Bill Pronzini: Camouflage

“How long did the marriage last?”

“Two years. Then I met Elaine, my second wife, and that was the end of Roxie.”

The end of Roxie. Some turn of phrase.

“She have any other living relatives?” I asked.

“No. Both parents were dead before we were married, no brothers or sisters.”

“What else can you tell me about her? Hobbies, special interests?”

“Animals, like I said. Always yapping at me about getting a dog or a cat or some damn thing. I didn’t want any part of that, so she started volunteering at one of the animal shelters. Spent more time there than she did at home with me.”

I didn’t blame her.

“Any other interests?”

“None that’ll help you find her.” Virden punctuated the sentence with a leer.

“Would you happen to have a photograph of her?”

“Sure. I figured you might need one.” He produced it from the inside pocket of his suit coat. “It’s more than eight years old,” he said as he handed it over. “I haven’t changed much since, but she might’ve. You know how it is with women as they get older.”

Keep it up, Virden, I thought. One or two more glimpses into what goes on inside that head of yours and I’ll toss you right out of here. I don’t have to like the agency’s clients, but on the other hand, we don’t need business badly enough so I have to put up with greedy self-centered sexists who insist on red-flagging their shortcomings.

I looked at the photograph. Five-by-seven color snapshot of Virden and a slender brunette taken on a beach somewhere, him in swim trunks and her in a two-piece suit. She had nice features-prominent cheekbones, luminous brown eyes, a generous smiling mouth. The swimsuit accentuated her other physical assets, no doubt the primary ones that had attracted Virden.

“How old was she when this was taken?”

“Let’s see. Thirty-one, thirty-two… yeah, thirty-two.”

“Do you remember her birth date?”

“Birth date.” His face screwed up in thought, smoothed out again. “I’m not very good with dates.”

“The month, at least.”

“June? No, July. That’s right; I remember now because it was a few days after the Fourth. Sixth, seventh, eighth, one of those.”

I asked him a few more questions, and he managed not to annoy me with his answers. So then I told him how much the investigation would cost, resisting an impulse to juice the charges a little. He didn’t bat an eye. Hell, why should he? It was small change compared to what he expected to be privy to once he joined the LoPresti family.

He signed the standard agency contract, wrote out a check for the retainer. “So,” he said then, “how long do you think it’ll take to find her?”

Roxanne Lorraine McManus. Not a common name, and he’d provided a reasonable amount of personal information. “I can’t give you an exact time line, but it shouldn’t take too long. This is Friday… possibly Monday.”

“The quicker the better. For Judith’s sake.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Alive or dead, doesn’t matter which.”

No, not to him it didn’t. As far as David Virden was concerned, Roxanne Lorraine McManus had ceased to exist the day he’d divorced her eight years ago.

After Virden left, I took my notes and the photograph into Tamara’s office. Skip-traces and missing-person cases are her meat. I’ve learned some computer skills from her and from Kerry, and Jake Runyon is proficient enough when the need arises, but she’s the resident expert. If there’s any information on any subject or person living or deceased available in cyberspace, she can find it as quickly as any professional hacker working today.

She was busy, as always, but she didn’t seem to mind the interruption or being handed additional work. There were a number of different Tamaras living inside her slightly plump young body; there were Grumpy Tamara, Professional Tamara, Tough Tamara, Streetwise Tamara, Philosophical Tamara, Playful Tamara, Sex-Starved Tamara, and a handful of others. But what we’d had for the past ten days or so was a brand-new member of the team: Unflappable Tamara. Or maybe Seriously Adult Tamara. Not exactly serene or cheerful, but exhibiting signs of both, and neither bothered nor shaken by anyone or anything. I liked most of the other personas, but I was developing a particular fondness for this one. No surprises, no put-ons or detailed commentaries on her sex life or lack thereof, and no need for me to shift into one of my own multiple personalities-boss, mentor, father confessor, pacifier-in dealing with her.

The reason for the appearance of this welcome new Tamara had to do with her involvement, both personally and professionally, with a con man calling himself Lucas Zeller. The secretive professional part had been a mistake, one that had nearly cost her her life, and the experience seemed to have had a profound effect on her. She was smart as a whip, but in the six years I’d known and worked with her she’d been unpredictable, not completely grounded, and just a little immature. I had the feeling that none of those applied any longer, that now, at age twenty-seven, she’d learned the lessons that come with full maturity. Seriously Adult Tamara.

She glanced at the photo, read through my notes. “Weird,” she said. “Bet you never had a case like this before.”

“Not even close. At first I thought I’d caught another cutey.”

“Cutey?”

“The oddball cases I seem to get stuck with. Pretty straightforward, once Virden explained his motives.”

“Uh-huh. I didn’t know the Catholic Church could annul marriages that’d already ended in divorce.”

“It’s not common knowledge outside the faith.”

“Three exes and now the dude’s looking to marry number four. This one must have money.”

“Good guess.”

“Greed beats love every time for some guys.”

“He was up-front about it; I’ll give him that,” I said. “I wouldn’t’ve taken him on if it wasn’t a simple trace job.”

“Simple as long as his checks don’t bounce.”

“I’ll run his retainer check down to the bank on my lunch break.”

“Low-priority case, right?”

“Right. Fit it in when you can.”

She gave me a patient little smile, my cue to go away and let her get back to work. I liked that, too. It was a much more pleasant cue than some of those her other personalities indulged in.

Jake Runyon rolled into the agency a little past four thirty, just as I was about to leave for the day. I had my overcoat and hat and muffler on; the weather lately had been fog ridden and blustery, the kind-even though it was only April-that had inspired Mark Twain to write that the coldest winter he’d ever spent was a summer in San Francisco. Runyon, on the other hand, was coatless in a rumpled suit and tie. He seemed impervious to weather conditions of any kind, maybe because he was a native of Seattle. The fact that he was twenty years younger than me might also have had something to do with it; I hadn’t been nearly so aware of weather extremes when I was his age.

He’d been out on a hunt for a witness to a near-fatal hit-and-run auto accident. The agency doesn’t usually handle personal injury cases, but the injured party involved in this one was a local politician whose attorney knew a criminal lawyer I’d done some work for in the past. So we’d taken it on as a favor. Quid pro quo is a necessity in any successful detective business.

“Find the witness yet?” I asked Runyon.

“Name and address, but he’s out of town for the weekend. Back on Monday-I’ll brace him then. Anything new for me?”

“Nope. One new client today, but it’s a minor trace job and Tamara and I are handling it.”

He ran a hand over his slablike face. Something on his mind; I could see it in his eyes. “You in a hurry to get home?”