Bill Pronzini: Betrayers

“Lose much money?”

“There wasn’t much in the wallet. But the thief made two ATM withdrawals from my checking account before I could close it. Six hundred dollars.” He sighed again. “I had my PIN number in the wallet, too, because I keep forgetting it.”

“Credit card charges?”

“No, thank God. I got them all canceled in time.”

Tamara gave him a detailed description of the phony Lucas. “You know that man, Mr. Zeller?”

“No.”

“See anybody looks like him the night your briefcase was stolen?”

“No, I’m sure I didn’t. You think he’s the thief?”

“Probably. He’s the man I’m looking for, not you.”

“I don’t understand…”

“He’s been posing as you, using your name.”

“What? Why would he do that?”

“Keep his own identity secret. Some other reason, too, maybe.”

“Such as what?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“A scam? Oh, Christ, my job, my reputation…”

“You report the theft to the police?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Then you don’t need to worry. He’d expect you to, and he knows you closed your bank account and canceled your credit cards. All he’s doing is using is your name, and maybe your driver’s license if he needs to show ID. He looks enough like you to pass.”

“Should I report this to the police, too?”

“You can, but there’s nothing they can do until he’s ID’d.”

“Then you don’t have any idea who he is?”

“No, but I’ll find out. You can count on that, Mr. Zeller.”

Now she was really pissed. The phony Lucas was a property and identity thief in addition to being a slick, lying, manipulative switch-hitter. And what else? Scam artist, using the real Lucas Zeller’s name to run a con of some sort? Wouldn’t surprise her. Small-time grifter in any case, the kind that was always on the hustle, always looking for a quick and easy score. Big-time scammers wouldn’t risk swiping a briefcase and six hundred bucks from ATM machines.

I shouldn’t have taken the chance with you. Now she understood what he’d meant by that. She’d as much as said it herself, when he asked her how she’d gotten Mama’s phone number. I run a detective agency, remember? All just a spicy game for him, laying a woman who worked on the right side of the law. In a way, that was more galling to her than any of the rest. She hadn’t even been human to him; all she’d been was a sex object, no more real to him than a piece of meat.

And what about Alisha? Really his mother? Girlfriend, wife? Whoever she was, she couldn’t be ignorant of any of the games he played. Grifter herself, likely. They might even be a team, working separately or together.

Tamara thought about fessing up the whole ugly business to Bill, bringing him and Jake Runyon into the hunt. Even considered going to Pop because of his connections at the Redwood City PD. But she ended up not telling any of them. Bill would be sympathetic, nonjudgmental, but she was too embarrassed to face him with her stupidity unless absolutely necessary. Pop would go ballistic; she’d never have a minute’s peace. Besides, it was personal. And she knew almost as much as they did about how to find somebody who didn’t want to be found, didn’t she? More, when it came to using the Net.

Sure, fine. Except that she couldn’t get a line on the man.

She tried everything she could think of, but the available data was just too sketchy. Trying to trace the phone number she had for Mama was a dead end: no record of the number, so no user’s address. One of those GoPhones that had a built-in number and limited amount of call minutes and that didn’t have to be registered. James had told Vonda he didn’t know how the man could be reached except by phone. And even if she had that number, there’d be no point checking it; it’d just turn out to be another GoPhone and probably out of service by now, too.

She knew what kind of car he drove, had ridden in it on their first date-a five-year-old light brown Buick LeSabre. It had a scrape and dent on the right front fender, the result of a minor accident, he’d told her; she’d noticed that, but she hadn’t paid any attention to the license plate. No reason she should have. You go out on a date, you’re interested in the man, focused on him, not details about his ride.

Was he still in the city, the Bay Area, California? No way of knowing. Her phone call, Mama reminding him of the mistake he’d made messing with a detective, could’ve been enough to send both of them packing. Chances were he was a floater anyway, moving to fresh territory every few weeks to stay one jump ahead of the law. For all Tamara knew he was in L.A. or Miami or New York by now.

On the other hand, he could be the reckless type, overconfident enough to hang on in the city or the Bay Area. Say he was working a con and had a sucker on the hook-that might keep him here until he made his score. In that case, would he keep on using Lucas Zeller’s ID? She hoped so. If he was using a different name now, he’d be even harder to track down.

She got in touch with Felice, her contact in the SFPD’s computer department, and talked her into checking local, state, and federal files for known African American thieves and grifters who answered his description and operated with an older woman who might or might not be his mother. Two possibles came out of that, but neither turned out to be the phony Lucas. Evidently he’d been lucky and hadn’t had been busted… yet.

Tamara talked to several of the sixty or so people who’d been at Ben and Vonda’s wedding reception-trying to get a handle on why he’d gone there. Not to see James, who’d been pissed when he showed up uninvited. To meet somebody else? Cruising for victims or a male or female bed partner? Nobody had any answers or leads to his whereabouts. Most didn’t remember him, and the ones who did hadn’t seen or talked to him since and couldn’t tell her anything about him she didn’t already know.

That left her with one other option: a face-to-face with James, a prospect that didn’t appeal to her any more than it would to him. Hostile witness. Man hadn’t wanted anything to do with her since he’d tried to hit on her back in his gangsta days and she’d blown him off and wounded his pride. Liked her even less, he’d told Vonda, after she’d gone to work for a white detective. It wouldn’t be easy dealing with James, if she could get him to talk to her at all. They were like a couple of pieces of flint whenever their paths crossed: friction and sparks.

And if she couldn’t get anything useful out of James? Well, she’d figure something out. No way that slippery bastard Lucas would get away with walking into her life, turning it upside down again, and then walking out free and clear to mess up somebody else’s. Somehow she’d find him, find out his real name. No matter where he was. No matter how long it took.

And then she’d be there, front and center, when a cell door slapped his sorry black ass on the way inside.

There’s a short story by John D. MacDonald called “I Always Get the Cuties,” about a cop named Keegan whose specialty is solving cases in which amateurs devise elaborate plans to commit the perfect crime. He calls them his “favorite meat.” They’re a lot easier to work on, he says, than cases involving professional criminals.

Seems like I always get the cuties in my profession, too. Different kinds than Keegan’s, but cuties nonetheless. Only they’re not my favorite meat by any stretch. Give me a simple skip-trace, insurance claim investigation, employee background check, or any of the other routine jobs that make up the bulk of the agency’s caseload. But for some reason, we seem to draw more than our fair share of the cuties, and even though I’m semiretired now, they usually fall into my lap. Screwball stuff. Like the one where a successful and seemingly rational businessman suddenly began attending the funerals of strangers for no apparent reason. Or the one I’d had recently that started off with the allegedly impossible theft of some rare and valuable mystery novels and ended up with cold-blooded murder in a locked room. Keegan would have loved that.