Paul Levine - False Dawn

So what was going on here, Jake old buddy? You get a call from a lady PI who wants to have lunch and maybe work for you. She paid attention to the dust on your car, and who knows what else. She knew you used a regular investigator but thought you might switch. Why?

“One time,” Lourdes was saying, “I was hired by an older man whose lover was a young man who taught aerobics.”

“Your client thought his boyfriend found someone younger at the gym.”

“Someone prettier. He was convinced the young guy was making it with a woman in one of his classes. So I signed up. Three classes a day for a month. High impact, low impact, step classes. I was in great shape.”

“You still are,” I heard myself say, then took a last slurp of the guava shake.

“The problem is,” she said, “I always start to empathize with the subject of the investigation. I mean, the instructor had a right to his own life, didn’t he?”

“Did he? I mean, with a woman.”

“Two at a time. They used the back of his van in the parking lot. Right after class and without taking showers. Maybe he needed to prove to himself that he was still a man, even if he was bisexual.”

“Most investigators just gather information. You analyze it.”

“I like to know why people do things. The doctor I told you about was just divorced and had some emotional needs that weren’t being fulfilled, so he took a walk on the wild side. Even the man who went bankrupt was responding to financial pressures he didn’t know how to handle.” She finished the last of the ropa vieja — ”old clothes” in Spanish-took a sip of iced tea, and patted her lips with her napkin. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, because you may think it affects my work. It doesn’t, but the truth is, I feel compassion. I always see the other side.”

“I have no problem with that. It’s called humanity. I wish the state attorney’s office had some.”

She studied me a moment, her eyes dark and knowing. “I think you and I will get along well, Jake Lassiter.” Then she looked away, her fine white skin coloring a bit. “Would you like to see my work?”

I smiled my crooked smile and allowed as how I would. Okay, I admit it. I try to be a modern man, treating women equally in the give-and-take of the business world. But I didn’t feel like punching Lourdes Soto on the shoulder and asking, So whadaya think of the Dolphins’ draft? I try not to regard women as sex objects, but damn it, I can’t forget who they are and what they’ve got, and if one turns out to be beautiful and bright and knows how to laugh, no matter how professional and courteous the conversation, there’s always the question lingering just beneath the surface: Is she finally The One?

Lourdes Soto reached under the table and opened an aluminum case. She pulled out a dozen eight-by-ten black-and-whites and spread them on the table. A middle-aged man, his gut hanging over his swim trunks, had his right hand on the bare breast of a superbly endowed young woman. She wore only black bikini bottoms and sunglasses.

“He’s putting on the Coppertone,” Lourdes said.

“From the looks of her, he’ll use the whole bottle before he gets to her back.’’

“Augmentation mammaplasty. He paid five grand for it. I got the receipts by impersonating a State Farm auditor.’’

“Good work. You shot the photos from above.”

“They were on the beach behind the Palace Hotel in San Juan. From the roof of the hotel, I used a Nikon 8008 with a three-hundred-millimeter autofocus lens at a twenty-two F-stop, two-fifty speed, and your basic Tri-X film.”

“His wife must have loved them.”

“Ordered two dozen different shots, blew them up into posters for the divorce party.”

Lourdes reached into the case again and pulled out a pair of binoculars with a microphone mounted between the barrels. A wire ran from the mike to two earpieces.

“Audio glasses,” she said. “From the top of the hotel, I could hear everything they said at two hundred meters. Got a handle on how much he was spending on the girl, where he was hiding his money, who his shrink was, and wouldn’t his wife just die if she could see him now.”

I shook my head. “Why do you suppose men tell their mistresses so much?”

“Because men are just little boys looking for their mommas.” She cracked a decidedly nonmaternal smile. “Anyway, my client got the kids, the dog, the Dolphins and Heat tickets, the condo in Aspen, plus fifty percent of the business, and permanent alimony.”

“How’d you know he was going to be in San Juan?”

She looked from side to side and leaned closer. The faint perfume was stronger. “I’ll show you,” she whispered. Again, she reached into her case. What other treasures were stored there? She pulled out a fountain pen, removed the cap, and shook out an inch-long capsule.

“A tracking transmitter,” she said. “I had the wife slip it into a pen he always carried with him. The receiver is portable. It’ll track up to sixty-five miles. A great help on surveillance when you take a wrong turn coming through Ponce and into old San Juan. First, I tailed him around Miami for a few weeks. I’d call his secretary and pretend to be a bunch of different people. Used the electronic voice changer to become a man with a southern drawl, that sort of thing. It’s amazing how much secretaries will tell you if they think you’re important business associates.”

I signaled the waiter for two cups of cafe Cubano. “You didn’t track him to Puerto Rico with that.”

She tried not to chuckle. “No, I had some help. The wife put a voice-activated recorder on his private line. He talked in code to his girlfriend, but I knew they were headed to the airport, and I just followed.”

“Illegal as hell…”

“But extremely effective.”

She gathered up the accoutrements of her cloak-and-dagger life. I watched the fine blue veins on the back of her hands. White, tapered fingers with short, clear lacquered nails. She ran a hand through her glossy black hair and cocked her head at me again. She put the binoculars back into their foam-cushioned spot in the aluminum case. “So what took you to the justice building this morning?”

“Francisco Crespo, a murder case. Probably a reasonable doubt defense. I need a witness to put somebody else at the scene, maybe find somebody who had a grudge against the victim.”

“Is that all? No signed confession from a notorious serial killer?”

I like a woman with a sharp sense of humor. Especially when she isn’t afraid to aim it at me. “You’re right,” I conceded. “I sometimes ask for too much. Right now, I’d settle for knowing a little more about my client’s employer. Crespo worked for an importer named Matsuo Yagamata. Ever heard of him?”

Her lips played with a smile, then let me have it. “Francisco Crespo used to work for my father. And my father used to be in business with Matsuo Yagamata.”

Oh.

“You knew I was representing Crespo, didn’t you?”

“A good investigator ought to know what’s going on around town.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this earlier? Why the life and times of Lourdes Soto?”

“I wanted you to hire me based on my qualifications, not my contacts.”

The waitress brought the check. I tried to sort it out. Lourdes Soto had information I wanted. Or she could get it. What did I have that she wanted?

“Crespo’s not telling me everything,” I said. “Or he’s telling me too much.”

“What do you mean?”

She was staring intently at me, her body perfectly still. This was happening a little too fast. I wasn’t ready to entrust Francisco Crespo’s future, or lack of it, to a woman I had just met, a woman who encouraged wives to illegally wiretap their husbands, and who probably knew what I ate for dinner last night. Still, I could use her.