“What is he, then?”
“He’s a teacher,” Tamara said. “History and social studies. Been at Whitney eleven years.”
My God. The tin box, the cocaine… one of Emily’s teachers!
17
TAMARA
Third time roaming around the Western Addition was the charm.
One light brown five-year-old Buick LeSabre parked on Steiner Street a block and a half from Psychic Readings by Alisha.
She’d left work early, headed over to the neighborhood again-compulsive about it now-and her figuring had finally paid off. Fresh excitement made her thump the steering wheel with her fist. She hunted up a parking space for the Toyota, hurried back to the Buick. The right front fender hadn’t been visible when she drove by, but she knew it would be scraped and dinged, and it was. No question this was Lucas’s car.
She looked both ways along the street. A few pedestrians, but no familiar black face. First thing, she noted the license plate number and quickly wrote it down. Then, casually, as if she owned the damn thing, she tried the passenger side door. Locked. She bent to peer through the window. Front seat: empty. Backseat: empty except for a light jacket that she didn’t recognize. Another check of the passersby, and around to the driver’s door. Also locked. So no chance at whatever ID items, such as an insurance card, he might keep in the dash compartment.
Not that it mattered, necessarily. The plate number would be enough to ID the registered owner-either Lucas or Mama. Unless they’d switched license plates for some reason…
Better not be another dead end, Tamara thought. Not when she was so close… better not be.
It wasn’t.
The Buick’s owner was Alisha J. Delman, with an address in Oxnard. So that was where Mama and Lucas had come from, Southern California. Where they’d been living when the car was registered five years ago, anyhow.
Tamara text-messaged Felice at the SFPD to ask for a quick callback. When Felice complied a few minutes later, she grumbled-as Marjorie at the DMV had grumbled-about being called on too often lately. Some smooth- talking and the promise of a few extra dollars for services rendered and Felice gave in and agreed to run Alisha J. Delman’s name through the system.
“Do it ASAP, okay? If you find anything, call me right away. And if there’s a mug shot in the file, e-mail it to me.”
“Hey, I can’t do that,” Felice said. “Information is one thing, but I can’t be e-mailing files-”
“Oh, hell, Felice. Nobody’s looking over your shoulder down there.”
“Not right now, maybe. But there’s a review coming up next month.”
“You worried about that?”
“No, not really, but-” “Just this one time. I won’t ask again.”
“Yeah, sure, I’ve heard that before. Why do you want a mug shot? You’re not planning to download it, show it to anybody?”
“No. Just for my own information. I’ll delete it right away.”
“… All right, I’ll do it for another fifty.”
“Damn, girl! You getting greedy now?”
“I need the money, Tam.”
“I’ll give you twenty-five.”
“Uh-uh. Got to be fifty for something like this.”
Everybody had their hand out these days, not that you could blame them with the economy in the tank. The fifty dollars would have to come out of her pocket, too.
“Okay, fifty. But this one time only.”
“Same with e-mailing files,” Felice said.
She called back twenty minutes later. And the info she had was worth five times fifty dollars.
Alisha J. Delman, fifty-three years old, African American, had a record dating back to the mid-1980s. Misdemeanors, mostly, in the L.A. and San Diego areas: operating illegal fortune-telling businesses and offering psychic-reading services without a license. But there were two felony charges, one for a bait-and-switch con game, the other for a charity swindle that sounded like it might be the prototype of Operation Save-bilking investors in a nonexistent company that was supposed to help black home owners avoid foreclosure. She’d served two years in Tehachapi for her part in the swindle.
But that wasn’t the best part.
The best part was that Alisha J. Delman’s partner in the charity con was her son from an early marriage, Antoine Delman, who also had a record-petty theft, impersonating a police officer for purposes of fraud, bunco schemes like the bait-and-switch con-and who’d also been convicted and also served time in prison for the same swindle.
Antoine. Antoine Delman.
And Mama really was his mama.
Alisha and Antoine, the two A’s- A for “Assholes.” Everything Tamara had thought they were, and more.
Felice e-mailed a mug shot of him as well as Alisha and that proved it beyond any doubt. He hadn’t worn a mustache back then, but there was no mistaking that blocky face and hooked nose and receding hairline. Mama surprised Tamara a little. From that scratchy old voice on the phone she’d expected a witchlike crone, but Alisha was just the opposite-slim and attractive, with the big soulful eyes of a black madonna. No wonder she’d been able to run her psychic scams so easily.
Decision time again.
If Antoine and Alisha had been wanted for anything, what to do now would’ve been an easy choice: call the law and turn them in. But they’d served their sentences and they weren’t fugitives. And as far as Tamara knew or could prove, they hadn’t actually done anything in the Bay Area yet except five-finger the real Lucas Zeller’s briefcase, a theft that couldn’t be proved beyond a reasonable doubt, and set up their marks for a new version of the black charity con. Money had to change hands, a large sum of it, in front of witnesses in order for a felony fraud charge to stick.
She could still go to the police, but it wouldn’t be easy convincing them to act. All she had was conjecture-no evidence or corroborative witnesses. Bringing Deron Stewart in wouldn’t do any good; all he knew was what she’d told him, what she’d hired him to do. The fraud inspectors would want to know who she was representing, the details of her investigation, where she’d gotten the data on the Delmans’ criminal histories. No way would she compromise Felice, and the truth about why she was after the Delmans would make her actions look like a personal vendetta (which it damn well was) and might even leave her open to charges of misuse of her license for acting as her own unpaid client.
The only way to get quick action was with evidence that kept the cops’ focus off of her and on Antoine and Mama and their con game. That meant finding out more about how they’d set it up, how much money they’d scored so far, and when they were expecting the rest to be paid. It also meant convincing at least one of the victims that they were being conned, then convincing them to take a trip to the Hall of Justice.
Four options there. No, make that three. Wait and do nothing until after the down-low club’s meeting on Saturday night was out. Deron Stewart might be able to get her some of what she needed and he might not; he might even screw up and blow the whole deal. If the two A’s got even a whiff that their scam had been found out, they’d take off like a shot.
Okay, three options-the three people she knew for sure were marks. Doctor Easy, Viveca Inman, Judge Alfred Mantle. Which one had the most knowledge? Which one was the most vulnerable?
Doctor Easy? No. She just wasn’t sure enough of where he stood. A man with a past record like his was as untrustworthy as they made ’em.
