“What else have you got?” she says. “No social security number? Maybe a vehicle license plate?”
“No. Sorry.”
“That’s it? Last name-first initial? And you don’t even got that for some of these people.”
“And the street address,” I remind her.
“You don’t want much,” she says.
“One other thing. The man I’m looking for. It’s possible he deals drugs.”
“Hmm. Well, now, that could help,” she says.
“How is that?”
“This guy deals drugs, he’s gotta have a pager, right? A cell phone? You ever seen a drug dealer doesn’t have a pager and cell phone?”
“I don’t know that many drug dealers,” I tell her.
“Take it from me. They got pagers and cell phones. People like that they always do. Of course sometimes these belong to somebody else,” she says. “That’s the business to be in.”
“What, cell phones?”
“Stealing them,” she says. Knowing Joyce, I know she is only half kidding.
“So I guess we start by doin’ the big five,” she says.
“What is that? Jump in the air and slap hands?”
“Noo. Noo.” Joyce has no sense of humor. “That’s the high five,” she says. “This is the big five. Different thing. These are the carriers. There’s five major ones offer all the wireless in this county. I know. We collect for them all. So, this guy you’re looking for. He’s got a cell phone; I’ll get his number. You want I should get you a copy of his monthly cell statement? Won’t cost you any more, seeing as it’s on the house.”
“You can do that?”
She hesitates for just a second. “For you, sure. When do you need this?”
“Yesterday,” I tell her.
“Gimme a day or so,” and she hangs up.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I have put this off as long as I can. Adam Tolt is expecting a call from me before the end of the day. So this afternoon I call Dana and tell her I have to see her, here in my office. She asks if it’s about the insurance. I tell her that’s part of it in order to get her here. Then I tell her there is also something more serious we need to discuss.
It’s a quarter after three, and she’s late. When she finally comes cruising into reception, she’s not alone. Nathan Fittipaldi is with her.
I am on the phone with a client, the door to my office only partly closed so that I can see them through the opening. They are both decked out, dressed like two college preppies headed to a party.
Fittipaldi has on a pair of tan slacks and a pullover shirt with Ralph Lauren’s polo rider tattooed over one tit. The sleeves of a white sweater are draped over his shoulders and tied loosely around his neck. He is running a comb through dark hair, parting it in the middle, looking like some over-the-hill heartthrob off the cover of Gentlemen’s Quarterly.
Dana is in a pair of white tennis shorts, tight enough that they leave little to the imagination, along with a blue sleeveless top that shows a lot of freckled and browned shoulders. She has on a white tennis cap, one of those visors with an adjustable strap and nothing but blond hair for the top. Her eyes are shaded in a pair of designer sunglasses that I suspect have set her back a good four hundred bucks.
She takes these off and holds one earpiece casually between her front teeth as she doffs the cap, drops it on our counter out front, and arranges her hair, holding a little mirror from her purse in one hand. “I must look a mess.” She giggles.
“You look great,” he says as he comes up behind her and snuggles.
When she turns this way, she sees through the crack in the door and spies me sitting in my office, phone to my ear, talking. To Dana this is an open invitation. Before I can tear myself away and close the door, she reaches it. Leaning over, smiling at me like she’s playing peekaboo through the opening, she pushes it open all the way and waves, giving me the full benefit of her pearly whites beaming in my doorway.
Fittipaldi walks up behind her, standing a good foot taller than Dana and gawking at my office. He is buffed up, stretching out the shoulders and chest of his shirt, looking very fit.
“Paul, you know Nathan, don’t you?”
With the phone in one hand, I hold up the palm of the other, letting them know that I like to finish one conversation before starting another.
“Oops.” Dana laughs. Covers her mouth with one hand. Silly me.
She turns to Fittipaldi and mouths the words: “You two know each other,” so that I can read her lips from across the room. Then she nods, a kind of self-assuring bob of the head to reinforce that I am part of the in crowd.
“Oh yeah, sure.” He smiles, nods toward me, hands in his pockets now.
Deprived of the gene of discretion, Dana just wanders in. She waltzes around in my office with her hands clasped behind her back like Leslie Caron playing Gigi. She studies all the pictures on my walls, my license from the State Supreme Court, the framed wall certificates from the Southern District of the Federal Court, and one next to it from the Ninth Circuit.
While she’s doing this, Nathan is standing in the open door, checking the place out. I sense from his expression that my office is not up to gallery standards.
“No, I understand. I know what you want. I don’t know that it’s possible, but I can try.” I’m trying to keep the conversation with my client cryptic and confidential, a local businessman facing four felony counts of fraud and embezzlement.
Dana turns toward Fittapaldi and whispers: “I hope this isn’t going to take too long.” This is loud enough for me to hear, since she is standing only four feet from my desk. The woman waiting for a two-million-dollar insurance check, buying groceries out of her dead husband’s client trust account, is in a hurry.
Then out loud she says: “It really is a beautiful car, Nathan. I just love it. I can’t wait to get going.” Knowing Dana, she wants the money. I can keep any bad news.
I’m forced to cup one hand over the mouthpiece in a futile effort to keep her voice from bleeding over the line to my client.
“Is somebody there?” he asks.
“Someone just walked in,” I tell him.
She turns and looks at me. Motions with a finger back toward the other room, questioning the obvious, that I might like her to leave.
I shake my head. I’ll have to continue the phone call another day.
Dana is flushed, her cheeks red, pixie hair turned to corn silk by the summer sun.
“Listen, I’m gonna have to call you back. Why don’t I give you a call tomorrow? Are you going to be in the office?”
He tells me he is.
“I’ll call you in the afternoon.”
With a female voice in my office swooning over a car, he’s afraid I might have better things to do, that I might forget, so he presses for a further commitment.
“Yes. No. I’ll call you before three.”
Before my receiver can hit the cradle, Dana bubbles all over my desk. “I thought you wouldn’t mind if I brought Nathan along,” she says. “We were just out for a ride. He was showing me his new Jaguar KX.”
“XK,” he says.
She laughs. “What do I know about cars? I mean, I just know it’s beautiful.” She turns to Fittipaldi as if to reassure him that he isn’t riding around town in some pile of crap.
“You really have to see this car,” she tells me. “It’s a kind of midnight blue, brand-new.”
