He shrugged that off. “Beyond these walls, we don’t discuss our clients’ business, ever.” He leaned back and put his hands up behind his head. “Damn if I don’t wish I could help you, too, but I gotta fly to L.A. this afternoon and we’re backed up three weeks around here, minimum. A month if you’re looking to bag a cheating spouse.”
“How many investigators work out of this office?”
“Five, including me. All of us booked solid. ’Tis the season for infidelity and runaways, not to mention the ongoing problem of delinquent dads, and moms, and what the courts hand us, which I’ve got to tell you has priority. That’s bread and butter, and they want what they want pretty much the day before they ask for it. District Court alone keeps two or more of us running full time, and we serve a lot of defense lawyers around town.”
I sank back in the chair. “So…got any suggestions?”
He shrugged. “DiFrazzia might have time for it.” He gave me a first name: “Jerry.”
DiFrazzia. The name rang a bell from my recent perusal of the phone book, but I’d rejected it as a one-man operation. It hadn’t said “& Associates.”
Mike grinned. “It’s close. Office is a few blocks west of here, on Washington, between First and Second.”
* * *
The place was a house, or had been. Good-sized one, too. Two stories, peeling pale-yellow paint with cream trim, a section of gutter held up with wire. Next door was a nest of lawyers in what had once been a modest riverfront mansion. The street was shaded by elms and maples. Sidewalks were buckled, grass growing in the cracks. No traffic going by on the street at the moment. Quiet neighborhood.
I went in blind, but what else is new? The sign on the door read DiFrazzia Investigations, so how was I to know?
The gal at the desk was shorter than any I’d spoken with recently, five-three. But she was a looker, in a solid, Mediterranean, outdoorsy way. And, like Dale, she could type a mile a minute, so that was also a requirement of the job.
A dozen prisms dangled in a window on fishing line, catching sunlight and shooting rainbows throughout the room—a large, open, humid place. It was a jungle, twenty potted plants, including a rubber tree and two enormous palmetto things eight feet tall. The pegged wooden floor creaked as I crossed the room.
“Help you?” the woman asked, looking up from her terminal. She had on a comfortably baggy brick-red cotton shirt and black sultan pants. I guessed her age at about twenty-eight, give or take.
“I’d like to talk to Mr. DiFrazzia.”
“You’re assuming something.”
“Huh?”
She smiled. “I’m DiFrazzia.” She paused a moment, then said, “Okay, now you’re staring. Is it the outfit? Not businesslike enough for you?”
“You’re DiFrazzia?”
“Yep. Geraldine, but everyone calls me Jeri, including my dad.”
I didn’t know what to say. Jeri, not Jerry. A vision of Jonnie’s head came back, his fogged stare, a maniac out there somewhere, gliding through the darkest of Reno’s shadows.
“You were expecting a man,” Jeri said, pushing herself away from her computer. She had short dark hair with feather bangs, full of deep-red highlights, cut in a carefully tousled way. Her eyes were direct, unwavering, right on mine.
“Sort of.” Okay, yes. I wanted a man the size and disposition of Officer Day, say three hundred twenty pounds, naturally suspicious of all humanity and sporting an Uzi he could field-strip in the dark, with a neck you couldn’t chainsaw through in a weekend. What I didn’t want was a fluffball who located missing dogs. Again, this shows how little I knew. Given all that, it’s amazing I’ve gotten this far in life without succumbing to some tremendous, avoidable accident, but, give me credit, something like that could still happen.
“Investigator-wise, I’m it, Mr. Angel. At least in this office.”
Christ, she practically knew my name. “Mort. At least you’re up on current events.”
“Everywhere one turns, there’s Mortimer and Dallas Angel. The two of you have been impossible to miss.”
“Not by choice. And the name’s Mort.”
“What you’re looking for, let me take a wild guess here—it’s got something to do with the Sjorgen and Milliken murders.”
“Jeez, you’re good.”
“Better than you know.”
I edged half a step toward the door. “Uh, no offense, but this is a pretty rough deal.” The floor squawked under my foot as I transferred weight.
Jeri leaned forward. “I can handle rough. Sit down. Let’s talk.”
“It’s more than rough. You heard about Gregory Rudd?”
“Your nephew, sure.”
“Then you know. This thing reaches out and grabs people, Ms. DiFrazzia.”
She made a face. “Jeri, please. And, yeah, I know. All the world knows. They found Mr. Rudd’s car this morning. Why don’t you sit down?”
I stared at her. “They found Greg’s car?”
“It was on the news,” she said, giving me a look.
While I’d been out busting vans and busses. Jeri was more on top of things than I was. The look she gave me wasn’t precisely one of scorn, but I knew she was wondering what planet I was from.
“Where’d they find it?” I asked.
“Parking lot at the Peppermill.”
Two miles south of his office. I had no idea what he might’ve been doing down there.
“Sit,” Jeri said.
“Really, I don’t think this is a good idea. I probably oughta can the whole idea. Might be best if you forgot I ever came in.”
“Sit down, Mr. Angel.”
I paused. “Mort.”
She pointed. “In the chair, Mort.”
There was only one parked in front of her desk. So, to be polite, I sat. I wasn’t about to hire her, but I couldn’t just walk out. She looked like she’d weigh in at about one-fifteen, soaking wet. I could see her walking into whatever Greg had come across. Goddamn if I wanted to find her head lying around anywhere.
“Exactly what’re you looking for?” she asked.
“Is the money clock running?”
“Not until I take the case. Which I
