The Debt Collector (18 page)

“You?” she prompted.

“I want to be your friend, Sonora.”

“So? Be my friend.”

“That's okay by you?”

“Actually, no.”

“Don't you stay friends then? With your exes?”

“It's been known to happen, but very rarely.”

“It's healthy and happy to stay friends.”

“That's nice, Keaton, but usually I hate their guts and never want to see them again.”

“That's not very mature.”

“Fuck mature.” Sonora hung up. If Sam were there, she would tell him that she wasn't mature. And he would say, tell me something I don't know.

The first wave of sleepiness kicked in at last. The pills were taking effect. Sonora turned off the light, clutched the cell phone, and cuddled up to Clampett. She missed the children, their quiet presence down the hall in the middle of the night.

She closed her eyes, and it came again, the whispers. The voice of Joy Stinnet.
Hail Mary, full of grace
.

34

Sonora stopped at the coffeepot, nudging Molliter aside, and paused at Gruber's desk.

Gruber tapped a pencil against the desktop, impossible as always for him to sit still. Sonora would not have wanted to be his kindergarten teacher.

She put her hand over his. “Be quiet.”

He pulled the hand away and kept tapping. “Hey, you know that lady that was in here yesterday? Where'd she lay the Karmic burden? I don't want to be tripping over it.”

“You seen Sam?”

“Little while ago—got off the phone like he had ants in his pants—”

Sanders came through the swing doors from CSU, looked at Sonora. “There you are,” she said.

“Like she's been hiding somewhere?” Gruber grinned at Sanders, and Sonora saw the look that passed between them. Definitely sleeping together.

“I've got Amber Wexford in One,” Sanders said. “She got here at seven-thirty. She's been waiting awhile.”

“Seven-thirty? Man.” Sonora grabbed her coffee mug, filled it, added cream, looked over her shoulder at Crick's office. The door was shut. And she didn't like to keep relatives waiting. She headed down the hallway to Interview One. Checked the two-way out of habit before she went in.

Amber Wexford was crying. She sat stiffly at attention in a folding metal chair, legs crossed at the ankle, a roundish woman with long legs in neatly pressed jeans and a golden sweater. Tears ran freely beneath the large square glasses as if they were in endless supply, and she wiped them away from time to time with a crumpled blue tissue.

Sonora went back to the coffeemaker, filled a cup half with coffee, half with sweet chocolate cocoa mix, and stole the box of white, lotion-soft Puffs off Molliter's desk. Amber Wexford was blowing her nose vigorously when Sonora pushed the door open with her hip.

“Here, can I help?” The woman was up and off her chair in a split second, taking the box of tissues out of Sonora's hands, leaving her to juggle the two coffee mugs.

“Help yourself,” Sonora said, inclining her head to the box of tissues. She handed Amber a mug. “This is for you.”

The woman took the cup with a blank expression that did not betray whether or not she wanted coffee at the moment.

“Go ahead, sit down,” Sonora said. “Are you cold? I can turn the heat up.”

“No, thank you, though, but I'm fine.”

Fine she was not. Eyes bloodshot, nose red, a look of stunned bewilderment with which Sonora was much too familiar.

Amber Wexford was the type of girl you saw a lot of in high school, pleasant to everyone, with no stir of what she really thought penetrating the mask of amiability. All knees and glasses, long hair freshly washed and blown dry with a hint of a flip at the bottom. Perhaps, to her intimates, she was quite dashing. But any pizzazz she had was buried under layers of conventionality that she used as armor to protect herself from the casual brutalities of everyday life.

She was reasonably attractive, hiding like a hedgehog in loose jeans two sizes too big and the large bulky sweater. She would never be seen in short, cut-off blue jeans. In the summers, her uniform would be cotton shorts—longish, cuffed, and pleated—bound in the middle with a canvas belt. Her watchwords would be
comfortable
and
decent
—pretty enough, and attracting only the right kind of attention, provided any attention was attracted at all. Might as well tattoo
I'm a very nice girl
on her forehead.

Sonora wondered what she was really like, thinking it possible that no one knew.

She put a hand on the woman's arm. “Mrs. Wexford, I'm Detective Blair. I just want you to know how sorry I am for your loss.”

Amber Wexford nodded, and Sonora thought she might not be trusting her voice just yet.

“How is the baby?”

“Oh.” Amber cleared her throat. “Excuse me. The baby is fine.” Her voice cracked and she cleared her throat again, took a grateful sip of the coffee. “I'm sorry.”

An apologizer, Sonora thought. Not surprised. “I'm just curious, Mrs. Wexford, do you know if you're the child's legal guardian?”

Amber nodded. “Yes, unless Carl changed the will. Both he and Joy asked me to take the kids if anything happened to them. And I made them guardian of my two.”

“Chloe's a lucky little girl,” Sonora said.

“Thank you. You must've met Eddie.”

They both laughed, but Amber was already backing away. “I'm sorry, that wasn't kind.”

Sonora didn't pursue it. “I really appreciate you coming in to help us out, it saves us time. But I can see how upset you are. Will it be okay to ask a few questions?” It was something of a dirty trick. She could appear sympathetic, secure in the knowledge that a woman like Amber Wexford would be accommodating. The world ran on the shoulders of women like Amber Wexford—dutiful, hardworking, and, above all, pleasant.

“No, that's okay.”

Sonora was thinking the words as Amber said them. “Tell me what was going on with your brother.”

Amber slid forward on her seat with the look of someone about to take a very difficult test. “My brother was a good man, a good man, Detective, but he was having money trouble.”

“A lot of people have money trouble, Mrs. Wexford. A lot of very good people.”

“Yes. Yes. But Carl—or Joy, I should say. The family was being threatened.”

Sonora waited. But Amber looked at her steadily, waiting.

“Tell me about the threats.”

“Some man would call and say that if they knew what was good for them, they better come down and pay.”

“In person?”

“In person.”

“Do you know who made the threats, Mrs. Wexford?”

“No, Carl never did say. He didn't tell me about it. I don't think he knew. Joy told me. They always talked to her.”

“But she didn't tell her husband?”

“Oh, Detective, Carl was so upset about his business and the Jeep—”

“What about the Jeep?”

“They repossessed it. He was so ashamed.” This brought on a new flood of tears. Sonora peeled off five tissues and folded them neatly, handing them over to Amber Wexford, who blew her nose. “I'm sorry. I just felt so bad for him. Joy didn't want to do anything to make him feel any worse.”

“And she didn't say who?”

Amber shook her head. “I'm surprised she told me that much. She kept that kind of thing to herself. But I was over there, I took them a little something, and she broke down and told me.”

“What did you take them?”

“Just … something.”

Sonora waited.

“I have an IRA with my job, and I cashed it out. And Carl was already starting to pay me back before … this happened.” She sobbed and blew her nose. “And he would have, Detective. He was going to pay me before the year was out so I could roll it into another account and not get the tax hit.”

“You are very generous,” Sonora said.

“He would have done the same for me. He
did
the same for me, he helped me through nursing school. He always had some extra money for me before I got married. It was good to get a chance to pay him back some. But he didn't tell me he was in trouble till after they took the Jeep.”

“Mrs. Wexford, do you know if your brother or his wife went to one of those instant check-cashing places?”

Amber eased back in her chair, frowning. “It's funny you say that.”

If ever a phrase got a copper's attention. “Yes?” Sonora said.

“Joy said something to me once. She told me never to go to one of those places. She said they were the newest breed of loan shark.”

“She was right,” Sonora said.

35

Sonora put her feet up on the desk, listening to Frank Sinatra singing “My Way.” She hated being put on hold almost as much as being in voice jail when she banked by phone. The door from CSU swung open and Mickey slid in front of her desk like a man on skates.

“We got a match, my beautiful baby. You're the first to know, after me.”

Sonora pulled her feet off the desk and leaned forward. “Aruba?”

“Kinkle. Beautiful forefinger on the front doorjamb. And a smear on the doorbell. Dipshit.”

Sonora kissed her fingers at him.

“Got to tell Crick.” He went in without knocking. Sonora, tied to the end of the phone, was aware of missing an opportunity. She got a quick glimpse of Sam standing up and Crick on the telephone before the door shut.

Dammit, she thought. She was going in there as soon as she got off the phone with this Quincy David. “Dammit.”

“Quincy Da—I beg your pardon?”

“I said this is Detective Blair, trying to get in touch with Quincy David, Attorney-at-Law.”

“You got me.”

“Mr. David, I'm working an investigation and I understand from our District Attorney that you're the man to call about these check-cashing services that are going up all over the city.”

His voice went from amiable to grim. “Like anything bad, Detective, they're everywhere. What can I tell you?”

“Tell me everything, Mr. David.”

“Okay.” Sonora had the impression of a man leaning back in his chair, so she leaned back in hers. “Can you give me a minute to grab a cup of coffee?”

“Go on ahead.” She considered her own mug. Decided against it. Waited. It was Jim Croce this time, singing “Roller Derby Queen.” If she kept not sleeping at night, maybe she could make it up napping while being on hold.

“Okay, I'm back, thank you.”

She took out a pen and paper.

“Once upon a time, Detective. Blair, is it?”

“Sonora Blair.”

“Sonora. It all started up in a little town called Cleveland, Tennessee, then it spread into Kentucky, and now it's moving across the country like venereal disease. In the beginning, it centered around the military bases, preying on the enlisted guys, giving them an advance on their next government check. They called them payday loans.”

“How does that work?”

“Joe Blow comes in and writes a check. They'll take anybody, so long as they have a job, a social security number, a bank account, a pay stub, or some other ID, like a utility bill. These guys let them cash a check and hold it for two weeks. Then, at the end of the two weeks, they let you roll the check over for payment. They might keep rolling it every two weeks for a year, which would wind up with the customer paying about nine hundred dollars for a one-hundred-dollar check.”

“Is that legal?” Sonora said.

“Nope, I don't think so. We've got some murky rulings handed down. As far as the check-cashing guys are concerned, they take the position they're immune. There's a statute that gives the right to cash checks and collect a fee where said fee is not considered interest. This kind of thing doesn't fall into that category, no matter how many times these people say it does. This is a loan, because these people know there is no money in the account when the check is written, and it's a rollover scheme. They're violating the truth-in-lending laws, RICO, a million and one consumer statutes.

“And they're in a sweet position. If people don't come in and pay the interest, then they cash the check they're holding, which they promised not to do, and run up all kinds of charges when it bounces. Sometimes they'll send the sheriff after people, to collect, maybe to put them in jail if they can't pay—debtors' prison is alive and well, Detective. It's not legal, but the deputy sheriff doesn't know better—hell, even a lot of attorneys aren't up on this—and when these people call their lawyers, they get told there's nothing they can do. It's tied up in federal court, right now, with Judge Hood. I mean, come on, Detective, we got the Gambinos in South Florida in on this, if that tells you anything.”

“Why this instead of their usual?”

He laughed. “No longer profitable. The damn credit-card companies get twenty-four percent. They've put the loan-sharking boys out of business. Do you know what the largest profit maker is for any bank?”

Sonora did the parrot thing. “Credit cards?”

“Yep. There isn't any money in loan-sharking.”

Crick's door opened, and Mickey came out, then turned on his heel and stood in the doorway, back to Sonora. She heard male voices, but she kept her mind on Quincy David.

“… and the credit-card companies are making so much money they don't even go after bad accounts anymore, they just write it all off. They don't even file a claim on their tax returns. It isn't worth their time. They spend all
their
money lobbying to make it harder for your average Joe to file bankruptcy and get the hell
out
of credit-card hell.”

She had pushed a hot button. She took notes, hand cramping, pen flying. “You sound angry, Mr. David.”

Mickey headed past her desk, waving. Sonora craned her neck, looking for Sam.