The Debt Collector (19 page)

“I
am
angry, Detective Blair.”

“What kind of people get caught up in this kind of thing?”

“All kinds of people, Detective. Victims range across the board, from the extremely well off to your single mom living on welfare. They've got one thing in common—immediate financial crisis. They need food, they have to make the mortgage, they have to make the rent.”

“What kind of collection methods are we talking here?”

“Okay, they're not out breaking legs. But there's no profit in that, anyway, and to tell you the truth, they don't have to. Most of these people are embarrassed. They feel guilty already for having to go there in the first place, they're usually under a lot of stress. And the ones at the low end of the financial scale, they're poor, they don't have good experiences with the law, so they're not going to complain. Most of the methods are psychological. They call, day and night. Read people that collection Miranda that goes on everything, even bubble-gum wrappers these days. We have the right to collect, blah blah blah. That little notice scares the bejesus out of people, God knows why. It looks official and threatening, and by God, people feel threatened.”

Sonora caught sight of Sam out of the corner of one eye, heading for her desk, skidding to a stop when he saw she was on the phone. He threw up his hands and she heard a curse. Headed back behind her to his own desk.

“You got horror stories?” Sonora asked, trying to keep her mind on David.

“I got a million of them.” He stopped, gulped. She pictured him drinking coffee, black probably, the perfect brew for a no-nonsense tough guy. “Most of them slide around within the bounds of the law. But I've had people in chapter thirteen bankruptcy with check cashers going after them, bouncing checks through their accounts and running up fees when these people can't pay their water bill or feed their kids. They've had people arrested, and they threaten it all the time. They've told people that unless they pay, they'll be taken into custody, and the jail will report them to Social Services and take their kids away, or they tell them they'll be convicted felons, and then they'll lose their kids. I had a woman, she's at home with three little kids, in the middle of a snowstorm. They call her and tell her to come down and pay the rollover, or pay the check and the fee, or they're going to deposit the check. There's nothing in her account over the checks she's already written to pay her bills, so she says she'll come down there with the grocery money; they give her till three o'clock. She goes with her kids four and a half hours on the bus on roads that are covered with snow and ice, gets there at two-thirty, and they already deposited the check. Bounced everything else in her account, ran up over a hundred in bloody bank fees, and she's got another four and a half hours home on that bus. You know what these people are, Detective?”

“Predators, Mr. David.”

“Shits, Detective. They're shits.”

A legal term, Sonora thought.

“And by the way, that tough guy calling about your MasterCard at eight
A
.
M
. on Saturday morning is probably a hard-core con in a maximum-security prison.”

Sonora winced. A new service, put together for your hard-core predator, Dial-A-Victim, courtesy of your credit-card company.

Sam waved a note under her nose, then handed it to her like a bouquet of roses. She nodded at him, fingering the folded paper, still listening to David.

“I had a lady, they wouldn't
let
her pay. She told them to send the check through. They said no, she had to pick it up. That way they can get her in the office and convince her to roll it over. I got people, they come in to my office and cry. Nice people, Detective, hardworking. Had a girl last week, they swore they were going to have her baby taken away if she didn't pay up.”

“Ever had anybody get physical?”

He paused. “Not that I've heard of. It's not the norm. But I've heard … rumors.”

“What kind of rumors?”

“People coming to the house. Ringing the doorbell, standing on the porch. One lady said some guy spent all afternoon on her porch swing, by the time she got me on the phone, she was hysterical. I don't know if it's true, I haven't got anything concrete on that. People do get scared. Mostly what I see is psychological. And that works because people are embarrassed. It quits working when people have had all they can take, and they just get hard about it.”

“What is the usual collection rate?”

“Depends on the part of town. Anywhere from twenty-five to forty-five percent. Thirty-three is the norm. But that's normal collections. Not these guys. I've known check cashers to make seven hundred percent.”

Sonora set her pen down. Seven hundred percent? That she would remember. “Can you give me anything at all concrete on the rumors?”

“I don't really have much. Just people, scared people. I can tell you this. The scaredest people come from that place over in Indian Hill. On the other hand—”

“You were saying?” Sonora broke in.

“It's this Indian Hill place. Just this one. I've heard of it a time or two and actually had it happen to a client.”

Sonora waited.

“Got to give the devil his due, I guess. Once in a while, some of these people, like the single moms with kids and stuff? The debt just goes away.”

“Where does it go?”

“All the people say is it's been forgiven. By the Angel.”

“The
Angel?
”

“Yeah, I know. And always from that place in Indian Hill, as far as I can tell, but most of this is whispers, it's hard to pin it down.”

“Who owns it, do you know?”

“I been trying for three months to unravel that paper trail. I'm nowhere yet, but maybe your people are better than mine. All I can tell you is, whoever that guy is, he's either your best friend or your worst nightmare.”

Sonora opened the note. Focused on Sam's neat block handwriting.

DETECTIVE WHITMORE FROM LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY, REPORTS THE PRIMER-STAINED MONTE CARLO AT THE SISTER'S ADDRESS ON OLD FRANKFORT PIKE. SUBJECTS MATCHING DESCRIPTION OF ARUBA AND KINKLE SEEN GOING IN AND OUT OF THE HOUSE. CRICK HAS THE PAPERWORK UNDER WAY
.

“Thank you, Mr. David, you've been a lot of help.”

“Uh, you okay, Detective, you sound kind of funny. Not having a heart attack, are you?”

“No, I'm fine, Mr. David, and very grateful for your help.”

“That so? Because if you're really grateful, Detective, spread the word there with your colleagues that it's not legal for you people to be out there picking my clients up.”

“I'll do that,” Sonora said. It seemed too rude to tell him it wasn't her department.

36

Sonora walked through the Dairy Mart, elbowing her way around every other person there on their way home from a long day at work, wondering if they'd have anything she could use for dinner. The kids were getting tired of Lean Cuisines, and she could not face the lines and jazzed-up panic of a major grocery store during the predinner after-work chaos.

She wanted to buy something quick, she wanted to buy something easy, so she could take a hot bath and get to bed early. Tomorrow she would be up at dawn for the drive to Kentucky. She ought to be excited.

But she wasn't excited.

Frozen pizza? Burritos? Pimento loaf, pickle loaf, stale doughnuts, what the hell was she doing shopping here anyway, when she should be at home doing something wholesome like making chicken and dumplings? Unfortunately, she did not have the first clue how one made chicken and dumplings, the kitchen was a mess, and the thought of clearing the rubble and cooking was enough to make her want to leave the country.

A man in corduroy pants that sang with the movement of his legs walked around her with an exaggerated air of polite tolerance that told her, one, he felt she was in his way but he was going to be civilized about it, and two, she didn't like his face. He did not look happy. She looked around, trying to find someone who did look happy.

No luck.

The door opened and closed, opened and closed, the line at both registers got longer. She decided on bacon. They would have BLTs, unfortunately without the tomatoes. Not the best dinner in the world, but not the worst. She would get the kids their favorite chips, totally unhealthy, but it would fill them up, and she was too tired to think of anything else. Unless … soup? Was there soup anywhere? Soup and sandwich, that was lunchy, but definitely wholesome, according to all those Campbell's commercials.

She found Chunky Soup, got into the end of the line. It wasn't moving. The woman at the front was buying cigarettes, and she wanted them in the box, Marlboros in the box.

The clerk found the right cigarettes. Now the woman wanted lottery tickets. Sonora gritted her teeth and made a fist. She hated waiting for people who wanted lottery tickets. People who wanted lottery tickets and cigarettes at dinnertime.

Maybe it made them happy. This woman looked happy now, the first happy person Sonora had seen in the Dairy Mart, of the thirty or so who passed through while she was trying to make up her mind.

She bit her thumbnail. Waiting in a line that was going so slow she genuinely thought she might prefer to die than wait her turn.

Here I am walking through Dairy Mart and I want to die. Everybody here who wants to die, raise your hand
.

Sonora wondered what the percentage would be. Low, surely, but deep in her heart she was convinced that it could be pretty damn high. Which showed how far gone
she
was.

By midnight, the witching hour, Sonora, back out in the car, cruising the streets, still wanted to die, even more now than when she was standing in line at the Dairy Mart. She had gone home not to kids, but to kid. Tim had not come home. On the one night she actually felt sleepy, had actually fallen asleep on the couch, had to get up very early the next morning to catch two desperate and dangerous killers, for God's sake, this would be the night the boy did not come home, the boy did not call, this would be the night the boy, her son and firstborn, chose to disappear.

Sonora, a mother, a cop, a woman with a great deal of common sense but a lot of imagination, thought she might never sleep again.

The list of things that could happen to him was as long as the list of things she would do to him once she had him home and safe, bargains with her maker aside.

She stopped at a red light, then turned the heat on in the car. It was cold out for cut-off jeans, but her sweatshirt was warm, and she was comfortable. Clampett, banished to the backseat, made a move for the front, which is where she would put Tim if she ever found him. She cruised slowly past the after-hours clubs and other places her son had better not be. Where the hell was he?

She had made all the phone calls, hospitals, the city jail, and found no sign. No news is good news, this pearl of wisdom courtesy of the clerk on duty at the city jail.

Cincinnati was quiet, she should be home in bed, so should all two of her kids. She closed her eyes, waiting for the light to turn. She had never felt so alone, so “back to the wall,” so afraid that she just couldn't do it anymore. The light changed. She found a blues station on the radio. Something from
Hot Flash
by Saffire—The Uppity Blues Women.

They call me a tramp. They don't understand. I just want one good man
.

She wondered what Gillane was doing, if he was working the night shift. She considered calling him to help her look. Changed her mind.

The dark thoughts were with her like never before. They touched her forehead with sweat, they sat in her stomach like an ulcer pain, made a knot in her chest that was becoming as familiar as her reflection in the mirror.

The thoughts scared her. They felt a long way from safe.

Another red light, she was catching them all. A black Trans Am, brand new, pulled up in the right lane beside her. The windows were tinted, Sonora could not see the driver. She had the uncanny feeling he was looking at her, and when the light changed, she took off.

The tires of the Trans Am screeched and he was with her neck and neck. She accelerated, looked at the speedometer. Eighty-five, and increasing. Traffic ahead. The car fell back. Sonora kept the speed up an extra second to make it clear who'd won, then braked hard, a red light ahead. Clampett slid forward into the dash and she grabbed his fur, keeping him in the seat, one hand on the wheel with the car weaving right and left and all over the road, till she got the speed down and the Pathfinder's nose straight.

“Sorry, Clampett.”

He was a good boy, he didn't deserve being slung into the dashboard. Sonora eased up to the light slowly like any middle-aged heavy, a BMW purring in the lane beside her. They both pulled away with a quiet decorum befitting a weeknight.

Clampett licked her arm.

37

Sonora was annoyed that Kentucky—reputed to be part of the South, if you believed the natives—was socked in with an overcast gray miasma that rivaled the worst you would endure in Cincinnati.

“Pretty here, isn't it?” Sam said.

Always the man with the cup half full. But in spite of the weather it
was
pretty here, cruising down the two-lane road, pastures greening-up on either side, a huge red brick Civil War mansion on the left, gravel drive leading to the front door, and a new barn going up on the right. New four-plank wood fencing on the right, wire fence on the left. Horses in the field, next to a pasture full of cows. Since her acquisition of her very own horse, Sonora had developed an appreciation of barns, that bordered on the obsessive. Where once she liked to look into people's windows as she drove by, imagining the home within, she now wanted to wander in and out of barns, checking out the stalls and tack rooms.

The road dead-ended into Old Frankfort Pike. Sam pulled the car off the pavement and opened a map.