“Tommy? Yeah. He’s okay,” one of the cops said, “mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“He used to sell a little cocaine and weed, to make ends meet. Not so much the last couple of years, though. Too much competition.”
“You think he’d talk to us?”
“Oh, sure. He’s friendly enough. He likes to have cops come by—keeps the riffraff down. He’s got an office upstairs, the stairway’s back by the restrooms. Name’s Tommy Saito. He’s usually up there afternoons and evenings, if he’s not down here.”
Lucas rapped his knuckles on the table. “Thanks.”
—
WHEN THEY’Dfinished the meal and paid and over-tipped, they wandered down the hallway in back, past the restrooms, then up a flight of wide wooden stairs to the office suite. A door with a tall glass window had a sign that said “Come In,” so they went in, where they found a heavyset woman sitting behind a wooden desk, going through what looked like charge slips and pounding on a dictionary-sized calculator.
She looked up and said, “Not guilty!”
“Tommy around?” Lucas asked.
She turned to a door recessed into a short hallway and shouted, “Hey, Tommy. There are some cops looking for you. Might be federal.”
Tommy Saito poked his head out of his office, looked at the three of them, and said, “Federal? Well, come in, I guess. What can I do for you? I pay all my taxes on time.”
“Ahead of time,” the woman corrected.
Saito held his office door open. Lucas led Bob and Rae in, where they found another wooden desk, sitting on a burnt-orange shag rug, with three visitors’ chairs facing the desk. Saito, a short, balding Asian American, maybe sixty years old, dropped into the chair behind the desk. The wall behind him was covered with framed photos, snapshots of the same woman and three children at a variety of ages, and some shots of other kids, even younger, who might be grandchildren.
Lucas showed Saito his ID, then took copies of Deese’s, Beauchamps’s, and Nast’s mug shots out of his jacket pocket, unfolded them, and pushed them across the desk.
“Have you seen any of these guys in here?”
Saito looked at all three, pushed Nast’s back across the desk, and said, “We don’t get many black dudes in here. Of those we do, he ain’t one of them.”
He lingered over Deese’s photo for a moment, then pushed it back across the desk as well. “This guy looks sorta familiar, but if he’s been in it was a long time ago. I’m saying, like, more than a year, and maybe a few. He’s got a face you remember.”
He looked at Beauchamps’s photo the longest, then said, “This guy comes in every once in a while, checking out the divorced chicks. Usually takes one home with him—wherever home is. I don’t know why I think this, but I don’t believe he’s from right around here. Maybe he told me once that he comes over here for business reasons and likes to stop in for a burger, fries, and a divorcee.”
“You know any divorcees he’s taken home?”
Saito looked at the photo for another moment, then yelled, “Heather! Come here a minute, will you?”
The woman came in, said, “I heard the question,” looked at the photo, then turned and peered at a window covered by drawn blinds, pointed a finger at Saito, and said, “Suzie-Q.”
Rae: “Really? Suzie-Q?”
Saito said, “That’s not really her name. We call her that because she used to play an old Creedence song on our jukebox every time she came in. She lives at one of the condos in Marina, I know that for sure. She walks over here couple times a week. What the hell is her name? I know it...”
Heather had gone back to staring at the blinds, then said, “Jackman.”
Saito said, “Barbara...?”
Heather said, “That’s it. Barbara Jackman.”
—
LUCAS WROTEthe name in his notebook. Then he said, “A friend of Mr. Beauchamps said he could be contacted by calling here. Do you know why that would be?”
Both Saito and Heather looked genuinely surprised; either innocence or excellent acting. Saito shook his head. “Not here. Are you sure it’s ours?”
