He sat back in his chair, jittery, which wasn’t unusual; he always had a foot or a hand moving. “She’s some kind of publicist. She’s on her own, not with one of the big firms.”
Jeremiah frowned. “A publicist?”
“Yeah. That dog that’s in the commercials is one of her clients. You know, the mutt with the attitude? And some ex-astronaut who’s taken up jazz piano, and this old geezer who’s written a book about his days in vaudeville. I guess he’s got pictures of George Burns and guys like that, stuff nobody’s ever seen before.”
Maybe it was a different Mollie after all. Jeremiah said nothing, watching Croc drag a well-browned fry through a mound of ketchup. “She’s got a few regular clients—a couple of upscale music shops, a Renaissance music society. Most of them have something to do with the arts.” He wiped his fingers on a napkin. “I guess she’s been in town five, six months.”
Jeremiah kept his face expressionless. His past relationship with Mollie, he felt sure, would be news to Croc. “If you already know so much about her, why do you need me to check her out?”
Croc lowered his shoulders and glanced surreptitiously at the surrounding tables as if he expected eavesdroppers. A German couple had taken a nearby table and were having coffee, laughing, and two women with four cranky toddlers were making a big production out of dividing up three pieces of key lime pie. Two old men were eating hot dogs at another table. There was a tableful of loud teenagers, and another of a lone woman in a business suit who looked as if she’d been stood up. No one struck Jeremiah as having the least interest in what Croc might have to say.
Finally, he leaned forward and said in a dramatic, conspiratorial whisper, “I think she could be the Gold Coast cat burglar.”
Jeremiah nearly spit out his coffee. “The who? Croc, for chrissake, if this is some kind of joke—”
“No, no, man. When have I ever bullshitted you about something this important?”
Jeremiah hissed through his teeth, his control shattered. Sorting out Croc’s hard facts and reliable leads from his fantasies and nonsense was a constant challenge, and why Jeremiah, who’d taken off on more than one wild-goose chase at Croc’s behest, put up with it was beyond him. He’d first turned up at Jeremiah’s desk at the Miami Tribune two years ago with a tidbit about an eighteen-year-old selling stolen guns to twelve-year-olds for twenty bucks each. It proved solid, and every few weeks since, he checked in. They’d developed a rapport that Jeremiah, a seasoned journalist, found alternately mystifying and frustrating. He had other sources, but none like Croc. He wasn’t a chronic liar or a hopeless paranoid so much as an imaginative kid who engaged in hyperbole and wishful thinking, sometimes blurring the line between reality and fantasy.
“You’ve heard about the cat burglar, right?” Croc asked.
Jeremiah gritted his teeth. “No.”
“Oh.” He seemed momentarily taken aback. “I figured you’d be on the story, but maybe it’s too…I don’t know, too mundane for you or something.”
“Mundane? Croc, where’d you learn a word like mundane?”
“Television.” He grinned, his teeth reasonably healthy, if in need of routine dental care. He wore baggy jeans and a threadbare T-shirt, and his scraggly hair had recently been washed. He was just, so far as Jeremiah could tell, a mixed-up kid who lived on the edge and liked to be in the know. “Come on, Tabak, you telling me you haven’t heard a word about a jewel thief loose in the land of polo and croquet?”
“Not a word, Croc. So, what jewel thief, and what makes you suspect this Mollie Lavender?”
“Stay with me, okay? I’m onto something here, I can feel it. See, this guy’s hit maybe a half-dozen times in the past two weeks—thirteen days, to be precise. We’re not talking about your Cary Grant type who sneaks over rooftops and into people’s hotel rooms. He—or she—hits right out in the open at dinner parties, charity balls—you know, your high-class gigs. Someone makes a mistake, and next thing, they’re out a fifty-thousand-dollar bracelet.”
“What kind of mistakes?”
“You take off a piece of expensive jewelry for any reason—it’s too heavy, it’s got a loose clasp, somebody else is wearing an identical piece—and drop it in a pocket, a handbag, leave it for two seconds, and our thief sees it and takes advantage.”
“He’s an opportunist,” Jeremiah said, interested in spite of himself.
“Exactly. I figure he’s netted damned close to a half-million in jewelry so far, retail value. He’s worked as far south as Fort Lauderdale and as far north as Jupiter. That’s probably why the police haven’t put all the pieces together and figured out they have a clever jewel thief on their hands. Too many departments involved—they just haven’t compared notes yet. Once they do, the shit’ll hit the fan.”
“You’re just one step ahead.”
“Yep.”