“What do you mean, the guy was smarmy?”
“Like, I just got this vibe off him, like if you crossed him you’d really pay for it.”
“He must have been pissed when you got caught.”
“I only heard from him once after that. He was pissed, but when he found out I wasn’t being charged, and that my dad got the manager at Dalrymple’s to forget about it, I guess he thought it was better not to stir things up.”
“What about your dad? Didn’t he want to find out who the guy was?”
“He was so mad, right? But he didn’t want my mom to know, because she’d have totally freaked out about it, so he decided it was better to let it go, too.”
“So this guy,” I said. “What’d he look like?”
Jeff shrugged. “Just a guy, you know?”
It was like pulling teeth. “Was he tall, thin, fat, black guy, white guy?”
“A white guy,” Jeff said, nodding, like that should do it.
“Fat?”
“No, he was in pretty good shape. And he had kind of light-colored hair, I guess. And he had pretty decent clothes. He smoked.”
“How old was he?”
“He was pretty old,” Jeff said.
“Like what, sixties, seventies?”
Jeff concentrated. “No, I think thirties.”
“How much was he paying you?”
“Well, he gave me the thing, you know, the wedge he called it, and he said he’d give me fifty bucks for every card I swiped through it. But mostly he wanted them to be high-end cards, like gold cards and stuff like that. So in a single shift, I could make a thousand bucks. Dalrymple’s, they were paying, like, just minimum wage, plus tips, but some nights they were good and some nights they weren’t, although I always told my mom they were big so she wouldn’t wonder why I had so much money.” He paused. “While it lasted.”
It wasn’t hard to understand the appeal for a young kid looking for some fast cash.
“But that last night, when Roy—”
“Roy?”
“Roy Chilton, the manager? When he saw me swiping the card an extra time through the wedge, he knew right away what it was and went all ballistic on me.”
“Why’d you do it, Jeff?” I asked. “You’re a good kid.”
He shrugged again. “I wanted to get a laptop.”
I stared out the window for a moment, watched the traffic go past. I asked, “Did Sydney know about this?”
“No way,” he said. “I never told her anything about it. I kind of didn’t want anyone to know. I told Sydney I got the job at Dalrymple’s, but when I got fired right away I told her I dropped a family’s entire order all over the floor and that was why they got rid of me. And I made Evan swear not to tell Sydney anything about the card I gave him.”
I could recall Syd mentioning something about Jeff losing his job, but never the reason why.
“You’re not saying anything,” Jeff said. “You pissed at me?”
I laid my hands flat on the tabletop and closed my eyes for a moment. When I opened them, Jeff was looking at me warily, wondering, I think, whether there was something wrong with me.
“You probably weren’t the only kid this guy had doing this,” I said. “That’s a lot of fake cards, a lot of identities getting ripped off for a lot of money.”
“One time,” Jeff said, “he made some mention, it was to get some people started, people who’d just come to the country, so they could get things and stuff.”
I thought about that a moment.
“You still have that cell number for this guy?”
Jeff shook his head.
“You sure you don’t remember his name?”
Jeff struggled for a moment. “Thing is, he told me his name once, but then when he answered his phone, he said, like, ‘Gary here.’”
“But Gary wasn’t the name he gave you?”
“No, it was something else.” Jeff wrinkled his nose, like the answer was out there and all he had to do was sniff it out. “It mighta been Eric.”
“Eric,” I repeated.
“I think that was it.”
“How’d you hook up with him the first time?”
“Someone told me that if I was looking for a way to make some extra money, to give this guy a call. I thought, maybe I could do something different than the Dalrymple’s thing, or work this other job on the side. Turned out the two of them went together.”
“Who?” I asked. “Who told you this?”
“Please, Mr. Blake, I don’t want to get anyone else in trouble.”
Maybe, if he hadn’t mentioned the name Eric, I’d still think it was possible Jeff’s problems were in no way connected to Sydney. Now I had the feeling there was a very strong link.
“Spill it, Jeff,” I said. “Who tipped you to this guy?”
Jeff ran his index finger sideways under his nose, then said, “You know him. He sells cars where you work? Andy?” I blinked. “Andy Hertz?”
“Yeah, that’s him. But don’t ever tell him I told you.”
I sat there, trying to put it together. Jeff looked at me and said, “Hey, Mr. Blake, you seen Patty around lately?”
THIRTY