“Then I’d like to talk to him.”
“That was crude,” he said contemptuously. “Trying to pretend you haven’t done your homework on our operation to know my secretary is a woman. I’ll ask Angela when she comes in on Monday. And give you a call.”
“Chamfers, I’ll tell you a little secret. If I were really committing industrial espionage, you wouldn’t even know I’d been here. I’d have had you guys staked out and known your comings and goings and made my move after you’d left for the weekend. So relax. Save the strain on your brain and your bankroll. All I want to know is the last time anyone here at Diamond Head saw my boy Mitch. When we know that, we’ll shake hands forever.”
I picked up my license from his desk and handed him one of my cards. “It’ll make it easier for you to call me if you have my number, Chamfers. And I’ll take yours.”
I leaned over the desk and copied the number stuck at the top of his phone buttons before he could stop me. “Want to give me a safe-conduct past Simon?”
He gave a triumphant smirk. “We’re not going through the body of the plant, so don’t get your hopes up, missy. We’ll go the long way around. And I’ll make sure our security forces are on the alert this weekend.”
We went back to the hallway and out a door that fronted the canal. In silence we followed a footpath around the side, past the vibrating truck where Simon stood guard, and on to the main entrance. A cracked road led away from it.
“I don’t know where you hid your car, but it had better not be on our land. I can’t promise to hold on to Simon if he catches sight of you sneaking around here again.”
“I’ll be sure to bring a bag of raw meat with me next time just in case.”
“There won’t be a next time. Get that through your head good and solid, missy.”
It didn’t seem worth it to escalate the conflict further. I blew him a kiss and headed up the drive. Arms akimbo, he glared me out of sight.
Chapter 10 - Going to the Dogs
It was after six when I finally got back to the Trans Am. After hiking down Diamond Head’s cracked access road to Bridgeport’s side streets, I figured out the route. My mistake had been in trying to get at the plant from Thirty-first Street: you had to go down to Thirty-third and snake up and down a few times.
I laughed a little to myself over my encounter with Chamfers. With all the industrial surveillance I’ve done over the years it was funny—as well as embarrassing—to make such a clumsy entrance that they took me for a spy. I should have just waited for Monday morning, when I could have spoken to Chamfers’s secretary in the accepted fashion. Now I’d have to do it anyway, but I’d have a big hurdle of suspicion to jump over.
I wondered if Chamfers would really get his own detectives to check up on me, or if that had been bravado to make me back away from my supposed espionage. I amused myself during the long drive up the Kennedy with figuring out what steps I would take if I were going to investigate myself. It would be hard for me to prove I wasn’t spying: by the time they’d checked with some of my corporate references, they’d realize it made up a significant part of my practice. They’d have to start tailing me; that would take a lot of time and money. It wouldn’t make me cry to think of Chamfers trying it to justify it to his corporate masters, whoever they were.
When I got home, Mr. Contreras jumped out of his front door to greet me. “Got anything on Mitch, doll?”
I put an arm around his shoulder and gently propelled him back into his apartment. “I’ve started asking people questions, but I’ve got a long way to go yet. I’m going to tell you the same thing I say to all my clients: I make regular reports, but I work less and less efficiently the more I get hounded for them. So pretend we’re neighbors who are both in love with the same dog, and let me handle the investigation as best I can.”
Mr. Contreras elected to be hurt. “It’s just that I’m worried about him. I ain’t trying to hound you or criticize you.”
I grinned. “Perish the thought. Can you give me Kruger’s old address—the one he had before he came home with you last Friday?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I got it right here.”
He pulled the cover from the desk that stood in the middle of his living room. I’ve never known either why he keeps it there, where he must bump into it a hundred times a week, or why he thinks it’s a good idea to drape it. From the jumble of papers stacked on top and spilling from the drawers I figured it wasn’t going to be an easy search. I skirted the operation and went over to check on Peppy.