He gestured at the bartender, who went about the business of making him a martini that he presented in an icy glass with two olives. He seemed comfortable with his transformation—expensive wardrobe, his hair streaked with shades of copper and pale gold. The spray-on tan had faded, but it still looked good on him.
He kept his gaze on his martini when he next spoke. “You’re Kinsey, right?”
“How did you know?”
“You’re the only one in here I don’t know. My grandmother says you left a message for me.”
“You didn’t return my call.”
“You left one earlier with my parole officer.”
“You didn’t return that one, either.”
“I figured if it was important you’d get back to me, which you did. So what’s this about?”
“You know what I do for a living?”
“You’re a private investigator.”
“Exactly. A couple of weeks ago, I was hired by a woman who claimed she wanted to locate a child she put up for adoption thirty-some-odd years ago. Yours was the name she gave me, along with newspaper clippings about your trial. I found out later she was full of shit, but by then I’d already sent off my report, in which I gave her your mother’s address and phone number. I may have put you in harm’s way and I thought you deserved a warning.”
“Two weeks is a little late for warnings, don’t you think?”
“It took me a while to figure out she’d put one over on me. I assume Teddy’s been in touch.”
“That’s correct,” he said.
He turned and looked at me with eyes that were a startling gray. Up close I could see that his teeth were good, and his aftershave suggested carnations and clean skin. These are qualities that loom large with me. For the first time, I entertained the idea that he was in Teddy’s life for the amusement value. I might have found him amusing myself, though his criminal history left much to be desired. A hard-boiled private eye and a bank robber seemed like a strange mix.
“What happened to your safecracking career?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t call it a career. It was an avocation.”
“A hobby?”
“Let’s call it a passion and leave it at that.”
“What was the draw?”
“I liked the challenge. Problem solving. Getting in there and figuring it all out. I avoided vaults. Those are in a whole separate category that’s way over my head. I started with home safes you could pick up and take with you to work on in your spare time. The fireproof models are lightweight, really just a shell of thin steel walls filled with insulating material to protect the contents from damage in case of a fire.”
“Have you ever heard of a Diebold Cannonball Safe?”
“Oh, sure. It was a Cannonball that stumped Jesse James in Northfield, Minnesota. Burglar-resistant safes are a tough proposition. With most, you’re talking about a seven-hundred-and-fifty-pound box embedded in concrete. Safe like that you have to work on in place, which is time-consuming. In those days, I didn’t care about finding cash, which is good because I never netted much.”
“How’d you manage to support yourself? Did you have an outside job?”
“I was twelve.”
“So mowing lawns.”
“Sometimes, sure. You know what the real problem was? Safecracking requires so much equipment. Drills, cold chisels, sledgehammers, electric saws with diamond-edged blades. An acetylene torch is mandatory, which means you have to have a hose and tank. Punch or drift pins you can’t do without, maybe a two-twenty-volt electric cutting torch. What was I supposed to do, hide it all under my bed?”
“No blasting caps?”
“I never got into those. Practice with explosives, you can picture the complaints.”
“Your mother and your grandmother didn’t notice the gear you had stashed in your room?”
“I told them I was interested in how things worked. You know, tinkering. What did they care? I could fix small appliances and that was good. I spent a lot of time in my room. I was quiet and industrious. I made good grades. I wasn’t truant. I didn’t hang out on street corners with the bad element.”
“Eventually you lost interest, is that it?”
“Essentially. Robbing banks has a bigger thrill quotient for a lot less time and effort. I got addicted to the rush. I’d walk in, calm and relaxed. Three minutes later I’d walk out the door higher than a kite with no illegal substances involved. How can you beat that?”
“You weren’t concerned about getting shot to death?”
“I didn’t carry a weapon. The first time a bank guard told me to drop, I’d have dropped. Meantime, I was nice about it. I didn’t yell. I didn’t threaten people—”
“Not ever?”
He smiled. “Okay, sometimes. In a note. I know tellers are gullible, but I tried not to take advantage. Most were beautiful young girls I’d have been happy to date. I thought of them as my ninety-second relationships. Brief, but intense. One teller wrote to me for a long time after I went to Lompoc. I can’t remember her name now.”
“Lucy.” That got his attention, but I didn’t want to stop and explain. Instead, I said, “You couldn’t have enjoyed prison life.”