Nightcrawlers: A Nameless Detective Novel (Nameless Detective Mystery) Read Free Page A

naked in the mirror. Love handles are okay, but I had bulges big enough for a couple of 49ers’ linemen to hold on to.”
    I let that pass. “What kind of diet are you on?”
    “Slim•Fast and rabbit food. Yummy. But I’m used to it, now.”
    “How much more are you planning to lose?”
    “Eight or ten pounds. Until I can wear a size eight without looking like a sack of cookie dough.”
    “Hot stuff.”
    “Yeah, well, there’s still my big booty and my face. Can’t do much about either of those.”
    “What’s wrong with your face?”
    “Hah. No competition for Halle Berry, that’s for sure.”
    “Who’s Halle Berry?”
    “You’re kidding, right?”
    “I’m not kidding. Who’s Halle Berry?”
    “Where you been lately? First African-American woman to win a best actress Oscar.
Real
hot stuff.”
    I said, “Oh,” because I see maybe one new film a year that Kerry recommends, avoid newspapers and the TV news, and pay no attention to actors or the Oscars.
    “Lot of modern film critics think Louise Beavers should’ve won one way back in the 1930s,” Tamara said, “but you know how blacks were treated in those days. In and out of Hollywood.”
    “Who’s Louise Beavers?”
    “Come on now. Don’t tell me you never saw
Imitation of Life
. As many old movies as you scope on TV?”
    “That tearjerker with Claudette Colbert?”
    “And
Louise Beavers. Delilah. Everydamnbody overlooks her and she stole the picture.”
    “I’ve seen it, but not in a long time. Since when do
you
watch old movies?”
    “Since I was about ten, if they have black folks in ‘em. Don’t know me as well as you think you do, huh?”
    “Evidently not. Sorry.”
    “For what?” She gave me one of her looks. “Beavers,” she said.
    “Right, Louise Beavers.”
    “I’m thinking other beavers now. You know who Beaver Cleaver was?”
    “No. Who?”
    “Leave It to Beaver
. ‘Oh, Ward, we just have to do something about the Beaver.’ ”
    “Huh?”
    “Take that two ways,” she said.
    “Take what two ways?”
    “Beaver.”
    “I don’t get what you mean.”
    “Don’t you know what a beaver is?”
    “Of course I know.”
    “Well?”
    “Fur-bearing mammal. Buck teeth, flat tail, and dam-building skills.”
    “I mean the other kind.”
    “There isn’t any other kind.”
    “That’s what you think.”
    “What’re you talking about?”
    “Beaver. Slang term.”
    “Slang term for what?”
    “You really don’t know, huh?”
    “I really don’t know.”
    “I’ll bet Kerry knows.” Mischievous old-Tamara grin. “Why don’t you ask her tonight when you get home?”
    “I’ll do that,” I lied. If I did, judging from that grin, I would regret it. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss. “So what’s on the agenda for today? Any new business?”
    “Nothing so far,” Tamara said. “But I turned up a possible lead on the deadbeat dad case.”
    “Which case is that? Oh, the split-fee from the Ballard Agency?”
    “Yup. Turns out George DeBrissac has a cousin who lives in Antioch and owns a second house in San Leandro. Rental property. Five months since the last tenants left, but it wastaken off the market three months ago and there’s no record of it being rented at that time or since.”
    “How long since DeBrissac skipped Portland?”
    “Just about three months.”
    “Could be coincidence.”
    “Hah,” she said.
    Right. In our business, the old “if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck” axiom usually applies. This was particularly true in deadbeat dad cases. They tend to be the easiest skips we’re called on to find, since the individuals are generally middle-class types with little or no criminal history and some traceable source of steady income. George DeBrissac was a well-paid freelance accountant with Bay Area ties; it stood to reason that when he ran out on his ex-wife and two kids in Portland, he would head straight for northern California. The Ballard Detective