She put her hand over his. “Be quiet.”
He pulled the hand away and kept tapping. “Hey, you know that lady that was in here yesterday? Where’d she lay the Karmic burden? I don’t want to be tripping over it.”
“You seen Sam?”
“Little while ago—got off the phone like he had ants in his pants—”
Sanders came through the swing doors from CSU, looked at Sonora. “There you are,” she said.
“Like she’s been hiding somewhere?” Gruber grinned at Sanders, and Sonora saw the look that passed between them. Definitely sleeping together.
“I’ve got Amber Wexford in One,” Sanders said. “She got here at seven-thirty. She’s been waiting awhile.”
“Seven-thirty? Man.” Sonora grabbed her coffee mug, filled it, added cream, looked over her shoulder at Crick’s office. The door was shut. And she didn’t like to keep relatives waiting. She headed down the hallway to Interview One. Checked the two-way out of habit before she went in.
Amber Wexford was crying. She sat stiffly at attention in a folding metal chair, legs crossed at the ankle, a roundish woman with long legs in neatly pressed jeans and a golden sweater. Tears ran freely beneath the large square glasses as if they were in endless supply, and she wiped them away from time to time with a crumpled blue tissue.
Sonora went back to the coffeemaker, filled a cup half with coffee, half with sweet chocolate cocoa mix, and stole the box of white, lotion-soft Puffs off Molliter’s desk. Amber Wexford was blowing her nose vigorously when Sonora pushed the door open with her hip.
“Here, can I help?” The woman was up and off her chair in a split second, taking the box of tissues out of Sonora’s hands, leaving her to juggle the two coffee mugs.
“Help yourself,” Sonora said, inclining her head to the box of tissues. She handed Amber a mug. “This is for you.”
The woman took the cup with a blank expression that did not betray whether or not she wanted coffee at the moment.
“Go ahead, sit down,” Sonora said. “Are you cold? I can turn the heat up.”
“No, thank you, though, but I’m fine.”
Fine she was not. Eyes bloodshot, nose red, a look of stunned bewilderment with which Sonora was much too familiar.
Amber Wexford was the type of girl you saw a lot of in high school, pleasant to everyone, with no stir of what she really thought penetrating the mask of amiability. All knees and glasses, long hair freshly washed and blown dry with a hint of a flip at the bottom. Perhaps, to her intimates, she was quite dashing. But any pizzazz she had was buried under layers of conventionality that she used as armor to protect herself from the casual brutalities of everyday life.
She was reasonably attractive, hiding like a hedgehog in loose jeans two sizes too big and the large bulky sweater. She would never be seen in short, cut-off blue jeans. In the summers, her uniform would be cotton shorts—longish, cuffed, and pleated—bound in the middle with a canvas belt. Her watchwords would be comfortable and decent—pretty enough, and attracting only the right kind of attention, provided any attention was attracted at all. Might as well tattoo I’m a very nice girl on her forehead.
Sonora wondered what she was really like, thinking it possible that no one knew.
She put a hand on the woman’s arm. “Mrs. Wexford, I’m Detective Blair. I just want you to know how sorry I am for your loss.”
Amber Wexford nodded, and Sonora thought she might not be trusting her voice just yet.
“How is the baby?”
“Oh.” Amber cleared her throat. “Excuse me. The baby is fine.” Her voice cracked and she cleared her throat again, took a grateful sip of the coffee. “I’m sorry.”
An apologizer, Sonora thought. Not surprised. “I’m just curious, Mrs. Wexford, do you know if you’re the child’s legal guardian?”
Amber nodded. “Yes, unless Carl changed the will. Both he and Joy asked me to take the kids if anything happened to them. And I made them guardian of my two.”
“Chloe’s a lucky little girl,” Sonora said.
“Thank you. You must’ve met Eddie.”
They both laughed, but Amber was already backing away. “I’m sorry, that wasn’t kind.”
Sonora didn’t pursue it. “I really appreciate you coming in to help us out, it saves us time. But I can see how upset you are. Will it be okay to ask a few questions?” It was something of a dirty trick. She could appear sympathetic, secure in the knowledge that a woman like Amber Wexford would be accommodating. The world ran on the shoulders of women like Amber Wexford—dutiful, hardworking, and, above all, pleasant.
“No, that’s okay.”
Sonora was thinking the words as Amber said them. “Tell me what was going on with your brother.”
Amber slid forward on her seat with the look of someone about to take a very difficult test. “My brother was a good man, a good man, Detective, but he was having money trouble.”
“A lot of people have money trouble, Mrs. Wexford. A lot of very good people.”
“Yes. Yes. But Carl—or Joy, I should say. The family was being threatened.”
Sonora waited. But Amber looked at her steadily, waiting.
“Tell me about the threats.”
“Some man would call and say that if they knew what was good for them, they better come down and pay.”
“In person?”
“In person.”
“Do you know who made the threats, Mrs. Wexford?”
“No, Carl never did say. He didn’t tell me about it. I don’t think he knew. Joy told me. They always talked to her.”
“But she didn’t tell her husband?”
“Oh, Detective, Carl was so upset about his business and the Jeep—”
“What about the Jeep?”
“They repossessed it. He was so ashamed.” This brought on a new flood of tears. Sonora peeled off five tissues and folded them neatly, handing them over to Amber Wexford, who blew her nose. “I’m sorry. I just felt so bad for him. Joy didn’t want to do anything to make him feel any worse.”
“And she didn’t say who?”
Amber shook her head. “I’m surprised she told me that much. She kept that kind of thing to herself. But I was over there, I took them a little something, and she broke down and told me.”
“What did you take them?”
“Just … something.”
Sonora waited.
“I have an IRA with my job, and I cashed it out. And Carl was already starting to pay me back before … this happened.” She sobbed and blew her nose. “And he would have, Detective. He was going to pay me before the year was out so I could roll it into another account and not get the tax hit.”
“You are very generous,” Sonora said.
“He would have done the same for me. He did the same for me, he helped me through nursing school. He always had some extra money for me before I got married. It was good to get a chance to pay him back some. But he didn’t tell me he was in trouble till after they took the Jeep.”
“Mrs. Wexford, do you know if your brother or his wife went to one of those instant check-cashing places?”
Amber eased back in her chair, frowning. “It’s funny you say that.”
If ever a phrase got a copper’s attention. “Yes?” Sonora said.
“Joy said something to me once. She told me never to go to one of those places. She said they were the newest breed of loan shark.”
“She was right,” Sonora said.
35
Sonora put her feet up on the desk, listening to Frank Sinatra singing “My Way.” She hated being put on hold almost as much as being in voice jail when she banked by phone. The door from CSU swung open and Mickey slid in front of her desk like a man on skates.
“We got a match, my beautiful baby. You’re the first to know, after me.”
Sonora pulled her feet off the desk and leaned forward. “Aruba?”
“Kinkle. Beautiful forefinger on the front doorjamb. And a smear on t
he doorbell. Dipshit.”
Sonora kissed her fingers at him.
“Got to tell Crick.” He went in without knocking. Sonora, tied to the end of the phone, was aware of missing an opportunity. She got a quick glimpse of Sam standing up and Crick on the telephone before the door shut.
Dammit, she thought. She was going in there as soon as she got off the phone with this Quincy David. “Dammit.”
“Quincy Da—I beg your pardon?”
“I said this is Detective Blair, trying to get in touch with Quincy David, Attorney-at-Law.”
“You got me.”
“Mr. David, I’m working an investigation and I understand from our District Attorney that you’re the man to call about these check-cashing services that are going up all over the city.”
His voice went from amiable to grim. “Like anything bad, Detective, they’re everywhere. What can I tell you?”
“Tell me everything, Mr. David.”
“Okay.” Sonora had the impression of a man leaning back in his chair, so she leaned back in hers. “Can you give me a minute to grab a cup of coffee?”
“Go on ahead.” She considered her own mug. Decided against it. Waited. It was Jim Croce this time, singing “Roller Derby Queen.” If she kept not sleeping at night, maybe she could make it up napping while being on hold.
“Okay, I’m back, thank you.”
She took out a pen and paper.
“Once upon a time, Detective. Blair, is it?”
“Sonora Blair.”
“Sonora. It all started up in a little town called Cleveland, Tennessee, then it spread into Kentucky, and now it’s moving across the country like venereal disease. In the beginning, it centered around the military bases, preying on the enlisted guys, giving them an advance on their next government check. They called them payday loans.”
“How does that work?”
“Joe Blow comes in and writes a check. They’ll take anybody, so long as they have a job, a social security number, a bank account, a pay stub, or some other ID, like a utility bill. These guys let them cash a check and hold it for two weeks. Then, at the end of the two weeks, they let you roll the check over for payment. They might keep rolling it every two weeks for a year, which would wind up with the customer paying about nine hundred dollars for a one-hundred-dollar check.”
“Is that legal?” Sonora said.
“Nope, I don’t think so. We’ve got some murky rulings handed down. As far as the check-cashing guys are concerned, they take the position they’re immune. There’s a statute that gives the right to cash checks and collect a fee where said fee is not considered interest. This kind of thing doesn’t fall into that category, no matter how many times these people say it does. This is a loan, because these people know there is no money in the account when the check is written, and it’s a rollover scheme. They’re violating the truth-in-lending laws, RICO, a million and one consumer statutes.
“And they’re in a sweet position. If people don’t come in and pay the interest, then they cash the check they’re holding, which they promised not to do, and run up all kinds of charges when it bounces. Sometimes they’ll send the sheriff after people, to collect, maybe to put them in jail if they can’t pay—debtors’ prison is alive and well, Detective. It’s not legal, but the deputy sheriff doesn’t know better—hell, even a lot of attorneys aren’t up on this—and when these people call their lawyers, they get told there’s nothing they can do. It’s tied up in federal court, right now, with Judge Hood. I mean, come on, Detective, we got the Gambinos in South Florida in on this, if that tells you anything.”
“Why this instead of their usual?”
He laughed. “No longer profitable. The damn credit-card companies get twenty-four percent. They’ve put the loan-sharking boys out of business. Do you know what the largest profit maker is for any bank?”
Sonora did the parrot thing. “Credit cards?”
“Yep. There isn’t any money in loan-sharking.”
Crick’s door opened, and Mickey came out, then turned on his heel and stood in the doorway, back to Sonora. She heard male voices, but she kept her mind on Quincy David.
“… and the credit-card companies are making so much money they don’t even go after bad accounts anymore, they just write it all off. They don’t even file a claim on their tax returns. It isn’t worth their time. They spend all their money lobbying to make it harder for your average Joe to file bankruptcy and get the hell out of credit-card hell.”
She had pushed a hot button. She took notes, hand cramping, pen flying. “You sound angry, Mr. David.”
Mickey headed past her desk, waving. Sonora craned her neck, looking for Sam.
“I am angry, Detective Blair.”
“What kind of people get caught up in this kind of thing?”
“All kinds of people, Detective. Victims range across the board, from the extremely well off to your single mom living on welfare. They’ve got one thing in common—immediate financial crisis. They need food, they have to make the mortgage, they have to make the rent.”
“What kind of collection methods are we talking here?”
“Okay, they’re not out breaking legs. But there’s no profit in that, anyway, and to tell you the truth, they don’t have to. Most of these people are embarrassed. They feel guilty already for having to go there in the first place, they’re usually under a lot of stress. And the ones at the low end of the financial scale, they’re poor, they don’t have good experiences with the law, so they’re not going to complain. Most of the methods are psychological. They call, day and night. Read people that collection Miranda that goes on everything, even bubble-gum wrappers these days. We have the right to collect, blah blah blah. That little notice scares the bejesus out of people, God knows why. It looks official and threatening, and by God, people feel threatened.”
Sonora caught sight of Sam out of the corner of one eye, heading for her desk, skidding to a stop when he saw she was on the phone. He threw up his hands and she heard a curse. Headed back behind her to his own desk.
“You got horror stories?” Sonora asked, trying to keep her mind on David.
“I got a million of them.” He stopped, gulped. She pictured him drinking coffee, black probably, the perfect brew for a no-nonsense tough guy. “Most of them slide around within the bounds of the law. But I’ve had people in chapter thirteen bankruptcy with check cashers going after them, bouncing checks through their accounts and running up fees when these people can’t pay their water bill or feed their kids. They’ve had people arrested, and they threaten it all the time. They’ve told people that unless they pay, they’ll be taken into custody, and the jail will report them to Social Services and take their kids away, or they tell them they’ll be convicted felons, and then they’ll lose their kids. I had a woman, she’s at home with three little kids, in the middle of a snowstorm. They call her and tell her to come down and pay the rollover, or pay the check and the fee, or they’re going to deposit the check. There’s nothing in her account over the checks she’s already written to pay her bills, so she says she’ll come down there with the grocery money; they give her till three o’clock. She goes with her kids four and a half hours on the bus on roads that are covered with snow and ice, gets there at two-thirty, and they already deposited the check. Bounced everything else in her account, ran up over a hundred in bloody bank fees, and she’s got another four and a half hours home on that bus. You know what these people are, Detective?”
“Predators, Mr. David.”
“Shits, Detective. They’re shits.”
A legal term, Sonora thought.
“And by the way, that tough guy calling about your MasterCard at eight A.M. on Saturday morning is probably a hard-core con in a maximum-security prison.”
Sonora winced. A new service, put together for your hard-core predator, Dial-A-Victim, courtesy of your credit-card company.
Sam waved a note under her nose, then handed it to her like a bouquet of roses
. She nodded at him, fingering the folded paper, still listening to David.
“I had a lady, they wouldn’t let her pay. She told them to send the check through. They said no, she had to pick it up. That way they can get her in the office and convince her to roll it over. I got people, they come in to my office and cry. Nice people, Detective, hardworking. Had a girl last week, they swore they were going to have her baby taken away if she didn’t pay up.”
“Ever had anybody get physical?”
He paused. “Not that I’ve heard of. It’s not the norm. But I’ve heard … rumors.”
“What kind of rumors?”
“People coming to the house. Ringing the doorbell, standing on the porch. One lady said some guy spent all afternoon on her porch swing, by the time she got me on the phone, she was hysterical. I don’t know if it’s true, I haven’t got anything concrete on that. People do get scared. Mostly what I see is psychological. And that works because people are embarrassed. It quits working when people have had all they can take, and they just get hard about it.”
“What is the usual collection rate?”
“Depends on the part of town. Anywhere from twenty-five to forty-five percent. Thirty-three is the norm. But that’s normal collections. Not these guys. I’ve known check cashers to make seven hundred percent.”
Sonora set her pen down. Seven hundred percent? That she would remember. “Can you give me anything at all concrete on the rumors?”
“I don’t really have much. Just people, scared people. I can tell you this. The scaredest people come from that place over in Indian Hill. On the other hand—”
“You were saying?” Sonora broke in.
“It’s this Indian Hill place. Just this one. I’ve heard of it a time or two and actually had it happen to a client.”
Sonora waited.
“Got to give the devil his due, I guess. Once in a while, some of these people, like the single moms with kids and stuff? The debt just goes away.”
“Where does it go?”
“All the people say is it’s been forgiven. By the Angel.”
The Debt Collector Page 14