Shafts of sunlight appeared to part the clouds when Charlie parallel parked on a low-rent stretch of Dauphin Street, Mobile’s answer to Bourbon Street according to the tourist information. The elaborate four- and five-story buildings indeed conjured those of New Orleans, but at eleven-thirty in the morning, Dauphin-pronounced Doffin by everyone here-was quiet, the bars still asleep.
Charlie entered a squat building whose ground floor tenants included a “gentlemen’s club” and a tattoo parlor. A grubby flight of stairs brought him to a door stenciled with big gold letters: Offices of David P. LeCroy, Licensed Private Investigator.
Charlie had barely knocked when the door was flung open by a voluptuous young woman.
“Hi,” she said, adding, “I’m the receptionist.” She wore a white blouse and a modest plaid skirt. Her lofty heels, the absence of hose, and the tattoo of dice on her ankle suggested that she worked at the club downstairs, and that she threw on the blouse and skirt when the detective had a prospective client. “Mr. LeCroy is expecting you.”
As Charlie followed her through the tiny anteroom, he realized that she hadn’t asked him his name. She gestured him ahead into a faux-teak paneled office, where the man from the ad shot up from his vinyl chair.
“Great to meet you,” he said, pumping Charlie’s hand.
“Same.” Charlie heard the outer door shut and heels clicking down the stairs.
In real life, the latter-day young Lincoln was pushing fifty and stood no higher than Charlie’s nose. He’d used a good retoucher for his ad-much of his face showed remnants of teenage acne. His hair was not his. And he’d put money into his mouth. Perhaps too much. Flashing a game-show host’s smile, he said, “Take a load off.” His eyes never once met Charlie’s.
Sitting down, Charlie asked, “So how’d you get into detective work?”
“I like to help people.” Leaning forward, LeCroy nested his chin on his hands, a pointedly contemplative pose. Finally his eyes found Charlie’s. “How can I help you?”
“I have a friend who arrived or will be arriving here from overseas this week in a private yacht, but I don’t have a way of reaching him. He’s not big on turning on his phone or checking e-mail on vacation. I was hoping that, as a licensed PI, you’d be able to access the port’s entry database.”
The screen saver on LeCroy’s computer was a low-resolution photo of a naked blonde in the same chair Charlie occupied now. The detective clicked his mouse and she dissolved into a jumble of file icons. “Know the name of the boat?” he asked.
“No.”
“What’s your friend’s name?”
All Charlie knew was that the name wouldn’t be Bream. “Is there any way I could see a list of all the people who’ve arrived?”
LeCroy’s eyes filled with understanding. “Let me guess: Your old lady took a cruise for two with a yacht owner you’ve never met and know nothing about, but would very much like to sock in the nose?”
“That sums it up well enough.”
LeCroy smiled. “I have more cases like this than you’d believe.”
“Then I have come to the right place.” Charlie decided that the private eye was probably better suited to this job than the CIA was.
“I can execute this search now.” LeCroy tapped his keyboard. “It usually runs ninety-nine ninety-five. How does that suit you?”
“How does cash suit you?”
“Goes well with my leather billfold.”
It took Charlie a moment to figure out in which of his new cargo pants pockets he’d placed his wallet. He dug it out and produced a hundred-dollar bill. Directed by a bob of LeCroy’s head, he dropped it into the in-box.
“Okay then.” The private investigator interlaced and stretched his fingers, the way pianists limber up. “So where’d the bastard take her?”
“Saint Lucia or the vicinity.” Bream would have covered his tracks, Charlie thought, though it made sense to start there.
LeCroy clicked away at the keys. “Bingo!”
Charlie felt a shiver of excitement.
“Ronald Feldman and Annabelle Kammeyer, ages sixty-one and thirty-one, of Fort Walton Beach, Florida. Arrived here in Mobile from Saint Lucia on Tuesday the twelfth, two days ago.”
Charlie’s excitement dissipated. “Couldn’t be my ‘friend.’ He was still in the Caribbean Monday the eleventh. I don’t think he could’ve gotten up here that fast.”
LeCroy reapplied himself to the keyboard. “I’m gonna check a bunch of ports. It’s possible the guy cleared customs in Florida or in Gulfport, Mississippi. Also a lot of folks get it out of the way in San Juan.”
The Florida Panhandle and Mississippi were both thirty miles away. The residents of Mississippi would offer a strong argument that their barbecue beat Alabama’s. Charlie could practically hear his prospects deflating.
The bulky dot-matrix printer behind LeCroy grunted out three sheets of paper. The detective snapped them up and perused. “Okeydoke, in the past forty-eight hours ending yesterday at four-fifty-eight P.M.-that’s about as late as CBP stays open-we’ve got eighty-three private vessels that checked in one way or another and either passed inspection or were cleared without inspection.”
“Can you tell me how many had a guy aboard between, say, thirty and forty?”
LeCroy ran his finger down the top page, counting to himself. “Thirteen so far. Plus a boat with a Jean aboard, age of thirty-one. Probably a broad, but could be a French guy, right?”
Charlie tried not to appear forlorn.
“Cheer up, kiddo. The game’s just begun,” LeCroy said. “Now’s when I put the gum to the pavement.”
“And do what?”
“Trade secret. Two twenty-five a day, plus expenses.”
“How about two hundred, if you give me a for instance?”
“Fine. Between us: harbormasters. They make it their business to know which fish are in their harbors, let alone which boats.”
“Aren’t they supposed to be discreet?”
“Yeah, but they’re also supposed to not accept donations for their kids’ new video game console funds, if you get my drift.”
“I think so,” Charlie said. He liked the harbormaster strategy, but odds were LeCroy would offer bribes that Bream would smell a state away.
LeCroy flipped through his desk calendar. “I got spouse cases today and tomorrow, meaning I’m stuck in a car with a camera in a motel parking lot. After that, I’m yours. What do you say you call me then?”
“That fits my schedule perfectly,” said Charlie, who intended to go visit the harbormasters now.