“Any evidence this stuff was stolen and not just misplaced?”
“I don’t know, I haven’t read the police reports. That’s where you come in. I don’t deal with officialdom, you know? You’re between stories, right? I figure you’re at a loose end, maybe you can help.”
“Croc, listen to me.” Jeremiah pushed aside his coffee mug and leaned over the table, the sun warm on his neck. “I find my own stories. I don’t work on assignment. And I can’t have you running around hunting up stories for me. I won’t be responsible for you getting hurt or stepping over the line, be it ethical or legal. You got it?”
“Yeah, sure, no problem.” He seemed unoffended by the lecture. “This is just off the record. Friend to friend. Okay?”
Jeremiah wasn’t about to agree to any terms. And he didn’t consider Croc a friend-to-friend kind of friend, not when he didn’t know where he lived and wasn’t even sure he knew his real name. He said it was Blake Wilder, but he could have pulled the name out of a James Bond movie for all Jeremiah knew. But he couldn’t end it here and walk away, not until he’d heard Croc out. “Tell me about Mollie Lavender’s connection.”
“Ah.” He popped another ketchup-slathered fry into his mouth, looking smug, proud of himself for having survived another Tabak firestorm and pricked Jeremiah’s interest. “She’s the common denominator. She’s been at every gig that’s been hit. Every one, from a jazz party in Fort Lauderdale to cocktails with the opera society in Jupiter.”
“And how did you get this information?”
He shrugged his bony shoulders. “I have my ways.”
“I suppose you’ve had access to all the guests lists and have checked out every hanger-on and every journalist and every guest who brought someone at the last minute or turned their invitation over to a friend and—”
“Okay.” Croc was unruffled. “So she’s the only common denominator I’ve found so far.”
Jeremiah sat back, already regretting his outburst. If he thought about it, Croc might wonder why his reporter buddy was getting so upset about what was, in reality, just another weird lunch with an informant. “What’s the point here, Croc? Why the interest in this story?”
“It just kind of grabbed my attention. You going to check it out or what?”
“I don’t do Gold Coast jewel thieves.” Especially if they involved a woman he’d once slept with, something that didn’t bear thinking about with Croc’s beady eyes on him.
“Then just check into it for me, Tabak. As a favor.”
In two years, Jeremiah’s twitchy, independent, cagey, young informant had never asked him a favor. Money wasn’t an issue because Jeremiah would never pay for information, but Croc had never so much as asked for a ride across town. Whatever satisfaction he received from providing the occasional useful tidbit to a high-profile Miami reporter was his alone to understand. Croc’s main skill was to pull his tidbits, whether useful or ridiculous, seemingly out of thin air. Like Mollie Lavender as jewel thief.
“You’ve never asked a favor of me, Croc,” Jeremiah said, calmer. “Why now?”
“There’s something about this thing…I don’t know…” He pushed his plate aside, his food only half eaten, another departure from the norm. “You don’t have to write the story, Tabak. I don’t care about that. Really. If it’s not your thing, fine. Just look into it. You know, you’ve got sources and access that I don’t. You go through the front doors. I go through the garbage.”
“You don’t have to.” Jeremiah spoke quietly, trying to get his sincerity across to a kid who’d probably never had anyone in his life he could trust. “You’ve got good instincts. If you want a job at the paper, maybe there’s something I can do. You’d have to start at the bottom of the ladder—”
“But seeing how I’m in the gutter now, that’d be a step or two up.” He grinned suddenly, his gray eyes sparkling with self-deprecating humor. “You get used to the gutter, you know? After a while, you don’t fit in anywhere else.” He got to his feet, snagging two last fries. “I’ll be in touch.”
“You don’t want to stay for dessert?”
“Nah. Mollie Lavender, Palm Beach. Cary Grant loose on the Gold Coast. You got it?”
Jeremiah might have had a hot knife twisting in his gut. “I’ve got it.”
Eight hours later, Jeremiah sat in his beat-up, disreputable truck, his prize possession, outside the exclusive Greenaway Club in Boca Raton, just south of Palm Beach. His was the only pre-1990 vehicle—never mind the only truck—he’d seen in the last hour. This was the Florida Gold Coast, another world from the one he covered, and lived in, fifty miles to the south.