"Jesus, you just can't trust anybody these days, can you?" Joey said.
"There's more crooks out of jail than in," Chason said.
"So he went to this company in Bala Cynwyd, you're telling me, and started this shit all over?"
"No. Not exactly. He's about to get canned from Wendell, Wilson for not producing. That means not selling or buying enough for his customers. The reason he's not producing enough is that he comes to work late, leaves early, or doesn't come to work at all. You can only get away with telling the boss you were 'developing business' on the golf course, which is why you weren't at work, if you actually produce the business."
"If he's not 'producing business,' what's he living on, if he's working on commission?"
"That's what I wondered," Chason said. "He lives good. He pays a lot of money for his apartment, drives a fancy car, dresses good, and he's got a girlfriend who probably costs him a lot of money."
"You mean a hooker?"
"No, I mean one of those Main Line beauties, who expect to be taken to expensive restaurants, and weekends at the shore. Like that."
"How do you know about the girlfriend?" Tony asked.
Chason took a small notebook from his pocket.
"Her name is Cynthia Longwood," he said. "Her father is Randolph Longwood, the builder."
"I heard the name," Joey said.
"Anyway, they have been running around for some time. So I wondered how he was paying for all this, and started asking some questions around. I got to tell you again, Joey, that I can't prove any of this, it's just…"
Joey Fiorello indicated with his hands that he understood the caveat.
"If I was a betting man, Joey, which I don't happen to be, I'd give odds that this sleazeball is into drugs. Maybe not big time, but not small time, either."
"No shit?"
"It all fits, if you think about it."
"You tell me."
"If somebody has an armful of that shit, everything is rosy. You don't give a shit about anything. You don't feel like going to work, you don't go to work. Everything will be all right. And if you do go to work, you put some shit up your nose, it turns you into a fucking genius. You're too smart to get caught buying and selling stocks and bonds nobody told you to. You understand?"
"I'm getting the picture."
"You get your hands on, say, twenty thousand dollars' worth of heroin, or cocaine, any of the high-class stuff, if you know where to get it and where to sell it, you keep out what you need to shove in your own arm, or up your own, and your girlfriend's, nose-"
"You think his girlfriend is a junkie?"
"I didn't hear anything like that. But I would be surprised if she didn't do some 'recreational drugs.' That's pretty common among people like that. You heard what happened to the Detweiler girl, her father owns half of Nesfoods?"
Joey Fiorello shook his head, "no."
"I know who they are," Joey said. "What about the girl?"
"She stuck a needle in her arm in Chestnut Hill and was dead before she could take it out."
"No shit?"
"Killed her like that," Chason said, snapping his fingers. "Anyway, after you put aside whatever shit you need for yourself and your girlfriend, you sell the rest. You put away enough money to buy another twenty thousand worth later on, and you live good on what's left over."
"And you think Ketcham is doing this?"
"Like I said, I can't prove it, but yeah, Joey, I'd bet on it."
"Can I ask you a personal question, Phil?"
"You can ask," Chason said. "But I won't promise to answer."
"You're a retired police officer," Joey said. "You get this feeling about somebody like this, dealing drugs, doing what you think he's doing with the stockbroker business, you feel you got to tell the cops?"
"No," Chason said. "For one thing, like I said, I can't prove any of this. And for another, if I did, they'd probably tell me to mind my own business."
"What do you think his chances are of getting caught dealing drugs?"
"He'll get caught eventually," Chason said. "If he don't get killed first, in some drug deal gone bad, or kill himself, the way that Detweiler girl did."
"Well, one thing for sure," Joey said. "We don't want this son of a bitch walking around the lot, do we?"
"I wouldn't if I was you, Joey," Chason said.
"Phil, I don't want anybody to know I was even thinking of giving this son of a bitch a job. It would be embarrassing, if you know what I mean."
"What I do, Joey, like it says in the phone book, is confidential investigations. What I told you, you paid for. It's yours. I just forgot everything I told you."
"I appreciate that, Phil," Joey said.
Chason nodded his head.
"How long did it take you to come up with all this, Phil?"
"No longer than usual. I'm going to bill you for ten hours, plus, I think, about sixty bucks in expenses."
"Two things, Phil. First of all, I think it took you like twenty hours," Joey said. "And I figure you had maybe two hundred in expenses."
"You don't have to do that, Joey."
"Don't tell me what I have to do, Phil, please, as a favor to me. Second thing, how would you feel about being paid in cash, instead of with a check? Are you in love with the IRS?"
"I don't have a thing in the world against cash, Joey."
"That's good, because I just happen to have some cash the IRS don't know about, either," Joey said.
He got up from his desk and went into what looked to Phil Chason like a closet. He returned in a minute with an envelope.
"You want to check it, to make sure it's all right?" Joey asked.
"I'm sure it is, Joey," Chason said, and put the envelope in his suit jacket pocket.
Joey offered him his hand.
"We'll be in touch," Joey said.
Chason started out of the office.
"Phil, you want to get out of that piece of shit you're driving, I'll make you a deal on something better."
"Not right now, Joey, but I'll consider that an open offer."
"It's an open offer," Joey said.
Chason left the office. Joey went to the venetian blinds and watched through them until Chason had left the lot.
Then he left his office.
"I've got to see a man about a dog, Helene," he said.
He went out and got into a red Cadillac Eldorado convertible and drove off the lot. Six blocks away, he pulled into an Amoco station and stopped the car by an outside pay phone.
He dropped a coin in the slot and dialed a number from memory.
"This is Joey. I need to talk to him," he said.
"Yes?" a new voice responded a minute later.
"This is Joey, Mr. S.," Joey said. "I just left the retired cop. I think we had better talk, if you have time."
"Come right now, Joey," Vincenzo Savarese said.
TWELVE
Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin looked up from the mountain of paper on his desk and saw Michael J. O'Hara sitting on his secretary's desk.
"How long have you been out there, Mickey?" Coughlin called.
"You looked like you were busy," O'Hara said.
"I told him I'd let you know he was out here," Veronica Casey, Coughlin's secretary, said.
"Never too busy for you, Mickey," Coughlin said, motioning for O'Hara to come into his office.
"Oh, you silver-tongued Irishman, you," O'Hara said, and slumped into one of the two armchairs in the room. "What's going around here you don't want me to know about?"
"There's a long list of things like that," Coughlin said. "You have something specific in mind?"
"Actually, what I had in mind was that you and I should go somewhere and have a little sip of something. Maybe two sips. Maybe even, if you don't have something on, dinner. You got plans?"