Midnight Pass: A Lew Fonesca Novel (Lew Fonesca Novels) by Stuart M. Kaminsky Read Free Book Online

and Syd.”
    “I told you what I can do,” I said.
    He thought about that for about a minute.
    “Okay,” he said.
    We worked out the payment and he gave me a five-hundred-dollar cash advance, all in fifties. I told him I’d check in with him and if it started to take a lot of time he could reassess the situation, especially if I had to go out of town or out of the state. He agreed.
    “Find them,” he said, placing a business card in front of me. “Please find them.”
    And he was gone. His office number was on the front of the card along with his home number. I pocketed the card as my phone rang. I picked it up and said, “Fonesca.”
    “Colleen Davenport,” Warren Murphy’s secretary said.
    She worked for one of the partners at Tycinker, Oliver, and Schwartz, where I was on a retainer. In exchange for that retainer, I got paid a fixed sum each time I served papers and I got the reasonable use of the services of Harvey the Hacker, who had an office in the back of the law firm.
    “Two jobs,” she said. “One has to be done today. The other by Friday.”
    “I’ll be right over,” I said. “Can I talk to Harvey?”
    Colleen said Harvey was out of town, which could mean that Harvey was out of town or Harvey had fallen off the wagon. I hung up and went to my backup, Dixie Cruise, no relation to the actor.
    Dixie was slim, trim, with very black hair in a short style. She was no more than twenty-five, pretty face, and big round glasses. Dixie worked behind the counter at a coffee bar in Gulf Gate Plaza. About six months back, I had sought her out to answer a summons about a reported assault she had witnessed in the coffee bar and found that Dixie, who had as down-home an accent as any Billy Bob, was a computer whiz.
    I called her at the coffee bar and she agreed to meet me when she got off of work at her apartment in a slightly run-down twelve-flat apartment building near the main post office. She had a small living room with a sofa bed, a large kitchen, and a bedroom devoted to her two computers, two large speakers, and all kinds of gray metal pieces with lights.
    When I got to Dixie’s apartment and she got in front of her computers, it took her ten minutes and cost me fifty bucks, which I would bill to Kenneth Severtson. Andrew Stark belonged to AAA. Three days earlier he had purchased two adult and two children’s tickets to Disney World, Sea World, and Universal Theme Park. Dixie got a list of hotels in Orlando. Andrew Stark had Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express cards. He had used the Visa to check into an Orlando hotel yesterday.
    “Embassy Suites on International Drive,” Dixie said, pointing at the screen as if her right hand were a handgun. “Checkout Thursday. Want to know what he ordered from room service?”
    “Should I?”
    Dixie shook her head and said, “A lot of burgers, fries, and Cokes, both diet and the new vanilla one,”
    In the old days, prehacker, I would have gone to AAA, told a sad story, and hoped for the best. Then I would have tried airlines, travel agencies, and friends of Janice Severtson and Andrew Stark. Sarasota isn’t huge but it might have taken me days, which means that without Dixie, Stark and Janice would have checked out before I found them.
    I went to the law offices of Tycinker, Oliver, and Schwartz on Palm Avenue. Colleen Davenport gave me two sets of papers to serve: one was urgent, the other had a few days.
    “How’s Harvey?” I asked her.
    She was young and inexperienced and trying to look a little older and filled with understanding of the world. She did a fair job.
    “Truth?” she said softly as I stood next to her in her cubicle outside of Murphy’s office. “He’s had a relapse.”
    “Bad?”
    “He’s been at this place in Mississippi for two weeks,” she said. “Firm is paying the bill. Harvey’s too valuable to lose.”
    I went back to the Nissan with the papers. I put one aside for a Mickey Donophin and read the one for Georgia