sound of a television being turned on in the background.
“What do you know about David Kenum?” Mary said.
“What?”
“David Kenum.”
“Have you talked to him?” he said.
“Just through the mail, I wrote him and asked him to marry me,” she said. “I’m one of those prison groupies.”
“Yeah, right. You’re a Cooper. I can tell.”
“Stop with the compliments. So? Kenum?”
“No, I don’t know anything about the fuckstick,” Bolt said. “The guy’s bad news. Killed a girl. That’s all I know.”
“Did you hear he was out of prison?”
A sharp intake of breath and then, “He is?”
“Yep. Paid his dues. Thoroughly reformed. Ready to be an upstanding citizen.”
“Look,” Bolt said. “I gotta go. You need anything else from me?”
“Nope, got everything I need.”
“Good. Bye.”
“Oh, wait!” Mary said. “Is the red positive or the black? I always get those mixed up.”
All she heard was a dial tone.
Twenty-two
Next up: Ready Betty. Does six or seven guys at a party. Moves to New York. Does a few plays. Marries a poor Jew. Gets fat and dies of a heart attack.
Not exactly The Bridges Of Madison County. Mary wondered if that was how her obituary had read. She idly wondered about her own obit. Would it be boiled down to a few pathetic facts like that? Worked as p.i. Never married. Owned lots of shoes. Killed a couple people. Died of an embolism while trying to sweat a confession out of a teenager.
Nice, Mary. Keep up that positive thinking.
She forced her negativity aside and focused on the task at hand: find a Jew in New York. No problem.
She used her paid subscription websites that helped her find a couple dozen Betty Schneiders. She eliminated all of the ones that didn’t fit the age range. Then she eliminated the ones that had never lived in southern California.
By the time she was done she had a half dozen Betty Schneiders.
Using the last known addresses and phone numbers, she eliminated another four.
Two left.
Within five minutes, she learned they were both dead.
Mary considered stopping. Why not? They both couldn’t have done it. But then she chided herself and it took another half hour to figure out which dead Betty Schneider was the infamous Ready Betty.
She spoke with a daughter who told Mary that her mother had in fact died of a heart attack, and that she had lived in L.A., trying to make it as an actress. The daughter had started to go into Betty’s life story but Mary begged off. The daughter did mention that Betty had weighed over three hundred pounds when she died. Heavy Betty.
So Mary crossed her off the list.
She pushed back from her desk and looked at the ceiling and took a deep breath.
She was down to her last name.
David Kenum.
Years ago, Mary had been given the opportunity to obtain a username and password for non-classified state of California governmental websites.
The opportunity had been presented to her by a happy client who also had these same privileges. Although her possession of access to the network was most likely prohibited, there had never been any questions or issues directed to Mary.
Therefore, it was relatively easy to access David Kenum’s prison information, at least everything that was deemed non-classified. It appeared to her that everything about David Kenum was non-classified.
It also listed the name of his parole officer.
Mary picked up the phone and called him. His name was Craig Attebury.
“Hi, my name is Laura Bancroft and I’m with Staffing Resources Management. I am doing a follow-up on behalf of a prospective employer who has been contacted by a…” here she paused and ruffled some papers. “David Kenum.”
“Hold on,” Mr. Attebury said. Now it was Mary’s turn to listen to papers being shuffled. The beauty of the L.A. criminal system: of course the parole officer wouldn’t recognize Kenum’s name firsthand. He probably had a hundred or so files stacked on his desk.
“What’s the name of your company again?” Attebury asked.
“Staffing Resources Management. SRM. Not to be confused with Sado Rectal Masochism.”
“Right, right. And Kenum applied for a job with you?”
“No, sir. He applied for a job with one of our clients. We do all of the tasks associated with verifying a prospective employee’s information. Everything but urinalysis. That we outsource.”
“I see, I see. Um…what’s the name of the company where he applied for a job?”
“Our client information is private, sir.”
“Figures.”
Mary heard him dig through more papers before he let out a sigh.
“Kenum. Here he is.”
Mary gave him a moment to breeze through the paperwork and remember the facts about the person