“We need your cooperation on something. And if we get it, we walk away. If we don’t get it, we talk to Immigration about some things you may have left off your green card application,” Lucas said. “I’m not trying to be unfriendly, I’m trying to outline the . . . realities.”
Haar nodded and asked, “What do you want? Specifically?”
“You use the pay phone downstairs as a kind of switchboard or answering service,” Lucas said. “No cops know that except the three of us, and nobody needs to know that we ever talked to you. We’re looking for a man named Marion Beauchamps, who you might know as Martin Keller or Martin Lawrence, if somebody called for him.”
Haar stared at Lucas for a moment, showing some teeth in what wasn’t a smile, then bobbed his head. “He’s a hard one. If he knew I’d talked to you, I could get hurt.”
“We will try to prevent that. If we can find them, they’ll be going to prison forever,” Rae said.
Haar thought about that for a second, looked carefully at Bob and Rae, and then back to Lucas. “It was Martin Keller and Martin Lawrence until a few months ago. Now it’s Raymond Sherman. I don’t know where he is, but if somebody calls for him I have a number to pass along.”
“A current one?” Bob asked.
“Like I said, everything changed a few months ago, including the number. If anyone calls for Keller or Lawrence, I don’t know who they’re talking about. If somebody calls for Sherman, I pass along the new number. I’ve only had one call for Sherman.”
“Have you called the number yourself?”
Haar shook his head. “No. I don’t need that kind of trouble.”
“How many clients do you have?” Bob asked. “For your forwarding services?”
“A few . . . twelve or fifteen. Most of them completely legitimate. I hook up people who need lawyers or real estate agents . . . I have a dog groomer, even.”
“Dope dealers?”
“I don’t do dope,” Haar said. “I’ve been asked, but dealers get caught. Always. Then they cough up everything they know. So I don’t do that.”
“How did you connect with Sherman? I mean, originally?” Lucas asked. “Whatever his real name is. Or was.”
“There’s a guy who used to hang out here a lot. He said he was on the run from his wife, he said he owed a couple hundred grand in alimony and child support and he told me he’d give me fifty bucks a call if I’d be his switchboard,” Haar said. He shrugged. “All I had to do is take two steps down the hall to answer the phone, so I said yes. Then another guy came along. My name was passed along by these chaps. I don’t know who any of them were or what they did. I just passed numbers. After a bit, I began to realize that some of them were . . . bad people. Two of them, maybe three, made the Los Angeles Times, and the Times doesn’t write about anyone unless they’ve done something noticeable.”
“What was your relationship with Sherman?”
“I passed numbers to him. Most of these people I never met. Sherman—I actually knew him as Keller—came in to see what was what. I knew right away that he was the wrong type. But he liked this place, he liked the women. He’d come in, like anyone else. Rougher but not crazy. A certain kind of woman definitely had a taste for what he was selling.”
“Give me the phone number you’re calling,” Lucas said.
Haar dug in his pant pocket, took out a black address book the size of a credit card and an eighth of an inch thick. He read out the number and said, “I hope you’ll use it with care. It’s possible that nobody calls that number except me, so if you call it, they’d know who gave it to you.”
“We’ll be careful,” Lucas said.
“I’m surprised you don’t use a smartphone for the numbers, maybe with some encryption,” Rae said.
Haar smiled for the first time, a brief flash of white teeth, and said, “You know the best encryption? Two pieces of paper wadded up and swallowed.”
“All right,” Lucas said. He took a card out of his wallet, wrote his phone number on the back, and said, “If Sherman calls, give me a ring. Don’t forget. When we get him—and we will—we’ll look at his phone to see who he’s been calling . .