Someone Always Knows Read Online Free

along?”
    “No, I’ve got plenty of work to catch up on here. See you at home for tacos later?”
    “You got it.”
    3:33 p.m.
    Hank called me back in the middle of the afternoon. “I’ve talked with several other attorneys about your problem with Renshaw, and they all agree that there’s a legal precedent in your favor. His abandonment, lack of communication…did you try to locate him?”
    “Not very hard,” I admitted.
    “But you did try?”
    “Sure. We’re investigators, that’s what we do.” My voice had an edge to it.
    “Don’t get testy with me.”
    “Sorry, I didn’t mean to. This has been an awful day.”
    “Well, hang in there. And send me any info on your or Hy’s attempts to locate this pest.”
    I went back to my files. In the months since the agency merged with RI and expanded, it seemed paperwork—on real paper or the computer—had come to dominate my life. Whether here in the office or at home, my computers and iPhone fired off messages, reports, and complaints at me with incredible speed. I couldn’t ignore the infernal devices; they rang and beeped at me with a persistence I’d never imagined any electronic device could exhibit. Sometimes I longed for the old days—
    Well, maybe not. Computers, which I’d previously hated and vowed never to use, now provide all sorts of data with speed and accuracy. For a poor typist like me, the Delete key is of prime importance. Fax machines, cell phones, and high-quality printers allow me to cut through red tape and save time. And the Internet is a great research tool—if I don’t take as gospel every word that appears on the screen. I still fact-check in person and with written sources, particularly the older ones, which tend to be more accurate. But the old days? Carbon copies, Wite-Out, endless erasing and retyping…uh-uh, not for me.
    When I looked up from a particularly boring case report, I found it was full dark; the lights of the city shimmered before me in a way that I knew predicted cold temperatures for the days ahead. The thought of tacos nudged at me. Time to go home.

 
    8:57 a.m.
    M ick looked through my office door and said, “I’ve compiled a list of people you may want to talk to about Renshaw.” He handed me two printed sheets. “It’s pretty extensive, many of them out of state or outside the country.”
    “Let me get Ripinsky in here.”
    As we waited for Hy, I studied my nephew. He looked good, fit and rested. If any traces of the problems he and his partner Alison had gone through earlier in the year remained, they weren’t major ones. I was about to ask him how the painting on their new house on Potrero Hill was going when Hy came in. The three of us went over the list together.
    I said, “In order to contact all these people, we’re going to have to co-opt other agencies in the more far-flung locations.”
    “I don’t think so,” Hy told me. “RI’s people—I mean, our people can handle it. And since Renshaw has surfaced here, I’d hazard that he has a connection in the Bay Area.” He looked a shade embarrassed: since we’d joined our firms, he sometimes slipped, speaking as if he were the sole owner of the organization.
    I ignored the error—it didn’t matter. “Right. But what’s he been doing all these years?”
    “Scamming,” Mick said. “You’ll notice the names on that list live all over the globe, but he primarily focused on South America, maybe because he’s fluent in Spanish and Portuguese.”
    I looked at the list: Chile, Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil.
    “What kinds of scams?” I asked.
    “The usual—extortion, blackmail, you name it. In Venezuela he and the sixteen-year-old daughter of a high government official ran off together, taking a good bit of money she’d stolen from her father’s safe; when officials found her and returned her to her parents, the money and Renshaw were gone. The brat had the nerve to proclaim to her family that he was ‘the greatest fuck’ she’d