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“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.
