Fever nd-33

by Bill Pronzini

  Forget the woman in the scarf. She was nobody to him, just one more among the legion of sufferers. Probably married anyway, couple of kids, a job, a life. The left side of her face… accident, disease, whatever. Bad things happen to people all the time. He knew that if anybody did. None of his business. Forget it.

  But that one good eye, dammit.

  Like something burning…

  6

  TAMARA

  She was alone in the offices when the woman came stumbling in.

  Monday morning, a little after nine. Bill wasn’t due in today and Jake and Alex were out on field assignments. Quiet; the phone hadn’t even rung yet. Some days, she enjoyed being here by herself. In control, the nerve and brain center of the agency. Nerve and brain center-the phrase made her smile.

  Shaping up to be a better Monday than most, all right. Weather was good, bright and sunny. And she’d had a pretty nice weekend for a change. Dinner with Kerry and Bill on Friday night-she grinned, remembering the look on Bill’s face during the rap about cosmetic surgery. New apartment hunting again yesterday; still hadn’t found a place that had everything she wanted-location, size, view-but she always had a good time looking. And then dinner with sister Claudia and her Oreo lawyer boyfriend, and for once neither of them had been obnoxious. Good day all around.

  Who needed a man in her life? Well, she did, at least for a night now and then (God, she was horny!), but not having somebody didn’t bother her as much as it had after that fool chump Horace dumped her. She had a good life other than her love life and she was finally learning how to enjoy it on its own terms.

  She finished her first cup of coffee while she answered a couple of phone messages, went out into the anteroom for a refill from the hot plate. Sunlight streamed in through the windows facing South Park. So did a fair amount of filtered noise. Lot of activity in and around the Park these days. The neighborhood had been the hub of the dot-com boom in the eighties and early nineties; now, a decade after the collapse of the market, it had bounced back with a vengeance. Web 2.0 companies were moving back in in droves-must be close to a dozen now-and South Park was once more “the town square of Multimedia Gulch.”

  Thinking about that made her feel good, too. She and Bill had swung a sweet long-term lease on this building when the real estate market was in the tank; couldn’t afford the going rent if they were trying to buy in now. And the high-tech companies being so close meant the likelihood of more business. The agency hadn’t gotten much out of the dot-com industry to date, but that could change. Web 2.0 companies had their employee and security problems same as any other big business, and when they did, the odds were favorable they’d hire a firm that happened to be in their own backyard.

  Tamara poured her cup full, stirred in some low-cal sweetener, and went back into her office. She was just sitting down when she heard the anteroom door open. Jake or Alex, probably. She didn’t bother to turn around for a look-not until the door slammed hard and there was a loud scraping sound as if the person out there was shoving furniture around. A woman’s voice called, “Hello? Anybody here?” That put her on her feet and sent her over to the door.

  Lord!

  The woman must have lurched against the couch; it was canted out from the wall and she was leaning on the back of it, bent over, her face turned sideways so that she seemed to be looking up from under, in Tamara’s direction. Bad news. Big lemon-colored bruise on the left side under the eye, cuts and swelling on the right cheekbone, puffed lip, more cuts and scrapes on the chin. No blood, dried or otherwise, on her face. No blood on the jacket, blouse, or jeans she wore. The pounding she’d taken was at least a day old.

  Tamara registered all of that before she recognized the woman.

  “Remember me?”

  “Janice Krochek. What happened to you?”

  Krochek didn’t answer. She sank onto the couch, sat with elbows resting on her knees. Pale, sweaty. Exhausted. Tense, too, the way she’d been in the Hillman last week. And scared. Trying to hide it behind a half smile and a flip tone, but her eyes gave her away; the scare was big and wormy in them.

  “Who did that to you, Mrs. Krochek?”

  “Nobody did it. I fell down some stairs.”

  Yeah, sure.

  “You wouldn’t have anything to drink, would you? Bourbon, Scotch?”

  “Just coffee and water.”

  “I thought all private detectives kept a bottle of booze around.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s crap. This is a business office.”

  “All right, coffee. Lots of cream and sugar. How about a cigarette?”

  “Nobody here smokes.”

  “Figures. Aspirin? My head hurts like hell.”

  Tamara went and got the tin of aspirin from her purse, poured the coffee. She had to open the tin herself; Krochek’s hands were too shaky. The woman slurped down four of them. Inside of her mouth must’ve been cut; she made a face and dribbled coffee out of the side with the puffed lip.

  “You need a doctor,” Tamara said.

  “No. No doctor. I’m all right.”

  “You don’t look all right.”

  “I walked all the way here. Fifteen goddamn blocks.”

  “Why? Why’d you come here?”

  “No place else to go.”

  “What about your friend?”

  “I don’t have any friends.” Bitterly.

  “Woman you’re staying with, Ginger Benn.”

  “Not staying there anymore.”

  “Why not? Because you got beat up?”

  Slurp, slurp. She was holding the cup in both hands, tight and up close to her face, alternately slurping and breathing in the steam like an asthmatic. Marks on both wrists, too, Tamara saw then-red chafe marks.

  She said, “So you remembered the business card we left last week. South Park-easy address to remember.”

  “I don’t know what I’d’ve done if I hadn’t. Where’s your boss? Not here?”

  “No. And he’s not my boss.”

  “Lover?”

  “Business partner,” Tamara said.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Do I look like I’m kidding?”

  “Black-white, May-December. What kind of partnership is that?”

  Tamara bit back the sharp retort that crawled out on her tongue. The woman was hurt; you couldn’t tell a beating victim to go fuck herself, even one as snotty as this one. Not yet, anyway.

  “Why don’t you tell me who beat you up, Mrs. Krochek?”

  “Nobody beat me up. I told you, it was an accident.”

  “Accident with somebody’s fist. Like maybe Carl Lassiter?”

  “No.”

  “Because of the money you owe him or his boss?”

  “I said no. Accident, accident-how many times do you want to hear it?”

  Could be Lassiter she was afraid of, could be somebody else. Tamara couldn’t tell with Krochek’s eyes cast downward and steam from the coffee smearing her expression.

  “What do you care anyway?” Krocheck said.

  “I don’t like to see anybody get beat up. Women especially.”

  “It’s none of your business.”

  “You’re in my offices, that makes it my business. Police business, too. Assault is a felony.”

  The word “police” seemed to scare Krochek even more. “I wasn’t assaulted! I don’t want anything to do with the law, you understand?”

  “Yeah, I understand. Just why’d you come here?”

  “Didn’t I just tell you that, too? I didn’t have any place else to go.”

  “What do you want us to do for you?”

  “Get me home.”

  “Oakland Hills?”

  “Where the hell else. That’s the only home I’ve got-for now anyway. Can I have some more coffee? More sugar this time.”

  What am I, Tamara thought, some kind of servant? Fetch this, fetch that. Yassum, Miz Scarlett. Grumbling to herself, she went and got the refill. When she brought it back, she said
, “So you changed your mind after all. Now you want to go back to your husband.”

  “Woman’s prerogative.”

  “If you weren’t coerced into it.”

  “It’s changed, isn’t that enough? Enough questions! Can’t you see I’m hurting?”

  “Offered to get you a doctor.”

  “I don’t want a doctor. I want to go home.”

  “So why didn’t you call your husband, have him come get you?”

  “With what? I don’t have my cell anymore. No money, either. Why do you think I walked all the way over here?”

  “Where’s your purse?”

  Shrug.

  “Whoever beat on you take it?”

  Slurp.

  “You could’ve called from Ginger’s room, or the lobby desk.”

  Krochek winced, pressed fingers gingerly against her puffed lip. “For God’s sake. Will you just call Mitch for me? Will you do that, please?”

  Tamara said with sour irony, “Quicker the better,” and went into her office to make the call.

  But getting rid of Janice Krochek wasn’t going to be that easy. Her husband was away from Five States Engineering today, out on some job site. Tamara pried his cell number out of Krochek’s assistant, but when she called it she got his voice mail. She left a curt message, saying it was urgent he return the call as soon as possible.

  Back to the anteroom, where she found Janice Krochek curled up in a fetal position on the couch. Sound asleep, making little wheezing, moaning noises in her nose and throat. She’d spilled some of the coffee on the low table and carpet and hadn’t bothered to wipe it up.

  Oh, yeah, great. Terrific. Just what the agency needed for an advertisement if a client should happen to walk in-a banged-up gambling junkie passed out on the anteroom couch.

  Krochek had shed her coat; it was crumpled on the floor. Tamara picked it up, started to drape it over the woman, and then hesitated. Might as well play detective here, just for practice. She ran her a hand into each of the pockets. One was empty; the other had the agency business card Bill had left for her, and a folded piece of paper torn off a scratch pad. Written in ink on the paper, in a woman’s hand, was: La Farge-s. 1408. Below that, heavily underlined several times, was the numeral 9.

  One of her johns, or something to do with the money she owed? Not that it mattered; once she was out of here, the agency was through with her and her messed-up life. Tamara put the paper back where she’d found it, spread the coat over the lower half of Krochek’s body. The woman didn’t move, just kept right on snoring.

  She sighed. So much for another try at the woman-to-woman thing. And so much for the good mood she’d been in earlier.

  She got a towel and cleaned up the coffee spill, washed out the used mug. In her office, waiting for the phone to ring, she answered a couple of e-mails and tracked down an address Jake needed for the pro bono case and then called him on his cell. Voice mail again. Whole damn world was unavailable this morning, it seemed. She left him a message.

  An hour passed. Still no callback from Mitchell Krochek. She went out to check on the woman. Hadn’t moved, from the look of her. Her breathing was still noisy and a little labored.

  Well, shit.

  Tamara called Bill’s home number. Answering machine. So then she called his cell. If she got his voice mail, too…

  She didn’t. He answered on the third ring. She said, “I hate to bother you but I’ve got a problem here,” and explained about her sweetheart morning with the Fever Woman.

  “She would have to pick on us,” Bill said. “Unpredictable as hell, that’s the trouble with addicts.”

  “Probably shouldn’t’ve taken the case in the first place.”

  “Hindsight, the great teacher.”

  “So what do I do? Keep on waiting for her husband to call back?”

  “No. He might not check his messages.”

  “She can’t sleep or hang here all day. I’ve got a client coming in for a consultation at one o’clock.”

  “Where’s Jake?”

  “Busy. He’s not answering his cell and Alex is down in San Jose. I suppose I could cancel the appointment and close up, take her over to Oakland myself…”

  “You’ve had enough hassle already. I’ll do it.”

  “You sure? If you’re busy…”

  “Busy doing nothing,” he said. “Errands, that’s all. It’ll take me twenty minutes or so to get to South Park. If Krochek calls in the meantime, give him my cell number and I’ll work something out with him.”

  Bet he doesn’t call, she thought.

  He didn’t.

  7

  Janice Krochek was still sleeping on the anteroom couch when I got there. She’d been pretty badly used, all right. Looking down at her built an impotent anger in me. Violence against women infuriates me every time I encounter it. Nobody, no matter how much they mess up their own lives, deserves to become somebody’s punching bag.

  “She won’t see a doctor,” Tamara said. “Just wants to go home.”

  “Maybe her husband can talk her into it.”

  “If he cares enough. I’ll tell him when he calls, if he calls.”

  “She told you she walked here?”

  “That’s what she said. Benn woman threw her out, apparently, wouldn’t even let her use the phone.”

  “That doesn’t sound right.”

  “Didn’t to me, either. Why didn’t she ask the desk clerk or one of the other residents?”

  “Maybe it wasn’t the Hillman she walked from.”

  “Fifteen blocks, she said.”

  “It’s a wonder she made it that far in her condition. And without anybody stopping to help her.”

  “In this city?” Tamara said. “Army of Dawn of the Dead zombies could march up Market Street and nobody’d pay much attention.”

  “Yeah. Come on, let’s wake her up. I’m parked in a loading zone across the Square.”

  Together we hoisted Janice Krochek into a sitting position. Tamara shook her a little until one bleary eye popped open and focused on me. “You,” she said.

  “Me,” I agreed. “How do you feel?”

  “Groggy. Shitty.”

  “I can take you to a hospital, get you some medical attention…”

  “No. Home.” The other eye was open now; her gaze roamed from side to side. “Where’s Mitch?”

  “We couldn’t get hold of him,” I said. “He’s on a job site today.”

  “Yeah, sure. Out screwing his latest bimbo.”

  “Come on, Mrs. Krochek, on your feet. I’ll take you home.”

  We got her upright. Shaky, but she could stand and move all right with my hand on her arm; I didn’t need Tamara’s help to get her downstairs. A couple of people on the sidewalk and in the park strip gave us passing glances and a wide berth.

  One of South Park’s many attractions is that a Bay Bridge approach is only a short distance away. We were on the bridge in five or six minutes. Janice Krochek sat slumped in the seat, her eyes closed, massaging her chafed wrists, unresponsive to the questions I put to her. Whoever had beat her up, for whatever reason, she wasn’t about to confide to me. Or, I’d have been willing to bet, to her husband.

  She was asleep again by the time we came off the bridge. I woke her up with a couple of sharp words to get directions; I had the Krocheks’ home address but the street name wasn’t familiar and I wasn’t going to stop to pore over a map. “Highway 24,” she said, “then straight up Claremont, ask me again when you pass the Claremont Hotel.”

  My cell phone went off at about the time we reached the Claremont. Had to be Tamara. I pulled over to answer it; unlike most people nowadays, I don’t consider talking on the phone while driving to be safe, and it’s even less so on narrow, hilly streets.

  Tamara said, “Mr. Krochek just called. I gave him the news. He’ll meet you at his house-on his way there right now.”

  “Reaction?”

  “Relieved and pissed off.”

  I re
layed the message to Janice Krochek, omitting the relieved and pissed off part.

  “Be still, my heart,” she said.

  We kept climbing. Turn right on this street, left on that one, half a mile and then right again on such-and-such. By then we were well up into the hills. Panoramic views of the bay, San Francisco, three bridges, Alcatraz Island. Expensive living for the financially well-endowed.

  What was surprising about the area was how quickly it had been regenerated, how many new homes had sprung from the ashes of the firestorm that had engulfed these hills in October of 1991. Hardly any signs remained of the devastation along the narrow, winding roads. High winds, brush-clogged canyons, and tinder-dry trees had spawned that fire, and before it was done raging it had reached temperatures as high as two thousand degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to boil asphalt, burned sixteen hundred acres, destroyed nearly three thousand single-family homes and apartment buildings, left twenty-five people dead, and caused something like a billion and a half dollars in damage.

  The Krocheks were too young to have lived up here at that time; they were among the multitude of newcomers who had figured lightning would never strike twice and so bought themselves a chunk of the rebuilt, relandscaped, million-dollar California Dream. They could have it. I preferred the West Bay; despite all its civic and other problems and the lurking threat of the Big One, the predicted earthquake disaster that would make the Oakland Hills fire look like a minor incident, San Francisco was my home and would be as long as I stayed above ground. My city, for better or for worse.

  The Krocheks lived on Fox Canyon Circle, at the end of Fox Canyon Road-a rounded cul-de-sac like the bulb on top of a thermometer. It was backed up against one of the short, narrow canyons that threaded the area. Before the fire, these canyons had been clogged with oak, madrone, dry manzanita. Now, short grass and scrub grew down there and in places along the far bank you could see bare patches where the fire had burned and nothing had regrown.

  Three large, Mediterranean-style homes, spaced widely apart, occupied the circle. The lower one on the north, away from the canyon, belonged to the Krocheks. The driveway was empty; Krochek hadn’t got there yet. I pulled up in front. The house was set behind a low, gated stucco wall fronted by yew and yucca trees: tile roof, arched windows with heavy wood balconies and ornamental wrought iron trim. The white stucco gave off thin daggerish glints of midday sunlight.