Fever nd-33

by Bill Pronzini

  “I had a hot streak going for a while,” she said, “shooting the pickle and winning two out of three hands. At one time I was ahead fifteen thousand. Can you believe it? Fifteen thousand! I couldn’t lose.”

  “But then you did.”

  “Yeah. My luck never holds for-Shit!” She’d lost another hand.

  “How much are you down now?”

  “I don’t know. Twenty K, maybe. It doesn’t matter.”

  “No? Why not?”

  “Plenty more where that came from.”

  “Rebecca Weaver’s money.”

  She didn’t deny it; she was still in the fever zone. “I’ll win it back,” she said. “All of it. My luck’s starting to change again. I can feel it.”

  “Credit cards? Or did you tap into her bank account, too?”

  She didn’t answer. Her eyes were fixed on the screen.

  “Is that why you killed her? To get your hands on her money?”

  “… What?”

  “I found her body,” I said. “In the freezer in your garage.”

  Nothing until the hand being played was finished and she’d lost again. Then, as she posted the blind for a new one, “I didn’t do it on purpose. It wasn’t my fault.”

  “What happened?”

  “… What?”

  “What happened with Rebecca, Mrs. Krochek?”

  “She came over to my house. She said she wanted to see if I was all right but it wasn’t me she was worried about, it was Mitch. She… Yeah, baby, that’s it, that’s it! Wired aces!”

  The bet she made on the aces was $250. I didn’t try to talk to her until the hand played out; she wouldn’t have heard me. She lost that one, too-lost another $1200 of Rebecca Weaver’s money on a single hand.

  It was the amount of the loss that made me step forward and do what I should have done sooner: flip the switch on the workstation’s power strip. She let out a yell when the screen and the desk lamp went dark. Sudden rage brought her up out of the chair, sent her flying at me with her hands hooked into claws and her nails digging at my eyes. I couldn’t control her; in her fury she had a man’s strength. The sharp nails got in under my guard and opened burning furrows down the left side of my face. I had no choice then but to clip her. It didn’t hurt her much, but it knocked her down and drove the fight out of her. When I was sure that she wasn’t going to come at me again, I hauled her up by the arms and pushed her down on the couch.

  She said, dully now, “You son of a bitch.”

  There was a ceiling globe; I switched it on. In the stronger light, she made a pathetic, wasted figure slumped down on the cushions. The excitement had gone cold in her eyes. They were bleak, bloodshot, reflecting the light with the same empty glassiness of an animal’s.

  I pulled the chair out from the workstation, straddled it in front of her. My cheek stung like the devil; when I touched the ragged furrows, my fingers came away bloody. I shook out my handkerchief, held it against the wounds. Sometimes it pays to be old-fashioned enough to carry a handkerchief.

  “Why did you kill Rebecca Weaver?” I asked her.

  “I didn’t mean to.” Her voice wasn’t much louder now than a hoarse whisper. “She made me do it.”

  “How did she do that?”

  “Real sweet at first, butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. But then she started ragging on me about hurting Mitch. I told her to shut up, go away, but she wouldn’t. Just kept ragging, calling me names, bitch, gambling slut. You know what she told me then? Take a guess.”

  “That she had an affair with your husband six months ago.”

  “That’s right. You know about that?”

  “I know. But you didn’t until she told you.”

  “Stupid. I should’ve known. Right next door, always looking at him like he was a piece of candy. She was the bitch, not me. Dirty little bitch.”

  “So you killed her.”

  “No, it wasn’t like that. She… I was hung over, sick, and she kept ragging and ragging, saying how much better she was for him than me or that cunt he’s sleeping with now. I told her she could have him, welcome to him, but that didn’t stop her. Kept screaming at me, breaking my eardrums, and then she grabbed my arm and I… I don’t know, I must’ve picked up a knife that was on the sink…” She shook herself, the way a dog does when it comes out of water. “I don’t remember stabbing her. I don’t. She was just… lying there on the floor, blood all over her, eyes wide open. Dead. She… I was sick, shaking so bad I couldn’t think… I don’t know, I don’t remember”

  “What did you do then?”

  “Had a drink, a big one. Wouldn’t you?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I would’ve called nine-eleven if she hadn’t been dead. I would have. I thought about doing it anyway. But the police… I couldn’t face them. I was scared… real scared… You know what I mean?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “I know what you mean.”

  “I sat in the living room with another Scotch and tried to calm down. I don’t know how long it took… a long time.”

  “And then?”

  She licked chapped lips. “I need a cigarette. Give me one, will you?”

  There was an open pack next to the computer. I got up to fetch it and a booklet of matches and the overstuffed ashtray. The smoke in there was bothering my chest, but I could stand it for the few minutes it would take to get the rest of the story out of her. Her hands trembled as she lit one of the cancer sticks; it bobbed between her lips, sending up smoke in erratic patterns around her head.

  “All I could think about was getting her out of there. You know? No idea what I’d do with her, not then, but I wanted her out of my house. I… dragged her into the laundry room and out through the back door. The gardener, he’d left a wheelbarrow on the lawn. I wheeled it over and lifted her into it. Like a sack.” She laughed, a sudden bleating sound that showed how close to the edge she was. “Like a big bloody dead sack.”

  “Then you wheeled her into the garage and put her into the freezer.”

  “No. I went back inside and washed the blood off the knife. I don’t know why I did that. Blood all over the floor, but the knife, on the counter… I don’t know why, I just did.” She blew smoke in a ragged stream. “That’s when I got the idea. While I was washing the blood off the knife.”

  “Moving in here, using her money to gamble with.”

  “She didn’t need it anymore, did she? She was dead and I’m alive and I… why shouldn’t I use it? Use her house, too, the goddamn bed where she fucked my husband.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “She had her purse with her, she was going out somewhere after she finished ragging on me. I looked in her wallet. Credit cards… my God, she had a dozen! Big credit limits on every one, I checked later to make sure. So much money. Why shouldn’t I spend it?”

  “And that’s when you put her into the freezer.”

  “I had to empty all the frozen stuff out first, so she’d fit. It wasn’t easy getting her in there. A dead person weighs a lot.”

  Yeah. “How long did you plan on leaving her there? Until you gambled away all of her money?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t think about that. One day at a time, that’s the way I’ve always lived. Thinking too much makes you crazy.”

  “Why didn’t you clean up the kitchen before you came over here? The blood smears on the floor.”

  “Didn’t I? Jesus, I must’ve been too distracted. And Mitch found them and called you. That’s why you’re here.”

  “I’ve been looking for you since Wednesday.”

  She waved that away. “Anyhow,” she said, “I needed action real bad. The fever was eating me up. And I knew Rebecca had a computer… if she didn’t have a password to log on, it’d be easy to use it. She didn’t and it was.”

  “And you’ve been here ever since.”

  Jerky nod. Her cancer stick was almost down to the filter; she lit another one off the burning coal. “Except once when I
ran out of cigarettes. I took her car, late, and went out and bought a couple of cartons and some more Scotch. Nobody in the neighborhood saw me. All alone here the rest of the time. Nice and quiet except when the phone rang or somebody rang the doorbell. My God, it was heaven! All that money, play as long as I wanted, shoot the pickle whenever I felt like it. I was ahead fifteen thousand at one point. Did I tell you that?”

  “You told me.”

  “Fifteen thousand.” The half-hysterical laugh again. “Top of the world, Ma.”

  “Only then you fell off.”

  “I’d’ve hit another winning streak if you hadn’t showed up,” she said. “I would have, I know it. Only a matter of time.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  She said, as if the thought had just come to her, “Does Mitch know?”

  “Not yet.”

  “He’ll be ecstatic when he finds out. No more worries for him.”

  “About you? Don’t be so sure.”

  “He doesn’t care about me,” she said. “He never did. All he cares about is money and pussy.” With sudden vehemence: “It isn’t fair! He’ll divorce me now and take everything and I’ll get nothing.”

  I said, “That’s not the way it works,” and immediately wished I’d kept my mouth shut.

  “It isn’t? Why isn’t it?”

  Too late now. She’d find out soon enough anyway. “Committing a felony or a series of felonies doesn’t invalidate the no-fault statute,” I said. “It probably should but it doesn’t.”

  She stared at me. A long ash fell off the end of the burning weed; she didn’t seem to notice, didn’t brush it off her lap.

  “You mean I can still divorce him and get my half?” she said. “Half of everything-the house, the bank accounts?”

  “You’ll need it for a good lawyer.”

  “But not all of it.” A slow, ghastly smile formed around the cigarette stub. “There’ll be some left. Even if I have to go to prison, there’ll be some left when I get out.”

  I lifted myself off the chair. The smoke in the room was making me sick. She was making me sick. Time, past time, to let the law have her.

  “Maybe,” I said, “but you won’t keep it for long. Horses, slots, poker… not for long.”

  “That’s what you think,” she said. “I’m overdue for a real winning streak. I’ve got a big one coming to me, big and long. You wait and see. Top of the world and this time I won’t fall off.”

  She believed it. Sitting there ravaged by her addiction, with another woman’s blood on her hands, and chasing the high and beating the odds was all she cared about, all she believed in. In a way, that made Janice Krochek more unfathomable, more terrible to me than anything else she’d done.

  26

  Mitchell Krochek took the news hard. The main reason, of course, was that no matter what kind of legal strategies his lawyer indulged in, he would lose half of his assets in a divorce settlement. And be forced to make restitution for the debts his wife had run up on Rebecca Weaver’s credit cards, and to shoulder responsibility for any civil claims that might be brought by her estate. As if that wasn’t enough, he’d have to suffer the negative publicity the murder trial would bring. Yet I had the sense that under his selfish, rutting-male exterior, he genuinely cared for Janice Stanley Krochek-even now, after all she’d done and was about to do to him. Love’s a funny thing. Sometimes, no matter how much two people beat the living hell out of it, it never quite dies.

  It was late Friday evening that I talked to him. He called me at home, after the Oakland police finally contacted him. He seemed to need to talk. Kept thanking me for helping him, for “getting to the bottom of things”-saving his ass, he meant. Volunteered the information that he intended to put the house on the market right away because he “couldn’t stand to live there now, after what she did to Becky in the kitchen. I’d have nightmares every goddamn night.” He’d move in with Deanne, he said, until the house was sold and the trial was over and he could start living a normal life again. After that, well, maybe he’d marry Deanne. She loved him and she wasn’t crazy like Janice and his first wife-“first woman I’ve ever been with who wasn’t batshit in one way or another.”

  I liked Deanne Goldman and I wished her well, so I hoped he was right about her mental health. If so, she not only wouldn’t marry him, she’d throw him out and change all the locks on her doors.

  O n Saturday morning, early, I called Tamara at home to fill her in on Friday’s events. She had a few questions; when I’d answered them, she said, “Some Friday. For you and for Jake, too. Our first pro bono and it turned out crazy, blew up in a murder-suicide.”

  “The hell it did. What happened? He didn’t get caught up in it, did he?”

  “Found the bodies, that’s all,” she said, and provided details. “Weird, huh?”

  “Very. Sometimes I think this agency is cursed. We get the damnedest cases.”

  “Always come out okay, though, don’t we?”

  “So far,” I said. “One thing for sure after yesterday: I’ve had it up to here with gamblers and gambling. If there’s even a hint of either one in a future inquiry, we turn the case down flat. In fact, do me a favor and don’t even mention gambling to me anymore.”

  She let me hear one of her saucy little chuckles. “I won’t,” she said. “You can bet the house on it.”

  S unday night, in bed, Kerry said, “I’ve made a decision.”

  “Good for you. About what?”

  “The way I look.”

  “You look fine. Kind of sexy tonight, as a matter of fact. Is that a new nightie?”

  “Don’t try to change the subject.”

  “I didn’t know I was. Since when is a compliment changing the subject?”

  “I’m talking about cosmetic surgery,” she said.

  Uh-oh. “You’re not serious?”

  “Oh yes, I am. Very serious.”

  “My God, not one of those bizarre surgeries you and Tamara were talking about the other night…”

  “No. Only my face.”

  “Nice face. I like it just as it is.”

  “You don’t have to look at it in the mirror every day.”

  “I look at it every day straight on. Same thing.”

  “No. Not from my perspective. Lines, wrinkles, eyebags… on my best days I look my age. On my worst… bleah.”

  “Come on,” I said, “you worry too much about things like that. Doesn’t matter. You still think and act young, you’re still sexy as all get-out-that’s what’s important.”

  “To you. Not necessarily to me.”

  “Vanity,” I said.

  “Call it what you want,” she said with a little snap in her voice. Then, “What’s wrong with a little vanity?”

  “I didn’t say there was anything wrong with it-”

  “Men can be just as vain as women. More. It’s human nature.”

  I sighed. “All right. So what is it you want to change?”

  “Everything.”

  “A whole new face? Like Bogart in Dark Passage.”

  “If I had my druthers,” she said. “But I’ll settle for a complete makeover. Get rid of the lines around my mouth, the eyebags and wrinkles. I’ve seen and talked to a few women who’ve had the procedure. They all look years younger. Just as important, they all feel years younger.”

  “Sometimes,” I said carefully, “that kind of surgery doesn’t work out the way it’s supposed to. I mean, there can be complications. Some face-lifts don’t heal right and the person ends up disfigured-”

  “Oh, bosh. There’s a tiny risk, yes, but there’s a tiny risk in just about everything we do in our lives. Surgeons have all sorts of new methods that make the procedure perfectly safe.”

  “Famous last words.”

  “Will you please stop arguing with me?”

  “I wasn’t arguing, I was only-”

  “I’ve made an appointment with a cosmetic surgeon,” she said. “Dr. Hamadi. He’s in the same building a
s my oncologist downtown.”

  “… Appointment for when?”

  “Next Thursday afternoon.”

  “You mean you’re having it done that soon?”

  “No. It’s just a preliminary examination to make sure I’m healthy enough to go ahead with the procedure.”

  “Healthy enough? So even if this doctor says you are, there could still be complications…”

  “You’re acting like I’m going to apply for a heart transplant. It’s a simple operation, done thousands of times every day with no complications whatsoever.”

  “We’re not talking about thousands of women, we’re talking about you.”

  Her mouth pursed. Stubborn, determined. “I’m doing this for me, not for you or anybody else. After all I’ve been through this past year, I think I’m entitled-whether you agree or not. A face-lift is safe, it’s affordable, and I’m going to have it done and that’s all there is to it.”

  I wilted a little. “How long is the recuperation?”

  “Not long. A few days until the last of the bandages come off. I’ll be housebound for a week or so, but I’ll take some vacation days and then work from home. I’ll be all healed in about six weeks.”

  “What about scars?” I said, thinking of the little tattoos on her chest to mark where the cancer radiation machine hookup had been applied.

  “Tiny ones, hidden inside my hairline. You’ll never even notice them once the incisions have healed.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Stop looking so gloomy,” she said. “When you see the new me, you’ll wonder why you put up such a fuss.” She leaned over to slide gentle fingers over the bandage that covered my scratched cheek, then started chewing on my ear. “Think of the benefits. It’ll be like going to bed with a younger, more attractive babe.”

  “I don’t want an attractive babe, I want you.”

  That ended the ear-chewing. “Thanks a lot,” she said.

  “I didn’t mean-”

  “Good night,” and she rolled over and turned off the bedside light.