Bill Pronzini: Fever

There was a silence. Then, “That you again, Mr. Lassiter?”

“No. Open up, please.”

More silence. Then a chain rattled and a deadbolt clicked and the door edged open about three inches. The eye that peered out was brown and faintly bloodshot. It roamed narrowly over me, over Tamara. “Who are you? I don’t know you.”

“We’re here on behalf of your husband.”

“Oh, shit.” More annoyed than anything else. “Police?”

“Private investigators.”

“You’re kidding.”

We flashed our licenses.

“Mitch must be desperate,” she said. “Is he out there with you?”

“No. Mind if we talk inside?”

She said, “Of course I mind,” but the protest had no teeth in it; the chain rattled again, and I heard it drop down against the inside panel. When I pushed on the door, it opened inward and she was walking away across the room in quick, jerky strides. Tamara and I went in and I shut the door.

Two-room apartment, bedroom and sitting room. Not large, not tidy, the furniture old and scratched up, the carpet threadbare. The dominant smell in there was tobacco smoke, thick and acrid; my chest tightened almost at once. Janice Krochek sat down on an open, unmade sofa bed and reached for a package of Newports on an end table.

I said, “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t smoke.”

She said, “I live here, you don’t,” and put one of the cancer sticks in her mouth and fired it with a cheap lighter. “How’d you find me?”

“It wasn’t too hard,” Tamara said.

“You don’t look like detectives. Either of you.”

“You don’t look like what you are, either.”

I gave Tamara a warning look. She’s young and she can be less than tactful; she needs to work on her people skills. We’d decided that she should do most of the talking, woman to woman, but if necessary I’d have to take over. There was nothing to be gained in allowing the situation to turn adversarial.

Janice Krochek laughed-an empty, sardonic sound. She was not at ease sitting there. High-strung type, but it was more than that-a sense of nervous expectancy, not for what we had to say to her but for something else. As late as it was, she might have just gotten out of bed. She wore a loose man’s shirt over a pair of jeans, her feet were bare, and her short brown hair was uncombed. She was thirty-three, but in the dim light, and without makeup, she looked older; you could see the stress lines around her mouth and eyes. Addiction will do that to you, no matter what type of addiction it happens to be.

She said, “Why did Mitch hire you? He couldn’t possibly want me back after all this time.”

Tamara said, “He could and he does.”

“Well, then, he’s a damn fool.”

“Lots of damn fools running around these days.”

That didn’t bother her, either. “I suppose he told you all about me.”

“He told us enough.”

“All about my ‘sickness.’ That’s what he calls it.”

“What do you call it?”

“The sweetest high there is,” she said. It was not a natural or spontaneous response, but the kind of phrase a person hears somewhere and likes enough to appropriate and repeat as their own. “He wants it cured. I don’t.”

“Even though you keep losing, getting in deeper and deeper.”

“I don’t care about that. The money isn’t important, winning or losing. Either of you ever gamble for high stakes? Poker, craps, whatever?”

“No.”

“Then you can’t understand any more than Mitch does. The action, the excitement… there’s nothing else like it. I’d rather gamble than fuck.”

That last was intended to shock, but neither of us reacted. Tamara said, “One supports the other now, right?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“We know what you’ve been doing for money since you left home.”

I nudged Tamara this time, from where Janice Krochek couldn’t see me doing it. Krochek started to say something-and there was a sudden melodic jangling from across the room, the kind of programmed tune fragment that substitutes for ringing in modern cell phones. She came off the sofa and went after it blur-fast, like a cat uncoiling to chase a mouse. The brown eyes were avid-the first real animation she’d shown. Before the phone rang again she had it out of her handbag and flipped open. She said, “Yes?” and then listened with her body turned away from us.

The conversation didn’t last long. I heard her say, “That’s too bad, I was hoping… okay, if that’s the way it has to be. Later, then? Right.” She dropped the phone back into the bag, and when she turned, the avidity and animation were gone. She recrossed the room in the same jerky strides as when she’d let us in.

She didn’t sit down again. Bent for another Newport, blew a thick stream of smoke, and said through it, “Well? What happens now?”

“That’s up to you, Mrs. Krochek,” Tamara said.

“Stanley, Ms. Janice Stanley. I like that name better.”

“You’re still married to the man.”

“You can’t force me to go back to him.”

“That’s right, we can’t.”

“Already tell him where to find me?”

“No. You want us to?”

“Christ, no. It’s all over between us. I made that clear to him before I left.”

“Man’s willing to pay all your outstanding debts if you give the marriage one more try.”

“Sure he is, so I won’t divorce him. That’s the real reason he hired you. Lot cheaper for him to pay off my debts than give me half of everything he’s got.”

“Everything he’s got left,” Tamara said pointedly.

“It was mine as much as his, then and now. You think he’s some kind of saint?” Bitter and angry now. “Well, he’s not. Far from it. He’s looking out for number one, same as I am.”

“You don’t believe he wants what’s best for you?”

“I don’t care if he does or doesn’t. I like to gamble. And I like my freedom.”

“How about selling your body? You like that, too?”

If there was any shame left in the woman, she had it well hidden behind the wall of her compulsion. She said flatly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Real hard way to support yourself and that habit of yours.”

“What I do for money until the divorce is my business.”

“Not when it’s against the law.”

“So what’re you saying? You’re going to report me to the police? You can’t prove I’ve been hooking and neither can they.” “Not unless they catch you at it.”

Time for me to step in, try a different tack. I said, “Have you seen a lawyer, Mrs. Krochek?”

“Lawyer? About the divorce? No, not yet.”

“Why not, if you’re so dead set on it?”

“That’s my business.”

“It doesn’t cost that much to hire one.”

“Never mind about that. If Mitch doesn’t file, I will-soon. You tell him that.”

“How much do you owe Lassiter?”

She didn’t like that question; it made her even more edgy. She took a quick drag on her cigarette before she said, “Who?”

“The man who came to see you a little while ago.”

“How do you know about that? Spying on me?”

“It’s a reasonable question.”

“I don’t owe him anything.”

“Whoever he works for then. Loan shark?”

“That’s none of your damn business.”

“The same shark you borrowed from before? The one who threatened you?”

A muscle jumped in her cheek. “Mitch’s fantasy. He listened in on a phone call and misinterpreted what he heard, that’s all.”

“That’s not what he says.”

“Well, I’m telling you the way it was.”

“So no threats then and none now. No pressure.”

“That’s right. No heat at all.”