Fever(2)

“People and their screwed-up lives.”

“That’s the main reason we’re in business, kiddo.”

“Don’t I know it.”

Runyon had been sitting on one of the chairs opposite the desk. Not doing anything else, just sitting there with his legs together and his hands flat on his knees. Patience was one of his long suits. That, and the ability to shut himself down when he was waiting, like a piece of finely tuned machinery with an idle switch. Part of the reason was his training as a cop: he’d been on the Seattle PD for years before a leg injury pensioned him off and led him into private investigative work. The other part of the reason was the loss of his wife to ovarian cancer a couple of years ago, after twenty years of marriage. He was still grieving—from all indications, he might never stop.

He got slowly to his feet when he saw us, stood flat-footed with no expression on his big, slablike face. Habitual, that lack of expression. He seldom displayed emotion of any kind; the one I’d never seen was joy.

The three of us formed a circle. The desk clerk, a youngish guy with thinning, rust-colored hair, was watching us, and I wondered briefly what he was thinking. One sixty-plus craggy Italian male, one forty-something stoic WASP male, one twenty-six-year-old black woman—three generations, three individuals completely different from one another.

“Still in her room, Jake?” I asked.

“Unless she went down the fire escape. She had a visitor, just after I called.”

“A john?”

“Not unless he’s a rabbit. He was out in less than ten minutes.”

“How do you know he saw her?”

“Heard him ask the clerk for Ginger Benn’s room. She’s out—it was Krochek he wanted. Thirties, heavyset, expensive clothes.”

“Pimp?”

“I don’t think so,” Runyon said. “I followed him outside when he left. He had a car waiting.”

“You get the license plate?”

“I got it. Car’s a white Caddy, looked brand new.”

Tamara said, “I’ll check it out when we get back,” and he gave her the page from his notebook with the number written on it.

I asked, “Krochek using her own name?”

“Maiden name. Janice Stanley.”

“Apartment number?”

“Three-oh-nine. Third floor.”

“Okay. We’ll take it from here, Jake.”

He nodded and moved off to the front door. On the way to the elevators, I called over to the desk man, “We’re going up to see the woman in three-oh-nine. Don’t bother to announce us.”

That bought me a faint sneer and a mock salute. “Yes sir, officer, whatever you say.”

I didn’t tell him we weren’t cops; let him think what he wanted. We got into one of a pair of elevators and it clanked and jolted us up to three. The car smelled of disinfectant, same as the lobby; so did the upstairs hallway. 309 was off an ell toward the rear. I rattled my knuckles on the panel.

Pretty soon a woman’s voice said warily, “Who is it?”

“Mrs. Krochek, Janice Krocheck?”

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.