“I never been there, I wouldn’t know.”
“Okay. Now let’s talk about Janice Stanley.”
“Who?”
“Ginger Benn’s roommate. The woman I came here to see last week.”
“What about her?”
“Last time you saw her was when?”
“I don’t remember. Couple of days ago. Why?”
“Saturday?”
“Might’ve been.”
“Sunday?”
“I don’t work Sundays.”
“Monday morning?”
“No.”
“Was Ginger Benn here Monday morning?”
“They come in, they go out. Half the time I don’t even see ’em.”
“Ginger say anything to you about her roommate moving out?”
“No. She don’t talk to me much.”
“So as far as you know, the two of them are still sharing her room.”
“Far as I know. Management doesn’t care, as long as the tenants pay their rent on time.”
“Management doesn’t care,” Mrs. Grabowski said, “and you don’t care, either. That’s for sure.”
Partain said, “What’s the idea of all the questions anyhow?”
“You know a man named Carl Lassiter?”
“Who?” His blank look seemed genuine.
“Big, heavyset, well-dressed, tough-looking. He was here to see Janice Stanley right before I came last week.”
“I don’t remember him.”
“You remembered me.”
“You were with a black chick and that other guy,” Partain said. “That who you mean, the guy you were with?”
“No. Carl Lassiter.”
“I see a lot of people and my memory’s not so good.” He ran the cards together into a stack and began to shuffle them. “You satisfied now?”
The hell with him. We’d rankled each other long enough. I put my back to him and headed out past the knitting woman.
“Told you he was an asshole, didn’t I?” she said.
My cell phone rang as I was driving to North Beach. I pulled over into a loading zone before I answered. Tamara. I’d called her on the way back from the East Bay, to fill her in on the situation with the Krocheks and to ask her to do some background checking on Krochek, Deanne Goldman, and Ginger Benn, see what else she could find out about Carl Lassiter.
“First thing,” she said. “Remember I told you about the piece of paper I found in Mrs. Krochek’s coat? La Farge, s. 1408.”
“I remember.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure it stands for Hotel La Farge, suite 1408. Number 9 underneath was probably a time—nine p.m., Saturday or Sunday. Could be the guy who beat her up.”
“Who occupied that suite on the weekend?”
“Man named Jorge Quilmes. Businessman from Argentina. Big bucks—suites at the La Farge don’t go for chump change.”
“Find out anything about him?”
“Not much yet. Checking.”
“He wouldn’t still be registered, would he?”
“As of a few minutes ago. They wouldn’t tell me for how long.”
“I’ll check it out. Anything else?”
“One new thing on Lassiter,” she said. “His Caddy is registered to him, but he doesn’t own it.”
“No? Who does?”
“QCL, Inc.”
“Address?”
“That’s the interesting part. I can’t find an address or phone number, or anything else about them.”
“Out of state?”
“Could be. So far it’s just a name.”
“Okay. Anything on Krochek?”
“Not much. He was married once before.”
“Is that right? When?”
“Ninety-four. Mary Ellen Layne. Lasted ten months.”
“He file for the divorce?”
“Her. Not the usual irreconcilable differences, either.”
“Wouldn’t be because of abuse, would it?”
“Uh-uh. Infidelity.”
“Krochek contest the settlement terms?”
“Nope. Man didn’t have many assets back then. You want me to BG check Mary Ellen Layne?”
“If you have time. What about his girlfriend?”
“Deanne Goldman? Haven’t gotten to her yet.”
“How about Ginger Benn?”
“Two arrests, one conviction for prostitution. One arrest for possession of a controlled substance—cocaine. No connection with Janice Krochek that I can find so far. How they hooked up, I mean.”
I told her where I was headed next. She said, “North Beach strip club, huh? Watch out for those topless dancers.”
“I won’t even notice.”
Tamara laughed. “Yeah, sure. You’re not gay and you’re not dead. You’ll notice, all right.”