Fever(4)
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.”
“Okay. Your business, your life.”
“Now you’re getting it. You going to tell Mitch where I’m living or not?”
“Not without your consent.”
“I figured as much. Suppose he tries to pry it out of you? Offers to pay you extra?”
“We don’t operate that way.”
“So what are you going to tell him?”
“We found you, you seem to be in reasonably good health, you say you’re not in any danger, you don’t want to reconcile, and you’re going to file for divorce any day.”
“And to leave me the hell alone from now on.”
“If that’s what you want.”
“Exactly what I want. So go tell him.”
I laid a business card, the one with both my name and Tamara’s on it, on the stained top of a cabinet. “In case you have second thoughts or want to talk some more.”
“I won’t. Now get out.”
Gladly, I thought. The damn smoke in there was bothering my lungs, making my throat feel scratchy. As soon as Tamara and I were out the door, Krochek came over and put the deadbolt and the chain back on. Locking herself away in her carcinogenic cocoon, to nurse her fever and wait for the phone to ring again.
In the elevator Tamara said, “Well, that was fun.”
“Yeah. Pretty much what I expected.”
“You know what I wanted to do in there? Bitch-slap that woman upside the head.”
“Wouldn’t have done any good. Hitting somebody with her kind of sickness never does.”
“Guess not. I didn’t do such a good job on the woman-to-woman thing, did I.”
“No, but I didn’t do much better.”
“You think she really believes all that stuff she said? About the sweetest high and not wanting to be cured?”
“Convinced herself it’s what she wants. She’s a textbook case.”
“She was lying about nobody threatening her.”
“Lying or pretending. She didn’t seem scared.”
“Riding for a big fall, you ask me. Straight down the toilet.”
“It’s her life,” I said. “She’s the only one who can save it.”
2
You hear a lot these days about drug addiction and alcohol addiction, but not so much about the equally widespread and growing problem of compulsive gambling. I’d come into contact with it peripherally over the years—when you’ve been an investigator as long as I have, you brush up against just about every kind of addiction, felony, misdemeanor, social issue, and human being there is—but I hadn’t confronted it head on until Mitchell Krochek walked into the agency offices eight days ago. What he’d told me, and what Tamara had found out on an Internet search, amounted to a real eye-opener.
Gambling is a national pastime and a national mania. Las Vegas, Reno, the entire state of Nevada. Nearly two hundred and fifty Native American casinos on tribal lands in twenty-two states and more being built every year. Upwards of eighty riverboat and dockside casinos in six states. Horse tracks, dog tracks. Twenty-four-hour card rooms and private poker clubs. The Super Bowl and the World