Fever: A Nameless Detective Novel (Nameless Detective Novels) (17 page)

“I know where it is.”

I went and knocked on the door and walked in. Mostly barren office that reeked of cigar smoke and had two men in it, Kinsella and one of his enforcers, a lopsided, balding guy with the build of a wrestler whose name I didn’t know. Kinsella sat bulging behind a cherrywood desk. He’d grown a third chin since I’d last seen him, added another junk-food inch or two to his waistline.

“Long time, Nick.”

“Long time,” he agreed. “How’s it hangin’?”

“Short, like always.”

He thought that was funny. The enforcer didn’t crack a smile.

Kinsella said, “So what brings you around this time? Don’t tell me you got money troubles?”

“Not your kind.”

“So?”

“Just some information. Maybe I can give you some in return.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

“About one of your competitors.”

One bushy eyebrow lifted. “Who’d that be?”

“QCL, Incorporated.”

“Never heard of ’em.”

“Carl Lassiter.”

“Never heard of him.”

Good. Trade material. It’s always easier to deal with the slimeball element when you know something they don’t. I said, “All right if I sit down?”

He waved a fat hand at the only other chair. “Sure, sure, sit.” And I when I was on the chair, “So what about this guy Lassiter?”

“He works for QCL. Quick Cash Loans. It’s a Vegas outfit.”

“Vegas?”

“With branch reps in half a dozen other cities, including S.F. High-interest loans to gamblers and prostitution on the side.”

“The hell you say.”

“So this is all news to you.”

“Yeah, news. Tell me more about this outfit.”

I told him all I knew. He soaked it up; you could almost see the wheels turning in his head.

“Sounds like a smart operation,” he said. “Low pressure, no overhead. Big profits, huh?”

“Probably.”

“But they only work the gambling trade. That don’t cut much into
my
profits, not the way they work it. No real competition.”

“But you’re glad to know about them.”

“Oh, yeah. Always glad to know about the competition.”

“And maybe if you put out the word, you could find out a little more.”

“Maybe. That what you’re after, more info on this QCL?”

“One of the reasons I’m here, yeah.”

“What’s the other one?”

“Different case. One of your customers.”

“Yeah? Who?”

“Brian Youngblood.”

“Names,” Kinsella said. “I got a lot of customers, I’m no good with names.”

“Black guy in his twenties, works in computers, lives on Duncan Street. Five-figure borrow.”

His face showed me nothing. He leaned back in his chair, clasped his sausage fingers behind his neck. “Maybe I know him, maybe I don’t. How come you’re so interested?”

“He’s in over his head. We’re trying to find out how deep.”

“Working for him?”

“No.”

“Who, then?”

“Confidential, Nick.”

“Better not be if it’s got something to do with me.”

I hesitated. But you couldn’t pry information out of Kinsella by holding out on him. “All right,” I said. “His mother.”

Kinsella’s lips twitched. Don’t laugh, you bastard, I thought. He didn’t; he sat forward again. “I don’t like to talk about my customers. Bad for business.”

“Only if word gets out. I’m a businessman, too, Nick. You know I know how to keep my mouth shut.”

“Just a couple of business types schmoozing, huh?”

“That’s right.”

“No hassles?”

“Not from me. Just trying to help a client, that’s all.”

He thought about it, shrugged, and said, “Okay. So what you want to know?”

“Amount of the initial borrow, if he came back for more, how much he’s into you for now. And whether something can be worked out in the way of accident insurance.”

“Kid already have an accident, did he?”

“Just last week. Bruises and a broken rib. Laid him up for a couple of days.”

“That’s too bad,” Kinsella said. “But you got to expect something like that when you don’t pay attention to your debts.”

The fat son of a bitch was enjoying himself, playing this little game. Maybe someday I’d have a chance to play a different kind of game with him; it was a good thought and I held onto it. “The original nut,” I said. “How much?”

“I’d have to check my records.”

“Would you do that?”

He grinned at me. There was a computer on his desk: Nick Kinsella, the ultra-modern bloodsucker. He fired it up, looked over at me—I turned my head the other way—and then did some tapping on the keyboard. Pretty soon he said, “Five figures, right. Ten K.”

“That’s a big nut. What’d he use for collateral?”

“Personal property and income records. I had one of my people take a look, I was satisfied.”

“What does he owe you now, with the vig and the missed payments? Thirteen, fourteen K?”

“Five.”

“… Wait a minute—five thousand? How’d he get it down that far?”

Kinsella’s smug grin flashed again. “Your boy walked in here couple of days ago, laid eighty-five hundred on me. Cash. He’s a good boy, your boy. Teach him a lesson, he learns real quick. He don’t need any accident insurance, not for a while anyhow.”

“Where’d he get the eighty-five hundred?”

“Who knows? He don’t say, I don’t ask.”

Not from another shark, I thought, not given the size of the original nut from Nick and the fact that Kinsella had had to send out an enforcer to collect overdue payments.
Loan sharks are like their saltwater relatives: when one spills some bad blood, the rest smell it and keep their distance.

“What about the five-thousand balance?” I asked.

“What about it?”

“If his source is dry, he’ll start missing payments again. Then he will need that insurance.”

“Not if he shows up next week with the full five K plus the week’s interest.”

“He told you he was going to do that?”

“Guaranteed it.” Kinsella laughed. “Swore it, in fact. You want to know what he swore it on?”

“No.”

He told me anyway. “His mother. Your boy swore it on his love for his sweet old mama.”

T
he Rickrack Lounge was on the corner of Columbus and Vallejo, only a few blocks from Benjy’s Seven, but that was about all they had in common. Neighborhood watering hole, the Rickrack, reminiscent in its old-fashioned ambiance, if not in its clientele, of the Washington Square Bar and Grill a couple blocks in the other direction. No loud music, no topless dancers, no sad-eyed voyeurs, no shill or bouncer. No local celebrities like Washington Square attracted, just a few quiet afternoon drinkers, two of whom were playing chess on a small magnetic board. The place had once been an Italian tavern, probably owned and frequented by the ever-diminishing Italian population of North Beach; one of the walls still sported a faded Venice mural and the handful of booths had upswept gondola-style backs.

Carol Brixon was on duty, working the plank alone—a heavyset redhead with a pleasantly homely face and a no-nonsense manner. She didn’t have much to say to me,
fending off my questions about Ginger Benn and QCL and Carl Lassiter, until I told her Jason Benn was worried that his wife had started hooking again. That made her angry and she opened up a little.

“That bastard,” she said. “If it wasn’t for him and his gambling, she wouldn’t’ve been screwing for money in the first place.”

“To pay off his debts to QCL.”

“Fucking bloodsuckers. They forced her into it. Jason was in so deep he’d never’ve got out otherwise.”

“She could have just walked away from him.”

“You think I didn’t tell her that? Hell, I begged her. But she’s loyal and she loves him. She’d rather sleep with strangers than divorce a prick.”

“He seems to’ve gotten his act together. Working steady now, not betting anymore.”

“Yeah, maybe. For Ginger’s sake, I hope so. We been friends a long time, her and me. I couldn’t stand to see her go back to peddling her ass.”

“So she’s not hooking again.”

“Not that I know about.”

“Do you know if she’s seen Lassiter recently?”

“Better not have. Slick as a snake, that one, and just as cold.”

“Sounds like you know him.”

“No, and I don’t want to. Only met him once, at Benjy’s. I went there to meet Ginger and he was slithering around. Once was enough.”

“Violent, would you say?”

“If you backed him into a corner.”

“But not otherwise? No physical stuff to keep women like Ginger in line?”

“Not him. Just his mouth, that’s all he uses—all he needs.”

“And it’s just him running the show here, no people working for him?”

“Just him.”

“Any violent types among the customers?”

She gave me one of those looks old-time San Franciscans reserve for visitors from red-state backwaters. “We work in the bar trade, mister. There’s
always
some macho asshole around flexing his muscles.”

“I meant among the johns Lassiter pimps for. Any of them ever get rough with Ginger?”

“Why don’t you ask her?”

“She won’t talk to me about QCL or Lassiter.”

“Yeah, well, I shouldn’t be talking to you, either. You show me a license, you act like one of the good guys, but how do I know?”

“You don’t. Look at this face, take it on faith.”

A smile tickled one corner of her mouth. She leaned over, gave the bartop in front of me a fast polish.

“
Did
Ginger have trouble with any of her johns?”

“What kind of trouble? Smack her around, you mean?”

“Anything that involves violence.”

“No. I don’t think so. She wouldn’t stand for crap like that.”

“She’d have told you if she had?”

“She’d’ve told me. Yeah. No secrets between us.”

“One more question. The woman I’m looking for, Janice Stanley. Are you sure you’ve never met her?”

“Positive,” Carol Brixon said. “Ginger didn’t tell me she had a roommate. Subject never came up.”

Another dead end. I seemed to be learning plenty about how QCL worked its scams, but not getting any closer to finding out who beat up Janice Stanley Krochek or what had happened to her.

C
arl Lassiter was already there when I walked into the agency at twenty till five. Sitting on the anteroom couch, one leg crossed, fingers interlaced on his knee—picture of a man at ease. When he saw me he unfolded, slowly, to his feet. There was a lot of him to unfold. About six-two and a solid two hundred and ten pounds, most of it encased in a silky brown suit that must have cost a couple of grand. Thick gold ring with a diamond setting on one hand, a gold stickpin in his Sulka tie. Freshly barbered look, wavy sand-colored hair styled to a fault. Suave little smile on a thinnish mouth. But none of that disguised what he was underneath. Carol Brixon had described him perfectly: slick as a snake and just as cold.

Tamara’s office door was open; she came out to stand framed in it. The set of her jaw and the downturn of her mouth told me what she thought of him.

He said my name in the form of a question. I admitted it. He said, “Carl Lassiter,” and put out his hand. I ignored it, watching his eyes. Chips of blue ice. But the suave little smile stayed put.

“Nice offices you have here,” he said.

Tamara said, “They were until about ten minutes ago.”

Lassiter ignored her as pointedly as I’d ignored his hand. “Is there somewhere we can talk privately?” he said to me.

“My office.”

I took him in there. The connecting door was shut; Tamara’s outer door slammed as I closed mine.

“Feisty little gal you’ve got there,” Lassiter said. “You should teach her to be more polite.”

“She’s polite enough when the situation warrants it,” I said. “And she happens to be my partner. You saw the names on the door.”

“Pretty young for your kind of work, isn’t she?”

“Old enough.”

“So are you,” Lassiter said. “Is it all right if I sit down?”

“Help yourself.”

Both of us sat. When he saw that I wasn’t going to bite on the “So are you” line, he followed it up himself. “Old enough to know better than to ask questions about things that don’t concern you.”

“Anything that concerns a case I’m working on concerns me.”

“Just what case are you working on?”

“As Ms. Corbin told you, that’s confidential information.”

He said, parroting me, “Anything that concerns my company concerns me.”

“This particular investigation doesn’t concern you or your company. At least not directly, so far as I can tell right now.”

“So you’re not investigating me?”

“Not you, and not QCL, Incorporated.”

“Then why the heat?”

“What heat?”

“Asking questions about us, bothering people associated with us.”

“That’s not heat. Stepping on your toes a little, maybe.”

“Whatever you want to call it. Why?”

“We’re an investigative agency, Mr. Lassiter. We ask a lot of questions of a lot of people. We step on a lot of toes, too, unintentionally most of the time.”

“But not all the time.”

“No. Not all the time.”

He studied his fingernails, polished one set on the leg of his slacks, studied them again. Very nonchalant, very much in control. But he was steaming underneath. In this business you learn to read people’s body language and emotional barometer, some more easily than others. He was one of the easy ones.

“What’s your interest in Jorge Quilmes?” Casual, off-hand, as if he were asking about the weather.

“No interest, specifically.”

“Ginger Benn.”

“Same answer.”

“Janice Stanley.”

Now we were getting down to it. I said, “She was Ginger Benn’s roommate this past month. At your request, I understand.”

“Who told you that? Ginger?”

“No.”

“Who, then?”

“Was it supposed to be a secret?”

“Of course not. I’m curious, that’s all.”

“Sorry,” I said. “Confidential.”

“All right.” He bit that off a little short. But he was still smiling when he said, “Suppose we dispense with the bullshit.”