pockets. One was empty; the other had the agency business card Bill had left for her, and a folded piece of paper torn off a scratch pad. Written in ink on the paper, in a woman’s hand, was: La Farge-s. 1408. Below that, heavily underlined several times, was the numeral 9.
One of her johns, or something to do with the money she owed? Not that it mattered; once she was out of here, the agency was through with her and her messed-up life. Tamara put the paper back where she’d found it, spread the coat over the lower half of Krochek’s body. The woman didn’t move, just kept right on snoring.
She sighed. So much for another try at the woman-to-woman thing. And so much for the good mood she’d been in earlier.
She got a towel and cleaned up the coffee spill, washed out the used mug. In her office, waiting for the phone to ring, she answered a couple of e-mails and tracked down an address Jake needed for the pro bono case and then called him on his cell. Voice mail again. Whole damn world was unavailable this morning, it seemed. She left him a message.
An hour passed. Still no callback from Mitchell Krochek. She went out to check on the woman. Hadn’t moved, from the look of her. Her breathing was still noisy and a little labored.
Well, shit.
Tamara called Bill’s home number. Answering machine. So then she called his cell. If she got his voice mail, too…
She didn’t. He answered on the third ring. She said, “I hate to bother you but I’ve got a problem here,” and explained about her sweetheart morning with the Fever Woman.
“She would have to pick on us,” Bill said. “Unpredictable as hell, that’s the trouble with addicts.”
“Probably shouldn’t’ve taken the case in the first place.”
“Hindsight, the great teacher.”
“So what do I do? Keep on waiting for her husband to call back?”
“No. He might not check his messages.”
“She can’t sleep or hang here all day. I’ve got a client coming in for a consultation at one o’clock.”
“Where’s Jake?”
“Busy. He’s not answering his cell and Alex is down in San Jose. I suppose I could cancel the appointment and close up, take her over to Oakland myself…”
“You’ve had enough hassle already. I’ll do it.”
“You sure? If you’re busy…”
“Busy doing nothing,” he said. “Errands, that’s all. It’ll take me twenty minutes or so to get to South Park. If Krochek calls in the meantime, give him my cell number and I’ll work something out with him.”
Bet he doesn’t call, she thought.
He didn’t.
7
Janice Krochek was still sleeping on the anteroom couch when I got there. She’d been pretty badly used, all right. Looking down at her built an impotent anger in me. Violence against women infuriates me every time I encounter it. Nobody, no matter how much they mess up their own lives, deserves to become somebody’s punching bag.
“She won’t see a doctor,” Tamara said. “Just wants to go home.”
“Maybe her husband can talk her into it.”
“If he cares enough. I’ll tell him when he calls, if he calls.”
“She told you she walked here?”
“That’s what she said. Benn woman threw her out, apparently, wouldn’t even let her use the phone.”
“That doesn’t sound right.”
“Didn’t to me, either. Why didn’t she ask the desk clerk or one of the other residents?”
“Maybe it wasn’t the Hillman she walked from.”
“Fifteen blocks, she said.”
“It’s a wonder she made it that far in her condition. And without anybody stopping to help her.”
“In this city?” Tamara said. “Army of Dawn of the Dead zombies could march up Market Street and nobody’d pay much attention.”
“Yeah. Come on, let’s wake her up. I’m parked in a loading zone across the Square.”
Together we hoisted Janice Krochek into a sitting position. Tamara shook her a little until one bleary eye popped open and focused on me. “You,” she said.
“Me,” I agreed. “How do you feel?”
“Groggy. Shitty.”
“I can take you to a hospital, get you some medical attention…”
“No. Home.” The other eye was open now; her gaze roamed from side to side. “Where’s Mitch?”
“We couldn’t get hold of him,” I said. “He’s on a job site today.”
“Yeah, sure. Out screwing his latest bimbo.”
“Come on, Mrs. Krochek, on your feet. I’ll take you home.”
We got her upright. Shaky, but she could stand and move all right with my hand on her arm; I didn’t need Tamara’s help to get her downstairs. A couple of people on the sidewalk and in the park strip gave us passing glances and a wide berth.
One of South Park’s many attractions is that a Bay Bridge approach is only a short distance away. We were on the bridge in five or six minutes. Janice Krochek sat slumped in the seat, her eyes closed, massaging her chafed wrists, unresponsive to the questions I put to her. Whoever had beat her up, for whatever reason, she wasn’t about to confide to me. Or, I’d have been willing to bet, to her husband.
She was asleep again by the time we came off the bridge. I woke her up with a couple of sharp words to get directions; I had the Krocheks’ home address but the street name wasn’t familiar and I wasn’t going to stop to pore over a map. “Highway 24,” she said, “then straight up Claremont, ask me again when you pass the Claremont Hotel.”
My cell phone went off at about the time we reached the Claremont. Had to be Tamara. I pulled over to answer it; unlike most people nowadays, I don’t consider talking on the phone while driving to be safe, and it’s even less so on narrow, hilly streets.
Tamara said, “Mr. Krochek just called. I gave him the news. He’ll meet you at his house-on his way there right now.”
“Reaction?”
“Relieved and pissed off.”
I relayed the message to Janice Krochek, omitting the relieved and pissed off part.
“Be still, my heart,” she said.
We kept climbing. Turn right on this street, left on that one, half a mile and then right again on such-and- such. By then we were well up into the hills. Panoramic views of the bay, San Francisco, three bridges, Alcatraz Island. Expensive living for the financially well-endowed.
What was surprising about the area was how quickly it had been regenerated, how many new homes had sprung from the ashes of the firestorm that had engulfed these hills in October of 1991. Hardly any signs remained of the devastation along the narrow, winding roads. High winds, brush-clogged canyons, and tinder-dry trees had spawned that fire, and before it was done raging it had reached temperatures as high as two thousand degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to boil asphalt, burned sixteen hundred acres, destroyed nearly three thousand single-family homes and apartment buildings, left twenty-five people dead, and caused something like a billion and a half dollars in damage.
The Krocheks were too young to have lived up here at that time; they were among the multitude of newcomers who had figured lightning would never strike twice and so bought themselves a chunk of the rebuilt, relandscaped, million-dollar California Dream. They could have it. I preferred the West Bay; despite all its civic and other problems and the lurking threat of the Big One, the predicted earthquake disaster that would make the
