It took me a few seconds to digest that, and then all I could think of to say was, “Well.”
“Not against it, are you?”
Five years ago, given her immaturity, I would’ve been. Two years ago I’d have tried to argue her out of it. Now…
“No, I’m not against it. It’s probably a good idea. And your dad’ll be a good teacher.”
“I thought so, too. Not that you or Jake wouldn’t have been as good…”
“I’m a little rusty and I don’t think Jake practices as often as he should, either. No, you made the right choice.”
“Now all I have to do is convince Pop of it.”
I went in to check my voice mail messages. Among them was a brief one from Mitchell Krochek. He had no news; he wanted to know if I had any. The callback number he left was his cellular.
“Janice isn’t in any of the East Bay or San Francisco hospitals,” he said when I got him on the line. “I called them all. Her friends, too… the women who used to be her friends. None of them has heard from her in over a year. I was hoping maybe you…” He let the rest of it trail off.
“Not yet. You’ll hear from me if I have anything to report.”
“I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” he said. “I didn’t sleep last night. If I don’t hear something by five o’clock, I’ll go home and see what’s what but I’m not staying there alone again tonight. I’ll be at Deanne’s.”
Deanne Goldman, the girlfriend. “What’s her number and address?”
He gave them to me. She lived in Oakland, near Lake Merritt.
After we rang off I spent a little time going over the file on Janice Krochek. Tamara had put it together when we were first hired to track her down and I thought there might be something in it that would give me a lead.
Born in Bakersfield, where her sister Ellen still lived. Parents divorced, father deceased five years ago, mother remarried and living in Florida. Moved to the Bay Area in 1996 to attend UC Berkeley. Majored in business administration, one of those catch-all degree pursuits that young people take when they have no set goals or special interests or skills. Left school after two and a half years-deteriorating grades, poor study habits. Her computer abilities were good enough to buy her a job as a “systems trainee”-glorified name for clerk-typist-at Five States Engineering, where she’d met Mitchell Krochek; they were married less than a year later. Pregnant the second year they were together, terminated by abortion. The pregnancy was an accident, according to Krochek; neither of them wanted children. By his lights, the marriage had been “pretty stable” until her gambling mania began to spiral out of control.
The Krocheks had a circle of friends, but they were what he called “couples friends”-other married people they saw in pairs and groups. Janice Krochek had no close women friends. She’d been something of a loner her entire life, kept things about herself private even after the marriage; he confessed that he’d thought he knew her well but now was sure he never really had. Her big passion as a teenager had been video games-no surprise, since a compulsive gambling addiction often starts with that sort of dissociative activity. It also explained her preference for Internet betting.
No police record or brushes with the law. No extramarital affairs; Krochek was positive of that, though his certainty might have been more ego than actual knowledge. No jobs after the marriage, nor any volunteer work or other outside activities. No hobbies or interests other than computers and gambling. Your typical bored wife of a well-to-do professional husband who had too few friends and interests, too much time on her hands, and carte blanche with his income.
Nothing, no potential lead, in any of that.
Tamara was on the QCL hunt; with any luck she’d turn up something in the next hour or so. Meanwhile, I had some other work to finish up. Routine business that didn’t completely engage my attention. The door between my office and the outer office was open; I heard Jake Runyon come in and exchange a greeting with Alex Chavez, who was pecking out a report on his laptop at one of the desks. I also heard what Runyon said next.
“Question, Alex. You know a man named Kinsella, Nick Kinsella?”
“Heard the name somewhere. Give me a second…”
I got up and went out there. “What about Nick Kinsella, Jake?”
“Know him?”
“Oh, yeah, I know him. Loan shark. One of the slickest in the city.”
“Sure,” Chavez said, “now I remember. Rough trade.”
“Very. Operates out of a place called the Blacklight Tavern, on San Bruno Avenue west of Candlestick. Charges a heavy weekly vig. Miss a payment or two, get a visit from his enforcers.”
Runyon said, “Sounds like you’d have to be pretty desperate for money to go to him.”
“Desperate, foolish, and naive.”
“That’s Brian Youngblood in a nutshell.”
“The pro bono case?”
He nodded. “I had a call last night. If it’s legit, Youngblood borrowed ten thousand dollars from Kinsella to pay off his debts.”
Briefly he laid out the situation with Brian Youngblood. I listened, but a part of my mind had slipped back to the Krochek case. Nick Kinsella. Loan shark. If QCL, Inc. and Carl Lassiter were in the same business, Kinsella might well know about it. And if he didn’t, he’d sure as hell want to. The one thing sharks hate more than anything except dead-beat customers is competition for their blood money.
Chavez said when Runyon was finished, “Funny Youngblood would call you anonymously like that. Why not just identify himself?”
“Yeah. Unless it’s got something to do with the girlfriend, Brandy. He’s afraid of her.”
“He’s got worse people to be afraid of,” I said, “if he’s into Kinsella for ten grand and missing payments. A cracked rib and a few bruises is just warm-up stuff for that bastard’s enforcers.”
“How approachable is Kinsella?” Runyon asked. “Think I could get him to talk to me about Youngblood?”
“No, but maybe I can.” And I told him why. Some time back I had tracked down a bail jumper for a bondsman I did business with now and then, Abe Melikian. The jumper was somebody Kinsella had a grudge against. He liked me for helping put the man in San Quentin, enough to favor me with some information on a couple of other cases. It had been a while since our paths last crossed, but he might be willing to talk to me again, give me some straight answers. Particularly if it turned out there was something in it for him.
I went back into my office and called Kinsella’s private number at the Blacklight. Somebody who didn’t give his name answered, said that Mr. Kinsella wouldn’t be in until later. I gave him my name and asked for a callback, ASAP. A small favor, I said, that might turn out to be mutual. I don’t like dealing with human parasites like Kinsella; if it were up to me, the fat son of a bitch would be occupying a prison cell with the bail jumper. But sometimes you have to wallow in the gutters they live and work in to get what you need for the greater good. Detective work is a little like modern politics in that respect.
T amara came into my office a short time later, while I was wrapping up a report on a routine skip-trace. Runyon and Chavez had both gone and I still hadn’t heard back from Kinsella.
“QCL, Incorporated,” she said. “Las Vegas, sure enough. QCL stands for Quick Cash Loans.”
“Surface-swimming sharks.”
“Yeah, and their meat is the gambling industry. From all I can find, they specialize in loans to gamblers.”
“The steady-loser type. Problem gamblers who can’t get a loan anywhere else.”
“Right. At humongous interest rates.”
“Who runs it?”
“Listed CEO is a dude named Adam O’dell. Nothing on him yet.”
“Carl Lassiter?”
“On the Board of Directors, along with five others-none of ’em with Vegas addresses. San Francisco, L.A., San Diego, Phoenix, Seattle, Denver.”
“So that’s the way they work it,” I said. “Not too hard to figure the prostitution angle now. Loan cash to compulsives like Janice Krochek, and when they can’t pay off on their own, force them into prostitution to do it.”
“And if they’re men-their wives and girlfriends.”
