“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.”
“I’m always in favor of that.”
“Janice Stanley turned up missing and you’re looking for her. You think I had something to do with her disappearance?”
“Did you?”
“Of course not.”
“But she was working for you at the time.”
“Working for me?”
“For QCL then. Hooking for QCL.”
“That’s a ridiculous statement,” Lassiter said. “We’re in the business of lending money, nothing more.”
