Surprised her a little, and drove Pop up out of his chair, clouds all over his big face. “You what?”
“You heard me, Dennis. Her work can be as dangerous as yours-you know as well as I do how close we came to losing her twice this year. She has as much right as you to own a gun, learn how to protect herself.”
“She’s too young, too inexperienced…”
“Too flakey, he means,” Tamara said.
“I never said that.”
“Didn’t have to.”
“All right, that’s enough,” Ma said. She went over to him, got up in his face. Little woman, Ma, but she could be tough as hell when she needed to be. “Tamara’s as stubborn as you are when her mind’s made up. If this is what she wants, then she’s going to have it no matter what you say. You want some stranger to teach her about guns instead of her own father? You should be proud she came to you, not getting into an argument you can’t win.”
He couldn’t win an argument with Ma, either. She knew how to handle him, the right buttons to push. Took a little time but the clouds started to break up. He said reluctantly, “Maybe you’re right.”
“Damn straight,” she said. “Tamara, apologize to your father for yelling at him.”
She did it; she wasn’t pissed anymore, either.
“Your turn, Dennis.”
He couldn’t do it. Not in so many words. That was Pop for you-hard, inflexible, strictly old-school macho. But it was all right because what he said was, “I’m free Saturday afternoon. I suppose we could go out to the police range then.”
Tamara said, “How about one o’clock?”
“One o’clock. All right.”
Damn if she didn’t feel a moment of tenderness toward both her parents. She grinned across at them.
“Well, that was easy,” she said.
Pop’s mouth twitched, twitched some more, and he burst out laughing.
Well, what do you know, she thought, grinning. She’d not only made him laugh, which was rare enough in their relationship, but for once she’d also had the last word.
14
My mood on Thursday morning was considerably better than it had been on Wednesday, but Tamara’s was downright ebullient. All smiley-faced and energetic. I thought maybe she’d finally met somebody new, after the months of monastic living, but no, that wasn’t it.
“Made up my mind to get firearms certified,” she said. “Going out to the pistol range with Pop on Saturday for the first lesson.”
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.