She said, as if the thought had just come to her, “Does Mitch know?”
“Not yet.”
“He’ll be ecstatic when he finds out. No more worries for him.”
“About you? Don’t be so sure.”
“He doesn’t care about me,” she said. “He never did. All he cares about is money and pussy.” With sudden vehemence: “It isn’t fair! He’ll divorce me now and take everything and I’ll get nothing.”
I said, “That’s not the way it works,” and immediately wished I’d kept my mouth shut.
“It isn’t? Why isn’t it?”
Too late now. She’d find out soon enough anyway. “Committing a felony or a series of felonies doesn’t invalidate the no-fault statute,” I said. “It probably should but it doesn’t.”
She stared at me. A long ash fell off the end of the burning weed; she didn’t seem to notice, didn’t brush it off her lap.
“You mean I can still divorce him and get my half?” she said. “Half of everything-the house, the bank accounts?”
“You’ll need it for a good lawyer.”
“But not all of it.” A slow, ghastly smile formed around the cigarette stub. “There’ll be some left. Even if I have to go to prison, there’ll be some left when I get out.”
I lifted myself off the chair. The smoke in the room was making me sick. She was making me sick. Time, past time, to let the law have her.
“Maybe,” I said, “but you won’t keep it for long. Horses, slots, poker… not for long.”
“That’s what you think,” she said. “I’m overdue for a real winning streak. I’ve got a big one coming to me, big and long. You wait and see. Top of the world and this time I won’t fall off.”
She believed it. Sitting there ravaged by her addiction, with another woman’s blood on her hands, and chasing the high and beating the odds was all she cared about, all she believed in. In a way, that made Janice Krochek more unfathomable, more terrible to me than anything else she’d done.
26
Mitchell Krochek took the news hard. The main reason, of course, was that no matter what kind of legal strategies his lawyer indulged in, he would lose half of his assets in a divorce settlement. And be forced to make restitution for the debts his wife had run up on Rebecca Weaver’s credit cards, and to shoulder responsibility for any civil claims that might be brought by her estate. As if that wasn’t enough, he’d have to suffer the negative publicity the murder trial would bring. Yet I had the sense that under his selfish, rutting-male exterior, he genuinely cared for Janice Stanley Krochek-even now, after all she’d done and was about to do to him. Love’s a funny thing. Sometimes, no matter how much two people beat the living hell out of it, it never quite dies.
It was late Friday evening that I talked to him. He called me at home, after the Oakland police finally contacted him. He seemed to need to talk. Kept thanking me for helping him, for “getting to the bottom of things”-saving his ass, he meant. Volunteered the information that he intended to put the house on the market right away because he “couldn’t stand to live there now, after what she did to Becky in the kitchen. I’d have nightmares every goddamn night.” He’d move in with Deanne, he said, until the house was sold and the trial was over and he could start living a normal life again. After that, well, maybe he’d marry Deanne. She loved him and she wasn’t crazy like Janice and his first wife-“first woman I’ve ever been with who wasn’t batshit in one way or another.”
I liked Deanne Goldman and I wished her well, so I hoped he was right about her mental health. If so, she not only wouldn’t marry him, she’d throw him out and change all the locks on her doors.
O n Saturday morning, early, I called Tamara at home to fill her in on Friday’s events. She had a few questions; when I’d answered them, she said, “Some Friday. For you and for Jake, too. Our first pro bono and it turned out crazy, blew up in a murder-suicide.”
“The hell it did. What happened? He didn’t get caught up in it, did he?”
“Found the bodies, that’s all,” she said, and provided details. “Weird, huh?”
“Very. Sometimes I think this agency is cursed. We get the damnedest cases.”
“Always come out okay, though, don’t we?”
“So far,” I said. “One thing for sure after yesterday: I’ve had it up to here with gamblers and gambling. If there’s even a hint of either one in a future inquiry, we turn the case down flat. In fact, do me a favor and don’t even mention gambling to me anymore.”
She let me hear one of her saucy little chuckles. “I won’t,” she said. “You can bet the house on it.”
S unday night, in bed, Kerry said, “I’ve made a decision.”
“Good for you. About what?”
“The way I look.”
“You look fine. Kind of sexy tonight, as a matter of fact. Is that a new nightie?”
“Don’t try to change the subject.”
“I didn’t know I was. Since when is a compliment changing the subject?”
“I’m talking about cosmetic surgery,” she said.
Uh-oh. “You’re not serious?”
“Oh yes, I am. Very serious.”
“My God, not one of those bizarre surgeries you and Tamara were talking about the other night…”
“No. Only my face.”
“Nice face. I like it just as it is.”
“You don’t have to look at it in the mirror every day.”
“I look at it every day straight on. Same thing.”
“No. Not from my perspective. Lines, wrinkles, eyebags… on my best days I look my age. On my worst… bleah.”
“Come on,” I said, “you worry too much about things like that. Doesn’t matter. You still think and act young, you’re still sexy as all get-out-that’s what’s important.”
“To you. Not necessarily to me.”
“Vanity,” I said.
“Call it what you want,” she said with a little snap in her voice. Then, “What’s wrong with a little vanity?”
“I didn’t say there was anything wrong with it-”
“Men can be just as vain as women. More. It’s human nature.”
I sighed. “All right. So what is it you want to change?”
“Everything.”
“A whole new face? Like Bogart in Dark Passage.”
“If I had my druthers,” she said. “But I’ll settle for a complete makeover. Get rid of the lines around my mouth, the eyebags and wrinkles. I’ve seen and talked to a few women who’ve had the procedure. They all look years younger. Just as important, they all feel years younger.”
“Sometimes,” I said carefully, “that kind of surgery doesn’t work out the way it’s supposed to. I mean, there can be complications. Some face-lifts don’t heal right and the person ends up disfigured-”
“Oh, bosh. There’s a tiny risk, yes, but there’s a tiny risk in just about everything we do in our lives. Surgeons have all sorts of new methods that make the procedure perfectly safe.”
“Famous last words.”
“Will you please stop arguing with me?”
“I wasn’t arguing, I was only-”
“I’ve made an appointment with a cosmetic surgeon,” she said. “Dr. Hamadi. He’s in the same building as my oncologist downtown.”
“… Appointment for when?”
“Next Thursday afternoon.”
“You mean you’re having it done that soon?”
“No. It’s just a preliminary examination to make sure I’m healthy enough to go ahead with the procedure.”
“Healthy enough? So even if this doctor says you are, there could still be complications…”
“You’re acting like I’m going to apply for a heart transplant. It’s a simple operation, done thousands of times every day with no complications whatsoever.”
“We’re not talking about thousands of women, we’re talking about you.”
Her mouth pursed. Stubborn, determined. “I’m doing this for me, not for you or anybody else. After all I’ve been through this past year, I think I’m entitled-whether you agree or not. A face-lift is safe, it’s affordable, and I’m going to have it done and that’s all there is to it.”
I wilted a little. “How long is the recuperation?”
“Not long. A few days until the last of the bandages come off. I’ll be housebound for a week or so, but I’ll take some vacation days and then work from home. I’ll be all healed in about six weeks.”