Fever: A Nameless Detective Novel (Nameless Detective Novels) by Bill Pronzini Page A

mine.”
    “You ever do anything together?”
    “Like what? Double dates? No.”
    “How about gambling?”
    “Her thing, not mine. I don’t gamble.” The shape of her mouth around the word was bitter. “I hate gambling.”
    “But you took in a compulsive gambler as a roommate.”
    “I told you—Never mind, forget it. You all done taking up my time now?”
    “Not yet.” I made a little show of opening my wallet, taking out a twenty, letting her see it before I creased it down the middle lengthwise. “A few more questions.”
    She licked her lips, her eyes fixed on the creased bill. Waitresses in places like this don’t make much money, rely heavily on tips. Call girls don’t get to keep a largepercentage of their fees, either, unless they run their own service, and Ginger Benn didn’t look shrewd enough for that. She wanted that twenty. What she didn’t want was to get herself in trouble by talking too much to a stranger.
    “I told you, man,” she said, “I don’t know anything about Janice getting beat up.”
    “I believe you. But you didn’t answer my question about her being your roommate. How’d that come about, if you’re not friends?”
    “Oh, shit. Okay. A favor, okay?”
    “But not to her.”
    “A friend. A favor for somebody we both know.”
    “What’s the friend’s name?”
    “Hey, Ginger.” That was the bartender; he’d moved down and was leaning across the bar. “Drinks waiting, customers waiting. Shag your ass.”
    “Yeah, I’m on it.” She didn’t look at him; her eyes were still coveting the twenty. “Wait here,” she said to me. “I’ll be right back.”
    I waited while she put a pair of drinks on her tray, delivered them to one of the tables. The bartender glared at me. So did a young, beefy type with a shaved head at the far end of the bar. Bouncer. I ignored both of them.
    Ginger came back with a clutch of bills, handed them over to the bartender. Nobody was allowed to run a tab in a place like this. She hesitated before she came back to where I half-sat on one of the stools. Reluctant, but unable to resist the lure of the twenty dollars.
    Her eyes made sure I still had the bill in my hand. Then she moved around so that her back was to the bartender and the bouncer. “You going to give me that? Better do it now if you are.”
    I dropped it onto her tray. She made it disappear into the shadow between her breasts in a movement as quick and deft as a magician’s.
    “Okay. But make it quick.”
    “You were going to tell me the name of the friend of yours and Janice’s you did the favor for.”
    “No, I wasn’t. It’s none of your business.”
    “It might be if he knows something about what happened to her.”
    “What makes you think it was a guy? It wasn’t.”
    A lie. I said, “Carl Lassiter?”
    “I don’t know any Carl Lassiter.” That came out fast—too fast. He was somebody she knew, all right. And the tightening of muscles around her mouth, the flicker of emotion in her eyes, said he was somebody she was afraid of.
    “How about a man named Quilmes, Jorge Quilmes?”
    “Who?” The puzzlement sounded genuine. “Never heard of him.”
    “Like you never heard of Carl Lassiter.”
    “That’s right.”
    “How about QCL, Inc.?”
    She couldn’t quite stop herself from flinching. QCL, Inc. was something else she was afraid of. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “Sure you do,” I said. “Lassiter, Janice, you—all connected to QCL.”
    “No. You’re wrong.” Her voice had risen. “Look, why don’t you just leave me alone?”
    “Let’s talk about QCL. I’ve got another twenty in my wallet—”
    “I don’t want any more of your money. I don’t want any more of
you!”
    Half shriek, that last sentence. As loud as the music was in there, the bartender heard her and hand-signaled the bald-headed guy. The bouncer came our way, not too fast, in a kind of hard glide. At the same time Ginger backed off from me. I took a step