Fever: A Nameless Detective Novel (Nameless Detective Novels) by Bill Pronzini Read Free Book Online Page B

himself a little taste of false hope, and what had that got him? Nothing. When an opportunity came to pursue it, he hadn’t been able to make the first move. She might’ve been receptive if he had; the timing was right for her, if not him. But it wouldn’t have worked out if he had. A Colleen substitute was the last thing he wanted or needed.
    Forget the woman in the scarf. She was nobody to him, just one more among the legion of sufferers. Probably married anyway, couple of kids, a job, a life. The left side of her face … accident, disease, whatever. Bad things happen to people all the time. He knew that if anybody did. None of his business. Forget it.
    But that one good eye, dammit.
    Like something burning …

TAMARA
     
    She was alone in the offices when the woman came stumbling in.
    Monday morning, a little after nine. Bill wasn’t due in today and Jake and Alex were out on field assignments. Quiet; the phone hadn’t even rung yet. Some days, she enjoyed being here by herself. In control, the nerve and brain center of the agency. Nerve and brain center—the phrase made her smile.
    Shaping up to be a better Monday than most, all right. Weather was good, bright and sunny. And she’d had a pretty nice weekend for a change. Dinner with Kerry and Bill on Friday night—she grinned, remembering the look on Bill’s face during the rap about cosmetic surgery. New apartment hunting again yesterday; still hadn’t found a place that had everything she wanted—location, size, view—but she always had a good time looking. And thendinner with sister Claudia and her Oreo lawyer boyfriend, and for once neither of them had been obnoxious. Good day all around.
    Who needed a man in her life? Well, she did, at least for a night now and then (God, she was horny!), but not having somebody didn’t bother her as much as it had after that fool chump Horace dumped her. She had a good life other than her love life and she was finally learning how to enjoy it on its own terms.
    She finished her first cup of coffee while she answered a couple of phone messages, went out into the anteroom for a refill from the hot plate. Sunlight streamed in through the windows facing South Park. So did a fair amount of filtered noise. Lot of activity in and around the Park these days. The neighborhood had been the hub of the dot-com boom in the eighties and early nineties; now, a decade after the collapse of the market, it had bounced back with a vengeance. Web 2.0 companies were moving back in in droves—must be close to a dozen now—and South Park was once more “the town square of Multimedia Gulch.”
    Thinking about that made her feel good, too. She and Bill had swung a sweet long-term lease on this building when the real estate market was in the tank; couldn’t afford the going rent if they were trying to buy in now. And the high-tech companies being so close meant the likelihood of more business. The agency hadn’t gotten much out of the dot-com industry to date, but that could change. Web 2.0 companies had their employee and security problems same as any other big business, and when they did, the odds were favorable they’d hire a firm that happened to be in their own backyard.
    Tamara poured her cup full, stirred in some low-cal sweetener, and went back into her office. She was just sitting down when she heard the anteroom door open. Jake or Alex, probably. She didn’t bother to turn around for a look—not until the door slammed hard and there was a loud scraping sound as if the person out there was shoving furniture around. A woman’s voice called, “Hello? Anybody here?” That put her on her feet and sent her over to the door.
    Lord!
    The woman must have lurched against the couch; it was canted out from the wall and she was leaning on the back of it, bent over, her face turned sideways so that she seemed to be looking up from under, in Tamara’s direction. Bad news. Big lemon-colored bruise on the left side under the eye, cuts and