Fever: A Nameless Detective Novel (Nameless Detective Novels) (6 page)

No need for him to wait until Monday. He’d told Rose Youngblood he would start the investigation today and he was a man who kept his word. Saturday was just another workday. Just another twenty-four hours in the string of days that made up what was left of his life.

B
rian Youngblood lived on Duncan Street, on the downhill side of Diamond Heights just above Noe Valley. Elderly wood-and-stucco building that contained four good-sized flats, judging from its size; Youngblood’s was one of those on the upper floor, south side, which meant views of the southern curve of the city and the bay beyond. Doing fairly well for himself, all right. Rents in the city, in a neighborhood like this, didn’t come cheap.

Runyon found a place to park and climbed the high front stoop. There were two doors, set at right angles, on either side of a narrow vestibule, each with its own bell button. The labels on the bank of mailboxes told him Youngblood’s flat number was 3; he leaned on the bell.

It was a windy late fall day, clouds chasing one another across the sky to the east; Runyon pulled his coat collar up against the chill. Out on the bay a freighter from the Port of Oakland was moving slowly under the arch of the Bay

Bridge, heading toward the Gate. He watched it while he waited. Colleen had always wanted to take a vacation cruise on a freighter, in the days when you could still book passage on one—down through the Panama Canal to the Caribbean. Another cruise she’d tried to talk him into was on one of the luxury ships that went up the Inside Passage to Ketchikan, Juneau, and other ports along the Alaskan coast.

No answer. He pressed the bell again.

But shipboard travel wasn’t his idea of a good time. Too confining, too regimented. He’d put her off, made excuses, steered her into other, landlocked vacations that allowed him freedom of movement. Selfish. She’d never said anything, she was never one to complain or wheedle or argue, but she must have been disappointed. Someday we’ll do it, he’d said. Only someday never came, not for either of them. Every time he thought about it, he felt like a shit for having denied her a simple pleasure that would have made her life, while she still had a life, a little happier.

Still no answer.

One thing he knew now, anyway: Youngblood wasn’t hurt badly enough to stay at home on a Saturday morning.

H
e decided he might as well see what, if anything, Dré Janssen could tell him. He drove to Chestnut Street in the Marina, wasted nearly half an hour hunting up a legal parking space, and got exactly nothing for the effort. Janssen didn’t work on Saturdays. Neither of the two clerks on duty in the video store could or would tell him where the manager lived.

Neither could the phone directory. Everybody had unlisted
numbers these days, it seemed—hunger for what little privacy remained to the average citizen in the Big Brother age. One more thing that would have to wait until Monday.

L
ong drive down the spine of the Peninsula on Skyline Boulevard, a swing over to the coast, a grilled cheese sandwich in Half Moon Bay, and back into the city on Highway 1.

Another pass by the Duncan Street address. Brian Youngblood still wasn’t home. Or he was home and not answering his doorbell.

The hell with it. Tomorrow was another day to fill up, get through.

O
n his way to the apartment, he saw the woman in the scarf again.

It was after six and he was stopped at the Taraval light on Nineteenth Avenue. He chanced to glance over just as she was coming out of the coffee shop on the southwestern corner. Same black-and-white checked coat, different-colored scarf, but tied in the same way over the left side of her face. Her, no doubt of it. She was walking away to the west when the light changed.

He drove three blocks before impulse made him turn and loop back around to Taraval. By the time he crossed Nineteenth, she was nowhere in sight. No sign of the chocolate-colored Scion, either. One more pass around, same results, before he gave it up and drove on to Ortega.

Just as well. What would he have done if she’d still been there? What could he say to her?

Crazy coincidence, that was all it was. You live in a big city neighborhood, you can go months or years without seeing the same person twice. So she occupied space somewhere in his neighborhood, so what? He’d probably never see her a third time. Didn’t matter if he did, did it?

Not in the long run, no, but it seemed to matter right now. Seeing her again had put her in the forefront of his mind. Her, and the intense pain that had radiated from her good eye the night before. That was why he’d given in to the impulse. Drawn to pain and suffering, like a moth to candle fire. Colleen. Risa Niland, who resembled Colleen, whose sister had been brutally murdered. Drawn to their hurt and then ultimately repelled by it because it was the same as his own and there was nothing he could do to ease it, much less put an end to it.

He’d let himself believe there might be a way with Risa Niland, given 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 …

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 then
dinner 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 swelling on the right cheekbone, puffed lip, more cuts and scrapes on the chin. No blood, dried or otherwise, on her face. No blood on the jacket, blouse, or jeans she wore. The pounding she’d taken was at least a day old.

Tamara registered all of that before she recognized the woman.

“Remember me?”

“Janice Krochek. What happened to you?”

Krochek didn’t answer. She sank onto the couch, sat with elbows resting on her knees. Pale, sweaty. Exhausted. Tense, too, the way she’d been in the Hillman last week. And scared. Trying to hide it behind a half smile and a flip tone, but her eyes gave her away; the scare was big and wormy in them.

“Who did that to you, Mrs. Krochek?”

“Nobody did it. I fell down some stairs.”

Yeah, sure.

“You wouldn’t have anything to drink, would you? Bourbon, Scotch?”

“Just coffee and water.”

“I thought all private detectives kept a bottle of booze around.”

“Yeah, well, that’s crap. This is a business office.”

“All right, coffee. Lots of cream and sugar. How about a cigarette?”

“Nobody here smokes.”

“Figures. Aspirin? My head hurts like hell.”

Tamara went and got the tin of aspirin from her purse, poured the coffee. She had to open the tin herself; Krochek’s hands were too shaky. The woman slurped down four of them. Inside of her mouth must’ve been cut; she made a face and dribbled coffee out of the side with the puffed lip.

“You need a doctor,” Tamara said.

“No. No doctor. I’m all right.”

“You don’t look all right.”

“I walked all the way here. Fifteen goddamn blocks.”

“Why? Why’d you come here?”

“No place else to go.”

“What about your friend?”

“I don’t have any friends.” Bitterly.

“Woman you’re staying with, Ginger Benn.”

“Not staying there anymore.”

“Why not? Because you got beat up?”

Slurp, slurp. She was holding the cup in both hands, tight and up close to her face, alternately slurping and breathing in the steam like an asthmatic. Marks on both wrists, too, Tamara saw then—red chafe marks.

She said, “So you remembered the business card we left last week. South Park—easy address to remember.”

“I don’t know what I’d’ve done if I hadn’t. Where’s your boss? Not here?”

“No. And he’s not my boss.”

“Lover?”

“Business partner,” Tamara said.

“You’re kidding.”

“Do I look like I’m kidding?”

“Black—white, May—December. What kind of partnership is that?”

Tamara bit back the sharp retort that crawled out on her tongue. The woman was hurt; you couldn’t tell a beating victim to go fuck herself, even one as snotty as this one. Not yet, anyway.

“Why don’t you tell me who beat you up, Mrs. Krochek?”

“Nobody beat me up. I told you, it was an accident.”

“Accident with somebody’s fist. Like maybe Carl Lassiter?”

“No.”

“Because of the money you owe him or his boss?”

“I said no. Accident, accident—how many times do you want to hear it?”

Could be Lassiter she was afraid of, could be somebody else. Tamara couldn’t tell with Krochek’s eyes cast downward and steam from the coffee smearing her expression.

“What do you care anyway?” Krocheck said.

“I don’t like to see anybody get beat up. Women especially.”

“It’s none of your business.”

“You’re in my offices, that makes it my business. Police business, too. Assault is a felony.”

The word “police” seemed to scare Krochek even more. “I wasn’t assaulted! I don’t want anything to do with the law, you understand?”

“Yeah, I understand. Just why’d you come here?”

“Didn’t I just tell you that, too? I didn’t have any place else to go.”

“What do you want us to do for you?”

“Get me home.”

“Oakland Hills?”

“Where the hell else. That’s the only home I’ve got—for now anyway. Can I have some more coffee? More sugar this time.”

What am I, Tamara thought, some kind of servant? Fetch this, fetch that. Yassum, Miz Scarlett. Grumbling to herself, she went and got the refill. When she brought it back, she said, “So you changed your mind after all. Now you want to go back to your husband.”

“Woman’s prerogative.”

“If you weren’t coerced into it.”

“It’s changed, isn’t that enough? Enough questions! Can’t you see I’m hurting?”

“Offered to get you a doctor.”

“I don’t want a doctor. I want to go home.”

“So why didn’t you call your husband, have him come get you?”

“With what? I don’t have my cell anymore. No money, either. Why do you think I walked all the way over here?”

“Where’s your purse?”

Shrug.

“Whoever beat on you take it?”

Slurp.

“You could’ve called from Ginger’s room, or the lobby desk.”

Krochek winced, pressed fingers gingerly against her puffed lip. “For God’s sake. Will you just call Mitch for me? Will you do that, please?”

Tamara said with sour irony, “Quicker the better,” and went into her office to make the call.

But getting rid of Janice Krochek wasn’t going to be that easy. Her husband was away from Five States Engineering today, out on some job site. Tamara pried his cell number out of Krochek’s assistant, but when she called it she got his voice mail. She left a curt message, saying it was urgent he return the call as soon as possible.