Fever

5

JAKE RUNYON

Tamara had e-mailed him some preliminary background information on Brian Youngblood; he looked it over on his laptop Friday night, after he got back to the apartment. First thing you always checked for when somebody was in trouble was a criminal record of any kind, adult or juvenile. Youngblood had neither one. Not even a misdemeanor driving infraction.

One possible in his credit history. There was a state law prohibiting private detectives and other citizens from using credit-monitoring services like TRW for investigative purposes; but realtors could subscribe to these services, since they were in the buying and selling business, and the agency had an arrangement with one in their former office building on O’Farrell Street. Runyon didn’t know the nature of the arrangement. Not his business.

According to Youngblood’s mother, Brian was very good at his profession and made a good salary. According to the credit report, he’d spent most of the past sixteen months mired in debt. Credit cards maxed to the limit, with not even the minimum paid. Two and three months in arrears on his rent; an eviction notice had been issued and then rescinded when he came up with the three-month balance. PG amp;E and telephone bills unpaid and service shut off twice by Pac Bell. The crisis point had been reached at the end of August. Might’ve been forced to declare bankruptcy if he hadn’t come into a windfall of at least ten thousand dollars. This allowed him to pay off everything he owed and to reestablish his credit.

But the fix had been only temporary. In the ninety days since, he’d managed to shove himself right back into a money trap at an accelerated rate: credit cards nearly maxed out, rent and utility bills upaid. If he didn’t do something about the new crisis, he was bound to go under this time.

Did his mother know where the ten thousand had come from? Probably not. Likely didn’t know anything about it at all or she’d’ve mentioned it. Something in that, maybe.

Something, too, in what had put Youngblood in the credit crunch in the first place. Until sixteen months ago, he’d had a fairly stable credit rating. No clue in the rest of his personal history.

There were two ways to handle a case like this. One was to talk to the subject first, worry him a little, and see if he could be made to own up to his problem. The other was to talk to his friends and neighbors and coworkers, find out what they knew, and try to build up a clear picture of the situation before you braced the subject. Runyon preferred the direct approach whenever possible, and that seemed to be the best way to go here, particularly since he had no address yet for Youngblood’s friend Aaron Myers. No listing for Myers in the phone directory. Tamara could turn up his address and the name of his employer easily enough on Monday, but that was Monday and this was Friday night and the weekend stretched out ahead.

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, Dre 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…