Fever(15)
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.
Brian 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.
He 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.
Long 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.
On 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.