“She loves you, you love her. Give her the benefit of the doubt.”
“Yeah,” he said. Then he said, “Carol. She’ll know. Ginger don’t have no secrets from her.”
“Who’s Carol?”
“Her best friend. They’re like sisters. She hates my guts, not that I blame her.”
“What’s Carol’s last name? Where does she live?”
“Why you want to know that?”
“Maybe she knows something about what happened to Janice.”
“Yeah.” He put a hand out, not quite touching the sleeve of my jacket. “You ask her about Ginger, too, huh? Make sure about her, let me know what she says?”
“Sure. Put your mind at ease.”
“No lie? You’ll let me know one way or another?”
“I’ll let you know.”
He nodded. All the hardness had gone out of him; he looked relieved. And sad and hurting and lost and vulnerable—a man who had hit bottom and was clawing his way back up, inch by painful inch.
“Carol Brixon,” he said. “She’s a bartender at the Rickrack Lounge on Columbus. Day-shift, same as Ginger.”
16
JAKE RUNYON
Sausalito was a little hillside and waterfront town filled with million-dollar homes on the Marin side of the Golden Gate Bridge. Former fishing village, artists’ colony, San Francisco bedroom community, real estate agent’s wet dream, and expensive tourist trap. That was as much as Runyon knew about it—as much as he wanted to know. Scenic places had no appeal to him anymore. Picturesque or nondescript or squalid, they were just places. The only things about Sausalito that registered on him were the swarming number of picture-taking, gabbling tourists that flocked the downtown streets and the difficulty in finding a legal parking space. He didn’t have to worry about either one this trip.
The Wells Fargo branch where Ginny Lawson worked was on Bridgeway, on the north end of town away from the tourist clutter, and he could use the customer parking lot. Turned out she was a bank officer, occupying one of half a dozen desks on a carpeted area opposite the tellers’ cages. The nameplate on the desk said VIRGINIA F. LAWSON. Nobody was in the customer chair in front it.
She glanced up from her computer screen when he sat down. Prim little professional smile. Devout and conservative, Dré Janssen had called her, and she looked it: gray skirt and jacket, white blouse, minimum amount of makeup, no cornrows or any other kind of distinctive African American hairdo. Her eyes had a remote quality, as if they were looking at you through a self-imposed filter.
“May I help you?”
“I hope so.” He laid his card in front of her. “I’m not here on bank business. Private professional matter.”
“Yes?” She glanced at the card, frowned, and said the word again with a flatter inflection. “Yes?”
“It’s about Brian Youngblood.”
She froze. Like running water suddenly turning to ice. In a strained voice she said, “I have nothing to say to anyone about Brian Youngblood.”
“He’s in trouble, Ms. Lawson. Maybe serious trouble.”
No response. Silence built up between them, thick and heavy. It occurred to him that she intended to keep on sitting there like that, frozen and silent, until he gave it up and went away. He waited as motionlessly as she sat, holding eye contact, letting her know he wasn’t leaving until she talked to him.
The silence lasted for maybe two minutes. Then, “I’m not surprised.”
“That Brian is in trouble?”
“He’s sick. He has been for a long time.”
“Sick in what way?”
“Mentally. He’s mentally ill.”
“That covers a lot of territory. It might help if you’d be more specific.”
Tight little headshake.
“Is that the reason you wouldn’t marry him? Because you think he’s mentally ill?”
“I won’t discuss my private life.”
“If you know something that might explain—”
“I said I won’t discuss it.”
“I understand it must be painful for you—”
“Don’t you listen? No means no.”
“Brandy,” he said.
She jerked as if he’d touched her with an electrode. The tight little headshake again, then the frozen silence.
“You know her, Ms. Lawson. Tell me about her.”
Nothing.
“She’s part of Brian’s troubles, isn’t she? Maybe the root cause.”
Nothing.
“Is she the reason you ended your relationship with him?”
Still nothing. But the ice was beginning to crack. She sat just as rigidly, but muscles had begun to twitch in her face—an effect like fissures forming and spreading on a glacial moraine.