Fever(56)

Partain moved and I moved, hands up at the level of my shoulders, palms outward. His attention was caught on me. Runyon was a short distance away, on his left and slightly behind him. When I saw Jake slide a careful step forward I knew what he was going to do and I tried to warn him off with my eyes, but he was focused on the gun. Partain kept coming and I kept gliding aside to clear his path to the door. He was between the two of us, starting to glance Runyon’s way as if he’d just remembered him, when Jake made his play.

He was good and he was fast; Partain had no time to swing the gun. Runyon judo-chopped his forearm, hit him with the other shoulder at the same time. The Saturday night special went spinning out of Partain’s hand, clattered on the floor. The force of the shoulder blow threw him staggering in my direction. I couldn’t get out of his way; he caromed off me, shoving with his hands. Runyon lunged at him, but his feet got tangled in the threadbare carpet and he tripped, lost his balance, banged a knee on the floor with enough force to bring a grunt of pain out of him. By the time he shoved up again, Partain had the door open and was out into the hall, running.

Runyon went after him. I yelled, “Jake, don’t!” but he kept going. Nothing for me to do then but to join the chase. But not until I’d scooped up the weapon and slid it into my coat pocket.

When I got into the hall, Runyon was just limping around the corner ell. It took me four or five seconds to get there and take myself around it. The long hall to the elevator was empty, but I could hear running steps close by. A door halfway along was just closing on its pneumatic tube. I yanked it open and bulled through. Fire stairs. But the running steps were going up, not down.

One flight to the roof. The door at the top of the landing stood half-open; I had a glimpse of Runyon’s back going through. I went running up the stairs. Not the man I used to be: I was puffing hard when I came out onto the roof.

Rough, tarry surface, heater vents and chimneys, taller buildings on all sides. And Partain at the far end, heading for a pair of curved hand bars at the top of a fire escape, and Runyon hobbling behind him. I sucked enough cold air into my lungs to yell, “Jake, let him go!” If he heard me, he kept going anyway.

Partain reached the hand bars, swung a leg over the parapet, and scrambled down out of sight.

I yelled it again, louder: “Jake! Let him go!”

It got through to him this time, broke his stride. He looked over his shoulder, saw me gesturing, and slowed to a walk. He was at the thigh-high parapet, leaning on the hand bars and looking down, when I reached him. I don’t like heights, but I eased forward to take a look myself. Partain was down past the third floor, running blindly and with enough panic to skid and bang precariously into the iron railings. He almost went over at the second floor level, caught himself just in time.

“No point in chasing him,” I said.

“Guess you’re right.” Runyon leaned down to rub his knee. “My bad leg, dammit. I’d’ve caught him if I hadn’t tripped.”

“Doesn’t matter. He’s got nowhere to go that he can’t be found. We’ve got nothing on him anyway except threat of bodily harm, and it’s his word against ours on that.”

“What about the gun?”

I took the Saturday night special out, broke it open. “Not even loaded.”

“Shit.”

That was a word Runyon hardly ever used. I glanced at him. Tight-lipped, eyes bleak and underslung with bags. Something bothering him. It could have been the hassle with Partain, but I had the sense that it went deeper than that. No use in asking; he was as closed-off a man as I’d ever known.

We started back across the roof. Runyon said, “You believe he had nothing to do with the Krochek woman’s disappearance?”

“Yeah, I do. He ran because he was afraid of taking the fall for something heavier than assault and false imprisonment. He’s a sorry little son of a bitch, but he’s not a kidnapper or a murderer.”

“Then who’s responsible?”

“Well, like it or not,” I said, “there’s one person left we haven’t taken a good long look at. Her husband—our client.”





20





JAKE RUNYON




When he left the Hillman, he knew he should start following up on what Bill had told him about Nick Kinsella and the eighty-five hundred dollars Brian Youngblood had paid on his debt. But the skirmish with Phil Partain had left a sour taste; he was done with business for the day. He drove straight up over Twin Peaks and west to the brown-shingled house on Moraga Street.

He didn’t even try to talk himself out of it. He was going to see Bryn Darby sooner or later, and it might as well be right away, tonight, if she was home. This crazy damn compulsion was like a fever in his blood and the only way to get rid of it was to face her, let her tell him to leave her alone, let her shame him into it. What other reaction could she have, some guy she’d seen once in her life obsessing over her? Yell at him, call him names—that was what he wanted her to do.