Fever nd-33

by Bill Pronzini

  “A reliable source. You know what I think? I think you hit on Janice Stanley sometime Saturday or Sunday and she surprised you by saying yes. She needed money and she didn’t much care how she got it. She’d have gone with you for the right price.”

  “No, no…”

  “I think she came up here sometime on Sunday and the two of you got it on. Only you like it rough and things got out of hand-”

  “No! It wasn’t like that!”

  “Then how was it? Why’d you beat her up?”

  Partain licked his lips, waggled his head from one side to another, big-eyed, as if looking for a way out.

  “Answer me, Phil. Why did you beat her up?”

  “She… I… all right, all right, I caught her trying to steal money out of my wallet, all right? Afterward, after I already paid her the fifty she asked for. All right? You satisfied now?”

  “You must’ve been damn angry. She was banged up pretty good.”

  “Bitch fought me, what else could I do? Tried to scratch me, kick me in the nuts. It was self-defense.”

  “What time did all this take place?”

  “I dunno what time, late afternoon…”

  “And then what happened?”

  “What you think happened? I threw her ass out.”

  “And she went back to Ginger Benn’s apartment.”

  “Yeah, I guess so. That’s the last time I saw her-”

  “You’re lying, Phil. Ginger Benn was there on Sunday and she didn’t see Janice Stanley. Nobody saw Janice until Monday morning.”

  “I don’t know where she went, how the hell would I know?”

  I was remembering those red chafe marks on Janice Krochek’s wrists. “Let’s try this on for size. You caught her stealing from your wallet, beat her up when she fought you, but you were still pissed and you figured it wasn’t enough payback. So you held her here against her will, tied her to the bed, let’s say, and used her while she was lying there helpless, and kept her tied up and kept using her until Monday morning.”

  It was the right scenario or close to it. Partain looked sick and panicky. Nerves jumped and crawled in his cheeks like worms under thin white latex.

  “And then maybe you decided you wanted more sex, more payback. So you went over to her house on Tuesday, caught her there alone-”

  “House? What house?”

  “You know where she lives. You could’ve found out easily enough. You went over there, caught her alone-”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “-and she gave you more trouble and things got out of hand. Is that about how it happened?”

  “No!”

  “Where is she, Phil? What’d you do with her body?”

  “Her… body? Jesus, you think I… Jesus!”

  “An accident, right? You didn’t mean to kill her-”

  “You’re crazy! I never went to no house, I never killed nobody! You’re trying to frame me, you…” The last word caught in his throat; he gagged, coughed up another stream of words. “I can’t listen to no more of this, I don’t have to stand here half-naked listening to this shit.”

  Partain stumbled over to an open closet door, dragged a pair of pants off a hanger. He was still at the closet door when he got them on, and when he reached in again I thought it was for a shirt. Wrong. What he was after was on the shelf above.

  Gun. Stubby, scratched up Saturday night special.

  I froze. So did Runyon. Partain waved the piece back and forth between us, his hand shaking hard enough to make the muzzle bob up and down. “All right, you bastards,” he said, “all right!”

  Both Runyon and I had been under the gun before, a couple of times together before this, and I’d been shot once a long time ago. But you never get used to looking down the bore. And the reaction, for me, is always the same: muscles bunching up tight, senses sharpening, a kind of cold calm descending over a thin layer of fear. The fear comes from uncertainty more than anything else; you can’t predict what somebody with a gun in his hand will do, and that goes double for a man in the throes of panic.

  I said slowly and evenly, “You want to be careful with that, Phil.”

  “You’re not gonna arrest me, frame me for something I didn’t do.”

  “Nobody’s trying to frame you.”

  “I never killed that bitch Janice. I never went to her house, I never saw her again after I threw her outta here Monday morning.”

  “I believe you. Put the gun down, you don’t want to shoot anybody.”

  “I don’t want to but I will. I’m not going to jail for something I didn’t do.”

  “You don’t have to go to jail. If Janice Stanley’s alive and intended to press charges, she’d’ve done it already. You’re home free, Phil. Unless you pull that trigger and one of us gets hurt.”

  It didn’t register; he wasn’t tracking clearly. He waved the gun, holding it in both hands now to steady his grip. “Get out of my way. I’m getting out of here.”

  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 ma
tter. 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.

  Wasn’t it?

  He didn’t know. Goddamn it, he’d always known what he wanted. Now all of a sudden he wasn’t sure anymore.

  Yes, he was: he wanted the past, not the present and sure as hell not the future. He wanted Colleen to still be alive, he wanted his old life in Seattle back, he wanted to be a part of his son’s life. But the past was dead, irretrievable. All he had was the present, and the present didn’t include Joshua-the present was his work, nothing more. Only now there was this crap with Bryn Darby, whatever it was, to complicate what needed to be simple. He had to put an end to it one way or another, drive it out of himself, so he could get back to where he was before last Friday night: a tightly wrapped detective with all his emotional baggage carefully stowed so he wouldn’t stumble over it.

  She was home; lights glowed behind drawn blinds in one of the brown-shingled house’s front windows. He squeezed the Ford into a narrow space between two driveways a short distance beyond. It was a cold night, the wind biting out here near the ocean, but he could feel sweat starting under his armpits as he walked back. Crazy, he thought. He forced the shutters up in his mind, got a tight grip on himself. Climbed the stairs and rang the bell.

  Nothing for several seconds. Then footfalls and a guarded woman’s voice behind the closed door. “Yes? Who is it?”

  “Mrs. Darby? Bryn Darby?”

  “Yes?”

  “My name is Runyon, Jake Runyon. Last Friday night at Safeway… I’m the man who helped you.”

  She said, “Oh,” faintly and there was a long pause. “What do you want?”

  “A few minutes of your time, that’s all.”

  Another, shorter pause. Then the porch light came on, a deadbolt lock rattled, and the door opened on a chain. The good side of her face peered out at him warily.

  His mind had gone suddenly blank. He said the first words that came to him, “I hope I’m not interrupting your dinner…”

  “It’s too early for my dinner. How did you find out where I live?”

  “It’s what I do. My job.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Finding people. I’m a detective.”

  “Detective? Police?”

  “No.” He had his license case in his hand; he flipped it open and held it up close to the opening. “Private investigator.”

  The visible eye blinked. It was a darker brown than he remembered, the iris very large, the lashes above it long and feathery. The suffering in it was as he remembered, too. Like something alive and hurt, hiding in a dark place.

  “Is it trouble about what happened?”

  “No,” he said, “nothing like that.”

  “I don’t… have I done something?”

  “No.”

  “They why are you here? Do you want something from me?”

  “No.”

  “Payment of some kind for your help?”

  He shook his head.

  The eye narrowed anyway. The smooth skin along her cheek tightened until the cheekbone stood out in shadowed relief. “Like for instance a date?”

  “I don’t… Date?”

  “Divorced woman and damaged goods besides,” she said with brittle irony. “Ought to be grateful, right? Easy pickings.”

  “No, you’re wrong. That’s not it at all.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  The cynicism in her voice was a small, cold thing surrounded by the hurt. Her pain had sharpened; the radiating force of it backed him up a pace. Made him feel ashamed, too-the self-recriminative feeling he craved. He shook his head again. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I never meant to hurt you, I don’t want to hurt you anymore,” and he swung around and went quickly down the stairs.

  He was nearing the sidewalk when he heard the door chain rattle, her voice saying, “Wait,” then her steps on the porch. He stopped. She was tying one of her scarves around her head, covering the frozen side of her face, as she came down. No coat, only a thin sweater over an ankle-length skirt, but she’d taken the time to grab the scarf on her way out.

  She stood off from him at the foot of the stairs, her body turned so that the shielded side of her face was out of his line of vision. “If you’re really not after something, why did you bother to track me down?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “That’s not an answer. You must have some idea.”

  “A compulsion, that’s all. At Safeway, the way you looked…”

  “I know how I look.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “What did you mean?”

  Another headshake. He couldn’t seem to control the muscles in his neck. “You don’t have to wear that scarf,” he said. “Or stand like that, turned to the side.”

  “Yes, I do. What’re you going to say now? That you’re sorry about my deformity but I should learn to deal with it?”

  “I’d never say that.”

  “You don’t know anything about what happened to me… Or do you? Did you track that down, too-my entire medical history?”

  “No.”

  “But you do know what happened.”

  “A little. Not much.”

  “And you want to know more, is that it? Diseases can be so interesting.”

  This time he managed not to move his head. He said nothing.

  She came a step closer, as if on the same impulse that had brought her out of the house. “You said you didn’t want to hurt me anymore. What did you mean by that? How could you hurt me?”

  “By coming here like this, bothering you.”

  The visible side of her mouth formed a bitter smile. “This is nothing. I’ve been hurt a lot worse.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “You know? No, you don’t. You can’t imagine.”

  “I think I can.”

  “From a few facts you dug up about me?”

  “Not from facts. I knew it at Safeway, when I saw you up close. I could see it, feel it.”

  “Bullshit,” she said.

  “It’s the truth.”

  “I suppose you’re
psychic.”

  “No. It’s just that I recognize pain when I see it.”

  “Oh, you do? Now you’re going to tell me you’ve been hurt, too.”

  “Yes. I have.”

  “How?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “You look perfectly healthy to me.”

  “It had nothing to do with my health.”

  “Somebody else’s?”

  “My wife’s.” He had no intention of saying the words, but they came out anyway. Like something solid tearing at his throat. “She died.”

  Bryn Darby stood quiet for several seconds. The cold wind tore at the silence between them, made her shiver; she crossed her arms tight across her breasts. “When?” she said.

  “Nearly two years ago. Ovarian cancer.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “So am I.”

  More silence. He wanted to leave, but his body wouldn’t let him. His bad leg and sore knee began to ache.

  Abruptly she said, “You’re lonely.”

  He didn’t respond.

  “That’s it, isn’t it? The reason you’re here. You’re lonely.”

  “No,” he said.

  “Yes, you are. I can see it in your face.”

  He didn’t deny it this time.

  “And you think I’m lonely. Kindred spirits.”

  He hadn’t thought that. He hadn’t let himself think it.

  “It wouldn’t work,” she said.

  “What wouldn’t?”

  “You, me, a couple of damaged strangers crying on each other’s shoulders. It wouldn’t work.”

  He heard himself say, “I just thought… Talk a little, that’s all.”

  “No,” she said.

  “Public place. Over coffee or a meal.”

  “I’m sorry, no. It wouldn’t do either of us any good. And I don’t want anyone in my life right now, not old friends and certainly not a new one like you. You understand?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “You’d better go.” She hugged herself tighter. “It’s cold out here.”

  “I won’t bother you again, Mrs. Darby.”

  “I’m not Mrs. Darby. Not anymore, thank God.” She turned and went back up the stairs. He was moving away when she called after him, “I hope you find someone else.”