Bill Pronzini: Fever

“You’d think the divorce courts would take something like a gambling sickness into consideration,” he said. “All the crap she’s pulled, all the money she’s blown already. But my attorney says no. The law says no fault, community property, that’s it. No extenuating circumstances. She gets half of whatever I can’t hide from the shyster she’ll hire, and I get screwed.”

Down another notch. Maybe you couldn’t blame him for hiding assets, either, but it’s illegal, and his telling me about it, making me an unwitting possessor of guilty knowledge, didn’t set well.

“Is that fair?” he said bitterly. “After all she put me through?”

“Life can be unfair, Mr. Krochek.”

“I don’t need platitudes,” he said. “I need a way out. Or at least an edge of some kind. I don’t suppose there’s any way I can convince you to tell me where she’s staying?”

“I’m sorry, no.”

“I’d pay well for the information.”

I let that pass. He was starting to piss me off.

“Isn’t there anything more you can do?”

“Such as what?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “talk to her again, try to arrange a meeting so we can work something out before the lawyers get into it.”

“I could make the effort, but it would be a waste of your money. I doubt she’d agree to another discussion, and even if she did, there’s nothing I could say that would change her mind. It’s made up, she made that plain.”

“Bitch,” he said. Then he said, “All right, can’t you get something on her, something I can use in court? She’s running around with lowlives, she could be mixed up in something illegal, couldn’t she?”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“You don’t think she’s mixed up in anything we could use?”

“I meant that it’s not an investigative course we’d care to pursue.”

“Why the hell not? You’re a detective, aren’t you?”

“With a selective list of services. Digging up dirt for use in divorce cases isn’t one of them.”

“So don’t dig it up. Couldn’t you just happen to stumble onto something somewhere? You know the kind of thing it would take-”

I was already on my feet. “End of conversation, Mr. Krochek. And end of our working arrangement.”

“Wait a minute. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean… Look, I’m desperate here, you can see that. Grabbing at straws.”

“I understand and I sympathize, up to a point. You just passed that point. Good luck.”

“For God’s sake…”

I said, “You’ll get our final report in the mail,” and put my back to him and walked out.

JAKE RUNYON

He had a heavy caseload that week. The Krochek skip-trace, an employee background check for Benefield Industries, a suspicious wrongful death claim for Western Maritime and Life, and a domestic case that Tamara had taken on pro bono. That was the way he preferred it-the fuller the plate, the better. Weeks like this one, he could put in a fair amount of overtime as well as a full workday. He seldom asked for overtime pay, or even mentioned the extra hours; meals, gas and oil, and parking fees went onto the various expense accounts, that was all. Money wasn’t the reason he worked long and hard. It was the activity, the need for movement and business details to occupy his time and his mind. Downtime meant the cold, empty apartment on Ortega Street and old movies on TV that did little to keep him from thinking about Colleen and the two decades they’d had together, or feeling the bitter frustration of his estrangement from Joshua.

His life wouldn’t be quite so bad now if Joshua would understand that his mother’s poisonous vilification had been a product of alcoholism and revenge and had no basis in fact; unbend a little, make room for some forgiveness. But that wasn’t going to happen. For a time, while Runyon was investigating the gay-bashing of Joshua’s unfaithful lover, he’d thought that there was a chance of establishing cordial relations, if not a reconciliation, but Andrea’s brainwashing had been too complete. No contact in months now, his few phone calls unanswered; the one time he’d gone to Joshua’s apartment, the partner had refused to let him in. Hopeless. If it weren’t for the job, the support he’d gotten from Bill and Tamara, his move down here from Seattle would’ve been a total waste.

By Friday, when Tamara handed him the pro bono case, he had the rest of the load well in hand. A one o’clock interview in Hayward to finish up the employee background check was all for the afternoon; he said he’d be back in the city no later than four. So Tamara set up an appointment for him to meet with the new client, Rose Youngblood, at five at her home in Visitacion Valley.

It was a worried mother job: son or daughter gets into a hassle that can’t or won’t be taken to the police, so mom goes the private route. The agency seldom handled that kind unless the client was well-heeled, and then with reluctance, but recently they’d started taking on selected cases involving African-Americans, Latinos, and other minorities who needed investigative services but couldn’t afford them.

Tamara’s idea. Give a little something back to the community, now that the agency was solidly in the black. It was all right with Runyon. Clients were clients, corporate or individual, rich or poor.

Rose Youngblood was a black woman in her fifties, widowed and living alone in the home she’d bought with her husband thirty years ago. Employed in the admissions office at City College of San Francisco. Active in community service and church work. She hadn’t contacted the agency directly; she’d been referred by Tamara’s sister, Claudia, a lawyer who did some pro bono work of her own in the African-American community.

The problem was Rose Youngblood’s twenty-six-year-old son, Brian. Whatever trouble he was in evidently wasn’t the usual sort the twenty-something set got into these days. Stable young man with a well-paying job as a freelance computer consultant, she’d told Tamara; never gave her a moment’s worry until now. Raised as a God-fearing Christian, good head on his shoulders, worked hard, had a bright future-all the proud maternal platitudes. Except that recently somebody had assaulted him, for a reason he refused to talk about, and she was fearful that his life was in jeopardy.

That was as much as Runyon knew when he parked in front of her small, wood-and-stucco home near the Crocker-Amazon Playground. One of the city’s older residential neighborhoods-lower income, single-family homes, primarily owned by blacks now. On the fringe of the crime-ridden projects and driven downscale by the infestation of drugs and gangs. Drive-by shootings, burglaries, and muggings were common enough to force many residents to put up fences and security gates and bars on their windows. Rose Youngblood wasn’t one of them. Living in a high-crime area, but not living in fear.

He was right on time, and she’d been watching for him; she opened the door even before he rang the bell. Tall, thin woman with gray in her close-cropped hair and stern features that conveyed determination and a strong will. Unsmiling and a little stiff at first. The first thing she said to him after he identified himself was, “Don’t take this wrong, but I was hoping for a black investigator.”

“We don’t have one on staff for field work,” Runyon said. “But the agency does have a pretty good racial mix-black, white, Latino, and Italian. I’m the token WASP.”

She almost smiled. “I didn’t mean to be insensitive. It’s just that I don’t have any idea of what’s going on with my son. You understand?”

“You don’t have to worry about my being able to handle it if it’s racially sensitive. I was a police officer in Seattle for several years and my partner and best friend for most of them was a black man.”