Nightcrawlers nd-30

by Bill Pronzini

“Don’t let anybody who works for Pinkerton hear you say that. How was your weekend?”

  She said, “Quiet,” and then amended it to “Busy. Worked most of Saturday.”

  “Now you’re picking up my bad habits. What happened to your social life?”

  “Club scene? Guys with booze on their breath hitting on me? Who needs it?”

  “There are other things to do with your friends.”

  “Not when they’ve all got love lives.”

  “Maybe you should take a few days off, fly to Philadelphia.”

  “Too much work to do here.”

  “Can’t Horace get away?”

  “Symphony season’s already started back there. He’s got no time for anything except that cello of his.”

  That sounded a little ominous. I wanted to ask her if everything was okay with her and Horace, but I didn’t do it. She’d been reticent about their relationship lately, and prodding her would not have gotten me anywhere. Three and a half months apart is a long time; biweekly phone conversations just aren’t enough to keep a long-distance romance burning hot. It had to be a strain on both of them. In fact…

  “Can I ask you a personal question, Tamara?”

  “Long as it’s not about Horace.”

  “It’s not. I’m just curious… have you been on a diet?”

  “How come you asking that?”

  “Well, you’re looking pretty svelte these days.”

  “Didn’t think you’d noticed.”

  “Trained professionals notice everything. Ever vigilant.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, I’ve lost twelve pounds so far.”

  “By choice?”

  “What, you think I quit eating ‘cause I’m pining away for Horace?”

  “No, no…”

  “Well, don’t worry. I’m losing weight for me, nobody else. Just got tired of looking at myself naked in the mirror. Love handles are okay, but I had bulges big enough for a couple of 49ers’ linemen to hold on to.”

  I let that pass. “What kind of diet are you on?”

  “SlimFast and rabbit food. Yummy. But I’m used to it, now.”

  “How much more are you planning to lose?”

  “Eight or ten pounds. Until I can wear a size eight without looking like a sack of cookie dough.”

  “Hot stuff.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s still my big booty and my face. Can’t do much about either of those.”

  “What’s wrong with your face?”

  “Hah. No competition for Halle Berry, that’s for sure.”

  “Who’s Halle Berry?”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I’m not kidding. Who’s Halle Berry?”

  “Where you been lately? First African-American woman to win a best actress Oscar. Real hot stuff.”

  I said, “Oh,” because I see maybe one new film a year that Kerry recommends, avoid newspapers and the TV news, and pay no attention to actors or the Oscars.

  “Lot of modern film critics think Louise Beavers should’ve won one way back in the 1930s,” Tamara said, “but you know how blacks were treated in those days. In and out of Hollywood.”

  “Who’s Louise Beavers?”

  “Come on now. Don’t tell me you never saw Imitation of Life. As many old movies as you scope on TV?”

  “That tearjerker with Claudette Colbert?”

  “And Louise Beavers. Delilah. Everydamnbody overlooks her and she stole the picture.”

  “I’ve seen it, but not in a long time. Since when do you watch old movies?”

  “Since I was about ten, if they have black folks in ‘em. Don’t know me as well as you think you do, huh?”

  “Evidently not. Sorry.”

  “For what?” She gave me one of her looks. “Beavers,” she said.

  “Right, Louise Beavers.”

  “I’m thinking other beavers now. You know who Beaver Cleaver was?”

  “No. Who?”

  “Leave It to Beaver. ‘Oh, Ward, we just have to do something about the Beaver.’ ”

  “Huh?”

  “Take that two ways,” she said.

  “Take what two ways?”

  “Beaver.”

  “I don’t get what you mean.”

  “Don’t you know what a beaver is?”

  “Of course I know.”

  “Well?”

  “Fur-bearing mammal. Buck teeth, flat tail, and dam-building skills.”

  “I mean the other kind.”

  “There isn’t any other kind.”

  “That’s what you think.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “Beaver. Slang term.”

  “Slang term for what?”

  “You really don’t know, huh?”

  “I really don’t know.”

  “I’ll bet Kerry knows.” Mischievous old-Tamara grin. “Why don’t you ask her tonight when you get home?”

  “I’ll do that,” I lied. If I did, judging from that grin, I would regret it. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss. “So what’s on the agenda for today? Any new business?”

  “Nothing so far,” Tamara said. “But I turned up a possible lead on the deadbeat dad case.”

  “Which case is that? Oh, the split-fee from the Ballard Agency?”

  “Yup. Turns out George DeBrissac has a cousin who lives in Antioch and owns a second house in San Leandro. Rental property. Five months since the last tenants left, but it was taken off the market three months ago and there’s no record of it being rented at that time or since.”

  “How long since DeBrissac skipped Portland?”

  “Just about three months.”

  “Could be coincidence.”

  “Hah,” she said.

  Right. In our business, the old “if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck” axiom usually applies. This was particularly true in deadbeat dad cases. They tend to be the easiest skips we’re called on to find, since the individuals are generally middle-class types with little or no criminal history and some traceable source of steady income. George DeBrissac was a well-paid freelance accountant with Bay Area ties; it stood to reason that when he ran out on his ex-wife and two kids in Portland, he would head straight for northern California. The Ballard Detective Agency up there, hired by the ex-wife, had figured the same thing; so they’d called us and farmed out the hard part of the job for half the fee, one of those cooperative deals that become necessary when the client isn’t wealthy enough and the fee isn’t large enough for the primary agency to send one of its own operatives out of state. The case was Tamara’s, for the most part. She hadn’t had any luck yet in finding out where DeBrissac was working, if he was working, but now maybe it didn’t matter. The relative’s house in San Leandro looked like a strong lead-just the sort of place a not-too-imaginative skip would pick to hole up.

  I hoped so. The quicker we wrapped this up, the better. Split-fee cases can be unprofitable as hell for the subcontractor if they drag on for any length of time. I’ve never liked them, but they’re unavoidable sometimes in a back-scratching business like ours. Paul Ballard had done a favor for me once, so I couldn’t say no when he called on us. Quid pro quo.

  I said to Tamara, “You want me to go over to San Leandro, check out the house?”

  “Have to be after hours. If DeBrissac’s living there, he’s liable to be working during the day.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “Uh-uh,” she said. “You work too hard as it is. Supposed to be semiretired, putting in almost as many hours as I am.”

  “I still don’t mind. Unless you want to wait a day and send Jake over tomorrow night. He won’t mind, either.”

  “Nope. I’ll do it myself.”

  “Now who’s the workaholic.”

  “Yeah, well. Besides, I kinda like fieldwork. No reason you and Runyon should have all the fun.”

  The voice on the phone was male, young, and hesitant. Its tone held something else that I couldn’t quite iden
tify-some kind of emotional upset. “Runyon… Jake Runyon, please.”

  “He’s not in. May I take a message?”

  “When will he be back?”

  “Tomorrow morning,” I said. “He’s out of town, not due back until after close of business.”

  “So he’ll be home tonight?”

  “Probably. Is this a business or personal call?”

  Dead air.

  “Let me have your name and number, and I’ll-”

  He said, “No, I’ll call him at home,” and the line hummed in my ear.

  Tamara had just come out of the bathroom and was standing there watching me. As I lowered the receiver, she asked, “What was that about?”

  “Call for Jake.”

  “From?”

  “Wouldn’t give his name. But I think it might’ve been his son.”

  “His son? I thought Jason, Joshua, whatever his name is-”

  “Joshua.”

  “-didn’t want anything to do with him. No contact since before Christmas.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Second thoughts about a reconciliation, maybe?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Didn’t sound like that at all.”

  I had one more nonbusiness call that day, just before five o’clock. This one was personal for me-a little surprising, a little disturbing.

  The caller said his name was Buck Trail. And he was elderly and not entirely sober, judging from his cracked and thickened baritone. “You don’t know me,” he said. “Pal asked me to call for him because he can’t.”

  “What pal is that?”

  “Russ Dancer.”

  It took a couple of seconds for the name to register. My God, Russell Dancer. A name out of the past, a man I hadn’t seen in six or seven years or thought about more than a couple of times in passing since.

  “He wants to see you,” Trail said.

  “Is that right? He still living in Redwood City?”

  “Not for much longer.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You will.”

  “What does he want to see me about?”

  “Didn’t tell me that. Just asked me to call you up, give you the message. I was you, I’d come on down right away. Tonight.”

  “Why tonight?”

  “He’s dying,” Trail said. “Croakers at Kaiser Hospital give him another day, two at the outside.”

  2

  JAKE RUNYON

  His flight from L.A. landed at SFO at 5:05, which put him smack into the middle of rush-hour traffic heading into the city. Not that the stop-and-crawl bothered him. There was a time when it had, in Seattle during the evening rush when he was on his way home to Colleen. Now he had no one waiting, no reason for hurry. Rattling around his San Francisco apartment or creeping along the 280 freeway-one place was the same as another. Her death had taught him patience, if nothing else. Or maybe patience was nothing but a prettied-up name for apathy.

  Work was the only thing that mattered to him anymore, the only relief for the disinterest he felt during his nonworking hours. Colleen was gone, his son hated him and refused to have anything to do with him, what else was there? But you couldn’t do your job twenty-four/seven; you had to have sleep, food, and like it or not there was a certain amount of downtime that you had to put up with every day. Weekends were the worst. Even weekends in L.A. Saturday he’d been able to put in a full day on the missing witness case; L.A. was a damn big place and he’d spent hours on the freeways and side streets getting from one place to another, all the way from the San Fernando Valley to Riverside. Sunday, though, had been bad. Motel room, movies and a baseball game on TV, coffee shop, and more driving, the aimless kind, to kill the rest of the time. Full workday again today, at least. And now he was home and looking at five more busy workdays before he had to face another Sunday.

  Home. Just a word now, like a word in a foreign language you didn’t understand.

  Into the city, finally, crawling past the state university campus and on up Nineteenth Avenue. When he neared Taraval he thought about turning off-coffee shops and Asian restaurants along there-but he kept on going instead. Hungry, but not hungry enough to bother stopping. Later he’d go out to eat. A bath first, soak out some of the driving and airplane kinks, the weekend fatigue.

  His apartment was in a nondescript building on Ortega, not far off Nineteenth. Four rooms that might’ve been rooms in a hotel or boardinghouse or the motel in L.A.; the only thing that personalized it, made it a place worth returning to, was the framed photograph of Colleen that he kept on the bedside nightstand. An eagerness to see the photo came on him as he keyed open the door, a shadow of the eagerness he’d felt when she was alive and he was coming home to her. He had another photo of her in his wallet, but it wasn’t as clear and sharp a likeness as the one in the bedside frame.

  The message light on the answering machine was blinking. He registered that-Tamara or Bill, probably, work-related-and kept on going into the bedroom. He picked up Colleen’s photo, stood looking at it for a long time. God, she’d been beautiful. Red hair, those impish Irish green eyes, that beacon-like smile. He put the frame down. If he looked at her image too long, the pain would start again and then he’d be in for a long, bad night.

  He shed his overcoat, started into the kitchen to put on water for tea-Colleen’s drink, his drink now-then changed his mind and went back into the living room. Might as well find out what the office wanted first.

  But it wasn’t the office. The voice on the machine said, “This is Joshua. I’ll probably regret this, but I need to talk to somebody.. Call me.” That was all except for his new number, the unlisted-to-avoid-his-father number.

  Runyon was beyond surprise at anything, business or personal, but sometimes things happened that came close. The hostage situation just before Christmas. And now this call out of the blue. No communication between Joshua and him since their one disastrous meeting in December, the boy so poisoned by Andrea’s bitter, alcohol-fueled hatred for Runyon and her imagined abandonment of them that the father-son gap seemed impossible to bridge… so why the sudden change of heart? I’ll probably regret this, but I need to talk to somebody. If it was a change of heart.

  Still, hope stirred in him. The kid had called. That was something; maybe it was a beginning. He played the message back, noting the day and time of the call: today, 2:27 P.M. Less than four hours ago. He wrote the unlisted number in his notebook, then picked up the receiver and tapped it out.

  Joshua answered immediately, as if he’d been sitting next to the phone, waiting for it to ring. “Yes? Hello?”

  “Hello, son.”

  Breathing sounds.

  “Joshua?”

  “I’m here.”

  Different tone of voice than on the message. The cold, distant one again.

  “I’m glad you called,” Runyon said.

  “Don’t be. It was a mistake.”

  “Why a mistake?”

  “I can’t talk to you. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  “No. There’s nothing you can do.”

  “What did you want me to do?”

  “Nothing. Just forget it.”

  “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

  “No.”

  “Something’s wrong. I can hear it in your voice.”

  “I said forget it. It’s not important.”

  “No? Must’ve cost you a lot, that call.”

  “More than you’ll ever know.”

  “Then talk to me.”

  “What’s the use? Straight society doesn’t give a shit about people like us.”

  “Wrong. Some of us do.”

  Breathing.

  “Talk to me, son.”

  Joshua said, “I’m not your son,” and broke the connection.

  Runyon lowered the receiver. He stood for half a minute or so, listening to the quiet in the apartment, making a decision. All right. He went back into the bedroom for his coat
and car keys.

  The old house was on Hartford just off Twentieth-a steep street of one- and two-story Stick Victorians and small, plain apartment buildings. The flat Joshua shared with his roommate was in one of the two-story Sticks, on the ground level.

  Runyon had been there once before. A drive-by, just to see what kind of place his son had picked to live in. He’d gotten the address by checking the reverse city directory. The roommate’s name was Kenneth Hitchcock, age twenty-eight-six years older than Joshua; born in Visalia in the Central Valley, graduated from Fresno State with a degree in business administration, worked as a teller in a downtown branch of B of A, had never been in trouble of any kind either as a juvenile or an adult. Curiosity had prompted the background check, nothing more. Runyon could have gotten their unlisted phone number, too, easily enough, but he hadn’t bothered. It wouldn’t have done any good to keep calling, invading Joshua’s privacy; would’ve just increased the rift between them. All he cared about, once his attempts to create an understanding had been unequivocally rejected, was that his son be safe, healthy, solvent, and reasonably content.

  But now there was this new contact, initiated by Joshua. A reaching out for some reason that wasn’t clear yet. It had opened the door, and Runyon wasn’t about to stand by and let it slam shut again without some push. Andrea’s alcoholic-fueled hate and vindictiveness had prevented him from being a part of Joshua’s life for the first twenty years, but he could be there for him now. And would be, whatever it took.

  He hunted up a parking place, walked back to the building through a chilly night wind that had the smell of fog in it. There was a gate, and a short path that led from the street, to a narrow front stoop. He rang the bell. Before long, footsteps. A peephole was set into the door; Joshua must have looked out through it because the door came open fast. Tight-set face, eyes that snapped with anger, words that were flung more than spoken. “What’re you doing here?”

  “We didn’t finish our conversation.”

  “Yes we did. I told you, I changed my mind. I don’t have anything to say to you.”

  “You did this afternoon.”

  “How did you know where I live? We’re not listed in the phone book. Oh, right… snooping’s what you do for a living.”

  Runyon let that slide. “Something’s wrong,” he said. “Don’t tell me different. It’s in your face as well as your voice.”