Nightcrawlers nd-30

by Bill Pronzini

  Joshua was a handsome kid, Andrea’s kid in that respect, too-her blond hair, her smoky blue eyes, her narrow mouth and delicate features-but he wasn’t so good-looking right now. Drawn, pale, puffy, as if he hadn’t slept much recently. Misery as well as anger showed in the blue eyes, some kind of visceral hurt.

  “Why should you care?”

  “That’s a stupid question and you know it.”

  “Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

  “Same category,” Runyon said. “I have left you alone. If you’d wanted me to go on leaving you alone, you wouldn’t have called.”

  Joshua met his gaze briefly, looked away.

  “We’re going to talk, son. Be easier on both of us if we do it inside.”

  He moved ahead on the last word, crowding the kid a little. No more resistance; Joshua gave ground, turned aside to let him past.

  Runyon automatically catalogued details as he advanced. Foyer and a short hallway with three closed doors leading off it. The hall opened into a big living room, uncurtained windows in the south wall that framed a broken view of an overgrown yard and the backsides of neighboring houses. Neat, clean, tastefully furnished in greens and browns and dusky reds. Paintings on the walls that had an amateurish look but weren’t badly done-expressionist style, all blobs and whorls of dark color on a white background, all the work of the same artist. Grouped on a folded dropcloth in front of one window were an easel, a chair, a big Tensor lamp, and a small table covered with brushes and jars of paint in symmetrical rows.

  “You the painter?” he asked.

  “No. Kenneth.”

  “He’s pretty good.”

  “Yes, he is. I wouldn’t have thought you’d like expressionist art.”

  “There’s a lot about me you don’t know. Is Kenneth here? I’d like to meet him.”

  “No, he’s not here.” A muscle spasmed in Joshua’s cheek. “He’s in the hospital.”

  “Yes? I’m sorry to hear it.”

  “Three days now and his condition is still critical.”

  “What’s the matter with him?”

  Hesitation. Then, in an angry, anguished rush: “He has a fractured arm, four cracked ribs, a broken cheekbone, and a punctured lung, that’s what’s the matter with him. Among other injuries. His face.. God, his poor face…”

  “What happened?”

  “He was beaten up. They used some kind of club.”

  “They?”

  “Fucking homophobes. Gay-bashers.”

  “So that’s it. Known to him?”

  “I don’t think so. He’s been under heavy sedation… confused when he’s awake. He can’t seem to remember much, just that there were two of them.”

  “When and where?”

  “Last Friday night. Saturday morning. He was on his way home from work, he moonlights as a bartender three nights a week at The Dark Spot on Castro. They must’ve been cruising for another target, it was late and he was alone…”

  “Another target?”

  “He wasn’t their first victim, the bastards.”

  “How many others?”

  “Two in the past two weeks. I know the second man.”

  “Yes?”

  “Gene Zalesky. He… used to be a friend of Kenneth’s.”

  “How badly was he hurt?”

  “Not as badly as Kenneth. He’s home now.”

  “Was he able to provide descriptions of the attackers?”

  “Young, early to mid twenties… the same pair.”

  “Driving what kind of vehicle?”

  “An old pickup truck, black or dark blue.” Joshua went to one of the chairs, slumped down on it. Runyon stayed where he was. “I told Kenneth to be careful, ask somebody to give him a ride home, take a cab if he had to. But he wasn’t afraid, he didn’t believe it would happen to him… Goddamn them! Goddamn them?”

  “Easy, son.”

  “Don’t tell me that. That’s what they kept saying.”

  “Who?”

  “The cops. Bullshit, that’s all. They didn’t care. Just another fag beating. File a report and forget about it.”

  Runyon said, “It doesn’t work that way,” but they were just words. It did work that way, much of the time. And not just in crimes against gays or other hate crimes-in nearly all low-profile street felonies. Too many crimes, too many criminals, too little time and manpower. Too many excuses and too much apathy.

  Joshua said bitterly, “I thought you didn’t lie. Isn’t that what you told me in December?”

  “All right. I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry. What good is sorry?” Shuddery breath. The blue eyes were moist now; shifting emotions, pain the most intense. “He could die. Kenneth could die.”

  “His condition that critical?”

  “Internal bleeding. The doctors had trouble stopping it. It could start again at any time…”

  It seemed for a few seconds that Joshua might break down. Runyon felt an impulse to sit beside him, give him a shoulder to lean on. Didn’t do it because he knew the gesture would be rejected. What his son wanted from him had nothing to do with fatherly solace.

  Joshua made a visible effort to pull himself together. At length he said, “I hate this,” in a shaky voice. “Kenneth is the strong one. I’m no damn good in a crisis.”

  Runyon said, “I am.”

  “I just… I don’t know what to do.”

  “You’ve already done all you can. Calling me was the right thing.”

  For the first time Joshua looked at him squarely. “Could you find them, stop them before they kill somebody?”

  “Maybe. No guarantees.”

  “Would you? If I hired you, paid you…”

  “No.”

  “But you just said-”

  “I’ll do what I can, but not for pay.”

  Silent stare.

  “You’re my son,” Runyon said. “That’s all the reason I need.”

  3

  TAMARA

  Vonda said, “Well, I met this guy.”

  “Uh-huh.” So what else is new? Tamara thought.

  “A couple of weeks ago at a club in SoMa. We danced and had some drinks and he asked me for my phone number and I gave it to him. I was a little ripped or I probably wouldn’t have.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “He kept calling me up and I gave in and I’ve been out with him a couple of times. A really nice guy, and gorgeous… I mean a real hunk. His name is Ben, Ben Sherman; he played football when he was at UC Berkeley. He has a good job, he works for a brokerage company in the financial district.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Saturday night we went out again, dinner and dancing, and afterward… well, he invited me to his place on Tel Hill, he’s got a great apartment up there, terrific view and everything…”

  “Let me guess. You ended up in bed.”

  “I wasn’t going to, it just happened. I mean, you know me, I don’t usually sleep with a guy until I get to know him first.”

  Oh, yeah, right. She’d been friends with Vonda since they were sophomores at Redwood City High. Shared some wild times, their gangsta period when they’d chased with some rough homies, smoked weed, done all kinds of stuff that came close to crossing the line. Vonda looked a little like a young Robin Givens, slim and sleek but with a J-Lo booty; guys had been all over her since her boobs started to show. She’d lost her cherry when she was fifteen, must’ve slept with fifty different guys before and after she cleaned up her act.

  “How was it?” The usual girl-talk question.

  “Oh, great. Wow. The best ever. I mean, Ben really knows how to treat a woman in bed. But it wasn’t just sex.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “No lie. There’s a difference, you know there is. Sex is one thing, making love’s another. I thought I’d made love a time or two, but with Ben… Lord, I think I’m in love with that man.”

  “Uh-huh.” She’d heard that one before, too.

  “Seriously, Tam. And it’s mutual. H
e came right out and said he loves me.”

  Tamara covered a sigh with a sip from her glass. Mineral water. And a white wine spritzer for Vonda. Tamara Corbin and Vonda McGee, the two badass young ‘ho’s all cornrowed and grunge-dressed and party-ready. If those high school homies could see the two of them now, nine years later, one a partner in a private investigation agency, the other an up-and-coming sales rep at the S.F. Design Center, wearing conservative business outfits and sipping mineral water and white wine spritzers in a crowd of mostly white establishment types in the South Park Cafe. Whoo! Sometimes she could hardly believe it herself, all the big jumps and sharp-angle turns in her life…

  “And I wish neither of us was,” Vonda said.

  “Was what?”

  “In love. Ben Sherman, my God, of all the guys in the world.”

  “Why? What’s wrong with him?”

  “He’s white,” Vonda said.

  Tamara stopped being bored. “Uh-oh.”

  “That’s not all. He’s more than just white.”

  “How can he be more than just white?”

  “He’s Jewish, too,” Vonda said.

  “… Damn, girl!”

  “I know, I know. That’s why I wanted to get together tonight, I had to talk to somebody about this and you’re the only one I can tell. I’ve never been with a white guy before, you know that, it’s never been my thing. And you know how my people feel about the interracial thing. Alton’ll go ballistic when he finds out.”

  “He doesn’t have to find out.” Alton was her brother, a head case who’d never outgrown his hatred of Whitey. “If you don’t see this Ben Sherman again.”

  “I don’t think I can do that, just blow him off. I really do love him, Tam.”

  “Great sex isn’t love. You’ve only known the guy two weeks.”

  “It’s not just physical and it doesn’t matter how long I’ve known him. You’ve been there, you understand what I’m saying. Same feelings you had for Horace right from the first.”

  Horace. Let’s not get started on Horace.

  “What am I gonna do?” Vonda said.

  “Got to be your decision, nobody else’s. Yours and Ben’s. What’s he say about it?”

  “He says it doesn’t matter how other people feel, it only matters how we feel about each other.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s right. But not a hundred percent right.”

  “I know it.”

  “Still got to do what your heart and your gut tell you to.”

  “What would you do? I mean, suppose Horace was white. And Jewish.”

  Horace again. “Well, he’s not.”

  “Come on, Tam. Suppose he was. What would you do?”

  “I don’t know,” Tamara said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  Eastbound traffic on the Bay Bridge was still moderately heavy, even though it was nearly seven o’clock when Tamara drove up the ramp and joined the stream. The westbound upper deck and the bridge railings and girders created a tunnel effect that magnified car and tire sounds into a steady shushing hum. After a while it seemed almost like a whispering voice.

  Saying Horace, Horace, Horace.

  Get a grip, she thought. She would have turned on the radio and slipped in a CD, but there was something wrong with the volume control-you couldn’t turn it up past a low hum not much different from the one outside. Damn thing had worked fine before he left. Figured. His car. Ten-year-old Ford hatchback that he’d left with her because he hadn’t wanted to chance driving it all the way to Philadelphia in the middle of winter. Maybe it missed him too. Yeah, or it was just a sign of things going wrong, screwing up.

  Vonda wasn’t the only one with a screwed-up love life. All God’s chillun got troubles and love troubles were high on the list. You could empathize with other people’s, but you couldn’t get too caught up in them when you had your own to deal with. Couldn’t give somebody else advice when you couldn’t advise yourself.

  Three and a half months now since Horace had left for Philly. Got his gig with the philharmonic back there, second seat cello, doing fine. Living with one of the other black men on the orchestra, a violinist named Cedric. Settled in. Just as she was settled in: agency partnership, new offices, expanding caseload and all the details and decisions that were part of the package. She wasn’t going anywhere for a long time, if ever. And neither was Horace.

  They talked on the phone once a week, exchanged e-mails, said all the right things about how much they missed each other and loved each other, made tentative plans to get together here or back east. But they still hadn’t done it. Something got in the way every time. And the phone calls were getting shorter because they didn’t seem to have as much to say to each other, couldn’t relate long distance to all the changes that made up their new, separate lives.

  She’d known it would be this way. Three-thousand-mile relationships might work for a while, but without personal contact, days and nights together to pump some fresh blood into the relationship, it’s bound to start withering. Sooner or later it would wither past the point of saving. Just dry up and croak, like a plant without water.

  It was already happening to her. She felt it, fought it, couldn’t stop it. All the lonely nights in the Outer Richmond flat they’d shared… she’d got so she hated going there after work. Stayed later and later at the office, started taking on after-hours field jobs like this deadbeat dad case tonight. Better that than staring at the walls or the boob tube and throwing pizza and junk food down her neck, which she’d done for about a week after Horace left. After that she’d gone the other way, started to lose her appetite. That was the main reason she’d dropped twelve pounds, not any real desire to shed the flab; she just wasn’t interested in food anymore. Or much of anything else except work.

  Now that’s a lie, she thought as she pulled out to pass a slow-moving truck. She was still interested in sex, oh Lord yes. On her mind more and more lately. Tonight, thanks to Vonda. Three and a half months is a long time to go without it when you’re used to getting it regularly. So damn horny sometimes she felt like she was ready to explode. Vonda might’ve gotten in over her head with a white, Jewish dude, but at least Vonda was getting laid.

  Maybe Vonda would loan out Ben Sherman for a night. Or maybe he had a friend who wanted to change his luck. She’d never slept with a white guy herself-or a Jewish guy, for that matter. Might change her luck.

  Stupid thoughts.

  Come on, Tamara. You want to do the nasty so bad, you know you can find somebody to do it with without even trying. Half a fox now that the love handles were slimmed down. Sleek and sassy. Must be a few hundred guys in the city that wouldn’t mind getting into her pants for a night or two, no strings. Pick a night, pick a club, pick a dick.

  More stupid thoughts.

  She sighed. She was off the bridge now, moving toward the interchange and 880 south, but she could still hear that damn shushing hum.

  Horace. Horace, Horace, Horace…

  The house George DeBrissac’s cousin owned in San Leandro was on Willard Street, 1122 Willard. She’d looked it up on the Netscape MapQuest site before leaving the office: Willard was in the wide trough between the 880 and 580 freeways, closest to 880 off San Pablo Avenue. Simple directions, should be pretty easy to find.

  It was. Blue-collar residential neighborhood, not much different from dozens of others in the East Bay-that was apparent even on a dark night in an area without many streetlights. Old houses, mostly frame, a few stucco, on pretty good-sized lots. Probably an ethnic mix of whites, blacks, maybe a few Latinos and Asians.

  Finding 1122 was a little harder. No numbers on the street signs, no reflector curbside numbers for the headlights to pick up, the houses set far enough back from the street so it wasn’t easy to read the numbers on them. Tamara drove slow, with the driver’s window down, until she passed a house with the porch light on: 906. Which way did the numbers run, up or down? Down-the next block was 800. She made a U-turn, came back to the 1100
block, finally pinpointed the right one.

  Boxy frame house, hedges hiding most of the front porch, low-maintenance yard behind a Cyclone fence interwoven with some kind of scraggly vine. Dark, no light showing anywhere. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t anybody inside. The front windows looked like they had heavy coverings, and there might be lights at the back that she couldn’t see from here.

  She kept on going, circled the block, eased back up Willard in the same direction as before. Fifty yards or so across from 1122, a gnarly curbside tree laid out a big puddle of shadow. She parked in the puddle, darkened the car. Unobstructed diagonal view of 1122 from there, if she needed to maintain a surveillance.

  Now that she was here, out on a field job, she began to feel a little stoked. Working on the computer was satisfying, she was an expert hacker, but it got boring sometimes. Fieldwork wasn’t, not yet anyway. She’d worked with Bill long enough to know that night jobs could be occasionally dangerous, and dull and more boring than office work when long stakeouts were involved, but she wasn’t worried about any of that. Probably lose its fascination for her before long, but right now it was all still new and pretty cool.

  She remembered what the boss man had taught her. Stay alert in unfamiliar territory, use your senses. Right. Street was deserted, nobody on the sidewalks or in any of the nearby yards. She got out, locked the door. Lights in some of the houses, salsa music playing somewhere, distant traffic sounds. Cross the street, not too fast and not too slow. Don’t go into a strange yard until you make sure there aren’t any dogs or BEWARE OF DOG signs. 1122 was a canine-free zone as far as she could tell. Don’t try to get past locked gates unless it’s absolutely necessary. Gate in the Cyclone fence wasn’t locked. She opened it, walked up the path and up the steps to the door.

  Nothing to hear from inside. There was a doorbell; she pushed it and it made a noise that sounded more like a long fart than a bell. She waited a minute or so, then released the fart again. Still silent inside.

  Alongside the house on the left was a gravel driveway. She quit the porch, went over there. Make sure you’re alone and unobserved before you go prowling around strange property. Yeah, she thought, and that goes double for a black woman even in a mixed neighborhood after dark. Alone and unobserved as far as she could tell; the house next door on that side was as dark as this one. She moved along the driveway to a garage that was just about big enough for one car. A rear yard opened up alongside the garage, but there wasn’t anything in it except a half-dead tree and some ground cover that was more weeds than lawn. The garage didn’t have any windows that she could see. The lift-up door was probably locked, and even if it wasn’t, she’d be asking for trouble to even try looking inside. Never take unnecessary risks. Right. No point in it anyway. If the deadbeat was hiding out here, he was somewhere else right now.