Nightcrawlers nd-30

by Bill Pronzini

  Zalesky’s address was one of the private homes, a dark wood and stucco job set back a few steps from the sidewalk. An ornate security gate barred the entrance. It told Runyon going in that Zalesky’s job as a systems analyst, whatever that was, for a banking outfit paid well. The interior of the house confirmed it. Antiques of one kind and another crowded the living room; the carpet on the floor was an expensive-looking wine-red oriental, the threads in an elaborate tapestry on one wall had the glitter of real gold. Velvety curtains were drawn over the expensive view.

  The man himself was in his late thirties, short, dark, and cynical. The cynicism showed in his eyes, the set of his mouth, his voice. It wasn’t the result of his beating; it had been a part of him for a long time, maybe ever since he’d found out that he was different from the so-called norm, an outsider and an object of lesser men’s hate and scorn. His left forearm was in a cast; fading bruises discolored the left side of his face, and there was a bandage over some kind of wound on the right cheekbone. He moved slowly, stiffly-testimony to other bruises, other wounds, beneath the silk robe and pajamas he wore.

  “Sorry I’m not dressed,” he said when he let Runyon in. “Still hurts like hell when I try to put on my pants.”

  “No apology necessary.”

  “One of them kicked me in the ass. I’ve got a bruise on my left buttock the size of a cantaloupe.”

  “Must be painful.”

  “Only when I sit down. I’m going to stand, if you don’t mind, but you go ahead and have a seat.”

  Runyon said he’d stand too. While he was declining the offer of a drink, a fluff ball white cat appeared from behind one of the antiques and came over to sniff at his shoes.

  “That’s Snow White,” Zalesky said. There was pride in his voice, as if he were introducing a relative. “Pure-blood Angora. You like cats?”

  “Yes.” Colleen had owned a cat when he met her. Pure black alley cat named Midnight. Lived with them for the first eight years they were married, and she’d cried for three days when it died.

  The Angora decided it had had enough of him and his shoes and drifted away. Zalesky made clucking noises; it ignored him, too. “Independent little bastard,” he said affectionately. Then he said, “So you’re Joshua Fleming’s father. I don’t remember him mentioning you until his call a few minutes ago.”

  “We’re estranged,” Runyon said.

  “Oh. I see.”

  “Not for the reason you might think. His mother and I were divorced when he was a baby. She blamed me. So does he.”

  “With just cause?”

  “I don’t think so, but he won’t listen to my side of it.”

  “Young and stubborn. I was like that myself, once, for different reasons. I learned to be more tolerant of my folks as I got older. Maybe he will, too.”

  “What I’m hoping.”

  “Is that why you’re doing this? Investigating these bashings?”

  “Partly. He contacted me, opened a closed door that I’d like to keep open.”

  “What other reason?”

  “He’s hurting, he needs my help. That’s one.”

  “There’s another?”

  “I’ve been in law enforcement most of my adult life,” Runyon said. “I don’t like to see innocent people hurt and I damn well hate the ones who do the hurting. This pair that beat you up, put Joshua’s roommate in critical condition… if they’re not stopped, they’re liable to kill somebody. I don’t want that to happen.”

  Zalesky said, “Commendable,” and seemed to mean it. “I wish more cops felt that way.”

  “So do I.”

  “I’ll do anything I can to help, of course, but you already know that. What is it you’d like to know?”

  “To begin with, where were you attacked?”

  “Just up the street from here, on the park side. I’d just come home from visiting a friend, just parked my car and gotten out.”

  “What time?”

  “After one A.M. Close to one-thirty.”

  “They followed you?”

  “No. They were parked a couple of spaces away, across from my house.”

  “As if they were waiting for you?”

  “It seemed that way.”

  “But they were strangers?”

  “Oh, yes,” Zalesky said. “Definitely. I suppose they spotted me somewhere, some other time, and followed me then. One of those random things. It’s quiet up here late at night, I must’ve seemed like a good target. I don’t know. With men like that… who the hell knows?”

  “They were in a pickup truck?”

  “Yes. Black or dark blue, I’m not sure which.”

  “Could you identify the make and model?”

  “I don’t know anything about cars, much less pickups.”

  “Did it seem new or old?”

  “More old than new.”

  “Anything distinctive about it that you can remember?”

  “Distinctive…” Zalesky’s brow furrowed, smoothed again. “Well, there was a Confederate flag in the back window. I noticed that when they came out at me.”

  “A real flag or some kind of decal?”

  “I think it was real. My God, you don’t suppose they could be Klan members? In San Francisco, of all places in this country?”

  “Anything’s possible,” Runyon said. “So they came out and then what? Just attacked you, or did they say anything first?”

  “Oh, they had a lot to say. The usual run of gay insults. One of them called me sweet thing… Christ. The other one said something ridiculous about teaching me not to mess with boys and then they started hitting me.”

  “They use weapons of any kind?”

  “One of them had a pipe or club made out of metal. Aluminum, I think.” Zalesky shuddered. “I can still hear the sound it made when he hit me with it.”

  “Little League baseball bat?”

  “I suppose it could’ve been. The other one hit me with his fists, kept kicking me when I was on the sidewalk. They were both laughing. The whole time… laughing, as if they were really having a fun time.”

  “What can you tell me about them?”

  “Not much. It was dark and I couldn’t see their faces clearly. One of them wore a jacket with a hood and the other a cap.”

  “What kind of cap?”

  “I’m not sure… it might’ve been a baseball cap.”

  “Was he the one with the aluminum club?”

  “… Yes, I think so.”

  “How old were they?”

  “Early twenties, maybe twenty-five.”

  “Big?”

  “The one in the jacket was. Over six feet and… what’s the word I want? Not fat, but… burly, chunky. Pale skin, at least it seemed pale in the dark. He may have red hair.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Freckles,” Zalesky said. “On his forehead and cheeks.”

  “You’re sure they were freckles, not blemishes?”

  “Freckles, yes. And I remember a lock of hair hanging out from under his cap. Light-colored, but not blond… it didn’t look blond to me.”

  Runyon said, “Good. That helps. What about the other one?”

  “Tallish, slender. Average-looking. That’s all I remember about him.”

  The white cat reappeared and began to wind itself around Zalesky’s legs, purring, making little burbling noises in its throat. Zalesky said, “What’s the matter, baby? You need a little love?” He bent, slowly and with evident pain, and scooped the cat up with his good hand and hugged it against his chest. The purring got louder. And louder still when Zalesky buried his face in the animal’s thick fur.

  Private moment; Runyon looked away. The cat wasn’t the only one who needed a little love right now.

  He was looking at the wall tapestry, trying to make out what the scene depicted on it was all about, when Zalesky put an abrupt end to the private moment. “I keep having the feeling I’ve seen him someplace before.”

  “Who?”


  “The tall, slender one.”

  “Before that night? Where?”

  “That’s just it, I can’t quite recall.”

  “Someplace around here, this neighborhood?”

  “No.”

  “Near where you work?”

  “The Transamerica Pyramid… no, not there.”

  “Try it this way,” Runyon said. “Day or night?”

  “I’m not… Night. It might’ve been at night.”

  “Where do you go nights? Public places, I mean.”

  “That’s not an easy question to answer. I go out frequently. Concerts, plays, the cinema. Dinner with friends. The Castro scene, too, of course-bars, clubs. I’m not really into cruising, but now and then… well, never mind, you’re not interested in that.”

  “Could that be where you saw him? Over in the Castro?”

  “He’s hardly the type to frequent gay bars, Mr. Runyon.”

  “Maybe not the bars themselves, but the neighborhood’s a good possibility. The two of them have to know the general area well enough to go hunting for victims. That might include the sections where the bars and clubs are.”

  “I suppose so, but… it wasn’t in a car or pickup that I saw him. I’m sure of that much.”

  “On foot, then. Walking the area alone or with his buddy.”

  Zalesky nuzzled the Angora again. It was still purring, but making twitchy movements now as if it had had enough attention. “I don’t think so,” he said, and kissed the cat on top of the head and then let it jump down.

  “All right.” Runyon wrote his home phone number on the back of one of his agency business cards. “If it comes back to you, give me a call, would you? Office or home.”

  “I will. If you think it might be important.”

  “The more information I have, the easier it’ll be to find them.”

  Zalesky nodded. And then frowned again, tapping the business card against his lower lip. “Outside one of the clubs,” he said abruptly.

  “Say again?”

  “That’s it, that’s where I saw him. Outside one of the clubs. He was arguing with somebody…”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “Two or three weeks, maybe a little longer.”

  “Do you know the person he was arguing with?”

  “Well… uh… I’m not sure…”

  “Not sure?”

  “I’ve seen him around, but I don’t know his name.”

  Lying, Runyon thought. Why?

  “Seen him around where?”

  “In the Castro. Here and there.”

  “Describe him.”

  “In his twenties, blond, an angelic face…” Zalesky seemed nervous now, ill at ease. “I’m not very good at describing people.”

  “This argument. What was it about?”

  “I… don’t know, I was just passing by.”

  Another lie. Falsehoods and deception weren’t natural to him; his eyes slid sideways, a little flick of guilt, when he wasn’t telling the truth.

  “So it wasn’t a violent argument.”

  “No. The guy was in his face, the blond’s face, but not touching him.”

  “Doing all the talking?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was anyone with you at the time?”

  “With me? Oh… no, I was alone.”

  One more lie.

  “That’s all I can tell you,” Zalesky said. “I’m not feeling very well… I’m still in a lot of pain and I took some Vicodin before you came and it’s making me woozy. If you don’t mind…”

  “Sure, I understand. Just one more question. The argument was outside one of the clubs, you said. Which one?”

  Hesitation. Another lie coming up? No. Zalesky held eye contact when he finally answered.

  “The Dark Spot,” he said.

  6

  TAMARA

  Nine-thirty, and still nobody home at 1122 Willard.

  She was terminally bored already. She had her headset on, Norah Jones’s Grammy-winner, “Come Away With Me,” cranked up in the Walkman; the good pop-jazz kept her awake but it didn’t do much for the boredom. The enforced sitting in the small, cramped car was what was messing with her head. Messing with her rear end, too. Bill had told her stakeouts could be a pain in the ass, and now she was finding out that he’d hadn’t been kidding. And she’d only been here, what, not more than a couple of hours? He’d done surveillance work that lasted four, six, as many as eight hours. Whoo. Any job like that came up in the future, she’d be quick to hand it over to Jake Runyon.

  She sighed and stared at the empty street and wondered if she ought to pack it in. Natural aversion to giving up on a job, even for one night, but much more of this and she’d be listening to complaints from her ass all day tomorrow. Besides which, she had to pee. Not too bad yet, but before long it’d be a crisis. Pepsi and 7UP didn’t have a thing on SlimFast when it came to fast trips through your plumbing. One can equaled one trip to the can.

  Another fifteen minutes, max. Then she was outta here.

  Thinking about SlimFast made her wonder if maybe there was a Slim•Fast snack bar hiding in the bottom of her purse. Not that she was hungry, but nibbling one of those bars would make the fifteen minutes go by a lot faster. Small bites, let the chocolate melt on her tongue before she swallowed… that was the way to do it. Her mouth began to water. She pulled her purse over, rummaged around inside.

  Damn! Ate the last one at noon, forgot to put another one in there.

  So now she was not only bored, but she had chocolate on her mind. Tasted chocolate, craved chocolate. How could those SlimFast people make snack bars that were loaded with chocolate and tasted like Snickers bars but were still good for you and helped you lose weight?

  Come Away with Me had cycled through and was replaying. By feel she worked the buttons on the Walkman, ejected the CD, found another one in the case that she thought was Springsteen, and fired that one up. Oh, great, she’d grabbed the wrong one. Classical instead of rock. Beethoven, with Yo-Yo Ma on the cello.

  Chocolate out, Horace back in.

  No. She wasn’t going to think about Horace any more tonight. Hell with Horace. Vonda was better, Vonda and her new white, Jewish boy toy. In love with him? Sure, she was. She’d been in love with every guy she went to bed with, it was her sexual MO. Couldn’t do the nasty for the sake of doing the nasty, just because it felt good-no, there had to be all this emotional attachment.

  Well, girl? You’re not much different, check out you and Horace Horace again.

  Vonda. Vonda, dammit. The black-white thing. Yeah, that’d be a big problem, if by some miracle she actually was in love with this Ben Sherman guy. And him being Jewish made the problem twice as big. Her family was borderline racist, brother Alton not so borderline; they’d make her life miserable if they found out, a living hell if she moved in with him or went all the way and married him. Stupid. Not so much Vonda, you couldn’t help who you fell in love with, it was all a matter of chemistry and hormones. Her family, the us-versus-them bullshit. She’d felt that way herself once, all the militant hardass stuff, but not anymore. Everybody had to live with everybody else, what difference did it make what color you were? Or what religion? Or who you slept with or lived with or married? If people would just Car coming.

  There’d been cars before, a bunch of them. This one probably wouldn’t belong to George DeBrissac either, but the lights were coming toward her, high and slow, and she scooted down until her butt was half off the seat. The glare filled the car, only this time they didn’t slide on past. Car slowed and then stopped on the street close in front of the Ford.

  Oh, man, she thought, cops. Somebody saw me sitting out here, called 911, and now I’m gonna get hassled.

  But it wasn’t cops, cop cars didn’t have high-riding headlights. In the next second she heard gears grinding and then the lights began to retreat and swing out away from her. Backing up. Backing into one of the driveways on this side, close to where she was parked. />
  Tamara blew out her breath, eased up on the seat until she could squint over the dashboard. Van. No, SUV, one of those big mothers with tinted windows so you couldn’t see inside, gliding up the drive of the brick-faced house directly in front of her. She sighed again. Somebody coming home, people on this block had been coming home the whole time she’d been here.

  She’d probably have quit paying attention, except the SUV was right in her line of sight. So she watched it stop within a few feet of a closed garage set just back from the house. Lights went off. Driver didn’t get out right away, must’ve been a minute or so before the door opened. It was dark over there, but the distance wasn’t much more than twenty-five yards. Big dude. Black man? She had the impression he might be, but she couldn’t be sure. Wore dark clothes, some kind of cap pulled down low on his forehead.

  A cramp was forming in her left buttock. Terrific. She wiggled, trying to ease it. No good. She needed to sit up, but she didn’t want to do that while the dude was hanging over there, maybe call his attention to her. She wiggled some more, willing him to hurry up, go inside, let her sit up-let her get out of here. Now she really had to pee.

  He hurried, but not straight into the house. Went around to the back of the SUV instead and hauled up the hatch. Light didn’t go on inside. But in he went, on hands and knees, out of sight for a few seconds. Then he backed out again to where she could see him, and when he straightened up he had something cradled against his chest with one arm. Something a couple of feet long wrapped in what looked like a blanket.

  Something that moved, kicked… struggled.

  Tamara blinked, squinting. Eyes playing tricks. No, there it was again, the kicking, the struggling, while the man hauled the hatch down and slammed it shut. He hugged whatever was in the blanket closer to his chest, using both hands and arms now. Stood for a few seconds, looking around, looking straight at the Ford for a heartbeat-gave her a chill even though she knew he couldn’t see her in the dark-then he half ran across a patchy lawn and up onto the porch. More struggles while he was getting the door unlocked. Then he was gone inside with whatever it was in the blanket.