Camouflage (Nameless Detective Mysteries)

by Bill Pronzini

  The South Park Café, on the opposite side of the square, was already starting to fill up with the Friday evening happy hour crowd when Runyon and I walked in. We managed to claim the last available table just ahead of a young couple who glared at us as if we’d robbed them of something valuable. Funny thing was, it was the same table we’d sat at a couple of weeks ago, at a quieter time of day, for the same reason we were here now—to talk over a personal matter. Only then it had been my personal matter, a nasty bit of business involving my adopted daughter, Emily, that still raised my blood pressure whenever I thought about it. I’d asked Jake to join me in doing something that was borderline illegal, and despite the professional risk he’d agreed without hesitation. I owed him any kind of favor in return.

  Runyon had also noticed the coincidence. He said as we waited for service, “Nothing like the last time we were here. Except that it’s about a kid in trouble … maybe.”

  “You’re not sure?”

  “Not a hundred percent. I could use your input.”

  “Glad to help if I can, you know that. Who’s the kid?”

  “Bryn’s son, Bobby.”

  Bryn was a woman he’d met not long ago, the first relationship he’d had since the death of his second wife, Colleen, in Seattle. Colleen had wasted away slowly from ovarian cancer, which left him devastated. He’d moved down here to be close to his estranged gay son from his first marriage, but they still hadn’t reconciled. Jake’s life had narrowed down to his work—he was a hell of a good investigator—and for the first year and a half he’d worked for the agency he’d been a tightly closed-off loner. Bryn Darby had brought him out of that hard depressive shell, started him living again for something more than his job. She was a commercial artist, divorced, with the one young son and a home in the Sunset District; that was all I knew about her, aside from one reference to a “physical problem” that he wouldn’t elaborate on.

  “What’s the trouble with Bobby?” I asked.

  This wasn’t easy for Runyon. He sat tight-mouthed for a few seconds, scraping fingernails along his hammerhead jaw, before he answered. “Bryn thinks he’s being abused. Physically.”

  “Christ. By whom?”

  “His father. Robert Darby. West Portal lawyer, used his position to convince a judge to grant him primary custody.”

  “But you’re not sure about the abuse?”

  “Bryn is. Bobby showed up at school with a fractured arm, claimed it happened in a fall. The doctor who set it found bruises on the kid’s back and arms. Bobby said he got them playing football with a couple of schoolmates.”

  “Any other physical evidence?”

  “No. But Bryn says there’ve been personality changes consistent with abuse—withdrawal, that kind of thing.”

  “Has she confronted her ex?”

  “Roundabout. He denies it, naturally.”

  “Taken her suspicions to Bobby’s school counselor or Social Services?”

  “Not enough proof without his cooperation.”

  “Any chance she could get the boy to a child psychologist, draw it out of him that way?”

  Runyon shook his head. “She’s afraid to do anything that might provoke Darby into legally shoving her all the way out of the kid’s life.”

  “He sounds like a bastard.”

  “First-class.”

  “Have you met him?”

  “Once. I went to his office a couple of days ago.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  Runyon said, “Yeah, I know. But I had to do it.”

  “Tell Bryn you were going to see him?”

  “No. I didn’t want to upset her. Or get her hopes up.”

  “How’d you approach him?”

  “Calm and polite, as a concerned friend.”

  “Tell him you’re a detective?”

  “No way around it. Friend wasn’t enough for him—he demanded to know who I was and I didn’t want to start off by lying to him.”

  “Bet I can guess his reaction.”

  “Yeah. He went all hard-ass lawyer, warned me to keep my nose out of his private life, and threw me out.”

  “What was your take? Think Bryn’s right about him?”

  “Capable of child abuse—capable of just about anything. Acted outraged and protective of Bobby, called Bryn a paranoid hysteric, but the guilty ones take that line same as the innocent.”

  “Every time.”

  “That’s where it stands now,” Runyon said. “Nowhere.”

  “And you’re wondering what I’d do if I were in your shoes.”

  “Like I said, I can use your input. You’ve had experience with kids—Emily’s not much older than Bobby.”

  “Well, the smart answer is drop it, don’t get any more involved.”

  “That’s what I keep telling myself. But I can’t just walk away. Would you be able to?”

  “Probably not.”

  “So?”

  “So you’ve got to be pretty careful, Jake. Any kind of strong-arm stuff is out. So is confronting Darby straight on.”

  “I know it. He’d sue me for harassment in a New York minute.”

  “You run a background check on him?”

  “First thing. Nothing there. His record’s clean except for one speeding ticket and an unprofessional ethics charge that got him a warning from the ABA five years ago.”

  A waitress finally showed up to take our order for a couple of Anchor Steam drafts. The interruption gave me time to weigh Runyon’s problem. When we were alone again, I said, “You’ve met the boy, right? Spend much time with him?”

  “Not much, no. Bryn only gets him two weekends a month.”

  “The next is when?”

  “This weekend. She picked him up at school today.”

  “Is he easy to talk to, get along with?”

  “Shy. Doesn’t say much.”

  “Would Bryn let you take him somewhere without her?”

  “… She might. But if he won’t tell his mother he’s being abused, he’s not going to open up to a stranger.”

  “His mother’s not a detective. You’ve interrogated kids before, same as I have. There’re ways to do it without making it seem like an interrogation.”

  Runyon thought that over. “Maybe,” he said.

  “Worth a shot,” I said. “I don’t see anything else you can do without risking a lawsuit and jeopardizing your license. Except be there for Bryn and the boy.”

  “That’s a given. Thanks.”

  “Por nada. Keep me posted.”

  He said he would. The beers arrived then and we shifted the conversation to agency business while we drank them.

  * * *

  Emily was alone in the Diamond Heights condo when I walked in, working on dinner in the kitchen. No real surprise there; she often did the cooking when Kerry had to work late at Bates and Carpenter and it was one of my days at the agency. Emily was thirteen going on thirty, one of those rare kids who were not only intelligent but also good at anything that interested them, from school subjects to the environment to music to Home Ec.

  What surprised me a little, and pleased and relieved me, was that she was singing while she cooked.

  The unpleasant events of a couple of weeks ago, which she’d been innocently involved in and that Runyon and I had dealt with, had had a rough effect on her. She was a sensitive kid. Lonely and withdrawn when she first came into our lives, the only child of a couple of screwed-up felons who had died separately in tragic and violent circumstances; it had taken a long time for Kerry and me to guide Emily out of her shell, and she still had a tendency, when bad things happened, to retreat into that private little world. She’d been uncommunicative the past two weeks, spending most of her time at home closeted in her room with her computer, her iPod, and Shameless the cat. The cooking and especially the singing were indications that the shell had cracked open and she’d come out into the world again.

  She hadn’t heard me, because she went right on singing. I shed my coat a
nd hat, tiptoed to the kitchen doorway. Emily’s ambition is to become a professional singer and there’s no doubt in Kerry’s or my mind that she’ll succeed one day; she has a clear, sweet voice and tremendous range for a thirteen-year-old with a minimum of vocal training. She can sing anything from folk songs to show tunes—rap and reggae, too, probably, when we’re not around to hear her do it. She doesn’t need accompaniment and she wasn’t using any at the moment; her ears were bare of the iPod buds. I didn’t recognize the lyrics or the melody, but what I know about popular music you could put in a disconnected iPod bud.

  I stood in the doorway, listening and watching her chop up garlic and onions. And smiling, because she seemed happy again and because I love her as much as if she were my own.

  She hit a series of high notes with perfect pitch, finishing the song and the chopping simultaneously, and saw me when she turned from the sink to the stove. She blinked a couple of times, then offered up a shy smile. “Oh, hi, Dad. How long have you been standing there?”

  “Long enough. What was that you were singing?”

  “‘Pointing at the Sun.’ It’s a Cheryl Wheeler song.”

  “I’ll bet Cheryl Wheeler doesn’t sing it any better than you just did.”

  She said, “Oh, you’re just saying that,” but she was pleased.

  “If I didn’t mean it I’d be fibbing. And you know I don’t fib.”

  “I know. Mom’s not home yet—she had to work late. She’ll be home around seven.”

  “She called me, too. What is it you’re making there?”

  “Vegetarian pasta casserole. We eat too much meat and chicken.”

  “We do?”

  “I think so. Vegetables are a lot healthier.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re turning into a vegan?”

  “No. Well, maybe. But if I do go vegan, I won’t try to convert you and Mom.”

  “That’s good. You can’t teach an old carnivore new tricks.”

  That got me another smile. “Don’t worry; you’ll like this casserole. You won’t even know it doesn’t have meat or chicken in it.”

  Yes, I would. But I said, “Okay. Need any help?”

  “No, I…” But then she changed her mind and said, “Well, you could put some water on for the pasta.”

  “Pasta’s my speciality.”

  I got a pot out of the cupboard. Emily went back to the cutting board, to chop up a red bell pepper this time. She didn’t do any more singing, but pretty soon she began to hum something up-tempo. Otherwise we worked in companionable domestic silence until the pasta was done and drained and mixed with the vegetables and the casserole was in the oven.

  She said then, “Dad? I’ve been thinking and … I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “The way I’ve been acting since … well, you know. It made me so sad and hurt and angry I didn’t feel like talking to anybody.”

  “I understand. You don’t have anything to apologize for.”

  “Well, I just wanted you to know that I’m okay now. I’m not going to think about it anymore.”

  I went over and put an arm around her and gave her a hug. Good kid, practically an anomaly in these days of rebellious, foulmouthed, drug-experimenting teenagers. Lucky kid, despite all the tragedy in her life.

  I hoped Bryn Darby’s son had some of the same good fortune. If Bobby was being abused, he was going to need it.

  3

  JAKE RUNYON

  Bryn said, “Bobby has two more bruises, big ones on his left side. He didn’t want me to hug him, flinched when I did—that’s how I found them.”

  “How did he explain them?”

  “Mumbled something about one of the kids at school punching him. He wouldn’t look me in the eye. Jake, I don’t know what to do.”

  Her voice on the phone was low and controlled, but Runyon could hear the angry desperation in it. A faint speech slur, too—she’d been binge drinking lately, nothing but wine but enough of it to feed instead of ease her chronic depression. His fingers were tight around the steering wheel. Outside the car, in the clogged traffic on Upper Market, horns blared and somebody gave somebody else the finger. Typical Friday evening in the city.

  “Where’s Bobby now?” he asked.

  “In his room. He won’t talk to me, not about anything.”

  “You have plans for him tonight or tomorrow?”

  “Not tonight. I was going to take him to the Academy of Sciences tomorrow, but … I don’t know now. Why?”

  Runyon didn’t usually see her on the weekends when she had her son; his choice, because he didn’t want to intrude on their limited time together. But the situation was different now, escalating into critical. “I’d like to come over,” he said, “spend a little time with Bobby.”

  “… He won’t talk to you, either. He hardly knows you.”

  “He might if I can get him off alone for a while. Man-to-man kind of thing. All right with you?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “When?”

  “Not tonight. Tomorrow morning?”

  “I’ll be there around eleven.”

  * * *

  The weather on Saturday was more of the same that the city had endured all week: cold wind, fog. It would’ve been easy enough to pick a place to take Bobby if the skies had been clear, but it wasn’t a day for the beach or the zoo or Golden Gate Park. An indoor day. The Academy of Sciences was always crowded on weekends—not a good place for a private talk. Besides, there was the problem of convincing the boy to spend time with him alone. He’d need a good reason for that.

  He thought of one on the short drive from his apartment to Bryn’s home on Moraga Street. A pretty good one that ought to make a nine-year-old cooperative even in his present state.

  Bryn’s house was brown shingled and, unlike most of the homes in the outer Sunset District, detached from its neighbors. Quiet, middle-class neighborhood whose only drawback was that it was often swaddled in fog. Not much happened there, not until recently anyway. There were always outer Sunset houses for rent at reasonable rates, and some of the city’s more enterprising criminals had surreptitiously taken advantage of this and of the fact that most residents minded their own business by establishing both brothels and “grow houses”—marijuana farms complete with irrigation systems and bright lights to simulate sunshine.

  The city cops had busted up three active call-girl rings in the area, and federal DEA agents had made nearly a score of busts, most of them small operations but one that had netted eighteen hundred plants plus a large quantity of meth and powdered and crack cocaine. None of this worried Bryn much—she had too many other, more immediate problems to cope with—but it was a source of concern to Runyon. So far all of the illicit activity and subsequent arrests had been nonviolent, but that could change at any time. Where you had crime, especially crime involving drugs, you had the potential for bloodshed.

  One more valid reason to legalize and tax the crap out of marijuana and prostitution.

  Bryn didn’t look well today. Mild hangover coupled with the bitter melancholy that plagued her. She’d been through so damn much—stroke, disfigurement, abandonment by her husband, custody loss of her son, and now this grim new anguish over Bobby’s well-being. Dark patches showed like stains beneath a layer of makeup under her eyes. She’d put on dark red lipstick, too, to match the scarf tied across the frozen left side of her face—splashes of bright color more for her son’s sake than her own or his, Runyon thought. The red-and-white-checked blouse and green skirt and red ribbon in her ash-blond hair, too.

  “Bobby’s in his room,” she said. “I told him you were coming over, but … he doesn’t want to go anywhere. If I let him, he’ll hide in there all weekend.”

  “I’ve got an idea. Tell him I’m here and I’d like to talk to him.”

  “You won’t get anything out of him here.…”

  “I know. That’s not how I’m going to handle it.”

  Runyon waited in the living
room for five minutes. When Bryn came back she said, “All right. But God, he’s still so apathetic. He doesn’t seem to care about anything.”

  Bobby’s room was at the rear of the house, opposite her office/workroom. Runyon knocked on the door before he stepped inside. The boy was sitting at a small desk, a laptop computer open in front of him; video game images twitched and jumped on the screen and his attention stayed focused on them. He was a gangly kid, tall for his nine years, his brown hair cut in the current short, spiky fashion that made Runyon think of a patch of grass that needed mowing. He wore Levi’s and a faded red 49ers sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off. There was a soft cast on his fractured left arm.

  Runyon stood by the door, waiting. He didn’t want to start this off by pulling adult rank. Bobby was a good kid, shy at the best of times, and generally polite; he wouldn’t let too much time go by before acknowledging his visitor.

  He didn’t. Less than a minute. Then, with reluctance, he shifted his gaze from the screen and said, “Hello, Mr. Runyon,” in a small, colorless voice.

  “You can call me Jake if you want to.”

  “I’m not supposed to call adults by their first names.”

  “Not even if the adult says it’s okay?”

  “… I don’t know.”

  “Your mom wouldn’t mind. We’re good friends, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “Jake, then, okay?”

  Short silence. Then, “I guess so.”

  Runyon moved over to where he could see the moving figures on the computer. “What’s that you’re playing?”

  “X-Men,” Bobby said. “Children of the Atom.”

  “Challenging?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Bet you’re good at it.”

  “Sometimes.” The boy glanced at the screen again, then clicked off. “Not this time,” he said then.

  Runyon said, “What I wanted to talk to you about is your mom’s birthday. Coming up pretty soon.”