Betrayers (Nameless Detective Novels)

by Bill Pronzini

  “A mask? Where’d this happen?”

  “Outside by the park. Mr. Runyon chased him off. If he hadn’t been there, I’d probably be dead right now.”

  Madison bounced up and waddled over to Runyon, close enough for Runyon to get a whiff of his breath. “I’m grateful you came when you did,” he said. “But why? You haven’t found my brother yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then . . .” His thin mouth tightened. “Troy,” he said. Runyon waited.

  “Maybe it wasn’t a mugger who shot Arletta; maybe it was my brother. He threatened us, I told you that.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Arletta Madison said. “Didn’t you think I had a right to know?”

  “I didn’t want to worry you.”

  “Didn’t want to worry me. You bastard, you were so worried you went out and got drunk and tried to get yourself laid.”

  “I wasn’t trying to get laid. I was upset, I wanted a couple of drinks to calm down. I shouldn’t have done it, I shouldn’t have called you from that bar—I should’ve come straight home.”

  “Bloody well right you should.”

  “All right, I’m sorry. But why didn’t you stay in the house instead of going out alone in the dark?”

  “Don’t start in, Coy. I’m in no mood for it.”

  Madison waved an agitated hand. “Troy . . . sure. He must’ve been over there watching the house, waiting for his chance. If you hadn’t gone out, he might’ve broken in. But you made it easy for him. How many times have I warned you it’s not safe to go traipsing around this neighborhood at night? You just won’t listen.”

  “I said don’t start in. It’s as much your fault as mine.”

  “Oh sure, blame it all on me. Twist everything around so you don’t have to take responsibility.”

  Her arm was hurting her and the pain made her vicious. She bared her teeth at him. “What’re you doing home anyway? Where’s the bimbo you claimed you picked up?”

  “I brushed her off. I started thinking about you here alone—”

  “Sure, right. You were drunk; now you’re sober. If there was any brushing off, she’s the one who did it.”

  “Arletta . . .”

  “What’s the matter with your face? She give you some kind of rash?”

  “My face? There’s nothing wrong with my face—”

  “It looks like a rash. It better not be contagious.”

  “Goddamn it, Arletta—”

  Runyon had had enough of this. The bickering, the hatred, the cold deception—everything about the two of them. He said in a flat, hard voice, “All right, both of you shut up.”

  They stared at him. Arletta Madison said, “You can’t talk to me like that in my own home—”

  “Keep your mouth closed and your ears open for five minutes and you’ll learn something. Your husband and I will do the talking.”

  Madison said, glowering, “I don’t have anything more to say to you.”

  “Yeah, you do. A lot more.”

  “Why’d you come here tonight anyway? I’m glad you showed up in time to chase Troy off, but if you’d done your job and found him before—”

  “I have found him,” Runyon said.

  “What?”

  “I know where he is.”

  “. . . Where?”

  “The rental house in San Bruno. Where you hid him out.”

  “Where I hid him? Man, you’re crazy.”

  His wife said, “Coy, what—”

  “Shut up,” he said without looking at her. He wasn’t looking at Runyon, either. His gaze seemed fixed on the hand he kept waving loosely in the air. “If that’s where my brother is, he went there on his own. I had nothing to do with it.”

  “Then why didn’t you tell me about the rental property?”

  “I don’t know; it never occurred to me.”

  “You didn’t want me to know about Bud Linkhauser, either. Afraid he’d tell me enough so I’d figure out you engineered the whole thing.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Sure you do. Troy jumping bail wasn’t his idea, or the Piper woman’s. It was yours. You talked him into it.”

  “Why would I want him to jump bail, for Chrissake?”

  “Same reason you arranged his bail in the first place. To get him out of jail, then make a fugitive out of him.”

  “Bullshit. What reason would I have to do a crazy thing like that? Didn’t I tell you how violent he can be, all the threats he made?”

  “You told me a lot of things, most of them lies. The truth is, you’re the violent one, not Troy.”

  Madison was so worked up now he kept shifting from one foot to another, like a kid who needed to go to the toilet. “No! He used to beat me up when we were kids—”

  “Not according to Bud Linkhauser. He says you were the aggressor.”

  “What the hell does Linkhauser know about the way things are now? Maybe I had some control over Troy once, but that all changed when he got into drugs. He threatened us, goddamn it! He threatened to kill Arletta and me!”

  “So you keep saying, emphasizing. All part of your plan.”

  “Plan? What plan?”

  “To murder your wife and frame your brother for it.”

  Him: hissing intake of breath.

  Her: strangled bleating noise.

  “He’s the one who shot you tonight, Mrs. Madison. Not a mugger, not Troy—your husband. The only reason you’re alive is that he doesn’t know enough about firearms to shoot straight in the dark.”

  Him: “That’s a fucking lie!”

  Her, to Runyon in a ground-glass voice: “Coy? How can you know it was Coy?”

  “You told me he was drunk when he called you earlier. He wasn’t, he was faking it. Nobody can sober up that fast in an hour, not when he’s standing here now without any smell of alcohol on his breath. The call was designed to do just what it did, drive you out of the house.”

  Madison took a step forward, changed his mind. He still wouldn’t meet Runyon’s gaze, or his wife’s. He wore the guilty man’s look now—sick and self-pitying.

  Runyon said, “I had a pretty good look at the shooter as he was running away. Tall—and your husband’s tall, but his brother’s four inches shorter. Walked and ran splayfooted, like a duck—the way he walks. Then there’re those blotches on his face. Look at them close-up and you can see they’re not a rash. He’s got the kind of skin that takes and holds imprints from fabric, doesn’t he? Wakes up in the morning with pillow and blanket marks on his face? The ones he’s got now are from the ribbing of that ski mask.”

  “You son of a bitch!” she said to Madison. “You dirty son of a bitch!”

  She came up off the couch and went for him with nails flashing. Runyon got in her way, grabbed hold of her; her injured arm stopped her from struggling with him. Then Madison tried to make a run for it. Runyon let go of her, chased him, and caught him at the head of the stairs. When Madison tried to kick him, Runyon knocked him flat on his skinny ass.

  With perfect timing, the doorbell rang. And it wasn’t just the EMTs; the law had also arrived.

  Coy Madison was as stupid as they come. The weapon he’d used, a Saturday night special, and the ski mask were both in the trunk of his car.

  Once he was confronted with the evidence, he broke down and spewed out a confession. It was all pretty much as Runyon had figured it, right down to the motive. Madison hated his wife, was jealous of her success, wanted control of her money and their joint property. No feelings for his brother, either, other than contempt for Troy’s drugged-out lifestyle, so the idea had been to get rid of both of them together. Kill her, then drive down to the rental house in San Bruno and plant the gun and ski mask on Troy, then phone in an anonymous tip to the police, and when Troy told them the bail-jump was his brother’s idea deny the hell out of it. The word of an allegedly honest citizen against that of an addict, dealer, and fugitive. Which of them would be believed?

 
; Foolproof plan, in Coy’s view. Stupid plan, in Runyon’s. A rookie cop with a couple of ounces of imagination could have seen through it, even if Madison hadn’t screwed it up with lies of commission and omission, a bumbling murder attempt, and a too-quick return home to find out how badly his wife was wounded. He didn’t realize yet how lucky he was that he hadn’t fired a killing shot. As it was, the charges would be attempted murder and aiding and abetting a fugitive; if he stayed lucky, he might still be relatively young when he got out of prison.

  While Madison was confessing, his wife hurled invective at him and the inspectors had to keep warning her to be quiet. She would have cut his throat with a dull knife if they’d let her have one. She told him so, complete with chains of four-letter words.

  Runyon was glad when they let him leave. He’d have liked to be the one to pick up Troy Madison and Jennifer Piper and deliver them to the Hall of Justice, but once he’d explained where they were hiding it was out of his hands. Didn’t really matter; the fact that he’d been responsible for putting the jumper back in custody would be enough to satisfy Abe Melikian. But Runyon prided himself on being able to close his cases himself, hands on.

  At least he’d been the one to blow up Coy Madison’s idiot scheme. Satisfaction enough in that, even if it was only a by-product of the job he’d been assigned to do.

  21

  TAMARA

  Judge Alfred Mantle was doing pretty well for himself. His house in Monterey Heights, on one of the winding streets below Mt. Davidson, was one of those big Spanish-style jobs you saw in the city’s upper-class residential districts. Lots of fancy tile, lots of shrubbery and tall, thin cypress trees. House lights, porch light, spotlights strewn among the landscaping—all blazing in the foggy early-evening gloom. Not many black folks could afford to live up here; sure bet that most, if not all, of the judge’s neighbors were white.

  Tamara drove on past, parked a little ways above the house. She didn’t really want to be here, but on the phone he’d said she could either come here tonight—his wife wasn’t home and wouldn’t be back until late—or see him in his chambers at City Hall sometime tomorrow. Pretty obvious why he wouldn’t agree to meet her on neutral ground. In his house or in his chambers, he’d have the psychological upper hand. Or thought he would.

  The street and sidewalk were wet and the cypress trees dripped, a kind of lonely, desolate sound. But nothing could dampen her spirits tonight, not unless she screwed up with the judge—and she wasn’t going to let that happen. All she’d told him on the phone was who she was, that she needed to talk to him about the Operation Save fund and the man he knew as Lucas Zeller, and that it’d be in his best interest to meet with her ASAP. He’d asked a bunch of questions that she’d pretty much evaded; the answers were better given face-to-face. He made it plain that he didn’t like being approached this way, by a private investigator of either sex, but in the end he agreed to see her.

  She rang the bell, listened to chimes floating around inside. There was one of those one-way magnifying glass peepholes in the door and she had the feeling he was right there on the other side looking out at her, sizing her up in the bright porch light before he let her in.

  She did a little sizing up of her own when he finally opened the door. Up close he was even huskier than he’d seemed at a distance. Large head and thick neck, like a football player. Real judge’s face: stern eyes, streaks of gray in the curly black of his hair, and an expression blank as a wall.

  The first thing he said to her was, “You’re not what I expected, Ms. Corbin.”

  “No? Not a sister, you mean?”

  “Not a sister and not so young. You sounded older on the phone.”

  “I’m not as young as I look,” she lied.

  He stood aside to let her come in. When he shut the door behind her he said, “We’ll talk in my study,” and didn’t quite put his back to her as they moved through the house.

  Some house. The furniture was modern and expensive, the décor black and white, mostly, with lots of African sculptures and carvings and such on shelves and in nooks and crannies. His wife’s doing—Tamara knew that as soon as she walked into his study. Everything in there—desk, chairs, sideboard, wall paneling—was dark, gleaming wood, masculine and somber. There were a couple of framed paintings, also dark toned, and some framed documents that looked to be copies of his law degrees. A big polished silver golf trophy reared up on a shelf above the sideboard.

  Mantle indicated a chair in front of the desk, went around, and sat down in a big leather chair behind it. He folded his thick hands together on the blotter and sat statue stiff, studying her some more with those stern eyes. Not saying anything, waiting for her lead.

  She didn’t waste any time. “Lucas Zeller,” she said, “isn’t who he claims to be. His real name’s Delman, Antoine Delman. And his business isn’t investments; it’s petty theft and con games.”

  Nothing changed in the judge’s expression. He still didn’t say anything, just kept looking at her. Hadn’t blinked even once since they’d sat down. She wondered if he was trying to quietly intimidate her. Wasn’t working, if that was it. She’d grown up with Pop’s stares and glares; the hard eye didn’t phase her anymore.

  She said, “He doesn’t work alone. Has himself a partner—his mother. Her name is Alisha Delman.”

  That got a couple of blinks out of Mantle. “Alisha?”

  “As in ‘Psychic Readings by Alisha.’ That’s her specialty—posing as a psychic to help set up marks.”

  Silent stare. Mr. Stone Face.

  “They both spent a couple of years in prison,” Tamara said, “for running a con in Southern California—bilking black investors in a charity scam. A fund that was supposed to help struggling African American families keep their homes. The investors put up the cash and take a tax write-off; the families pay back the money at a reasonable interest rate, everybody makes out. Only the fund doesn’t exist and the only folks who make out, if they don’t get caught, are the Delmans—they disappear with the investment capital. Sound familiar, Your Honor?”

  The stony look.

  “Operation Save is their new con,” she said. “More sophisticated than the one they worked down south. They set up a Web site this time, desktop-published some brochures with fake quotes and statistics. I’ll bet you looked at the Web site but didn’t investigate Operation Save any further than that. Am I right?”

  More silence. She let it go on, let him be the one to break it. Took more than a minute. His lips barely moved when he said, “How do you know all this?”

  “It’s my business.”

  “You seem to believe it’s mine as well.”

  “No, I meant the business I’m in. The detective business.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question. Who hired you?”

  “I can’t tell you that. Privileged.”

  “Stop playing games with me, young woman. Tell me what makes you think I’m associated in any way with Lucas Zeller.”

  “Antoine Delman,” Tamara said. “And I don’t think it; I know it.”

  “What do you know?”

  “That he and Alisha are behind Operation Save. That he’s been working on you and Doctor Easy to invest—others, too, probably. And that his mother’s been working on Viveca Inman.”

  “Am I supposed to know these people you’re talking about?”

  “Come on, Judge, you were with Hawkins last night at the Twilight Lounge on Ocean. And you were driving the BMW you just bought from Mrs. Inman.”

  The look. Seemed like you couldn’t crack it if you used a hammer.

  Finally he said, “You were there and you followed me,” in the same tone you’d use to talk about the weather. Statement, not a question.

  “Straight to Psychic Readings by Alisha,” Tamara said. “You drove Mrs. Inman there, went to the Twilight meeting and then back afterward to pick her up. Got together with her to decide whether or not to invest in the O.S. Fund. Right?”

  Mantle
didn’t answer. He seemed to be thinking on something else. He said, “How did you—,” and then stopped, and moved for the first time since he’d sat down: his hands unlocked and he spread them out flat on the desktop. “Stewart,” he said then. “Deron Stewart.”

  Her turn to be silent.

  “He’s another one like you,” the judge said flatly. “A paid snoop.”

  “Operative.” No reason not to admit it. There wasn’t any need now for Stewart to keep working undercover. “That’s right; he is.”

  “Why? Why the deception?”

  “To find Antoine Delman.”

  “And what other purpose?”

  “No other purpose.”

  “I don’t believe you. You know what Stewart knows.”

  Be straight with the man, she thought. Always the best way to go, and besides, it’d give her a certain amount of leverage. “About the club. Yes.”

  “The club,” he said in that talking-about-the-weather tone again. “Tell me how you found out about it.”

  “I knew Delman was on the down low, never mind how.”

  “I don’t like that term.”

  “Okay, then I won’t use it again.”

  “How many people have you told about the club?”

  “None except Stewart. And I guarantee he won’t repeat it.”

  Another long silence. Then, “Do you realize how serious a crime blackmail is, Ms. Corbin?”

  “Blackmail? That what you think I’m here for?”

  “Well?”

  “You couldn’t be more wrong,” Tamara said. “My agency has one of the best reps in the city.”

  Silence.

  “I don’t care what you do in private, Judge. Or what any consenting adults do in private. None of my business. Believe it.”

  “Why are you here, then?”

  “To save you and Mrs. Inman and Doctor Easy and anybody else who’s thinking of investing in Operation Save from being ripped off. Call it my Operation Save.”

  “Very noble of you.”

  “I’m not trying to be noble. Like I said before—”

  “As I said before.”

  She almost smiled. Correcting her grammar in the middle of a conversation like this. Judge Mantle was some piece of work.