Camouflage nd-36

by Bill Pronzini

  “Shopping? How’d you manage that?”

  “A little psychology.”

  She stepped out of the pantry and shut the door. “You’re good with kids, you know that?”

  “Well, I always thought I might be if I had the chance.”

  She didn’t comment on that; she knew what he meant. He’d told her the whole bleak story of his relationship, or lack of one, with his son, Joshua. The mistake he’d made in not fighting harder for custody after he’d filed for divorce from Angela; how she’d taken Joshua away to San Francisco, riddled with vindictive hate and driven by the alcohol dependency that eventually killed her, and convinced him as he was growing up that he was a victim of adultery and careless neglect-neither of which was true. Runyon had never had another chance to be a father-Colleen hadn’t been able to have kids-and by the time he’d moved down here from Seattle after Colleen died, it was too late to mend the damage done by Angela’s malicious hatred. Joshua wouldn’t listen to the truth. He’d called on Runyon once professionally, when his lover was a victim of gay-bashing, but refused to have anything to do with his father since. Unbridgeable gap between them.

  Bryn put a hand on his arm. “Be careful with him, Jake. He’s very fragile right now.”

  “I will.”

  “So am I, for that matter. If I didn’t have Bobby… and you…”

  “But you do.”

  “For now. Sometimes I feel as if I were made of glass. Bump me too hard and I’ll shatter into little pieces.”

  “You’re stronger than you think.”

  “Am I? I don’t know.” She clutched his arm more tightly. “I can’t stand any more of this. It has to stop before it gets any worse.”

  “It will. We’ll put an end to it.”

  “One way or another,” she said.

  In the car on the way to the Stonestown mall, Bobby sat fiddling with a berry-colored Game Boy. Runyon let the silence go on until they reached Nineteenth Avenue, then began to do a little probing.

  “You like living with your dad, Bobby?”

  “… I guess so, sure.” But the words were mumbled and unconvincing.

  “Spend a lot of time together with him?”

  “Not very much. He works all the time, and I have to…”

  “Have to what?”

  No response.

  “What do you do together when he’s not working?”

  “Not too much. He’s always tired, or else…”

  “Or else?”

  No response. The boy’s fingers moved rapidly on his computer toy.

  “Does he get angry when he’s tired? Lose his temper?”

  No response.

  Runyon tried a different tack. “You know, your mom wishes she could see you more often. She really misses you.”

  “I know.”

  “You miss her, too, right?”

  Head bob.

  “Then how come you stay in your room, instead of spending time with her?”

  Six-beat. Then, “I wish it was like it used to be.”

  “Before your dad moved out?”

  “Before she had that stroke. We were a family then.”

  “The divorce was your dad’s idea. He couldn’t deal with what happened to her face.”

  No response.

  “It doesn’t make any difference to me. Or to you, right?”

  Flying fingers, now. “I don’t want to talk about this stuff anymore, Mr. Runyon.”

  “Jake.”

  No response. And silence the rest of the way to the mall.

  Runyon parked in the galleria’s underground garage. The mall was enclosed, inhabited by dozens of stores, shops, salons, and cafes on two levels-a few of them empty now, victims of the economic recession. He took Bobby into Macy’s, let him wander around looking without making any suggestions.

  The boy said nothing until they’d nearly finished making a circuit of the women’s clothing department. Then, in that shy way of his, and with a little more animation, “I know what I want to get Mom. But I only have two dollars and it’ll cost more than that.”

  “Tell you what,” Runyon said. “I’ll loan you the money and you can pay me back out of your allowance. Fifty cents a week or whatever you feel comfortable with.”

  “My dad wouldn’t like that.”

  “He doesn’t have to know, does he?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Just between us. What is it you want to buy?”

  Bobby showed him. Good choice. Perfect, in fact, because it was caring, thoughtful, appropriate.

  Scarf. Silk scarf.

  He spent five minutes making his pick, one unlike any in the collection of scarves Bryn used to cover the nerve-paralyzed side of her face. A deep burgundy color, with an interwoven silver and gold design.

  “You think she’ll like this one, Jake?”

  “I think it’ll be her favorite.”

  Bobby was quiet again on the ride back to the house. But he didn’t fiddle with the Game Boy; he sat looking straight ahead, his mouth thinned a little, his forehead ridged. Thinking hard about something.

  They were on Moraga, with only a few blocks to go, when Bobby said, “Mr… um, Jake. Are you really a detective?”

  “That’s right. I was a policeman in Seattle for a long time; now I work for a private agency.”

  “Do you have a gun?”

  “Yes.”

  “What kind?”

  “Three-fifty-seven Magnum.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “… Why?”

  “I’ve never seen a real gun before.”

  “Guns aren’t toys, Bobby.”

  “I know that.” Pause. “Have you ever shot anybody?”

  “Yes. In self-defense.”

  Another pause. “Could I see it? Please?”

  Runyon almost said no, he didn’t have it with him. But he didn’t like lying, especially to kids. The weapon was locked in the glove compartment, where his permit allowed him to keep it; loaded but with the chamber under the hammer empty. There didn’t seem to be any harm in granting Bobby his request.

  The house was just ahead. Runyon said as he pulled up in front, “All right, but just a quick look.” He shut off the engine, keyed open the glove box. The Magnum was in its clip-on holster; he slid it out, let Bobby have his wide-eyed look.

  Runyon was locking the weapon away again when the boy said, “I wish I had a gun like that,” in an off-tone that made Runyon glance sharply at him.

  “Why? What would you do with it?”

  “Keep it for… the next time.”

  “What do you mean, the next time?”

  No response.

  “The next time your dad hurts you, is that it?”

  “My dad doesn’t hurt me.”

  “No? Who, then?”

  Silence.

  “Who, Bobby?”

  The boy’s mouth twisted and a name burst out of him, like a lump of something bitter that he’d hacked up from his throat.

  “Francine,” he said.

  “Who’s Francine?”

  “I hate her,” Bobby said with sudden ferocity, “I hate her, I hate her! ” And he bolted from the car and raced up the steps to the house.

  4

  JAKE RUNYON

  Bryn came hurrying out to meet him on the porch. “What happened? Why is Bobby so upset?”

  “Put a coat on. Let’s go for a walk.”

  “He went running into his room…”

  “Better if we talk outside.”

  Runyon waited until they’d gone a short way to the west, hunched against the fog-threaded ocean wind, Bryn’s anxious eyes on him as they walked, before he said, “Do you know anyone named Francine?”

  “Francine? The woman Robert’s going to marry… Francine Whalen. Why?”

  In clipped sentences Runyon told her about the gun episode and Bobby’s last words before he fled the car.

  “Oh my God.” Bryn stopped walking, turned to face him. “She’s the one who’s
been hurting him, not Robert. But that’s… why would she…”

  “How much do you know about her?”

  “Not very much. She’s a paralegal, worked for Robert’s firm. I didn’t like her the first time I met her. The kind of sweetness-and-light type that fool men but not women-a cold, calculating bitch underneath. I think he was sleeping with her before I had the stroke.”

  “They living together now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “He has a flat in the Marina, near the Green. Avila Street.”

  “Number?”

  “Four-sixteen. Upstairs.”

  “She still working for his firm?”

  “No. He’s already paying her bills,” Bryn said, and then added bitterly, “In exchange for her taking care of Bobby.”

  “When is the marriage supposed to take place?”

  “I’m not sure. Sometime this summer.” A wind gust blew up a swirl of discarded fast-food wrappers, but that wasn’t what made the visible tremor run through her. She drew her coat collar tight around her throat, held it there with one hand. “I just don’t understand any of this. Bobby’s silence, for one thing. If Robert was abusing him, yes, but Francine… why wouldn’t he tell his father, me, somebody?”

  “Threats, intimidation. He hates her, but he’s also terrified of her.”

  “But for God’s sake why would she hurt a little boy, break his arm, punch him hard enough to leave bruises? She’s getting everything she wants… Robert, his position, his money.”

  “No way of telling until we know more about her.”

  “Whatever the reason, I don’t blame Bobby for wishing her dead. I’d like to kill her myself.”

  “No, you wouldn’t.”

  “Oh yes. Yes, I would.”

  “That’s not the answer, Bryn.”

  She drew a heavy breath. “What is?”

  “Proof,” Runyon said. “Solid proof that’ll convince your ex, Social Services, the police.”

  “How do we get it? Bobby? Should I tell him we know Francine’s been abusing him?”

  “You can try, straight on or roundabout.”

  “But you don’t think he’ll admit it?”

  “I think he came as close as he could in the car with me.”

  “Saying how much he hated her… that’s a cry for help.”

  “Yes. But in my limited experience with kids, fear always trumps hatred. He’s too afraid of the woman and whatever threats she made.”

  “Damn her! She’ll keep right on hurting him, and the next time… the next time… I won’t let it happen. I won’t.”

  Runyon said, “There may be something in her background that’ll help. I’ll see what I can find out. ‘Whalen’ spelled W-h-a-l-e-n?”

  “Yes.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Late twenties, maybe thirty.”

  “Description?”

  “Bottle blonde. Five three or four, slender but top-heavy. Robert always did like big boobs… mine weren’t enough for him.”

  Runyon let that pass. “Know anything about her background? Where she was born, if she was married before, has any kids?”

  “I think she’s divorced, but I’m not sure. I hope to God she never had any children of her own.”

  “When did she start working for Robert’s firm?”

  “Three years ago. In the summer.”

  “Any idea where she worked before?”

  “No. Robert never told me and I had no reason to ask.”

  The good side of Bryn’s face was flushed and she was still shivering. Gently he took her arm, turned her back the way they’d come. At the bottom of her porch steps he said, “Better wait awhile before you talk to Bobby, let him calm down.”

  “Yes.”

  “Call me afterward.”

  “I will.”

  He said, “It’ll be all right, Bryn. We’ll make it all right.” Hollow words and cold comfort, but for now they were all he had to give.

  In his apartment on Ortega he brewed a cup of tea and booted up his laptop to run a preliminary background check on Francine Whalen. He wasn’t nearly as skilled at computer searches as Tamara, but he’d done enough of them using the agency’s search engines and a few of her hacker’s tricks to be able to pull up the basics on any known subject.

  Finding Francine Whalen proved easy enough. Born in Alameda twenty-nine years ago; father and mother both deceased. Two younger sisters: Gwen, unmarried, a resident of Berkeley, and Tracy, married and living in Ojai in Southern California. Graduate of Sadler Business School in Oakland. Three previous paralegal jobs before joining the West Portal firm of Darby and Feldman three years ago; exemplary references. Married to an S.F. investment banker, Kevin Dinowski, in September 2005; divorced February, 2006, no children. Previous address before moving in with Robert Darby: apartment on Broderick Street in the Laurel Heights neighborhood that she’d shared with another woman, Charlene Kepler, also a paralegal, age twenty-five.

  Police record: none, not even a traffic citation.

  No red flags in any of that, unless there was something in the brevity of her marriage. Abusers of children were usually one or a combination of three things: victims of abuse themselves, the possessors of deep-seated hostilities and anger management problems, chronic drug users or alcoholics. There was a fourth, less common variety: psychotic child haters, the worst of the lot. Finding out which of these fit Whalen might take some work, but it could be done. The problem was tying whatever explanation for her actions to her abuse of Bobby. Robert Darby, as the boy’s legal guardian, was the one who had to be convinced first, and without Bobby’s corroboration it’d take conclusive evidence to make his father accept the truth about the woman he was planning to marry.

  Runyon did quick checks on her two sisters, ex-husband, and former roommate. Nothing there, either; records all as superficially clean as Francine Whalen’s. He created a file of all the information he’d gleaned. If need be, he’d turn it over to Tamara on Monday and ask her to run deeper background checks. One of the benefits, like his talk with Bill yesterday, of working for good people in a small agency.

  He spent what was left of the afternoon in front of a bad but commercial-free TV movie. Not watching it, using it for white noise while he waited to hear from Bryn. He had the ability to switch off his thoughts, like shutting down a machine, during any waiting situation. Survival trick he’d learned over the long months of Colleen’s illness, the only way he’d been able to keep himself sane and functioning while he watched the cancer eat away at her.

  Bryn called a little after six. Her voice was quiet and even toned, but he’d known her long enough to be sensitive to her moods and feelings. As she was to his. Damage control mechanism between two damaged people. He knew what she was going to say before she said it.

  “Bobby still won’t admit anything, Jake. He won’t talk about Francine at all.”

  “You ask him directly about the abuse?”

  “Not at first. I asked how he liked her, if they got along, if he was glad she was going to be his stepmother, that kind of thing. All he did was mumble. He wouldn’t look at me the entire time. Finally I just… I came right out and asked him if she was hurting him.”

  “And?”

  “That was the only time he reacted. He shouted at me to leave him alone and ran out and hid in the crawlspace.”

  “Crawlspace?”

  “Behind the water heater in the basement. Where he’d go when he was little and something scared him. It took me five minutes to find him and another ten to coax him out.” Bryn drew a long, shaky breath, let it out in a faint hiss. “There’s no doubt, Jake. He’s terrified of that bitch. I came close to getting in the car and driving over to Robert’s and confronting her.”

  “Bad idea,” Runyon said. “She wouldn’t admit it-and it might make her angry enough to take it out on Bobby.”

  “I thought of that, too. That’s why I didn’t do it.”

  “Don’t s
ay anything to your ex, either, when you take Bobby back tomorrow.”

  “If I take him back.”

  “Another bad idea if you don’t. You know what Robert would do.”

  “I know, but I can’t stand the thought of Bobby being alone with that woman anymore. The next time he does something to provoke her… God knows what she might do to him.”

  Runyon didn’t respond. Bryn’s fear was legitimate, the point inarguable.

  He heard her take another couple of breaths, composing herself. Then she said, “Did you find out anything about Francine?”

  “Nothing so far that might explain her behavior. Her marriage didn’t last long enough to produce any children.”

  “Well, thank God for that.” Pause. “Jake? Would you try talking to Bobby again tomorrow? He responded so well to you today…”

  “Sure. I’ll try.”

  “I hate to keep burdening you with this-”

  “It’s not a burden. You know I’m there for you.”

  “Yes. But it seems so one-sided.”

  “Not so,” he said, and meant it. Being there for Bryn meant being there for himself. She was his salvation. Gave him reasons other than work to get up in the morning, ways to fill his days and nights that didn’t involve long, aimless, solitary drives. Helped him regain his self-respect. Made him a man again, physically as well as mentally. He wasn’t sure whether what he felt for her was love or a kind of abiding gratitude; if it was love, it was an altogether different kind from what he’d shared with Colleen. One thing he did know for certain: he would do anything for Bryn, just as he’d have done anything for Colleen.

  He spent part of Sunday afternoon trying to get through to Bobby again. The avuncular approach, the buddy approach, the detective approach. None of it got Runyon anywhere. The boy was locked in tight now, like a frightened young animal hiding in the shadows of a cave. Poking his head out into the light on Saturday had been a onetime thing; he was too afraid to let it happen again.

  That left only one way to stop the abuse, the potentially dangerous way-by running a backdoor investigation of Francine Whalen.