Camouflage nd-36

by Bill Pronzini

  “The two women. Does Ms. Carson, who works for Ms. McManus, live on the premises?”

  “Lives there. Moved in together six or seven years ago. What they do is none of my business.” A valid enough comment, which she spoiled by adding, “Couple of lesbians, if you ask me. Hardly ever see a man around the place, except when one shows up with a dog to be boarded.”

  “All the boarders are ladies, then?”

  “How should I know? You think I go peeking under their tails?”

  I said, as patiently as I could, “I meant the people who rent a room there.”

  “Oh. Well, why didn’t you say so? Almost all women, that’s right. One old man early last year, must’ve been eighty-he’s the only one I remember.”

  “One room for rent or more than one?”

  “Just one. That’s what Rose told me.”

  “Rose?”

  “She lived over there for a few months a while back. Nice person, my age, widow like me only she didn’t have any kids, lucky her. We had a lot in common. Bingo, All My Children, a toddy now and then. She liked her toddies, Rose did. That’s how she met the dog woman. Not McManus, the other one. Carson.”

  “… I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”

  She gave me a well-then-you-must-be-dense look. “In a cocktail lounge. Both of them having toddies and they got to talking and that’s how Rose ended up here. She couldn’t afford the rents down there anymore.”

  “Down where?”

  “What they call SoMa now. That’s where Rose and the dog woman were having their toddies.”

  “Do you remember the name of the cocktail lounge?”

  “Rose never said. Why do you care what cocktail lounge?”

  “Curiosity. What was Rose’s last name?”

  “O’Day. Rose O’Day. Pretty name.”

  “Yes. When did-”

  “Irish,” Mrs. Hightower said.

  “… Pardon?”

  “Rose. She was Irish.”

  “When did she move out?”

  “Well, let’s see. Must’ve been more than three years now. That’s right, three years in February.” Click, frown, double-click. “Kind of funny,” she said.

  “How so?”

  “Never said good-bye. Just up and left. And us with a date to play bingo over at the church. I saw the dog woman, McManus, down at the market a few days afterward and asked her how come Rose left so sudden. Said she went back to Michigan-that’s where she’s from, Saginaw, Michigan, like in the song. Moved back to Saginaw, Michigan, to live with her brother.”

  “I see.”

  “No, you don’t,” Selma Hightower said, “and neither do I. Rose told me she was an only child.”

  “Well, people sometimes say that if they’re estranged from a relative-”

  “Hah. Rose didn’t have anybody to be estranged from. She didn’t have anybody, period. Alone in the world after her husband went to his reward. All her family dead and gone and her all alone in the world.”

  Half an hour after I left Mrs. Hightower, I finally located somebody who’d seen David Virden on Tuesday. Two somebodies, in fact. Both of them in the same place-a watering hole on Third just around the corner from 20th Street called, appropriately if unappealingly, The Dog Hole.

  It was one of those venerable neighborhood places that cater to a mixed clientele. At its peak hours you’d probably find blue-collar workers, Yuppies, bikers, scroungers, retired people, lonely individuals of both sexes looking for companionship of one kind or another, and maybe an upscale hooker or two trolling for customers. At this time of day, early afternoon, what you had was a small core of habitual drinkers and pensioners with no better spot to spend their time. Three men were drinking beer and playing cribbage in one of a row of high-backed booths. A rail-thin man in his seventies and a heavily rouged fat woman twenty years younger occupied stools at the bar, neither of them having anything to do with the other.

  The bartender was a bulky guy in his forties-a weight lifter, judging from the bulge of his pecs and biceps in a tight short-sleeved shirt. I ordered a draft Anchor Steam, and when he brought it I showed him Virden’s photograph and asked my question. He gave the snapshot a bored study, started to shake his head, looked again, and said, “Yeah, he was in here. Double shot of Jameson, beer back.”

  “What time?”

  “Around this time.”

  “Alone?” I asked.

  “All alone. You a cop?”

  “Private. He’s missing; I’m looking for him.”

  “That right?” But not as if he cared. Life outside a gym and a weight room probably bored him silly. “Never saw him before or since.”

  The old gent got off his stool and sidled down to where I was, bringing his empty glass with him. “Mind if I have a look?” I held the photo up so he could squint at it through rimless glasses. “Yep, I seen him, too. Stranger dressed real nice, suit and tie. But it wasn’t around this time.”

  “No? When was it?”

  “Well…” He set his empty on the bar and licked his lips in a mildly suggestive way. I gestured to the bartender, who shrugged and filled the glass from a bottle of port wine.

  “Thank you, sir. To your health.” He had some of his port, an almost dainty sip as if he intended to make it last. “Must’ve been about one thirty when the fella come in. No more’n five minutes after I did. Remember, Stan?”

  Another shrug. “If you say so.”

  “You didn’t happen to talk to him?” I asked.

  “No, sir. He wasn’t the sociable type.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Fella had a mad-on about something. Face like a thundercloud, you know what I mean? Sat there and swallowed his drinks and then all of a sudden he smacks the bar and out he goes.”

  “Smacked the bar?”

  “Real hard. Went out of here like something just bit him on his ass.”

  Or he’d made up his mind about something, I thought. Like maybe going back for another conversation with the woman who was supposed to be his ex-wife.

  I was out of The Dog Hole and in my car, but not driving yet, when my cell phone went off. Small favors. Or so I thought until I answered the call.

  “R. L. McManus. Why are you harassing me?” This in a clipped voice as cold as ice.

  “I’d hardly call two brief visits to your home harassment, Ms. McManus.”

  “I told you on Monday I wanted nothing more to do with you or my ex-husband. And I told him the same thing when he showed up here the next day.”

  “Did you, now.”

  “In no uncertain terms. And I suppose he sent you back to bother me with more of his annulment nonsense?”

  “No. As a matter of fact, I haven’t spoken to him since Monday.”

  “Then why were you at my home again today?”

  “Because he’s gone missing.”

  One, two, three seconds before she said, “Missing?”

  “No one’s seen him since Tuesday afternoon.”

  “Well, I don’t know anything about that. He was here for no more than five minutes and I haven’t seen or heard from him since.”

  “Must’ve been kind of an awkward meeting.”

  “It was. Awkward and unnecessary.”

  “How did he look to you?”

  “… What kind of question is that?”

  “Eight years since your divorce. Had he changed much?”

  “Not very much, no.”

  “Recognized him immediately, then.”

  “I’m not likely to forget a man I was married to, am I?”

  “And he recognized you right away.”

  “Of course he did. I haven’t changed that much, either.” Suspicion in her voice now. “What are you getting at?”

  “All you talked about is the annulment, is that right?”

  “Yes, that’s right, and that’s the last question I’m going to answer. If you don’t leave me alone, I’ll sue you for harassment. You can tell David that goes for hi
m, too, when you find him. Is that understood?”

  What’s understood, lady, I thought, is that you’re a damn liar. But I didn’t say it. I didn’t say anything, just pressed the Off button on the cell.

  I was pretty near convinced that Tamara was right about McManus. People who overreact by threatening lawsuits usually have plenty to hide. Question was, just how dirty was she?

  13

  JAKE RUNYON

  Another busy road day. Over to Oakland, first thing, for a deposition in an insurance fraud investigation. Then down to Union City for another interview with the second witness in the hit-and-run accident case: the attorney for the injured party had some questions he wanted answered to verify the man’s reliability. Then back across the bay on the Dumbarton Bridge and up to Palo Alto to talk to a woman who had new information on the subject of a backburnered skip-trace.

  Ordinarily Runyon didn’t mind that kind of workday. Preferred it, in fact. When he’d first joined the agency, he’d asked for assignments that kept him on the move and put in as much weekend work as he could without requesting overtime pay. And most of his spare time had been spent behind the wheel; long drives that he’d pretended were to familiarize himself with the highways and back roads of the greater Bay Area but in reality were excuses to keep him moving, keep his mind occupied and focused on externals. That was how he got through his waking hours. Once he’d accepted the fact that his and Joshua’s estrangement was permanent, work became his only reason for existing. When he wasn’t on a job, he shunned company. Had no use for casual friends, didn’t want another woman even for a single night because he’d lost, or believed then that he’d lost, his sex drive.

  But he hadn’t thought of himself as a lonely man. Empty, consumed by loss-a loner by choice and circumstance. It wasn’t until he met Bryn that he realized the truth about himself. And was finally able to let go of his grief, drag himself out of his self-imposed limbo.

  Bryn and her son and Francine Whalen were the reason the long road day dragged by. Frustration nagged at him. He kept trying to devise some way to expose Whalen for what she was, but without support from the people she’d wounded he was hamstrung. An outsider, already walking a tightrope line. Confronting her directly, trying to intimidate her, was sure to backfire. You could intimidate a rational person whose emotions were under control, but not a calculating, unstable, and possibly sadistic one. It might even trigger her violent impulses, with Bobby as the handiest target.

  Francine, out.

  Another face-up with Robert Darby wouldn’t get him anywhere, either. Just be another exercise in futility. The man was too deep in love and denial to listen to reason until the truth was shoved in his face. And then it might be too late.

  Darby, out.

  What did that leave him? Not much. Another go at Bobby, if he could manage it. The boy had opened up to him a little on Saturday; maybe there was a way to gain enough of his trust to counteract Francine’s hold on him. Talk again to Gwen Whalen, Tracy Holland, the ex-husband, try to convince at least one of them to come forward. See if he could track down the man Francine had lived with before moving in with Charlene Kepler, David or Darren something.

  But the first person he wanted to see tonight was Bryn.

  He drove back into the city on 280. It was a couple of minutes shy of four o’clock and he was on Nineteenth Avenue, waiting at one of the stoplights fronting the S.F. State campus, when his cell phone vibrated.

  He checked the screen. Bryn. He clicked on, saying, “I was just thinking about you-”

  “Jake,” she said, and he knew instantly that something was wrong. Her voice had a clotted sound, as if her throat was full of phlegm. When she spoke again, he could hear the kind of ragged breathing that comes with near hysteria. “Jake, I need you… I don’t know what to do…”

  “What is it? What’s happened?”

  “Can’t, I can’t… not on the phone. Can you come here… now, right away?”

  “Where are you? Home?”

  “No. Robert’s flat in the Marina.”

  Jesus. “Is Bobby all right?”

  “Yes… yes. Hurry, Jake. Please hurry.”

  “On my way. Twenty minutes.”

  Heavy traffic on Nineteenth Avenue made it twenty-five minutes. Runyon didn’t let himself think on the way. You got an emergency call, you waited until you arrived at the scene and assessed the situation before you opened up your mind.

  Avila was a short, slanting street off busy Marina Boulevard, Robert Darby’s address within shouting distance of the Marina Green and the city’s West Harbor yacht clubs beyond. Runyon parked illegally at the corner, the hell with it, and ran to the brown stucco building mid-block and leaned on Darby’s bell in the tiny foyer. The answering buzz came almost immediately. Inside, up a flight of carpeted stairs. Bryn was waiting for him in an open doorway at the top.

  She’d composed herself in the time it had taken him to get there, evident in the way she stood with her back straight and her arms down at her sides. But it was a brittle kind of calm; the aftereffects of shock and near panic showed in her eyes, in the paleness of the undamaged side of her face. But what caught his attention first, before any of that, was the drying smear of blood across the front of her blouse.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No.”

  “The blood-Bobby’s?”

  Bryn shook her head, but Runyon couldn’t tell if it was a negative or reflex.

  “Where is he?”

  “In his bedroom. I washed the blood off his face, made him lie down with an ice pack…”

  “You said he was all right.”

  “He is now. She hit him in the face, there was blood all over him when I got here. From his nose, from a ring cut on his cheek. His nose isn’t broken, thank God.”

  “Francine. Where is she?”

  “The kitchen. She… oh, God, Jake…”

  Bryn turned away from him, walked to the middle of the room. Steadily, if rigidly, her arms still hanging down and pressed close to her body. Runyon eased the door shut, went to stand close in front of her. Peripherally he was aware that the living room had too much furniture, that the decor was done in a confused jumble of colors-blue, green, orange, brown. But the only color he had eyes for was the crimson on her blouse.

  “You’d better sit down,” he said.

  “No. I can’t sit still.”

  “Where’s the kitchen?”

  “I don’t want to go in there again.”

  “You don’t have to. Just point me to it.”

  “Through the swing door over there.”

  He left her, pushed through the swing door. The kitchen, big, lit by track lighting between a pair of skylights, was at an angle beyond a formal dining room. One step into it, he pulled up short.

  Bad, all right. As bad as it gets.

  Francine Whalen lay on the floor between an island stove and a dinette table, twisted onto her back with her skirt hiked up over her thighs, eyes open with that milk-glass cloudiness he’d seen too many times before. Blood all over her blouse, too, and on the floor around her. The knife in her chest had a curved bone handle stained with bloody fingermarks. The lingering aroma of something she’d been baking contrasted sickeningly with the carnage.

  Runyon backed up, turned, returned to the living room. Bryn was pacing in slow, restless steps; she stopped and stood still again when she saw him. A little color had come back into the right side of her face. The paisley scarf over the crippled side hung askew; he rearranged it so the stroke-frozen flesh was completely covered. She didn’t move or speak until he finished.

  “I did it,” she said then. “I didn’t mean to, but I killed Francine.”

  “What happened, Bryn?”

  “She showed up at my home last night, threatened me in a cold-blooded, vicious way… I was afraid she might do something else to Bobby just to spite me. I shouldn’t have come here today, I know that, but I couldn’t help it, I had to make sure he was all right.” Fla
t voice, without inflection, but Runyon could hear the undercurrent of emotions like a distant sea whisper. “She didn’t want to let me in. I knew something was wrong by the way she acted. I pushed past her, and when I saw Bobby, all the blood, what she’d just done to him, I… went a little crazy. I screamed at her and she screamed back. Then she tried to claw my face. I slapped her, she slapped me and ran into the kitchen, I ran after her. What happened after that… it’s not very clear. We were struggling and the next thing I knew she had that knife in her hand. I grabbed her arm, twisted it, tried to make her drop the knife, but instead she… somehow it got between us and… the next thing I knew I was standing over her with blood on my hands.”

  Her hands were clean now. She saw Runyon looking at them, at the fresh-looking Band-Aid on one finger, and said, “I washed it off in the bathroom. Some of it was mine… she must have cut my finger in the struggle.”

  “Did Bobby see it happen?”

  “No. God, no. He never came out of his bedroom.”

  “Sure of that?”

  “Yes. I’m sure. He doesn’t know Francine’s dead.”

  “Did you call anybody besides me?”

  “No.”

  Runyon glanced at his watch. Four forty. “What time does Darby usually get home?”

  “I don’t know…”

  “When you were married to him-what time then?”

  “No set time. He usually called if he was going to be later than six. Oh, God, I don’t want to be here when he comes.” She gripped Runyon’s arm. “Jake, do we have to call the police? Can’t you just take Bobby and me away from here?”

  He could, sure. Leave the door open, let Darby find Francine’s body. Call the law from Bryn’s house, or not call them at all, on the slim hope Darby and the police would assume an intruder had killed Francine. But running out, pretending, lying, were always bad ideas. Always ended up making a bad situation even worse.

  “You know I can’t do that,” he said.

  “Just Bobby, then. I don’t care what happens to me…”

  “But I do. There’s no place to take him and even if there was-”

  “His doctor. His nose should be looked at, he could have other injuries.”