Betrayers

4

JAKE RUNYON

“Jumpers,” Abe Melikian said sourly. “God, I hate ’em, I hate ’em with a passion. They want to jump, why don’t they go jump off a bridge, jump off a building? No, they got to jump on my poor ass instead.”

Runyon made a sympathetic noise.

“As if I don’t have enough troubles,” Melikian said. “I got a bad back, I got hemorrhoids, and now my doctor says I got to have a hip replacement. I’m falling apart here. Business is lousy, and now I got another jumper trying to screw me. This Troy Madison bum loses himself down a sewer hole with the rest of the goddamn rats I’m out thirty-one point five K, and I can’t afford the loss. You understand what I’m saying to you?”

Bill had worked a few bail-jump cases for Melikian in the past and had warned Runyon he was a chronic complainer and poor-mouth. In fact, he now owned one of the more successful bail bonds outfits in the city: half a dozen employees and offices right across Bryant Street from the Hall of Justice. Healthy as a horse, too, Bill said, in spite of his usual litany of physical complaints. Right. Robust, fit-looking man in his late fifties, with a full head of dark brown hair that didn’t look dyed.

Runyon said, “I understand. You want him found as fast as possible.”

“Fast, that’s right. Before he disappears so nobody can find him.”

“What time was his court appearance this morning?”

“Ten o’clock. Soon as I found out he didn’t show, I sent one of my people over to his apartment. Gone. Flew the coop last night.”

“How do you know it was last night?”

“One of the neighbors saw him leave. Him and that skanky broad he lives with. Carrying suitcases, both of ’em.”

“What’s the neighbor’s name?”

“I don’t know; ask Frank outside. He’s the one talked to her.”

“The neighbor have any idea where they were headed?”

“Hell no,” Melikian said. “Jumpers, they’re like mimes-they don’t say a word to nobody.”

“What about Madison’s lawyer?”

“Public defender. Surprised Madison jumped, he said. Met with him two days ago, Madison promised he’d show, that was good enough for the PD. Why’s everybody frigging incompetent these days?”

“Everybody isn’t.”

“Meaning you? Better not be. I don’t know you, but I know your boss; he’s plenty competent. How come he didn’t come himself? He can’t be bothered with Abe Melikian anymore?”

“He’s semiretired. I do most of the fieldwork for the agency now.”

“Yeah? So I guess you must be okay. I’d hate to have to call in a bounty hunter. Those buggers want fifteen, twenty percent of the bond-I can’t afford to pay fees like that, put me straight out of business.”

Runyon said, “Tell me about Madison.”

“Tell you what? It’s all in that file you got there in your hand.”

“I’d rather hear it from you first.”

Melikian screwed up his face until it resembled a mournful hound’s. “A doper,” he said. “You can’t trust dopers, they’re the dregs, they’re gene-pool scum. Even the first-timers, and he’s not a first-timer-he was busted three times before this last one.”

“All for possession with intent to sell?”

“No. Just this last time for dealing.”

“Jump bail before?”

“No. You think I’d’ve put up his bond if he had? Ahh, why the hell’d he have to pick on me this time? I should’ve turned him and that brother of his down flat; that’s what I should’ve done.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Why. The man asks why. I got mouths to feed and bills and salaries to pay, that’s why. I got to have a hip replacement operation, I already told you that. So what choice do I have but to serve the dregs, the scum, unless my shit detector tells me don’t do it. Only it wasn’t working with this Madison pair. The doper came across all contrite and respectful and I fell for it like he was my first client ever. Maybe my shit detector’s busted permanently along with everything else I got wrong with me. I tell you, I’m falling apart here.”

Runyon said, “His brother put up your fee. Coy Madison, is it?”

“Yeah. Coy. Coy and Troy. Some names.”

“What’d Coy say when you told him his brother didn’t show?

“He was pissed, what else? He’s out thirty-five hundred, or his wife is.”

“The wife’s money?”

“Yeah,” Melikian said. “He works in some art supply store, doesn’t earn much of his own.”

“Either of them have any idea where his brother might be?”

“He says no.”

“Or why Troy jumped bail?”

“Why? Why do you think? Figured he’d be convicted, didn’t want to do the time. Goddamn jumpers are all alike.”

“He have any other relatives?”

“No.”

“What about friends?”

“Dopers like that, they don’t have friends, they just have customers.”

“He’s got at least one,” Runyon said.

“Yeah? Who?”

“The woman he lives with.”

Melikian managed to half-curl his upper lip. “Her. What the jumper sees in her I can’t imagine, unless she does something fancy in bed. Looks like she’s been dragged a few times behind a Muni bus. Older than him, must be thirty-five.”

“What’s her name?”

“Jennifer Piper. Another doper. She got caught in the same bust, but the cops didn’t hold her. Not enough evidence she was dealing, too.”

“Where’ve they been living?”

“Apartment on Valencia. Address is in the file.” Melikian’s voice was edged with impatience now. “Everything else you need is in the file. So how about you get moving instead of sitting here asking me questions, find that goddamn jumper so I don’t lose my thirty-one point five K.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“I don’t want to hear do your best. You think my doctor’s gonna give me a hip replacement I tell him I’ll do my best to pay him for it? Results, that’s what I want. That damn jumper back in jail where he belongs, that’s what I want.”

Runyon had nothing to say to that. He’d learned long ago that you didn’t argue with clients or respond to less than reasonable demands from the aggressive ones like Melikian. You just nodded, said you’d be in touch. And went away to do exactly what you’d said you would-your best, always.

In his car he went through the printout of the Madison file. There were two pics of Troy Madison in addition to the usual bio sheet, one the booking photo from his latest arrest, the other a head-and-shoulders snap probably taken by one of Melikian’s employees. Skinny kid at five ten, 160 pounds. Long reddish hair, scraggly beard, pockmarked cheeks-not much to look at, but memorable enough once you’d seen him. Runyon slipped both photos into his jacket pocket.

The two brothers had been born in Bakersfield, Troy the younger by two years-twenty-eight now. Both parents deceased and no living relatives except an eighty-five-year-old grandmother in a Visalia nursing home. Never married. Mechanic by trade, also worked as a truck driver. Current address: 244 Valencia Street. Arrested four times on narcotics charges over the past seven years, all in San Francisco-three for possession of methamphetamines and crack cocaine, the recent intent-to-sell bust made outside a Mission District nightclub by two undercover narcs. The possession charges had resulted in a couple of slaps on the wrist and one six-month stay in the county jail; the current bust involved sufficient amounts of meth and crack to land him in Folsom if he was convicted. Melikian’s shit detector had malfuctioned where Madison was concerned, all right. Prime jumper candidate from the get-go.

Madison’s brother, Coy, and his wife lived on 19th Street. He was manager of Noe Valley Arts amp; Crafts Supply on 24th; Arletta Madison was a self-employed sculptress, either one of the few successful artists of that type or she had money of her own that her husband wasn’t privy to without permission.

There was nothing in the file on Jennifer Piper.

Runyon called the agency, asked Tamara to run checks on the Madison brothers, Piper, and Arletta Madison and to find out if she could turn up any individuals with ties, particularly criminal ties, to Troy Madison. Then he got rolling.

The apartment building where Madison and Piper had been living was an old four-story stucco pile with a buff-colored facade, a couple of blocks off Market. The lobby mailbox that bore Madison’s name but not Jennifer Piper’s was 3B. Runyon rang the bell three times, just making sure, before he looked up the building manager, a fat woman with hair the color of Cheez Whiz. She had nothing to tell him. “I don’t pay no attention to what the other tenants do unless they don’t pay their rent on time,” she said. “Troy Madison pays his on time, that’s all I know, that’s all I want to know.”

Runyon went back into the vestibule and thumbed the bell on the box marked Adams, the name of the woman who’d seen Madison and Piper leaving with their suitcases. No answer. He rang the other bells one at a time, got three responses. One of the three wouldn’t talk to him; the other two were willing enough, if hardly a font of information.

“I heard Madison got arrested for selling drugs,” one of them said, “but he never tried to push any around here. I’d’ve turned him in if he had. I don’t have nothing to do with drugs, mister. One of my sister’s kids died of a heroin overdose three years ago.”

“The Piper woman?” the other neighbor said. “Sure, I seen her around. Unfriendly as hell. Stare right through you like you were a piece of glass. No, I don’t know where she works. Don’t work anywhere, for all I know. I seen her around here all hours, day and night.”

So much for Valencia Street, at least for the time being. Next stop: Noe Valley.

He wondered what Bryn was doing right now.

Funny how thoughts like that popped into his head lately. He’d be thinking about something else or not thinking about anything, driving someplace or no place, and then all of a sudden she’d be there in his mind. Just the way Colleen had been in the twenty good years before the cancer diagnosis. Happened all the time then, not just occasionally, but he’d been deeply in love with Colleen-the love of his life. He wasn’t in love with Bryn. Or was he? Maybe, a little

… more than a little. But not in the same way, now or ever.

With Colleen the connection had been so complete that when the cancer had finally destroyed her, it’d nearly destroyed him, too. With Bryn it was different. A closeness built on friendship, understanding, a gradually hardening bond of trust. Gentle intimacy, even in bed the past month. Two damaged people, her by the stroke that had paralyzed one side of her face, him by Colleen’s lingering death and the black hole it had left inside him. Leaning on each other for support, sure, but it was more than that-it was helping each other learn how to feel again, how to care about themselves again.

She’d be working now, he thought, as she did most afternoons. Maybe on one of her watercolors or charcoal sketches, maybe on the computer-generated graphic designs that paid her bills. She’d refused spousal support when her cold, selfish ex-husband divorced her after the stroke. Too proud, too self-sufficient. She’d even insisted on paying a share of the support for her only kid, nine-year-old Robert Jr., Bobby.

Bobby had spent this past weekend with her-one of the two weekends a month she was allowed to have her son to herself. The ex-husband, the kind of lawyer that gave the profession a bad name, had manipulated it that way. Made some sort of arrangement with a family court judge who granted him full custody except for the monthly weekend visits and one week in the summer, the decision based on the lie that Bryn’s stroke and disfigurement made her less than fit to raise the boy as a single mom. Bastards. And now Robert Sr. was getting married again, which meant a new “mother” for Bobby, an increased feeling of alienation for Bryn.

Nothing she could do about it. Nothing Runyon could, either, except be there for her when she needed him-particularly during one of her periodic bouts of near-suicidal depression. He’d been suicidal himself after Colleen died, come close more than once to eating his gun; he knew all about the waves of black melancholy and the death-wish impulses. He’d fought them, beat them off, finally buried them. Bryn would do the same with his help and support. He believed that and he felt that she was starting to believe it, too.

He hoped the weekend had gone well. He hadn’t talked to her since Thursday night, didn’t feel it was right to intrude on her private time with her son. Had she taken his advice to be more affectionate with the boy? So afraid Bobby would pull away from her because of her deformity that she’d let an uncomfortable distance build up between them, not once in his presence removing the scarf she wore constantly over the frozen side of her face.

That wouldn’t change, at least not for some time. She still wouldn’t let Runyon see her without the scarf, or touch her face or kiss her. Sex in the dark, bodies close but heads apart at awkward angles.

Hurt and lonely, both of them. It was what had drawn them together, what would keep them together until something happened to end their relationship or make it permanent.

Better not think about that now. Carpe diem. It had been so long since he’d felt like seizing any day, looked forward to something other than filling up the long empty hours with work and aimless driving. Enjoy it while it lasted. Be grateful for the chance to feel alive again.

Noe Valley, between the east side of Twin Peaks and the Mission District, was one of the city’s thriving upscale neighborhoods. Fashionable older homes and apartment buildings, and along 24th Street blocks of restaurants, coffee-houses, bookstores, taverns, small businesses. Parking was at a premium; it took Runyon ten minutes to find a space within a block and a half of 24th and Castro, where Noe Valley Arts amp; Crafts was located.

Small place: long, narrow, with shelves and displays along the walls, more shelving down the middle, and an upfront counter. The girl behind the counter was eighteen or nineteen, gold rings and studs in her ears, nose, and upper lip, and fingernails painted the color of a ripe eggplant. The stud in her lip sparkled when she told him, smiling, that Mr. Madison was in his office in back. She offered to go fetch him, but Runyon said he’d just go on back, he had some personal business to discuss.

The office door was open, revealing a small, tidy office and the man standing at an old-fashioned file cabinet along one wall. He was taller than his brother, a couple of inches over six feet, and also red haired, but with the kind of smooth baby-skin face that would sprout only enough whiskers for twice-weekly shaves. A weak chin and close-set eyes kept him from being good-looking. He glanced around, blinking, as Runyon stepped into the doorway.

“This is a private office,” Madison said. “The girl at the counter can get you anything you need-”

“Afraid not, Mr. Madison.” Runyon introduced himself, showed his license. “I’m here about your brother.”

Madison said, “Oh, God,” in a voice that was half-pained, half-irritated. “Come in; shut the door.” Then, when Runyon had complied, “I suppose that bondsman, Melikian, hired you to find Troy.”

“My agency. That’s right.”

“Well, I don’t have any idea where he went.” Madison moved away from the file cabinet, around behind his desk. Most men of his height had an easy way of walking, but his movements were awkward and loose-jointed, almost a duck waddle. “A long damn way from here, I hope. So far away you never find him.”

“If you feel that way, why did you arrange for his bail?”

“You don’t know him,” Madison said. “Nobody knows him like I do.”

“Meaning?”

“He puts on a good act, pretends to be easygoing, everybody’s friend. But inside he’s just the opposite. A mean, violent son of a bitch. He used to beat me up when we were kids, just for the hell of it. I took more abuse from him than anybody else in my life, including my wife.”

“He threatened you, is that it?”

“Not at first. Claimed he was innocent, that he’d been set up and could prove it at his trial. Swore he’d pay the money back as soon as he could-a crock; he never paid anybody back a dime in his life. I told him no, we couldn’t afford it. That’s when he turned ugly. He knew we had the money. Said he’d hurt me, hurt Arletta, if we didn’t bail him out.”

“You could’ve ignored the threats, left him in jail.”

“Sure. Maybe he’d’ve been convicted and maybe he wouldn’t, and even if he was he’d spend, what, a couple of years in prison. What do you think he’d do when he got out? No, you just don’t know him and what he’s capable of.”

“Did you expect him to jump bail?”

“I thought he might. He was in jail for six months a few years ago; you probably know that. He hated it, hated the idea of going to prison.”

“So you were hoping he would jump, go on the run.”

“Well, what if I was? I didn’t help him do it, did I?”

Same as. But Runyon didn’t put the thought into words.

“I have a right to protect myself and my wife,” Madison said defensively. “The best way I can.”

“She agree?”

“Sure she agrees. Why ask that?”

“I understand it was her money that paid Melikian.”

“Her money.” Madison’s mouth thinned down even more, until his smooth baby face seemed lipless. “Christ, I get tired of hearing that. So she’s gotten lucky with those sculptures of hers, darling of the critics and gallery owners, so what? We’re married, it’s my money, too.”

Runyon said mildly, “Abe Melikian says you had to ask her for the thirty-five hundred. Prenup?”

Anger kindled in Madison’s pale blue eyes. “That’s none of your business. My personal affairs have nothing to do with my brother skipping out on his bail.”

Runyon let it go. “When did you last see him?”

“The day he got bailed out.”

“No contact with him since? No demands for more money?”

“No. At least not yet.”

“Then he might have some of his own stashed away. Or a supply of drugs or a source to get him some that he can turn into ready cash. Any idea who his suppliers are?”

“No.”

“His friends?”

“No. They’re all drug freaks like that bitch he lives with. I don’t have anything to do with people like that.”

“But you do know her. Jennifer Piper.”

“Not before he was arrested. I hardly ever saw Troy, except when he needed money. She was at the jail when I went to see him. Christ, what a piece she is. Tattoos, greasy hair, body like a scarecrow. She gave me the creeps.”

Runyon asked, “He still have ties to anyone in Bakersfield?”

“Not that I know about. He wouldn’t’ve gone back there, if that’s what you’re thinking. He hated growing up there; we both did.”

“What do you think, then, Mr. Madison? Is he running or hiding out somewhere locally?”

“I can’t answer that. Troy’s not smart; he’s just cunning-and so messed up on drugs there’s no telling what he might do.”

Runyon laid one of his business cards on the desk. “Let me know if he contacts you for any reason.”

“I don’t think so,” Madison said. “I help you catch him and he finds out, Arletta and I will be the ones to suffer when he gets out of prison. I hope to Christ none of us ever sees his ugly face again.”