Camouflage

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.”

“Week after next.”

“You have a present for her yet?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Know what you’re going to get her?”

Bobby shook his head. “I can’t think of anything,” he said, and paused, and added, “I don’t get much of an allowance.”

“Well, I’m not sure what to get her, either. I thought maybe you and I could put our heads together, figure out what she’d like.”

The boy squirmed a little, not saying anything.

“Drive over to Stonestown,” Runyon said, “look around in the stores.”

“… I don’t know.”

“Don’t know if you should? I can fix it with your mom.”

Silence. But he was thinking it over.

“I’d really appreciate your help, Bobby. She deserves some nice birthday presents, don’t you think?”

“Yes.” Then, making up his mind, “Okay, if she says I can go.”

“I’ll ask her. Give me a couple of minutes.”

Bryn was in the kitchen, fiddling with the arrangement of canned goods in a small pantry-make-work while she waited. Runyon said, “So far so good. We’re going over to Stonestown, do some shopping.”

“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.