Come Morning

Chapter 10

While the soft drink driver was filling the coin machines outside the conference rooms, Runyan stole his uniform cap. He went into the men’s room and used his pocket knife to cut off the cloth COCA-COLA badge, then wrote “LOUISE GRAHAM, Wharfside Hotel, Rm 243” on the manila envelope holding the two folders he had taken from her room. Down in the left-hand corner, underlined twice, he added “URGENT.”

Carrying the folder and wearing the cap, he shoved his way through the conventioneers and vacationers to the reception desk. He slapped the envelope down in front of the clerk.

“American Messengers. I get no answer from Louise Graham in Room Two-Four-Three. They said to get her forwarding if she had checked out. They’ll have to fly this to her right away.”

Without a second glance, the clerk went to confer with the cashier, returned with a slip of paper and the address.

“One-Seven-Oh-Two Mojave Road South, Las Vegas. No zip.”

Runyan folded the slip and stuck it in his windbreaker pocket. “It’ll be hand-delivered anyway. Thanks, pal.”

He strolled out of the hotel. The big man known as Cronin came down the stairs from his vantage point above The Lubbers Bar and followed him out. Cronin was well over six feet tall; besides his mackinaw he wore a battered yachting cap, sunglasses, a grey-shot beard, and scuffed thick-soled boots that had gotten a lot of wear but which made him walk as if they hurt his feet a little.

Forty minutes after Runyan had gone, Moyers went past the striped barrier arm and cruised the underground parking garage looking for Louise’s car. First alarm and then anger bubbled up as he realized it was no longer there.

Louise, on a plane to Vegas.

Runyan, gone with her car.

Report the car stolen? Wrong play. He didn’t want Runyan back inside, he wanted him out here where eventually he would make his run for those diamonds.

Unless he was getting them right now.

No. That didn’t make sense. He’d had to hide them at night, in desperation. At night would be the logical time to recover them. And so far, he hadn’t had a night out from under Moyer’s surveillance.

He showed his I.D. to the same desk clerk on whom Runyan had worked his messenger scam.

“Homelife General Insurance, we carry the personal liability for the hotel.” He had no idea if they did or not, but he could be sure the clerk knew even less. “We need the forwarding of a Louise Graham, checked out this morning...”

“Sure,” said the clerk. “Room Two-Four-Three. OneSeven-Oh-Two Mojave Road South, Las Vegas. A messenger was here half an hour ago with a package for her, I had to—”

“What kind of package?”

“Manila envelope.”

“Manuscript size?”

“That would be about right, yes sir.”

Could be. A manuscript, galley proofs, research material — the possibilities were endless. He got the address from the clerk, started to turn away, then turned back again.

“Which messenger service, do you remember?”

“Uh... American? I think that’s what he said.”

“What did he look like?”

“You know. Cap. Jacket. Medium height, medium build...” He brightened. “Like a messenger.”

Moyers headed for the pay phones. Runyan? Could have been, if she’s skipped out on him while he was sleeping. But why? Called off? By whom? Someone in Vegas?

He used his credit card to get the Las Vegas number he had called earlier from the airport.

“Stark Investigations.”

“Rich-Dave Moyers again, I—”

“I was hoping you’d call, Dave. My man at the airport reported in five minutes ago. Our lady was a no-show. Ticketed and reserved, but not on the plane.”

“Goddammit!” exclaimed Moyers. “It stopped in Burbank, could she have—”

“Negative,” said Stark crisply. “We’ve got good contacts at the airport, my man got a look at the passenger manifest.”

She’d been standing somewhere in the airport terminal, watching him take the bait. Well, that answered the writer bit. No way.

“I have an address on her,” he said. “Seventeen-Oh-Two Mojave Road South.”

There was a long pause, then Stark’s heavy voice said, “I won’t know ’til I see the building, but some of those places out there are connected.”

Moyers was silent for a long moment himself. Connected. Two million in eight-year-old hot jewels didn’t seem sufficiently heavy action for wise-guy interest as elaborate as this; but it could be some soldier running his own show, with the organization raking a percentage if he came up with anything. That made sense, and would explain her expertise, her impact. She would be the very best.

“That in itself would mean something,” he said. “Get what you can. If it’s a dead end, spend some money around town to get a line on her. Stay on her until I tell you to stop.”

“Will do.”

“And bill this to Homelife direct, not through me. I don’t want my name on it if anything heavy is going down.”

“Got you,” said Stark cheerfully. “Hell, Dave, the company pays a lot quicker than you, anyway.”

Finally, Moyers called his office, told them to call him on the mobile phone when they had the Hertz location that had rented the car to Louise. Maybe he could pick up Runyan again when he turned the car in. Failing that, a stakeout on the Westward Hotel in hopes that Runyan would show up there before going after the diamonds.

Five minutes before Moyers found out that Louise had rented her car at the Hertz Main Office on Mason Street, Runyan had parked it in one of the return lanes there, had gotten out, and had walked away after dropping the key and paperwork into the slotbox provided for credit-card customers. He had already worked the rental agreement for all its information.

The same Las Vegas address she had left at the hotel. And a Nevada driver’s license.

Las Vegas was a long way from Minneapolis where she supposedly had been working on a newspaper.

He walked aimlessly, unaware of the car tail being conducted by the big bearded man in the mackinaw.

The stewardess leaned across the empty seats to ask Louise if she wanted coffee, tea, bouillon, a drink perhaps?

“Oh. Nothing, thank you.”

She nodded her warm empty smile and went on. Louise, with a window seat not because she cared but only because the plane was not crowded, watched the endless Western landscape unroll far below her.

She felt drained. Had she done the right thing, just leaving like that? Hadn’t she owed Runyan an explanation, right from the beginning? Las Vegas. Getting out with her face still pretty, but owing the man who had gotten her out. Certainly Runyan could have understood that she needed the diamonds, not for herself, but to pay off the debt? Would have been willing to work something out together?

Then she would have been free to take the thing with Runyan wherever it led. Even if it led nowhere in a matter of months, or weeks — even days. Wouldn’t that have been better than this... this self-loathing?

Stop it. Men weren’t that way. There was very little reason to suppose Runyan would have been even the least bit interested in sharing the diamonds he’d given eight years of his life for. He hadn’t wanted her, he’d wanted her body. He would have refused...

Oh hell, he had wanted her. She could smell it on them, the desire, the wanting. She’d become an expert in that. So, better to have ended it here and now. She’d get over him. She’d gotten over men before, as she’d gotten used to being used by men — and to using them in turn.

She found to her amazement that she was crying silently; or rather, that tears were running down her face without her having any conscious awareness of them. She used kleenex from her purse to wipe her eyes, then resolutely studied the view.

Runyan wouldn’t give her up so easily. He’d be looking for her, trying to find her, get her back. Of course he would. There was no way he could do it; but the fiction that he was trying seemed somehow to comfort her.

Runyan got five bucks worth of quarters from the middle-aged change lady in a porn palace a block from Hertz and started working the phone. No listing for Graham, Louise, in Las Vegas. None in Minneapolis, either. Of course she might have a listing in some outlying bedroom community, but he was just hitting the high points here for his own peace of mind.

Okay, one more shot and then admit that she’d just ditched him, pure and simple. He dialed Rochester information and asked for a listing for Osco Drugs.

“Downtown store or Apache Mall, Sir?”

“Uh... downtown store. But better give me both.”

She hadn’t lied about that, she had been from Rochester — or at least knew it pretty well. Osco Drugs didn’t sound like a chain. Apache Mall would have to be a shopping center, probably more recent than the downtown store. He manages the Osco Drug Store in Rochester, Minnesota... He dialled the number, fed in quarters.

“Osco Drugs.”

“Mr. Graham, please.”

“Just a moment, sir.”

Graham had a slightly querulous voice with the slight Midwestern twang. This was not the general of Louise’s story, trapped in the labyrinth of his own failing mind.

“Do you have a daughter named Louise?” asked Runyan in a heavy official voice.

“Why, yes, we do.” Very quickly. “Who is this? What’s happened? We haven’t—”

“Lieutenant... um, Costanzo, San Francisco, California, police. A man who was in an accident had her name in his wallet, giving you as her reference. If you could give us—”

“I find this very unusual,” said Graham suspiciously. “In the man’s wallet, you say?”

“That’s all we know, Mr. Graham. We were hoping you could help us identify—”

“Our letters to Louise have all come back for at least a year from some place in Las Vegas, out in Nevada, and the phone was disconnected a year ago, we had the sheriff’s office out there check. A different woman lived there, she’d never heard of Louise.” His voice rose, got almost shrill. “What sort of trouble has she gotten herself into now? If she thinks we’re going to pick up the pieces for her again she...”

Runyan hung up. Not hard to see why Louise had left home. But it did nothing for him; he’d hit a stone wall with her.

He found a bar, had a drink. Stared at himself in the mirror. Fighting the mirror, old-time bartenders used to call it. Time to quit thinking with his cock. Louise was lost to him, gone forever. And he was still in the vise. Moyers. The unknown on the phone — that man wasn’t going to give up.

Runyan was going to have to fit himself back into that skin he had sloughed, have to become that earlier, harder man he had been before Q. The man he had come out of prison swearing to himself he would never become again. In the process, he was going to diminish inescapably the man he had sought to become — but he might just stay alive.

He finished his drink and went out to catch a bus. Time to get a handle on Jamie Cardwell, so he could find out what was coming down on him.