Come Morning

Chapter 11

The bearded man who called himself Leo Cronin started the car and popped another dexie when Runyan came out of the bar. Had to stay awake and alert until Runyan got somewhere isolated enough to do it. His hand strayed to the cheap plastic suitcase on the seat beside him. Do it, get the diamonds off the body, get away unseen.

Shirt pocket, maybe — Runyan would know that pants pockets could be picked too easily. Or maybe a money belt-which would mean a few extra seconds to get the damn thing off the body, so the set-up had to be right.

He watched Runyan get on the bus.

Two million dollars.

Even fencing the stones in Vegas for only a percentage of their retail worth would get him out of trouble and set him up in style, really set him up. Him and Louise. She wouldn’t leave if he had the diamonds.

He checked his rear-view and followed the Number 76 bus out Sutter, still thinking of Louise. If she ever found out he’d aced Runyan, he’d lose her. But she was on her way back home by now, believing he was still in Vegas. He’d tell her his man in San Francisco hadn’t been able to get the stones, but it didn’t matter because he’d won big in Vegas, really big, enough to get even and a hell of a lot more besides.

Guys like Runyan always seemed to get whatever they wanted, but not this time. Runyan had Louise for the moment, but...

Goddamn, he’d almost missed Runyan getting off the bus. He had to drive right by him, pull up across Van Ness, and hold him in the rear-view mirror. Not easy, with a man you knew you were going to kill. Six, seven years ago he’d maimed that nigger in Detroit with a fucking knee-drop, but he’d never killed anyone before.

Fucking Runyan he was going to kill.

A bus came and went; Runyan stayed where he was.

Could he do it up close this way, in daylight, looking him right in the eye when he pulled the trigger? Things could come up in you at a time like that, could mess your head around for that vital moment. And he could be so worried about getting away afterwards that he could screw it up, too. Better just hope...

Runyan got on another bus. Everything was okay when he was moving, didn’t have to think. Think of the two million. Two million dollars in diamonds, all his, fair and square, finders-keepers...

Runyan got off the 71 Bus at 23rd and Kirkham. From the pay phone at a drugstore in a small neighborhood business area, he called Jamie Cardwell’s unlisted number. He let it ring 12 times, then hung up. On the way out, he bought a clipboard and a pad of cheap lined paper which he clipped on top of Louise’s manila envelope.

The Sunset District south of Golden Gate Park was working-class: stucco and frame row houses built in the ’thirties. Until then, the whole area had been empty shifting sand dunes. Even now, often, the fog didn’t burn away until noon and was back by four. But today it was bright and beautiful. A good day for Runyan to check out the terrain, find his edge.

Cardwell’s house was in the 1700 block, sharing side walls with the adjacent houses and with the usual under-the-house garage. Curtains shut off the front windows. Runyan went up the terrazzo steps to the inset front door and held his finger on the bell for a long time. No response.

As he started down, a small dark vivacious woman in her forties, with piercing brown eyes and an old-fashioned kerchief tied around her head, came down the sidewalk wheeling a cart full of laundry. “You looking for Miz Cardwell, she’s a nurse over to the Shriner’s Hospital on Nineteenth and Moraga, they don’t like personal visitors on the job?”

“It was Mr. Cardwell I was—”

“Five o’clock.” He realized she was foreman of the local information factory, punching the neighborhood time clock. “He gets off work to PGandE at four, picks up their little girl Patty from the playground and comes straight home. If there’s anything I can help you with?”

“That’d be the playground at...”

“Sunset at Twenty-ninth, between Lawton and Moraga.”

“Thank you very much,” said Runyan, starting away.

She called quickly after him, “I could tell him you were asking for him, Mister?”

“Harrold. From the Veterans Administration.”

Staring after him, she exclaimed aloud, “His disability pension!” Her face cleared and she triumphantly trundled her cart down Kirkham.

This might be the place, Cronin thought with quickening pulse. Over on the far side of the block-wide park were slides and a monkey gym, but Runyan was sitting here alone in a swing. Cronin actually had opened the plastic suitcase before he paused. The broken-down 12-gauge shotgun inside had eight inches hacksawed off the barrel so it would fit.

Not good. Not smart. Sure, Runyan was alone, but across the street were houses. Inside would be housewives sitting on their butts while their husbands were out working to support them. And sure as hell one of them, during a commercial in her soap opera, would wander over to gawk out one of those windows — and see him blowing the back of Runyan’s head off. No thanks.

With mingled regret and relief he shut the cheap plastic suitcase again. He had to be patient, wait for dark. In a city in daylight, he wasn’t going to find enough isolation to do it.

But what if Runyan was here to meet his fence? Okay, then he’d show the guy a sample of the merchandise, then set up another meet — negotiations in something like this took time...

Tonight, after dark, while Runyan still had the stones on him. Then he’d take them to Vegas, fence them through his connections there. He had a lot of connections in Vegas.

Patty was about eight, wearing a blouse and a jumper short enough to show bony knees too big for her legs. Her eyes were a waif’s eyes, shy and downturned. Reddish hair worn long, lots of freckles. She would be a beauty some day, but right now, Runyan thought, she was just the skinny little daughter of a busy mother trying to make the best of a lousy marriage.

She set her blue book bag precisely at the foot of one of the sloping metal poles supporting the swing apparatus. As he’d known she would, Patty chose the swing furthest from his.

“I used to swing a lot when I was your age,” he said.

She shot a quick sideways look at him, wild as a fox kit.

“I know,” said Runyan, “your mommy told you not to talk to strangers. That’s what I’d tell my little girl if I had one.”

Abruptly, she said, “My daddy.”

“I’m a friend of your daddy’s. His name is Jamie.”

She looked over at him openly now, forgetting to swing.

“Nobody but Mommy calls him Jamie.”

“I knew your daddy a long time ago, Patty — before you were born. Did he ever tell you about being in the war?”

“That’s why his stomach hurts so he has to take a lot of drinks and yell and throw things. To make the hurt go away.”

“I bet he has to take a lot of drinks,” said Runyan. He stood up. “Would you like me to push you while we wait for your daddy? That way you won’t have to pump.”

When Jamie Cardwell got out of his lousy old Datsun, he could hear his daughter’s delighted shrieks from the swing just out of sight up the grassy slope. Patty was the only really great thing that had happened to him in this lousy world. He’d be long gone from here without her. But shit, Betty’d get her if there was a divorce, what with his lousy credit and his record as a drinker. What’d they expect of a guy got as many lousy breaks as he did, for Chrissake?

Cardwell started up the slope, panting immediately from the effort. He had changed from the solid chunky Cardwell of Runyan’s nightmare. His cheeks were slack, leathery now, his face ruddy with the habitual drinker’s high color. Self-pity calipered his mouth; his eyes were set in sockets of discontent. A whiskey-drinker’s paunch hung over his belt.

Dammit, a man had to drink to kill the memories the gook bullets had stitched into his gut all those years ago.

Lousy breaks.

He lengthened his stride. Some bastard was pushing Patty in the swing.

“Hang on tight!” the guy yelled, and ran through underneath her, releasing the swing at the very far end of its arc, so she was hung out parallel to the ground for a delicious microsecond, clinging to the ropes for dear life and shrieking with the excitement of her own daring.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Cardwell yelled at the guy. He stopped Patty on the backswing, jerked her off the seat, held her against his aching stomach. “Honey are you okay? How many times have I told you about strangers in—”

“Strangers, Jamie? I’m hurt.”

The voice froze him. He felt the blood draining from his legs. He wanted to fold his arms across his slug-stitched gut and fall down on the ground in the fetal position and just stay there.

Runyan was back on his own swing, grinning at Cardwell. Cardwell darted looks from him to the girl and back again. She had her face in her hands, trying to hide her tears.

“Why... why don’t you go play on the slide with the other kids, Patty?” he said in an uncertain voice, as if asking Runyan’s permission with the question.

Patty darted away without a backward glance.

“I had a chat with your V.A. caseworker, Jamie.” There was nothing in Runyan’s face at all. Not hatred, not pity. It was as if he were having a discussion with a picket fence. He idly drifted himself to and fro with little stabs of a toe in the dust. “I told him about saving your life in Vietnam, and he told me where to find you.” The voice got soft and terrible. “You do remember me saving your life in Vietnam, don’t you, Jamie?”

A great feeling of self-pity washed over Cardwell. “I wish you’d of left me to die! I never—”

“—never get any breaks,” said Runyan. “I know, Jamie. Like eight years ago, when you owed some Shylock money and came to me with this setup where you worked. Pleaded with me...” His voice was so low it was almost a whisper. “Seven years in Q, hoping it was just you and me in on it. But it wasn’t just you and me, was it? I had a phone call the night I got out of Q, Jamie.”

“A... phone call?”

Runyan’s eyes burned Cardwell with their coldness. “Which one suggested blowing me away and splitting it up between the rest of you?”

Cardwell wanted to lie. He was going to lie. But he couldn’t. Not to those eyes.

“They... didn’t know until... afterwards...” His heart was pounding so hard he thought it was going to fly to pieces. He burst out, “I had to, Runyan! There wasn’t enough, not with what I owed the Shylock, and the other guy’s cut, and what I needed to...” He swung his arm toward the children screaming their delight across the park. “She was on the way...”

Runyan stood up with a bitter laugh.

“I thought when I came out of Q that I wasn’t going to have to go into the shit again. Shows you how stupid a man can be, doesn’t it?” He looked off across the playground. “Eight years in the can.” He looked at Cardwell. “How old is she, Jamie? Eight? Nice kid. I’ll be in touch.”

Cardwell watched him walk away, tears of anger and frustration in his eyes. Yeah, he’d be in touch, and Cardwell would get shoved around again, would have his little Patty threatened again. He didn’t have any other options. In this lousy world he never had any options, never got any breaks. But he knew one thing: He needed a drink, bad. Right now.