Come Morning

Chapter 13

At 5:30 a.m. the bearded man, no longer bearded and no longer Leo Cronin, went bust at the $100-minimum blackjack table at the Arabian Nights Hotel on the Vegas Strip. Angel Morgan, security manager for the casino, was looking down idly from the security catwalk above the mirrored ceiling when the player took a hit and went bust with an eight.

Angel chuckled. “Hey, Manny, you see who I see?”

Manny Arnheim, the casino manager, was dressed in Western clothes and hand-tooled boots, but looked like Hoagy Carmichael — a limp cigarette even dangled from one corner of his mouth.

“Jesus Christ,” he said in a grating voice, “the fucking clown is back!”

“And bust,” said Angel.

“This surprises you? The man’s a degenerate.”

“Should I call down the street? I hear he’s into them for a pretty good bundle.”

“Naw,” said Manny, losing interest, “comp him at the front desk if he needs it. The guy did us a good turn last year, taking that broad out of here, what was her—”

“Louise.”

“Yeah. Louise. He got her out of here before we had to do something about her...” He shook his head almost sadly. “Good broad, then she gets fucked around in her head and starts wanting to talk to people...”

The big man who was no longer Leo Cronin entered the 11th-floor suite, crossed the wall-to-wall, and opened the sliding-glass door to the balcony. Cool morning desert air came in. He stared at distant purple mountains.

Christ, he’d planned to be here with his pocket full of diamonds and his troubles behind him.

Instead, he had fled San Francisco in a panic, sure that if he looked back he would see red lights flashing. Then the stupid trick downstairs, going bust at blackjack an hour after he hit town. So here he was, riding one of Manny’s comps at the front desk because he was over the limit on his plastic.

They always said a shotgun was a sure thing, shut your fucking eyes and cut down a roomful of people. But he’d missed. Missed! With a fucking shotgun! Fucking Runyan had moved like a snake. He’d never seen anybody move so fast.

So now what? He had to think. Maybe there was still a way. Runyan knew somebody had tried, but he didn’t know who. Louise had said there were others after the stones, and Runyan had been moving around, showing himself, talking with the fence... Hell, for sure he’d think it was one of the others.

So, keep all his options open. Call the airlines, call his office, call Louise. And call room service for some breakfast and a Bloody Mary or two. Maybe he could salvage it after all.

Louise was asleep when the phone started to ring. She knocked it on the floor where the receiver kept making squawking tones. When she found it and brought it up to her face, they became words: “... hell are you doing? I’ve been ringing this goddamn thing for—”

“I was sleeping.” She used her brassy voice.

“Sleeping? It’s six in the morning.”

She sat up under the covers, hugging her drawn-up knees. Her old-fashioned flannel nightgown, shapeless but practical, went with the big brass-steaded bed and the colonial-looking patchwork quilt.

“You called me up to tell me that?”

“I called to say I’ll see you this afternoon.”

“Why didn’t you wait until this afternoon to spoil my day?”

“Goddammit, Louise, do you always have to be that way?”

“ ‘To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life,’ ” she said. “How about that? Stevenson at six a.m.” She realized she was still a little woozy. Two Restorils, two Valiums, and a hot milk with rum and honey in it, just to get to sleep last night. “I suppose I should ask you how your man made out with the diamonds in San Francisco, but you know what? I’m tired of talking with you.”

She hung up the phone.

It started to ring again as she got out of bed and walked across the rag rug to the typing table in front of the window. It was the sort of room one’s grandparents grew up in, hardwood dresser with an oval mirror, family portraits on the walls in cherrywood frames, slow-ticking brass-pendulumed grandfather clock as tall as she was. The bird in the gilded cage. Maybe work would keep her from getting depressed over his return.

She sat down and turned on the typewriter. The phone kept on ringing. She kept on ignoring it.

The fat woman’s lower jaw moved up and down like a puppet’s in its motionless bib of fat.

“There is a gas leak. I can smell a gas leak.”

“Lady, there isn’t any gas leak. I checked.”

“I tell you, my gas bills have never been this high.”

Jamie almost told her where to put her gas bills, but instead just walked away, leaving her flapping and squawking like a hen with its head cut off. Let her complain. They couldn’t fire him — he was on disability and PG&E was a public utility.

Hell, he’d forgotten to read her meter. Well, it was all that goddamn Runyan’s fault anyway, showing up yesterday and threatening his kid. He pull that shit again, Cardwell thought, swinging up into his brown and tan PG&E truck, he’d shoot the fucker again, and do it right this time.

Runyan was sitting against the far door, his hands empty but great bodily harm in his eyes. All thoughts of killing him skittered desperately from Cardwell’s mind. Runyan made it worse by saying, “Somebody tried to blow me away last night, Jamie. Was it you?”

“I... I got loaded last night, Runyan. You can ask Betty if you don’t—”

Runyan sighed and looked out the windshield. “One of the others, then.”

“I didn’t tell them you were around.” He grabbed at Runyan’s arm. “You’ve got to believe—”

His head was rammed right down inside the ring of the steering wheel, so suddenly he didn’t even know it had happened. Runyan’s voice came from somewhere above and behind him.

“You tried to kill me once, Cardwell. Don’t ever lay your fucking hands on me again.”

He was abruptly released. The strength in those hands had been terrifying. He pulled himself erect. His jaw ached where it had been slammed against the steering post. He risked a look over. Runyan was different from yesterday. Harder. Colder. Cold as the grave.

“Are they morons, or what?” he asked. “Is one of them stupid enough to think I’m carrying the diamonds around with me?”

“Look, Runyan, leave me out of it, okay?” Cardwell whined. “I got a wife and kid to support—”

“Your wife works and your little girl goes to public school,” said Runyan coldly. “You draw disability from the V.A. and you have a steady job at union scale and seniority. Give me the names of the others, then you’re out of it. Unless they’re expecting me when I drop around — then you’re back in.”

Watching him walk away with the names he had wanted, Cardwell felt a great weariness. It wasn’t ever going to end. It was just going to keep on, until he was dead. He’d never got any breaks. They were all bastards, every one of them, and he’d never gotten even one little break at all, never in his lifetime.

Moyers put a ten-dollar bill into the rat-faced clerk’s paw, and the rat scuttled back into its hole. The shooting last night had to have been an attempt on Runyan, but nobody had seen anything, nobody was hurt or dead, and the cops weren’t going to waste much time on it. Runyan’s stuff was still in his room. Moyers would have to hold the stakeout to see if Runyan would chance coming back for it.

He went to the phone, picked up the receiver, was about to drop his two dimes when he thought: the drug pusher. The big bearded guy in work clothes. His suitcase had carried a broken-down shotgun, not drugs: instant, not progressive death. In and out, blip, blip, blip — very professional.

Except that he’d missed. Which said that Runyan was very damned good indeed. Well, Moyers had seen him work out on the rings. He moved like quicksilver in the palm of your hand.

A professional hit. But by whom? Louise’s Vegas connection? That seemed most likely.

None of that got him any closer to Runyan. But this might. He put in his dimes and tapped out his number. When a secretary answered, Moyers said, “Mr. Benjamin Sharples, please.”

Runyan was nursing a cup of coffee in a cafe next door to a sex devices store which also rented gay video porn movies. His two hundred from the parole board was almost gone; there was enough to pay a week on the room he’d rented by phone, sight unseen, on Bush just beyond Franklin, but not much more. He had to get his stuff out of the Westward Hotel, and he had to do it without Moyers catching on. He couldn’t have Moyers looking over his shoulder any more, because somebody else might be looking over Moyers’s. After last night, staying loose meant survival.

Three young white male whores in chains and black leather came in and took a table near his. They looked him over, mistaking the nature of his interest. The blond one came to Runyan’s table and sat down.

“Hello, darling,” he said.

Behind the eyeshadow and rouge he was not over 16, wearing a cup to make his scrotum look sexually engorged. Runyan had seen dozens of them at Q; most of them, handed around the cellblock like a box of candy, were reduced to rubble in a week. Those who survived came out vicious and usually deranged. This one hadn’t started the downward spiral yet.

Runyan tore a twenty-dollar bill in two and dropped half of it on the table along with his room key.

“Westward Hotel, around the corner and up the street. Second floor rear by the fire escape. Clean it out, clothes, a chess set — everything except the yellow gym bag. Leave that.”

“What is this, a joke?” demanded the kid in a half-scared, half-angry voice. This wasn’t as simple as opening some John’s zipper in the men’s room.

“Easy money,” said Runyan. “Somebody’s waiting outside the building — knows me, but doesn’t know you.”

“If this is a setup, my friends will hurt you. Bad.”

Runyan didn’t speak, so after a moment the kid took the maimed twenty and the key and stood up. As he started to turn away, Runyan said softly, “Your friends?” The kid paused. Runyan said, “They’re the hostages.”

The boy stared at him through mascaraed lashes, then walked out with a single scared backward glance. While waiting for his return, Runyan looked up the South of Market Loan Company in the phone book.