Come Morning

Chapter 15

Louise, dressed in sloppy, comfortable country clothes that went with the Norman Rockwell room, worked through the manuscript with her ballpoint pen, scribbling revisions, crossing out words, writing a whole new sequence into the right margin. The phone rang. She swivelled to reach down and pick it up.

“Yes?”

“I’m back. We have to talk.”

“I thought maybe your plane had crashed.” She wrote in another phrase. “Hoped it had crashed.”

The heavy voice began, “There was a time when you were plenty goddamned grateful to—”

“That was before you started asking me to fuck other men on your behalf,” she said. She put down the manuscript page and, with the phone clipped between shoulder and jaw, fed a fresh sheet into the typewriter.

“Why not, you had plenty of practice in Vegas.”

“And you wonder why there’s nothing between us any more,” she said, and hung up.

She forced her mind back to Assault on the Citadel. She had written it over again since San Francisco, she thought it was a lot better than the version she had left behind. Writing as therapy? She started to type with the quasi-despairing concentration of impending interruption, dreading whatever scene was to come, but grateful for these few hours.

She wondered what Runyan might be doing.

Runyan walked briskly along the posh Pacific Heights street. Carefully nurtured hardwoods gave the block a slightly Eastern air, as if some early gold-rusher had been nostalgic for Connecticut. He was dressed in black tight-fitting clothes; his shoes were tight-fitting also, rubber-soled rock-climbing shoes that scraped no leather echoes from the sidewalk.

Gatian Sheridan had an impressive Queen Anne Victorian with a steeply slanting driveway which ran up to level off alongside the house and then continue back to the garage where the stable and carriage house once had been. No lights showed, but in the rounded turretlike structure at one corner of the house — a feature of Queen Anne architecture — a window was open.

That would do. If he still had his nerve.

He hyperventilated, went up the slope in a rush, cleared the low picket fence around the planting beds in a nimble leap, landed coiled in the bushes directly in front of the house, and sprang upward — all in one burst of movement. There was the adrenaline constriction in the chest, the feeling that he had to move, do something, act, or he would explode. God, he hadn’t known that feeling for eight years!

At arms’ length below the decorative trim under the front windows, he worked quickly over to the slot between bays. He chinned himself, kicked one leg up and hooked a heel, levered himself up, and was standing erect on the two-inch-wide trim.

He began chimneying himself up the slot exactly as he had done dozens of times rock climbing before San Quentin, his back against the side of one bay, his feet against the side of the other. His technique was rusty; but from the countless hours of gymnastics in prison he was stronger than he had ever been.

At the top he paused, wedged between bays. Directly above his head was the heavy metal rain gutter. He shook it with one hand, testing it for support; then he swung at arms’ length below it, kipped neatly up into a pressout, swung a leg up, and rolled over into the trough between the roof coping and the rain gutter.

The lower sill of the open third-story window in the curving face of the tower was only about two feet above his outstretched hands. As he crouched to spring, a heavy sedan turned into the slanting driveway.

Gatian Sheridan had gone to work in his father’s wholesale jewelry business after college at the age of 22. He had convinced old Hiram that if they ever wanted that nice standard 300 percent markup, they would have to enter the retail trade. His father had died a year after Runyan’s conviction.

As the lights of his conservative black Mercedes four-door swept across the front of the beautifully maintained Victorian, he noted with a little thrill of anticipation that the tower window was shut.

“I did close it, Norman,” he said. “You were right.”

The man beside him, who was about ten years younger and quite beautiful, said softly, “I’ll have to chastise you for doubting me, Gatty.”

A delicious shudder ran through Gatian as he killed the engine and the lights and got out, a soft pale man of 36, exquisitely dressed in a grey three-piece suit with a slight hint of salmon stripe running through it. Norman was taller, lithe as a dancer, with long blond hair that Gatian loved to kiss.

This was going to be some night. First Leontyne Price in Tosca and in magnificent voice; now... the tower room.

Inside, they went directly up to their adjoining bedrooms to get ready. Norman had spent a year in Morocco learning things that made Gatian weak to think about. He pulled on black silk pajamas, put on his superb velvet quilted smoking jacket, and padded barefoot to the connecting door.

“I’m going up, Norman,” he called through it. “I have the new Tosca as a surprise for you.”

“I can hardly wait,” said Norman in those soft tones that raised the hairs on the back of Gatian’s neck.

He opened the door with the mirror on it, flicked on the lights, and went up the circular staircase to the tower. The walls were covered with pornographic photos of copulating males; there was another full-length mirror on the ceiling above the king-size waterbed with the mauve velvet spread. He crossed to the expensive unitized stereo and put on the Tosca.

The haunting voice of Tosca pleading with Scarpia for her lover’s life filled the room. Still crouched in front of the stereo, he opened a small compartment and removed a small golden platter. He did not see the door of the antique armoire behind him open cautiously. From the same compartment he removed a small plastic bag of coke, which he ripped open to heap on the platter, a one-edged razor blade, and a tiny golden spoon.

Something round and metallic and hollow was pressed against the back of his neck. A hand grabbed an agonizing fistful of his hair and jerked his head back. A voice grated in his ear.

“Scream, I’d love it.”

Gatian had already opened his mouth to do so. He had never known such mingled terror, revulsion, and excitement in his life. His heart felt as if it was going to stop, but he also had an instant and rock-hard erection.

The man pulled him to his feet and walked him across the room to the ornate, mirror-topped coffee table. “Put the tray on the table,” he said, “then sit in the chair.”

Gatian did so, hoping the robber wouldn’t notice his erection. Or maybe he wanted him to. He didn’t know. He was terrified, not thinking straight.

“You... you can have the coke, any cash...”

The pressure of gun against the back of his neck went away. The man, lithe as Norman but more muscular, with an absolutely marvelous build set off by his tight black clothing, walked around the coffee table and sat down on the arm of the couch. Gatian realized the hollow socket of the candlestick he was holding in one hand was the “gun” that had been pressed against the nape of his neck. He looked involuntarily at the stairwell.

“I wouldn’t,” said the man. He made no threatening motion of any sort, but his tone jerked Gatian’s eyes back to him, and shocked recognition brought another terrified frisson.

“Runyan!” he exclaimed. “You’re Runyan!”

“Eight years ago, you fingered a robbery of your father’s wholesale diamond firm. Pretty neat idea. You collect on the insurance, then peddle the stones later at retail. The one trouble was that I ended up in the slammer for seven years.”

Gatian’s mouth was suddenly very dry. “I... I had nothing to do with... any of that, Runyan. I wouldn’t—”

“It looks like the insurance set you up pretty well, but your kind always wants more.” He leaned forward. “Did you want it bad enough to come after me with a shotgun last night?”

Gatian looked into his eyes and was totally still, suspending even his breathing. Runyan answered his own question contemptuously.

“Not you. You’d come in your pants the first time you touched a gun.” He paused speculatively. “Your little friend?”

“Norm...” It came out as a squeak. He tried again. “Norman wouldn’t...”

“Of course not. You wouldn’t put yourself in his hands that way.” Runyan started around the coffee table, then paused. “Stay clear until I get the insurance man off my back, or there won’t be any diamonds. Just...”

He tossed the heavy candlestick high in the air, so he was already jerking open the window as it crashed back down through the mirror top of the coffee table, puffing Gatian’s coke into oblivion.

“...Just seven years bad luck. For someone.” He threw a leg over the sill. “I’ve already had mine.”

Norman came bursting up the stairs in black leather bikini briefs and soft black boots halfway up his thighs. He wore a domino mask. He stopped dead at sight of the chaos.

“What happ—”

“Oh shut up!” exclaimed Gatian in a high hysterical voice. He was down on his hands and knees, trying to salvage his coke. At that moment the duet on the stereo ended.