Come Morning

Chapter 16

Before Runyan had been sent up, Whitey’s had served the best ribs in town. It still did. He dropped the last bone into the rubble on his plate and wiped his fingers with a paper napkin. Whitey’s didn’t run to steaming finger towels.

The chubby black waitress had pudgy thighs which made whish-whish-whish sounds under her black nylon skirt when she moved. Runyan laid a twenty-dollar bill on the counter beside his plate. He was the only white man in the place, which was on Fillmore not far off Ellis Street.

“I heard Sister Sally’s man hangs around here,” he said. The girl’s eyes got old. He chuckled and flicked the bill with his finger. “I’m not heat and I’m not trouble.”

After a long moment, she picked up his check and the bill off the counter. As she did, her finger pointed briefly toward the rear of the restaurant. “Flashy Dude,” she said.

Runyan looked at the mirror behind the counter; the silvering had come off, giving the black young brash-looking man’s reflected image a cloudy Maxfield Parrish effect. He was playing one of the electronic games in the back of Whitey’s, all purple and fox grey and ruffles, as if hoping someone would mistake him for Prince.

Runyan sauntered back to stand very close behind Flashy Dude. He said, “Sister Sally.” The black man became aware of him by stylized degrees, as if coming up from anaesthetic.

“Go fuck yo momma,” said Flashy Dude without turning.

Runyan put a friendly hand on his shoulder and smiled. It was the same smile he had given Jamie Cardwell in the park. His vise-like fingers tightened. Flashy Dude winced.

“Which freeways you want them to find you under, Dude?” he asked in his soft prison-dead voice.

Flashy Dude’s eyes went moist, not so much with pain as with the knowledge that Runyan might only be bluffing, but that he didn’t have the seeds to find out.

Sister Sally’s was on the second floor of a frame house in a totally black neighborhood on Sutter just off Broderick. A block away were the lights and traffic of Divisadero. Runyan went up the terrazzo stairs to the front door of the lower apartment, which was illuminated by a 40-watt ceiling fixture, the bottom of the globe brown and mottled with the bodies of dead moths. The stairway was littered with yellow throwaway shopping newspapers.

The door opened on a chain; music and laughter brought out the smell of smoke and liquor and perfume with them. An impassive eye peered out. The white of the eye was yellow-tinged.

“Sister Sally,” said Runyan. “From the Dude.”

The door was opened wide enough for Runyan to enter but not so wide that he could avoid brushing against the bouncer as he passed. Quick fingers checked for weapons, went away. The living room was dimly lit for a spurious seductive look. In chairs and couches lining the walls were half a dozen white and black women in various combinations of revealing underwear, negligees, camis, teddys, and chemises. All were reasonably young, all were attractive, one was beautiful. None, Runyan was sure, was cheap.

Milling around in the center of the room were several black men with drinks in their hands. Their conversation dipped as Runyan went toward the bar which was set up beside the kitchen doorway, but Chaka Khan from the stereo was loud enough to shatter glass.

Behind the bar was an immense black woman with a round jolly smiling face and achingly white teeth and warm brown eyes that bespoke knowledge of and forgiveness for all sins. She wore a billowing futa of a thin silklike print material, and moved with a great natural dignity that owed nothing at all to age or beauty.

She was mixing a drink with a rhythmic dexterity that was almost music. In the rich mellifluous voice of a gospel singer, she asked, “What’s your pleasure?”

“Taps Turner with a twist,” said Runyan.

She gave a bawdy chuckle and shook her head in wonderment. “Mmmm-mmm, that Dude! Whut I’m gonna do with that child?” She raised her voice. “Ambrose, the gen’man’s just leaving.” As the bald-headed bouncer appeared at Runyan’s elbow, she added, twinkling, “You the wrong color in the wrong part of town at the wrong time of night, boy. You ain’t careful, Taps be playin’ at your funeral.”

Ambrose took Runyan’s arm in an ungentle grip that made him go numb from shoulder to elbow. He said, “I’m Runyan.”

Ambrose hesitated. Sister Sally kept wiping at the same spot with long, circular motions with her bar rag, her eyes fixed on Runyan’s face. Then she gave him a huge delighted grin.

“Mr. Runyan,” she said, “let me offer my condolences on the loss of your loved one.”

Dirgelike organ music rolled tastefully down the hallway of the mortuary from one of the chapellike viewing rooms. The carpet had a thick maroon pile, the drapes were discreetly heavy plush to absorb sound and cigarette smoke. Runyan paused beside the open doorway beside a tasteful plaque, SERVICE IN PROGRESS.

He went through the doorway. A tape-activated organ, unattended, played in one corner of the room. The otherwise empty room was full of pews. At the far end an open casket on rollers was banked with fresh flowers that made him want to sneeze. Lighted candles flickered in ornate brass holders.

The dead black man in the casket did not seem to mind the solitude. As Runyan moved up the aisle he could hear, over the funereal strains, the murmur of voices and could see brighter light coming through the gap between the floor and the foot of the drapes behind the dais. He pulled aside one of the drapes.

Overhead lights bright enough for autopsies made moving puddles of heavy shadow on the blanket that had been thrown over the old-fashioned marble dissecting table. The dice were still with Runyan. He was the only white player among a dozen men. His point was eight. He had an impressive pile of money in front of him.

“Eighter from Decatur,” he said ritually.

One of the other players dropped a bill in front of him. “Says twenny,” he exclaimed.

“You’re faded,” said another. “Mother can’t keep doin’ it all night.”

Runyan rolled. The dice bounced against the stop at the far end of the table, landed with two fours showing. The banker raked the dice back to him.

“All right!” exclaimed Runyan, reaching for his winnings.

The thick black hand of Beef, the bouncer, was there before him. Beef had a face to which all possible damage already had been done: seamed and scarred and flattened and bent, with a shapeless nose trying to sniff out trouble beside his cauliflowered left ear.

Beef’s other hand took the dice and tossed them to the middle-aged banker, who had an unlit cigar in one corner of his mouth and a Giants baseball cap on his balding head. He squinted at them against the light, meanwhile running his fingers delicately along the edges for loads, shaves, roughs, or slicks. He nodded and bounced them up and down in a seamed brown palm.

“Uh huh,” he said, “suction bevel miss-outs. Damn good, too.” He looked over at Runyan. “Musta got them from Lay Dead Dawson up to Q, ain’t nobody else does ’em that good these days.”

He jerked his head at Beef, and Beef yanked Runyan away from the table into darkness. The banker collected Runyan’s winnings with his rake.

Taps Turner sat on the corner of the desk in his office, one ankle-booted foot swinging idly as he counted the stacks of money on the desk. There was a lot of it. He was perhaps 33, dressed in a very conservative $500 midnight blue three-piece suit, a pale blue-on-blue shirt of vertical stripes, and a watered silk tie which caught the light with subtly shifting shades of maroon.

“Damn good night,” he murmured over the distant music.

“Best in almost a month,” admitted Grace.

He gazed appreciatively at her as she worked the electronic tape calculator with lightning speed. Her hair was natural and very short and her deep brown skin glowed with health. She wore ivory linen slacks and a puff-sleeved sweater that matched Taps’s tie in color and had cost as much as his suit.

The door slammed open so Runyan could run headfirst into the wall across the room. He landed in a heap and stayed there, making vague choking sounds in his throat and moving his arms and legs aimlessly. Beef filled the doorway from edge to edge and from floor to header.

“Playin’ with shaved dice,” he said. His lips had once been split by something blunt and hard, and had been glued back together slightly awry, so he spoke with a sort of rumbling lisp. “You want I should make sure he—”

“I’ll handle this mother myself,” said Taps.

This jerked Grace’s head up; she stared speculatively at Runyan as he rolled over onto his back and groaned. Beef looked from Grace to Taps to Runyan, then sighed and backed out of the room. Taps stood up, hands on his hips, grinning. Runyan crawled slowly to his feet. Grace came out from behind her desk.

“You’re some fun guy to look up,” said Runyan.

Taps gestured at the stacks of bills, still grinning.

“Got a lot of people would like to drop in ’long about countin’ time. I figured you could find me if you really tried.”

“That makes you Runyan,” said Grace. She didn’t offer to shake hands. “You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t calling in Taps’s marker.”

Runyan nodded. “I need to score. Big.”

“Yeah!” Taps suddenly laughed and slapped his knee. “I always knew you’d come around eventually. The setup is the same — hot bearer bonds in a penthouse safe in Los Angeles...”

“How big?” asked Grace with unconcealed hostility.

“One-half of thirty percent of whatever two-point-one-three million in uncut stones, retail eight years ago, would be worth today.”

Grace’s eyes didn’t even flicker, nor did she turn back to her calculator. “If they’re under a carat-twenty-five, you have to figure two-hundred-twenty percent appreciation, minimum. So that means you’re talking... um... a hundred-twenty-five dollars shy of seven-hundred-nineteen thousand dollars.”

“Bright for twenty-three, ain’t she?” demanded Taps proudly.

Runyan was still meeting the hostility in Grace’s eyes. He said to Taps, “This setup good for that much?”

“Different numbers each month, but it’s the biggest hot bond drop west of Chicago.” He shrugged. “Sure. It’ll go two, three times that easy.”

“You tap everything over the basic nut I got to crack.”

“You’re crazy, Taps!” Grace exclaimed. “You and Brother Blood worked it out that he stays in L.A. and you stay up here. It’s workin’ just fine. You try this, that man’s gonna eat you two alive!”

“I don’t plan to leave any tracks,” said Runyan. “You come up with duplicate bonds good enough so he won’t make ’em before he unloads ’em and—”

“You that good?” demanded Grace disbelievingly.

Runyan was still meeting her eyes. “I’m that good.”

Taps was leaning back against the edge of the desk, his arms folded on his chest.

“It’s gotta wait ’till I can get the serial numbers off the next shipment from my man in L.A.... Where can I reach you?”

Runyan walked around Grace’s desk to look at the number tape on the phone. “I’ll reach you,” he said.

“Right enough. Anything you need?”

Runyan took several hundreds off the desk and slipped them into his pocket. “To replace what your gorilla took off me out there,” he explained. “And a set of lock picks. I don’t have time to make my own.”

Taps nodded and Grace opened a drawer in the desk and took out a three-by-five black leather folder with a snap fastener. MAJESTIC PIX-QUIK MODEL B was stamped on the leather in gold letters.

“I gets ’em from a outfit in Jersey,” said Taps. “They think I’m in law enforcement.” His booming laugh was surprisingly sonorous for such a slim man.