Come Morning

Chapter 18

The Dock Restaurant overlooked the Tiburon marina; from their window table they could watch the yachts rock at their moorings as the red and green jetty lights drew slow colored circles in the air. Angel Island, a dark unlit mass to the left, helped frame the city twinkling across the bay.

Louise set down her wine glass and leaned forward slightly. Her eyes glowed in the light of their candle.

“Now, young lady,” she said in mock-judicial severity, “if you would just tell the court in your own words about your abrupt disappearance and equally abrupt reappearance from—”

“Las Vegas,” said Runyan.

“Oh,” she said, much of her gaiety slipping away. “The auto rental form?”

“And a few phone calls. Vegas... Minneapolis... Rochester...” To her dismayed look, he nodded, “They aren’t going to bail you out of whatever trouble you’ve gotten yourself into this time, but please send money.”

“It wasn’t always that way,” she said, a little bitterly.

“How about stealing apples off the Mayo brothers’ estate?”

“Oh, that was true. But the book...” She waggled a palm-down hand. She finished the wine in her glass; her tone changed abruptly. “You know, when I was in high school and junior college I really did want to be a writer. I wrote all the time—”

“The stories in your hotel room,” said Runyan. “Window dressing from a long time ago?”

Louise nodded. “In a way. But it’s funny, now I’ve started writing again. As if wanting grew out of pretending.”

“Sort of like you and me, isn’t it?”

He kept being able to do that: catch her unawares, surprise her with an insight he shouldn’t have been capable of having. Why couldn’t it just be as simple as that?

“Exactly like you and me,” she said, hating the lie in the remark even as she made it. Runyan nodded again.

“Only your folks hadn’t heard from you in a year, and you weren’t listed in Minneapolis, and none of the Las Vegas data was any good any more. So...”

She held out her glass, glad of the respite, fighting the oddest compulsion to break out crying. But at the same time realizing that he was different from when she had walked away a few days ago. Subtly in command now, more sure of himself, more aggressive. Was it her coming back to him, showing her vulnerability, or was it something that had happened while she had been gone?

Runyan finished the bottle into both their glasses. “So,” he said, “where are we — really?”

“We’re in Tiburon, California, and I’m giving you the short happy life of Francis Macomber.”

“Hemingway,” said Runyan. To the surprise in her eyes, he added, “Prison library. Most of the guys wouldn’t crack a book unless it hit ’em first, but I read a lot. For a few hours you could live someone else’s life.”

“We’ll make this Frances Macomber — a.k.a. Louise Graham. I had two years at Rochester JC, was going to major in journalism at UofM, but I also had been dancing since I was five. That’s what I meant about my folks not always being that way. Until I was a teen-ager, they doted on me. Then I started going out with boys and then started staying out, and...”

“For me it was getting drunk, getting into fights, having my buddies or the cops bring me home at three in the morning...”

“Anyway, I was a pretty good dancer... ballet, tap, jazz — they called it ‘modern’ then — and acrobatic.”

She drank some wine. There was a far-off look in her eyes, and for the first time Runyan started to believe what she was telling him. She was really telling it to herself.

“Everybody kept saying I had what it takes to be a professional dancer. And for me being a professional meant glamor, easy money...”

“So you caught a bus to Vegas.”

“You’ve heard this story before.”

The waitress came around to ask them if they wanted coffee. They both did. She poured and withdrew.

“I was going to burn ’em up, knock ’em out...” Louise made an exaggerated sweeping motion with her hand. “ZOOM! Right to the top.” She added cream and sugar to her coffee. “Instead, ZOOM! Right into a casting director’s bed. Because Vegas is full of women who were told in their home towns that they had what it took. And who wanted the glamor and easy money just as much as I did...” Her voice rose slightly; her hands had closed into white-knuckled fists. “So I got into a show — but all it ever seemed to be was ostrich feathers and mesh stockings and bare boobs...”

He asked in an easy voice, “And a little favor for the management now and then?”

Louise gave a rueful little laugh. “You have heard this story before!” The animation died in her face. “All of a sudden I was at that line between amateur night and...”

“The first robbery I did was on a dare,” said Runyan. “A guy bet me fifty bucks I was afraid to climb up the side of an apartment building and steal somebody’s stamp collection. I got my fifty bucks and he made ten thousand fencing the stamps. So I turned professional. I went over the line.”

“I wasn’t sure where the line was, but I knew I was over it. Since I couldn’t stomach the thought of being a hooker, I started doing different kinds of favors, for a lot heavier people. Muling some grams here, once a kilo there... Flying to L.A. once a month to deposit skim money in a bank that wasn’t connected...”

She drank coffee, checking her watch again as she did. She hadn’t meant to tell him all this. She had been going to keep it light and full of laughs and ease her way back into his confidence, and suddenly she was into true confessions. And the hell of it was that she wanted to tell him all of it — or almost all.

“I finally realized that I was being a whore in a different way. And I wanted OUT — but they couldn’t understand I just wanted to walk away, not turn snitch, not claim a reward, just... hike. And of course by then I knew a whole lot more about a whole lot more things and people than I wanted to. Than was safe to...” She looked over at him with sudden stunning realization. “Just like you. I wanted out from under and—”

“And you couldn’t get out from under. We keep bouncing off one another, don’t we?”

“But at least you have a choice. You can turn the diamonds over to Moyers and try to duck the others, or give them to the others and try to duck Moyers...”

“No,” said Runyan. “I haven’t recovered them yet.” Before she could speak, he added, “How did you get out of it in Vegas?”

“A man. How else? He was there for a convention first, then kept coming back because he had gotten hooked on me...” She shrugged. “He was able to square it with those people — money or favors or maybe just convincing them that I didn’t want to blow any whistles, I never knew which. He wanted me to go with him, so I did. He set me up in a place.”

She made a rueful face, and finished her coffee.

“A kept woman, a first for me — I sort of liked it. I’d slept with a lot of men, but I’d never had a real relationship with any of them. I guess I was naive. When things got tight financially for him, he wouldn’t let me work to bring in some money. He just got nasty about what I cost to keep. Then, when I wanted to leave, he wouldn’t let me do that, either...”

“Tell me how he kept you,” said Runyan with a grin. “I sure haven’t figured it out.”

“That’s easy — guilt. If it had just been force, I could have handled that. I’ve had a lot of practice. But it was — moral. He told me he was in real trouble, and that it was because of me. He said he needed to make a really big score to get even, and that I had to help him. He said I owed him.”

“Did you?”

“I thought I did.”

“What was the big score?”

She met his eyes with a steady gaze. “You.”

“Make contact, get next to me, stick until I got the diamonds, then...”

She nodded. He turned his empty wine glass with his fingers for a long moment, then let out a long breath, nodded almost sadly, looked up and caught her gaze and held it.

“Only I didn’t go get them when you thought I was going to, and you were gone when I got back.” He paused for another long moment. “So why are you back now?”

Louise met his gaze levelly. “I’m on my own this time. For as long as you want me here.” She stood up. “I’ll be right back, darling.”

Runyan watched her go out to the hallway where the restrooms and pay phone were located. He had a half-smile on his face. It slowly faded.

“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice — shame on me,” he muttered to himself. He went quickly and quietly across the restaurant to lean against the pay phone partition.

“I don’t have much time,” Louise’s voice was saying in low, urgent tones. “I’m back in, but he doesn’t trust me yet. You won’t be hearing anything from me for a while...”

Runyan, blank-faced, moved away as silently as he had come.