Come Morning

Chapter 19

Runyan woke with Louise’s hair in his face; he was lying spoon-fashion against her back in his narrow bed, both of them nude under the covers. He could smell a lingering trace of her perfume. Why couldn’t they just lie here the rest of the day, waking, dozing, loving... Memories of the overheard phone conversation the night before tried to crowd in, but he pushed them away. Just let him be unwary here, just for this time. Just...

He realized that for several moments her hips had been shifting against him, slyly, so he hadn’t been consciously aware of being brought erect. He began gently rolling her left nipple between his fingers. She gave a sigh of contentment, reached down between her legs, and guided him into her waiting nest.

After almost a minute, her vaginal muscles began a rhythmic contraction around his rigid shaft; a few minutes later they climaxed exactly together, gently, lovingly, without a word having been spoken between them.

Louise turned right on Gough, running past the cold soaring spire of St. Mary’s cathedral with the morning traffic’s lemming rush for downtown. “Why do you have to see your parole officer? I thought you gave him your change of address.”

“I did. But I have to leave the jurisdiction overnight to get the diamonds. I want permission ahead of time so they can’t violate my parole.”

Louise checked the rear-view mirror to get into the right lane so they wouldn’t get sucked into the vortex of traffic funneling into the freeway entrance on Turk. She exclaimed, “Moyers is following us!”

“Moyers? How the hell did he...” Runyan interrupted himself, “Sharples! My parole officer! The son of a bitch sold Moyers my new address!”

“Why would your parole officer—”

“For the money.” Runyan chuckled. “We’ll just have to be creatively evasive when the time comes.”

But when they pulled up in front of the regional parole office on South Van Ness, Runyan glanced across the sidewalk to the newspaper coin boxes. He took his hand quickly off the door handle. Looking across him, Louise could see the morning Chronicle headline:

“If that headline’s about who I think it is,” said Runyan, “it changes everything. We’re going to have to get out of town quicker than I thought, and we’re going to need Moyers on our tail. Make sure he follows you, then don’t lose him.” He started out of the car. “I’ll see you back at your hotel later.”

He went across the sidewalk and into the building without a backward glance.

Sharples waited until Runyan had left the office, then put on his porkpie hat and went out. His secretary looked up angrily. She was always angry; knowing what about was a matter of nuance. He read this expression as one of angry surprise.

“You have another client in ten minutes,” she snapped.

“I’ll be back before then.”

“If anyone calls, where have you gone?”

Though his mother had been dead for nearly four years, he was never going to get away from her; every woman in his life became her eventually. He left without replying. His secretary took a spiral notebook from her purse and made a notation; she was gathering evidence for a letter informing the Civil Service Commission that Mr. Sharples was not a good civil servant.

Sharples went out the back door to the pay phone in the adjacent gas station. Runyan could not see him from the bus stop; also, his secretary could not see him from her window. He knew all about her notations in her little spiral notebook; for the past six weeks, he had been keeping a similar record of her lapses, indulgences, and excesses.

Hi-Tech Electronics was on Larkin between Eddy and Ellis, a small, cramped, littered place much frequented by law enforcement people, both federal and state, from the government office buildings a couple of blocks away. Evidence obtained from illegal wire taps and room bugs, while not admissible in court, supplied a great many leads for evidence that was admissible.

High-Tech’s owner/operator, a skinny man with hornrimmed specs and long-fingered hands and his hair in Laurie Anderson spikes, was at his workbench when the phone rang. On the bench was a black box the size of a cigarette pack, with a magnet at one side and two small antennae extending out not more than an inch from the other side. He picked up the phone, listened for a moment, then handed it to his client, Moyers.

Sharples’s voice, high-pitched with tension, said, “Runyan was in and said he was going camping in the Sierra for a week before he started to look for work. He wanted permission—”

“I told you I expected that,” snapped Moyers impatiently.

“So I did what you... ah... suggested. I dated his permission letter tomorrow instead of today. But that means he can leave any time after midnight tonight...”

“I know what it means,” said Moyers. “It means I’ll have the son of a bitch when he makes his move.”

The sparkling display windows faced Grant Avenue with tasteful arrangements of rings, necklaces, stones and earrings. Beside the inset entranceway was a discreet brass plaque:

As Runyan entered, he thought that Gatian had done well for himself since the robbery eight years ago. Everyone seemed to have done well except Runyan. And maybe Tenconi.

Gatian was frightened; he paced up and down his private office just barely controlling an impulse to wring his hands. Delarty, at the window, wore a sour look mixed with not a little impatience. On the desk was the same newspaper Runyan had seen, with the same headline visible.

“Take it easy, will you?” said Delarty. “Tenconi had a lot of enemies besides Runyan. Half the wops in North Beach probably are holding a candlelight parade now that he’s—”

The door burst open and Runyan stormed in past Gatian’s protesting secretary. His shirt was open halfway to his navel; there was a twitch to his hips and a lisp in his voice.

“Gatian sold me the ring for five thousand dollars last week,” he exclaimed, “but my friend says it isn’t worth a penny over three thousand, and I’m not going to be taken advantage of just because Gatian and I had a moment together...”

Delarty took his hand unobtrusively out from under his jacket. The flustered Gatian caught the movement. “Ah, Brenna, I’ll... ah... take care of... um...”

He herded the distraught secretary out of the room as Runyan plunked himself down in the big impressive padded executive’s swivel chair. He grabbed the edge of the big impressive executive’s desk and spun himself around and around in the swivel chair as a kid might have done. He stopped himself by slamming a flattened palm down on the newspaper headline.

“You’ve got a problem, Gatian. Tenconi was a shit and Delarty here is a shit. But he steps into Tenconi’s percentage so you two are partners.” He gave an amused laugh. “Bambi and Godzilla.” He tipped back in the swivel chair, and said to Delarty, “Your problem is stupidity. I’d like you for the hit on your partner, except that you aren’t really smart enough to come up with that peephole idea...”

Blood suffused Delarty’s already slightly choleric face. He took two steps forward and threw a roundhouse right at Runyan’s jaw. Runyan snapped up a cocked leg so the fist thudded into the sole of his shoe. Delarty did a little dance about, nursing his skinned knuckles and breathing through his nose.

Runyan laughed. “You are smart enough,” he said to Gatian, “but no guts.” He came out from behind the desk. He looked from one to the other. “Which perhaps leaves Bambi and Godzilla together again, ridding the world of poor old Tenconi — and his claim to a percentage of the take.”

“You could have worked it,” said Delarty stubbornly.

“Sure I could have. But... kill me before I can recover the stones, you get nothing.” He laughed aloud again. “Leave me alone, maybe you get dead.”

Gatian, still nervous, began, “I’m sure we can work—”

“Or maybe it was Cardwell,” suggested Runyan. “Maybe something snapped inside his head and he went after Tenconi.” He grasped the doorknob and turned it, not quite pulling the door open. “Or maybe it was one of you, working independently, not telling the other how you were going to do in old Tenconi. I’d keep an eye on each other if I were you.”

Then he opened the door and slipped through, closing it firmly behind him. Delarty glanced almost accusingly across the room at Gatian — and was startled to meet an equally hostile glare from him.

From Gatian’s, Runyan went to the nearest medical office in the phone book and waited until a doctor could see him. He explained that he was involved in a complicated business deal that he found impossible to put out of his mind, so he was having difficulty getting to sleep at night. The doctor gave him a prescription.

Forcing himself to consider only the necessity Louise’s phone call seemed to dictate, he had the prescription filled at the drugstore on the corner. Then he went in search of Louise, feeling guilty but more secure.