Come Morning

Chapter 21

Louise rummaged with greasy fingers in the bucket for the final piece. She took a big crunching bite and gestured with the maimed thigh as she chewed. “No diamonds stashed here?”

Runyan’s gaze followed her gesture around the little cove. Gulls wheeled and keened overhead. Down at the surfline, sandpipers dressed like tuxedoed dandies chased a receding breaker back toward the ocean on spindly legs.

“Maybe no diamonds stashed anywhere.”

“Why don’t I believe you?”

“Why doesn’t anyone believe me?”

His tone made the movement of her jaws slow for a moment as she weighed whether he was serious or not. Then she laughed and stood up and brushed the front of her jeans.

“You’d be in a mess if there really weren’t any diamonds.”

Runyan stood up also, doing a lousy W. C. Fields imitation. “That I would, m’dear,” he said, “that I would indeed.”

They stuffed all the junk into the Colonel’s bucket and started back toward the path, their shoes sinking deep into the soft pale sand at each step. There was a momentary flash of light, not repeated, from the bluff a quarter of a mile back.

“Why are you grinning, monkey?” Louise demanded.

“What is it that guy says on television? ‘I love it when a plan comes together’?”

Going up the steep narrow winding path was easier on the knees than coming down, but it took Louise’s breath away almost instantly. “That doesn’t have to be Moyers up on the bluff with a pair of binoculars.”

“It doesn’t make sense any other way. He had Sharples date my permission to leave for today instead of yesterday so he would have time to put a bug on your car.” Louise noted enviously that he wasn’t even breathing hard. “I hope he had time to put a bug on your car. Otherwise we’re in big trouble.”

When Moyers’s headlights swept across the sign which read ENTERING YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, the gate was untended. He swung down a long curve flanked by tumbled grey granite, and was on the valley floor. Even with the windows closed he could hear the clatter of fast brown water over the rocks of a nearby riverbed.

Runyan had driven up over the coast range at Half Moon Bay, had crossed the Bay on California 92, then had used the Interstates to Manteca to pick up California 120 directly here. Obviously going to camp in the park for a day or two, making it look good. Probably also trying to make sure nobody was on his tail. Moyers chuckled silently to himself. The homing device on the dash emitted its thin unvarying whine.

Still early enough to call Vegas when he got in. And to get some supper. God, he was starving, he was glad he’d had his office make reservations ahead. He’d spent a Labor Day weekend at the Ahwanee Lodge with his then-wife almost 15 years ago; alone was better, he wouldn’t have to keep faking awed reactions to the mountains. A mountain was just rocks piled up too high, and never would be anything else to him.

Camp Four was called the Zoo, because the serious rock climbers stayed there. Louise had never camped out in her life, but Runyan set up their two-man tent and made supper on the one-burner Coleman stove with admirable efficiency. Bacon, onion, and garlic sauteed in a saucepan, two cans of baked beans and half a bottle of syrup dumped in for the last few minutes. They ate it all.

The two climbers at the next numbered pad had started a fire, so Runyan got out the bottle of red wine they’d bought. He stepped to the edge of their fire and raised the freshlyopened bottle by the neck interrogatively, totally at his ease here, with none of the tensions and quick suspicions she had come to think of as part of his basic nature.

“Hey, great, man!” exclaimed one of them.

It was cold enough that all four were wrapped in their heavy down jackets. Runyan took a slug of wine and handed the bottle to Louise. She drank and passed it on to the one who’d spoken to them. He was a man in his early twenties who talked incessantly and smoked relentlessly. His name was Steve.

His partner was in his mid-thirties, with piercing eyes and thin floppy black hair and a pair of newish jeans and positively filthy tennis shoes. He wordlessly saluted Runyan with the bottle and drank deeply.

“He’s Italian,” said Steve. “Wherever there’s a mountain he speaks the language. Except English.” Steve held out thumb and forefinger a scant quarter-inch apart. “I speak a little Spanish so we don’t have any problems.”

“Giovanni,” said the Italian suddenly.

Runyan leaned forward. He pointed to his chest. “Soy Runyan.” He indicated Louise. “Eśta es mi mujer Luisa.”

“Ah. Luisa.” Giovanni grinned and leaned forward gallantly to kiss Louise’s hand. Then he shook enthusiastically with Runyan.

Louise said to Runyan, “Where did you learn Spanish?”

“We had a lot of Latinos in the joint.”

There were so many facets to Runyan that she didn’t know about. The thought almost numbingly and suddenly struck her: I am in love with this man. Screw everything else, I’m in love with him.

Runyan turned back to Giovanni. “Estéban dice que usted es de Italia.”

“Si. De Ticino. Es la parte Italiana de los Alpes. He estado viajando durante un año, escalaro por todo el mundo.”

“¿Donde están las montañas chingonas?”

“En el Rusia. Los Urales. Son las más peñosas y magníficas. Mejorísimas que los Alpes.”

The firelight flickered across their faces, making their features ruddy and dusky by turns; the bottle was making its circle again. Runyan turned back to her.

“Giovanni is from the Italian Alps. He’s been travelling and climbing for a year, all over the world. He says the rockwork in the Urals, in Russia, is much better than the Alps.”

Louise made a gesture around. “How do you like Yosemite?”

“Aquí se encuentran las más bonitas de todas las montañas,” said Giovanni.

“The most beautiful,” said Runyan.

Louise made a departing gesture with her hands. “From here — where?”

“El Perú. Ya, si yo tuviera el dinero por un boleto, a India,” said Giovanni. “Las Himalayas.”

Runyan had asked Steve, “Which climbs have you guys done?”

“The nose of El Cap. The Northwest Buttress and the North Ridge of Half Dome...”

Runyan nodded, said to Louise, “Did you get that? Peru? The Himalayas?”

“Didn’t he say something about A Passage to India?”

Runyan laughed. “He’s going to India to climb the Himalayas if he can find the money for his passage.”

Steve was saying, “Tomorrow we’re doing the transverse to Lost Arrow. If you guys want to come along...”

Runyan grinned and shook his head.

“Out of practice?”

“Amateurs.” Steve gave him an appraising look, not accepting that, recognizing one of his own, but Runyan added, “Monday Morning Slab tomorrow. That’s us.”

When the fire died down and the bottle went dry, they broke up, Steve and Giovanni hitting the sack, Runyan and Louise walking over to the store: Runyan had to make a phone call.

“About the diamonds?” she asked.

“Of course.”

“Can I listen in?”

“Of course not.”

Camping areas made little puddles of light in the darkness. There was no moon, but the air was so clear that the sky was almost pale with the stipplings of the Milky Way. When Louise blew out she could see her breath.

“You’re just sore because I was making time with Giovanni.”

“He tried to buy you,” said Runyan in perfect seriousness.

“Tried to...” Then she realized he was putting her on and laughed. She didn’t know when she had felt so happy. She wanted it to go on forever. “If Moyers did follow us, where do you suppose he is right now?”

“Probably the Ahwanee Lodge — one of the big old national park hotels built by the CCC back in the ’thirties. Really beautiful — hand-laid stone fireplaces and formal dining rooms and carved hardwood...”

“Can we see?” she exclaimed.

“Better not, he might catch us poking around. We need him playing our game, not the other way around.”

“Just what is our game?”

“Rock climbing,” he said.

She looked over at him in the starlit darkness. “Sometimes I wish I knew what was really going on in that head of yours.”

The room was spacious but simple, hardwood floors and knotty pine walls and a lot of blankets on the double bed. On the floor beside it the homing transceiver from the car pinged intermittently to itself. Moyers, on the phone, waited through the clicks and windy silences of his credit-card call until Stark, the Las Vegas detective, answered the phone.

“I’ve got a little more for you on her,” Stark said.

“I hoped you might.”

“She was getting a little salty, they were afraid they couldn’t trust her any more, so they tossed a scare into her,” said Stark’s heavy voice. He stressed all his syllables equally, like the computer-generated voice of Information. “The usual, we’re gonna toss acid in your face — like that. She bought it and lit a shuck out of town, which was all they wanted anyway.”

“Alone?”

“You kidding?” Stark gave a grating chuckle. “She already had a visiting fireman lined up, panting to play house with her.”

“Tell me about him,” said Moyers.

As he listened, he unconsciously nodded to himself several times. Then he started grinning. Just what he’d thought but hadn’t dared to hope. It was all going to work out. He had Runyan just where he wanted him.

On the canvas floor was a French four-in-one handtorch which cast a pale white fluorescent glow over the interior of the tent. When Runyan came crouching through the zippered flap, Louise was already inside, kneeling half-undressed on their double sleeping bag. God, he wanted her! Looking at her smooth bare shoulders, the delicate ivory slope of her brassiered breasts, he knew he could never get enough of her.

“Can you believe I’ve never slept in one of these?”

“What makes you think you’re going to sleep tonight?” he leered.

Then he remembered what Taps Turner had said on the phone: It was set for two nights from now in L.A. The plane would be at the airfield from 10:30 on. He turned quickly away, on the pretext of zipping up the tent flap.

He’d told Taps he’d be there. Alone. Goddammit, why couldn’t it be simple? Why had he had to overhear that damned phone call? Why had Louise had to make it? Why...

Louise’s hot, naked body landed on his back. Runyan tumbled sideways onto the sleeping bag, breaking her grip, his gloom of a moment before dispelled.

“You’ve led me on long enough,” she exclaimed in baritone tones. “Now I’m taking what you deny me!”

“Get away from me!” he squeaked in a girlish falsetto. “I’m not that kind of girl!”

“Then why are you taking off your pants?” she demanded suspiciously.

“I thought I’d slip into something more comfortable.”

Louise switched off the torch. “Hi,” she said in the dark, “my name is Comfortable.”

A few minutes later, Runyan said, rather breathlessly, “It certainly is.”