Come Morning

Chapter 29

Runyan crossed the echoing lobby of the Hall of justice from the elevator bank, pushed open the front door, and went out into the cool bright San Francisco day. On the steps he passed detainees’ relatives coming from the bail brokers’ offices across Bryant Street, chattering attorneys bright-voiced as magpies, plainclothes cops whose veiled arrogance made them unmistakable.

Waterhouse said behind him, “You got lucky, Runyan.”

He turned, face cold and set. They must have been waiting since getting the news that Moyers had backed Runyan’s statement concerning Cardwell’s murder.

“For the moment,” added Prince.

“Since the same gun was used, you’re clean on both hits.”

“For the moment,” said Prince.

“It’s bullshit, of course, but...” Waterhouse shrugged.

Runyan went down the steps without speaking. Louise had abandoned him again, obviously for good, which meant he was back to being an ex-con out on the street with a lot of people after him for one thing or another.

But he had one more job before resigning from the human race. Jamie was dead, and to his own amazement he couldn’t just let it go. Maybe what the Chinese said was right: When you saved someone’s life he was your responsibility forever. Delarty and/or Gatian, working singly or in tandem. Either way, he was going to take them down. He knew just how to do it.

At the East Bay Terminal, after making sure nobody was on his tail, he entered the same phone booth he had used after putting the bonds in the coin locker the night before.

When the phone rang Art was brooding out the window at the fine drizzle which was obliterating Portland’s measly skyline. Win, lose, or draw, the fucking auditors were gone, anyway.

Gladyce stuck her head in the door. She’d had it in his lap every night for a week; pretty soon, he wasn’t careful, she’d be going down on him under the desk. He’d taken to calling her Glad-Ass in their private moments.

“It’s your brother on line three, Art.”

He swung his swivel chair back to the desk, staring at her box and making kissing sounds with his lips as he punched line three. Gladyce giggled and pulled the door shut.

“Yeah, you in town, kid?” demanded Art into the phone.

Runyan’s voice answered, “San Francisco. I just called to thank you for the loan, Art, and to tell you I’ll be putting it into the mail to you this afternoon or tomorrow.”

“Hey, bring it with you,” said Art. Aggrieved, he added, “You aren’t going to crap out on me, are you?”

“I’m sorry, Art, I won’t be able to make it for a while. I’ll be cleaning up some loose ends around here, then...”

Runyan had stuffed two sticks of gum into his mouth and started chewing them while talking with Art. When he hung up, the hand he’d rested casually on the moulding at the top of the phone booth brought down the coin locker key he’d stashed there.

He divided the bonds into two even packets: one he tossed back in the locker, feeding in a coin and removing the key again; the other packet he split to cram into the inside pockets of his jacket like a chipmunk stuffing nuts into its facial pouches.

Then he got a shoeshine at the stand beside the door to the men’s room. As the black man daubed on polish and popped the cloth, head down and concentrating on the shoes, Runyan took the wad of gum from his mouth, wrapped the locker key in it, and stuck it against the inner edge of the front of the chair on which he was sitting.

It was the grassy interior of California here, hot and endless and unchanging, and Louise drove it half asleep. Far to the east was the blue smudge of the Sierra; to the west the low dark backs of the Coast Range. Here were just grass and moaning wind and hovering white-tailed kites, beautiful lean snowy birds that might have been gulls or terns except for that unmistakable predator’s head.

What else could she have done except leave? If Moyers had told Runyan about her, any relationship between them was gone anyway. Better leave him thinking she was still working out some imagined debt to a former lover; he already had assimilated that incomplete part of the story.

Why was she not on her way to Hawaii or Florida or Puerto Rico or even Atlantic City, any resort area where a woman with her sort of talents could always find an uneasy living? Why was she returning to the house of a man she had come to loathe?

To pick up her half-completed scraps of stories, no other reason. From the beginning, she now saw, her brief season with Runyan had been doomed to failure — but it had somehow ruined her taste for the good life on the edge. His struggle to break free from his past had made her want to break free from hers.

Together, they might have done it. Apart, both would fail. But she was going to keep going through the motions, because conventional wisdom held that sometimes appearance became reality.

For the first time in over a year, she wished she had some coke. Coming back to Runyan, she hadn’t brought her sleeping pills. She hadn’t thought she’d need them. Without them, she needed some coke to kick her past this first, bad part. Well, maybe booze would do it. Maybe she would stop at a motel before dark, sign in, and get drunk.

Runyan sat on his side of the assistant bank manager’s desk as the young middle-aged man with round glasses and a precise manner laid down the magnifying glass he’d been using to examine the sheaf of bonds, and cleared his throat. “I’m sorry to have been so... cautious, Mr. Dawson, but these are worth a great deal of money, and as you come to me without references...”

Runyan nodded pleasantly.

“I understand. But they are bearer bonds, and I am the bearer...”

“Precisely,” said the banker, as if the fact caused him pain. “And I realize the necessity of confidentiality in, ah, business arrangements which require a large amount of cash...”

“Five-hundreds and a few hundreds are fine,” said Runyan. “And a couple of envelopes to put them in...”

Louise followed the freeway signs indicating FOOD — LODGING — GAS to the most anonymous motel in a motel row on the outskirts of Redding: motel, pool, restaurant, and piano bar all in one. She stopped in front of the office and put on her sunglasses to go register.

Runyan was waiting when Patty Cardwell came trudging up with her blue book bag, dressed in another skirt and a white blouse, her sweater around her waist with the arms knotted in front. With her father so recently dead, he hadn’t been sure she would come here to play; but he also figured she didn’t have much of anywhere else to go. She stopped dead at sight of him, remembering. Then she came on.

“My daddy is dead,” she said.

“I know. I’m sorry, Patty.”

“He was shot.” She sat down in a swing. “Like on TV.”

He took one of the bank envelopes out of his inner coat pocket and crouched to stuff it down into her bag between schoolbooks. He looked up into her solemn watching eyes.

“I want you to go right home and give this to your mother. It’s something your father gave me to keep for her. Can you remember that?”

She stared at him for a very long moment. “Sure.”

She turned and ran off with the book bag. Runyan watched her until she was out of sight. At least Betty and the kid would make out all right: The envelope contained just shy of $300,000.

Louise started with a shrimp cocktail, had a green salad with Roquefort dressing, went on to filet mignon with baked potato and sour cream and butter, garlic toast and the vegetable of the day — slightly undercooked zucchini — and finished with a chocolate mousse and two cups of coffee with cream and sugar. With the meal she had a half-carafe of Zinfandel. After the meal, she went into the lounge to drink Margaritas without salt.

Runyan taped the second envelope to the inside of one thigh with adhesive tape, had two cheeseburgers and a large fries at Jack-in-the-Box, then started drinking boilermakers through the Tenderloin. The coldness of his face, the flatness of his voice, and the obvious conditioning of his body protected him from the predators. They preferred their prey maimed; even at his most drunken, Runyan looked as ready to attack as they.

The night was a descending spiral into purgatorial images and impressions. Sometimes it was just faces. Faces lost, angry, sad, frightened, but always the faces of the Tenderloin: whores, male and female, beckoning and smirking, all ages, all colors, all races. Old people scuttling like crabs, their Social Security checks clutched in their pockets. Money went further here, and there was, after all, the illusion of life on these streets. Cops. Runaways. Dealers. Players. Narcs. People seeking action.

A degenerate youth, who could have been one of the trio he had used to get his stuff out of the Westward Hotel, groped him. He shoved the boy aside and shambled on.

A tough-faced cop paused to look him over, perhaps thinking paddy wagon and drunk tank. Runyan turned into a convenient corner grocery store and bought an apple, and the moment passed.

Later he was aware only of single sharp details: the line of a jaw; light shining amber through a raised drink; a heavy skull-and-crossbones ring on the finger of an outlaw cyclist; his own features distorted by a cheap back-bar mirror.

The streets seemed to grow darker; their detail softened from sharp to fuzzy to blurry and finally to contorted as his alcohol level rose. He threw up into the gutter between two parked cars, knowing he had to be finished with the Tenderloin’s mean streets before they finished him. He would never escape if he gave in to the obscure feelings of worthlessness Louise’s defection had triggered. Together, supporting one another, they could have made it. Alone, apart...

He drank hot black coffee and wandered again. The darkness became literal: The nighttime streets had become the black man’s streets. He was standing in front of Sister Sally’s. He started up the steps. He wasn’t sober, but he was compos mentis.

The man was a foot taller and five years younger than Louise, with golden flowing hair, a bandito mustache, the bodybuilder’s bunched shoulders and trim waist, and the self-centered stud’s empty eyes. She had noted his bulging muscles at poolside, and had felt his eyes on her during dinner. For the past 20 minutes she had been feeling his hand on her thigh, and hadn’t had enough self-esteem to remove it.

The woman playing the piano, who was pushing 40 hard enough to sprain a wrist, knew exactly. After ten minutes of dagger looks at Louise, she started to play the old Pal Joey tune, The Lady Is a Tramp.

Terrific. Everyone kept telling her, in words and actions, that that was who she was, what she was good at. So why fight it? It might as well be right away, like climbing back on the horse right after he’d thrown you. Otherwise maybe she’d never do it again.

“One more drink first,” she said to the blond stud.

She paid. Of course.