Nightcrawlers

2

JAKE RUNYON

His flight from L.A. landed at SFO at 5:05, which put him smack into the middle of rush-hour traffic heading into the city. Not that the stop-and-crawl bothered him. There was a time when it had, in Seattle during the evening rush when he was on his way home to Colleen. Now he had no one waiting, no reason for hurry. Rattling around his San Francisco apartment or creeping along the 280 freeway-one place was the same as another. Her death had taught him patience, if nothing else. Or maybe patience was nothing but a prettied-up name for apathy.

Work was the only thing that mattered to him anymore, the only relief for the disinterest he felt during his nonworking hours. Colleen was gone, his son hated him and refused to have anything to do with him, what else was there? But you couldn’t do your job twenty-four/seven; you had to have sleep, food, and like it or not there was a certain amount of downtime that you had to put up with every day. Weekends were the worst. Even weekends in L.A. Saturday he’d been able to put in a full day on the missing witness case; L.A. was a damn big place and he’d spent hours on the freeways and side streets getting from one place to another, all the way from the San Fernando Valley to Riverside. Sunday, though, had been bad. Motel room, movies and a baseball game on TV, coffee shop, and more driving, the aimless kind, to kill the rest of the time. Full workday again today, at least. And now he was home and looking at five more busy workdays before he had to face another Sunday.

Home. Just a word now, like a word in a foreign language you didn’t understand.

Into the city, finally, crawling past the state university campus and on up Nineteenth Avenue. When he neared Taraval he thought about turning off-coffee shops and Asian restaurants along there-but he kept on going instead. Hungry, but not hungry enough to bother stopping. Later he’d go out to eat. A bath first, soak out some of the driving and airplane kinks, the weekend fatigue.

His apartment was in a nondescript building on Ortega, not far off Nineteenth. Four rooms that might’ve been rooms in a hotel or boardinghouse or the motel in L.A.; the only thing that personalized it, made it a place worth returning to, was the framed photograph of Colleen that he kept on the bedside nightstand. An eagerness to see the photo came on him as he keyed open the door, a shadow of the eagerness he’d felt when she was alive and he was coming home to her. He had another photo of her in his wallet, but it wasn’t as clear and sharp a likeness as the one in the bedside frame.

The message light on the answering machine was blinking. He registered that-Tamara or Bill, probably, work-related-and kept on going into the bedroom. He picked up Colleen’s photo, stood looking at it for a long time. God, she’d been beautiful. Red hair, those impish Irish green eyes, that beacon-like smile. He put the frame down. If he looked at her image too long, the pain would start again and then he’d be in for a long, bad night.

He shed his overcoat, started into the kitchen to put on water for tea-Colleen’s drink, his drink now-then changed his mind and went back into the living room. Might as well find out what the office wanted first.

But it wasn’t the office. The voice on the machine said, “This is Joshua. I’ll probably regret this, but I need to talk to somebody.. Call me.” That was all except for his new number, the unlisted-to-avoid-his-father number.

Runyon was beyond surprise at anything, business or personal, but sometimes things happened that came close. The hostage situation just before Christmas. And now this call out of the blue. No communication between Joshua and him since their one disastrous meeting in December, the boy so poisoned by Andrea’s bitter, alcohol-fueled hatred for Runyon and her imagined abandonment of them that the father-son gap seemed impossible to bridge… so why the sudden change of heart? I’ll probably regret this, but I need to talk to somebody. If it was a change of heart.

Still, hope stirred in him. The kid had called. That was something; maybe it was a beginning. He played the message back, noting the day and time of the call: today, 2:27 P.M. Less than four hours ago. He wrote the unlisted number in his notebook, then picked up the receiver and tapped it out.

Joshua answered immediately, as if he’d been sitting next to the phone, waiting for it to ring. “Yes? Hello?”

“Hello, son.”

Breathing sounds.

“Joshua?”

“I’m here.”

Different tone of voice than on the message. The cold, distant one again.

“I’m glad you called,” Runyon said.

“Don’t be. It was a mistake.”

“Why a mistake?”

“I can’t talk to you. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.”

“No. There’s nothing you can do.”

“What did you want me to do?”

“Nothing. Just forget it.”

“Are you in some kind of trouble?”

“No.”

“Something’s wrong. I can hear it in your voice.”

“I said forget it. It’s not important.”

“No? Must’ve cost you a lot, that call.”

“More than you’ll ever know.”

“Then talk to me.”

“What’s the use? Straight society doesn’t give a shit about people like us.”

“Wrong. Some of us do.”

Breathing.

“Talk to me, son.”

Joshua said, “I’m not your son,” and broke the connection.

Runyon lowered the receiver. He stood for half a minute or so, listening to the quiet in the apartment, making a decision. All right. He went back into the bedroom for his coat and car keys.

The old house was on Hartford just off Twentieth-a steep street of one- and two-story Stick Victorians and small, plain apartment buildings. The flat Joshua shared with his roommate was in one of the two-story Sticks, on the ground level.

Runyon had been there once before. A drive-by, just to see what kind of place his son had picked to live in. He’d gotten the address by checking the reverse city directory. The roommate’s name was Kenneth Hitchcock, age twenty-eight-six years older than Joshua; born in Visalia in the Central Valley, graduated from Fresno State with a degree in business administration, worked as a teller in a downtown branch of B of A, had never been in trouble of any kind either as a juvenile or an adult. Curiosity had prompted the background check, nothing more. Runyon could have gotten their unlisted phone number, too, easily enough, but he hadn’t bothered. It wouldn’t have done any good to keep calling, invading Joshua’s privacy; would’ve just increased the rift between them. All he cared about, once his attempts to create an understanding had been unequivocally rejected, was that his son be safe, healthy, solvent, and reasonably content.

But now there was this new contact, initiated by Joshua. A reaching out for some reason that wasn’t clear yet. It had opened the door, and Runyon wasn’t about to stand by and let it slam shut again without some push. Andrea’s alcoholic-fueled hate and vindictiveness had prevented him from being a part of Joshua’s life for the first twenty years, but he could be there for him now. And would be, whatever it took.

He hunted up a parking place, walked back to the building through a chilly night wind that had the smell of fog in it. There was a gate, and a short path that led from the street, to a narrow front stoop. He rang the bell. Before long, footsteps. A peephole was set into the door; Joshua must have looked out through it because the door came open fast. Tight-set face, eyes that snapped with anger, words that were flung more than spoken. “What’re you doing here?”

“We didn’t finish our conversation.”

“Yes we did. I told you, I changed my mind. I don’t have anything to say to you.”

“You did this afternoon.”

“How did you know where I live? We’re not listed in the phone book. Oh, right… snooping’s what you do for a living.”

Runyon let that slide. “Something’s wrong,” he said. “Don’t tell me different. It’s in your face as well as your voice.”

Joshua was a handsome kid, Andrea’s kid in that respect, too-her blond hair, her smoky blue eyes, her narrow mouth and delicate features-but he wasn’t so good-looking right now. Drawn, pale, puffy, as if he hadn’t slept much recently. Misery as well as anger showed in the blue eyes, some kind of visceral hurt.

“Why should you care?”

“That’s a stupid question and you know it.”

“Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

“Same category,” Runyon said. “I have left you alone. If you’d wanted me to go on leaving you alone, you wouldn’t have called.”

Joshua met his gaze briefly, looked away.

“We’re going to talk, son. Be easier on both of us if we do it inside.”

He moved ahead on the last word, crowding the kid a little. No more resistance; Joshua gave ground, turned aside to let him past.

Runyon automatically catalogued details as he advanced. Foyer and a short hallway with three closed doors leading off it. The hall opened into a big living room, uncurtained windows in the south wall that framed a broken view of an overgrown yard and the backsides of neighboring houses. Neat, clean, tastefully furnished in greens and browns and dusky reds. Paintings on the walls that had an amateurish look but weren’t badly done-expressionist style, all blobs and whorls of dark color on a white background, all the work of the same artist. Grouped on a folded dropcloth in front of one window were an easel, a chair, a big Tensor lamp, and a small table covered with brushes and jars of paint in symmetrical rows.

“You the painter?” he asked.

“No. Kenneth.”

“He’s pretty good.”

“Yes, he is. I wouldn’t have thought you’d like expressionist art.”

“There’s a lot about me you don’t know. Is Kenneth here? I’d like to meet him.”

“No, he’s not here.” A muscle spasmed in Joshua’s cheek. “He’s in the hospital.”

“Yes? I’m sorry to hear it.”

“Three days now and his condition is still critical.”

“What’s the matter with him?”

Hesitation. Then, in an angry, anguished rush: “He has a fractured arm, four cracked ribs, a broken cheekbone, and a punctured lung, that’s what’s the matter with him. Among other injuries. His face.. God, his poor face…”

“What happened?”

“He was beaten up. They used some kind of club.”

“They?”

“Fucking homophobes. Gay-bashers.”

“So that’s it. Known to him?”

“I don’t think so. He’s been under heavy sedation… confused when he’s awake. He can’t seem to remember much, just that there were two of them.”

“When and where?”

“Last Friday night. Saturday morning. He was on his way home from work, he moonlights as a bartender three nights a week at The Dark Spot on Castro. They must’ve been cruising for another target, it was late and he was alone…”

“Another target?”

“He wasn’t their first victim, the bastards.”

“How many others?”

“Two in the past two weeks. I know the second man.”

“Yes?”

“Gene Zalesky. He… used to be a friend of Kenneth’s.”

“How badly was he hurt?”

“Not as badly as Kenneth. He’s home now.”

“Was he able to provide descriptions of the attackers?”

“Young, early to mid twenties… the same pair.”

“Driving what kind of vehicle?”

“An old pickup truck, black or dark blue.” Joshua went to one of the chairs, slumped down on it. Runyon stayed where he was. “I told Kenneth to be careful, ask somebody to give him a ride home, take a cab if he had to. But he wasn’t afraid, he didn’t believe it would happen to him… Goddamn them! Goddamn them?”

“Easy, son.”

“Don’t tell me that. That’s what they kept saying.”

“Who?”

“The cops. Bullshit, that’s all. They didn’t care. Just another fag beating. File a report and forget about it.”

Runyon said, “It doesn’t work that way,” but they were just words. It did work that way, much of the time. And not just in crimes against gays or other hate crimes-in nearly all low-profile street felonies. Too many crimes, too many criminals, too little time and manpower. Too many excuses and too much apathy.

Joshua said bitterly, “I thought you didn’t lie. Isn’t that what you told me in December?”

“All right. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry. What good is sorry?” Shuddery breath. The blue eyes were moist now; shifting emotions, pain the most intense. “He could die. Kenneth could die.”

“His condition that critical?”

“Internal bleeding. The doctors had trouble stopping it. It could start again at any time…”

It seemed for a few seconds that Joshua might break down. Runyon felt an impulse to sit beside him, give him a shoulder to lean on. Didn’t do it because he knew the gesture would be rejected. What his son wanted from him had nothing to do with fatherly solace.

Joshua made a visible effort to pull himself together. At length he said, “I hate this,” in a shaky voice. “Kenneth is the strong one. I’m no damn good in a crisis.”

Runyon said, “I am.”

“I just… I don’t know what to do.”

“You’ve already done all you can. Calling me was the right thing.”

For the first time Joshua looked at him squarely. “Could you find them, stop them before they kill somebody?”

“Maybe. No guarantees.”

“Would you? If I hired you, paid you…”

“No.”

“But you just said-”

“I’ll do what I can, but not for pay.”

Silent stare.

“You’re my son,” Runyon said. “That’s all the reason I need.”