Spook

11 Jake Runyon

It took him three and a half days to track down Big Dog.

He might’ve cut that time in half if he’d been able to devote all his working hours to the task. But Tamara Corbin had given him a handful of interview assignments on another case that took up all of Wednesday afternoon and half of Thursday. Routine work — white collar offices in the city, an upper middle-class home in Palo Alto. He preferred the streets, bleakness and all. His meat, his comfort zone.

He found out a couple of things on the Spook investigation before he found Big Dog. One was what Pete Snyder had told him, the only new information he’d gotten out of anybody at Visuals, Inc. The other came from one of the homeless who’d known Spook, the one called Pinkeye. Why he had that street name Runyon never did find out. Both his eyes were brown, milky with cataracts, the whites more or less clear, and there wasn’t anything else pink about him. Big, loose-jointed black man, face mostly hidden behind a grizzled, gray prophet’s beard. And eager enough to talk once he had two dollars of Runyon’s money tucked away in a saggy pants pocket. He knew Big Dog, too, well enough to steer clear of him. (“Bad dude, cut your throat for a dime and drink your blood afterward.”) Couldn’t help with Big Dog’s whereabouts; his information had to do with Spook.

“I wonder what happened to his stuff,” he said.

“What stuff?”

“His stuff, man. Everybody out here’s got stuff.”

“Police didn’t find anything on him.”

“Sure they didn’t. Don’t keep your stuff on you, not if you want to keep it.”

“Where, then?”

“Got to have a hidey hole,” Pinkeye said. “Everybody got a hidey hole somewhere. You got one yourself, I bet.”

“You know where Spook’s was?”

“No idea, man. You tell anybody where you got your stuff hid, ain’t gonna be yours for long.”

“What kind of stuff did Spook have?”

“Bright and pretty, that’s what he collected. Sidewalks, gutter, garbage cans, Dumpsters... scoured ’em all. All kinds of bright and pretty.”

“Such as? Give me an example.”

“One time,” Pinkeye said, “I seen him pick up a gold earring. Yeah. One big old gold earring, right off the sidewalk. Not real gold, just a bright and pretty, but the way he grinned and hopped around you’d’ve thought it was. I asked him what was he gonna do with it. ‘Give it to Dot,’ he says.”

“Dot. His ghost woman?”

“Yeah. One of old Spook’s head people. ‘She likes pretty things,’ he says. ‘Gonna give it to her, she’ll look real pretty, maybe she’ll forgive me.’ ”

“Forgive him for what?”

“Wouldn’t say. Talked to his head people but wouldn’t talk about ’em.”

“So you figure he kept the earring with the rest of his stuff.”

“What else, man? Dot wasn’t no real woman. Can’t give no bright and pretty to somebody only lives inside your head.”

Runyon had gone back to Visuals, Inc. and talked to the client and to Meg Lawton. Both were surprised to hear that Spook had had a hidey hole, collected shiny objects; he’d never said anything on either subject. Franklin Square had been next. No help from Delia or any of the other homeless who hung out there. No help from anybody else he talked to.

After he finished up the last of the interviews on Wednesday afternoon, he drove to the Potrero neighborhood and picked up where he’d left off, widening the radius of his search. Lower Potrero from Duboce to Twentieth on the north; all the way past Highway 280 to Third and the area called Dogpatch on the south; back north and then west toward Army. Street people, liquor store clerks, employees and inhabitants of greasy spoons and bars, plus a homeless shelter and a soup kitchen he hadn’t tried before. And finally, midday on Friday, all the legwork paid off.

Liquor store with heavily barred windows, near Mission on Twenty-fifth; a thin man of Middle Eastern descent behind a counter protected by a wall of bullet-proof glass. “Him, that one,” the man said when Runyon described Big Dog. “He better not come in here anymore. I don’t want his money, I told him I don’t want to see his face again.”

“When was that? The last time you saw him?”

“Only one time. The night before last. He comes in drunk, staggering, he wants to buy a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. I tell him I don’t have any Jack Daniel’s, he starts yelling. Dirty words, dirty names. Calls me an obscenity Muslim, an Arab terrorist. I am not a Muslim, I am not an Arab, I am not a terrorist. I tell him I am Jordanian, but he keeps right on calling me names. I tell him to get out or I call the police. He keeps on yelling obscenities. So I pick up the phone, I call the police, and then he leaves before they come.”

“Any idea where he came from or where he went?”

“I don’t know, I don’t want to know.”

“He wanted a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, you said?”

“Jack Daniel’s. In this neighborhood.”

“So he must’ve had money to pay for it.”

“Yes, he had money. He waved his money, twenty dollars he waved while he called me an obscenity Arab Muslim terrorist.”

Runyon found two other liquor stores in the teeming, mostly Latino neighborhood. Big Dog had been in both, had bought a fifth of Jack Daniel’s in one three days ago, the only bottle of Jack they’d had in stock; the second store hadn’t had any and he’d verbally abused the clerk there too. That placed him in the general vicinity. Another hour of canvassing, and Runyon located a panhandler on Twenty-third and Shotwell who admitted, in exchange for the usual cash dole, that he’d seen Big Dog in the neighborhood recently.

“He’s a mean son of a bitch, drunk or sober. Knocked down an old guy got in his way the other night, just knocked him down and kicked him like he was a cat. Why’d he hafta move in on this neighborhood, for Chrissake?”

“How long’s he been here?”

“Week or so. Too freakin’ long.”

“Ever see him before that?”

“No. What you want with him?”

Runyon said, “You know where he hangs?”

“I think he’s got a room at the Commerce.”

“Commerce? Doesn’t sound like a shelter.”

“Nah. Roach hotel. One of them residence joints.”

“Address?”

“Right up on the next block. But he probly ain’t there now.”

“No?”

“I see him goin’ into Fat Tony’s a while ago.”

“Fat Tony’s is what, a bar?”

“Pool joint. Tobacco and pool. Twenty-fourth, near Mission.”

“How long ago?”

“Right before I come down here and I ain’t been here long.”

Fat Tony’s turned out to be a storefront with a dirt-streaked plate glass window that you couldn’t see through clearly until you stood up close. Long, gloomy, droplit interior, counter and cases and shelves of tobacco along one wall, the rest of the space taken up with pool and snooker tables in decent repair. Only one of the tables was in use, by two Latino men. The only other occupant was a huge blob of a man on a ladderback stool.

On the wall behind the fat man was what looked like a blow-up of a cartoonish Christmas card. Santa Claus on a snowy rooftop, his sleigh and reindeer parked to one side, the animals lying down in their traces, the words SEASON’S GREETINGS FROM SANTA in scraggly letters in the snow. It seemed out of place in these surroundings until Runyon got close enough to see the details. St. Nick was standing in partial profile, a stream of urine coming from his unbuttoned trousers, writing his holiday message in dirty yellow. Right. Not out of place at all.

The fat man said, “Ain’t that a pisser?”

“What?”

“Cartoon.” Rumbling sounds rolled out of the massive chest. “A real pisser, ain’t it?”

“Hilarious,” Runyon said. “I’m looking for Big Dog.”

“Who?”

Runyon described him. The fat man’s jolly little smile turned upside down. “Yeah, he was here. Half hour ago, maybe.”

“First time, or he been in before?”

“Couple times before.”

“Buy tobacco? Shoot pool?”

“Neither. Don’t buy nothing, ain’t a player. Asshole drunk. Pig-dirty bum.”

“Then why does he come in?”

“Lookin’ for one of my regulars. Pablo.”

“Pablo who?”

“Just Pablo. Another asshole. Fuckin’ butcher, what I hear.”

“Butcher?”

“Raw meat salesman. You dig what I mean?”

Runyon nodded. what kind of raw meat?”

“What kind you think?”

“Child porn?”

“What I hear. Little kiddies. I hate that shit, man.”

“Makes two of us. Big Dog one of Pablo’s customers?”

Shrug. “One and one adds up to two, don’t it?”

“Where can I find Pablo?”

“Works in a tacqueria on Mission. Grease cook.”

“That where you sent Big Dog today?”

“What I told him, same as you.”

Runyon pried loose the name and general location of the tacqueria. Then he said, “If you hate what this butcher peddles, why do you let him hang out in here?”

“Why?” Fat Tony seemed surprised at the question. “I got to make a living, too, don’t I?”

The tacqueria was a hole-in-the-wall, overheated by the big cookstove and ovens behind the serving counter, the air clogged with the smells of chile peppers and fried lard. Two of the eight tables had customers. At one an old man was finishing a burrito in careful little bites. And against the rear wall, a big man sat hunched vulturelike over a table strewn with plates, beer bottles, and spilled food. He had a ratty red and green wool cap on his head, wore what might have been a recently purchased secondhand rain slicker with the collar pulled up and new, thick-soled black shoes. The slicker already had foodstains on it, some dried, some fresh. He clenched a dripping taco in one hand, was using two fingers of the other hand to scoop up beans and shovel them into his mouth.

Feeding time for Big Dog.

Runyon stopped a couple of paces from the table, stood sizing him up. A brute, all right. Inch or two over six feet, bullet head, thick neck, running to sloppy fat from booze and poor diet. The close-set, squinty eyes and the looseness of his features said he was as stupid as he was mean. Bad news anywhere. On the street, among the weak and the down-and-out, he’d be a holy terror.

It took close to thirty seconds for him to realize he had company. His head swung up slowly, the little pig eyes focused on Runyon; words and taco sauce dribbled out through a half-chewed mouthful. “What the fug you lookin’ at?”

“You, Big Dog.”

“You know me? I don’t know you. Fug off.”

“We need to talk.”

“Can’t you see I’m eatin’?”

Runyon sat down across from him.

“I told you fug off, not sit down. You want your head busted?”

“Like Spook got his head busted?”

“... Huh?”

“Spook. Somebody busted his head with a bullet.”

Confusion bunched the coarse features. He shook himself like an animal.

“Maybe you didn’t do it, but could be you know who did. Who and why.”

Big Dog’s reaction caught him off guard. He expected denial, and he was ready for anger and aggression; he’d learned how to handle slow-witted thugs in his years working the Seattle waterfront. But what replaced Big Dog’s confusion was fear, and what he did then was motivated by it. He howled, “I ain’t goin’ to jail!” and shoved the table hard into Runyon’s midriff, driving him backward, and then lurched to his feet and barreled out of the tacqueria at a staggering run.

By the time Runyon kicked free of the table and chair and reached the sidewalk outside, Big Dog was lumbering around the corner onto Twenty-second Street. A light rain was falling and the pavement was slick; Runyon had no trouble with his footing, but Big Dog was clumsy and at least half drunk and the soles on his new shoes were still smooth. He slipped cutting across the street, went down and skidded on hands and knees into the far curb. The fall and the time it took him to scramble up and get moving again allowed Runyon to halve the distance between them. The separation was less than thirty yards when Big Dog plunged into a one-way alley mid-block, went charging down its narrow length between close-packed rows of parked cars.

Runyon caught up to him halfway along, grabbed hold of the belt on his rain slicker and tried to yank him to a stop. Big Dog twisted free, stumbled sideways into a parked car, caromed off and wheeled to face him. His eyes were wild; taco juice and drool gave his wide-open mouth a bloody look. “Get away from me,” he yelled, “I ain’t goin’ to jail!”

Instead Runyon moved in on him. He ducked a flailing arm, jabbed stiffened knuckles into the soft fat under the bulging sternum. Would’ve followed that up with judo shots to the throat and neck, hurt him enough to subdue him, except that Big Dog’s new shoes slid again on the wet pavement and the belly blow connected only glancingly. It took away some but not all of his wind, left him enough strength and mobility to flail out again. Runyon tried to duck away, but he was in too close by then and vulnerable.

The big fist smacked him solidly on the left ear, sent him reeling into another of the cars. Its front bumper struck him mid-thigh, threw him up over the hood. He rolled down between that car and the one in front, banging his head. Both his vision and his faculties went out of whack; he was only dimly aware of hitting the pavement.

For a few seconds his head was full of ringing and roaring and he couldn’t move. His face was upturned; he felt nothing, then he felt the rain, then he was aware of pain — head, thigh, shoulder. And then his motor responses returned and he was clawing up the front of the car, onto his feet again. He backhanded his eyes clear, blinked them into focus as he came out limping from between the cars.

Big Dog was running again. Down at the end of the block, not looking back. Around the corner and gone.

Runyon let him go. He wasn’t hurt much, but he didn’t see any point in continuing the chase. The fact that Big Dog had run told him some of what he wanted to know. The rest he could find out by other means. Or the SFPD could. Wherever Big Dog went now, it wouldn’t be any place where he could hide for very long.