Spook

7 Jake Runyon

He spent the rest of the afternoon cruising the area within a ten-block radius of Visuals, Inc. No sign of Big Dog in Franklin Square or on the streets or in the soup kitchen or homeless shelter or among the handful of wary occupants of a cluttered, junk-infested encampment under the freeway interchange. A few of the street people he talked to owned up to knowing who Big Dog was, but none could or would say where he hung out. Most refused to say anything, even when money was offered. Even the soup kitchen and shelter volunteers were reluctant to speak freely. Fear seemed to be the motivating factor, not of Runyon or what he represented, but of Big Dog and of becoming involved in a homicide.

Runyon didn’t blame them. The thick shit sandwich out here was hard enough to swallow without adding dead meat and hair from a junkyard dog to the loaf. At dusk he called it quits for the day. The wind had sharpened, turned gusty, and the smell of rain was in the air. Raw night ahead. Most of the homeless were already forted up; the soup kitchen had long lines and the shelter had been nearly full at four o’clock. Trouble, not answers, was what you invited by prowling unfamiliar territory on a cold, wet winter night.

No food since a skimpy breakfast and he was hungry. He’d gone days without eating after Colleen died, but once he was away from Seattle his appetite had gradually returned. Two meals a day now, and starting to put back some of the weight he’d lost. He stopped at a Chinese restaurant on his way across Twin peaks, packed in a three-course meal. Egg rolls, mooshu pork, crispy Peking chicken — Colleen’s favorites. They’d eaten Chinese two or three times a week before she got sick, usually in the same little hole-in-the-wall off Pioneer Square. He’d continued the ritual after he moved down here, in honor of her and what they’d shared. Another way of keeping her memory close.

His apartment was on Ortega, a few blocks off 19th Avenue, on the city’s west side. Four rooms, furnished, on the third floor of an old, anonymous stucco building. When the real estate agent first showed him the place, he’d automatically cataloged each room and its contents down to the last detail. Now that he’d lived there for more than a month, he’d’ve been hard-pressed when away to say what color the living room walls were or whether or not there was a carpet in the bedroom. Familiarity made the details nonessential. That was the way his mind worked in professional circumstances: Particulars noted, retained for as long as necessary, then filed for future reference or erased completely from his memory banks, depending on their relative importance to the business at hand.

Cold night, cold apartment. He turned on the heat, went into the kitchen to brew himself a cup of tea. Colleen’s drink, now his. The fifth of Wild Turkey was stored in the same cupboard with the package of darjeeling, still almost half full. Emergency rations. Colleen’s phrase: “We ought to keep emergency rations on hand, just in case we suddenly have something to celebrate.” Or something to mourn. They’d gotten into the emergency rations just twice, the first time when he was promoted from patrolman to detective, the second when one of her sculptures sold for $300 at a crafts fair. He’d gotten into the whiskey just once on his own, the night she died. Booze was a crutch. He didn’t need a crutch, unless you counted work as one. The things he needed he could never have — a time machine and a cure for ovarian cancer. But he’d brought the bottle along anyway. Not because he might need it again; because it was something else they’d shared.

He took his tea into the living room, flipped on the TV. Five minutes of the seven o’clock news was all he could take. He shut the set off, sat there in the silence for a time, and then without thinking about it he got up and went to the phone. No need to look up the number. He’d dialed it often enough in the past few weeks.

And listened often enough to the same silly recorded message. “Hello. This is the disembodied voice of Joshua Fleming. Leave your name and number and my real self will return your call as soon as it materializes.”

Screening his calls all the time now, probably. The first call he’d answered, but as soon as Runyon said, “Josh, this is your father,” he’d broken the connection. Answering machine every call since. And still not one returned.

The beep sounded in his ear. He said, “It’s me again, son. I don’t enjoy pestering you, no matter what you might think, but I’m not giving up until we talk at least once. Pick up if you’re there.”

Silence.

All right. He recited his number again, started to lower the receiver, then brought it back up. “Please,” he said. “It’s almost Christmas.”

Too quiet in the apartment. He put the television back on for noise, surfed up an old movie — Casablanca, one of Colleen’s favorites — and sat staring at it without comprehending much of what was going on. His mind was on Joshua.

He’d come close to bracing him two weeks ago, when he’d gone down to Embarcadero Center to the firm of financial planners where Josh worked as a trainee. No good reason for going except to see what the place was like, maybe get a look at him from a distance. He’d got the look, all right, from a dozen feet away in the building lobby, but before he could make up his mind whether to speak to him, Josh had faded into the crowd. Just as well. Catching him off guard like that would’ve been a mistake; probably alienated him even more.

No longer a kid now, his son. Twenty-two and a man. Tallish, handsome in a pretty-boy way, with Andrea’s blond hair and blue eyes and narrow mouth. Otherwise, a stranger. Nothing of his father in appearance or mannerisms or the way he moved, and damn little, if any, of his mental or psychological makeup. If even a hint of Jake Runyon had manifested itself in Joshua in his early years, Andrea would have made sure to leech it out of him. Hell hath no fury. Her son, her image, her hate-child to the bitter end.

He watched the movie for a while, still without internalizing much of it except for the scene in Rick’s Café when the French patriots begin singing “La Marseillaise” to drown out the Nazis’ drunken rendition of “Deutschland über Alles.” Stirring stuff that had made Colleen cry every time. Lots of things made her cry. What was that phrase from one of the other old movies she’d liked, the one set in Japan with Glenn Ford? Cry for happy, that was it. She’d cried at the drop of a hat, but mostly it had been crying for happy. It wasn’t until the goddamn cancer that she’d cried for sad, cried for scared, cried for hurt, and that he’d started crying with her.

The phone rang.

Runyon’s first thought was telemarketer. He’d had maybe half a dozen incoming calls since he’d lived here, and all but two — the two from his new employer — had been telemarketers. Invasion of privacy at the best of times, and this wasn’t the best of times. He went over and answered it, snapping his “Hello,” ready to snap harder once the pitch began.

The voice on the other end said formally, grudgingly, “This is Joshua Fleming.

For a few seconds the words ground his mental gears, stalled his thoughts. “Well,” he said, and it sounded stupid. He cleared his throat and said, “Thanks for getting in touch.” And that sounded stupid, too.

“I’m tired of all the messages on my answering machine.” Cold and flat and tight with contained anger. Like Andrea’s voice the few times he’d tried to talk to her after the separation and divorce. The only difference was that hers had dripped loathing like acid. “Why did you have to move down here? Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

“I had nowhere else to go,” Runyon said.

“You could have stayed in Seattle.”

“No, I couldn’t. Not after... well, you know about my wife.”

“Yeah, I know.” That was all — no expression of sympathy. “It doesn’t change anything.”

“I think it does. You’re all I have left now.”

“Then you don’t have anything left now.”

“You’re my son, Josh.”

“My name is Joshua, not Josh.”

“All right. My son Joshua.”

“Like hell I’m your son. I stopped being your son the day you left my mother and me twenty years ago.”

“I’ve tried to make up for that. The whole time you were growing up, I tried. Your mother—”

“You put her through hell, you have no idea how much she suffered.”

“It wasn’t just me who made her suffer.”

“You didn’t know her. You never did.”

“Is that what she told you?”

“You don’t know me, either. Anything about me.”

“I want to know you.”

“Well, I don’t want to know you.”

“We need to talk, Joshua.”

“Why? There’s nothing you can say that I want to hear.”

“I’m going to say it anyway, sooner or later.”

“Fine, then go ahead, say it.”

“Not on the phone. Face to face, man to man.”

“No.”

“In a public place, if you want it that way. Lunch, dinner, drinks.”

“I don’t drink.”

Good, Runyon thought, that’s one good thing you learned growing up with her. “One meeting, one conversation. That’s all I’m asking.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I’m not a liar, son. Whatever else you think of me, believe that. I never lied to your mother. I’ll never lie to you.”

“So you say. Why should I give you the opportunity?”

“Why not? What can one meeting hurt? If you still want nothing to do with me afterward, okay, I won’t bother you anymore.”

Circuit hum. Then, “Does that include leaving San Francisco?”

“I have a job here now. City’s big enough for both of us, isn’t it?”

“It’s my city, my mother’s city, not yours.”

“I meant what I said. One meeting, straight talk, and after that the ball’s in your court.”

“... You just won t give up, will you?”

“Not before we talk.”

More humming silence. Somebody, not Joshua, said something in the background in a low whisper.

“Who was that?”

“My roommate. He thinks I should go ahead, get it over with.”

“What do you say?”

“I say you’re spoiling my holidays.”

“Not my intention. Peace for both of us, that’s all I’m after.”

“Man, that’s really profound. You’re a profound guy, aren’t you?”

“When can we meet? You name the time and place.”

No answer.

“Any day, anywhere you say.”

“Oh, Christ,” Joshua said. Then, as if he were hurling the words, “All right. All right, I’ll let you know, I’ll leave a message on your machine this time,” and the receiver went down hard on the other end.

Runyon returned to the couch. Casablanca was over; some other movie had started. He shut off the TV. Then he switched off the lamp and sat in the dark, alternately thinking and not thinking, waiting for it to be time for bed and sleep.