No big insight here, she thought ruefully. She’d let herself see clearly before, made vows before to own up and change her ways. But just when she’d make a start in the right direction, something would happen and she’d handle it wrong, words coming out her mouth without going through her brain first, closing off and lashing out at the same time. Like the other day when Pop came to the office, Friday night at Claudia’s, the three conversations last night.
Better stop treating everybody like an enemy, girl. Hang on to family, friends, learn self-control, or else you’re really gonna end up independent one of these days — gonna end up all alone.
The little slap-talk with herself made her feel better. When Jake Runyon called a few minutes later, to let her know he was on the road and expected to be in the office around one o’clock, she made an effort to be nice to him. Told him again what a good job he’d done up in Mono County. The stroking didn’t have much effect; all he said was “Thanks” and “See you later.”
She did some work, managed to lose herself in it. But then, around ten, the phone rang a second time. And her mood went sour again.
Breathing. Heavy breathing.
Oh, yeah, that was all she needed now. A perv.
Still breathing. She didn’t wait for any more, didn’t say anything, just slammed the receiver down.
Phone rang again a few seconds later. She ground her teeth, made herself answer it cool and businesslike.
Same jerkoff chump, breathing like a pig at a trough. But then a raspy voice said, “Don’t hang up.”
“Well, don’t be panting in my ear. Something I can do for you?”
She expected an obscene answer and got ready to slam down even harder, bust his eardrum. But he surprised her. He said angrily, spewing the words, “What’s the idea siccing the cops on me?”
“Huh?”
“Can’t leave a man alone, always after him, never a minute’s peace. Everybody, my wife, the IRS, cops, you people, the bastards you’re working for. Who are they? Who hired you?”
Man! “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You know, all right. Don’t give me that crap, I’m not taking any more bullshit from anybody.”
“Who is this?”
“You know who I am. Sicced the cops on me. All those years, nobody did anything about it, everything went to hell, whose fault is that? Not mine. Goddamn you people, not mine!”
“Robert Lightfoot? Thomas Valjean?”
“Smart bitch, don’t play games with me!”
That made her lose it. She said, “Drop dead, asshole,” and hammered the receiver into its cradle, damn near broke it. Next thing she did was open her purse, find the high-frequency whistle Pop had given her years ago. Chump called a third time, she’d huff and puff and really bust his eardrum for him.
But he didn’t call again. The phone stayed quiet.
Well, all right. Must’ve been Valjean; Lightfoot talked with a slur because of his stroke. Why hadn’t the cops arrested Valjean by now? Insufficient evidence, probably. Report the call? Not much point. He hadn’t said his name; she was just guessing and the police couldn’t act on guesswork. Boss man had drummed that into her head enough times, hadn’t he? But if he called again...
Meanwhile, back to work. She started preliminary work on a skip-trace for Abe Melikian, a hard-luck bondsman who called the agency whenever one of his lowlife clients jumped bail, which seemed often enough to put most bondsmen out of business or at least make them think twice about who they posted bond for. Routine stuff. Interesting when she was in the right mood, boring when she wasn’t. Boring today.
An hour’s worth of the routine was all she could stand. The only good thing about the hour was that the phone stayed silent. For no damn good reason, she surfed Philadelphia on the Net. Fifth largest city in the country, population 5.8 million... too many people in one place. City of Brotherly Love. Yeah, right. Well, they did have an African-American heritage museum, and Philly’s Quakers had been active in the abolitionist movement and the underground railroad, so the brotherly love thing had some history anyway. Liberty Bell and Freedom Hall. University of Pennsylvania. Home of the Eagles, Phillies, 76ers. And the Philly Cheesesteak sandwich, just what she needed to help keep her weight under control. Average winter temperature of 33 degrees... terrific.
Lots of stuff on the plus side, she supposed, but too many minuses if you were a West Coast woman, a San Francisco woman, a snow-and-freezing-cold-sucks woman. Yeah, and a 49er fan like Pop and Bill and everybody else she knew on this side of the Bay. Root for the Eagles? No way.
Horace could adapt to life back there, sure. Horace didn’t care about football or the weather or anything much except classical music. (And me, she thought, don’t forget me.) But this child? Shrivel right up and die in a snowbank the first winter.
She sighed. And then grimaced because the sigh sounded just like one of Pop’s. Wall clock said it was almost noon. She shut down her Mac, put on her coat, locked up, and went out to lunch.
Tommy’s Joint on Van Ness, treated herself to their buffalo burger. Some treat. Tommy’s specialty had always been one of her favorites, but she just wasn’t hungry today, couldn’t even eat half of it. Raining again when she came out, and she’d forgotten to bring her umbrella. Figured. She was dripping by the time she got back to the office.
Inside she hung up her coat, squeezed out her scarf and hung that up too. On her way to her desk, she heard the door open behind her. She thought it was Jake Runyon, took another couple of steps without turning. Next second she heard hard, quick footfalls coming up behind her, metallic objects rattling and clanking together, and that was when she started to turn—
Something cracked against the side of her head, something solid that brought a sunburst of pain and confusion and sent her sprawling headlong across the floor.
23
Steve Taradash was still doing that nervous, quit-smoking trick of his with a package of cigarettes. While I talked I watched him take one from the pack, roll it between thumb and forefinger, lay it on the desk blotter, and go through the slice-and-dice routine with his penknife. In the other chair Meg Lawton kept her eyes on me the whole time, a look of near anguish on her round face.
Eventually I stopped talking. Taradash said, “Rotten cancer sticks,” and swept the dismembered weed into his wastebasket. Without any sign of glee this time; his expression was bleak. Mrs. Lawton rubbed her palms over the silky material of her skirt, making a dry rustling sound.
She said, “It’s so hard to believe Spook murdered three people in cold blood. My Lord, he seemed so... harmless.”
“He was by the time you met him. Unstable personality unhinged by one psychotic episode, seventeen years of guilt and remorse and self-hatred.
“Until there wasn’t anything left,” Taradash said glumly, “but a walking vegetable.”
“Horrible,” she said. “I almost wish...”
“That we’d never found out the truth about him? So do I. Try to make a gesture in the spirit of the holidays, this is what you get. I should’ve left well enough alone.”
“Look at it this way,” I said. “If you had, Spook might never have been identified and nobody would’ve known what became of Anthony Colton. At least now the Mono sheriff’s department and the FBI can close their files on the case.”
“I suppose you’re right. Still... oh, hell, don’t misunderstand me, you and your people did a good job, I don’t begrudge the expense. It’s just that I’m feeling disillusioned right now.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“And I can’t help wondering if Spook got what he deserved out there in the alley, if Lightfoot and Valjean, if they’re the ones responsible, were justified in knocking him off.”
“Murder’s never justified, Mr. Taradash.”
“I’m not so sure I wouldn’t’ve done the same thing if a member of my family was shot down and I had a crack at the man who pulled the trigger.”
“Nobody
knows what he’d do in a situation like that until he’s confronted with it. All I can say is that most of us wouldn’t give in to the impulse.”
“I wouldn’t,” Meg Lawton said. “I could never take a human life, not for any reason.”
“There’s another thing to consider, too. The man who murdered Spook also murdered Big Dog. Double homicide isn’t any less heinous than triple homicide... he’s no better than Anthony Colton. Worse in the eyes of the law because his crimes were premeditated.”
“Big Dog,” Taradash said. “You think he’d still be dead if I hadn’t hired you?”
“No question. He signed his own death warrant before we got involved.”
Taradash shook out another cigarette, began the ritual once more. “How’d he know who to blackmail? How’d Spook get recognized in the first place, after seventeen years?”
“No answers to those questions yet. We’ll get the rest of the story when the police make an arrest.”
“If they make an arrest.”
“They will. I don t think it’ll be long.”
Meg Lawton had been staring past her boss, through the window at activity on the warehouse floor — employees readying equipment for another indy film being shot in the city, I’d been told. Abruptly she said, as if a thought had just struck her, “Steve, what about... you know, a burial plot for Spook, some kind of marker?”
“You don’t expect me to go through with that now?”
“It’s not that I expect it...”
“We found out who he was, isn’t that enough?”
“I don’t know. If you think so.”
“Well, I don’t know either.” Taradash jabbed his penknife into the cigarette; tobacco spurted like flecks of dry brown blood. He asked me, “What do you think? Should I go ahead, arrange to bury the poor bastard?”
“Not my call. I didn’t know Spook.”
“No opinion either way?”
“Sorry, no.”
“And where would we put him? Here? Mono County?”
I didn’t say anything.
“He was so sad,” Meg Lawton said, “so... damaged. It’s horrible, what he did, but he wasn’t really free all those years, was he? Didn’t really escape punishment? It just seems to me he ought to have a final resting place.”
“Maybe,” Taradash said, “maybe you’re right, I wish I could make up my mind.” He jabbed the knife blade again into the corpse of the cigarette. “I wish it wasn’t the Christmas season,” he said.
Meg Lawton said, “I’m glad it is.”
So was I. For a lot of reasons.
24
Jake Runyon
The one thing he’d never liked about investigative work was surprises. When you knew what was going down, or at least had some advance warning, you could make preparations, plan for contingencies. But when you walked cold into an unexpected situation, it was like being hamstrung — you couldn’t act quickly, you needed time to regroup and by then it might be too late. More than anything else he hated being helpless.
This surprise was a bad one, the worst kind. Tamara Corbin sitting slumped at her desk, one hand cradling her head, smears and streaks of blood all down the left side of her face and neck and across the front of her blouse. Hot-eyed stranger standing spraddle-legged in the middle of the office — big, rangy, early forties; beard-stubbled, brown hair jutting wild from a blotchy scalp, big mole on the left side of his nose; wearing a flak jacket and camouflage fatigues and high-lace boots. Paper files and desktop items strewn all over the floor.
And guns everywhere — on the surface of Bill’s desk, on the floor, spilling out of an open duffel bag next to the desk. At least three handguns, an assembled assault rifle, a couple of big, rapid-fire machine pistols. The piece held steady in the man’s hand was a Micro Uzi SMG, which meant a magazine capacity of twenty rounds minimum of 9 mm parabellum ammo. Bad enough if it was semiautomatic, worse if it was automatic. Deadly as hell in any case. There was ammunition spread around, too, boxes of it for all the weapons.
Runyon took it all in, the details and implications, in the few frozen seconds after his entry. Hostage situation, suicide mission, planned slaughter. It shut him down inside, put him on cold alert. Emotion, any kind, was a liability in this type of situation. The only possible survival mechanisms were intelligence, training, instinct. And they were damned puny against a heavily armed man with death on his mind.
The stranger broke the tableau with a sharp motion of the Uzi and raspy words that seemed to come from deeper within him than his diaphragm. “Which one’re you? What’s your name?”
“Runyon.”
“Yeah. Shut the door, Runyon. Lock it again.”
He did that, turned around. “Who’re you?”
“Three guesses, first two don’t count. Who am I?”
“Tom Valjean.”
“Right the first time, you people are so fucking smart.” Valjean used his free hand to drag the chair away from Bill’s desk, then gave it a kick that sent it rattling across the floor. It banged into a corner of Tamara’s desk, caromed off; the noise made her jerk, raise her head in an unfocused stare. “Go on over there, smart guy, sit down and keep your hands where I can see them.”
Runyon obeyed, moving slow. He asked Tamara, “You okay?”
“Head hurts. Still kind of woozy.” Her eyes were on him now, trying to hold him in focus. He saw pain, fear, disorientation — and anger. The anger was good, as long as she kept it under control. Tough kid. If she hadn’t come unglued by now, she probably wouldn’t. “Cut my face when he smacked me. Won’t stop bleeding.”
“Doesn’t look too bad. Just keep putting pressure on it.”
“Shut up,” Valjean said. “Don’t talk to her, you want to talk you talk to me, understand?”
“Why the arsenal, Tom?”
“Don’t call me Tom, all you bastards think you know me, you don’t know anything about me.”
“What’re you planning to do?”
A sly look reshaped Valjean’s long, slab-cheeked face. “You’re a hotshot detective, you figured out about Colton, all about me and Bob Lightfoot, ought to be easy to figure out about this. Go on, smart guy, figure it out, tell me what I’m gonna do.”
Spook had murdered three people in cold blood, lived for seventeen years with their ghosts in his head, but Thomas Valjean was more unbalanced and far more lethal — the real spook in this business. Runyon said, “Colton deserved to die,” making the lie sound as convincing as he could. “If he’d destroyed my family, I’d’ve killed him too. Same goes for Big Dog.”
“Drunken blackmailing bastard. Bob and me, we shouldn’t’ve paid him the first time, should’ve known he’d be back for more. Should’ve just blown him right out of the picture then.”
“Sure. You were justified with both of them.”
“Damn right I was.”
“But not this time.”
“This time, too. Damn right. Dogging me, siccing the cops on me, you’re no better than Colton or Big Dog or the rest.”
“Cops would’ve figured out about you and Lightfoot, even if we hadn’t.”
“Hell they would. Stupid bastards. You people, you’re the smart ones, Bob told me it was you. You deserve what you’re gonna get, same as the others.”
“All right. But why not just kill me? I tracked you down, I put the law on you, I’m the one you want. Let the woman go.”
“No. She’s part of it, you’re all part of it.”
“Let her go, Tom.”
“Nobody leaves, everybody pays.” Valjean began to pace the width of the office in short, agitated strides, like an ungainly animal. For part of each crossing, the Uzi was pointing away from where Runyon sat; but there was too much distance between them to try to rush him. He and Tamara would both be dead before he got halfway.
“Bastards who hired you,” Valjean said, pacing, “they’re gonna pay too. Who are they, who sent you after me?”
Tamara said, “I wouldn’t tell him.”<
br />
“Runyon hadn’t come in when he did, you’d’ve told me all right. I’d’ve knocked it out of you.”
“He tore up the office trying to find out,” she said to Runyon.
“Shut up. You tell me, smart guy. Right now, or I’ll bust the other side of her head, make her bleed some more. You want that?”
“No.”
“Then tell me who hired you!”
“The Department of Human Services.”
“Who? What the hell’s that?”
“City agency that administers to the homeless. They didn’t know who Spook was and the police weren’t getting anywhere, so they brought us in.”
“Bullshit. Why would the city care?”
“So he could have a proper burial.”
“You’re lying to me. Those people, bureaucrats, government bastards, they don’t care about homeless people, they don’t give a shit about anybody. They’re like the IRS, like Marjorie, take your business away, take everything that’s left and leave you with nothing, ruin your life.”
“You asked me who hired us, I told you. The Department of Human Services.”
“Who in the department? Who called up, who’d you talk to, give me some names.”
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