“I can’t do that.”
“You damn well better. Give me a name, then you call them up, tell them get their asses over here.”
“Bring in more innocent people so you can murder them? I won’t do that, Tom.”
“I won’t either,” Tamara said. “Believe it, man.”
Valjean stopped pacing, leveled the Uzi again. “I’ll kill you, you don’t do what I tell you!”
“You’re planning to kill us anyway. But nobody else is going to die if we can help it.”
“You can’t help it. Cops’ll come when you’re all dead, SWAT team, you think I care? I’ll take some of them out too, as many as I can before they get me.”
“Why?”
“Why? I’ve had it, that’s why, I can’t stand it any more. All the lies, laws, bullshit, everything, everybody, you hear me?”
“Take out as many people as you can just because you’re pissed off at the world. Innocent people doing their jobs.”
“Don’t tell me that! Innocent! Just doing your jobs, just following orders, that’s what you all say, all you bastards, come around and take away everything a man has, ruin his life, then tell him it’s nothing personal, you’re just doing your jobs. Well I’m making it personal. I made it personal with Colton and that blackmailing son of a bitch Big Dog and Marjorie and I’ll make it personal with you and the bastards that hired you, everybody gets in my way, no mercy no prisoners no more bullshit!”
Tamara made a small noise in her throat. Runyon didn’t look at her. Valjean’s eyes were smoky at the edges, the pupils as red-black as burning embers; and they didn’t blink, he hadn’t blinked more than once the entire time. Bad sign. So was the way he kept caressing the Uzi with his free hand, slow, sensuous movements, the intimate caresses of a man making love to a woman. Ready to blow any second, like a shaken bottle of nitro. Anything might set him off — a word, an action, one of his own shorted circuits.
The accelerated rasp of Valjean’s breathing and the steady patter of rain on the skylights were the only sounds in there now. Runyon sat tense and spring-coiled. If Valjean blew, there wouldn’t be time to do much of anything, but at least he’d be up and trying to get in front of Tamara Corbin. He damn well didn’t want to die sitting passive in a chair.
Fifteen seconds like that, and then the crisis point passed. Runyon felt it, saw it in the hot eyes, heard it in the sudden gusty expulsion of breath. Valjean took his left hand off the gun, sleeved sweat from his forehead.
“All right,” he said, “all right, when’s the other one coming?”
“What other one?”
“Don’t play dumb, Runyon, I told you I won’t put up with any more bullshit. Three of you work here, when’s the other one coming?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he won’t be in today.”
“He’s coming, she said he was.”
“Later,” Tamara said. “Not until later.”
“Later, later, when later?”
“Told you, man, I don’t know.”
“Call him, get him on the phone.”
“Don’t know where he is. Told you that too.
“You must know, you work for him.”
“We’re partners.”
“What? You? Partners?”
“Yeah, me. Young black bitch, how about that?”
“Shut up, I didn’t mean it that way. You think I’m prejudiced? I’m not.”
“You just hate everybody, right?”
“That’s right, everybody’s equal in my eyes, I hate everybody regardless of race, creed, or color.” Valjean laughed, a sound like heavy wheels rumbling through gravel. “Justified, by God. Justified!”
Runyon said, “What happens now?”
“What do you think? We wait for your partner.”
“He’s not my partner. I just work here.”
“You think I care? I don’t care about anything any more. It’s almost finished. Soon as he gets here, then everybody gets what’s coming to them, everybody pays, everybody dies.”
25
From Visuals, Inc. I drove downtown and hung around Bates and Carpenter’s offices on lower Geary until Kerry could break free. We had just enough time for a quick lunch before we headed out to the avenues to Emily’s school. The Christmas pageant was scheduled for one o’clock. She really wanted us to be there, and I’d rather have cut off an arm than add another disappointment to her already too-long list.
The auditorium was mostly full by the time we walked in, but it turned out that the Simpsons, Carla’s parents, had saved a couple of seats for us. Nice people, Carl and Lorraine; always cheerful and friendly, and affectionate toward each other in public. But since Emily had dropped her little bombshell, I’d felt uncomfortable in their presence. The Simpsons’ problems in the bedroom were none of my business, but the seed had been planted and it kept sprouting whenever I saw them. Out of the mouths of babes. The less you know about somebody else’s sex life, the better off you are — and if that isn’t an axiom, it ought to be.
So I sat next to Carl and made polite conversation and was relieved when the program finally started. I’d figured they would put it on by grades, but they had a better scheme than that — a series of nonsecular skits, each one integrating several kids from different age and ethnic groups. Pretty well done, too. The second was a Santa’s Workshop thing, a biggish twelve-year-old dressed up as St. Nick (poor kid), a dozen or more elves in costume puttering and singing. Originally Emily had been assigned to that skit, in the role of one of the elves, but she’d talked her way out of it. “I think it’s silly,” she’d said when I asked her why.
“What’s silly about it?”
“Elves are silly. There aren’t any such things.”
“There aren’t, huh? What about Santa Claus?”
“He’s just a figment.”
“Figment?”
“Make-believe. I’ve known that since I was five.”
“Who told you?”
“My mom. She said all that stuff, Santa Claus and reindeer and elves, was just a big stupid fantasy that messes up kids’ heads. Parents and friends give you presents at Christmas, not some fat elf in a sleigh.”
“You really believe it’s just a big stupid fantasy?”
“Well, I cried when she told me. But I’m too old for that stuff now anyway.”
Ten years of life. Too old for that stuff. Kids grow up so damn fast these days, by necessity, and maybe the earlier they start being fed doses of reality, the more effectively they’ll be able to cope with the screwed-up world of the twenty-first century. Some modern theories of child-rearing embrace that approach. Admittedly Kerry and I are Johnny-come-latelys to parenthood, and I’m hopelessly old-fashioned; but it seems to me that the traditional fantasy beliefs of childhood are neither stupid nor harmful. They encourage kids to indulge their imaginations, allow them to keep their sense of innocent wonder a little longer. Emily’s parents had been fearful, cold, materialistic people with darkly hidden pasts; their doses of reality had been tainted and had tainted her. It would be foolish to say that she’d have fewer psychological scars if they’d let her believe in Santa Claus, but in my view, destroying her child’s fantasy world so early and so harshly had contributed to the damage.
The skit Emily had lobbied for, and gotten to perform in with Carla Simpson, was called Evening Carolers and featured a wintry street scene — cotton batting and white confetti doing duty as snow — and a dozen or so kids in snowsuit costumes going from door to door singing “Silent Night” and “O Come All Ye Faithful” and “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.” It was the right venue for her, the one she should’ve been picked for in the beginning. She had a clear, sweet voice and she liked to sing — a fact neither Kerry nor I had known until recently, when she began to come out of herself and regain optimism, put trust in her new life. One night we’d heard her singing in her bedroom, to the accompaniment of one of her CDs: wounded little bird learning how to be happy again. It hadn’t taken much prais
e and encouragement for her to overcome her shyness and do some warbling in front of us; and now, up there on the stage in front of several hundred people, she was radiant and you could tell even at a distance that she was having a fine time. Natural-born performer.
After the show, when kids joined parents out front, she hugged Kerry and me and said, “I’m so glad you’re here,” as if she’d been worried right up to the last minute that one or both of us would back out.
“So are we,” I said. “You were pretty terrific up there, kiddo.”
“Honest? I missed a couple of high notes. But so did Carla.”
“Couldn’t tell it from where we were sitting.” Kerry gave me a wink that said, How would you know, you have a tin ear. I ignored it. “How about singing those three carols for us on Christmas Eve, see if you can hit the notes you missed?”
“What, the whole group?”
“We don’t need the whole group. Just you.”
“Well... maybe.” But her smile said the suggestion delighted her.
The Simpsons came up. “We’re heading home to get things ready for the party,” Lorraine said. “Emily’s coming with us, right?”
“Right,” Kerry said.
Carla said, “Great. See you both around five.”
When they were gone again, the two children in tow, I said to Kerry, “Party? What party?”
“You’re a nice man and a good father, you know that? And I love you.”
“Never mind the soft soap. What party?”
“The Simpsons are having a little Christmas get-together at their place, kids and adults both. And before you start grumbling and grousing, Pm going to be as nice to you as you were to Emily just now. I’ll go by myself and tell them how sorry you are to miss it but you had some urgent business to attend to downtown.”
“You’re really willing to do that?”
“Well, I don’t like to lie, but it’s better than listening to you grumble about having to endure another party.”
I kissed her, by way of thanks. But in the car, on the way downtown, I began to feel a little guilty. I asked how many people were going to be at the Simpsons’; she said she thought twenty or so. Twenty or so, a third of them kids — not so bad, really. What’re they having to eat? I asked then. Canapes, cake, ice cream, she said. Eggnog? Eggnog, sure, what would a Christmas party be without eggnog.
It was the eggnog that did it. I like the stuff, entirely too much. Hard to find and therefore easily avoidable most of the year, but the holiday season is a different story. “All right,” I said when I pulled to the curb in front of Bates and Carpenter’s building. “You won’t have to lie for me. I’ll bite the bullet and go to the Simpsons’.”
“If you want to,” she said. “Entirely up to you. I should be there no later than five-thirty.” She slid out of the car, then leaned back inside to wink at me again before she hurried away, a big, broad wink this time.
Sneaky woman. She’d planned it this way all along.
I drove over to O’Farrell, found parking on the street for a change, went into my building. The office door was locked; Tamara must’ve gone out somewhere. I was smiling, thinking about Emily and her pageant performance, Kerry and her devious little ways, anticipating the Simpsons’ eggnog if not the Simpsons’ party, as I keyed the door open and walked in.
My high spirits made the shock even greater. It was like passing through a doorway from heaven into hell.
26
Nobody moved, nobody said anything.
It took me a few seconds to absorb the scene, assess it, come to terms with it. The blood on Tamara, the display of weaponry, the look on the stranger’s face built a virulent mixture of sickness and profound outrage. I made an effort to keep it from showing, to maintain a neutral expression to match the one Jake Runyon wore over in my desk chair.
The telephone rang.
In the frozen silence the noise was explosive. We all jumped, stared; the tension in the room seemed palpable, pastelike. Sweat had already begun to run on me, warm and slimy, like the feel of a snail track.
“Don’t touch it,” the guy with the gun said, “let it ring.”
Two, three, four...
“No, wait a minute, maybe it’s those bastards at Human Services. You, Tamara, pick up over there. That s who it is, you tell them get over here right now, make up some excuse, just get them here.”
She hesitated. Most of the blood on her face and blouse appeared to be darkening, coagulating. From a not-too-recent wound on her left temple, under the hairline. In some pain, from her expression, but alert, clear-eyed. And in control.
“I’m all right,” she said, as if reading my thoughts.
“Answer the fucking phone!”
She lifted her extension. The only item other than weapons and ammunition left on my desktop was the other phone; the gunman picked up at the same time with his free hand.
Don’t let it be Kerry, I thought. Please, God, don’t let it be Kerry.
Tamara gave the agency’s name, listened, said, “No, Mr. Bauer, he’s not here. Not expected back today.”
Sam Bauer, head of Coast States Insurance’s claims department.
“Soon as he comes in tomorrow, right, I’ll tell him.” Pause. Then, with a bitter edge just before she disconnected, “Merry Christmas to you too.”
The receiver on my phone clattered down, hard enough to bring a single ring from the bell. He said to me, “You, you’re Bill?”
“And you’re Thomas Valjean.”
“Smart guy. Everybody’s so goddamn smart in this place. Close that door, lock it again, hurry up.”
I closed it, locked it. As I turned, my eye caught Runyon’s; our gazes locked. He’d been in deadly force situations before, just as I had, but this had to be something new for him too — unstable, heavily armed man bent on a destructive siege. Valjean radiated hate; you could almost smell it in the office along with the stink of sweat and gun oil. On full alert, all his senses heightened. Everything in his favor, nothing in ours. Death was a heartbeat away. And the three of us had no means of communication except by eye contact and maybe careful gesture, nothing to rely on except instinct and luck and the hunger for survival.
I said to Valjean, “What’s this all about?”
“You’re such a smart guy, you figure it out.”
“My fault,” Tamara said. “He called before he showed up, started ragging on me, and I slammed his ear.”
“Not your fault,” Runyon said. “He was coming anyway.”
“That’s right. I was coming anyway.”
“Why?” I said. “Why us?”
“Why do you think? You sicced the cops on me. You and those Human Services bastards.”
Runyon said, “I told him that’s who hired us. Department of Human Services.”
Valjean jabbed the gun in my direction. “Straight talk or more bullshit?”
“Straight. They’re our clients.”
“Who do you deal with over there? I want a name.”
“It won’t do you any good.”
“Goddamn it, I’m not going to screw around with you people anymore, I want a name!” Growing agitated, fingertip beginning to slide back and forth along the weapon’s trigger, veins bulging in his forehead, cords bulging in his neck, eyes like holes in the wall of a furnace. “Give me a name, now!”
“Ray Chandler,” I said.
“Chandler, all right, Chandler, call him up, get him over here.”
“I can’t do that.”
“I won’t tell you again, call him up!”
“He won’t be there. Nobody’s at Human Services now.”
“What kind of crap is that?”
“It’s after three. Their offices are closed.”
“I warned you, no more bullshit!”
“It’s Christmas week. All city offices close early this week.”
Fiery stare, his teeth clenched so tight I could see white ridges of muscle on both sides of his jaw. If he called the bluff, d
emanded one of us make the call, I’d be the one to do it; he didn’t know the number over there, and there were a couple of other offices I could call that would likely be empty this time of day. But if he checked first to make sure it was the right number...
He didn’t call the bluff. He said, “Lousy government bastards, take everything away from other people, average joes, people just trying to get along, keep all the perks for themselves. Christ, I wish I could fix them all, line ’em up and shoot ’em down one by one.”
Thought processes muddied by his hate; reacting with some clarity of focus but not anticipating, not thinking things through logically. And not quite ready yet to begin his killing spree. Thin thread of something — humanity, conscience, sanity — holding him back for the moment. But only for the moment. That thread would snap before long. A word, an action, something would break it, or it would just disintegrate from the strain.
Keep him talking. Talk had bought time already or Tamara and Runyon wouldn’t still be alive. There was still a chance he’d make a mistake, as keyed up as he was, or that one of us could figure a way to neutralize the threat. So far I couldn’t see any gamble worth taking. If Runyon had, it didn’t show on his face.
I said, “What did they do to you, Thomas, that you hate them so much?”
“Don’t call me Thomas, I don’t like it.”
“Tom, then. That okay?”
“No, it’s not okay. You want to call me something, you call me Mr. Valjean.”
“What did the government do to you, Mr. Valjean?”
“Ruined my life, that’s what they did.”
“How did they do that?”
“Took everything away from me for back taxes. Lousy economy, bitch wife of mine always throwing money away, bastards wouldn’t let me have another extension, kept tacking on penalties, then they slapped a lien on the house, on my business, forced me into bankruptcy. What they didn’t get Marjorie got when she walked out on me. But I took care of her, all right, I fixed her wagon.”
“How’d you do that?”
“Figure it out, smart guy. What you think I did when I went over to her apartment this morning, before I came here? Huh? You tell me.”
Spook Page 19