Come Morning - Joe Gores

by Gores

  The memory caused a slight involuntary contraction in her pelvis, as if marking the onset of yet another orgasm. She'd lost it, lost it all. He'd gotten what he wanted; what reason for him to come back to her now?

  At the entrance of the lot she waited as the light released a burst of rush-hour traffic up Leavenworth; then she eased her foot off the brake. But Runyan came charging across the street, shirtless and barefoot, wearing only his trousers, and she felt a fierce surge of elation. Walking out had been the perfect gambit after all.

  Runyan slammed his open hands on the hood as if to stop her, then moved along the flank of the car to her open window like someone gentling a spooked horse. "I thought of a title for your book. Bad Time. A con is pulling bad time when-"

  She started to laugh, she couldn't help it. Relief, but he couldn't know that. She took her hotel room key from her purse and held it up where he could see it.

  "It's a terrific title," she said. "We can talk about it in the morning. Ten o'clock in the coffee shop."

  She let the car ease forward so he had to step back or get his bare toes run over. Not knowing why, she blew him a kiss as she shot into the street just ahead of the next barbarian horde released by the stop lights at the corner below.

  ***

  Runyan stared after her, shifting his bare feet on the cold dirty blacktop; the kiss she'd blown him burned in his mind. She still could be using him, just trying to find out about the diamonds. He glanced down toward the YMCA, three blocks below, then started to trot in that direction, his bare feet padpadding on the filthy sidewalk.

  Everybody said it in the joint: When you first got out, you were so bombarded with stimuli that you'd be overwhelmed if you didn't stay locked away inside yourself. She had already unlocked him, made him vulnerable.

  Just don't keep the appointment with her in the morning. Just stay away. Just forget her.

  But he was running now, the blood being pounded back into his icy feet. Passing under a raised fire escape, he leaped up and tapped the bottom step with both hands. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, tapping in a rebound.

  He tried to slow to a walk. All the shit in the world might be coming down on him. He needed control. But somehow he was leaping up and whapping the next ladder with both outstretched hands--Kareem stuffing one on the fast break.

  "YAHOO!" Runyan yelled. He leaped up and caught the rung of the next ladder, swung backward and forward, let go to land running, whooping, bounding down Leavenworth like an escaped panther joyous in the streets.

  ***

  Through the glossy philodendron leaves, David Moyers watched Runyan leap down the far sidewalk like the last day of school, barefoot and shirtless besides. Moyers himself had a stocky, underexercised body which looked heavier than it was because of his habitual slouch and because of his heavy head, which contained a mind with nothing slouchy about it.

  He tossed a handful of change on the counter. The ageless Chinese man standing in front of the delicate oriental wall mural with a red sign slapped across it, YES, WE HAVE BEERS, bowed deeply and grinned at him.

  Moyers walked slightly splay-footed through the chilly spring evening. His car was in the same lot where Louise had left hers. He'd taken her license number and noted it was a Hertz, not because he suspected any connection with Runyan at the time, but because she belonged in that neighborhood like a gold ingot in a butter dish. With that thousand-a-night hooker stride the Supreme Court should have ruled on, the lobby of the Hilton should have been her hunting ground.

  He got his bag of new workout stuff from the trunk and went down toward the Y, memorable as a phone book. His eyes fed data into his quick, obsessed mind without conscious attention as he thought about Runyan and the woman.

  Damn her! He'd been willing to be patient; but three hours of fucking Runyan's brains out had given her a definite edge. She was making things move faster then he'd anticipated, and he didn't like the feeling of not quite being in control.

  But Runyan, meanwhile, would have pumped a lot of his strength into her up in that hotel room; now he'd be feeling depleted and a little sad, and already disoriented from hitting the street for the first time in eight years. Maybe it was all for the best; maybe now was the perfect time to brace him up about the diamonds again.

  ***

  Runyan leaped up to slap his chalked hands into the rings, kipped effortlessly into a full pressout, brought stiffened legs up straight in front of him, toes pointed, then swung legs and trunk down and around and into a planche, his rigid body now parallel to the floor. He was still in his slacks, shirtless and barefoot, revolving now into a shoulderstand with his toes pointed straight at the ceiling.

  "Ah, Runyan. Drinking the sweet wine of freedom."

  Moyers wore a spanking-new red acetate track suit with white piping; on his feet were white Adidas with a red flash. Runyan pushed into a handstand, triceps bunched beneath his smooth hide, rings vibrating slightly with the effort of keeping them in. After a few moments, he lowered into the shoulderstand again. He'd learned how to tune out interruptions in the joint.

  "Have you thought about Homelife General's offer?"

  Another handstand, the rings vibrating more noticeably now. Sweat was rivuletting the sharply defined cuts between muscles. He was panting.

  "The diamonds returned to us, a percentage reward paid, no questions asked . . ."

  Runyan returned to his original pressout position, body vertical to the floor, arms tight to the sides, elbows locked.

  "Even if you duck me and recover the stones-" Moyers chuckled disbelievingly- "what can you do with them?"

  Runyan began the slow agony of a crucifix--moving his arms out to the sides so his body began to lower into the widening gap between the rings. He was panting fiercely now.

  Moyers said reasonably, "We've got tabs on every fence big enough to handle them. . ."

  Runyan's stiffened arms were straight out from his shoulders with his entire weight supported by his lats, delts, and the bunched, rock-hard trapezius muscles.

  "Israel? Holland? As a convicted felon, you can't get a passport . . ."

  Runyan lost it, letting go with his left hand, swinging like a chimp, then dropping lightly to the floor.

  "The little lady took it out of you, didn't she?" asked Moyers with his nasty little chuckle.

  Runyan snapped him under the nose, hard, with an index finger. Moyers sprang back in reflex, tears starting from his eyes. Runyan jerked his towel from the leather horse and slung it around his neck. The slapping feet of a couple of joggers on the mezzanine running track above them echoed through the gym.

  "Who is she, Runyan?" Moyers, eyes still watering, gamely got in his way. "I'll just check out her license number anyway."

  Runyan spoke for the first time. "Rental."

  "She had to show them a driver's license."

  Runyan seemed uncertain. "I guess you'll find out anyway." His voice was defeated. "She's writing a book."

  "Writing a book?"

  "Exposing the insurance companies."

  Then, for the first time since he had walked away from Q, Runyan started to laugh.

  CHAPTER 6

  Angelo Tenconi pushed the button. The drapes slid open silently to frame the nighttime city displayed by the wide picture window of his Russian Hill penthouse living room. He'd come far and fast from his boyhood, strongarming lunch money out of little slant kids and ripping off the poor box at Joe DiMaggio's Church. From the lighted white finger of Coit Tower in North Beach, past the financial district's soaring TransAmerica spike and cold dark Bank of America monolith, to the glittering tail of headlights the Bay Bridge dragged out from the industrial area south of Market, Angelo Tenconi's grasp was felt. A percentage here, a couple of nonreducible points there--a little bit of a lot of people's action.

  He caught reflected movement in the window, turned to see statuesque, blond-braided Melodia pulling lace panties up over the dark pubic triangle he had been savaging just moments before. Ran the city's clas
siest call-girl operation, but she had started on his money and had never been able to get past the vig to touch the principal.

  "Wasn't for me, bitch," he said in his deep aggrieved voice, "you'd be turning two-dollar tricks with some slant up one of them alleys off Grant Ave."

  He chuckled softly at the flash of real hatred in her eyes. Smart-ass bitch, with her gallery openings and first nights at the opera. Never did it with customers any more. Never gave head any more. Wrong. She gave him whatever he wanted, when he wanted it. He owned that bitch, the same way he owned Runyan.

  He moved toward the phone. The only difference was that Runyan didn't know it yet.

  ***

  The skinny rat-faced clerk dropped the receiver so it bounced and jerked on its silver flex, jerked a thumb at it, and went down the hall toward the room with OFFICE over the door. Runyan picked it up.

  "Runyan."

  A grating unknown voice, its owner probably not as tough as he thought but still plenty tough, said, "Who was the bitch picked you up outside Q today, asshole?"

  The guy looking in the condo window. Had to be. He said, "My parole officer."

  "Don't get fucking cute with me, Runyan. We been waiting eight years, we don't get our cut, you're fucking dog meat."

  Runyan's heart plummeted. That damned Cardwell! He said, "Who's 'we'? You got a mouse in your pocket?"

  "I told you not to get cute, asshole. You don't even know which way to look."

  He hung up. Runyan put his forearm against the wall as he used to do against the bars of his cell, pressed his forehead against it, thinking. Just a Tenderloin hotshot with a long memory? Or somebody Jamie Cardwell had been in it with?

  You don't even know which way to look.

  Sure he did. Time to dig Jamie out of his rathole.

  ***

  The Veterans Administration Assistance Division was in a big new pile of metal and prestressed concrete on Main near the Rincon Annex. Runyan went through dark-glassed revolving doors behind a regal black woman whose hair was corn-rowed over to one side and hanging down in front of her shoulder. Her beauty brought Louise so sharply into Runyan's mind that a wave of physical desire swept through his body like a chill.

  Four minutes after the office opened, Runyan was sitting across from a bureaucrat named Harrold, who had a face like a dill pickle and jockied one of a twin row of desks stitching their way down the big barren room. There was a large red number 4 beside Harrold's name plate.

  Runyan used the Okie twang of a lifer he'd worked with in the dry-cleaning plant his first year at Q.

  "Me an' Jamie Cardwell, we go 'way back to Nam together. I know he's drawin' partial, so I come to get his address off you."

  Taking great pleasure in the fact, Harrold told Runyan frostily that their records were confidential. He would have made a good prison guard, Runyan thought. The kind who'd been such a bastard all the way through that he was all buddy-buddy on your release date, because he didn't want you going out and buying a cheap rifle with a good scope on it once you were free.

  Runyan tipped back his chair and stared at a corner of the ceiling. "Tet offensive of 'sixty-eight, it was," he said in a faraway voice. "We was short, hadn't but a week left 'fore we was to be rotated home." He brought down his gaze to the dill-pickle face. "Gut shot."

  Harrold's Adam's apple worked, twice. "Gut ... shot?"

  "Cong with one a them AK-forty-sevens the slopes made-you remember them, the kind with them little bitty wire stocks an' the banana clips. Stitched old Jamie right across the gut like a sewing machine." The front legs of his chair hit the floor with a bang, and Runyan was on his feet, leaning over Harrold with a fierce expression on his face. "His guts would of fell right out there on the ground if he hadn't got drug out right quick."

  "I ... I see. . ."

  "Like shit you see!" yelled Runyan, veins bulging in his neck. "I drug him out!"

  James (Jamie) Cardwell lived in the 1700 block of Kirkham Street, had an unlisted number, and worked out of the PG&E Division Offices at 245 Market, reading gas and electric meters.

  ***

  Louise was staying in a fancy chain hotel two blocks from Fisherman's Wharf. The sprawling unitized four stories of rough-cut wood and tan stucco and red metal trim took up an entire block across Mason from the old Longshoreman's Hall. There was under-the-building parking and a lobby opening off an ornately cobbled, bisecting alley.

  Louise was alone at a table for two, drinking coffee and eating sweet rolls and reading the morning Chronicle. On her table was a stem vase with a single red rose. Runyan, 15 minutes early, faded back from the doorway without being seen, turned, and collided with a florid-faced man wearing a plaid suit that made him look like an auto seatcover. Pinned to one lapel was a big round button, IT'S A SELLABRATION!

  Runyan excused himself and went across the lobby with its clusters of small round tables separated by brass-rail dividers, pinning IT'S A SELLABRATION! to his own lapel. He drummed impatient fingers on the wood parquetry check-in counter until a clerk came.

  "Graham, Two-Four-Three, my wife left the key for me."

  The harried clerk returned empty-handed. "Looks like she forgot, Mr. Graham..."

  Runyan pushed blood into his face, turning it crimson. "Just how the hell am I supposed to-"

  "I'll get you a duplicate, Mr. Graham." His voice tried to be hurried and soothing at the same time.

  Over the bed was an indifferent original of Fisherman's Wharf, the artificially bright colors laid on with a palette knife. Behind it, nothing. In the closet, only clothes with labels from chain stores or boutiques meaningless to Runyan. The suitcase was empty, its sweaters and pantyhose and lingerie in the dresser, the cosmetics case nearly so, its contents on the vanity. A Smith-Corona electric portable and several manila folders were on the table under a hanging fake-Tiffany lamp.

  One folder was marked CONVICT BOOK and held newspaper clippings (none about Runyan), notes, and a scratch pad with BAD TIME slashed across it in felt-tip, circled and with several exclamation points behind. Runyan felt momentary pleasure before reason told him she would do the same if it were a con.

  In a folder beside the typewriter was a newly typed story titled Assault on the Citadel.

  Every day we are forced to retreat further into the citadel. The enemy does not advance steadily, so many yards a day. He has to fight harder than that for his territory. Foot by foot. Inch by inch.

  Runyan lowered the manuscript. A retired army general, whose only family was a daughter, fighting a losing battle against senility. The citadel was his reason. Louise's father, maybe?

  Pops, behind the huge old rolltop in his study, a banty rooster of a man with silky white hair and a kindly, pleasant face which had grown more stern with his years as a circuit judge. The shelves jammed ceiling high with lawbooks, in one corner the rack of hunting rifles shared by him and Runyan. Pops, leaning forward, creaking his swivel chair.

  "Remember, boy, you can do things you can't walk away from."

  Drunk driving? Assault? Runyan couldn't remember what had occasioned the lecture. Three years later, when Pops died, he'd had to break out of the honor farm to attend the funeral. It was then that the court had given him the option: state prison or service in Vietnam. He'd taken Nam. And done a lot of things since that had only proved the old man right.

  With a wave of repugnance, he thrust the story away. Why couldn't they just have a day of discovery together--each other, his freedom--instead of creeping around her room and snooping her belongings, full of suspicion and paranoia?

  It only took an act of belief and affirmation on his part. Didn't it?

  CHAPTER 7

  Louise wore wide-wale cords and a puff-shouldered sweater under her Icelandic wool jacket. Runyan had a heavy Navy wool watch sweater under his windbreaker; but Pier 39 was thronged with tourists woefully underdressed for a San Francisco summer. A little black boy appeared beside their reflections in a shop window, dancing and throwing punches at his im
age. "I'm fightin' myself in the mirror!" he exclaimed.

  Runyan dropped to his knees, covering up. The kid crowed with delight and bounced a few punches off Runyan's forearms before a long male parental arm whisked him off as an angry parental voice trailed away.

  "You're never going anywhere else with me for the whole entire history of the world, you hear me talking, boy?"

  They made a circuit of the massive hexagonal games arcade in an absolutely stunning din of voices, laughter, music from the two-story carrousel in the center of the building, electronic bleats and whistles, and the popping of guns from the shooting gallery. Chinese youths in black satin jackets with ornate embroidered dragons on the backs yelled and punched each other over the skeeball games. At MAKE A HOOP, Runyan sank bucket after bucket without a miss.

  Louise exclaimed, "Why, you're really good!"

  "For nothing." Runyan immediately tossed the basketball back to the girl attendant. He added sheepishly, "Lots of free time in the exercise yard."

  They started off, but the girl called after them: Runyan could choose anything on the top shelf for free. He picked a huge fluffy teddy bear, four feet long with big soulful glass eyes and a soft black cloth nose.

  "You clown! What are you going to do with it?"

  "What are you going to do with it?" he said, shoving it into her arms like a first grader giving a present. So unexpected was the gesture that Louise grabbed him and held him for a few moments; she didn't want him to see the tears in her eyes.

  "Nobody's given me a teddy bear since I was five," she said against his shoulder.

  They went down the pier arm-in-arm, Louise feeling as she used to on the first date with a new boy. Suppressed excitement, a sense of adventure, a hint of future wickedness, an almost overwhelming feeling of something strange and shining about to happen. What usually happened was the boys tried to make her, and after a few years she started to let them, and the shiningness had gone away and hadn't come back. Until today.