Come Morning - Joe Gores

by Gores

  But then her eyes met those of a slouchy fortyish man standing slightly splay-footed in front of a poster display. She jerked back.

  "Runyan! That man..."

  "What?"

  He already was gone. There were a lot of slouchy fortyish men with lustful eyes in this world; no use inviting Runyan to share her paranoid belief that those were the eyes which had ogled her through the philodendrons the afternoon before.

  "Nothing." She put the heavy, awkward bear back in Runyan's arms. "You can borrow this until we get back to the car."

  ***

  It started to go bad at the restaurant, as if the slouchy man's lustful gaze had turned their luck sour. She had chosen a large, impersonal place on the second level, its walls covered with rare photos of old San Francisco--the water chute at the Great Highway, the Cliff House, the Sutro Baths, downtown before and after the '06 quake. The sunken dining area overlooked the pleasure-craft marina, with the Bay Bridge a silver parabola in the background.

  They ordered, touched their wine glasses, and drank. "Did you miss alcohol in prison?"

  He shook his head. "I missed you."

  "You didn't know me."

  "I knew you. In my dreams I knew you." He paused. "In my fantasies."

  Runyan drenched everything with ketchup and began eating very quickly, casting quick looks around, his left arm forming a protective circle around his plate. Like a dog with its food bowl, she thought, and had to look away, moved almost to tears by a sort of anguished rage. But he caught her look and straightened up quickly, guiltily, jerking away his protective arm and dropped the ketchup-drenched cheeseburger back on the plate.

  "Don't apologize, damn you!" she cried.

  ***

  They left the pier and walked swiftly, aimlessly, not saying much. In a narrow covered passageway between two of the pastel-colored, low-income housing units in the projects off Bay Street, monuments to the hope-filled redevelopment era of the 'sixties, they passed a dozen black and Chinese kids, ranging from eleven down to about five. They were bouncing a soft, basketball-sized rubber ball against one of the concrete walls.

  The ball hit a boy of about seven in the forehead; eyes squeezed tight shut, he started to cry. Nobody paid attention, so he grabbed the ball and threw it into the face of a five-yearold girl. She sat down abruptly and started shrieking. Louise moved to comfort her; Runyan stopped her.

  "Don't humiliate her more than she is!" he said harshly.

  Now everyone had stopped to stare. The boy, worried, stooped over her with his hands on his knees.

  "You ain't hurt, woman," he said hopefully. She yelled louder. He pointed a finger and jeered, ashamed of his own tears a moment before, "Crybaby! Crybaby!"

  As she fled, screaming, past them, Runyan thrust the huge soft floppy teddy bear into her arms. It was as big as she, its yellow furry feet dragging the ground between her own. She clasped it automatically, her steps slowing, faltering, stopping. She just stood there, hugging it, staring at them with huge wet-stained eyes; then she whirled and was gone between the buildings with her treasure.

  Runyan's unexpected beau geste brought tears to Louise's eyes for the second time that day. She said gruffly, "Dammit, Runyan, you gave away my teddy bear."

  "You ain't hurt, woman," he said.

  They started away, laughing, the bad moments on Pier 39 forgotten--and a tall skinny man on roller skates, wearing a helmet with a tiny rear-view mirror attached, whipped by them backwards with only inches to spare.

  Louise yelped with surprise, but Runyan sprang somehow backwards and sideways at the same time, his eyes absolutely wild, every muscle of his body rigid with incipient violence. His skull was momentarily visible beneath the roped muscles. After several moments of total rigidity, his face lost its scraped-bone look, and he slowly came erect.

  "I saw two murders in prison," he panted. "I was around the corner from three more. You don't do anything. You don't say anything. You just walk away. Otherwise, a couple of weeks later when you've quit expecting it, somebody rams the sharpened end of a pail handle between your ribs in the shower room and you're just blood on the tiles."

  She raised a hand to touch him, comfort him, then let it drop. His voice rose, thickened.

  "You ask me what I want? I want OUT. Out from under people like Moyers, following us around."

  He gestured after the skater, his voice ragged with control. "I wanted this to be our day, just me with the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, and I can't do it! I'm still in prison, I-"

  Louise grabbed him and began physically dragging him toward her hotel.

  "All day we've been doing what you want to do," she said. "Now we're going to do what I want to do."

  ***

  Astride Runyan in the dim golden light, Louise felt the pulsating contractions begin yet again. She stiffened, cried out, trapped in ecstasy at the edge of pain. Her orgasm triggered Runyan's: His clenched buttocks reared two feet off the bed and his own spasms began. They remained that way for ten or fifteen seconds, frozen, utterly concentrated, as he emptied himself into her with no movement by either of them. Then gradually his buttocks returned to the bed, and her thighs unclenched from around his hips. Without strength now, she gently folded down upon him.

  "I wish every day was this day," she whispered into the hollow of his throat.

  "Today is this day."

  He could feel himself going limp inside her soft hot cradle. He had never known such utter arousal followed by such utter tenderness. He started to say so, but she spoke first.

  "I'm hungry," she said.

  ***

  "In fact, I can't really remember when I haven't been hungry." She dropped the empty oyster shell on the bed of cracked ice, selected another, slurped, chewed, licked the juice from the corner of her mouth as he watched her in awe. "Better have some before I eat them all."

  "You already have." He leaned forward. "Your old man doesn't own a liquor store, does he?"

  "He manages the Osco Drug in Rochester, Minnesota. Why?"

  "The Marine's dream--the deaf-and-dumb nympho whose old man owns a liquor store-"

  "So that's how I strike you."

  "Rochester, Minnesota," he said musingly. "Don't they have the Mayo Clinic there?"

  "Runs the town."

  As she spoke, a vivid memory rushed back upon her. She could smell the sharp tang of green apples, feel her T-shirt cling to her bony adolescent back with evaporated sweat, rough bark under her hands, the shock and sting in her feet when she dropped to the ground and darted into the bushes lining the fieldstone drywall at Mayowood. The guard's flashlight bouncing and probing unsuccessfully through the orchard.

  "The Mayos had a big estate a couple of miles out of town when I was a kid, we used to ride out there on our bikes and steal apples."

  "What happened if you got caught? They'd take out your appendix?"

  She laughed and shook her head. "I never got caught."

  "Were you scared?"

  "Petrified. But it was such a delicious feeling."

  "I've never been so scared as this last month, waiting to get out," he said, surprising her; she had thought so much openness was impossible for him. "You get scared of freedom. Every con who's served a few years without getting killed or turning queer has learned how to survive inside. You run a couple of bluffs, you get your Levi's pressed and your shoes shined and wear a fancy belt and buckle. You're a big man. But in the process you let yourself get defined by the place. When you finally make parole, you start getting scared you won't be able to make it on the outside."

  "You want them to have stopped the world while you got off?"

  "Or at least slow it down so I can jump back on. But they don't." He squeezed her hand. "You. The way you are. Maybe there were women like you around when I went inside, but I never knew any of them. I don't know how to handle someone like you." His tone changed, tightened; his eyes caught hers and held them. "I wanted it to be simple when I got out. So I could be out--
not carrying prison around on my back. Nothing coming at me. But you're coming at me. You-"

  "Runyan, you don't have to-"

  "Of course I do. You make me feel..." He paused. His voice was intense, slightly hoarse. "You turn me around. I've got to handle that. Moyers is staked out on Beach Street, waiting for me to make my move. I've got to handle that, too. Last night I got a phone call that means I'm going to have to get out of this hotel tonight without being seen. All of a sudden my options are limited. If Moyers finds out I'm going. . ."

  "Take my car," she said. Her smile was stunning, full of devilish delight. "I'll take care of Moyers. Moyers will never know what hit him."

  CHAPTER 8

  Moyers was parked in the first space next to the fire hydrant on Beach just off Mason. The garage entrance was across the street, the exit was centered in his rear-view mirror, and by turning his head he could see down the cobbled alley to the hotel entrance. If they tried to leave, he'd have them nailed. Slouched behind the wheel of the Datsun, he wondered if they were up in her room right now, doing it again. Almost eidetic images of the woman, nude, in various abandoned positions upon the bed, flashed through his mind: In each of them, Moyers, bare-assed and shlong at the ready, was about to perform upon her whatever sexual act her particular position seemed to encourage.

  He forced his mind away, to himself before the parole board, saying the things that had gotten Runyan out of San Quentin. Brilliant.

  "I believe he knows where those diamonds are, and I believe he will try to recover them shortly after his release. In doing so, he will violate the terms of his parole. He will be returned to San Quentin, Homelife General will make recovery, and the interests and aims of society will have been served. . ."

  Louise Graham opened the off-side door, slid in beside him, and slammed it. She wore a clinging soft grey wool dress which, without displaying anything, suggested everything.

  "You have any coffee?" she asked. "It's freezing out and I left my coat up in the room."

  Moyers forced himself to look away from her body while he considered the problems her presence suggested. He shot a quick look at the entrance and his rear-view mirror, then reached down for the Thermos, a deliberately sleepy look on his face.

  "I hope you left Runyan up in the room too."

  She eyed the coffee greedily. "Dead to the world."

  He gave a coarse laugh as he unscrewed the top of the Thermos. "Fucked himself to sleep, huh? After all these years without any."

  "Oh goody," she said tonelessly. "It knows how to talk dirty. I was so afraid it wouldn't." She held out the plastic cup from the Thermos and he poured steaming coffee into it.

  Okay, nothing cheap about her. Brains and sensitivities to match her looks. Which made her more dangerous. Why had she come here? Probably to try and pump him about Runyan. Or about himself; he could be a factor in the equation she hadn't expected. She could be as curious about his role as he was about hers. He switched tacks.

  "Runyan tells me that you're a writer."

  She nodded. "Louise Graham." She slurped coffee and made a face. "Vile but hot."

  "Moose-shit pie-but good!"

  She surprised him with a husky laugh that affected him like her languid fingernails running up his spine. "Don't try so hard to shock me. I started out doing newspaper obits; you ever listen to the jokes undertakers tell between cadavers?"

  She started to take another drink of her coffee, bumped her elbow on the door handle, and cascaded hot coffee into her lap.

  "Ouch!" she yelled. "Damn!"

  Moyers snatched out his handkerchief and sopped at the spill, his fingers almost greedy in their movements. Before she pushed his hand away, he had felt the firm twin curves of her inner thighs coming together, had brushed the mound of her pudendum even through the wet wool of her skirt.

  "Thanks," she said coldly. "I can manage."

  Moyers belatedly looked down the alleyway to the hotel entrance, checked the garage exit in the rear-view mirror. Nothing moving either place. With her coffee spill, Louise had given Runyan just enough time to whip the Lynx out of the garage exit and around the corner, out of sight. Her ruined skirt apparently forgotten, she plucked a box of Winchell's doughnuts from the dashboard.

  "Any of these left? I'm starving to death."

  Moyers doubted that, having observed them in the hotel dining room, but he wasn't going to argue. He had to get as much as he could from her about Runyan's plans without letting her know what he was doing. It wouldn't be too tough: She was bright enough, but he was a professional.

  "So," he said, "you must have come out here for more than my doughnuts."

  "Don't bet on it," she said, biting into a sugar glaze. "Newspeople are the world's original freeloaders."

  ***

  Runyan stopped just beyond the wide concrete apron and, by the light of the streetlamp 30 yards down the alley, looked across the car at the street loading door.

  In his mind, a gun went off.

  The door was shoved violently open and Runyan, eight years younger, head back and arched as he yelled distantly, fell out through it. Clinging grimly to his attache case, he struggled to his feet and reeled toward the car, leaving an irregular blood spoor across the concrete.

  Stony-faced, Runyan watched himself come shambling up the tunnels of memory and through the closed door of the Lynx, a man made of smoke. He could feel the hairs on his arms rise, as if that younger, crippled, more innocent and wilder self were trying to reintegrate with this stunted prison parolee.

  ***

  Moyers watched Louise take the final bite of her third doughnut and wash it down with hot coffee. He had a vivid desire to lick away the tiny wetness of powdered sugar at the corner of her mouth.

  "I get the feeling," said Louise as she poked around in the box for another doughnut, "that you don't believe a damned thing I've said. So just pretend I'm a writer working on a book. Just pretend I wrote to Runyan in San Quentin and that he wouldn't even come to the visitors' room to meet me..." She looked up. "You like the ones with hagelschlact on them?"

  "Hagel-what?"

  "Those little chocolate bits."

  "Oh. No. Go ahead."

  Dammit, she couldn't be a writer. Any woman who made you want to come just by eating a doughnut had to live by sex. But she couldn't just be a prostitute, either. She was too much herself, she lacked that sophisticated fantasy persona men paid the top-drawer callgirls to possess. So whoever had sent her was a genius. Just-released cons were always after anything hot and hollow with hair around it; but here Runyan had been given the Mona Lisa to cope with.

  "In fact," she said, "just pretend I'm a journalist after a story and tell me all about Runyan--who he is, what he did, why he did it, why you're after him. Okay?"

  Tomorrow he'd have to run her car plate; meanwhile, she was dangerous because she made him just ache to tell her things.

  "Okay," he said. "Eight years ago, Runyan hit a wholesale diamond merchant for two-point-one-three-million in topquality uncut stones. He got shot by one of the guards but got away, then crapped out from loss of blood and went off the freeway north of San Rafael three hours later. They got him, but no diamonds."

  "If they didn't have the diamonds, how did they prove-" "Diamond merchant's attache case in the car. Guard's bullet in Runyan. His blood type on the floor. Positive LD. by the guard who shot him. From Runyan they got nothing. He stood mute at his trial."

  "Where is San Rafael?"

  "Marin County. North across the Golden Gate Bridge."

  ***

  Crossing the bridge, the younger Runyan squinted into the fog at the lights of oncoming traffic. An auto horn trailed angry sound past him, he jerked the wheel over: yellow rubber lane markers flew in every direction as he plowed through them before getting back into his own lane. The bridge's foghorn gave a disconsolate bellow from its nest beneath the roadbed.

  In Louise's Lynx, Runyan tried to reconnect with that younger, brasher, colder self again,
tried to recapture the rage and pain; but they were emotions in another man's dream. Even the diamonds were an abstraction, something to deal away to Moyers for the reward which then would buy off last night's caller. His life had started today. Louise was reality.

  ***

  Louise brushed powdered sugar off the clinging fabric in her lap. Moyers could almost feel his own fingers there, beneath the skirt, caressing up her inner thigh, slipping under the elastic legband of her panties to ...

  He said, "I've never bought the image of Runyan the papers played up at the time--romantic cat-burglar type, in it as much for the kicks as for the money ..."

  "Why not?"

  "This job screams for someone inside, and someone else to dispose of the gems afterward. Someone he was going to meet when he went off the road."

  "Then he would have had the diamonds with him."

  Moyers shook his head. "If he shows up with the stones, already half-dead, they just finish him off and split one less way. But if he shows up half-dead without the stones-"

  "Of course," said Louise. "They have to keep him alive to tell them where he hid them. But he never made the meeting, and so they never. .." Abruptly, surprisingly, she shuddered. "So they'd be waiting when he got out. No contact, no threats, no nothing. Just ... waiting."

  "That's why he'll have to come to me eventually," said Moyers complacently. "I'm the only game in town."

  She opened her door. "If your reconstruction is right."

  "It's right."

  She went back across the street, her heels ringing loudly on the pavement. He watched the movement of her backside with carnal lust.

  ***

  The headlights swept across the ancient, oddly tilted tombstones of the old cemetery. In Runyan's mind, the Bel-Air nosed to a stop, lights and motor still on. His younger self opened the door and fell out on the ground. After a long time, that earlier Runyan dragged himself erect, his hands leaving wet red smears on the door, window, door handle.