by Gores
Beside the hotel's lobby entrance was a small intimate bar called The Lubbers. Tucked inconspicuously away above it was a dark, cozy private drinking room with only two tables and a view of the street entrance through dark-tinted windows. A bulky bearded man in a red and black Pendleton, calling himself Leo Cronin, finished his drink so Louise would have time to get back to her room. Then he went down to the pay phones in the lobby.
***
Louise lay on the unmade bed with her forearm over her eyes. She had thought taking on Moyers would be fun; instead, it had brought back all the old despised memories. Smoke, and booze, and uncounted rows of coke. Lights that were never turned off, slots that never stopped clanging, the dealers' smooth tones, the muted click of chips, the babble of the suckers as they poured their case money down the toilet of house odds.
Moyers, in his own narrow little company-man way, was one of them, his cesspool thoughts as easily read as the top line on an eye chart:
J Q X T WHAT I WANT IS SODOMY
P W K A GIMME HEAD ALL THE WAY
Men, all men. Except Runyan. She sat up abruptly. God, she wanted him back here with her. In her, coming in her, what was she going to do? When he came back, she would tell him. All of it. Every...The phone rang. She snatched it quickly off the hooks, but the heavy familiar voice was not Runyan's.
"Goddammit, where you been? I been ringing for-"
"Out. Busy." Her voice was shriller, brassier, catalyzed into reaction by him. "Don't push, damn you. That was the arrangement. I come in, make contact. .."
"Well, what about it? He fall for you?"
"How should I-"
"You know, don't try to shit me. You can smell them in rut. That's what you're good at."
Dear God, did she have to tell him? Unwillingly, she said, "He's hooked. Hard." As if she were being ill, vomiting everything out, she added, "He's out in my car right now." Then she plunged despairingly into the gyre of betrayal she had to enter one way or another. "I think he went to get the diamonds."
***
Climbing in the first predawn light, Runyan could see the little twisted tree on the crest. Bigger twisted tree, now. That night he'd used the tire iron as a sort of crutch, but still had fallen twice before he reached the tree with his sack of diamonds. Half hanging against the trunk, he'd vomited blood, then had gone down the far slope to the massive, oddly shaped boulder on which he'd practiced rock climbing and rappelling techniques. Fell on his knees beside it, started to dig with his tire iron ...
Runyan, carrying Louise's tire iron, could almost hear the clink of metal against stone. In 20 minutes he'd have the diamonds, he'd take them back and tell Louise all about everything ...
***
"Let me tell you," said the bearded Cronin into the phone in the lobby, "I want you out of there tonight."
Louise reeled as if struck in the face. Before she had a chance to tell Runyan ... what? What could she tell Runyan? "Are you still in Vegas?" she asked in a dull voice. "Where the fuck else would I be?" snapped the man in the lobby. "But I have a man in San Francisco to take over."
"Whatever you want."
"I want you out of there." He hung up.
She paced the room, stopped and looked at her face in the mirror. Acid in the face. That's what they had threatened. And he'd wanted her, desperately, and even weak blustery men sometimes found courage in desire. So he'd stood up to them. Or maybe bought them off. Either way, she owed him. So, betray him, betray Runyan--she was really only betraying herself anyway. She whirled to stare at the loverumpled bed behind her.
"Damn you, Runyan!" she cried. "You were supposed to be a creep!"
She fell across the bed and burst out crying.
***
Runyan leaned against the twisted tree and burst out laughing. Bitter laughter, edged with despair. As if in mimicry came one of the intricate broken calls of a mockingbird. A jay raucously challenged it, and a California quail whistled liquidly from a far slope. Dawn was almost here.
Runyan looked down the slope once more at the half-built unit of a not-yet-occupied subdivision. The site was still earlymorning deserted, and the boulder was gone, blasted to rubble by a subdivider's plans. Gone with it were Runyan's hopes. The diamonds no longer existed.
CHAPTER 9
Louise was wearing a tam and a Burberry; it was only when the cab went by that her face, framed in that gleaming dark hair, registered with Moyers. He muttered a startled curse and U-turned after the cab up the Embarcadero. Very cool, very clever, going to check into some other hotel, figuring he wouldn't follow her, leaving Runyan to slip out with her car and join her later. Leaving David Moyers in the dust. And she had almost gotten away with it. Would have, if he hadn't been such an old hand at keeping ahead of the opposition. When this was all over and Moyers had recovered the diamonds, whoever the hell had hired her wouldn't be too happy. She might need someone to take care of her. That might even have been her real purpose in sneaking out to his car last night--laying the groundwork for a new liaison in case she missed with Runyan. Naturally, she would think of Moyers as her next move.
Louise didn't think about Moyers until the cab was up on the skyway heading for the airport. Huddled bleakly in the back seat, staring out at the serrated teeth of the financial district as the early morning light struck their glass caps and steel inlays, she suddenly thought, My God, that creep from the insurance company is going to be following me. She almost turned to look out the rear window, but controlled the urge.
He'd figure she was on her way to check into a new hotel in the belief he wouldn't follow her--so of course he would. When she ditched him, he was going to take it personally and really go after her: So, what did he know, and what could he find out?
He knew her name and the license number of her U-drive. From that he could get to the car rental company, and would have ways of getting into their files--probably just punch her up on the insurance company's computer.
That would give him her Nevada driver's license number, her credit card number, and her Vegas residence address. She caught her own reflection in the driver's rear-view mirror.
They had threatened to throw acid in her face. Everything deadended in Vegas, everything was billed to that address where she hadn't lived for over a year ...
So, point him at Vegas.
***
Runyan parked on North Point, around the block from where Moyers would be staked out, and went in a side entrance of the hotel. He didn't have the diamonds, but he couldn't let Moyers know he had gone looking; he would have to think up ways to stall the rough-voiced man who had threatened him on the phone. If they had been there, it all would have been so simple. Now ...Now, nobody was going to believe they had been lost in the building of a new subdivision. He could hardly believe it himself. Moyers might be just mean enough and sore enough to get the parole board after him. Violating an ex-con's parole was the easiest thing in the world; any minor infraction was enough to send him back inside.
Walking down the corridor from the elevator, he knew he was going to have to come up with something. Before he had gone inside, it would have been easy; he always had half-adozen possible burglaries lined up. But now he was on parole; he almost needed permission to go to the bathroom. No jobs cased and probably no guts to do one anyway.
The only illumination was from around the edges of the drapes. The bathroom was open, its door open. The bed was as they had left it from their love-making.
"Louise?"
Down in the coffee shop. He was halfway back out of the room when he froze. The typewriter and manila folders were no longer on the table.
He hit the lights; the room sprang into bold relief. No cosmetics on the vanity. The closet area was stripped. Suitcase and overnighter gone. He yanked out the empty dresser drawers, dropping each on the floor as irrational panic became rational certainty.
She was gone. Cleared out. No note, nothing. Just gone. He sat down on the bed as if his legs could not support his weight. T
here had to be an explanation.
She'd left the car with him ... With the bill unpaid. She'd gotten a call, long-distance, her father back in Rochester was sick, sinking fast, there'd been no time for a note to Runyan ...
There was always time for a note-if you wanted to write one. He stood up wearily. She'd been after the diamonds all along. But if so, why clear out before he recovered the stones? Before there was any chance for her to get them for herself? What if she'd come to con him out of the diamonds, then had started to feel something for him, as he had for her, and couldn't go through with it? That would explain just disappearing, it would explain the lack of a note or a goodbye ...Didn't she know that he didn't care what she'd started out to do? That yesterday was the first day of their lives? That today was all that counted?
The room yielded nothing to help him find her. But stuffed in the wastebasket were two manila folders. One was the CONVICT BOOK folder, including the sheet with his title BAD TIME slashed across it; the other was ASSAULT ON THE CITADEL. He took them with him; in some way, they confirmed his feeling. She had come to scam him, and when self-revulsion set in had discarded the files as too painful to keep.
Somehow he'd find her.
***
As Moyers pulled up, Louise was walking into the terminal beside the porter carrying her bags. He stopped behind the taxi that had brought her, walked up to the driver's open window and gave the man a swift glimpse of a silver badge he carried for times like this. A replica of the SFPD badge in size and shape, it had long since ceased being even marginally legal to carry.
"Daltinski, Airport Security," he said in a bored voice. His rubber face had become set in the cop mold, his eyes had turned bleak. "That fare you just dropped. Which airline?"
"PSA. She said she was catching a flight to Vegas."
Moyers didn't thank him; cops didn't. He got back in his car and followed the arrows for a return to short-term parking. He couldn't risk leaving his car in front of the terminal--they were very quick to ticket and tow violators here, and he had to get back to the hotel as soon as he knew for sure where she was going. Her catching a plane just didn't fit into any scenario he could devise, and her getting this far away from Runyan just couldn't be made to make sense. Unless ...
Unless she was just a goddam writer after all. She gets her interview, gets a good fuck from the ex-con--something to tell the monthly writing club about over drinks--and off she goes. But then why leave her car behind?
Easy. She has her Runyan interview on tape, he casually offers to turn her car in for her ...
But Moyers couldn't be sure. And if they had run a game on him, and he was out of touch with Runyan, then he damn sure better not get out of touch with the woman.
***
Toeing her bags forward in the PSA line, Louise kept a wary eye out for Moyers-if he got here too quick she'd have to think of something else. But her luck held. She collected the ticket she had ordered from the hotel, and checked her bags.
"I also need a ticket to Las Vegas on your flight through Burbank," she said to the clerk. "For a Louise Graham. She doesn't have any luggage."
"That flight leaves in eleven minutes," said the mustachioed, uniformed agent as he made out the one-way ticket.
***
Moyers trotted along the moving beltway, up the two flights of escalators to the main terminal lobby, and shoved his way through the throngs to the PSA flight board behind the ticket counters. The Las Vegas flight was marked DEPARTED. He got the PSA reservations number from a pay phone.
"PSA, Ms. Laurence, may I help you?"
"Yes, my wife is taking your ten a.m. flight to Las Vegas from S.F. International, it just left and I wanted to make sure she caught it. She was cutting it awfully fine. Graham, first initial L."
"Thank you, sir." There was a pause as she tapped into the computer. She came back on. "She was ticketed and had a reservation made just before departure time, Mr. Graham. There hasn't been time for the passenger manifest to be turned in by the personnel on the check-in gate, but the records we do have would indicate she made the flight."
He thanked her and hung up, then used his phone calling card to contact a Las Vegas detective he had used in the past.
"Louise Graham, twenty-nine, blue-green on brown, fiveeight in heels, hundred-and-fifteen pounds, wearing a Burberry and a light blue tam. She's arriving on the next flight from SFO through Burbank. Everything you can get on her in a hurry."
"She expecting us?"
Moyers thought for a second. "No. But I'd rather you got made than lose her. I'll call for a preliminary report in. .." he checked his watch. "Three hours."
"You got it."
Moyers personalized his tone. "Wife and kids?"
"Fat and sassy--in that order."
"They usually are," said Moyers.
As soon as he left the terminal, Louise emerged from the labyrinth of book shelves in the lobby tobacco shop from which she had been watching him. With a touch of irony, she bought Erica Jong's Fear of Flying to read during the 45-minute wait for the plane's scheduled departure.
CHAPTER 10
While the soft drink driver was filling the coin machines outside the conference rooms, Runyan stole his uniform cap. He went into the men's room and used his pocket knife to cut off the cloth COCA-COLA badge, then wrote "LOUISE GRAHAM, Wharfside Hotel, Rm 243" on the manila envelope holding the two folders he had taken from her room. Down in the left-hand corner, underlined twice, he added "URGENT." Carrying the folder and wearing the cap, he shoved his way through the conventioneers and vacationers to the reception desk. He slapped the envelope down in front of the clerk.
"American Messengers. I get no answer from Louise Graham in Room Two-Four-Three. They said to get her forwarding if she had checked out. They'll have to fly this to her right away."
Without a second glance, the clerk went to confer with the cashier, returned with a slip of paper and the address.
"One-Seven-Oh-Two Mojave Road South, Las Vegas. No zip."
Runyan folded the slip and stuck it in his windbreaker pocket. "It'll be hand-delivered anyway. Thanks, pal."
He strolled out of the hotel. The big man known as Cronin came down the stairs from his vantage point above The Lubbers Bar and followed him out. Cronin was well over six feet tall; besides his mackinaw he wore a battered yachting cap, sunglasses, a grey-shot beard, and scuffed thick-soled boots that had gotten a lot of wear but which made him walk as if they hurt his feet a little.
***
Forty minutes after Runyan had gone, Moyers went past the striped barrier arm and cruised the underground parking garage looking for Louise's car. First alarm and then anger bubbled up as he realized it was no longer there.
Louise, on a plane to Vegas. Runyan, gone with her car.
Report the car stolen? Wrong play. He didn't want Runyan back inside, he wanted him out here where eventually he would make his run for those diamonds.
Unless he was getting them right now.
No. That didn't make sense. He'd had to hide them at night, in desperation. At night would be the logical time to recover them. And so far, he hadn't had a night out from under Moyer's surveillance.
He showed his I.D. to the same desk clerk on whom Runyan had worked his messenger scam.
"Homelife General Insurance, we carry the personal liability for the hotel." He had no idea if they did or not, but he could be sure the clerk knew even less. "We need the forwarding of a Louise Graham, checked out this morning. .."
"Sure," said the clerk. "Room Two-Four-Three. OneSeven-Oh-Two Mojave Road South, Las Vegas. A messenger was here half an hour ago with a package for her, I had to-"
"What kind of package?"
"Manila envelope."
"Manuscript size?"
"That would be about right, yes sir."
Could be. A manuscript, galley proofs, research material--the possibilities were endless. He got the address from the clerk, started to turn away, then turned back again. "Whic
h messenger service, do you remember?"
"Uh ... American? I think that's what he said."
"What did he look like?"
"You know. Cap. Jacket. Medium height, medium build. .." He brightened. "Like a messenger."
Moyers headed for the pay phones. Runyan? Could have been, if she's skipped out on him while he was sleeping. But why? Called off? By whom? Someone in Vegas?
He used his credit card to get the Las Vegas number he had called earlier from the airport.
"Stark Investigations."
"Rich-Dave Moyers again, I-"
"I was hoping you'd call, Dave. My man at the airport reported in five minutes ago. Our lady was a no-show. Ticketed and reserved, but not on the plane."
"Goddammit!" exclaimed Moyers. "It stopped in Burbank, could she have-"
"Negative," said Stark crisply. "We've got good contacts at the airport, my man got a look at the passenger manifest."
She'd been standing somewhere in the airport terminal, watching him take the bait. Well, that answered the writer bit. No way.
"I have an address on her," he said. "Seventeen-Oh-Two Mojave Road South."
There was a long pause, then Stark's heavy voice said, "I won't know 'til I see the building, but some of those places out there are connected."
Moyers was silent for a long moment himself. Connected. Two million in eight-year-old hot jewels didn't seem sufficiently heavy action for wise-guy interest as elaborate as this; but it could be some soldier running his own show, with the organization raking a percentage if he came up with anything. That made sense, and would explain her expertise, her impact. She would be the very best.
"That in itself would mean something," he said. "Get what you can. If it's a dead end, spend some money around town to get a line on her. Stay on her until I tell you to stop."
"Will do."
"And bill this to Homelife direct, not through me. I don't want my name on it if anything heavy is going down."
"Got you," said Stark cheerfully. "Hell, Dave, the company pays a lot quicker than you, anyway."