Come Morning - Joe Gores

by Gores

  ***

  Runyan was thinking of Louise and hurting. He wished he had the resources, knew the angles to find her again. But what if she hadn't left because she was ashamed? What if she'd merely been called back to report to whoever had hired her in the first place? Stew about that one for a while, Runyan.

  The bright-eyed black-haired old Chinese man brought his check and laid it on the table.

  "Good soup?" he asked. Runyan had eaten fried chicken.

  Runyan rubbed his stomach and grinned. "Very good soup."

  The old man giggled and went away with Runyan's money.

  ***

  Cronin came out of the room he had rented and tapped the sawed-off muzzle of his shotgun against the bare low-watt bulb of the nearest hallway ceiling fixture. The bulb shattered with a subdued POP which drifted down thin warm shards of pale glass.

  He moved down the hall on silent stockinged feet, repeating with the other lights. Nobody came from any of the rooms at the sound of the bulbs breaking. Most of them were pensioners, what did they have to do anyway except go to bed early and stare at the ceiling in the dark?

  The cross-hall was now very dim. Runyan would have just enough illumination to see the keyhole of his door. Which was the last thing he would ever see.

  ***

  Runyan turned into the darkened cross-hall, checked at the slight crunch of glass under his shoe, then went on. For those few moments, still distracted by Louise, he rejoined the majority of mankind. Because most men, their survival no longer dependent on identifying another by his scent, the rate or timbre of his breathing, the precise click of tendons in knee or elbow, have lost the ability to perceive physical threats instinctively.

  But Runyan was a born survivor. He had been around the corner from three murders in prison because his survival instinct had stopped him from turning those corners. Those same senses now strove to warn of danger, but Runyan was ignoring them.

  Even when he stepped on the second litter of fragments, he didn't connect it with himself. Since nobody knew the diamonds no longer existed, nobody could move on him, right? He was safe. By the dim light of the window, he bent to thrust his room key into the lock. Twenty feet down the hall, in darkness his eyes could not penetrate, a fingertip slid surreptitiously across a shotgun safety catch.

  Runyan heard the tiny metallic click of his father's shotgun safety before he heard the beat of the pheasant's wings as it rose from the clump of red rye grass, and he knew, I'm between him and the light, and was already throwing himself backwards and sideways out of the closed fire-escape window while his conscious mind was still trying to fit the key into the lock. The frame and curtain six inches above his hurtling body splintered and shredded with the shotgun roar.

  Runyan hit the slatted metal platform in a sideways tumble and kept rolling, right over the edge. Grabbing handholds recklessly, he dropped down the steel framework of the fire escape like a monkey, careless of torn palms, ripped clothes, or gashed skin, jinking first one way and then another to create a difficult target. Tricks that had become second nature from years of rock climbing and rappelling in the Sierra carried him down.

  He hit the alley on the balls of his feet with his knees flexed, tucking and rolling even as he landed, tight up against the side of the building. Two more shots ripped down at him, the goose pellets whining and rattling down through the metal struts of the fire escape to gouge the blacktop where he had landed a second before. None hit him.

  He heard the squeerk! of metal two stories above even as running footsteps pounded down the alley from the street. Runyan rolled quickly back from the wall and sprang to his feet, so when the cop's torch beam impaled him he was standing in the middle of the alley, gawking upward.

  "Shots!" he cried, turning toward the light, shielding his eyes with one hand, still pointing upward with the other, "Up there!"

  The uniformed beat cop swung his light up, service revolver in hand. The fire escape was empty except for tattered remnants of curtain blowing through the gaping second-floor window.

  "Second floor!" yelled Runyan.

  The cop ran for the mouth of the alley which would take him around to the front of the building, gun still in hand.

  ***

  Cronin ran lightly down the hall, rage at Runyan's escape turned to fear. Just as he had rehearsed it in his mind, except now, goddammit, he didn't have the diamonds. He didn't have anything. Jesus, lucky it was the sort of hotel it was-nobody even stuck a head out of a room. He threw the shotgun into the suitcase, shoved his feet into his boots, and ran down the hallway toward the front stairs with his laces flapping.

  He was at the head of the stairs when the street door opened and the cop came pounding up. He ducked, terrified, around the edge of the stairwell, and the cop ran right by toward the back of the hotel without even a turn of the head.

  He went down the stairs very quietly and quickly, keeping to the edges so they wouldn't creak. It was just over two minutes since he had fired his first shot.

  ***

  Moyers, standing outside his car and wondering what had happened, saw the big bearded guy come back out, still carrying his suitcase, and go up the hill with his boot laces flapping. Drug pusher, rousted by what had sounded like gunshots, getting out while he could? But if they had been shots, why had the cop let him go? And where was Runyan, who had entered the hotel less than five minutes before?

  ***

  Runyan slouched to the mouth of the alley, hands in pockets, just another nighttime Tenderloin drifter. He checked and faded back into the shadows without any quick movements.

  Uphill across the street was Moyers, standing beside his parked car, staring intently at the entrance of the hotel. Staked out, probably had been there when Runyan had come carelessly home. Damn prison, the way it had dulled his reactions! Would he ever be what he had been, thinking with his gut, survival instincts in control, instead of being distracted by his emotions to the point where they nearly got him killed?

  Survival thinking meant getting a wall at his back and keeping a clear field of fire in front of him. He was loose right now. Nobody had a finger on him. Not Moyers, not whoever had tried to kill him, not whoever had called him, not Cardwell, not anybody. Not even Louise.

  He had to make his own moves, follow his own rules, use his own logic. No more counterpunching. From now on the initiative had to be his. Otherwise he was going to be dead.

  And in that hallway a few minutes ago, his body had told him what his mind, in his misery, had perhaps forgotten: that he wanted desperately to be alive.

  CHAPTER 13

  At 5:30 a.m. the bearded man, no longer bearded and no longer Leo Cronin, went bust at the $100-minimum blackjack table at the Arabian Nights Hotel on the Vegas Strip. Angel Morgan, security manager for the casino, was looking down idly from the security catwalk above the mirrored ceiling when the player took a hit and went bust with an eight. Angel chuckled. "Hey, Manny, you see who I see?"

  Manny Arnheim, the casino manager, was dressed in Western clothes and hand-tooled boots, but looked like Hoagy Carmichael--a limp cigarette even dangled from one corner of his mouth.

  "Jesus Christ," he said in a grating voice, "the fucking clown is back!"

  "And bust," said Angel.

  "This surprises you? The man's a degenerate."

  "Should I call down the street? I hear he's into them for a pretty good bundle."

  "Naw," said Manny, losing interest, "comp him at the front desk if he needs it. The guy did us a good turn last year, taking that broad out of here, what was her-"

  "Louise."

  "Yeah. Louise. He got her out of here before we had to do something about her. .." He shook his head almost sadly. "Good broad, then she gets fucked around in her head and starts wanting to talk to people ..."

  ***

  The big man who was no longer Leo Cronin entered the 11th-floor suite, crossed the wall-to-wall, and opened the sliding-glass door to the balcony. Cool morning desert air came in. He
stared at distant purple mountains.

  Christ, he'd planned to be here with his pocket full of diamonds and his troubles behind him. Instead, he had fled San Francisco in a panic, sure that if he looked back he would see red lights flashing. Then the stupid trick downstairs, going bust at blackjack an hour after he hit town. So here he was, riding one of Manny's comps at the front desk because he was over the limit on his plastic.

  They always said a shotgun was a sure thing, shut your fucking eyes and cut down a roomful of people. But he'd missed. Missed! With a fucking shotgun! Fucking Runyan had moved like a snake. He'd never seen anybody move so fast.

  So now what? He had to think. Maybe there was still a way. Runyan knew somebody had tried, but he didn't know who. Louise had said there were others after the stones, and Runyan had been moving around, showing himself, talking with the fence ... Hell, for sure he'd think it was one of the others. So, keep all his options open. Call the airlines, call his office, call Louise. And call room service for some breakfast and a Bloody Mary or two. Maybe he could salvage it after all.

  ***

  Louise was asleep when the phone started to ring. She knocked it on the floor where the receiver kept making squawking tones. When she found it and brought it up to her face, they became words: " . . . hell are you doing? I've been ringing this goddamn thing for-"

  "I was sleeping." She used her brassy voice.

  "Sleeping? It's six in the morning."

  She sat up under the covers, hugging her drawn-up knees. Her old-fashioned flannel nightgown, shapeless but practical, went with the big brass-steaded bed and the colonial-looking patchwork quilt.

  "You called me up to tell me that?"

  "I called to say I'll see you this afternoon."

  "Why didn't you wait until this afternoon to spoil my day?"

  "Goddammit, Louise, do you always have to be that way?"

  "'To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life,' " she said. "How about that? Stevenson at six a.m." She realized she was still a little woozy. Two Restorils, two Valiums, and a hot milk with rum and honey in it, just to get to sleep last night. "I suppose I should ask you how your man made out with the diamonds in San Francisco, but you know what? I'm tired of talking with you."

  She hung up the phone.

  It started to ring again as she got out of bed and walked across the rag rug to the typing table in front of the window. It was the sort of room one's grandparents grew up in, hardwood dresser with an oval mirror, family portraits on the walls in cherrywood frames, slow-ticking brass-pendulumed grandfather clock as tall as she was. The bird in the gilded cage. Maybe work would keep her from getting depressed over his return.

  She sat down and turned on the typewriter. The phone kept on ringing. She kept on ignoring it.

  ***

  The fat woman's lower jaw moved up and down like a puppet's in its motionless bib of fat.

  "There is a gas leak. I can smell a gas leak."

  "Lady, there isn't any gas leak. I checked."

  "I tell you, my gas bills have never been this high."

  Jamie almost told her where to put her gas bills, but instead just walked away, leaving her flapping and squawking like a hen with its head cut off. Let her complain. They couldn't fire him--he was on disability and PG&E was a public utility.

  Hell, he'd forgotten to read her meter. Well, it was all that goddamn Runyan's fault anyway, showing up yesterday and threatening his kid. He pull that shit again, Cardwell thought, swinging up into his brown and tan PG&E truck, he'd shoot the fucker again, and do it right this time.

  Runyan was sitting against the far door, his hands empty but great bodily harm in his eyes. All thoughts of killing him skittered desperately from Cardwell's mind. Runyan made it worse by saying, "Somebody tried to blow me away last night, Jamie. Was it you?"

  "I ... I got loaded last night, Runyan. You can ask Betty if you don't-"

  Runyan sighed and looked out the windshield. "One of the others, then."

  "I didn't tell them you were around." He grabbed at Runyan's arm. "You've got to believe-"

  His head was rammed right down inside the ring of the steering wheel, so suddenly he didn't even know it had happened. Runyan's voice came from somewhere above and behind him.

  "You tried to kill me once, Cardwell. Don't ever lay your fucking hands on me again."

  He was abruptly released. The strength in those hands had been terrifying. He pulled himself erect. His jaw ached where it had been slammed against the steering post. He risked a look over. Runyan was different from yesterday. Harder. Colder. Cold as the grave.

  "Are they morons, or what?" he asked. "Is one of them stupid enough to think I'm carrying the diamonds around with me?"

  "Look, Runyan, leave me out of it, okay?" Cardwell whined. "I got a wife and kid to support-"

  "Your wife works and your little girl goes to public school," said Runyan coldly. "You draw disability from the V.A. and you have a steady job at union scale and seniority. Give me the names of the others, then you're out of it. Unless they're expecting me when I drop around--then you're back in."

  Watching him walk away with the names he had wanted, Cardwell felt a great weariness. It wasn't ever going to end. It was just going to keep on, until he was dead. He'd never got any breaks. They were all bastards, every one of them, and he'd never gotten even one little break at all, never in his lifetime.

  ***

  Moyers put a ten-dollar bill into the rat-faced clerk's paw, and the rat scuttled back into its hole. The shooting last night had to have been an attempt on Runyan, but nobody had seen anything, nobody was hurt or dead, and the cops weren't going to waste much time on it. Runyan's stuff was still in his room. Moyers would have to hold the stakeout to see if Runyan would chance coming back for it.

  He went to the phone, picked up the receiver, was about to drop his two dimes when he thought: the drug pusher. The big bearded guy in work clothes. His suitcase had carried a broken-down shotgun, not drugs: instant, not progressive death. In and out, blip, blip, blip--very professional. Except that he'd missed. Which said that Runyan was very damned good indeed. Well, Moyers had seen him work out on the rings. He moved like quicksilver in the palm of your hand.

  A professional hit. But by whom? Louise's Vegas connection? That seemed most likely.

  None of that got him any closer to Runyan. But this might. He put in his dimes and tapped out his number. When a secretary answered, Moyers said, "Mr. Benjamin Sharples, please."

  ***

  Runyan was nursing a cup of coffee in a cafe next door to a sex devices store which also rented gay video porn movies. His two hundred from the parole board was almost gone; there was enough to pay a week on the room he'd rented by phone, sight unseen, on Bush just beyond Franklin, but not much more. He had to get his stuff out of the Westward Hotel, and he had to do it without Moyers catching on. He couldn't have Moyers looking over his shoulder any more, because somebody else might be looking over Moyers's. After last night, staying loose meant survival.

  Three young white male whores in chains and black leather came in and took a table near his. They looked him over, mistaking the nature of his interest. The blond one came to Runyan's table and sat down.

  "Hello, darling," he said.

  Behind the eyeshadow and rouge he was not over 16, wearing a cup to make his scrotum look sexually engorged. Runyan had seen dozens of them at Q; most of them, handed around the cellblock like a box of candy, were reduced to rubble in a week. Those who survived came out vicious and usually deranged. This one hadn't started the downward spiral yet.

  Runyan tore a twenty-dollar bill in two and dropped half of it on the table along with his room key.

  "Westward Hotel, around the corner and up the street. Second floor rear by the fire escape. Clean it out, clothes, a chess set--everything except the yellow gym bag. Leave that."

  "What is this, a joke?" demanded the kid in a half-scared, half-angry
voice. This wasn't as simple as opening some John's zipper in the men's room.

  "Easy money," said Runyan. "Somebody's waiting outside the building--knows me, but doesn't know you."

  "If this is a setup, my friends will hurt you. Bad." Runyan didn't speak, so after a moment the kid took the maimed twenty and the key and stood up. As he started to turn away, Runyan said softly,

  "Your friends?" The kid paused. Runyan said, "They're the hostages."

  The boy stared at him through mascaraed lashes, then walked out with a single scared backward glance. While waiting for his return, Runyan looked up the South of Market Loan Company in the phone book.

  CHAPTER 14

  When Runyan entered the storefront office on Mission off Fifth, around the corner from the old Mint, a little bell screwed to the top of the door tinkled. A secretary with greystreaked hair and a long nose was pounding an antique electric typewriter as if it were the chest of an unfaithful lover. Runyan's clothes and chess set were under his arm in the supermarket bag the hooker had brought back to him. The secretary stopped typing, her mouth slightly open so he could see an inverted V of rabbit teeth behind her upper lip.

  "He's expecting me," said Runyan.

  She pointed over her shoulder with a pencil she jerked from her hair, jammed it back, and assaulted her paramour again as Runyan crossed to the door.

  The inner room was a windowless box with an old-fashioned bottled-water stand against the back wall next to an equally old-fashioned coat rack. Nothing old-fashioned about the steel-set-in-concrete under-the-floor safe; not even oxyacetylene would touch that baby.

  A fleshy red-headed man with his shirt sleeves rolled up almost to his shoulders was sitting behind a desk with a brass plaque on it: PATRICK DELARTY. He had freckled muscular arms with fine red-gold hairs glinting on them. A cigar jutted from the center of his mouth as if he'd seen too many old newsreels of Franklin Roosevelt. Red brows which he pulled down over hard blue eyes in a frown made him look like a clown with only half his makeup on.