Come Morning - Joe Gores

by Gores

  "They're going to get you, Runyan."

  "At the trial, the prosecution said I was working alone. Found the combination on the back of the desk drawer-"

  "You wrote that there yourself, Runyan. It's an old safecracker's trick." He added urgently, "They've had eight years to figure out how to do you in and get the diamonds."

  "Unless I turn the stones over to you. Yeah, sure."

  They were almost even with the car whose engine had started up. The driver honked once, a single short tap. It was a white Toyota Tercel with a woman behind the wheel. The woman was Louise. Runyan's face flushed hot as if he were ashamed of something he had done. Louise! What ...

  "Homelife General can offer you the reward for turning in the stones, plus protection from whoever-"

  "Old home week," said Runyan, glad of the darkness that hid the almost feverish flush on his cheeks.

  He cut across the sidewalk to the car and opened the driver's door. Louise quickly slid over into the other bucket as Runyan started to get in. Moyers belatedly ran across the sidewalk, but Runyan already had the car moving. He looked in the side mirror; Moyers was standing in the white zone staring after them with an unreadable expression. Runyan gave a short snort of laughter, then turned to look at Louise as if seeing her for the first time.

  "You didn't know where else to find me, so you waited around until I showed up for a workout. You just couldn't stay away-"

  Louise kept her eyes straight ahead. "I missed you."

  "But back there in Minneapolis you'd left a hot story on a back burner and you were afraid it would boil over, so-"

  "Dinner? My treat?" she said abruptly. "I have to talk with you. Seriously."

  "Okay. I used to know a good place over in Tiburon." He stopped by the Golden Gate Theatre as the light fired a burst of pedestrians across in front of them. He had forgotten the excitement of downtown crowds at night. He looked over at Louise. She was much more exciting. He said, "Anybody going to lose any sleep over you if we're late home?"

  The green beauty of her eyes was almost painful, like an unexpected blow to a nerve center. She shook her head and smiled. "You?"

  The light changed. Runyan made the left into Taylor, edging around because now the pedestrians were flowing that way. He chuckled.

  "Well ... maybe a guy named Tenconi. . ."

  ***

  Tenconi had Runyan backed up against the wall with one hand around the back of Runyan's head, the other buried in Runyan's throat. He grasped the Adam's apple; he was going to rip it out and make the freaker eat it. Runyan was making a harsh buzzing noise.

  The door buzzer, long and insistent, finally brought Tenconi awake. He couldn't remember his dream, except that Runyan had been in it and that it had been pretty damn good. He checked the luminous face of his watch. Nine-thirty, a little past. He must have fallen asleep on the freaking couch.

  The doorbell sounded again.

  Tenconi gingerly swung his legs around and sat up. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. The burning in his groin had subsided, though his balls were still tender to the touch. He fumbled around, switched on the table lamp and squinted against the illumination. The bell rang again.

  "Yeah, coming!" he yelled.

  Freaking maid, why didn't she use her key? He padded to the door on stockinged feet and put his head close to the panel.

  "Yeah? Who?"

  There was no response. Tenconi grunted and slapped aside the fancy wrought iron peephole cover and stooped slightly to put his eye to the little glassed orifice. The silenced .38 pressed against the outside of the peephole said PHHHT! and Tenconi spun away from the peephole with only one eye. He was dead before his knees started to buckle.

  CHAPTER 18

  The Dock Restaurant overlooked the Tiburon marina; from their window table they could watch the yachts rock at their moorings as the red and green jetty lights drew slow colored circles in the air. Angel Island, a dark unlit mass to the left, helped frame the city twinkling across the bay. Louise set down her wine glass and leaned forward slightly. Her eyes glowed in the light of their candle.

  "Now, young lady," she said in mock-judicial severity, "if you would just tell the court in your own words about your abrupt disappearance and equally abrupt reappearance from-"

  "Las Vegas," said Runyan.

  "Oh," she said, much of her gaiety slipping away. "The auto rental form?"

  "And a few phone calls. Vegas ... Minneapolis ... Rochester. .."

  To her dismayed look, he nodded, "They aren't going to bail you out of whatever trouble you've gotten yourself into this time, but please send money."

  "It wasn't always that way," she said, a little bitterly.

  "How about stealing apples off the Mayo brothers' estate?"

  "Oh, that was true. But the book. .." She waggled a palmdown hand. She finished the wine in her glass; her tone changed abruptly. "You know, when I was in high school and junior college I really did want to be a writer. I wrote all the time-"

  "The stories in your hotel room," said Runyan. "Window dressing from a long time ago?"

  Louise nodded. "In a way. But it's funny, now I've started writing again. As if wanting grew out of pretending."

  "Sort of like you and me, isn't it?"

  He kept being able to do that: catch her unawares, surprise her with an insight he shouldn't have been capable of having. Why couldn't it just be as simple as that?

  "Exactly like you and me," she said, hating the lie in the remark even as she made it. Runyan nodded again.

  "Only your folks hadn't heard from you in a year, and you weren't listed in Minneapolis, and none of the Las Vegas data was any good any more. So..."

  She held out her glass, glad of the respite, fighting the oddest compulsion to break out crying. But at the same time realizing that he was different from when she had walked away a few days ago. Subtly in command now, more sure of himself, more aggressive. Was it her coming back to him, showing her vulnerability, or was it something that had happened while she had been gone?

  Runyan finished the bottle into both their glasses. "So," he said, "where are we--really?"

  "We're in Tiburon, California, and I'm giving you the short happy life of Francis Macomber."

  "Hemingway," said Runyan. To the surprise in her eyes, he added, "Prison library. Most of the guys wouldn't crack a book unless it hit 'em first, but I read a lot. For a few hours you could live someone else's life."

  "We'll make this Frances Macomber--a.k.a. Louise Graham. I had two years at Rochester JC, was going to major in journalism at UofM, but I also had been dancing since I was five. That's what I meant about my folks not always being that way. Until I was a teen-ager, they doted on me. Then I started going out with boys and then started staying out, and ..."

  "For me it was getting drunk, getting into fights, having my buddies or the cops bring me home at three in the morning. . ."

  "Anyway, I was a pretty good dancer ... ballet, tap, jazz-they called it 'modern' then--and acrobatic."

  She drank some wine. There was a far-off look in her eyes, and for the first time Runyan started to believe what she was telling him. She was really telling it to herself.

  "Everybody kept saying I had what it takes to be a professional dancer. And for me being a professional meant glamor, easy money..."

  "So you caught a bus to Vegas."

  "You've heard this story before."

  The waitress came around to ask them if they wanted coffee. They both did. She poured and withdrew.

  "I was going to burn 'em up, knock 'em out. .." Louise made an exaggerated sweeping motion with her hand. "ZOOM! Right to the top." She added cream and sugar to her coffee. "Instead, ZOOM! Right into a casting director's bed. Because Vegas is full of women who were told in their home towns that they had what it took. And who wanted the glamor and easy money just as much as I did. .." Her voice rose slightly; her hands had closed into white-knuckled fists. "So I got into a show--but all it ever seemed to be w
as ostrich feathers and mesh stockings and bare boobs ..."

  He asked in an easy voice, "And a little favor for the management now and then?"

  Louise gave a rueful little laugh. "You have heard this story before!" The animation died in her face. "All of a sudden I was at that line between amateur night and. .."

  "The first robbery I did was on a dare," said Runyan. "A guy bet me fifty bucks I was afraid to climb up the side of an apartment building and steal somebody's stamp collection. I got my fifty bucks and he made ten thousand fencing the stamps. So I turned professional. I went over the line."

  "I wasn't sure where the line was, but I knew I was over it. Since I couldn't stomach the thought of being a hooker, I started doing different kinds of favors, for a lot heavier people. Muling some grams here, once a kilo there ... Flying to L.A. once a month to deposit skim money in a bank that wasn't connected . . ."

  She drank coffee, checking her watch again as she did. She hadn't meant to tell him all this. She had been going to keep it light and full of laughs and ease her way back into his confidence, and suddenly she was into true confessions. And the hell of it was that she wanted to tell him all of it--or almost all.

  "I finally realized that I was being a whore in a different way. And I wanted OUT--but they couldn't understand I just wanted to walk away, not turn snitch, not claim a reward, just ... hike. And of course by then I knew a whole lot more about a whole lot more things and people than I wanted to. Than was safe to. .." She looked over at him with sudden stunning realization. "Just like you. I wanted out from under and-"

  "And you couldn't get out from under. We keep bouncing off one another, don't we?"

  "But at least you have a choice. You can turn the diamonds over to Moyers and try to duck the others, or give them to the others and try to duck Moyers ..."

  "No," said Runyan. "I haven't recovered them yet." Before she could speak, he added, "How did you get out of it in Vegas?"

  "A man. How else? He was there for a convention first, then kept coming back because he had gotten hooked on me. .." She shrugged. "He was able to square it with those people--money or favors or maybe just convincing them that I didn't want to blow any whistles, I never knew which. He wanted me to go with him, so I did. He set me up in a place."

  She made a rueful face, and finished her coffee.

  "A kept woman, a first for me--I sort of liked it. I'd slept with a lot of men, but I'd never had a real relationship with any of them. I guess I was naive. When things got tight financially for him, he wouldn't let me work to bring in some money. He just got nasty about what I cost to keep. Then, when I wanted to leave, he wouldn't let me do that, either. . ."

  "Tell me how he kept you," said Runyan with a grin. "I sure haven't figured it out."

  "That's easy-guilt. If it had just been force, I could have handled that. I've had a lot of practice. But it was--moral. He told me he was in real trouble, and that it was because of me. He said he needed to make a really big score to get even, and that I had to help him. He said I owed him."

  "Did you?"

  "I thought I did."

  "What was the big score?"

  She met his eyes with a steady gaze. "You."

  "Make contact, get next to me, stick until I got the diamonds, then..."

  She nodded. He turned his empty wine glass with his fingers for a long moment, then let out a long breath, nodded almost sadly, looked up and caught her gaze and held it.

  "Only I didn't go get them when you thought I was going to, and you were gone when I got back." He paused for another long moment. "So why are you back now?"

  Louise met his gaze levelly. "I'm on my own this time. For as long as you want me here." She stood up. "I'll be right back, darling."

  Runyan watched her go out to the hallway where the restrooms and pay phone were located. He had a half-smile on his face. It slowly faded.

  "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice-shame on me," he muttered to himself. He went quickly and quietly across the restaurant to lean against the pay phone partition.

  "I don't have much time," Louise's voice was saying in low, urgent tones. "I'm back in, but he doesn't trust me yet. You won't be hearing anything from me for a while. .."

  Runyan, blank-faced, moved away as silently as he had come.

  CHAPTER 19

  Runyan woke with Louise's hair in his face; he was lying spoon-fashion against her back in his narrow bed, both of them nude under the covers. He could smell a lingering trace of her perfume. Why couldn't they just lie here the rest of the day, waking, dozing, loving ... Memories of the overheard phone conversation the night before tried to crowd in, but he pushed them away. Just let him be unwary here, just for this time. Just ... He realized that for several moments her hips had been shifting against him, slyly, so he hadn't been consciously aware of being brought erect. He began gently rolling her left nipple between his fingers. She gave a sigh of contentment, reached down between her legs, and guided him into her waiting nest.

  After almost a minute, her vaginal muscles began a rhythmic contraction around his rigid shaft; a few minutes later they climaxed exactly together, gently, lovingly, without a word having been spoken between them.

  ***

  Louise turned right on Gough, running past the cold soaring spire of St. Mary's cathedral with the morning traffic's lemming rush for downtown. "Why do you have to see your parole officer? I thought you gave him your change of address."

  "I did. But I have to leave the jurisdiction overnight to get the diamonds. I want permission ahead of time so they can't violate my parole."

  Louise checked the rear-view mirror to get into the right lane so they wouldn't get sucked into the vortex of traffic funneling into the freeway entrance on Turk. She exclaimed, "Moyers is following us!"

  "Moyers? How the hell did he. .." Runyan interrupted himself, "Sharples! My parole officer! The son of a bitch sold Moyers my new address!"

  "Why would your parole officer-"

  "For the money." Runyan chuckled. "We'll just have to be creatively evasive when the time comes."

  But when they pulled up in front of the regional parole office on South Van Ness, Runyan glanced across the sidewalk to the newspaper coin boxes. He took his hand quickly off the door handle. Looking across him, Louise could see the morning Chronicle headline:

  LOAN COMPANY OFFICIAL MURDERED

  IN POSH PENTHOUSE APARTMENT

  "If that headline's about who I think it is," said Runyan, "it changes everything. We're going to have to get out of town quicker than I thought, and we're going to need Moyers on our tail. Make sure he follows you, then don't lose him." He started out of the car. "I'll see you back at your hotel later."

  He went across the sidewalk and into the building without a backward glance.

  Sharples waited until Runyan had left the office, then put on his porkpie hat and went out. His secretary looked up angrily. She was always angry; knowing what about was a matter of nuance. He read this expression as one of angry surprise.

  "You have another client in ten minutes," she snapped.

  "I'll be back before then."

  "If anyone calls, where have you gone?"

  Though his mother had been dead for nearly four years, he was never going to get away from her; every woman in his life became her eventually. He left without replying. His secretary took a spiral notebook from her purse and made a notation; she was gathering evidence for a letter informing the Civil Service Commission that Mr. Sharples was not a good civil servant.

  Sharples went out the back door to the pay phone in the adjacent gas station. Runyan could not see him from the bus stop; also, his secretary could not see him from her window. He knew all about her notations in her little spiral notebook; for the past six weeks, he had been keeping a similar record of her lapses, indulgences, and excesses.

  ***

  Hi-Tech Electronics was on Larkin between Eddy and Ellis, a small, cramped, littered place much frequented by law enforcem
ent people, both federal and state, from the government office buildings a couple of blocks away. Evidence obtained from illegal wire taps and room bugs, while not admissible in court, supplied a great many leads for evidence that was admissible.

  High-Tech's owner/operator, a skinny man with hornrimmed specs and long-fingered hands and his hair in Laurie Anderson spikes, was at his workbench when the phone rang. On the bench was a black box the size of a cigarette pack, with a magnet at one side and two small antennae extending out not more than an inch from the other side. He picked up the phone, listened for a moment, then handed it to his client, Moyers.

  Sharples's voice, high-pitched with tension, said, "Runyan was in and said he was going camping in the Sierra for a week before he started to look for work. He wanted permission-"

  "I told you I expected that," snapped Moyers impatiently.

  "So I did what you ... ah ... suggested. I dated his permission letter tomorrow instead of today. But that means he can leave any time after midnight tonight. .."

  "I know what it means," said Moyers. "It means I'll have the son of a bitch when he makes his move."

  ***

  The sparkling display windows faced Grant Avenue with tasteful arrangements of rings, necklaces, stones and earrings. Beside the inset entranceway was a discreet brass plaque:

  GATIAN'S GEMSTONE GALAXY

  Gemologists - Goldsmiths

  As Runyan entered, he thought that Gatian had done well for himself since the robbery eight years ago. Everyone seemed to have done well except Runyan. And maybe Tenconi.

  ***

  Gatian was frightened; he paced up and down his private office just barely controlling an impulse to wring his hands. Delarty, at the window, wore a sour look mixed with not a little impatience. On the desk was the same newspaper Runyan had seen, with the same headline visible.

  "Take it easy, will you?" said Delarty. "Tenconi had a lot of enemies besides Runyan. Half the wops in North Beach probably are holding a candlelight parade now that he's-"