Come Morning - Joe Gores

by Gores

  She had also come for power, but not to fly. She had to speak to the General in charge--she needed his help in a decision which she had to stick to, she knew, or die.

  The General was standing in the middle of the main square, very tall, unmilitary even though wearing a dark uniform. She pushed through the crowd of petitioners and asked him to help her. He shook his head.

  "Not now. There's a plague in the city, and I have too much to do. Not now."

  To detain him, Louise reached over and seized the General's penis with her hand. It did not seem a strange thing to do, nor did it seem odd that his member was bare despite the uniform he wore. She came awake in a panic, working her hand up and down the quickly stiffening cock, sure Runyan had given her the sleeping pills and was about to sneak away without her.

  Instead, he was rolling over on top of her, still half-asleep himself. She quickly opened her legs, with a gasp of mingled pleasure and relief felt his thick shaft pushing into her. His strokes were long and slow, steady as a heartbeat; when they rose to orgasm she arched her head against the ground so hard that her neck creaked, and raked his back with clawed fingers. He licked her eyelids, licked the corners of her mouth, kissed her on the chin before regretfully withdrawing his still half-rigid member.

  Louise sat up, yawning, sated, fumbling in the dim light of the torch for the bra and panties abandoned for her quick dive into the sleeping bag three hours before. Only then did she remember the question which had been bothering her when she had gone to sleep.

  "If using our car would alert Moyers to the fact that we're leaving, how are we going to get to the airfield in time?"

  "We're going to steal one of the Park Service jeeps. Hell, what are thieves for?"

  ***

  It was just 10:30 when Runyan turned off California 140 in the rolling grassy hills a few miles southwest of the park entrance at El Portal. He followed a narrow rutted dirt track that bounced and tossed the stolen jeep about like an Australian surfboat coming in through the breakers. One instant their headlights were glinting off the scrub oaks, the next casting long shadows behind a lichen-covered boulder, then making twin glowing rubies of the eyes of a startled mule deer.

  Going across the flat grassy surface of the airfield, their lights picked out the night-deserted quonset-hut hangar and office with the airsock hanging limp from the mast on the roof.

  "I always wondered what it was like to be a rodeo rider," Louise yelled above the noise of the jeep.

  She heard a plane's engines turn over, cough, catch. It smoothed out and a trim white plane with a blue decorative stripe running along the side began trundling slowly forward from among a half-dozen others tied down. Runyan stopped the jeep.

  "Taps Turner knows how to do things in style," he said. "Twin-motor Aztec-C. We'll be to Burbank in two hours."

  ***

  The black woman pilot in a red jumpsuit, huge black radio earphones making her head resemble that of a gigantic fly, didn't even unstrap while they boarded. Instead, she demanded, "Who the fuck is this?"

  Runyan tossed the carefully packed black nylon stuff bag into the back of the cabin, then stood on the wing to help Louise into her seat. "My mother. She wanted to see the cherry blossoms in bloom."

  His eyes were challenging, glinting with either excitement or anger. After a long moment, the pilot sighed and turned away toward the instrument panel. "Sheee-it, mother," she said, giving the first word two syllables, "ain't no cherries in L.A.--let alone blossoms. Just mahture fruits with grey chest hair and medallions on gold chains."

  The plane was moving even as Runyan climbed into the copilot's seat; it bumped and jittered as it gained speed, as if it were a handy target for anger that should have been directed at Runyan. The landing lights tossed exaggerated shadows out beyond the clumps and tufts of grass on the runway. They slanted up and away sharply, the engine almost stalling.

  She picked up California 99 and followed it down the fertile San Joaquin Valley, the land just blackness below them, pinpointed with farm lights and the moving broken firefly chains of traffic on the highway. The I-5 Grapevine showed the way through the San Gabriel Mountains, which cup Los Angeles down to the sea, giving it both its climate and its smog. After locking on to the Burbank radio beam, she jerked off her big earphones to glare at him.

  "Louise," he said, "I'd like you to meet Grace."

  Grace was a stunningly beautiful woman, Louise realized, five or six years younger than she. And not at all interested in Louise. She spurned the proffered hand.

  "I thought you was a fucking professional," she said to Runyan.

  He sang loudly, "I'm a beauty, I'm a daisy, I'm humpbacked, I'm crazy, I'm knock-kneed and bow-legged as well!" He grinned. "A song my daddy taught me." He grabbed the controls and jerked the half-wheel over and down to the left.

  "Whut're your doin', honky shit toad?" shrieked Grace.

  It was instantly apparent that Runyan knew exactly what he was doing. As she tried unsuccessfully to wrest back control of the plane from him, he executed a rapid series of intricate maneuvers--Immelmanns, barrel rolls, stalls. Then he levelled her off and picked up the Burbank radio beam again.

  "It's just like riding a bike, Grace," he said. "You never forget how."

  "I knew you were fucking trouble the moment you walked into Taps's office," she muttered.

  "Was thrown in," Runyan corrected her. "This isn't trouble, Grace. This is the end of trouble."

  CHAPTER 25

  It was 1:21 in the morning. As they passed the Sunset Boulevard exit, Grace got the rented Cougar into the right lane of the San Diego Freeway. Traffic was late-night fast but light. Louise was beside her in the front seat; Taps and Runyan were in the back. The night was clear and dark and crisp, 20 degrees warmer than Yosemite had been. "Brother Blood's out making a coke buy," said Taps. "You got one hour for sure, maybe more."

  "An hour's enough," said Runyan, fighting to keep the irritation out of his voice. Pregame tension.

  "So you keep telling me," said Taps. Tension strummed in his voice also.

  They must have gone over the plan in broad strokes a hundred, two hundred times in Q, a fantasy scheme to pass a few of the endless prison hours. Now it was happening.

  Grace took the Wilshire Boulevard exit, following the offramp down and around under the freeway past the sterile landscaped Veterans Administration, then east on Wilshire past the anachronistic one-story red-roofed Ships Restaurant in Westwood, a gaudy soft palate for the new high-rise condo teeth that lined Wilshire like multimillion-dollar inlays. A half mile beyond, she turned off near the ultraprivate L.A. Country Club.

  She turned again, then slowed to crawl past a pair of highrise condos that took up an entire block. She pointed.

  "Brother Blood's penthouse is in the one on the right."

  "You go in the one on the left," said Taps unnecessarily. "Not so much security."

  Runyan didn't say anything at all. He wished Taps hadn't come up with that idea about Runyan not leaving the penthouse with the bonds on his person. He desperately wanted it not to mean the obvious, but he'd have to find out the hard way.

  Grace turned right at the next corner, then right again and stopped. They were now behind the buildings. Runyan took a deep silent breath, gripped his black nylon stuff bag.

  "Twelve minutes," he told the back of Grace's head as he opened his door and stepped out into the street.

  Without turning, she said, "I'll be ready."

  Runyan closed his door without slamming, went around behind the back of the waiting car to the curb side. Although the street was residential-area deserted, he could hear occasional cars on Wilshire two blocks away. Louise reached a hand out of her window and he took it. Her skin was warm, almost hot, as if she were slightly feverish.

  "Eight years," he said with a nervous grin. Eight years in the belly of the beast.

  "Eight years better," Louise said.

  Runyan nodded jauntily; his jitters had disappeared at her
words. Taps stuck his head and one arm out of the rear window; the manicured nail of his long brown forefinger made tiny ticking noises against the crystal of his watch.

  "The power goes off fifteen minutes after Grace goes in. Then you got ninety seconds to get on and off the cable, or-"

  "Or I fry," said Runyan.

  "And remember Brother Blood owns the damn building, so when you've made the switch-"

  "I know what to do," Runyan said flatly.

  ***

  Grace drove aimlessly to kill the extra minutes. Taps leaned his forearms on the back of the front seat, his head behind and between those of the two women in front of him.

  "We got a couple minutes for insurance. Swing by the dealer's an' make sure Brother Blood is where he's spozed to be."

  They crossed Beverly Glen on Lindbrook, near Holmby drove by a long black Mercedes limo with a middle-aged black chauffeur leaning against the front fender and smoking a fat brown cigar.

  "Yeah!" exclaimed Taps. "We're on!"

  Grace drove the Cougar back the way she had come, stopped on a side street a block from the condos. Taps got out; he wore work clothes and a Dodgers souvenir baseball cap and carried an electrician's tool box.

  "You got five minutes," he warned Grace.

  "I be late, shugah," she drawled, "you fire my ass."

  Taps watched the car drive away. It was all expensive homes here, in the multi-hundred-thousand-dollar range. Pool man on Mondays, wetback Mexican gardeners on Wednesdays, private school for the kids, vacation in Puerto Vallarta with Europe every third year. Well, his turn now.

  He walked quickly back to a manhole cover flush with the concrete, took a stubby wrecking bar out from under his windbreaker, inserted the bent end into the socket, and heaved the cover aside. It grated loudly in the still night air. He sat down on the edge, found the ladder with his toes, shot another look around, then went down out of sight. The cover grated back, clanging dully into place. The street was deserted again.

  Grace had parked the Cougar in mid-block so it wasn't really in front of either high-rise. Louise, leaning back against the locked door on her side of the car, watched Grace use the tipped-down rear-view mirror to make herself into a whore. Grace caught her eye in the mirror and winked.

  "Your man's gonna be just fine, honey," she said.

  "I thought you didn't like him," said Louise coldly.

  "Said he was trouble."

  From a handbag big enough to hold an Uzi machine gun, she took purple three-inch spikes and a bright purple silk scarf. She cinched the scarf tight around her middle, leaving the ends hanging over one hip. Then she jerked the zipper of her shimmery red jumpsuit down almost to her navel.

  "I like you and him together, shugah," she drawled. "You go by your gut feelin' with a man, you don't never be wrong."

  She wore no brassiere; her breasts were magnificent, bared almost to the edge of the areolas, but she frowned down at them, then began rolling her nipples between her fingers and thumbs until they stood up boldly against the thin satin material.

  Finally she looked over at Louise. "How do I look?"

  "Like a two-dollar quickie on the back seat."

  Grace winked again. "You got it, shugah."

  She opened her door and got out. Louise slid over under the wheel. She had always considered herself quite sophisticated; Grace made her feel young and naive as a virgin.

  She called, "Good luck." Grace turned and gave her a street-urchin's grin and a thumbs-up signal, then cut at an angle across the carefully barbered and lit lawn toward the front entrance of the condo which did not have Brother Blood's penthouse perched on top of it.

  ***

  Picking any lock takes a certain amount of time and a great deal of skill. It is not the simple matter that television would have us believe. Nobody ever picked a lock with one pick; at the outset a tension tool--an L-shaped piece of spring steel-must be inserted into the keyhole and turned slightly so that as each pin is raised to its shear line the tension will keep it from falling back down into the core.

  Runyan had spent 2.5 minutes trying to "rake" the lock of the basement rear service entrance of the high-rise-the quick and easy way which sometimes works in a matter of seconds--then had gotten serious: another 7.55 minutes with his tension tool and a curved-tip pick before the lock finally yielded.

  He made no move to open the door, instead held it just fractionally ajar; he knew that a closed-circuit TV scanning camera was covering the inside of it. The luminous dial of his watch told him there was less than a minute to go.

  ***

  Emery Samnic was 47 years old, had been married to the same woman for 26 years and despite this--or because of it-had his sexual fantasies like any other man. For five nights a week he wore the uniform of a security guard and sat behind the security desk in the high-rise lobby.

  It was good duty. Tipped back in his swivel chair, he had only to turn his head to examine the bank of TV screen monitors set against the back of the security cubicle. The monitors covered the condo's entrances, doorways, corridors, and the interiors of the elevators. In one a guard walked a corridor; the others showed nothing at all.

  Then a beautiful black woman appeared in the front entrance monitor to push the night buzzer. It sounded behind Emery's desk. She waited with a hip thrust out provocatively, her big gaudy handbag tucked under one arm, tapping a three-inch spike against the pavement, a thin brown cigar between her lips.

  There was no one else with her, but Emery stood up and loosened the Smith and Wesson .38 Police Special in his belt holster before pushing the button to release the door catch. On the screen, the black woman opened the door and disappeared. The real Grace, in living color, simultaneously came across the lobby toward his desk, her heels clop-clopping on the terrazzo, everything moving the way women's bodies moved in his fantasies. Her expression was go-to-hell and she obviously wore no bra or panties under the clinging red jumpsuit.

  Emery cleared his throat and said, "This isn't your sort of place, sister."

  Grace put her elbows on his counter, thrusting out her butt and languidly blowing smoke in his face.

  "I is invited, honey." She had a slightly husky voice.

  She could see past Emery's thick waist to the basement monitor. Runyan opened the loading door and entered boldly. She leaned closer yet, giving Emery the news all the way to her navel. As Runyan walked over to the freight elevator and pushed the button, Grace pointed at the house phone with a very long synthetic purple nail.

  "Why don't you phone up the man and find out? Apartment ... Two-Three-Seven."

  What sort of business would the Rotzels have with this sort of woman at almost two in the morning? The old man was a deacon of the Baptist church, for Pete sake.

  "This time of night. .." he began, letting it hang.

  Grace moved her cleavage closer; across the lobby, the elevator indicator glowed as the cage descended to Runyan.

  "It was a urgent phone call, shugah," she said. "I swear I think that man was watching a dirty movie and he's got his motor running, you know what I mean..."

  Emery knew what she meant: He could feel his dork pushing out against the heavy twill uniform pants. Jesus, what would it be like to put the old banana into something like that?

  He unconsciously blew out a deep breath and picked up the house phone and tapped out two-three-seven. On the monitors, the elevator door opened and Runyan stepped through, disappearing from the basement screen to be instantly picked up by the adjacent elevator camera. Grace could hear an angry squawking voice on the phone. Hurry, Runyan, damn you!

  Emery said unhappily into the phone, "This is Emery on the lobby desk downstairs. I'm sorry to disturb you, sir, but there's a young lady here who says. .." He broke off to listen to more squawks, finally said, "I know what time it is, sir, I surely do, but she says you wanted. .."

  Grace, watching Runyan spring up and knock open the elevator ceiling trap, reached across the counter to grab the phone out of
Emery's hand.

  "Lemme talk to him," she said, then said into the phone, "Listen, buster, you phone up an' say you needs an Around the World, bad, now what's this shit about-"

  "Who is this?" demanded a high scratchy man's voice. "How dare you use language like that to me? My wife and I are Christian people who-"

  "So you got your old lady there, so I takes care of her too," said Grace, winking at the open-mouthed Emery. "All it'll cost you is an extra fifty-"

  "I'm going to call the police and report you!" shrieked the man on the phone. On the monitor, Runyan was tossing his stuff bag up through the ceiling trap. In front of her, Emery was starting to turn toward the monitors. Grace quickly thrust the phone back into his hands.

  "Man wanta talk to you."

  On the monitor, Runyan crouched for his leap.

  On the phone, the confused Emery said, "I ... I'm real sorry, Mr. Rotzel, I didn't know she was going to-"

  "Rotzel?"

  Grace reached over and broke the connection in mid-word. Behind Emery, Runyan leaped up and grabbed the edges of the trap.

  "Rotzel ain't the name of the dude phone up! What's this here address?"

  "Uh ... Twelve-Forty-two Boningto-"

  "Shee-it, shugah, I got the wrong building!"

  Grace winked at Emery and swivelled her way toward the door, her exaggerated hip swing holding his lusting eyes long enough for Runyan to disappear through the trap in the elevator ceiling. As the door closed behind Grace, Emery wiped the sheen of sweat from his forehead and whirled belatedly to check the monitors. Everything was serene, nothing moving anywhere.

  CHAPTER 26

  Standing on the roof of the elevator cage, Runyan fit the Jumars to the cable. The clock was really running now. He put his feet in the slings and, black nylon stuff bag clipped to his belt, began walking himself up the cable. Could it have been just two days ago that Louise had watched him do this under the overhang on Monday Morning Slab? ***