Demons

by Bill Pronzini

  “Yes, I see what you mean.” She jabbed out her cigarette in an oyster shell ashtray, immediately lit another. “Even if you do find her, it’ll take time. Won’t it? A lot of time?”

  “It might. Then again, I might get lucky.”

  “What do we do in the meantime?”

  “About Cahill? Unless your husband presses assault charges, I’m afraid there’s nothing much you can do. Except to not provoke him if he calls again. And first thing Monday, contact the phone company and have your number changed.”

  “What if he comes here to the house?”

  “I don’t think he will.”

  “But if he does?”

  “Don’t let him in, don’t talk to him under any circumstances. But the best safeguard is not to be here, none of you.”

  “You mean convince Vic to go away for a while.”

  “The three of you, yes. Visit friends… go someplace you’ve enjoyed together in the past, familiar surroundings.”

  “He won’t do that either,” she said. “I can’t get him to do anything anymore. He just won’t listen to me.”

  “Is he talking to you at all?”

  “Barely.”

  “Say anything about what happened with Cahill?”

  “Not a word. He’s in a great deal of pain. I think if he wasn’t he’d have tried to leave, to go back to her house today. I hid his car keys, both sets. Ridiculous, isn’t it? Having to do a thing like that with a forty-year-old man?”

  I put an awkward hand on her arm. Gently I said, “Maybe I can get through to him. He was willing enough to talk to me on the way to the hospital.”

  “To a stranger but not to his wife and son.”

  “Guilt, Mrs. Runyon. You know that.”

  “Yes, I know, but it still hurts…” Angrily she snuffed out her second cancer stick. “Oh, shit,” she said, “let’s go inside. I don’t know why I came out here in the first place. I thought painting might ease my mind, but I should have known better. I can’t concentrate-I can barely think straight.”

  Inside the house, in the kitchen, she said, “Would you like a drink? Some coffee?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “I’m going to have a Scotch. I need one. You want to talk to Vic alone, don’t you?”

  “It would be better that way.”

  “He’s in the TV room. At least, that’s where he was earlier. Straight through that door over there.”

  I went through the door and across a dining area, following the muted babble of television voices. The TV room was large, comfortably furnished. No Dreamsicle effect here; the color scheme was autumnal browns and golds. Victor Runyon sat in a recliner, both feet flat on the floor. He wore slippers and a bathrobe. The bandage across the middle of his face, the bruises that had spread upward from his broken nose to darken his eyes, made him look grotesque and pathetic. I might have felt compassion for him if he’d been a different sort of man, suffering for different reasons; as it was, I felt nothing. All my tender mercies were reserved for his wife and son.

  The pained eyes stared blankly at a twenty-five-inch TV screen, where cartoon characters screeched and gabbled and chased each other across a cartoon landscape. He didn’t know I was there until I moved over to form a block between him and the screen; then he blinked and his head lifted and he stared at me.

  “Remember me?” I said. “I’m the detective who hauled your sorry ass to the hospital last night.”

  That failed to get a rise out of him. He said in a monotone, “I remember.”

  “I’ve identified the man who attacked you. His name is Cahill, Eddie Cahill. He’s been in prison twice before, once for felony assault. Two years ago, before he went to jail the second time, he threatened and harassed Nedra Merchant to the point where she had a lawyer obtain a restraining order against him. She never told you about that?”

  “No.”

  “He’s a dangerous man, Runyon. A threat to you and your family. Something has to be done about him.”

  No answer.

  “I’m telling you the hard truth here. I saw him again this afternoon, tried to talk sense to him; he won’t listen. He’s convinced you’ve harmed Nedra in some way. Sooner or later he’ll come after you, or maybe after your wife and son. You can prevent that by pressing assault charges against him. How about it, Runyon?”

  “Go to the police? Tell them about Nedra and me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t,” he said.

  “Why not? A lot of people know the truth now-your wife, your son, me, Cahill, Nedra’s ex-husband, her shrink, a couple of others. What difference does it make if the police know too?”

  Silence.

  “If you don’t give a damn about yourself, fine. But think about your family for a change.”

  “I won’t let anything happen to my family.”

  “No? How are you going to prevent it?”

  “I won’t let anything happen.”

  “There’s Nedra too,” I said. “He’ll be a threat to her when she comes home, if you don’t put him back in prison where he belongs.”

  “Nedra,” Runyon said. As if he were invoking the name of a deity.

  “So? What’s it going to be?”

  “I have to think.”

  “Don’t take too long.”

  “I won’t.” He moved painfully in the chair. “Go away now, will you? Leave me alone.”

  “One question first,” I said, and asked him about the empty spare-key hook in Nedra’s desk drawer, the one marked “Thorn.” “Mean anything to you-the abbreviation?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sure? There’s no place she used to go that starts with ‘Thorn.,’ no person she knows with that kind of name?”

  “No,” he said again, and again he shifted position, wincing. “Please go away. Talking makes my face hurt.”

  Mine, too-talking to him. I went away and left him alone.

  ***

  KERRY HADN’T CALLED BACK. The only message on my office machine was from James Keverne, Nedra Merchant’s attorney.

  I sat down at my desk. After six-thirty now; the building was silent as a tomb. Too late to call Keverne back-but he would be in his office tomorrow morning, he’d said. Too late to do much of anything else work-related tonight. The evening stretched out ahead, so long and far that I couldn’t see the end of it. Friday evening. For most people it was T.G.I.F., the beginning of a weekend of freedom. Dinners out, shows, nightclubs, ball games… lovemaking too. But not for me. Not for Kerry, either, by her own testimony.

  Why hadn’t she called back? She couldn’t be that busy, for Christ’s sake.

  I caught up the phone, punched out her private number at Bates and Carpenter. No answer. Not tonight. I just can’t. I’ve got to get some more work done on the Blessing account. I stayed on the line, and pretty soon the call was switched automatically to B and C’s in-house switchboard. I asked the operator if Kerry was still on the premises; she said Ms. Wade was unavailable. What the hell did that mean, unavailable? It sounded evasive. I asked when Ms. Wade would be available and the operator said she didn’t know, did I want to leave a message? No, I said, no message.

  I went and got some water and put it on the hot plate to boil. Then I watched it boil. Then I made a cup of instant coffee. Things to do with my hands and my eyes; little time killers.

  Getting darker in here now. even though there were still a couple of hours of daylight left: clouds crawling over the sky, fat gray bloated things that shut out the sun. The night sounds were already starting-groans and mutters in the walls, like an old man complaining aloud to himself. Why don’t buildings make noises in the daytime? Or if they do, why don’t we hear them even when it’s quiet? Why do old joints creak and phantoms walk only at night?

  I took my coffee to the desk. And in my mind’s eye I could see myself sitting there in the darkening room, hunched and alone with the cup steaming in one hand. Pathetic image, like one of those black-and-white studies you see in
arty photographic books, above titles like “Estranged” and “Study in Twilight.”

  To hell with that; no man wants to view himself as a cliche. I got up again, carried the coffee down the hall to the toilet, and emptied it out. Then I locked up and let the spooks have the office and the building to themselves.

  CHAPTER 13

  THE HEAVY FRIDAY NIGHT exodus from the city had eased somewhat, so traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge was no longer a stop-and-go snarl. I drove across and then down into Sausalito. Parking along the main drag, Bridgeway, was out of the question, but I lucked into a space on one of the hillside streets not too far away. Standing-room-only at the No-Name Bar, where I went sometimes when I wanted a gaggle of people around me and where I had once met Sterling Hayden, the actor and writer. I had two beers and didn’t talk to anyone on this visit except a waitress, who looked right through me. I was there fifteen minutes; it was as if I weren’t there at all. A lot of imaginative types think it would be amusing to have the power of invisibility, even for just a day, like the character in the H. G. Wells story. I know it wouldn’t be.

  Bayfront and other downtown restaurants were all packed, with waiting lists of an hour or more. I drove out to the north part of town, where there are some little eating places in shopping centers, and found one where I had to wait only ten minutes for a table. I splurged on a crab Louie and another beer. Didn’t talk to anybody there either; the waiter paid no more attention to me as an individual than the No-Name waitress.

  Afterward I went for a walk along the bay. The way the dark water moved, the way the lights shimmered on the surface, as though they were trapped beneath it rather than reflected off it, had an oddly hypnotic effect on me. I could feel the pull of all that quiet, rippling dark, the allure of it… and after a while it made me uneasy. This was no place for me tonight, feeling as I did, with the loneliness and the uncertainty about Kerry weighing heavy on my mind. No damn place for a loner to be alone.

  Back to the car, back to the city. I knew where I was going without having to think about it.

  ***

  THE BUILDING IN WHICH Bates and Carpenter had its offices was a high-rise on Kearney, on the fringe of the Financial District. The doors were locked at six o’clock on weeknights, so you had to go through the security desk to get in or out afterhours. For nonemployees of one of the firms, that meant you couldn’t get past the lobby without authorization and proper ID. And employees and nonemployees alike had to sign in and out.

  I rang the lobby bell and the guard on the desk came over to see what I wanted. His name was Ben Spicer; I knew him because he was a retired cop, like a lot of night security people, and because I’d been here after six to meet Kerry on several occasions. He opened up as soon as he recognized me.

  “Kerry Wade still working late at B and C, Ben?”

  “No, you missed her. She left a couple of hours ago.”

  “… That long? You sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “Alone?”

  “Somebody with her, I think. At least they signed out at the same time.”

  “Man or woman?”

  “Man.”

  “Tall, slender, good-looking, silver at the temples?”

  “That’s him.”

  Metallic taste in my mouth now. “You know who he is?”

  “Well, he doesn’t work for B and C or anyplace else in the building, I can tell you that. But I’ve seen him before.”

  “With Kerry, recently?”

  “Time or two, now that I think about it,” Spicer said. “Why? You got a problem?”

  I made myself smile; it felt like a rictus. “No, no problem. What’s his name, Ben?”

  “I’m lousy with names of people I don’t know. I can check the register.”

  “If you wouldn’t mind.”

  He crossed to the security desk, consulted the register, came back. “Paul Blessing. Odd name. Count your blessings, huh?”

  “Yeah,” I said. I’ve got to do some more work on the Blessing account. Or on Paul Blessing himself. Count your blessings. “Kerry didn’t happen to say where she was going, did she?”

  “Afraid she didn’t.”

  “Thanks, Ben.”

  “Sure. Hope everything’s okay. You look kind of sick.”

  “Something I ate, that’s all.”

  Double lie. Something I was trying to swallow and couldn’t choke down.

  ***

  IN THE DAYS BEFORE HIV began killing people, Henry the Eighth’s had been a flagship in the sexual revolution-a singles hangout, a meat market. Kerry had told me that once and I’d kidded her about having firsthand knowledge. She’d been mildly offended. Casual sex wasn’t for her; never had been, never would be. She had to care about a man before she went to bed with him. “Contrary to what you may think,” she’d said, “I am not an easy lay.”

  Count your blessings.

  These days, with AIDS a full-scale epidemic thanks to head-in-the-sand politicians, Henry the Eighth’s had a new, more sedate image. Live jazz had replaced canned rock, and sex was no longer the primary topic of conversation. Men took their wives there now. Men took their lady friends and mistresses there too. Men like Barney Rivera. Men like Paul Blessing.

  Not tonight, though. Big Friday night crowd, dancing, drinking, couples holding hands and intimate discussions; it took me a while to canvass the place, hating what I was doing the whole time. Hating myself, too, because now I wasn’t just the sad loner, the invisible man, but a different and even more piteous cliche: man on the hunt for a woman who might be cheating. The kind of job I despised when it was offered to me professionally. The kind of job, in reverse, that Joe DeFalco had talked me into doing for Kay Runyon.

  Kerry wasn’t there. I saw a couple of tall, fortyish, silver-templed types, but the women they were with were strangers. Been here and gone? Where? His place? Hers? Would she take him home with her? Bad enough if she went with him, but if she took him to her apartment, if she took him into the bed she’d shared with me…

  ***

  SHE HADN’T. Not tonight anyway.

  I drove from the Financial District to Diamond Heights, hating myself even more, and made two passes in front of her building on Gold Mine Drive. No sign of her car. Then I dropped down to the street below, parked and got out at a point where you could look up and see her balcony and windows. The drapes were drawn and the lights were off.

  ***

  PAUL BLESSING.

  All right, who was Paul Blessing?

  Back downtown, driving in a kind of fog now. O’Farrell again, and into my building, and upstairs to my office. Telephone directory. Blessing, Paul or P. No listing. But there was a listing for Blessing Furniture Showrooms on Mission and Sixteenth. The Yellow Pages carried a half-page ad for Blessing Furniture Showrooms; they specialized in solid oak and walnut furnishings and sofa beds, and had three branches-Cupertino, Lafayette, and Millbrae. Large enough operation to benefit from a professionally orchestrated advertising campaign. And Bates and Carpenter actively solicited the business of small chain outfits in a variety of enterprises.

  I hauled out my accumulation of White Pages for the nine Bay Area counties and began to hunt through them. He lived in Marin County; at least, there was a listing for Blessing, Paul M., in Tiburon, and Tiburon was the kind of upscale community that attracted successful business types. I copied down the address and telephone number. Then I combed the remaining directories to find out if there were any other Paul or P. Blessings in the area. There weren’t.

  I wondered if he had a wife over there in Tiburon.

  I wondered if he and Kerry were in a motel room somewhere.

  I wondered if he loved her or was just using her.

  I wondered if she loved him.

  After a while, when I was sick with wondering, I closed up the office again and went home to wonder some more.

  ***

  I KEPT THINKING, SITTING in the dark of my living room, that it was my fault.

&
nbsp; That in a way I had set it up-not the specific circumstances of the affair, but the climate that had allowed it to happen. Unconsciously, but with the same precision and results as if it had been a calculated plan. Loner, workaholic, lapsed idealist… that was me, all right. But no matter what I had led myself to believe, Kerry was none of those things. She needed people; she needed a well-rounded life; she needed dreams and ideals to sustain her. And from me she needed more than a few hours or a few days, catch-as-catch-can-uninspired, predictable hours and days at that, with no excitement and no real passion except in bed. All my careful rationalizations about how much alike we were were so much crap. Soulmates? No way. Her soul was bright and mine was dark-and it was possible, even probable, that she’d understood that longer and better than I did, that it was the one true reason she refused to marry me.

  My fault. Sad-eyed loner with his heart on his sleeve… not such a bad way to look at yourself, because it was an acceptable self-image. The troubled knight, good and noble, jousting for justice. But in others’ eyes, the image might not be half so appealing. What was my kind of loner, when you broke him down to basics, but a weak and selfish person? Pretending other people matter a great deal to him, paying lip service to how much empathy he has-but maybe the truth is, no one matters much except as they pertain directly to him, and his only real empathy is for himself.

  The few individuals he lets get close to him are there to feed his vanity, to help him maintain his positive self-image. Ah, but those few have minds of their own, different needs and agendas, different ways of looking at things, and sooner or later they begin to chafe under the yoke of his selfishness, to stop collaborating in it. And instead of understanding, adapting, he shifts the blame to them and maneuvers them out of his life.