Demons

by Bill Pronzini

  Agonistes went home with Kay Runyon’s check for five hundred dollars; she hadn’t batted an eye when I told her his fee. I drove the Runyons back to Ashbury Heights. Matt and his father went straight into the house. Mrs. Runyon stayed for a few words with me.

  “You’ll keep looking for Nedra?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “I thought you would but I wanted to be sure. If we’re ever going to have Vic back, Matt and I, it won’t be until he knows she’s dead. Or alive and no longer available to him.”

  “I’ll be in touch, Mrs. Runyon.”

  “Thank you,” she said, and before she went into the house she did an odd thing: She leaned up and kissed me on the cheek. It made me feel old. And it made me feel bad, because it started me thinking again about Kerry.

  ***

  I COULDN’T GO HOME, not yet, and I had no taste for restaurant food or tavern beer. Where else but to the damn office? No messages: still no word from Kerry. Unless she’d called me at home… but I knew I wouldn’t find a message from her there either. I sat at my desk and tried to lose myself in paperwork, all there was to occupy my hands and my head at seven o’clock on a Saturday evening.

  Twenty slow-moving minutes of that-and the telephone bell went off, so loud in the heavy silence that I dropped the pen I was using to sign a dun letter.

  I picked up fast, knowing it wouldn’t be Kerry, hoping it would be. It was Kay Runyon. Sounding upset again, frantic to the point of tears.

  “It’s Vic,” she said.

  “What about him?”

  “He found where I hid his car keys. He’s… gone.”

  “Take it easy. Maybe he just needed to get out for a while. Even if he went up to Crestmont-”

  “You don’t understand. I mean he’s gone. He left me a note. In the bedroom, on the nightstand.”

  “A note? Saying what?”

  “Saying good-bye.”

  CHAPTER 16

  I ASKED HER, “HOW long ago did he leave?”

  “Within the hour. Matt had a date tonight and I went to the store. There wasn’t anything to eat in the house and I thought it would be all right to leave Vic alone for a little while…”

  “He seemed okay when you left?”

  “Yes. He was in the bedroom, lying down.”

  “Did he have much to say after I dropped you off?”

  “More than he has lately. He said he was glad you’d talked him into signing a complaint against Cahill. He said now he didn’t have to worry about anything happening to Matt and me.” She made a sticky breathing sound, as if she were having respiratory difficulties. “Oh God, I’m afraid, I’m so afraid.”

  I didn’t have to ask her why. I could hear Runyon saying to me earlier, talking about his family: They’d be better off without me. Deep depression, a feeling of hopelessness… and if he’d stopped believing finally that Nedra Merchant was alive, that she’d come back and take up with him again, you had more than a note saying good-bye. You had a man shaking hands with death.

  She said, “I think he took a gun with him.”

  Fine, dandy. “What kind of gun?”

  “I’m not sure… a pistol, for target shooting. He used to take Matt target shooting. It was packed away in the garage and now it’s gone. I looked before I called you.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about the gun before?”

  “He hadn’t had it out in so long, I just forgot about it. Until I read that note…”

  He didn’t want to do it there, I thought, where she or Matt would find him. Nedra’s house? Would he want to die there, sully the seat of his shrine? Maybe, maybe not. He was a sick man; there was no way to predict what kind of thoughts were working inside the head of a man with his type of affliction.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Kay Runyon said. “Tell me what to do. Should I call the police?”

  “Yes. As soon as we hang up. Talk to Inspector Branislaus if he’s in, tell him exactly what you told me. Then call the suicide prevention hotline; their people are trained in this sort of thing.”

  “All right. Will you try to find him too?”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  “That woman’s house…”

  “It’s the first place I’ll check.”

  “I was going to drive there myself,” she said, “but if he’s there… if he’d already… I couldn’t stand to find him, to see him like that…”

  “You don’t have to explain, Mrs. Runyon.”

  I heard her draw another sticky breath. “His office… that’s another place he might have gone. Should I try to call there?”

  “After you’ve talked to the police and suicide prevention.”

  “Yes, all right.”

  “Is there anywhere else he might be? Someplace private he goes when he wants to be by himself?”

  “Mount Davidson,” she said. “He… the monument up there, the cross. He’s always found it a peaceful place. We used to go together sometimes…”

  “Anyplace else?”

  “I can’t think of anyplace.”

  “Call my car phone if he comes home or you hear from him or the police. If I don’t contact you, you’ll know I haven’t found him and I’m still looking.”

  I got her off the line so she could ring Branislaus. The police weren’t going to do much except put out a pickup-and-hold order on Runyon, but it would have been cruel to tell her that. Cops are overworked, especially on summer Saturday nights, and all she had to give them was a husband gone for one hour, a missing target pistol, and an uncorroborated suspicion that he intended to do himself harm; he’d never even mentioned suicide to her or she’d have told me about it. The suicide prevention people couldn’t do much either, except to help hold her together. If anybody tracked down Victor Runyon before he pulled the trigger on himself-or afterward-the chances were it would be me.

  ***

  HE WASN’T AT NEDRA MERCHANT’S house. No sign of his BMW on Crestmont, and the place was dark and still locked up tight. But I parked and went in to check it anyway, just to make sure.

  While I was at the door, a car rolled uphill and then swung over directly in front of the gate, on the side of the street where you weren’t supposed to park. I recrossed the deck, went through the gate. The car was a new, beige Cadillac Eldorado, and the man getting out of it was Walter Merchant.

  We both stopped and looked at each other, him with one hand holding the car door open. His expression said he was puzzled, concerned, and a little sheepish. The bright glaze on his eyes said he’d been out liquor tasting. He wasn’t hammered, but he wasn’t sober either.

  “What’re you doing here, Mr. Merchant?”

  “I might ask you the same thing.” No word-slur, at least.

  “Looking for somebody on behalf of my client.”

  “One of her conquests?”

  “Who I’m looking for is my business.”

  “Wouldn’t have anything to do with Nedra’s disappearance, would it?”

  “No, it wouldn’t. I told you I’d let you know if I found out what happened to her. I haven’t; I still don’t have a clue. Now, why are you here?”

  He let out a boozy sigh. “I can’t give you much of an answer, I’m afraid. I’ve been for drinks with a client who lives over on Parnassus. That’s not far away and on my way home I thought, well, why not?” He chuckled self-deprecatingly. “Oh, hell, I don’t know. Nedra’s been on my mind ever since you told me she was missing.”

  “You come up here often, do you?”

  “Christ, no. This is the first time in years.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “The truth, whether you believe it or not. I was married to the woman for five years, lived with her in this house for five years. I’m concerned about her-you can understand that, can’t you?”

  I could understand it, all right. His torch was burning hot again after years of being dampered down to a sizzle; hell, I was the one who’d relit it for him. So now here he was, mooning around up here
too. Runyon and Cahill and now Merchant-a regular goddamn convention of bewitched males making pilgrimages to the lair of the enchantress.

  Merchant said, “You leaving now?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Me too. Home and hearth await.”

  “Maybe you’d better sit here for a while. Or go for a walk, get some fresh air.”

  “I’m sober enough to drive.”

  “Are you? The legal limit is point-oh-eight and you’re carrying more than that for sure.”

  “Never cite the law to a lawyer,” he said.

  He got into the car. I thought about reaching in, yanking his keys out of the ignition; but it would probably mean laying hands on him, and he was litigious as hell. I might have done it anyway, but I’d waited too long: he slammed the door and I heard the lock click.

  I leaned down to the window. “Don’t kill anybody on your way home.”

  He pulled a face-half smile and half grimace-saluted, and put the car in gear. The U-turn he executed was slow and careful; so was his progress around the first curve and out of sight. So maybe he wouldn’t kill anybody on the way home, himself included-the damn fool.

  ***

  MOUNT DAVIDSON WAS ONLY A FEW miles from Mount Sutro; I went up there next. Highest hill in San Francisco at over nine hundred feet, and atop it, one of the city’s manmade parks dominated by the huge cross where Easter morning services are held every year. Lonely enough spot at night, despite regular police patrols-just the sort of place that might attract a potential suicide. But not Victor Runyon, at least not this soon after nightfall. None of the cars parked up there was a BMW.

  Downtown. SoMa was jumping: bright lights, restless crowds, and just about any kind of night action you wanted, from stand-up comedians to sadomasochistic gay sex shows performed by leather-clad men in cages. The building in which Runyon had his business office was shut down, but there was a security guard in residence. He knew Runyon, he said. And hadn’t seen him in over a week. He assured me that there was no way Runyon could have gotten into the building tonight unseen.

  Getting on toward ten o’clock now. I headed up Market: no place to go except back to Crestmont, start all over again. Nights like this, on missions like this, I felt like a hunk of metal hurtling through black space. Moving at speed, veering off on tangents now and then, sometimes traveling in circles, but without any real destination or purpose in the scheme of the universe; lighted objects all around, some close, some remote, none with any connection to me-other fragments rushing on their aimless courses, different and yet fundamentally the same. A small, useless thing, all alone on a zigzag course toward the edge of the void.

  Bad thinking-bad anytime. I switched on the radio to get some distracting noise into the car. Drive, just drive, don’t think.

  Crestmont, the red-shingled house. Still no sign of Runyon.

  Mount Davidson. Still no sign of Runyon.

  I came down out of the park on Dalewood, swung over and got onto Portola Drive. But instead of heading down Market again, I turned on Diamond Heights Boulevard. Useless to go to SoMa again; he wasn’t going to be at his office now either. Out driving around somewhere, maybe, trying to work up enough nerve to blow himself away. Or already dead in some other private place. Why the hell keep chasing around the way I had been? Why try to stop him at all? Just let the poor bastard do it, if he hadn’t already. He was no good to his family anymore, likely never would be again; and worst of all, he was no good to himself. Everybody concerned would be better off with him dead and gone.

  But I didn’t believe it. I was not that cynical-not yet. Busted-up humans like Runyon could be fixed; and even if they couldn’t, the people who loved them had the moral right to keep them alive. In Runyon’s case, I had the moral obligation to help his loved ones keep him alive. I had played the vengeful god once, not long ago: decided spur-of-the-moment that the world would be better off with a man dead and then made him that way. The man had been evil, but that didn’t make what I’d done right; just, maybe, but not right. It was a decision and a responsibility I never wanted to be mine again.

  Back to SoMa, then, and the whole circuit a third time if necessary. But not just yet. First, a little detour up Gold Mine Drive.

  ***

  KERRY WASN’T HOME.

  I didn’t see her car on two passes, and when I U-turned and came back again I parked in front of her building and went into the foyer and rang her bell. I could have let myself in with my key; I could have gone into her apartment and poked around to see if there was any evidence of an affair with Paul Blessing. I even thought for a few seconds about doing just that. But I couldn’t go through with it, any more than I could drive over to Tiburon and see if she was with Blessing at his house. Or come back here later and hang around to find out if she came home.

  I did not want to learn the truth in any of those ways, on the sly, like the sleazy keyhole peepers and divorce mucksters that had given my profession a bad name. I had too much respect for Kerry, for what we’d had together, for myself, to invade her privacy and turn a painful situation into an ugly one. A little dignity isn’t much to hang on to when a relationship starts to come apart, but it’s something at least. Something important.

  ***

  A LITTLE DIGNITY.

  The phrase kept repeating itself in my mind as I drove-and I had a sudden insight into Eberhardt, into what had made him quit me the way he had.

  It wasn’t freedom he’d wanted; it was dignity.

  It wasn’t that he’d grown to dislike me; it was that I stood in the way of him liking himself.

  He’d put thirty years of his life into being a cop, a good honest cop, and frustrations and dissatisfactions had built up, and one day six years ago he’d made a sudden moral decision-just as I had in causing an evil man’s death-that went against everything he was and believed in. He’d let himself take a bribe. He changed his mind at the last minute, tried to back out of the deal, and that had spurred the briber to hire someone to murder him. The fact that he’d been shot down and nearly killed should have been punishment enough for his actions, but it wasn’t. He couldn’t reconcile the fact that he’d disgraced himself and his badge. Or that he’d compounded his guilt by not confessing to his superiors, by requesting an early retirement instead so he could keep his pension.

  I was part of the problem, too, a large part. I chanced to be at his house when the hired gun showed up, and I’d also been shot and wounded. One more burden for him to bear: his fall from grace had nearly cost me my life as well as his own. Then there was the capper: I’d recovered first and gone hunting the people responsible, and in the process learned the truth about the bribe. Before long I was the only one besides Eberhardt who did know.

  And yet, after he left the force he’d accepted my offer of a partnership because he had no other options. He’d thought he could live with the arrangement, but five-plus years of sharing an office and spending off-hours together had worn him down. I was a constant nagging reminder of the act he couldn’t forget, couldn’t forgive himself for. He must have seen himself as a loser, a sellout; and as he approached sixty, the feelings had grown more painful, less tolerable. He looked into the future and all he saw was more of the same. The grand-scale wedding to Bobbie Jean he’d planned in April had been a last-ditch effort to add some substance to his life; but he’d carried it too far and the whole thing had collapsed around him. Another loss, another failure. And I’d made it even worse by berating him, then losing my head and sucker-punching him in his own kitchen to end a heated argument.

  He had to get shut of me after that; it had just been a matter of time. It was the only way he could go on living with himself. And once he was free of me, opening his own agency-taking charge of what remained of his life-was the only way he could recapture some of his self-worth.

  The more I thought about it, the more I felt sure I’d hit on the truth. The insight made me feel something other than anger for the first time since he’d walked out;
it made me sad and it made me hurt for him. It also made me want to go see him, tell him I understood now, tell him I wished him well. But it was too late for any gesture like that. He wouldn’t have wanted to hear it from me. He had too much pride.

  Eb, I thought, goddamn it, Eb, it wasn’t just you. It wasn’t just me. Life does it to all of us, one way or another. Nobody can exist in a perfect vacuum, without some sin, some shame. There are no saints anymore, if there ever were.

  But he wouldn’t have wanted to hear that either.

  ***

  I DROVE THE CITY UNTIL nearly two a.m., back and forth from Forest Hill to Mount Davidson to SoMa. No Victor Runyon. And no call from his wife.

  Fatigue and hunger prodded me home finally. I didn’t feel like eating, but the pains in my belly were hot and insistent-I hadn’t had any food in eighteen hours-and I was afraid of doing some harm to myself. I forced down a sandwich. Half an apple, too, before I fell asleep sitting at the kitchen table.

  CHAPTER 17

  THE TELEPHONE RANG JUST as I was getting out of the shower. I hoped it would be Kerry, thought it was probably Kay Runyon; it was neither. Inspector Branislaus, SFPD.

  “Wake you up?” he asked.

  “No. I’ve been up for a while.”

  “Six o’clock for me. On a Sunday morning that’s obscene. I hate pulling weekend duty.”

  “What’s up, Branny? You find Runyon?”

  “Not yet, alive or dead. No, I’m calling about Eddie Cahill. I thought you’d want to know.”

  “Know what? Don’t tell me he’s still on the loose?”

  “Afraid so. Daly City officers went out to his address last night and he wasn’t there. They waited around quite a while, but he didn’t show. Early this morning they went back. He was there, but when they tried to take him into custody he assaulted one of the officers and got away.”