Spook

  Annotation

  Shaken after a hair’s-breadth escape from death, Nameless has made changes in his professional life, but he’s not put himself out to pasture. Again he enters San Francisco’s shadowy underworld, this time in a search for the identity of a gentle, mentally disturbed homeless man who has been found dead in an alley doorway. Clues are few, but eventually they bring the Nameless Detective to the small California town that drove the nameless victim tragically to murder and madness.

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  Bill Pronzini Prologue

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  Christmas Tamara

  Jake Runyon

  Bill

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  Bill Pronzini

  Spook

  For Marcia

  Prologue

  Hate. Rage.

  They’d lived in him for as long as he could remember, like parasites. He’d had them under control until the past year or so. Then they’d begun to feed on all the crap that’d happened to him — feed, grow, become stronger. Now they were bloated things that screamed in his head, burned in his belly, boiled and bubbled in his blood. He slept with them at night, woke with them in the morning, carried them heavy inside him all day, every day. He feared and fought them. Wanted them, clung to them, and knew that someday he’d give in to them.

  Here, tonight, they were wild. Howling, hurling themselves at the walls of his mind like a pair of animals in a cage rioting for escape.

  Hungry animals, demanding to be fed.

  Demanding blood.

  Almost there, almost feeding time. Three A.M. by the dashboard clock. Wet, empty city streets. Trash everywhere. Filth. This was where that hunk of human garbage had ended up. Mind rotted until he was little more than a drooling idiot dressed in rags, stumbling through filth during the day and sleeping in an alley doorway at night. But that wasn’t enough punishment for what that bastard had done. He’d gotten away with it too long, left too much wreckage behind. Been free too long. Lived too long.

  But there’d be justice tonight, by God. Justice! Then both the dead and the living would finally have some peace.

  Red light, blinking. He stopped the car and peered at a street sign through the slash of windshield wipers, the thin drizzle. Mariposa Street. The light changed; he turned west, went half a block until he was able to make out the black mouth of the alley. No other headlights on the street, nothing moving anywhere except wind-flung litter. He drove into the lightless tunnel between old buildings.

  The reach of his headlamps showed him emptiness, shadow-shapes at the edges and beyond. A little farther, at a crawl now. And the beams outlined the recessed doorway ahead on the right, the huddled mound lying there.

  His lips peeled back from his teeth. His head felt huge, as if it were being pumped full of air. But outwardly he was cool and calm. Hands steady, breathing normal, senses sharp as spikes. Like when he was on a hunting trip.

  He braked, shut off the headlights but left the engine running. Blackness outside, pulsing red inside. He opened the glove box, took out the six-cell flashlight first, then the Colt Delta.

  The gun, clean, oiled, loaded with a full clip, felt cold-hot in his hand; felt good, felt right. His Bushmaster assault rifle, his Micro Uzi, his shotguns were all wrong for the job — too large, made too much noise. His collection of sidearms hadn’t included a Colt .41, so he’d gone out and bought one special. The hollow-point ammo, too. Perfect, fitting. Hell, how could he even have thought of using any other kind of weapon?

  He stepped free of the car. Wind lashed his face, blew wetness into his eyes as he moved around to the front; he barely felt any of it. Pause to listen. Windsound. Rainsound. Nightstill. He put the flash beam on long enough to get his bearings, then groped blind to the building wall and shouldered along it ten paces to the doorway. He flicked the torch on again, angling it upward to splash white light against the metal door. In the downspill, the mound inside the tattered, grimy sleeping bag lay motionless. He let the beam slide slowly down the door, centered it on the huddled form. Piece of garbage still didn’t move.

  He kicked yielding flesh. Did it again, harder. Grunt, moan; the body flopped over and the head popped out like a turtle’s, the face turned up blind toward him. He’d seen from a distance what time had done to that face, but up close in the flashlight’s glare the sight lashed his hate to a frenzy. Ravished, shrunken, blotched and scabbed and wrinkled, but still the same fucking face.

  Sounds came out of the gap-toothed mouth, words that weren’t words. Then, clear enough, “Who’s that? Dot? Who’s there, Dottie?”

  Dot, Dottie!

  He went to one knee, put his face close to the hated face, held the beam to one side so the vague rheumy eyes could see him in the sideglow. “Look at me, you son of a bitch. You know who I am?”

  “No, no, Mr. Snow! Oh, oh, Mr. Snow!”

  “Not Snow, damn you. Look at me!”

  “Luke? Luke?”

  He straightened again, kicked the bastard savagely. The screech of pain was like music, high and hot.

  “Look at me! Who am I?”

  Blank stare. “Don’t know don’t care don’t know. You, Luke? You? Never believed you’d do this to me. Oh Dot, oh Luke, oh oh Mr. Snow. Forgive me, Dottie. Give you something bright and pretty. Forgive me? Love me forever?”

  He couldn’t stand it anymore. Luke, Dot, Mr. Snow... he couldn’t stand it another second.

  He bent, moving the Colt into the dazzle of white.

  The hated face stared at it. Saw it or didn’t see it, he couldn’t tell. Then the face turned down away from him, hid itself in the crossed fold of scrawny arms.

  He laid the muzzle close above the right ear and lulled through the trigger.

  The recoil threw him up straight again, the light beam dancing crazily within the doorway. He brought the beam back down, steadied it, and when he saw the blood, saw what the hollow point had done to the hated face, it was if taut-strung wires had been released inside his head.

  Dead. Finally dead. Finally justice.

  He wanted to shout, to laugh. He felt the way he did when he made a quick clean kill in the woods. Killing a man, a hated enemy, a piece of human garbage was no different than putting a bullet in a deer or an elk or a rabbit. Yeah, and so much more satisfying. Justice! Justified!

  He located the ejected cartridge case, slipped it into his pocket. Shut off the flash, went back to the car wrapped in wet black. Weapon and six-cell into the glove box. Light up the deserted alley, drive on through and away.

  Done, finished. Mission accomplished.

  Except for one thing he hadn’t counted on. One thing that quickly ate away the pleasure, left him without peace. Scared him.

  He was satisfied, but the hate and rage weren’t.

  Inside they still burned, still boiled and bubbled, still screamed like caged animals.

  As if they were still hungry. As if they wanted more.

  1

  He was the fourth applicant Tamara and I interviewed for the field operative’s job. On paper he had all the necessary qualifications and experience, but he didn’t make a very good first impression. Not much charisma, for one thing. And he had personal problems.

  His name was Runyon, Jake Runyon. Native of Washington state, grew up in Spokane where his father had risen to the rank of poli
ce sergeant, lived most of his adult life in the Seattle area. Fourteen years with the Seattle PD, the first seven as a uniformed officer, the last seven working plainclothes on the robbery and then homicide details. Voluntary retirement with a partial disability pension five years ago, reason not set down in his resume. Since then, until six weeks ago, he’d worked as an operative for Caldwell & Associates, a solidly respectable Seattle investigative agency.

  Plentiful professional credentials, but pretty sketchy on the personal side. Except for vital statistics — age 42, height 6’1, weight 190 — Runyon hadn’t supplied much information. Moved to San Francisco five weeks ago, in early November; current residence was an apartment on Ortega Street. Evidently he lived alone, since the only family reference he’d included was a terse “no dependents.” Shortly after establishing residence, he’d applied for a California investigator’s license and had been issued a temporary on the basis of his Washington state license. And that was all.

  He showed up on time for his eleven A.M. appointment. Well-dressed in a suit and tie, freshly shaven except for a scimitar mustache, curly brown hair clipped short. He took an inclusive look around the office when he came in, without appearing to do so, the way a good investigator will in new surroundings. He had a crisp handshake and he made and held eye contact whenever he spoke to either Tamara or me. All of that was on the plus side.

  On the negative side he looked as though he might have been or might still be ill. He had a large, compact frame and a slablike face, hammerhead-jawed and blunt-angled, like a chunk of quarried stone; but his clothes hung loosely on him, as if he’d recently lost some weight, and the stone slab had an unhealthy grayish cast and seemed to have developed fine cracks and crumbly edges that had nothing to do with age. There was a distance, an inward-turned reticence about him, too, that made him hard to read. For me it was more like confronting a closed fire door than interviewing a man.

  He declined a cup of coffee, sat solid and stiff on one of the clients’ chairs — a waiting posture that didn’t change much throughout the interview. Lot of pressure built up behind that fire door, I thought. If he’s not careful, one of these days he’ll blow out an artery.

  Tamara and I had worked up separate sheets of questions for each applicant. We’d also decided not to compare notes until all the applicants had been interviewed, so as to narrow down the field individually before we did it jointly. That way, we wouldn’t be inclined to try to influence each other during the process.

  I got the ball rolling with Jake Runyon by asking, “The partial pension — what kind of disability do you have?”

  “Far as I’m concerned,” he said, “I don’t nave any.”

  “Then why the pension?”

  “The department’s idea, not mine. All it is is a slight limp, left leg. You notice it when I came in?”

  I said, “No,” and Tamara shook her head.

  “Hardly anyone does, most days. Now and then, when the weather’s bad, I get twinges. You might be able to tell then, but you’d have to be paying close attention.”

  “These twinges—”

  “They don’t keep me off the job. Or from moving as fast as I always have. I can still run hard if I have to.”

  “Broken leg what caused the limp?”

  “Tibia fractured in three places. Two surgeries to get it fixed right.”

  “How’d it happen?”

  “High-speed chase in pursuit of a fugitive homicide suspect,” Runyon said. “A truck hit us and he got away. I came out of it lucky. My partner was driving. He came out of it dead.”

  “Rough.”

  “A shame and a waste. But it happens.”

  “If the leg doesn’t cause you problems, why’d you take voluntary retirement?”

  “They tried to chain me to a desk after I got out of the hospital the second time. No way. I’m a doer, not a sitter.”

  Tamara frowned at that, but she made no comment.

  I asked, “Any other physical problems?”

  “No.”

  “You look like you might’ve lost some weight—”

  “I’m fine.” Through compressed lips.

  “Have you had a recent physical exam?”

  “Six months ago. My health’s good. I’ll get you confirmation if you want it.”

  I let it go. “You went straight from the Seattle PD to Caldwell & Associates, is that right?”

  “Right. Interviewed with them before I left the department, to make sure I had a job waiting. You know Caldwell?”

  “We’ve had some minor dealings. Good outfit. You like working for them?”

  “Well enough.”

  “Field work the entire five years?”

  “Mostly. Outside interviews, surveillance, bodyguard and security jobs, chasing bail jumpers — you name it.”

  “Well, we’re a much smaller agency, as you can see. Not much surveillance or security work. Mainly we handle skip-traces, insurance claims investigations, background checks. And the occasional offbeat case that nobody else wants.”

  “An familiar territory,” Runyon said. “If anything comes up that I haven’t dealt with before, it won’t take me long to learn the ropes. I’m a quick study.”

  I made a couple of notes on his résumé. “Back to Caldwell. Any problems or hassles while you were with them?”

  “If you mean black marks on my record, no. Lee Caldwell wouldn’t’ve given me the letter of recommendation if there were.”

  “I’m just wondering why you left them,” I said.

  “I wasn’t fired or let go. I resigned.”

  “For what reason?”

  Silence. He just sat there, looking halfway between Tamara and me. His eyes, more black than brown, were shadowed.

  “Mr. Runyon?”

  “My wife died,” he said.

  Stone-faced and flat-voiced. I might’ve taken it for a cold response if it weren’t for what I saw in those shadowed eyes. For just a second, as he spoke the words, the door opened and I had a glimpse of what lay inside. Grief, suffering... emotion so raw and corrosive it was no wonder he had it under such tight guard.

  Awkward moment. Tamara and I passed meaningless words of sympathy, the way you do. And she added, “Was it sudden?”

  “Yes and no. Cancer. Three months alter the diagnosis, she was gone.” Pause, and then he said, “Twenty years. You think that’s a long time, but it’s not. It’s the blink of an eye.”

  Yeah, I thought.

  Tamara asked him, “That the reason you quit Caldwell, left Seattle?”

  “I couldn’t stand it up there afterward.”

  “Why’d you pick San Francisco?”

  “Personal reasons.”

  “Friends, relatives in this area?” I asked.

  “Does it matter?”

  “Not unless it has something to do with your work.”

  “It doesn’t,” Runyon said. Then he said, in a slow, dragging way as if the words scraped on the membranes of his throat, “My son lives here.”

  “Son? You say on your resume that you have no dependents.”

  “He’s not a dependent, he’s a grown man with a job of his own.” Runyon glanced at his hands, looked stonily at me. “Twenty years,” he said again. “Blink of an eye.”

  “So you moved down here to be near him?”

  “More or less.”

  “Have you applied with any other agencies since you’ve been in the city? Other jobs of any kind?”

  “No. You’re the first.”

  “Getting acclimated, spending time with your son?”

  “Getting acclimated. I haven’t seen him yet.”

  “Oh? How come?”

  He shook his head, sharply. “Like I said, it’s personal. I’d rather not talk about it, you don’t mind.”

  I said, “Suit yourself,” but I sensed that at some level he did want to talk about it. The something hidden away behind that door was the lonely man’s conflicted hunger for privacy on the one hand, human contact a
nd understanding on the other.

  Tamara took over the questioning. “You computer literate, Mr. Runyon?”

  “I can operate one of the things.”

  “Mac or pc?”

  “Mac.”

  “Personal habits. You smoke?”

  “No.”

  “Drink?”

  “Not much. Never on the job.”

  “Recreational drugs?”

  “No. I’ve seen too much of what crack and blow can do.”

  “Pot?”

  “No.”

  “How do you feel about weed? Same category as hard drugs?”

  “No. You want my honest opinion, marijuana should be decriminalized.”

  “Why?”

  “Same reason I think prostitution and all forms of gambling should be legalized,” Runyon said. “Trying to legislate morality is a waste of time, money, and manpower.”

  “Uh-huh. Vice is here to stay.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  She said, “You know I’m a new partner in this agency, right?”

  “So I gathered from the newspaper ad.”

  “You mind taking orders from a woman?”

  “I don’t have any problem with it.”

  “Black woman just about young enough to be your daughter?”

  “No problem with that either. I’ve worked with women, black and white, young and old. And my partner, the man who was killed in the chase, was black.”

  “He was driving, you said?”

  “The crash wasn’t his fault, if that’s what you’re getting at. I don’t hold grudges against dead men, Ms. Corbin. Or live ones, for that matter, black or white.”

  “So you get along with everybody.”

  “If they make a reasonable effort to get along with me. I don’t toady to anyone, and I’ve been known to question authority — male or female — if I think the situation warrants it. Might as well get that said up front. Otherwise, I’m easy enough. And a good investigator. I work hard, I don’t object to overtime or scut work, I don’t make unreasonable requests, and I don’t pad the expense account.”

  That pretty much ended the interview. Runyon shook hands with each of us again, I told him we’d be in touch one way or the other, and away he went. He hadn’t cracked even the ghost of a smile the entire time.