Spook Read online

  Screening his calls all the time now, probably. The first call he’d answered, but as soon as Runyon said, “Josh, this is your father,” he’d broken the connection. Answering machine every call since. And still not one returned.

  The beep sounded in his ear. He said, “It’s me again, son. I don’t enjoy pestering you, no matter what you might think, but I’m not giving up until we talk at least once. Pick up if you’re there.”

  Silence.

  All right. He recited his number again, started to lower the receiver, then brought it back up. “Please,” he said. “It’s almost Christmas.”

  Too quiet in the apartment. He put the television back on for noise, surfed up an old movie — Casablanca, one of Colleen’s favorites — and sat staring at it without comprehending much of what was going on. His mind was on Joshua.

  He’d come close to bracing him two weeks ago, when he’d gone down to Embarcadero Center to the firm of financial planners where Josh worked as a trainee. No good reason for going except to see what the place was like, maybe get a look at him from a distance. He’d got the look, all right, from a dozen feet away in the building lobby, but before he could make up his mind whether to speak to him, Josh had faded into the crowd. Just as well. Catching him off guard like that would’ve been a mistake; probably alienated him even more.

  No longer a kid now, his son. Twenty-two and a man. Tallish, handsome in a pretty-boy way, with Andrea’s blond hair and blue eyes and narrow mouth. Otherwise, a stranger. Nothing of his father in appearance or mannerisms or the way he moved, and damn little, if any, of his mental or psychological makeup. If even a hint of Jake Runyon had manifested itself in Joshua in his early years, Andrea would have made sure to leech it out of him. Hell hath no fury. Her son, her image, her hate-child to the bitter end.

  He watched the movie for a while, still without internalizing much of it except for the scene in Rick’s Café when the French patriots begin singing “La Marseillaise” to drown out the Nazis’ drunken rendition of “Deutschland über Alles.” Stirring stuff that had made Colleen cry every time. Lots of things made her cry. What was that phrase from one of the other old movies she’d liked, the one set in Japan with Glenn Ford? Cry for happy, that was it. She’d cried at the drop of a hat, but mostly it had been crying for happy. It wasn’t until the goddamn cancer that she’d cried for sad, cried for scared, cried for hurt, and that he’d started crying with her.

  The phone rang.

  Runyon’s first thought was telemarketer. He’d had maybe half a dozen incoming calls since he’d lived here, and all but two — the two from his new employer — had been telemarketers. Invasion of privacy at the best of times, and this wasn’t the best of times. He went over and answered it, snapping his “Hello,” ready to snap harder once the pitch began.

  The voice on the other end said formally, grudgingly, “This is Joshua Fleming.

  For a few seconds the words ground his mental gears, stalled his thoughts. “Well,” he said, and it sounded stupid. He cleared his throat and said, “Thanks for getting in touch.” And that sounded stupid, too.

  “I’m tired of all the messages on my answering machine.” Cold and flat and tight with contained anger. Like Andrea’s voice the few times he’d tried to talk to her after the separation and divorce. The only difference was that hers had dripped loathing like acid. “Why did you have to move down here? Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

  “I had nowhere else to go,” Runyon said.

  “You could have stayed in Seattle.”

  “No, I couldn’t. Not after... well, you know about my wife.”

  “Yeah, I know.” That was all — no expression of sympathy. “It doesn’t change anything.”

  “I think it does. You’re all I have left now.”

  “Then you don’t have anything left now.”

  “You’re my son, Josh.”

  “My name is Joshua, not Josh.”

  “All right. My son Joshua.”

  “Like hell I’m your son. I stopped being your son the day you left my mother and me twenty years ago.”

  “I’ve tried to make up for that. The whole time you were growing up, I tried. Your mother—”

  “You put her through hell, you have no idea how much she suffered.”

  “It wasn’t just me who made her suffer.”

  “You didn’t know her. You never did.”

  “Is that what she told you?”

  “You don’t know me, either. Anything about me.”

  “I want to know you.”

  “Well, I don’t want to know you.”

  “We need to talk, Joshua.”

  “Why? There’s nothing you can say that I want to hear.”

  “I’m going to say it anyway, sooner or later.”

  “Fine, then go ahead, say it.”

  “Not on the phone. Face to face, man to man.”

  “No.”

  “In a public place, if you want it that way. Lunch, dinner, drinks.”

  “I don’t drink.”

  Good, Runyon thought, that’s one good thing you learned growing up with her. “One meeting, one conversation. That’s all I’m asking.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I’m not a liar, son. Whatever else you think of me, believe that. I never lied to your mother. I’ll never lie to you.”

  “So you say. Why should I give you the opportunity?”

  “Why not? What can one meeting hurt? If you still want nothing to do with me afterward, okay, I won’t bother you anymore.”

  Circuit hum. Then, “Does that include leaving San Francisco?”

  “I have a job here now. City’s big enough for both of us, isn’t it?”

  “It’s my city, my mother’s city, not yours.”

  “I meant what I said. One meeting, straight talk, and after that the ball’s in your court.”

  “... You just won t give up, will you?”

  “Not before we talk.”

  More humming silence. Somebody, not Joshua, said something in the background in a low whisper.

  “Who was that?”

  “My roommate. He thinks I should go ahead, get it over with.”

  “What do you say?”

  “I say you’re spoiling my holidays.”

  “Not my intention. Peace for both of us, that’s all I’m after.”

  “Man, that’s really profound. You’re a profound guy, aren’t you?”

  “When can we meet? You name the time and place.”

  No answer.

  “Any day, anywhere you say.”

  “Oh, Christ,” Joshua said. Then, as if he were hurling the words, “All right. All right, I’ll let you know, I’ll leave a message on your machine this time,” and the receiver went down hard on the other end.

  Runyon returned to the couch. Casablanca was over; some other movie had started. He shut off the TV. Then he switched off the lamp and sat in the dark, alternately thinking and not thinking, waiting for it to be time for bed and sleep.

  8

  Monday was one of those dark, dreary December days — cold, light rain, low-hanging clouds. My mood was pretty upbeat in spite of the weather, but not Tamara’s; she blew in like a raincloud, wet and sullen. Uncommunicative, too. She growled unintelligibly at my “Good morning,” grumbled likewise at my offer of a cup of coffee, threw her coat at the rack — it slid off the hook to puddle on the floor, where she left it — and stomped to her desk. On went her computer; she sat there glowering at it.

  “Okay,” I said, “what’d you do with her?”

  Mutter that sounded like “Who?”

  “New Tamara, the pleasant one. I could swear I’m looking at Old Tamara, the gloomy, irascible brat.”

  Another mutter, this one with a four-letter word in it.

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “Definitely Old Tamara. I never did like her much.”

  Silence.

  I made a couple more futile efforts to jolly her out of her mood. Then I went
and refilled my cup at the hotplate as an excuse to take a closer look at her. Puffy cheeks, baggage under her eyes, the whites shot through with red veins. Not New Tamara, not Old Tamara — an alarmingly different Tamara.

  “You want to talk about it?” I said, serious now.

  “No.”

  “Something happen over the weekend? Looks like you haven’t had much sleep.”

  “I’m okay,” she lied. “Don’t worry your head about me.”

  “Come on, Ms. Corbin. I’m a detective, I can deduce the difference between okay and not okay.”

  Mutter.

  “I didn’t get that.”

  “Said I don’t want to talk about him.”

  “Who?”

  Silence.

  “Tamara, who is it you don’t want to talk about?”

  She made eye contact for the first time. Her expression was more than just haggard; it was etched with pain, the mental kind. “It’s all over,” she said. “Finished, kaput.”

  “What is? You don’t mean you and Horace?”

  “Man wants me to marry him.”

  “He what?”

  “Marry his sorry ass. I moved out on Saturday.”

  “I don’t get that. Moved out?”

  “Staying with Claudia till I can find someplace else,” she said, and pulled a face. “Vonda doesn’t have a spare room, Lucille’s mother’s living with her now, wasn’t anybody else.”

  I stared at her. Claudia was her older sister, Vonda and Lucille were two of her girlfriends. That much made sense, but the rest of it... “You moved out on Horace because he asked you to marry him?”

  “No way I’m going to Philadelphia with him.”

  “... Where did Philadelphia come from?”

  “His big dream. Seat with a symphony orchestra.”

  “In Philadelphia? Good for him, but—”

  “Audition last Friday, now he’s got his big chance.”

  “So it’s definite?”

  “Definite enough. Has to practice with the orchestra first, but they wouldn’t be paying his way if he wasn’t gonna get the gig. Besides, he’s a fine cellist. Gonna get better, too, maybe in Yo-Yo Ma’s class someday, wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “Well, then, you can’t blame him for—”

  “I don’t blame him. Go to Philly, play his cello, have his dream, have a nice life.”

  “Are you saying he gave you some kind of ultimatum? Marry him and move back east, or it’s all over between you?”

  “No. But he expected it, you know what I’m saying?”

  Jake Runyon walked in just then and put an end to this confusing exchange. Tamara glowered at him and began to pound her computer keyboard. He glanced at me, nodded when I made a go-easy gesture behind Tamara’s back. Horace situation on hold.

  I asked Runyon how things had gone on Saturday afternoon. He said, “Turned up a few things, nothing definite,” and gave me a terse rundown.

  “Those genital scars might be an angle if we can get a general fix on where Spook came from,” I said. “Can’t be many near-castration cases on record.”

  Tamara had been listening. She muttered, “Be one in San Francisco if that man don’t keep his distance.”

  When a woman is in a mood like hers, all primed and loaded and ready to go off, the smartest thing a man can do is to ignore her. Runyon knew it, too. He said to me, “Pretty severe wounds, self-inflicted or not. Professionally treated, from the look of the scars. Bound to be hospital records somewhere.”

  “You think there might be a connection to those ghosts of his?”

  “Could be. The guy with the mole I can’t figure yet.”

  “Odds are he’s the shooter.”

  “Or a scout for the shooter. Linked somehow, anyway.”

  “Probably.”

  “Question is, why track down and blow away a disturbed homeless man? Homeless and harmless, by all accounts.”

  “Motive might be tied up in who Spook was, his background.”

  “Maybe. You have anything else for me today?”

  “I don’t think so. Tamara?”

  “Nothing pressing except the job for McCone Investigations.”

  “Almost finished with that. My baby, anyway.”

  Runyon said, “Then I’d like to work the streets again, try to get leads on the guy with the mole and this Big Dog character.”

  “Okay. Go ahead.”

  “Just remember to check in,” Tamara said, “you find something or not.”

  “I won’t forget.”

  I said, “One thing before you go, Jake. You own a firearm?”

  “Three-five-seven Magnum.”

  “You’ll need to get it registered in California. Bonding company requirement.”

  “Already taken care of. Soon as I had a permanent address.”

  “Premises?”

  “And carry, both.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “You must’ve pulled a string somewhere to get a carry permit without bonafide employment.”

  “A couple of strings,” Runyon said. “All in who you know.”

  “Ain’t that the truth.”

  When he was gone, I said to Tamara, “About you and Horace—”

  That was far as I got. She swung around on me, scowling and sparking. “I don’t want to talk about him anymore. That’s all I been doing since Friday night, talking to or about that man.”

  “I’m sorry, I know it must be hard for you.”

  “Just don’t be telling me we can work something out. He keeps saying it, Claudia keeps saying it, I don’t want to hear it out anybody else’s mouth.”

  “Okay. No questions, no comments, no advice. Peace and quiet in the workplace.”

  That bought me one of her slitty-eyed looks. “You sure you a man, all nice and reasonable like that?”

  “Last time I looked.”

  “Hah. Now that’s typical, comes down to that every time.”

  “What does?”

  “How a man thinks. Ask him if he’s sure he’s a man, right away he says ‘Last time I looked.’ Dude that used to draw ‘Bloom County,’ he had it right on.”

  “ ‘Bloom County’?”

  “One strip, this feminist tells Opus and Bill the Cat to take another look at the one thing gives meaning to their meaningless lives, and what do they do?”

  I had no idea who Opus or Bill the Cat were. “I don’t know, what?”

  “Drag open their shorts and stare at their dicks. Never catch a woman saying ‘Last time I looked’ and opening her panty hose and staring at her—”

  “Never mind! Let’s just drop the subject, shall we?”

  “Men,” she muttered, and went back to abusing her keyboard.

  I had two cases working. The least important was an employee investigation for one of the city’s small engineering firms; the employee was in a position of some trust, and the head of the firm had cause to suspect that the trust had been violated — that the employee might be passing bid specs to a rival company. The priority case was the subcontract for McCone Investigations.

  Sharon McCone was an old friend, and in small ways something of a protégé. Her agency down on the bayfront had prospered in recent years, to the point where she now had a staff of six and a caseload that many times larger than the one Tamara and I carried. By dint of several high-profile cases, she’d developed a reputation for results that now and then brought her plum jobs. The most recent was a politically and media sensitive investigation of the city’s building-inspection department. It had started out as a relatively simple probe into whether or not a senior official, one Joseph Patterson, was taking kickbacks in exchange for speeding up the permit process, but it had blossomed into a revelation of corruption in other arms of city government. The group that had hired her, headed by the deputy in order to satisfy them McCone and her overworked staff needed help with certain aspects of the investigation. Occasionally in such situations she subcontracted work to other operatives like Tamara and me.

&
nbsp; Our part of the inquiry had been fairly extensive, if routine, and some of the information I’d dug up had turned out to be vital — McCone’s word when I passed it on to her. The entire case was close to the finish now. A few more chunks of hard evidence, and she’d turn over enough ammunition to the deputy mayor and the D.A. to prosecute Patterson and two of his cronies and to remove a few others from their entrenchment in the city pork barrel.

  But the last chunk from us would have to wait a while longer. The two calls I made produced zero results, both sources being unavailable until later in the day. There wasn’t much else I could do until I talked to them.

  Dead silence in the office now. Tamara was sitting zombielike, staring off into space. Hurting and angry and full of gloom; I could almost see the dark cloud hanging above her head, like the character in Li’l Abner. As sorry as I felt for her, her bleak mood was having an effect on me. I decided I needed an airing. Work on the engineering employee job could wait until later, and it was getting on toward lunch time and I was hungry. Imminent semiretirement had done wonders for my appetite. If I didn’t watch out, it would eventually do greater wonders for my waistline.

  I told Tamara where I was going, that I’d be back around one. Her response was a grunt. Who says it’s so great to be young? I thought, and beat it out of there before youth took another bite out of my Monday.

  9

  Tamara

  She spent most of the morning on a search for an insurance company client — hospital medical records that were supposed to be private. Hah. Wasn’t much of anything that was private these days. Small hospital up in southern Oregon, no cooperation through regular channels, so she’d hacked into their files. On the side of the angels here, right? Subject claimed he’d developed severe stress problems on his job that led to a mild stroke, wanted his firm’s insurance company to pay all medical expenses and provide a disability package. Said he’d never been treated for high blood pressure or any other stress-related illness. Flat-out lie. Hospital records said he’d been in there twice, once in the emergency room after passing out on the street, diagnosis both times of dangerously high blood pressure exacerbated by alcohol abuse. Given prescriptions for blood thinners and strongly advised to quit drinking. (Didn’t take the advice or the blood thinners; other searches proved that.) Both parents confirmed alcoholics, father also had high blood pressure and died of a stroke. Oh, yeah, this sorry-ass dude was toast in more ways than one.