Nightcrawlers: A Nameless Detective Novel (Nameless Detective Mystery) (7 page)

“Could that be where you saw him? Over in the Castro?”

“He’s hardly the type to frequent gay bars, Mr. Runyon.”

“Maybe not the bars themselves, but the neighborhood’s a good possibility. The two of them have to know the general area well enough to go hunting for victims. That might include the sections where the bars and clubs are.”

“I suppose so, but . . . it wasn’t in a car or pickup that I saw him. I’m sure of that much.”

“On foot, then. Walking the area alone or with his buddy.”

Zalesky nuzzled the Angora again. It was still purring, but making twitchy movements now as if it had had enough attention. “I don’t think so,” he said, and kissed the cat on top of the head and then let it jump down.

“All right.” Runyon wrote his home phone number on the back of one of his agency business cards. “If it comes back to you, give me a call, would you? Office or home.”

“I will. If you think it might be important.”

“The more information I have, the easier it’ll be to find them.”

Zalesky nodded. And then frowned again, tapping the business card against his lower lip. “Outside one of the clubs,” he said abruptly.

“Say again?”

“That’s it, that’s where I saw him. Outside one of the clubs. He was arguing with somebody . . .”

“How long ago was this?”

“Two or three weeks, maybe a little longer.”

“Do you know the person he was arguing with?”

“Well . . . uh . . . I’m not sure . . .”

“Not sure?”

“I’ve seen him around, but I don’t know his name.”

Lying, Runyon thought. Why?

“Seen him around where?”

“In the Castro. Here and there.”

“Describe him.”

“In his twenties, blond, an angelic face . . .” Zalesky seemed nervous now, ill at ease. “I’m not very good at describing people.”

“This argument. What was it about?”

“I . . . don’t know, I was just passing by.”

Another lie. Falsehoods and deception weren’t natural to him; his eyes slid sideways, a little flick of guilt, when he wasn’t telling the truth.

“So it wasn’t a violent argument.”

“No. The guy was in his face, the blond’s face, but not touching him.”

“Doing all the talking?”

“Yes.”

“Was anyone with you at the time?”

“With me? Oh . . . no, I was alone.”

One more lie.

“That’s all I can tell you,” Zalesky said. “I’m not feeling very well . . . I’m still in a lot of pain and I took some Vicodin
before you came and it’s making me woozy. If you don’t mind . . .”

“Sure, I understand. Just one more question. The argument was outside one of the clubs, you said. Which one?”

Hesitation. Another lie coming up? No. Zalesky held eye contact when he finally answered.

“The Dark Spot,” he said.

Nine-thirty, and still nobody home at 1122 Willard.

She was terminally bored already. She had her headset on, Norah Jones’s Grammy-winner, “Come Away With Me,” cranked up in the Walkman; the good pop-jazz kept her awake but it didn’t do much for the boredom. The enforced sitting in the small, cramped car was what was messing with her head. Messing with her rear end, too. Bill had told her stakeouts could be a pain in the ass, and now she was finding out that he’d hadn’t been kidding. And she’d only been here, what, not more than a couple of hours? He’d done surveillance work that lasted four, six, as many as eight hours. Whoo. Any job like that came up in the future, she’d be quick to hand it over to Jake Runyon.

She sighed and stared at the empty street and wondered if she ought to pack it in. Natural aversion to giving up on a job, even for one night, but much more of this and she’d be listening to complaints from her ass all day tomorrow. Besides which, she
had to pee. Not too bad yet, but before long it’d be a crisis. Pepsi and 7UP didn’t have a thing on Slim•Fast when it came to fast trips through your plumbing. One can equaled one trip to the can.

Another fifteen minutes, max. Then she was outta here.

Thinking about Slim•Fast made her wonder if maybe there was a Slim•Fast snack bar hiding in the bottom of her purse. Not that she was hungry, but nibbling one of those bars would make the fifteen minutes go by a lot faster. Small bites, let the chocolate melt on her tongue before she swallowed . . . that was the way to do it. Her mouth began to water. She pulled her purse over, rummaged around inside.

Damn! Ate the last one at noon, forgot to put another one in there.

So now she was not only bored, but she had chocolate on her mind. Tasted chocolate, craved chocolate. How could those Slim•Fast people make snack bars that were loaded with chocolate and tasted like Snickers bars but were still good for you and helped you lose weight?

Come Away with Me
had cycled through and was replaying. By feel she worked the buttons on the Walkman, ejected the CD, found another one in the case that she thought was Springsteen, and fired that one up. Oh, great, she’d grabbed the wrong one. Classical instead of rock. Beethoven, with Yo-Yo Ma on the cello.

Chocolate out, Horace back in.

No. She wasn’t going to think about Horace any more tonight. Hell with Horace. Vonda was better, Vonda and her new white, Jewish boy toy. In love with him? Sure, she was. She’d been in love with every guy she went to bed with, it was her sexual MO. Couldn’t do the nasty for the sake of doing the
nasty, just because it felt good—no, there had to be all this emotional attachment.

Well, girl? You’re not much different, check out you and Horace—

Horace again.

Vonda. Vonda, dammit. The black-white thing. Yeah, that’d be a big problem, if by some miracle she actually was in love with this Ben Sherman guy. And him being Jewish made the problem twice as big. Her family was borderline racist, brother Alton not so borderline; they’d make her life miserable if they found out, a living hell if she moved in with him or went all the way and married him. Stupid. Not so much Vonda, you couldn’t help who you fell in love with, it was all a matter of chemistry and hormones. Her family, the us-versus-them bullshit. She’d felt that way herself once, all the militant hardass stuff, but not anymore. Everybody had to live with everybody else, what difference did it make what color you were? Or what religion? Or who you slept with or lived with or married? If people would just—

Car coming.

There’d been cars before, a bunch of them. This one probably wouldn’t belong to George DeBrissac either, but the lights were coming toward her, high and slow, and she scooted down until her butt was half off the seat. The glare filled the car, only this time they didn’t slide on past. Car slowed and then stopped on the street close in front of the Ford.

Oh, man, she thought, cops. Somebody saw me sitting out here, called 911, and now I’m gonna get hassled.

But it wasn’t cops, cop cars didn’t have high-riding headlights. In the next second she heard gears grinding and then the lights began to retreat and swing out away from her. Backing
up. Backing into one of the driveways on this side, close to where she was parked.

Tamara blew out her breath, eased up on the seat until she could squint over the dashboard. Van. No, SUV, one of those big mothers with tinted windows so you couldn’t see inside, gliding up the drive of the brick-faced house directly in front of her. She sighed again. Somebody coming home, people on this block had been coming home the whole time she’d been here.

She’d probably have quit paying attention, except the SUV was right in her line of sight. So she watched it stop within a few feet of a closed garage set just back from the house. Lights went off. Driver didn’t get out right away, must’ve been a minute or so before the door opened. It was dark over there, but the distance wasn’t much more than twenty-five yards. Big dude. Black man? She had the impression he might be, but she couldn’t be sure. Wore dark clothes, some kind of cap pulled down low on his forehead.

A cramp was forming in her left buttock. Terrific. She wiggled, trying to ease it. No good. She needed to sit up, but she didn’t want to do that while the dude was hanging over there, maybe call his attention to her. She wiggled some more, willing him to hurry up, go inside, let her sit up—let her get out of here. Now she
really
had to pee.

He hurried, but not straight into the house. Went around to the back of the SUV instead and hauled up the hatch. Light didn’t go on inside. But in he went, on hands and knees, out of sight for a few seconds. Then he backed out again to where she could see him, and when he straightened up he had something cradled against his chest with one arm. Something a couple of feet long wrapped in what looked like a blanket.

Something that moved, kicked . . . struggled.

Tamara blinked, squinting. Eyes playing tricks. No, there it was again, the kicking, the struggling, while the man hauled the hatch down and slammed it shut. He hugged whatever was in the blanket closer to his chest, using both hands and arms now. Stood for a few seconds, looking around, looking straight at the Ford for a heartbeat—gave her a chill even though she knew he couldn’t see her in the dark—then he half ran across a patchy lawn and up onto the porch. More struggles while he was getting the door unlocked. Then he was gone inside with whatever it was in the blanket.

Dog, Tamara thought. Sure. Sick dog, picked it up late at the vet’s. No big deal.

A light went on in the front room over there, punching a couple of saffron squares in the darkness. Both windows had shades pulled all the way down. She sat up, fidgeting, replaying in her mind what she’d just seen.

Hadn’t kicked like a dog. Or any other kind of animal.

Kicked like . . . what? A kid?

Come on, Tamara. Why would he have a kid all wrapped up like that? Punishment of some kind? Bad boy, bad girl, wrap your sorry little ass in a blanket?

Lord. A kid could smother, all trussed up in the back of an SUV like a piece of baggage. Lot of bastard parents in this world, abuse their kids in all sorts of ways . . .

No. It hadn’t been a kid.

Had it?

Too much imagination, girl. Got to be some simple explanation, nothing weird at all except inside your own head.

Still.

The way the guy had thrown looks around after he shut the
SUV’s hatch, sort of furtive, like he was worried somebody might see him. She hadn’t imagined that. Or the way he’d half run for the house, humped over, as if he were trying to shield the bundle with his body.

Just didn’t seem natural, none of it.

Well, okay, then. What’re you gonna do about it?

She sat chewing her lower lip. Call the cops? Oh, yeah, right. Go over to the house, ring the bell, ask the man if everything was cool? He’d say it was even if it wasn’t. And it’d piss him off either way, maybe get her in the kind of trouble she wasn’t equipped to handle.

Forget about it then. None of her business. Her business was George DeBrissac and 1122 across the street. Plus her full-up bladder. If she didn’t get to a bathroom pretty quick . . .

She reached for the ignition key, then pulled her hand back and lifted it instead to click off the dome light. Then she was out of the car, creaking a little from all the sitting, drawing her thighs together against the pressure in her bladder. Always walk in a strange neighborhood as if you belong there, don’t do anything to call attention to yourself. Right. Up onto the sidewalk, amble slow past the house. Glance at it, don’t stare at it. Lights still on in the front room, shades still drawn tight. Just enough shine from the one nearest the door so that she could make out brass numbers on the brick wall between them. 1109. Pretty sure that was it.

On her way past the driveway, she risked a longer look at the SUV. Big, black—Chevy Suburban? The front license plate was shadowed. 1MO Something 6 Something Something.

Tamara kept on going, forcing herself not to hurry. At the far corner she paused for a few seconds, then turned and came back at the same measured pace. Nothing had changed at
the house. She squinted harder when she reached the driveway, still couldn’t quite make out the license number. Caution told her to give it up, go straight to the Toyota; curiosity sent her a quick half-dozen steps up the drive, bent low, until she could read the plate clearly.

1MQD689.

She retreated to the sidewalk, her heart hammering. Got away with it. Nobody came out of the house, nobody chased her, nothing happened. A minute later she had the Toyota’s engine rumbling and she was on her way.

Took her five minutes to find a service station on San Pablo Avenue. Good thing it didn’t take six or more; as it was, she just made the rest room in time.

K
erry said, “Remember D-Day? Amazing grace?”

“That’s what he said. Mean anything to you?”

“No.”

D-Day. June 6, 1944, the day the Allied forces invaded Europe, the beginning of the end of World War II. “Cybil and Dancer were both living in New York in the summer of ‘forty-four, weren’t they? And the Pulpeteers were active then.”

“So?”

“Just thinking it could have something to do with the group.” The Pulpeteers had been a loose-knit writers’ club of a dozen or so Manhattan-based professionals, Cybil and Ivan and Dancer among them, and a moderately wild bunch according to what Kerry had told me once—club-hopping, all-night parties, crazy practical jokes. “One of their pranks or escapades, maybe.”

“That he’d want her to remember after fifty years? I don’t think so.”

“I guess not.”

“Amazing grace,” Kerry said. “Well, he couldn’t have meant the hymn, that’s for sure. Not Russ Dancer.”

“I asked him about that and he said no.”

“This package,” she said. It was on the table between our chairs, where I’d put it when I arrived home a few minutes ago. She’d already fingered it twice; I watched her make it three times. “Paper, a lot of it. It feels like a manuscript.”

“You said that before.”

“Why would he give her a manuscript?”

“Oh, hell,” I said, “all we’re doing is asking each other rhetorical questions. Cybil will give us the answers if she wants us to know.”