For the first time in over a year, she wished she had some coke. Coming back to Runyan, she hadn’t brought her sleeping pills. She hadn’t thought she’d need them. Without them, she needed some coke to kick her past this first, bad part. Well, maybe booze would do it. Maybe she would stop at a motel before dark, sign in, and get drunk.
Runyan sat on his side of the assistant bank manager’s desk as the young middle-aged man with round glasses and a precise manner laid down the magnifying glass he’d been using to examine the sheaf of bonds, and cleared his throat. “I’m sorry to have been so... cautious, Mr. Dawson, but these are worth a great deal of money, and as you come to me without references...”
Runyan nodded pleasantly.
“I understand. But they are bearer bonds, and I am the bearer...”
“Precisely,” said the banker, as if the fact caused him pain. “And I realize the necessity of confidentiality in, ah, business arrangements which require a large amount of cash...”
“Five-hundreds and a few hundreds are fine,” said Runyan. “And a couple of envelopes to put them in...”
Louise followed the freeway signs indicating FOOD — LODGING — GAS to the most anonymous motel in a motel row on the outskirts of Redding: motel, pool, restaurant, and piano bar all in one. She stopped in front of the office and put on her sunglasses to go register.
Runyan was waiting when Patty Cardwell came trudging up with her blue book bag, dressed in another skirt and a white blouse, her sweater around her waist with the arms knotted in front. With her father so recently dead, he hadn’t been sure she would come here to play; but he also figured she didn’t have much of anywhere else to go. She stopped dead at sight of him, remembering. Then she came on.
“My daddy is dead,” she said.
“I know. I’m sorry, Patty.”
“He was shot.” She sat down in a swing. “Like on TV.”
He took one of the bank envelopes out of his inner coat pocket and crouched to stuff it down into her bag between schoolbooks. He looked up into her solemn watching eyes.
“I want you to go right home and give this to your mother. It’s something your father gave me to keep for her. Can you remember that?”
She stared at him for a very long moment. “Sure.”
She turned and ran off with the book bag. Runyan watched her until she was out of sight. At least Betty and the kid would make out all right: The envelope contained just shy of $300,000.
Louise started with a shrimp cocktail, had a green salad with Roquefort dressing, went on to filet mignon with baked potato and sour cream and butter, garlic toast and the vegetable of the day — slightly undercooked zucchini — and finished with a chocolate mousse and two cups of coffee with cream and sugar. With the meal she had a half-carafe of Zinfandel. After the meal, she went into the lounge to drink Margaritas without salt.
Runyan taped the second envelope to the inside of one thigh with adhesive tape, had two cheeseburgers and a large fries at Jack-in-the-Box, then started drinking boilermakers through the Tenderloin. The coldness of his face, the flatness of his voice, and the obvious conditioning of his body protected him from the predators. They preferred their prey maimed; even at his most drunken, Runyan looked as ready to attack as they.
The night was a descending spiral into purgatorial images and impressions. Sometimes it was just faces. Faces lost, angry, sad, frightened, but always the faces of the Tenderloin: whores, male and female, beckoning and smirking, all ages, all colors, all races. Old people scuttling like crabs, their Social Security checks clutched in their pockets. Money went further here, and there was, after all, the illusion of life on these streets. Cops. Runaways. Dealers. Players. Narcs. People seeking action.
A degenerate youth, who could have been one of the trio he had used to get his stuff out of the Westward Hotel, groped him. He shoved the boy aside and shambled on.
A tough-faced cop paused to look him over, perhaps thinking paddy wagon and drunk tank. Runyan turned into a convenient corner grocery store and bought an apple, and the moment passed.
Later he was aware only of single sharp details: the line of a jaw; light shining amber through a raised drink; a heavy skull-and-crossbones ring on the finger of an outlaw cyclist; his own features distorted by a cheap back-bar mirror.
The streets seemed to grow darker; their detail softened from sharp to fuzzy to blurry and finally to contorted as his alcohol level rose. He threw up into the gutter between two parked cars, knowing he had to be finished with the Tenderloin’s mean streets before they finished him. He would never escape if he gave in to the obscure feelings of worthlessness Louise’s defection had triggered. Together, supporting one another, they could have made it. Alone, apart...
He drank hot black coffee and wandered again. The darkness became literaclass="underline" The nighttime streets had become the black man’s streets. He was standing in front of Sister Sally’s. He started up the steps. He wasn’t sober, but he was compos mentis.
The man was a foot taller and five years younger than Louise, with golden flowing hair, a bandito mustache, the bodybuilder’s bunched shoulders and trim waist, and the self-centered stud’s empty eyes. She had noted his bulging muscles at poolside, and had felt his eyes on her during dinner. For the past 20 minutes she had been feeling his hand on her thigh, and hadn’t had enough self-esteem to remove it.
The woman playing the piano, who was pushing 40 hard enough to sprain a wrist, knew exactly. After ten minutes of dagger looks at Louise, she started to play the old Pal Joey tune, The Lady Is a Tramp.
Terrific. Everyone kept telling her, in words and actions, that that was who she was, what she was good at. So why fight it? It might as well be right away, like climbing back on the horse right after he’d thrown you. Otherwise maybe she’d never do it again.
“One more drink first,” she said to the blond stud.
She paid. Of course.
Chapter 30
Voices, laughter, sweat, perfume, and smoke filled the air, all weaving through Donna Summer’s She Works Hard for the Money. Runyan decided it probably was as apt a song for Sister Sally’s as He’s a Sixty-Minute Man had been for similar establishments in the post-World War II era of his father’s bourbon memories.
Sister Sally, immense behind the bar, caught Runyan’s eye but made no move to serve him. Instead, she leaned across the bar toward him, her great breasts overflowing against the polished hardwood. Her hair gleamed with pomade like shavings of gunmetal.
“Somebody made his point the hard way with Taps last night. Firebombed the mortuary and caught up with him at home. Now they gonna be playin’ Taps at his funeral.” She gave a sudden rich peal of laughter that shook the mounds of her breasts and belly like bagged jello under the tentlike futa. “Gonna have to bury him out of somebody else’s funeral home.”
A petite shapely girl with knowing eyes and very full lips, wearing only a red Fleur de Lace bodysuit of filmy silk, slipped up beside Runyan. She twined her arm through his.
Feeling a sad stillness inside him, he ignored her to say, “His woman? Grace?”
Sister Sally shrugged, disinterested in any women not her own. The girl pulled Runyan toward the stairs to the second floor with professional urgency.
“C’mon, sweetie,” she said, “Emmy Lou show you some grace.”