Well, staying alive, for openers.
He said, “You wanted her gone to isolate me so I had nobody to back up my story except you. But I can’t figure what you threatened her with to make her go.”
He crossed the room, still rubbing at his hair, and tossed the wet towel over the back of the room’s single straight-backed chair. He put his foot on the seat and leaned one elbow on the raised knee.
Moyers said, “You don’t want to know. Just give me the diamonds and I’ll be on my way.”
“I’ll bet you will,” said Runyan, “since you never intended to turn them back to the insurance company anyway. First you nudge the authorities into granting me a parole, then you furnish me with an alibi for two murders. If I don’t hand them over, you withdraw the alibi and I go back to prison.” He laughed harshly. A lot of things had fallen into place for him. “But if I do hand them over, I get killed.”
Moyers was standing with his legs slightly spread, square on to Runyan, both hands now in the topcoat pockets. Runyan’s left hand had retained its grip on a corner of the towel, where Moyers could not see it.
“I can arrange police protection against—”
“Who? Delarty and Gatian?” Runyan shook his head. “Hell, it was you killed Tenconi and Cardwell — to eliminate some of the competition. So giving me an alibi gave you one, too. The beauty of it is that I give you the diamonds, I get shot, and Delarty and Gatian get blamed for it. Getting revenge for their dead associates. Neat.”
He tightened his grip on the towel.
“But Delarty and Gatian got arrested about an hour ago for trafficking in hot bonds. And there aren’t any diamonds. When I went back to get them, they were gone. So you see—”
Moyers was jerking the silenced .38 from his topcoat pocket, but Runyan had already snapped the towel. Moyers yelled as the wet cloth bit at his eyes. He staggered back against the window shade, firing two wild shots as he did.
The shade shredded as the window burst inward with the double-crump of the 12-gauge shotgun across the alley. Moyers was blown across the room, his back a pulped mass. His inert form slid face-first down the wall to settle in a heap against the torn-up baseboard.
Chapter 31
The intense glare of the spotlights inside Runyan’s room cast an almost palpable bar of white light through the open doorway, washing the wallpaper flowers from the opposite wall. Policemen moved in and out, their shadows cast almost black by the relentless spots. Runyan stood in the hall beside the door, head lowered and arms folded on his chest, listening to his landlady’s quiet hysterics from the living room downstairs.
He thought he had it figured out now. Of those who had known about the diamonds, only Louise’s former lover was still unaccounted for. And the shotgun blasts which had killed Moyers had unmasked him. The problem was, what could he do about it? What should he do about it? Stay here? Leave? Seek vengeance? Seek Louise? Or give up everything, slip back into the narrow existence of so many ex-cons who let their past fuck-ups forever dictate the shape of their futures?
Prince emerged from the room carrying a clear plastic evidence bag with Moyers’s silenced .38 inside it. At almost the exact moment, as if they were indeed identical twins, Waterhouse appeared at the head of the stairs. He waited while two green-coated ambulance men edged their way out of the room and down the stairs with Moyers’s bodybagged corpse, then they converged on Runyan like a nickel defense on a quarterback.
“Here we got a thirty-eight automatic with a commercially made, expansion-chamber type silencer,” said Prince. He held up the evidence bag as if it were a trout he had caught. “Moyers had the fucking permit for the piece in his pocket — though not for the silencer, of course — and a current passport and a one-way ticket to Israel. Obviously planned to kill Runyan and keep the diamonds for himself. Diamonds Runyan ain’t got anything to say about.”
Runyan remained silent.
Waterhouse asked, “What about across the alley?”
“Ah, yes. Across the alley. Real cute over there. Guy rented the room today. Big and bearded. The lab boys are going over it for prints, but it doesn’t look as if he even whizzed in the john. Just waited. We also got two twelve-gauge double-oh shell casings.” He looked at Runyan and laughed sardonically. “Looks like somebody tried for you and got Moyers instead.”
Waterhouse nodded. “It figures. ’Cause after our anonymous phone tip we find Delarty and Gatian just getting a packet out of a locker at the bus station. Do we find diamonds inside?” He answered himself. “We do not. We find sevenhundred K in bearer bonds so hot the bank in New Orleans don’t even know they’re missing from the vault until I call them up and tell them. Still had the bank’s bands on them.”
“If I had a dirty mind,” said Prince to Runyan, “I’d think you fenced the diamonds, bought some hot bonds somewhere — probably the same fence, and he’s a guy I’d like to meet — and then set these guys up with some of the hot bonds for a fall because they blew away your old pal Cardwell.”
“Would you care if I did?” asked Runyan.
“Hell, no! I’d love it. Because if you did or not they think you set them up with the bonds, and they’re pissed. Since there doesn’t seem to be any way we can touch you legally, the idea of people out there after you suits me just fine.”
“To say nothing of how pissed our shotgunner’s gonna be when he finds out he scragged the wrong guy,” put in Prince with a sort of dreadful relish.
“So we think you ought to leave town,” said Waterhouse. “Like maybe today? Like maybe far away? We’ll square it with Sharples down at the parole authority. He sounds so cooperative I keep thinking you must have something on him, too.”
Runyan kept silent.
Prince said, “By God, another one would like your ass! Go die in somebody else’s jurisdiction, Runyan.”
“So Waterhouse and Prince don’t get stuck with the paperwork,” said Waterhouse.
Maybe they were right, Runyan thought. Maybe it was time to leave. Maybe it was time to go home.
Portland had changed in 12 years, had grown, become citified, gotten cluttered up with traffic — but still, despite the new skyline and the Portland Mall, reminding him in some odd way of suburban Cincinnati on a bad day. It was still too early to make contact with Art at the truckers’ union office, but he wanted to see the old homestead first anyway, alone.
He caught a Woodstock 19 bus and rode it out past Reed College to the end of the line at 103rd Street. Old white frame houses almost touching elbows on barren, tough-looking streets. Fast-food joints next to liquor stores, pickups with gun racks, outlaw motorcyclists in black leather, semis snoring through gears on the thruways. Not much really changed.
A mile’s walk brought him to his old high school. He went up the walk to the front entrance of the tan three-story stone building. It was not yet seven o’clock in the morning, so it was still locked up tight.
He pressed his nose against the glass, cupping his hands around his eyes so he could peer in. The hall stretched straight ahead through the building. Classrooms had their doors still open from the cleaning people the night before.
Runyan seemed to hear the muted rattle of football cleats on the terrazzo floor, vague youthful voices, laughter. It was almost as if he could see padded and suited football players coming up the hall from the far door, backlit almost to transparent silhouette. They were carrying their helmets in their hands or under one arm. He and Art were among them, chatting and laughing as they headed for the locker room after practice.