“It’s a terrific title,” she said. “We can talk about it in the morning. Ten o’clock in the coffee shop.”
She let the car ease forward so he had to step back or get his bare toes run over. Not knowing why, she blew him a kiss as she shot into the street just ahead of the next barbarian horde released by the stop lights at the corner below.
Runyan stared after her, shifting his bare feet on the cold dirty blacktop; the kiss she’d blown him burned in his mind. She still could be using him, just trying to find out about the diamonds. He glanced down toward the YMCA, three blocks below, then started to trot in that direction, his bare feet pad-padding on the filthy sidewalk.
Everybody said it in the joint: When you first got out, you were so bombarded with stimuli that you’d be overwhelmed if you didn’t stay locked away inside yourself. She had already unlocked him, made him vulnerable.
Just don’t keep the appointment with her in the morning. Just stay away. Just forget her.
But he was running now, the blood being pounded back into his icy feet. Passing under a raised fire escape, he leaped up and tapped the bottom step with both hands. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, tapping in a rebound.
He tried to slow to a walk. All the shit in the world might be coming down on him. He needed control. But somehow he was leaping up and whapping the next ladder with both outstretched hands — Kareem stuffing one on the fast break.
“YAHOO!” Runyan yelled. He leaped up and caught the rung of the next ladder, swung backward and forward, let go to land running, whooping, bounding down Leavenworth like an escaped panther joyous in the streets.
Through the glossy philodendron leaves, David Moyers watched Runyan leap down the far sidewalk like the last day of school, barefoot and shirtless besides. Moyers himself had a stocky, underexercised body which looked heavier than it was because of his habitual slouch and because of his heavy head, which contained a mind with nothing slouchy about it.
He tossed a handful of change on the counter. The ageless Chinese man standing in front of the delicate oriental wall mural with a red sign slapped across it, YES, WE HAVE BEERS, bowed deeply and grinned at him.
Moyers walked slightly splay-footed through the chilly spring evening. His car was in the same lot where Louise had left hers. He’d taken her license number and noted it was a Hertz, not because he suspected any connection with Runyan at the time, but because she belonged in that neighborhood like a gold ingot in a butter dish. With that thousand-a-night hooker stride the Supreme Court should have ruled on, the lobby of the Hilton should have been her hunting ground.
He got his bag of new workout stuff from the trunk and went down toward the Y, memorable as a phone book. His eyes fed data into his quick, obsessed mind without conscious attention as he thought about Runyan and the woman.
Damn her! He’d been willing to be patient; but three hours of fucking Runyan’s brains out had given her a definite edge. She was making things move faster then he’d anticipated, and he didn’t like the feeling of not quite being in control.
But Runyan, meanwhile, would have pumped a lot of his strength into her up in that hotel room; now he’d be feeling depleted and a little sad, and already disoriented from hitting the street for the first time in eight years. Maybe it was all for the best; maybe now was the perfect time to brace him up about the diamonds again.
Runyan leaped up to slap his chalked hands into the rings, kipped effortlessly into a full pressout, brought stiffened legs up straight in front of him, toes pointed, then swung legs and trunk down and around and into a planche, his rigid body now parallel to the floor. He was still in his slacks, shirtless and barefoot, revolving now into a shoulderstand with his toes pointed straight at the ceiling.
“Ah, Runyan. Drinking the sweet wine of freedom.”
Moyers wore a spanking-new red acetate track suit with white piping; on his feet were white Adidas with a red flash. Runyan pushed into a handstand, triceps bunched beneath his smooth hide, rings vibrating slightly with the effort of keeping them in. After a few moments, he lowered into the shoulderstand again. He’d learned how to tune out interruptions in the joint.
“Have you thought about Homelife General’s offer?”
Another handstand, the rings vibrating more noticeably now. Sweat was rivuletting the sharply defined cuts between muscles. He was panting.
“The diamonds returned to us, a percentage reward paid, no questions asked...”
Runyan returned to his original pressout position, body vertical to the floor, arms tight to the sides, elbows locked.
“Even if you duck me and recover the stones—” Moyers chuckled disbelievingly- “what can you do with them?”
Runyan began the slow agony of a crucifix — moving his arms out to the sides so his body began to lower into the widening gap between the rings. He was panting fiercely now.
Moyers said reasonably, “We’ve got tabs on every fence big enough to handle them...”
Runyan’s stiffened arms were straight out from his shoulders with his entire weight supported by his lats, delts, and the bunched, rock-hard trapezius muscles.
“Israel? Holland? As a convicted felon, you can’t get a passport...”
Runyan lost it, letting go with his left hand, swinging like a chimp, then dropping lightly to the floor.
“The little lady took it out of you, didn’t she?” asked Moyers with his nasty little chuckle.
Runyan snapped him under the nose, hard, with an index finger. Moyers sprang back in reflex, tears starting from his eyes. Runyan jerked his towel from the leather horse and slung it around his neck. The slapping feet of a couple of joggers on the mezzanine running track above them echoed through the gym.
“Who is she, Runyan?” Moyers, eyes still watering, gamely got in his way. “I’ll just check out her license number anyway.”
Runyan spoke for the first time. “Rental.”
“She had to show them a driver’s license.”
Runyan seemed uncertain. “I guess you’ll find out anyway.” His voice was defeated. “She’s writing a book.”
“Writing a book?”
“Exposing the insurance companies.”
Then, for the first time since he had walked away from Q, Runyan started to laugh.
Chapter 6
Angelo Tenconi pushed the button. The drapes slid open silently to frame the nighttime city displayed by the wide picture window of his Russian Hill penthouse living room. He’d come far and fast from his boyhood, strong-arming lunch money out of little slant kids and ripping off the poor box at Joe DiMaggio’s Church.
From the lighted white finger of Coit Tower in North Beach, past the financial district’s soaring TransAmerica spike and cold dark Bank of America monolith, to the glittering tail of headlights the Bay Bridge dragged out from the industrial area south of Market, Angelo Tenconi’s grasp was felt. A percentage here, a couple of nonreducible points there — a little bit of a lot of people’s action.
He caught reflected movement in the window, turned to see statuesque, blond-braided Melodia pulling lace panties up over the dark pubic triangle he had been savaging just moments before. Ran the city’s classiest call-girl operation, but she had started on his money and had never been able to get past the vig to touch the principal.
“Wasn’t for me, bitch,” he said in his deep aggrieved voice, “you’d be turning two-dollar tricks with some slant up one of them alleys off Grant Ave.”
He chuckled softly at the flash of real hatred in her eyes. Smart-ass bitch, with her gallery openings and first nights at the opera. Never did it with customers any more. Never gave head any more. Wrong. She gave him whatever he wanted, when he wanted it. He owned that bitch, the same way he owned Runyan.