I asked for an envelope, wrote Purchase’s name and the word “Personal” on the front. Then, on one of my business cards, I wrote: “Regarding Nedra Merchant. Matter not pertaining directly to you, strictly confidential.” I underlined confidential three times, added my signature, sealed the card inside the envelope, and left it with the secretaries.
A mistake, maybe. But I get stubborn — and nowadays, a little reckless — when I’m trying to open a tough nut. I also don’t like to be intimidated, especially by a man who doesn’t even know I exist.
Chapter 6
Victor Runyon was back at 77 °Crestmont that evening.
And this time he wasn’t alone.
I drove up there because I had nowhere else to go, nothing else to do. A long, solitary evening in my flat was definitely out; I didn’t feel like a show or any of the city’s other nighttime attractions. I hung around the office until after six-thirty, finishing up the paperwork. Then, when the rest of the building’s tenants went home and the night silence closed down, I locked up and got my car and headed for Forest Hill.
They were out in front of Nedra Merchant’s red-shingled house, Runyon and a husky, balding man in workman’s garb. The gate in the redwood fence was open and Runyon stood in the opening, as if blocking access; the other man faced him in a flat-footed, belligerent stance. They were arguing about something. Heatedly. I drove by, turned at the dead-end circle, and came back. Runyon’s BMW was parked behind an off-white Ford Econoline van; I veered to a stop in front of the van, shut off the engine. Good vantage point: I was less than thirty yards away.
The two of them were still arguing. I had my window down but I couldn’t make out what they were saying; the wind was stronger up here tonight and noisy in the high tension wires and the woods above and below. The balding man was becoming more and more agitated, waving his arms to emphasize what he was saying, his nose about three inches from Runyon’s. Runyon stood his ground, shaking his head in a helpless kind of way.
This is going to get ugly, I thought. I put my hand on the door release — and in that instant it got ugly.
The balding guy shoved Runyon without warning, a two-handed blow to the chest that slammed him hard into the gate. Runyon bounced back at him like a ball rebounding, his hands coming up in front of his face. He didn’t want to fight; the movement of his hands was defensive. The other man didn’t read it that way, or didn’t want to read it that way. He hit Victor Runyon in the face, closed fist this time, and knocked him backward and down inside the fence. Then he went charging in after him, out of my sight.
I was free of the car by then, but it took me a few seconds to run between it and the van and then across the street and through the gate. Christ! Runyon was still down, on his back moaning, the balding guy straddling him and punching him with both hands in a kind of frenzy. There was blood all over Runyon’s face, flecks of it flying from a smashed nose to splatter the redwood decking around his head.
I caught the balding guy’s shoulder, jerked backward. No good. He was ox-strong and half crazed; he shrugged me off and kept right on hitting Runyon, making a series of snorting sounds like an animal in a rut. To get him loose I had to go to one knee, wrap an arm around his neck and then heave and twist him backward, over on his side. As soon as I did that he started fighting me, or trying to. He couldn’t do any damage because I was bigger, heavier, and had enough leverage to keep most of his body pinned under mine.
The one eye I could see was glazed and rolling at first, like a blue marble under a film of plastic; then it regained focus, and some of the straining wildness went out of him. He said in a choked voice, “Goddamn you, let me go.”
“Not until you cool down.”
“I’ll break your fuggin’ head.”
“You think so? Maybe I’ll break yours instead.”
The one eye glared at me for three or four seconds. Then the heat in it died, all at once like a light going off, and he went limp under me. “All right,” he said with his mouth against the deck. “All right. All right.”
I held on to him awhile longer, to make sure he had his wits back and wasn’t going to give me any more trouble. He did and he wasn’t; he stayed limp when I finally eased my grip. I shoved off him, up onto my feet, and backpedaled a couple of paces. Victor Runyon was still sprawled on his back, still moaning; his face was lacerated in half a dozen places, his nose bent toward his right cheekbone. Spiderwebs of blood covered the lower half of his face, the fronts of his blue shirt and blue sport jacket.
“Proud of yourself?” I asked the balding guy.
“He had it coming.” The words were muffled; on one knee now, he was sucking the bruised and torn knuckles of his right hand.
“You might have killed him.”
“Might of had that coming too.”
“Is that right? Why? Who are you?”
“Who the hell are you, slick?”
“A friend of Runyon’s.”
“Yeah? Or Nedra’s, huh? Another of hers.”
“Her what? Boyfriends? Is that what you are?”
“Asshole,” he said.
Neither of us had anything for the other; we were just wasting breath. I watched him get slowly to his feet. He was one of those people whose age is difficult to gauge: he might have been anywhere from twenty-five to forty. He had a blocky, ridged face, but with skin that was red as a radish and baby-smooth except for pale, downy brows — as if some curious chemistry had produced an infant that resembled a fully grown adult male.
What was left of his hair was tobacco-colored and as thin and wispy as a dust mouse.
He said, “Hell with it. For now,” and swung away abruptly through the gate.
I went after him. There was nobody else out there, nobody visible at any of the neighboring houses. It seemed as though the three of us had made a lot of noise, but it always does when you’re in the midst of something violent. The wind was an effective muffler, too, this high on a hillside. Even if any of the neighbors had been alerted, I thought, they probably wouldn’t do anything about it. Hear no evil, see no evil.
The balding man was halfway across the street. I called, “Maybe I ought to notify the cops,” to see what his reaction would be.
Not much. “Go ahead,” he said without slowing or turning.
“Aggravated assault. That’s a felony.”
No response.
“So is making threatening telephone calls.”
Another bust. He was at the van now; he yanked open the door, hauled himself inside. The engine revved, the gears ground, and he came away from the curb in a fast, tight U-turn, the van’s front bumper scraping the front bumper of my car. There was not enough room for him to complete the turn in the street; he bounced his wheels up onto the sidewalk, forcing me to jump back out of the way. With one hand he got the van straightened, with the other he gave me the finger. Five seconds later he was gone around the uphill turn.
Hell with it. For now.
Yeah. For now. But I’d see him again — soon.
I have good vision, and there was still plenty of daylight on the street: I’d gotten the van’s license number before he’d made me jump.
I wrote the number down in my notebook: insurance against forgetting it or misremembering or transposing any of the letters or numerals. When I came back through the gate I saw that Victor Runyon had raised himself into a sitting position; but his eyes had a painglaze on them and it was obvious that he still wasn’t tracking very well. I moved past him to the front door, tried the latch. Locked. I pushed the bell, kept my finger on it for about ten seconds. No answer. If Nedra Merchant was in there, she wasn’t dealing with any of this little drama.