“Well,” he said, “the private cop,” and came out to stand at a little distance from me on the walk, leaving the door open. I could read his mind plainly enough. If there was going to be trouble, he wanted room to maneuver.
“How’d you know I was a private investigator?”
Crooked yellow grin. “What do you want, slick?”
“It’s not what I want, Cahill, it’s what you want.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“Not to go back to prison.”
No response. But the grin died fast.
“You’ve been in twice,” I said. “You go back again and it’ll be hard time — Quentin or Soledad instead of Lompoc. A second fall for felony assault and a third felony conviction ought to net you a minimum of five years, even with plea bargaining. You don’t want to do another nickel behind bars.”
“Bullshit,” Cahill said.
“I saw you bust up Victor Runyon, remember? I’ll testify that it was an unprovoked attack, if it comes to that. So will Runyon,” I lied. “He’s already agreed to press charges if you don’t leave him and his family alone.”
“He did something to Nedra. You think I’m gonna let him get away with it?”
“He didn’t do anything to her. You’re wrong about that.”
“The hell I am. Where is she, then?”
“Away on an extended vacation.”
“You think I buy that crap?”
“She sent postcards to people telling them so.”
“What people?”
“Friends, business associates.”
“Let’s see one of these cards.”
“Not even if I had one with me.”
“Then tell me where she’s been all this time.”
“You know I’m not going to do that.”
“Why’d she go off so sudden? Why’d she shut down her business without telling anybody? Huh? You think I don’t know about all that?”
“She had her reasons.”
Cahill blew air through his nose, a sharp, wet sound. “Jerking my chain so I’ll leave Runyon alone. Nice try, slick, but it won’t work. He did something to Nedra, damn right he did — that’s the truth.”
“Why? Why would he harm her?”
“She blew him off, that’s why. He told me so himself.”
“He wouldn’t hurt her for that. Or for any reason.”
“I say different. He’s so goddamn innocent, what’s he doing hanging around her house all the time?”
“Keeping her affairs in order until she gets back.”
“Bullshit. That don’t make any sense. He’s up to something.”
“He’s in love with her, can’t leave her or her life alone. Hell, Cahill, if anybody ought to be able to understand that, it’s you. Same reason you kept hassling her two years ago, why you started hanging around her place again as soon as you got out of Lompoc.”
His eyes bored into me. Anger had flared in them, fusing with the malice; the combination was like a critical mass heating up, beginning to glow. You could feel the violence radiating off him. Unpredictable as a critical mass, too — liable to go off at any second. I moved my feet apart a little, shifted my weight forward, lifted my hands above waist level. If he exploded at me he was going to set off a second volatile pile that might just knock him on his ass.
“She got a restraining order against you once,” I said. “She’ll do it again when she comes home from her trip. You’ve got to know that.”
Nothing from him.
“If Runyon doesn’t put you back in the slam, if I don’t, then Nedra will. Can’t you see that? Don’t you care whether or not they shut the door on you again?”
“I care,” he said.
“Okay, then. Leave the Runyons alone and leave Nedra alone. No more phone calls, no more confrontations, no more threats, no more hassles. Walk away and start clean.”
“Not if she’s dead. Not if he made her that way.”
“Then back off and let me handle it. I’ll find her, prove she’s alive, prove Runyon hasn’t done anything to her.”
“Why the hell should I?”
“I just told you why, for Christ’s sake.”
“You know what I say to that? I say fuck the Runyons. And fuck you, too, slick.”
“If that’s how you want to play it, fine. But hear this. You keep making trouble for them, you’re going to have me and the cops to contend with. I don’t push the way Runyon does. In fact I don’t push at all.”
“Big talk from an old fart.”
“I can back it up.”
“Sure you can. Break your neck with one little twist.”
“Show me,” I said.
He took a fast step toward me. It was a feint, to gauge my reaction; I didn’t move, didn’t flinch. I would have reacted the same way if it hadn’t been a feint. A little time went by while we played stare-down. I could hear the wind in the vacant lot behind me, hear it rattling something nearby. Feel it cold against my skin.
“Well, Cahill?”
“That ain’t gonna work with me either,” he said.
“What isn’t?”
“Push me into jumping you so you can hang another assault rap on me.”
“I don’t need to hang one on you. I told you, Runyon’s prepared to do that himself after last night.”
“You think I’m stupid? I’m not stupid. Runyon was gonna press charges, he’d already of done it and the cops’d be here rousting me, not you. He won’t do it because he’s afraid to, because of what he done to Nedra. I know that, even if you don’t. You tell him I know. You tell him I’ll find her one way or another, and when I do she better not be dead or hurt or he’ll be the sorriest son of a bitch who ever lived.”
“I’ll take that as a threat on his life.”
“Take it any damn way you want to.”
Cahill hawked deep in his throat, spat a glob of mucus at my feet. When I still didn’t move he gave me the meltdown stare again, then the crooked yellow grin like a door opening briefly under a furnace. Then he turned on his heel and stalked into the house and banged the door behind him.
Chapter 12
Matt answered the bell at the Runyon house in Ashbury Heights. Giants sweatshirt today, sleeves cut off at the shoulders; in one hand he held a rumpled copy of the Sporting News. There was a thin line of blond fuzz on his upper lip, as if he’d suddenly decided to grow a mustache. He didn’t seem happy to see me, but then he didn’t seem unhappy either. The young-old eyes were as bleak as they’d been last night at S.F. General.
“How’s it going?” I asked him.
“Shitty. You want to see my mom?”
“If she’s home.”
“Out back in her studio. I’ll show you.”
“How about your dad? Still in bed?”
“No, he’s up.”
“How’s he feeling?”
“I don’t know,” Matt said.
“Not talking?”
Headshake. “I tried and Mom tried.”
“He hasn’t tried to leave the house?”
“No. Not yet.”
He took me through the kitchen, out the back door. A covered walkway connected the house to an outbuilding that had been erected next to the garage. There was still plenty of yard — a long strip of lawn, flower beds, a liquidambar tree between the outbuilding and an eight-foot wooden fence with an access door shaped into it. Beyond the fence, partly visible from the porch, was one of the narrow pedestrian ladder streets that you find in some of the hillier sections of the city.
Matt knocked on the studio door and we went in. It was one big room, naturally lighted: the east wall and part of the ceiling were of glass. Ficus plants in redwood tubs gave it a partial greenhouse effect. But there was no mistaking the fact that it was a painter’s studio. Canvases in various sizes were everywhere — finished, unfinished, blank; some displayed on easels and on the two white walls, others in rows along the floor. Kay Runyon, wearing a paint-spattered smock, stood before an easel set up in front of the glass wall, a table beside her cluttered with paints and brushes and an open bag of dryer lint. But she hadn’t been working; just standing there, arms folded across her breasts, like a sculptured likeness of an artist in repose.