The streets were crowded at the moment, with people leaving the offices and galleries and showrooms for the day. I couldn’t have picked Victor Runyon out of the crowd streaming past, even though his wife had provided me with a clear color photo of him; but I didn’t have to try. He rarely left his office until five-thirty and usually not until six, she’d told me — a pattern he had evidently maintained even while in the throes of his affair with Nedra. Maybe so, but where stakeouts are concerned I prefer not to leave anything to chance. While hunting this parking space I’d called his office from my mobile phone, feigning a wrong number. He was there.
I took his photo out again and had another look at it. Handsome guy: fair-skinned, though with brown hair that was on the curly side; ascetic features, soft mouth, gentle brown eyes under abnormally long lashes. There was intelligence and sensitivity in the face, but there was also weakness. I wondered again what went on inside the head of a man like him; how, if his wife was right about him, he could have emotionally paralyzed himself. I understood obsessive-compulsive behavior well enough; I had a mild case of it myself, where my job was concerned. But I recognized the symptoms when they appeared, had always been able to control them. A man who was so weak as to allow an obsession to rule his emotions and then to undermine the foundations of his life was alien to me.
Five-thirty. The crowds and the traffic on Townsend and on Second were thinning. It had been a clear, cool day, and now the sunlight was softening into a mellow gold where it lay in angles and patches on the streets and against buildings. Down along the Embarcadero, now that the remains of the earthquake-damaged Embarcadero Freeway had finally been torn down, that soft gold light on the bay, on the old pier sheds and the restored eminence of the Ferry Building, would be making the tourists sing the city’s praises. The coming night would be nice, too, one where lights and colors stand out in sharp relief against a darkness that seems as hard as black glass. From the balcony of Kerry’s apartment in Diamond Heights, you’d have a miles-wide view as far east as Mount Diablo.
That was where I wanted to be tonight, up there with Kerry. I hadn’t seen much of her lately and I was lonesome. But given the fact that she’d been in conference when I called Bates and Carpenter shortly before five, and her secretary had said she had another meeting scheduled for six, my prospects were poor. Creative director for a small but aggressive ad agency is more than a full-time job; it’s a commitment that takes precedence over just about everything, including a normal personal life. I resented that, but I couldn’t argue with it. It was the same sort of commitment I’d made to my own profession a long time ago. Workaholics, Kerry and me. Chafing at the harness sometimes, sure, but knowing we wouldn’t be worth a damn unless we were wearing it.
Six o’clock coming up. Not too many pedestrians now and I paid closer attention to the ones that passed on this side of the street, approaching from Brannan. Victor Runyon finally showed at three minutes after the hour: alone, walking briskly with a stiff-backed posture, eyes straight ahead. Tan gabardine suit, no tie, light tan trench coat unbuttoned and flapping like wings in the thin evening breeze. I shifted on the seat to get a better look at him as he passed. No expression on his ascetic face. Man with things on his mind... man with a purpose for tonight? I watched him enter the parking garage; then I started the car and backed up a little, to make sure I could get out of the space easily when the time came.
It was not long before the maroon BMW appeared. Runyon was at the wheel; I could see him clearly when he braked before turning south toward Townsend. I eased out behind him.
West on Townsend, driving neither fast nor slow, changing lanes only when it was necessary. I dropped back just far enough to be certain I could make every light he did. Right on Duboce, Duboce to Market, up Market to Twin Peaks. If he’d been going home to Ashbury Heights he’d have then taken Divisadero, or maybe Clayton halfway up; he didn’t turn on either street.
I moved up closer to him as we neared the top of Market, where it becomes Portola Drive. Traffic was heavy and I didn’t want to lose him. He had no idea he was being followed; when you’ve been at the game as long as I have, you can tell when a subject is suspicious. Man with a purpose, all right — totally focused on getting to where he was headed. I could ride his bumper all the way, I thought, and still he wouldn’t have a clue that I was there.
Beyond the big intersection at O’Shaughnessy, he turned left and swung around and back into the Tower shopping center. Going after groceries or liquor, maybe... but I was wrong about that. He parked in front of a florist shop, hurried inside while I hovered illegally in the vicinity, and reappeared a few minutes later with two huge, green-paper-wrapped bouquets of flowers.
From the shopping center he drove back onto Portola and then turned downhill past the Youth Guidance Center and Laguna Honda Hospital. Another turn on Clarendon, a broad avenue that winds along the south side of Mount Sutro above one of the city’s reservoirs. Near the top of Clarendon he swung left into the moderately expensive residential district called Forest Hill.
The streets up there were narrow and twisty, all the houses built along the west sides to take advantage of sweeping views of the ocean, the hills and the flatlands of the city’s western perimeter. The land on the right sides was too steep to build on; thick forest, dominated by eucalyptus, provided a rustic backdrop and the false illusion of country privacy. Attractive part of San Francisco to call home, as long as you didn’t subscribe to the theory that a catastrophic earthquake was going to hammer this old town someday. The houses — smallish, brick or stucco over wood, each with a two-car garage — were all on steep ground, and while there was bedrock up here, there was also plenty of loose topsoil; and too many homes had been built on wooden pilings instead of on concrete foundations dug into the hillside. A big enough shake, centered on the San Andreas Fault nearby, and everything on this hill could conceivably wind up in one disastrous heap on the flats below.
Crestmont was the street Runyon wanted, the dead-end section beyond Devonshire. Secluded little pocket here, very woodsy, hidden away from the eyes and minds of 99 percent of the population. The houses and lots were larger and not quite as uniformly nondescript: wood-shingled or angularly modernistic with too much glass, set back far enough from the street so that most had small fenced-in decks or gardens in front.
There was parking along the right side of the street, where the woods crowded down close against brick and concrete retaining walls. Runyon slowed, pulled his BMW to the curb opposite a wood-shingled house stained a dark red. I drove on past him without slowing down and without looking his way. At the circle where the street dead-ended I turned around and came back far enough to see him getting out of his car with the two bouquets of flowers. Then I parked, too, about fifty yards away.
The dark-red house was his final destination. He opened a gate in the high wooden fence in front, using a key, and disappeared through it. I sat quiet for five minutes; he didn’t come back out. I quit the car then and walked over there, taking my time, like a man enjoying a casual stroll in his own neighborhood.
The house didn’t look large from the street, but it was built on two levels. A wooden staircase ran down along the north side, to a landing and a door that would open into the lower level. Through the gap there that separated the red house from its northside neighbor, I could see Ocean Beach and the Pacific beyond; the westering sun made the water look like something out of a fiery biblical prophecy. The fence in front was too high to see over, but there were chinks between the gate boards that gave me glimpses of potted shrubs, an agave cactus in a wooden tub, a glass-topped table. Affixed to the gate were three block numerals made out of redwood: 770.