Bill Pronzini: Camouflage

“Not really. Why?”

“I can use your input on a problem.”

“Business?”

“Personal.”

That was a surprise. Runyon was usually reticent when it came to his personal life; he’d offer up snippets now and then if you asked him a direct question, but he seldom volunteered any information.

“Sure thing,” I said. “How about we go across the square? I can use a beer.”

“I’ll buy,” he said.

The agency’s offices are in an old, salmon-colored building on South Park, a chunk of Bohemian-era San Francisco-private residences, cafes, small businesses, a little park and playground-sandwiched among a lot of high-rise buildings between Second and Third, Brannan and Bryant. It was a prime business location, close to downtown and the Bay Bridge; we’d managed to get a long-term lease shortly after the dot-com industry collapse a few years ago, when office space all over the city was going begging. Lucky timing, because the industry had bounced back and now the area surrounding South Park was thick with high-tech companies paying rents five and six times higher than ours.

The South Park Cafe, on the opposite side of the square, was already starting to fill up with the Friday evening happy hour crowd when Runyon and I walked in. We managed to claim the last available table just ahead of a young couple who glared at us as if we’d robbed them of something valuable. Funny thing was, it was the same table we’d sat at a couple of weeks ago, at a quieter time of day, for the same reason we were here now-to talk over a personal matter. Only then it had been my personal matter, a nasty bit of business involving my adopted daughter, Emily, that still raised my blood pressure whenever I thought about it. I’d asked Jake to join me in doing something that was borderline illegal, and despite the professional risk he’d agreed without hesitation. I owed him any kind of favor in return.

Runyon had also noticed the coincidence. He said as we waited for service, “Nothing like the last time we were here. Except that it’s about a kid in trouble… maybe.”

“You’re not sure?”

“Not a hundred percent. I could use your input.”

“Glad to help if I can, you know that. Who’s the kid?”

“Bryn’s son, Bobby.”

Bryn was a woman he’d met not long ago, the first relationship he’d had since the death of his second wife, Colleen, in Seattle. Colleen had wasted away slowly from ovarian cancer, which left him devastated. He’d moved down here to be close to his estranged gay son from his first marriage, but they still hadn’t reconciled. Jake’s life had narrowed down to his work-he was a hell of a good investigator-and for the first year and a half he’d worked for the agency he’d been a tightly closed-off loner. Bryn Darby had brought him out of that hard depressive shell, started him living again for something more than his job. She was a commercial artist, divorced, with the one young son and a home in the Sunset District; that was all I knew about her, aside from one reference to a “physical problem” that he wouldn’t elaborate on.

“What’s the trouble with Bobby?” I asked.

This wasn’t easy for Runyon. He sat tight-mouthed for a few seconds, scraping fingernails along his hammerhead jaw, before he answered. “Bryn thinks he’s being abused. Physically.”

“Christ. By whom?”

“His father. Robert Darby. West Portal lawyer, used his position to convince a judge to grant him primary custody.”

“But you’re not sure about the abuse?”

“Bryn is. Bobby showed up at school with a fractured arm, claimed it happened in a fall. The doctor who set it found bruises on the kid’s back and arms. Bobby said he got them playing football with a couple of schoolmates.”

“Any other physical evidence?”

“No. But Bryn says there’ve been personality changes consistent with abuse-withdrawal, that kind of thing.”

“Has she confronted her ex?”

“Roundabout. He denies it, naturally.”

“Taken her suspicions to Bobby’s school counselor or Social Services?”

“Not enough proof without his cooperation.”

“Any chance she could get the boy to a child psychologist, draw it out of him that way?”

Runyon shook his head. “She’s afraid to do anything that might provoke Darby into legally shoving her all the way out of the kid’s life.”

“He sounds like a bastard.”

“First-class.”

“Have you met him?”

“Once. I went to his office a couple of days ago.”

I didn’t say anything.

Runyon said, “Yeah, I know. But I had to do it.”

“Tell Bryn you were going to see him?”

“No. I didn’t want to upset her. Or get her hopes up.”

“How’d you approach him?”

“Calm and polite, as a concerned friend.”

“Tell him you’re a detective?”

“No way around it. Friend wasn’t enough for him-he demanded to know who I was and I didn’t want to start off by lying to him.”

“Bet I can guess his reaction.”

“Yeah. He went all hard-ass lawyer, warned me to keep my nose out of his private life, and threw me out.”

“What was your take? Think Bryn’s right about him?”

“Capable of child abuse-capable of just about anything. Acted outraged and protective of Bobby, called Bryn a paranoid hysteric, but the guilty ones take that line same as the innocent.”

“Every time.”

“That’s where it stands now,” Runyon said. “Nowhere.”

“And you’re wondering what I’d do if I were in your shoes.”

“Like I said, I can use your input. You’ve had experience with kids-Emily’s not much older than Bobby.”

“Well, the smart answer is drop it, don’t get any more involved.”

“That’s what I keep telling myself. But I can’t just walk away. Would you be able to?”

“Probably not.”

“So?”

“So you’ve got to be pretty careful, Jake. Any kind of strong-arm stuff is out. So is confronting Darby straight on.”

“I know it. He’d sue me for harassment in a New York minute.”

“You run a background check on him?”

“First thing. Nothing there. His record’s clean except for one speeding ticket and an unprofessional ethics charge that got him a warning from the ABA five years ago.”

A waitress finally showed up to take our order for a couple of Anchor Steam drafts. The interruption gave me time to weigh Runyon’s problem. When we were alone again, I said, “You’ve met the boy, right? Spend much time with him?”

“Not much, no. Bryn only gets him two weekends a month.”

“The next is when?”

“This weekend. She picked him up at school today.”

“Is he easy to talk to, get along with?”

“Shy. Doesn’t say much.”

“Would Bryn let you take him somewhere without her?”

“… She might. But if he won’t tell his mother he’s being abused, he’s not going to open up to a stranger.”

“His mother’s not a detective. You’ve interrogated kids before, same as I have. There’re ways to do it without making it seem like an interrogation.”

Runyon thought that over. “Maybe,” he said.

“Worth a shot,” I said. “I don’t see anything else you can do without risking a lawsuit and jeopardizing your license. Except be there for Bryn and the boy.”

“That’s a given. Thanks.”

“ Por nada. Keep me posted.”

He said he would. The beers arrived then and we shifted the conversation to agency business while we drank them.

Emily was alone in the Diamond Heights condo when I walked in, working on dinner in the kitchen. No real surprise there; she often did the cooking when Kerry had to work late at Bates and Carpenter and it was one of my days at the agency. Emily was thirteen going on thirty, one of those rare kids who were not only intelligent but also good at anything that interested them, from school subjects to the environment to music to Home Ec.