Bill Pronzini: Camouflage

What surprised me a little, and pleased and relieved me, was that she was singing while she cooked.

The unpleasant events of a couple of weeks ago, which she’d been innocently involved in and that Runyon and I had dealt with, had had a rough effect on her. She was a sensitive kid. Lonely and withdrawn when she first came into our lives, the only child of a couple of screwed-up felons who had died separately in tragic and violent circumstances; it had taken a long time for Kerry and me to guide Emily out of her shell, and she still had a tendency, when bad things happened, to retreat into that private little world. She’d been uncommunicative the past two weeks, spending most of her time at home closeted in her room with her computer, her iPod, and Shameless the cat. The cooking and especially the singing were indications that the shell had cracked open and she’d come out into the world again.

She hadn’t heard me, because she went right on singing. I shed my coat and hat, tiptoed to the kitchen doorway. Emily’s ambition is to become a professional singer and there’s no doubt in Kerry’s or my mind that she’ll succeed one day; she has a clear, sweet voice and tremendous range for a thirteen-year-old with a minimum of vocal training. She can sing anything from folk songs to show tunes-rap and reggae, too, probably, when we’re not around to hear her do it. She doesn’t need accompaniment and she wasn’t using any at the moment; her ears were bare of the iPod buds. I didn’t recognize the lyrics or the melody, but what I know about popular music you could put in a disconnected iPod bud.

I stood in the doorway, listening and watching her chop up garlic and onions. And smiling, because she seemed happy again and because I love her as much as if she were my own.

She hit a series of high notes with perfect pitch, finishing the song and the chopping simultaneously, and saw me when she turned from the sink to the stove. She blinked a couple of times, then offered up a shy smile. “Oh, hi, Dad. How long have you been standing there?”

“Long enough. What was that you were singing?”

“‘Pointing at the Sun.’ It’s a Cheryl Wheeler song.”

“I’ll bet Cheryl Wheeler doesn’t sing it any better than you just did.”

She said, “Oh, you’re just saying that,” but she was pleased.

“If I didn’t mean it I’d be fibbing. And you know I don’t fib.”

“I know. Mom’s not home yet-she had to work late. She’ll be home around seven.”

“She called me, too. What is it you’re making there?”

“Vegetarian pasta casserole. We eat too much meat and chicken.”

“We do?”

“I think so. Vegetables are a lot healthier.”

“Don’t tell me you’re turning into a vegan?”

“No. Well, maybe. But if I do go vegan, I won’t try to convert you and Mom.”

“That’s good. You can’t teach an old carnivore new tricks.”

That got me another smile. “Don’t worry; you’ll like this casserole. You won’t even know it doesn’t have meat or chicken in it.”

Yes, I would. But I said, “Okay. Need any help?”

“No, I…” But then she changed her mind and said, “Well, you could put some water on for the pasta.”

“Pasta’s my speciality.”

I got a pot out of the cupboard. Emily went back to the cutting board, to chop up a red bell pepper this time. She didn’t do any more singing, but pretty soon she began to hum something up-tempo. Otherwise we worked in companionable domestic silence until the pasta was done and drained and mixed with the vegetables and the casserole was in the oven.

She said then, “Dad? I’ve been thinking and… I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“The way I’ve been acting since… well, you know. It made me so sad and hurt and angry I didn’t feel like talking to anybody.”

“I understand. You don’t have anything to apologize for.”

“Well, I just wanted you to know that I’m okay now. I’m not going to think about it anymore.”

I went over and put an arm around her and gave her a hug. Good kid, practically an anomaly in these days of rebellious, foulmouthed, drug-experimenting teenagers. Lucky kid, despite all the tragedy in her life.

I hoped Bryn Darby’s son had some of the same good fortune. If Bobby was being abused, he was going to need it.

JAKE RUNYON

Bryn said, “Bobby has two more bruises, big ones on his left side. He didn’t want me to hug him, flinched when I did-that’s how I found them.”

“How did he explain them?”

“Mumbled something about one of the kids at school punching him. He wouldn’t look me in the eye. Jake, I don’t know what to do.”

Her voice on the phone was low and controlled, but Runyon could hear the angry desperation in it. A faint speech slur, too-she’d been binge drinking lately, nothing but wine but enough of it to feed instead of ease her chronic depression. His fingers were tight around the steering wheel. Outside the car, in the clogged traffic on Upper Market, horns blared and somebody gave somebody else the finger. Typical Friday evening in the city.

“Where’s Bobby now?” he asked.

“In his room. He won’t talk to me, not about anything.”

“You have plans for him tonight or tomorrow?”

“Not tonight. I was going to take him to the Academy of Sciences tomorrow, but… I don’t know now. Why?”

Runyon didn’t usually see her on the weekends when she had her son; his choice, because he didn’t want to intrude on their limited time together. But the situation was different now, escalating into critical. “I’d like to come over,” he said, “spend a little time with Bobby.”

“… He won’t talk to you, either. He hardly knows you.”

“He might if I can get him off alone for a while. Man-to-man kind of thing. All right with you?”

“Yes, of course.”

“When?”

“Not tonight. Tomorrow morning?”

“I’ll be there around eleven.”

The weather on Saturday was more of the same that the city had endured all week: cold wind, fog. It would’ve been easy enough to pick a place to take Bobby if the skies had been clear, but it wasn’t a day for the beach or the zoo or Golden Gate Park. An indoor day. The Academy of Sciences was always crowded on weekends-not a good place for a private talk. Besides, there was the problem of convincing the boy to spend time with him alone. He’d need a good reason for that.

He thought of one on the short drive from his apartment to Bryn’s home on Moraga Street. A pretty good one that ought to make a nine-year-old cooperative even in his present state.

Bryn’s house was brown shingled and, unlike most of the homes in the outer Sunset District, detached from its neighbors. Quiet, middle-class neighborhood whose only drawback was that it was often swaddled in fog. Not much happened there, not until recently anyway. There were always outer Sunset houses for rent at reasonable rates, and some of the city’s more enterprising criminals had surreptitiously taken advantage of this and of the fact that most residents minded their own business by establishing both brothels and “grow houses”-marijuana farms complete with irrigation systems and bright lights to simulate sunshine.

The city cops had busted up three active call-girl rings in the area, and federal DEA agents had made nearly a score of busts, most of them small operations but one that had netted eighteen hundred plants plus a large quantity of meth and powdered and crack cocaine. None of this worried Bryn much-she had too many other, more immediate problems to cope with-but it was a source of concern to Runyon. So far all of the illicit activity and subsequent arrests had been nonviolent, but that could change at any time. Where you had crime, especially crime involving drugs, you had the potential for bloodshed.