Bill Pronzini: Betrayers

Runyon said, “His brother put up your fee. Coy Madison, is it?”

“Yeah. Coy. Coy and Troy. Some names.”

“What’d Coy say when you told him his brother didn’t show?

“He was pissed, what else? He’s out thirty-five hundred, or his wife is.”

“The wife’s money?”

“Yeah,” Melikian said. “He works in some art supply store, doesn’t earn much of his own.”

“Either of them have any idea where his brother might be?”

“He says no.”

“Or why Troy jumped bail?”

“Why? Why do you think? Figured he’d be convicted, didn’t want to do the time. Goddamn jumpers are all alike.”

“He have any other relatives?”

“No.”

“What about friends?”

“Dopers like that, they don’t have friends, they just have customers.”

“He’s got at least one,” Runyon said.

“Yeah? Who?”

“The woman he lives with.”

Melikian managed to half-curl his upper lip. “Her. What the jumper sees in her I can’t imagine, unless she does something fancy in bed. Looks like she’s been dragged a few times behind a Muni bus. Older than him, must be thirty-five.”

“What’s her name?”

“Jennifer Piper. Another doper. She got caught in the same bust, but the cops didn’t hold her. Not enough evidence she was dealing, too.”

“Where’ve they been living?”

“Apartment on Valencia. Address is in the file.” Melikian’s voice was edged with impatience now. “Everything else you need is in the file. So how about you get moving instead of sitting here asking me questions, find that goddamn jumper so I don’t lose my thirty-one point five K.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“I don’t want to hear do your best. You think my doctor’s gonna give me a hip replacement I tell him I’ll do my best to pay him for it? Results, that’s what I want. That damn jumper back in jail where he belongs, that’s what I want.”

Runyon had nothing to say to that. He’d learned long ago that you didn’t argue with clients or respond to less than reasonable demands from the aggressive ones like Melikian. You just nodded, said you’d be in touch. And went away to do exactly what you’d said you would-your best, always.

In his car he went through the printout of the Madison file. There were two pics of Troy Madison in addition to the usual bio sheet, one the booking photo from his latest arrest, the other a head-and-shoulders snap probably taken by one of Melikian’s employees. Skinny kid at five ten, 160 pounds. Long reddish hair, scraggly beard, pockmarked cheeks-not much to look at, but memorable enough once you’d seen him. Runyon slipped both photos into his jacket pocket.

The two brothers had been born in Bakersfield, Troy the younger by two years-twenty-eight now. Both parents deceased and no living relatives except an eighty-five-year-old grandmother in a Visalia nursing home. Never married. Mechanic by trade, also worked as a truck driver. Current address: 244 Valencia Street. Arrested four times on narcotics charges over the past seven years, all in San Francisco-three for possession of methamphetamines and crack cocaine, the recent intent-to-sell bust made outside a Mission District nightclub by two undercover narcs. The possession charges had resulted in a couple of slaps on the wrist and one six-month stay in the county jail; the current bust involved sufficient amounts of meth and crack to land him in Folsom if he was convicted. Melikian’s shit detector had malfuctioned where Madison was concerned, all right. Prime jumper candidate from the get-go.

Madison’s brother, Coy, and his wife lived on 19th Street. He was manager of Noe Valley Arts amp; Crafts Supply on 24th; Arletta Madison was a self-employed sculptress, either one of the few successful artists of that type or she had money of her own that her husband wasn’t privy to without permission.

There was nothing in the file on Jennifer Piper.

Runyon called the agency, asked Tamara to run checks on the Madison brothers, Piper, and Arletta Madison and to find out if she could turn up any individuals with ties, particularly criminal ties, to Troy Madison. Then he got rolling.

The apartment building where Madison and Piper had been living was an old four-story stucco pile with a buff-colored facade, a couple of blocks off Market. The lobby mailbox that bore Madison’s name but not Jennifer Piper’s was 3B. Runyon rang the bell three times, just making sure, before he looked up the building manager, a fat woman with hair the color of Cheez Whiz. She had nothing to tell him. “I don’t pay no attention to what the other tenants do unless they don’t pay their rent on time,” she said. “Troy Madison pays his on time, that’s all I know, that’s all I want to know.”

Runyon went back into the vestibule and thumbed the bell on the box marked Adams, the name of the woman who’d seen Madison and Piper leaving with their suitcases. No answer. He rang the other bells one at a time, got three responses. One of the three wouldn’t talk to him; the other two were willing enough, if hardly a font of information.

“I heard Madison got arrested for selling drugs,” one of them said, “but he never tried to push any around here. I’d’ve turned him in if he had. I don’t have nothing to do with drugs, mister. One of my sister’s kids died of a heroin overdose three years ago.”

“The Piper woman?” the other neighbor said. “Sure, I seen her around. Unfriendly as hell. Stare right through you like you were a piece of glass. No, I don’t know where she works. Don’t work anywhere, for all I know. I seen her around here all hours, day and night.”

So much for Valencia Street, at least for the time being. Next stop: Noe Valley.

He wondered what Bryn was doing right now.

Funny how thoughts like that popped into his head lately. He’d be thinking about something else or not thinking about anything, driving someplace or no place, and then all of a sudden she’d be there in his mind. Just the way Colleen had been in the twenty good years before the cancer diagnosis. Happened all the time then, not just occasionally, but he’d been deeply in love with Colleen-the love of his life. He wasn’t in love with Bryn. Or was he? Maybe, a little

… more than a little. But not in the same way, now or ever.

With Colleen the connection had been so complete that when the cancer had finally destroyed her, it’d nearly destroyed him, too. With Bryn it was different. A closeness built on friendship, understanding, a gradually hardening bond of trust. Gentle intimacy, even in bed the past month. Two damaged people, her by the stroke that had paralyzed one side of her face, him by Colleen’s lingering death and the black hole it had left inside him. Leaning on each other for support, sure, but it was more than that-it was helping each other learn how to feel again, how to care about themselves again.

She’d be working now, he thought, as she did most afternoons. Maybe on one of her watercolors or charcoal sketches, maybe on the computer-generated graphic designs that paid her bills. She’d refused spousal support when her cold, selfish ex-husband divorced her after the stroke. Too proud, too self-sufficient. She’d even insisted on paying a share of the support for her only kid, nine-year-old Robert Jr., Bobby.

Bobby had spent this past weekend with her-one of the two weekends a month she was allowed to have her son to herself. The ex-husband, the kind of lawyer that gave the profession a bad name, had manipulated it that way. Made some sort of arrangement with a family court judge who granted him full custody except for the monthly weekend visits and one week in the summer, the decision based on the lie that Bryn’s stroke and disfigurement made her less than fit to raise the boy as a single mom. Bastards. And now Robert Sr. was getting married again, which meant a new “mother” for Bobby, an increased feeling of alienation for Bryn.