Bill Pronzini - Spook

“I’m not sure. Little things now and then...”

“Names, places?”

“The only one that sticks in my mind is Sweetwater Street. I think it might be where he lived once. He didn’t say so, but that was the impression I got.”

“No such street in the city.”

“I don’t have any idea where it might be,” she said. “It was one of his lost days when I heard him say it... you know, when he wasn’t tracking very well.”

Runyon asked, “What can you tell us about those ghosts of his?”

“Well, he had conversations with them. Long, strange conversations that didn’t make much sense.” She paused, frowning. “One time I heard him say ‘Are you still mad at me, Dot? I’m sorry for what I done, you know I’m sorry.’ And then he started to cry. That poor, sick man... he cried like a baby.”

“ ‘Dot.’ That was one of the ghosts’ names?”

“Yes. A woman, definitely. Another time it was ‘Dot honey.’ It seemed to hurt him somehow, whenever he said her name.”

“As if there was a painful memory attached to it?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“What about the other ghost? Or were there more than two?”

“Three, I think. I’m not sure.”

“The one you are sure of, man or woman?”

“Man. Luke, or it could have been Duke.”

“And the third?”

“Sometimes he’d say things like ‘No, no, Mr. Snow.’ And ‘Ain’t that so, Mr. Snow.’ Always rhyming it.”

“Just Mr. Snow, no other name?”

“Just Mr. Snow.”

“Dot, Luke or Duke, Mr. Snow. Real people who died, you think, or just figments?”

“Well... I’d say real people. Anyway they were to him.”

“Assuming they were real,” I said, “ ‘Dot honey’ indicates someone close to him. Wife, girlfriend, sister.”

“That was my impression, too.”

“Did you get any idea of what he did to her or thought he did to her?”

“No, none.”

“Or of who either of the men were, what relationship he might have had with them?”

Sad shake of her head. “I’m not being much help, am I?”

“On the contrary, Mrs. Lawton. You’re doing fine.”

We asked her a few more questions, none of which produced any potentially useful information. It was well past one o’clock when we were done and Steve Taradash still hadn’t put in an appearance. Most of the other employees were involved with the film shoot, so questioning them would have to wait. Runyon asked Meg Lawton to show us the doorway where Spook’s body had been found. She led us through a back door onto the loading dock, down concrete steps into a windblown, litter-strewn alley.

“We try to keep the area back here clean,” she said apologetically, as if the alley’s state was some sort of social lapse, “but with so many homeless, and the careless way people throw things out of cars... it’s just an impossible job.”

Neither Runyon nor I had anything to say to that. We were both taking visual impressions of the alley as we followed Mrs. Lawton along the warehouse wall. It was wide enough to allow room for a small truck to back into one of the dock’s two loading bays — almost wide enough to be called a street. Down at the far end, a raggedy homeless man was poking among the contents of an overflowing shopping cart; otherwise it was empty of people, if not of parked vehicles. The buildings on both sides made it into a canyon where the wind played swirl games with newspapers, food wrappers, the remains of a cardboard carton.

“This was Spook’s doorway,” Meg Lawton said.

It was about fifty feet east of the loading dock and fifty yards or so from the nearest cross street, Hampshire. Narrow space, not more than five feet wide, which would make it cramped sleeping quarters; but deep enough so that it afforded some shelter from the elements. On the rough pavement were dark stains that someone — Mrs. Lawton, maybe — had tried and failed to eradicate with a brush and an abrasive solvent.

The door there was metal and appeared to be secure. Runyon asked, “What’s on the other side?”

“A supply room. The only time the door is opened is when there’s a delivery.”

“The person who found the body — is he working today?”

“Verne Dolinsky, one of our warehousemen. No, he’s off today.”

“Be here on Monday?”

“Yes, but he’s a new man, only with us a short time. He didn’t know Spook as well as the rest of us.” She was hugging herself, staring down at the stained pavement. A little shudder went through her. “It’s freezing out here. If you’re done...”

“Jake?” I said. “Anything else?”

“Not right now.”

Back inside, we found Taradash finally back from his urgent meeting. I introduced him to Runyon, told him Jake would be handling the field part of the investigation. Taradash had no objection once I assured him that our entire agency worked as a team, no additional charge.

Runyon asked how long the filming would last, if it was all right if he stopped back later to talk to some of the other employees. Taradash said sure, any time, and requested that we leave by the loading dock door because of the shoot. On the way back there I said to Runyon, “Blue collar boys, that’s us. Tradesmen please use the rear door.”

Feeble joke and he didn’t crack a smile. But then, the funniest man alive would have had trouble getting a smile out of Jake Runyon these days. We both remained silent until we were outside and on our way through the wind-chilled alley.

“You want to take over from here, Jake?” I said then.

“Counting on it. See if I can locate this Big Dog for starters.

For no good reason I said, “ ‘And when the big dog comes home, he’ll tell you what the little dog’s done.’ ”

“Come again?”

“Line from an old jazz song. ‘St. Louis Blues.’ ”

“You a jazz fan?”

“Most of my life. But I don’t pay as much attention as I used to.”

That was enough small talk for him. He pulled his collar up tight around his throat and said, “One question. You have contacts with the SFPD?”

“I know a couple of guys on the Bureau of Inspectors.”

“I’d like a look at the official report, just for background. Will one of them let me see it? Talk to me about their investigation?”

“Answer your questions, at least.”

“Let me have a look at the body?”

“Shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Who do I ask for first?”

“Jack Logan. Lieutenant. I’ve known him the longest — we used to play poker together. The other man is an inspector, Harry Craddock. If you need me to verify your employment, I’ll be home the rest of today.” I passed over one of the business cards with my home number on it. “Feel free to call yourself, any time, any reason.”

“Thanks, but I don’t think it’ll be necessary.”

We parted on Hampshire Street. No more words, just a nod from Runyon before he moved away, walking fast and ram-rod-straight with his hands stuffed in the pockets of his overcoat.

He was a hard man to like as well as a hard man to know, unless you were cut from similar cloth. I wasn’t sure I liked him much, at least not yet, but I was pretty sure I understood him and could work with him. Time would tell if Tamara, as young and high-strung as she was, felt the same.

Back in his element.

Little twitches of life in him again.

Funny way to feel, walking among the homeless and the derelicts shivering in the gray cold of Franklin Square. But you couldn’t control something like that. He’d been numb for so long, ever since Colleen died. No, before... from when the chemotherapy hadn’t done any good and hope faded and he’d been forced to face the fact that he would lose her. So numb he could barely function, walking around like a zombie — days and nights of the living dead. So numb after she was gone he couldn’t even lift his .357 Magnum, much less shove it into his mouth and eat it. Three nights of that, three nights of sitting numb and sweat-soaked with the gun as heavy as a slab of granite on his lap before he’d faced another fact: he didn’t want to die yet. That had numbed him even more, because the desire to live seemed like a betrayal of Colleen, a mockery of her suffering.