Bill Pronzini - Spook

“ ’Bout your age. Big. Bet he didn’t have a pencil pecker.”

“Big how? Tall, fat, heavyset?”

“Who could tell in a raincoat? Just big, that’s all.”

“Description?”

“I just told you, didn’t I? ’Bout your age and big.”

“What color hair?”

“Brown hair. No, black. No, brown. Drizzly that day, that’s right, and his hair was wet. Wet and brown and not too much of it. Kinda thin, scalp showing through.”

“Beard, mustache?”

“Clean as a whistle, ’cept he had a thing next to his nose.”

“A thing?”

“Mole or whatever. Big one.”

“Which side, left or right?”

“Uh... left. Left side.”

“What else was he wearing?”

“Couldn’t tell. Raincoat was all buttoned up.

“You’re sure it was a raincoat, not an overcoat?”

“What’s the difference?”

“Overcoats are bulkier, made of heavy cloth, like mine. Raincoats are lightweight — polyester cotton, microfiber.”

“Pretty smart, aren’t you?” she said and cackled. “Wasn’t no overcoat. Raincoat. Brown raincoat.”

“Old or new? Expensive or inexpensive?”

“Old. Old and wet. Who knows how much it cost? I don’t.” She held out her hand, palm up. “You sure do ask a lot of questions. Ought to be worth more’n just that one dollar, my answers, eh?”

Runyon gave her two singles, watched her make them disappear inside her own threadbare coat. “You tell any of this to the police, Delia?”

“Any of what?”

“About the man in the brown raincoat.”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“They never paid me, that’s why not. All cops ever give me is a hard time.”

“One more question,” Runyon said. “You happen to see what kind of car he was driving? The man in the raincoat.”

“Nope. I don’t know nothing about cars, don’t pay no attention to cars unless I’m crossing the street. This is a dangerous city, you know? They drive their cars like crazy people in this city. Run red lights, don’t watch where they’re going, one of ’em almost got me in a crosswalk not long ago. Big hurry in their damn fancy cars.” Delia tapped her temple again. “Crazy people,” she said.

Jack Logan was the only one of the two contact names on duty at the Hall of Justice. He was in his late fifties, salt-and-pepper hair, pepper-and-salt mustache. Quiet, on the reserved side, a little stiff at first. But when Runyon told him who he was working for and sketched out his Seattle background, it produced a warming trend, made Logan almost garrulous.

“Heard a rumor that old Bill was going to retire,” he said. “Been meaning to give him a call, but you know how it is — too much work, never enough time. How’s he doing? His health, I mean.”

“Seems fine.”

“Hope so. You can’t help wondering when somebody our age decides to pack it in, if maybe they’re doing it for health reasons. I always figured an old warhorse like him would stay in harness as long as mind and body permitted.”

“Semi-retirement, from what I understand,” Runyon said. “Cutting back on his hours, giving up most of the field work.”

“Well, that makes more sense. Tired of the grind, I guess. I can sympathize with that.” Logan scratched his head, then shook it. “Time catches up with all of us. Seems to happen all at once, too. One day you’re in your prime, the next you’re staring geezerhood in the eye and your whole outlook’s different, you’re not the same man you used to be. In more ways than one.”

Runyon said nothing.

“Well, the hell with it. You don’t want to listen to that kind of talk and neither do I. So you’re Bill’s new hire. You’ll like working with him. He doesn’t always do things by the book, has a tendency to get mixed up in heavy stuff now and then, but he’s a good man.”

“How about his partner?”

“Partner? Can’t mean Eberhardt. He’s dead.”

“Tamara Corbin.”

“He made her a partner? Kid like her? She can’t be more than twenty-five.”

“Pretty smart for her age, seems like.”

“So I hear,” Logan said. “I’ve only met her a couple of times. Cop’s daughter, and she’s been with Bill four or five years now. Makes sense, if he’s cutting back. Times change, all right. People, too.”

Again Runyon said nothing.

“So. This Spook business is your first case, you said?”

“That’s right. Not a homicide investigation — strictly ID and background search on the victim.”

“Let’s see what we’ve got.” Logan switched on his computer, punched up the case file. “Bupkus,” he said then. “Fingerprint and DNA checks negative, dental check negative, no ID of any kind on the body. Unclaimed John Doe so far.”

“Personal items?”

“Not unless you count a pencil stub, two cigarette butts, and a penny.”

“Any leads to the perp or to motive?”

“Zero. Forensics didn’t find anything at the crime scene or on the vic’s clothing. No eyewitnesses, no ear witnesses, nobody on the street knows anything or will admit it if they do. Random assault or personal grudge — most of the homeless homicides come down to one or the other.”

“Nothing in the report about a big man with a mole on the left side of his nose, asking questions about Spook a few days before the shooting?”

Logan raised a shaggy eyebrow. “Where’d you get that?”

“An old lady named Delia, in Franklin Square.” Runyon summarized the rest of what she’d told him.

“You must be good, to pick that up in a couple of hours.”

“Lucky. Right person, right questions.”

“Still. Investigating officers should’ve come up with it....” Logan checked the computer screen. “Oh, yeah, Gunderson.” His expression said that Inspector Gunderson was somebody he neither liked nor respected. “Not on duty now, but if you want to talk to him...”

“Not much point, is there?”

“Not much,” Logan admitted. “I’ll pass on the info, for whatever good it’ll do. But my guess is this case will wind up in the inactive file — unless you turn up something else in the course of your investigation.”

“If I do, it comes straight to you.”

“That’s what I like to hear from the private sector.”

Runyon said, “Be all right if I look at the body?”

“No problem. But it won’t do you much good as far as ID goes.”

“No?”

“Shot in the back of the head execution style, forty-one caliber weapon, hollow point slug. You know what that means.”

“I’d still like a look.”

“Suit yourself. I’ll call down to the morgue, tell them you’re on the way.”

A .41 caliber hollow point does a hellish amount or damage when fired at point-blank range. The upper half of the corpse’s face, including both eyes, was gone. The lower half wasn’t much better. Bruised and torn flesh from the bullet, decaying teeth, cold-cracked lips, skin lesions, popped blood vessels from alcohol consumption. Age: hard to tell, probably mid-forties, maybe older. Body type: an inch or two under six feet, skinny to the point of emaciation. Identifying characteristics: strawberry birthmark on the upper right arm; thin scar a couple of inches long on the underside of a narrow, pointed chin; long neck with a prominent Adam’s apple; knobs on two right finger knuckles that indicated the hand had once been broken.

The most interesting thing was three other scars, old ones, in a place you wouldn’t expect to find them — the genital area. The largest measured more than three inches, a curving, jagged line across the abdomen and down alongside the shriveled scrotum. The other two were on the penis itself, one across the top, one on the left side, that had deformed its shape. As if he’d been slashed down there with some kind of sharp instrument.