Bill Pronzini: Spook

“You mind taking orders from a woman?”

“I don’t have any problem with it.”

“Black woman just about young enough to be your daughter?”

“No problem with that either. I’ve worked with women, black and white, young and old. And my partner, the man who was killed in the chase, was black.”

“He was driving, you said?”

“The crash wasn’t his fault, if that’s what you’re getting at. I don’t hold grudges against dead men, Ms. Corbin. Or live ones, for that matter, black or white.”

“So you get along with everybody.”

“If they make a reasonable effort to get along with me. I don’t toady to anyone, and I’ve been known to question authority — male or female — if I think the situation warrants it. Might as well get that said up front. Otherwise, I’m easy enough. And a good investigator. I work hard, I don’t object to overtime or scut work, I don’t make unreasonable requests, and I don’t pad the expense account.”

That pretty much ended the interview. Runyon shook hands with each of us again, I told him we’d be in touch one way or the other, and away he went. He hadn’t cracked even the ghost of a smile the entire time.

“Mr. Personality,” Tamara said.

“Man with problems. But he seemed forthright enough.”

“Uh-huh. Working with that dude would be a laugh a minute.”

“Like working with me, you mean?”

“You can be pretty funny, specially when you’re not half trying.”

“Thanks. I think.”

“Funny as Drew Carey, sometimes.”

Whoever Drew Carey was.

We had a total of nine applicants, and as a matter of course we ran a background check on each one. The check on Jake Runyon filled in some of the gaps in his personal record. He had problems, all right. A long, sad history of them.

He’d been married twice, the first time at age nineteen to a woman named Andrea Fleming. The following year she’d borne him a son, Joshua. Fourteen months after that, he’d left her for his second wife, Colleen McPhail — a bitter separation and divorce that culminated in Andrea getting full custody of the child and moving to San Francisco, where she’d taken back her maiden name and legally changed the child’s surname to Fleming. Evidently her bitterness hadn’t been tempered by time; one of Runyon’s friends on the Seattle PD told me she’d poisoned Joshua against his father and the boy had grown up hating him, refusing to have anything to do with him. Andrea Fleming had never remarried; had nursed her bitterness with alcohol and died two years ago of liver failure. Runyon’s second marriage, meanwhile, had apparently been rock-solid; he worshipped Colleen, the cop friend said. No children from that union, just the two of them together for two decades. And now Colleen Runyon was gone, too, of ovarian cancer, and Jake Runyon was alone except for his estranged son whom he still hadn’t seen after five weeks in the city.

Tamara said, “Moved down here looking to patch things up, probably, and he’s not getting anywhere.”

“Can’t be easy finding an antidote to a lifetime of poison.”

“Yeah. But the man did it to himself. Left his wife and baby for another woman. I’d be full of poison, too, if a man treated me that way.”

“For twenty years? I don’t think so. You’re not the type who lives in the past, uses booze to nurse an obsessive hatred.”

“Might be if I loved somebody enough in the first place.”

“As much as Runyon seems to have loved his second wife, you mean?”

“Sure, take his side. Men always stick up for each other.”

“I’m not taking anybody’s side,” I said. “We don’t know enough about any of these people to make judgments. All I’m saying is that there are no easy explanations for what people feel or do. Life can be a complicated mess sometimes.”

“Ain’t it the truth. What Runyon said about twenty years being the blink of an eye — you agree with it?”

“Absolutely. Life itself isn’t much more than three or four.”

By the end of the week I had the field narrowed down to two. Jake Runyon was one; the second was Deron Stewart, another ex-cop with similar credentials. Stewart was local, had worked eight years for the San Francisco office of a big national agency. The economic crunch brought about by the sudden collapse of the dot-com industry had cost him his job, but he’d been given an unqualified recommendation and he owned a solid if undistinguished record.

Tamara and I sat down late Friday afternoon to make our final decision. I said, “Two names on my list. There’s not much difference in background or experience, so as I see it the choice comes down to personalities.”

“Uh-huh.”

“How many names on your list?”

“Just one.”

“Really? Who?”

“You first.”

“Okay. Close call, but my vote goes to Deron Stewart.”

She gave me a bent smile. “How come you be picking him?”

“He has a nice, easy way of dealing with people,” I said. “Quick, too. And he’s upbeat.”

“Those the only reasons?”

“Only ones I can think of at the moment.”

“Fact that he’s African American didn’t have anything to do with it?”

“Well...”

“You figure I’d be more comfortable working with a brother, maybe?”

“Come on, Tamara, don’t bring race into this.”

“Me? You the one playing that card, boss man. We been working together four years now, the last two full-time, and you don’t know me any better’n that? You think I’m still the hard-ass college kid I was back when?”

She’d been a hard-ass, all right — the type of young urban black who distrusts and dislikes whitey, sees racism lurking in every act and spoken word, and adopts a hostile attitude. The first day she’d walked into this office, to interview for the part-time job of computerizing my old-fashioned operation, she’d worn outlandish clothing, brandished her attitude like a sword, and all but accused me of having ulterior sexual motives toward her. We’d clashed, hard. But there’d been a connection nonetheless, one which allowed us to get past all the crap and give each other a second chance. And she had matured into a person with perspective, tolerance, compassion, a far more adult fashion sense, and a remarkable flair, passion, and professionalism for the detective business. Four years ago it would’ve been inconceivable to me that I’d one day offer her a full partnership — as inconceivable as making a firm decision to semi-retire at the age of sixty-one.

I said, “Anything but.”

“Then don’t be patronizing me,” she said. There was an edge to her voice, but no real heat. She was making a point, not starting an argument.

“I’m not patronizing you. I was only—”

“You really think Deron Stewart’s the best man?”

“Well... don’t you?”

“No,” she said.

“Why not?”

“He’s a hound, that’s why not.”

“Hound?”

“Pussy hound. Didn’t you see the way he looked at me, how long he held onto my hand after we interviewed him? Sniff, sniff, sniff, with his big old tongue hanging out.”

“Was he that obvious?”

“Was to me. Man’s sly, but not so sly a smart woman can’t see what he is. He’d be hitting on me inside a week. Be hitting on any other woman he figured might be available, too, black or white, every chance he had.”

“You mean while on the job?”

“On the job, off the job, in his sleep. Trust me, he’s a hound. I can’t work with a hound no matter what color he is.”

I like to think I’m a good judge of character, that I can pick up on obvious flaws on a first meeting. Not where Deron Stewart was concerned, evidently. Because he was a black man? Because I’d wanted to believe Tamara would be happier, more comfortable with someone of the same race — patronizing her, as she’d claimed, with reverse racism? Or just because I was getting old and missing signals, more ready for the pasture than I wanted to admit?