Bill Pronzini: Spook

“Runyon hadn’t come in when he did, you’d’ve told me all right. I’d’ve knocked it out of you.”

“He tore up the office trying to find out,” she said to Runyon.

“Shut up. You tell me, smart guy. Right now, or I’ll bust the other side of her head, make her bleed some more. You want that?”

“No.”

“Then tell me who hired you!”

“The Department of Human Services.”

“Who? What the hell’s that?”

“City agency that administers to the homeless. They didn’t know who Spook was and the police weren’t getting anywhere, so they brought us in.”

“Bullshit. Why would the city care?”

“So he could have a proper burial.”

“You’re lying to me. Those people, bureaucrats, government bastards, they don’t care about homeless people, they don’t give a shit about anybody. They’re like the IRS, like Marjorie, take your business away, take everything that’s left and leave you with nothing, ruin your life.”

“You asked me who hired us, I told you. The Department of Human Services.”

“Who in the department? Who called up, who’d you talk to, give me some names.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You damn well better. Give me a name, then you call them up, tell them get their asses over here.”

“Bring in more innocent people so you can murder them? I won’t do that, Tom.”

“I won’t either,” Tamara said. “Believe it, man.”

Valjean stopped pacing, leveled the Uzi again. “I’ll kill you, you don’t do what I tell you!”

“You’re planning to kill us anyway. But nobody else is going to die if we can help it.”

“You can’t help it. Cops’ll come when you’re all dead, SWAT team, you think I care? I’ll take some of them out too, as many as I can before they get me.”

“Why?”

“Why? I’ve had it, that’s why, I can’t stand it any more. All the lies, laws, bullshit, everything, everybody, you hear me?”

“Take out as many people as you can just because you’re pissed off at the world. Innocent people doing their jobs.”

“Don’t tell me that! Innocent! Just doing your jobs, just following orders, that’s what you all say, all you bastards, come around and take away everything a man has, ruin his life, then tell him it’s nothing personal, you’re just doing your jobs. Well I’m making it personal. I made it personal with Colton and that blackmailing son of a bitch Big Dog and Marjorie and I’ll make it personal with you and the bastards that hired you, everybody gets in my way, no mercy no prisoners no more bullshit!”

Tamara made a small noise in her throat. Runyon didn’t look at her. Valjean’s eyes were smoky at the edges, the pupils as red-black as burning embers; and they didn’t blink, he hadn’t blinked more than once the entire time. Bad sign. So was the way he kept caressing the Uzi with his free hand, slow, sensuous movements, the intimate caresses of a man making love to a woman. Ready to blow any second, like a shaken bottle of nitro. Anything might set him off — a word, an action, one of his own shorted circuits.

The accelerated rasp of Valjean’s breathing and the steady patter of rain on the skylights were the only sounds in there now. Runyon sat tense and spring-coiled. If Valjean blew, there wouldn’t be time to do much of anything, but at least he’d be up and trying to get in front of Tamara Corbin. He damn well didn’t want to die sitting passive in a chair.

Fifteen seconds like that, and then the crisis point passed. Runyon felt it, saw it in the hot eyes, heard it in the sudden gusty expulsion of breath. Valjean took his left hand off the gun, sleeved sweat from his forehead.

“All right,” he said, “all right, when’s the other one coming?”

“What other one?”

“Don’t play dumb, Runyon, I told you I won’t put up with any more bullshit. Three of you work here, when’s the other one coming?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he won’t be in today.”

“He’s coming, she said he was.”

“Later,” Tamara said. “Not until later.”

“Later, later, when later?”

“Told you, man, I don’t know.”

“Call him, get him on the phone.”

“Don’t know where he is. Told you that too.

“You must know, you work for him.”

“We’re partners.”

“What? You? Partners?”

“Yeah, me. Young black bitch, how about that?”

“Shut up, I didn’t mean it that way. You think I’m prejudiced? I’m not.”

“You just hate everybody, right?”

“That’s right, everybody’s equal in my eyes, I hate everybody regardless of race, creed, or color.” Valjean laughed, a sound like heavy wheels rumbling through gravel. “Justified, by God. Justified!”

Runyon said, “What happens now?”

“What do you think? We wait for your partner.”

“He’s not my partner. I just work here.”

“You think I care? I don’t care about anything any more. It’s almost finished. Soon as he gets here, then everybody gets what’s coming to them, everybody pays, everybody dies.”

From Visuals, Inc. I drove downtown and hung around Bates and Carpenter’s offices on lower Geary until Kerry could break free. We had just enough time for a quick lunch before we headed out to the avenues to Emily’s school. The Christmas pageant was scheduled for one o’clock. She really wanted us to be there, and I’d rather have cut off an arm than add another disappointment to her already too-long list.

The auditorium was mostly full by the time we walked in, but it turned out that the Simpsons, Carla’s parents, had saved a couple of seats for us. Nice people, Carl and Lorraine; always cheerful and friendly, and affectionate toward each other in public. But since Emily had dropped her little bombshell, I’d felt uncomfortable in their presence. The Simpsons’ problems in the bedroom were none of my business, but the seed had been planted and it kept sprouting whenever I saw them. Out of the mouths of babes. The less you know about somebody else’s sex life, the better off you are — and if that isn’t an axiom, it ought to be.

So I sat next to Carl and made polite conversation and was relieved when the program finally started. I’d figured they would put it on by grades, but they had a better scheme than that — a series of nonsecular skits, each one integrating several kids from different age and ethnic groups. Pretty well done, too. The second was a Santa’s Workshop thing, a biggish twelve-year-old dressed up as St. Nick (poor kid), a dozen or more elves in costume puttering and singing. Originally Emily had been assigned to that skit, in the role of one of the elves, but she’d talked her way out of it. “I think it’s silly,” she’d said when I asked her why.

“What’s silly about it?”

“Elves are silly. There aren’t any such things.”

“There aren’t, huh? What about Santa Claus?”

“He’s just a figment.”

“Figment?”

“Make-believe. I’ve known that since I was five.”

“Who told you?”

“My mom. She said all that stuff, Santa Claus and reindeer and elves, was just a big stupid fantasy that messes up kids’ heads. Parents and friends give you presents at Christmas, not some fat elf in a sleigh.”

“You really believe it’s just a big stupid fantasy?”

“Well, I cried when she told me. But I’m too old for that stuff now anyway.”

Ten years of life. Too old for that stuff. Kids grow up so damn fast these days, by necessity, and maybe the earlier they start being fed doses of reality, the more effectively they’ll be able to cope with the screwed-up world of the twenty-first century. Some modern theories of child-rearing embrace that approach. Admittedly Kerry and I are Johnny-come-latelys to parenthood, and I’m hopelessly old-fashioned; but it seems to me that the traditional fantasy beliefs of childhood are neither stupid nor harmful. They encourage kids to indulge their imaginations, allow them to keep their sense of innocent wonder a little longer. Emily’s parents had been fearful, cold, materialistic people with darkly hidden pasts; their doses of reality had been tainted and had tainted her. It would be foolish to say that she’d have fewer psychological scars if they’d let her believe in Santa Claus, but in my view, destroying her child’s fantasy world so early and so harshly had contributed to the damage.