Bill Pronzini - Spook

The job I’d just taken on for Steve Taradash didn’t make me feel any less frustrated or impotent. The homeless person called Spook was dead; there was nothing I or anybody else could do for him. Identifying him might help to ease Taradash’s conscience, but not mine. It meant my taking to the mean streets yet again, dealing with its denizens, and it figured to be a depressing experience no matter what the outcome. I wasn’t sure I was up to it.

By the time I got to where I’d left the car, I knew I wasn’t up to it. Semiretired, promises to Kerry to back away from shadow-world cases, overload of empathy... a nice little bunch of rationalizations, maybe, but there they were. And if I needed one more, it was the fact that it might be necessary to talk to Joe DeFalco, since he’d have compiled a background file for his Spook article, and I was trying to avoid him as much as possible these days. He kept threatening, since I’d made the mistake of telling him about my semi-retirement, to write a feature about me and my career. The last thing I wanted was any more publicity of the hyperbolic variety he indulged in.

So I took the coward’s way out. I decided to pass the buck to the agency’s brand-new hire.

Jake Runyon was still home when I called his number on the car phone. I jumped right in, saying, “How would you like to start work tomorrow instead of on Monday?”

“I wouldn’t mind,” he said.

“Time and a half for weekends.”

“No problem either way. What’s the job?”

“ID and background check on a homicide victim. How do you feel about the homeless?”

“You mean in general?”

“In general, and any specific feelings you might have.”

“Some good people, some bad, like any other group. I feel for the genuinely hard-up. The system parasites... I can’t work up much sympathy. Why? The homicide victim homeless?”

“That’s right. You work many street cases for Caldwell?”

“No. They’re mainly high-tech and white-collar,” Runyon said. “But I spent a lot of years on the down-and-dirty end for the SPD. San Francisco’s streets can’t be much different from Seattle’s.”

“Not much, except that the homeless problem here is out of control.”

“So I hear. Political hot potato.”

“No politics involved in this case. Personal variety.”

“Who’s paying me bill?”

I told him who and why and as much as I’d learned about Spook from Taradash and DeFalco’s article.

“Robbery, grudge motive, or random shooting,” he said, “one of the three.”

“Probably. Not our concern, though, unless something shakes out during the ID investigation.”

“Suits me. I’ve had enough of that.”

“Okay, then. Meet me tomorrow around eleven-thirty at the office. I’ll brief you and then we’ll head over to Visuals, Inc. and I’ll introduce you to the client.”

I’ve had enough of that. Homicide investigation, he’d meant. But I thought that he’d also meant death, enough of death. Amen. I’d had enough of it, too, the professional kind and the personal kind. None in my life as painful as Runyon’s recent loss, but a few, such as Eberhardt’s, that had been bad enough. Spiritually we seemed to have a lot in common, Jake Runyon and me. Brothers under the yoke.

Kerry said, “You really have turned over a new leaf.”

“New leaf?”

“Giving this Spook case to your new man instead of handling it yourself. Isn’t it better being home on a cold December night than out on the streets?”

“I’ve already been out on the streets tonight. And I’d be home now even if I was handling the case. There’s no real work to be done until tomorrow.”

“You know what I mean. Don’t obfuscate.”

“Don’t which?”

“You also know what obfuscate means.”

“Sure do. Wanna obfuscate before dinner?”

“Smart-ass. You think he’ll work out all right?”

“Who?”

“Jake Runyon. He sounds like a man with problems.”

“Everybody’s got problems,” I said. “He’s dealing with his the best he can. Besides, he’s a pro. Tamara was right — best man for the job.”

Kerry pulled a face. “I can’t believe you wanted to hire a black man just because you thought it would make her happy.”

“That wasn’t the only reason, I told you that. Deron Stewart’s qualifications—”

“— weren’t quite as good as Jake Runyon’s. Which you also told me. Sometimes you try so hard to please, you don’t think things through.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“You might have really offended her.”

“She wasn’t offended.”

“But she might’ve been.”

“Might’ve been doesn’t count. She wasn’t.”

Kerry said musingly, “She’s only twenty-five.”

“So?”

“I wish I’d been that smart and insightful at her age.”

“And you wish I was now, at my age.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Didn’t have to. Anyhow, you’re right. By the time she’s sixty-one she’ll probably have gone national, head up a dozen branches and be a multimillionaire.”

“Well, I wouldn’t be surprised. She has that kind of potential.”

“Whereas I never did.”

“I didn’t say that either. Are we feeling a bit gruffly tonight?”

“No, we’re not. Not if we don’t spend the evening picking on us.”

“If only you weren’t so pickable,” she said. Her face was straight, but her eyes said she was yanking my chain a little. All the women in my life — Kerry, Tamara, even Emily — seemed to take an unholy joy in deviling me now and then. The reason for it escaped me. Pickable. What makes somebody pickable, anyway?

We were in the living room with a wood fire going, white wine for her and beer for me. Emily was in her room with Shameless the cat, her door shut and locked; she’d disappeared in there as soon as she and Kerry walked in. Fast hug, peck on the cheek, and she was gone. I figured she was either working on her costume for her school’s Christmas pageant next week, or wrapping presents. She’d been carrying a big sack and wouldn’t let either of us see what was in it.

I drank some of my beer-flavored water. New Year’s resolution: Start treating myself to a better quality of beverage. The stores were full of local microbrews, among them some hoppy IPAs that people kept touting to me.

“Did you find out what Emily wants for Christmas?” I asked.

“Yes, she told me. Her fondest dream wish... her words.”

“And?”

“Her own cell phone.”

“What? At her age?”

“A lot of kids have them now.”

“Ten-year-olds going around ringing and yacking in public? Who do they talk to?”

“Friend’s, family. It keeps them connected.”

“Connected,” I said. “When I was a kid, we didn’t need to be jabbering on the phone to feel connected.”

“Did they have telephones when you were a kid?”

“Hah. Funny.”

“Well, you sound like an old fogey.”

“Maybe I am. But most people of my generation... our generation... turned out just fine without portable phones and pagers and handheld computers and all the other techno gadgets they have nowadays.”

“Times change, darlin’. Lifestyles change. Kids grow up a lot faster, and there’s a greater need for connection. It’s anything but a kind and gentle world out there, as I don’t have to tell you. Cell phones aren’t just for kids’ amusement, they’re for emergencies too. And to keep emergencies from happening.”

No way I could argue with that. “Okay,” I said. “Still, those things are expensive.”

“The one Emily wants is reasonable enough.”

“You mean she’s got a specific brand all picked out?”