I said Fred would be pleased. Then I said, “I took a call for you yesterday afternoon. Didn’t sound like business. He wouldn’t leave his name, but… I had the impression it might’ve been your son.”
Nothing changed in Runyon’s expression. “Might’ve been. Message from him on my machine when I got home last night.”
“He sounded upset about something. Everything okay with him?”
“No. His roommate’s in the hospital. Three gay bashings in the Castro district over the past couple of weeks-he’s the latest victim.”
“Christ. Hurt bad?”
“Still critical.”
“Police have any leads on who did it?”
“Other than sketchy descriptions of the two perps, no.”
“Figures. This damn city. SFPD’s in a shambles, the politicians keep tearing each other up over who’s responsible instead of working together to fix the problems, and meanwhile even violent-crime cases get short shrift.”
“Hate crimes against gays among the shortest,” Runyon said. “I looked up last year’s stats a while ago. Nearly five hundred reported cases, only a handful resolved.”
“So much for San Francisco’s reputation as a liberal mecca for homosexuals. What was it like in Seattle?”
“Pretty much the same. Cases like this, it takes a media howl for there to be much of an official effort.”
“And the only way that happens is if there’re more beatings and maybe one of the victims dies.”
He nodded. “It won’t get to that point if I can help it.”
“An investigation of your own?”
“Joshua asked me to see what I can do. I’d go ahead even if he hadn’t.”
“So would I, in your shoes.”
“Already started,” Runyon said. “On my own time. I talked to the second victim last night.”
“Anything?”
“Maybe. Too early to tell for sure.”
“Well, the job doesn’t have to be strictly on your own time,” I said. “Agency facilities are yours if you need them. That includes Tamara and me. If there’s anything we can do, just ask.”
“No payoff in it.”
“So? You think this agency’s never done any pro bono work before? Or taken on any personal cases? If it was my kid who was hurting, or somebody in Tamara’s family, wouldn’t you offer to help out if you could?”
“In a minute.”
“Okay. That’s all the payoff we need.”
“Sorry if I sounded cynical.”
“Hell,” I said, “it’s not easy to be anything else these days.”
I didn’t have much opportunity to talk to Tamara during the day. Lunch with Pat Dixon, an assistant D.A. who’d become a friend after a revenge bomber case that involved the kidnapping of his son. Both of us busy in the office with our respective caseloads, client calls, and a drop-in visit from another client who wanted to talk over a report. It wasn’t until three-thirty that we found time to say more than a few words to each other.
“How’d the deadbeat dad thing go last night?” I asked. “DeBrissac living in the cousin’s San Leandro house?”
“If he is,” Tamara said, “he was out later than I was. Three hours’ surveillance was all the down time I could take.”
“Told you stakeouts were a pain in the butt. How about the house? Did it look lived in?”
“Hard to tell. All the windows blinded so I couldn’t get a look inside. Nothing in the front or back yards but weeds.”
“Talk to any of the neighbors?”
“Not yet. Didn’t want to risk it yet.”
“Probably wise. So you’re going back tonight?”
“Yeah.” She hesitated, a frown working up little rows in the smooth skin of her face. “Funny thing,” she said then.
“What is?”
“Something that went down last night.”
“What kind of something?”
“What I saw, or thought I saw,” she said. “Keeps messing around in my head. I did some checking, but… I don’t know, it’s probably nothing. Just my bad imagination, you know what I’m saying?”
“No,” I said. “What is it you saw?”
“Well, while I was-”
The phone rang just then and cut her off. The call was for me, and by the time I finished with it Tamara was involved in a call of her own. I meant to pick up the conversation again, find out what she’d seen that was bothering her, but the press of other business kept getting in the way. Well, if it was anything important she’d come to me about it eventually.
Just before I left the office I called Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Redwood City. The last frayed thread of Russ Dancer’s wasted life had snapped at 1:57 that afternoon.
8
JAKE RUNYON
The first victim of the gay bashings had been a printer and graphic artist named Larry Exeter. Time: a few minutes past midnight on April 4. Place: an alley off Eighteenth Street, not far from where he lived. He’d gone out for a walk around the neighborhood “to get some air.” Two men had accosted him on the street, dragged him into the alley, beat him senseless with fists and an “unidentified blunt instrument.” A resident in one of the flanking buildings had heard the commotion, looked out his window, yelled when he saw what was going on, and the perps ran. Neither Exeter nor the citizen had been able to supply detailed descriptions of the men or their vehicle. Exeter’s injuries were serious enough to require hospital treatment, but the beating had been interrupted before any major damage was done: three cracked ribs but no broken bones or internal damage.
Runyon got all of this from the police report, through one of the agency’s contacts at the SFPD. Joshua hadn’t been able to remember Exeter’s name, and Gene Zalesky had professed not to know him, either. Exeter’s Seventeenth Street address was given in the report, but no phone number; and there was no listing for him in the white pages. A check revealed that he shared an apartment with a David Mulford, who did have a listed number.
Runyon had a window of free time around three o’clock. He tried Mulford’s number then, and the man who answered owned up, reluctantly, to being Larry Exeter. High, thin, timid voice and an attitude to match, he kept saying, “I just want to forget what happened, get on with my life.” Runyon danced with him, playing it low-key and mentioning his son several times, and eventually talked him into a face-to-face meeting. “But you can’t come here,” Exeter said. “David.. my partner… he wouldn’t like it.”
“Any time and place that’s convenient for you.”
“Does it have to be today?”
“If you can manage it. The sooner the better.”
“Well… I should go out for groceries before David gets home. The Safeway on Market and Church, you know where that is?”
“You want to talk while you’re shopping?”
“No, no. Across the street, on the first block of Church, there’s a coffee shop… Starbucks. I could meet you for a few minutes around four-thirty.”
“I’ll be there.”
The second thing Runyon did was to finish up a preliminary background check on Gene Zalesky that he’d
