“Come on, Cybil, you’re being evasive. Secrets?”
She ignored the question. “You did bring the envelope?”
It was in my briefcase; I hauled it out, handed it over. She held it for a few seconds, moving it up and down slightly as if she were estimating its weight. Then she put it down on the glass-topped table in front of her.
“Manuscript of some kind,” I said.
Sharp look. “You didn’t open the envelope?”
“You know me better than that. Besides, you can see that it’s still sealed.”
“… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to… oh, shit, I hate this!”
Cybil almost never cusses. She didn’t even seem to realize she’d used a four-letter word. Which showed how upset she was under the calm facade she had on.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Talk about what? I’m not going to open the envelope in front of you, if that’s what you’re angling for.”
“It’s not.”
“I may not even tell you later what’s in it. You or Kerry.”
“Your prerogative,” I said. “Look, Cybil, I’m only trying to be helpful here, lend a sympathetic ear.”
“There’s no need for it. You think I’m mourning Russ Dancer?”
“I don’t think anything.”
“Well, I’m not,” she said. “I despised the man.”
“He loved you.”
“Damn his brand of love! I’m not sorry he’s dead, I wish our paths had never crossed. He left me in peace the past twenty years, why couldn’t he keep on that way instead of trying to come at me from the grave?”
“Come at you? How?”
She shook her head almost violently. The outburst had put flame in her thin cheeks, like a boozer’s flush. It made me remember that Cybil had been a hard drinker back in the forties, and that she’d taken at least one walk on the wild side with another member of the Pulpeteers-facts that were hard for me to imagine because of her grace and wholesome qualities. Her and Dancer, too? No, that couldn’t be what this was all about. The idea of her taking him up on one of his crude advances, drunk or sober, was ludicrous.
I watched the flush fade as she tightened the reins on her emotions. Pretty soon she said, “Finish your beer. It’s time you took Emily home and gave the child her dinner. She doesn’t eat enough as it is, she’s too thin.”
Emily’s appetite was fine; so was her weight. But I didn’t argue. Cybil had had enough of us. She wanted to be alone with that envelope and whatever was in it-alone with whatever private little demons Dancer’s life and Dancer’s death had stirred up inside her.
Kerry was home when Emily and I came in. The first thing he said when we were alone was, “I’m not going to apologize for calling her.”
“I didn’t ask you to. I don’t want to fight about this anymore.”
“Good. Neither do I.”
“I’d just like to know what’s going on here. What’s got Cybil so riled up.”
“She’ll tell us if she wants us to know.”
“Don’t you want to know? Or maybe you already know, or at least have some idea.”
“I don’t,” she said grimly, “I don’t have a clue.”
And that worried me, too. Cybil almost never cussed and Kerry almost never lied, and now both of them were acting out of character. Kerry knew or suspected, all right. And it must be pretty disturbing for her to hide it behind a flat-out lie.
11
JAKE RUNYON
He hated hospitals.
Six months of them while Colleen was dying, the last six months of her life. Short stays for tests and radiation treatments, longer stays when the cancer worsened, then that last terrible month when they both knew there was no more hope and she kept growing weaker and weaker, becoming a small wasted pitiful thing lying there among all that antiseptic white and gleaming metal. The medicine smells, sick smells, death smells. The pain, the rage he’d felt. The fight to keep a smile on his face and his voice upbeat, and the constant fear that he wouldn’t be able to get through another visit, that he’d break down right there in front of her. At least she hadn’t died in that place. The last few days at home, with him and a hospice nurse at her bedside, had been bad enough. In the hospital, the waiting and the slow slipping away would have been unbearable. He’d’ve broken down for sure.
As soon as he walked into San Francisco General, the sights and smells brought the hate spiraling up into his throat. Irrational, almost pathological-so be it. Before he’d let anybody shut him up in a place like this, stick tubes and needles in him, hook him up to machines, he’d do what he’d thought about doing in those first couple of days after Colleen was gone. He’d put the muzzle of his. 357 Magnum between his teeth and this time there’d be no sweating hesitation, no waffling; this time he’d eat it.
He crossed the lobby fast to the elevators. Fourth floor, Joshua had said. He punched 4 on the panel, and while the elevator took him up there he finished shutting himself down inside, focusing his mind to basics-the only way he could deal with a place like this. Do what he’d come here to do. Get through it. Walk out and away as quickly as possible.
Kenneth Hitchcock was in Ward 6. The floor duty nurse told him where it was. Six beds, three on a side, each one outfitted with privacy curtains. The curtain was partially open at the one on the left, nearest the door; inside, Joshua sat in a chair drawn up close to the bed, holding the hand of the man who lay there. He clung to it even more tightly when he saw Runyon; his face shaped into one of his defiant looks. Runyon acknowledged him with a nod, shifted his gaze to Kenneth Hitchcock.
Well set up, dark, long hair, and a brushy mustache. Handsome, ordinarily, in an actorish way, but not now. Left arm in a sling, upper body swathed in bandages to hold his cracked ribs in place, right side of his face bandaged, the other side tallowish and raddled with lemon- and raspberry-hued bruises. He was awake, his eyes open and reflecting pain. Joshua had said on the phone that his condition had been upgraded to fair, that he’d be all right barring infection or a resumption of internal bleeding.
“Kenny,” Joshua said, “this is Jake Runyon.” Not “my father,” just the name. As if he were introducing a stranger.
“Hello.” Weak voice, ghost of a smile. “Pardon me if I don’t shake hands.”
“My son tells me you’re feeling better.”
“Might live. Wasn’t so sure there for a while.”
“You’ll be fine,” Joshua said. Then again, as though trying to convince himself, “You’ll be fine.”
Runyon said to him, “I’d like to talk to Kenneth alone.”
“Alone? Why?”
“Indulge me. It won’t take long.”
“I don’t know… Kenny?”
“It’s okay. See if you can get me some bottled water, will you? I’m thirsty, and the tap water here tastes like piss.”
“All right, love.”
The term of endearment was for Runyon’s benefit-looking right at him as he said it. Another attempt at defiance. Runyon ignored it. How long before Joshua learned, if he ever learned, that his sexual orientation meant nothing to his father? Family mattered, blood mattered. Gay didn’t matter at all.
Joshua went away without looking at him. Runyon pulled the chair back a foot or so, sat down. Midnight-blue eyes, dull with pain, watched and measured him. What Kenneth thought of him, if anything, didn’t register on his battered face.
“I can’t tell you much,” he said. “Don’t remember much. Doctors say that’s typical in trauma cases.”
Runyon said, “Two men, young, in a pickup truck. One a chunky redhead with freckles, wearing some kind of cap, the other tall and slender wearing a jacket with a hood.”
