“Yes. I thought so.”
“Do you have any idea what it was?”
“No. But her headaches seemed worse… you know she have bad headaches?”
“Migraines, yes.”
“She suffered very much from them.”
“Was she seeing a doctor about the headaches?”
“I asked her the last time. A doctor in San Francisco, she said.”
“San Francisco?”
“A specialist.”
“What kind of specialist?”
“She didn’t say.”
“Did she mention his name?”
“No.”
“Or how long she’d been seeing him?”
“No.”
That was all Mrs. Ruiz had to tell me. I left her to her rude son and her dinner, headed for home and a late dinner of my own.
Making progress. But even so, I didn’t have a good feeling about the direction we were heading. A case like this one is like driving through a bad neighborhood at night: the streets seem familiar and you’re pretty sure you’re on the right one, but your instincts keep telling you that sooner or later you’ll come to a dead end.
17
JAKE RUNYON
Conflicting reports, conflicting images. Every time somebody handed him a verbal picture of Jerry Belsize, it was as if he was looking at the same person with a different face. Like the picture of Dorian Gray. And now the same thing was happening with Sandra Parnell.
The girl was Belsize’s devoted soul mate, the one person he was able to turn to in a time of crisis. She wasn’t the girl he thought she was and he didn’t want anything more to do with her. She was decent, loyal. She was a dope-smoking slut. She was strong willed, with Jerry’s best interests at heart. She was a weak and easily fooled punching bag.
It was even worse with Belsize. He was an innocent victim of circumstance. He was guilty as hell. He was a good, clean-cut kid who got along with everybody. He was a wild and crazy kid who bought and distributed marijuana, drove like a maniac, ran down dogs for the thrill of it. He got along fine with Manuel Silvera. He murdered Silvera in cold blood in a particularly vicious way. He treated his girlfriends in a normal fashion. He was a borderline rapist who slapped them around when he got high. He was good; he was evil; he was a little bit of everything in between.
More: He spent all day Friday in Lost Bar, buying half a kilo of weed from Gus Mayerhof and getting his car fixed. He wasn’t in Lost Bar at all on Friday. He was a regular customer of Mayerhof’s. Mayerhof didn’t know him from Adam’s off ox. He was so afraid of Kelso he’d opted to hide out at the migrant camp rather than go home and proclaim his innocence. He left the camp for no apparent reason and went somewhere else. He torched the camp. He didn’t torch the camp.
What was fact and what was fiction?
Which was the real Sandra Parnell, which the real Jerry Belsize?
T here were no other cars in the Gasco station when Runyon drove in. He parked alongside the convenience store, went inside. The red-haired kid with the dim eyes, Bob Varley, was behind the counter looking hot and bored. The place had neither air-conditioning nor ceiling fans and the temperature outside had climbed up into the nineties again.
Runyon said, “Talk to you for a minute?” and introduced himself. But he needn’t have bothered.
Varley said, “Yeah, I know who you are.”
“No secrets in a small town.”
“Yeah.”
“I understand you and Jerry Belsize are pretty good friends.”
The kid quit making eye contact. Not that it mattered. You couldn’t read anything by watching his eyes. They were like a cat’s, more mirrors than windows, and even if you could see through them, all you’d be looking at was mostly empty rooms.
“We hung out together sometimes,” he said. “But I don’t know where he is and I don’t know nothing about those fires. I already told Deputy Kelso that.”
“You think Jerry’s guilty, Bob?”
“I dunno. Everybody says he is.”
“Not everybody. His parents don’t believe he’s capable of setting fires, hurting people.”
“Yeah, well, they’re his parents, you know?”
“What kind of guy do you think he is?”
“Jerry? A good guy. We get along real good. He don’t treat me like some people do. I mean, I know I’m not smart, but that don’t matter to him.”
“What do the two of you do when you hang out?”
“Do?”
“Chase girls, drink some beer, drag race?”
“Nah, we don’t race.”
“I heard Jerry likes to drive fast, run down animals that get in his way.”
“What? Hey. That’s bullshit, man.”
“Smoke some dope now and then?”
“I never smoked no dope.”
That was a lie. Varley would never be a good liar; it made him turn shifty and furtive.
Runyon said, “Jerry does, though. Supplies weed to his friends, gets it from a German farmer up in Lost Bar.”
“He don’t. That’s more bullshit.”
“Come on, Bob. It’s no big deal. Everybody smokes pot now and then.”
“Yeah, well.”
“Jerry’s ex-girlfriend does and she’s not afraid to admit it.”
“What ex-girlfriend?”
“Sandra Parnell.”
“She’s not an ex.”
“His mother says they broke up two or three weeks ago. Not so?”
“Jerry never said nothing about it to me.”
“And he would if it were true?”
“I guess he would. Sure, why not?”
“Why would they bust up, if they did?”
“I dunno. They been together a long time.”
“Jerry smack her around much?”
“Huh?”
“You know, hit her when he was mad. He likes to play rough, doesn’t he?”
“Nah. Who told you that?”
“Maybe he found another girl he liked better. Maybe that’s why he broke up with Sandra.”
“He didn’t care about no other girl.”
“Maybe she found somebody else. Pretty hot stuff, I hear.”
“Who? Sandra?”
