held his license up so the eye could read it. One blink was the only reaction.
She said, “What are you, a bounty hunter?”
“No. My agency operates on a straight fee basis.”
“Same thing, if you’re working for Troy’s bondsman.”
“It’d be easier if we could talk inside, Mrs. Madison.”
“I can’t tell you anything. Have you spoken to my husband?”
“Before I came here.”
“If he doesn’t know where Troy is, why do you suppose I do?”
“I don’t suppose anything,” Runyon said. “I just have a few questions.”
She thought about it for ten seconds. Then she said, “Oh, all right, you may as well come in,” and the chain rattled, the door opened all the way.
The rest of what went with the narrowed eye was older than Coy Madison, somewhere around thirty-five. She had an angular face dominated by a long, almost spadelike chin. Long brown hair was raggedly cut, as if she’d done it herself with a cracked mirror. She wore a not very clean smock over a man’s Pendleton shirt and a pair of Levi’s.
When Runyon was inside, she closed and locked and rechained the door and then turned past him and led him up a flight of stairs that ended in a short hallway. They went down that, through a couple of furnished rooms, and into a huge room at the rear that had been created by knocking out a wall or two and inserting three rows of skylights into the high canted roof. Artist’s studio. A cluttered one full of sculptures and paintings and the tools to create them, including an acetylene torch outfit.
He didn’t know much about artworks, but he wasn’t impressed by what he saw here. The sculptures, more than twenty of varying sizes, dominated the studio. To his untrained eye they looked like nothing so much as weirdly misshapen root and leaf vegetables made out of scraps of fused metal, glass, straw, and some kind of ropy fibers-hemp, maybe. Big, little; long, short; fat, thin. Some of the tuberous ones had filament-like ends that resembled roots or suckers. The paintings were all over on one side-three or four hung on the wall, a partly finished one on an easel set up on a paint-stained drop cloth, the rest leaning in uneven stacks. Unlike the sculptures, they struck him as amateurish splatterings that had no form or meaning, like the finger paintings kids made in grade school.
“Do you like them? My sculptures?” The words had an expectant, almost eager inflection. That was why she’d brought him back here-to show off her work.
He said politely, “Interesting.”
“ ‘Unique’ is a better word, don’t you think? Anselm Kiefer was an early influence, but of course I’ve refined and developed my own vision and thematic concepts. His pieces tend to be depressive, destructive, while mine are celebrations of the fecundity of life.”
She might have been speaking a foreign language. Runyon nodded and said nothing.
“I’ve had eleven shows now and not a single knowledgeable person has compared me to Kiefer. Some of the most eminent critics in the art world have praised my creations as totally original. I’m starting to make a serious name for myself-finally, after years of struggle. Just last month one of my best pieces, Field of Desire, sold for fifteen thousand dollars.”
“That’s a lot of money.”
“Yes, but my work will be worth much more someday.”
No false modesty in her. No humility of any kind.
“Are the paintings yours, too?”
She laughed, a half-delighted, half-derisive sound, as if he’d just told a juicy off-color story. “Good God, no. My husband’s. Coy thinks he has artistic talent, but he doesn’t-he’ll never even rise to mediocrity. Self-delusion is just one of his faults.”
Runyon was silent again.
“I suppose that sounds as if we don’t get along very well,” she said. “Sometimes we do. And sometimes he makes me so damn mad I could scream. When he calls me drunk from some bar downtown, for instance, bragging about a woman he’s just picked up. He knows that drives me crazy.”
Still nothing to say.
“Oh, not the crap about the women. They’re lies, mostly. It’s the drinking and the taunting that gets to me- he’s so damn jealous of my success I swear his skin is developing a green tint.” She sighed elaborately. “You’re wondering why I stay married to him? Habit, I suppose. There’s not much love left, but I do still care for him. God knows why. And of course he stays because now there’s money, more money than either of us ever dreamed I’d be making.”
Runyon had had enough of her personal life, her success, and her ego. He said, “Your brother-in-law, Mrs. Madison. The reason I’m here.”
“Well, I have no idea where Troy is. I wish I did. You don’t think I want him to get away, do you?”
“I hope not.”
“You know I put up his bail money? Yes, of course you do. I let my husband talk me into it in a weak moment. They both promised me Troy would pay it back, but I didn’t believe it.”
“Then why agree? Thirty-five hundred is a lot of money.”
“It used to be,” Arletta Madison said. “Not anymore. I told you, my sculptures are starting to sell for large sums. Very large. And Troy is family. Neither he nor my husband may be worth much, but they’re all the family I have.”
And she got a bang out of lording it over them, Runyon thought. The kind of woman who used her success like a whip. He didn’t like her much. But then he hadn’t liked Coy Madison much, either.
He asked, “Can you give me the name of anyone who might help me find him? A friend of his or the woman he lives with?”
“That dreadful little tramp. She’s the one who got him hooked on meth, you know.”
“Is that right?”
“Six or seven years ago. He didn’t use or sell hard drugs then, just a little recreational pot. He had a steady job with Bud before he met her.”
“Bud?”
“Bud Linkhauser. Have you talked to him?”
“This is the first I’ve heard the name.”
“Coy didn’t say anything about Bud?”
“No.”
“He and Troy and Bud grew up together in Bakersfield. I wonder why he didn’t tell you that.”
Runyon wondered why, too. He said, “Where can I find Bud Linkhauser?”
“He owns a trucking company in the East Bay. Hayward, I think. I don’t have the address, but Coy probably does.”
“I’ll find it. What did your brother-in-law do for Linkhauser?”
“Mechanic.” Condescending note in her voice, as if she considered mechanics several stations beneath her. “Troy has always been good with motors and things. Or he was before that Piper bitch got hold of him.”
“What can you tell me about her?”
“Nothing. Except that she was probably the reason he jumped bail.”
“Talked him into it, you mean?”
“Well, she wouldn’t want her meal ticket to spend time in prison. Then what would she do for money and drugs? She’s too ugly to sell her body. And probably diseased besides.”
Runyon had now had enough of Arletta Madison, period. He gave her one of his cards and the standard call- if-you-think-of-anything-else line, and would have gotten out of there quick if she hadn’t caught hold of his arm.
“Before you go,” she said, “let me show you my latest piece. There, on the table by the door. It’s good, isn’t it-one of my best. I call it Seedpod. ”
He looked at it for all of five seconds on his way out. It was a couple of feet long, round, with tapering ends, constructed of what seemed to be joined blobs of black-painted lead and studded with bits of straw and glass. He had a better name for it than hers. He’d have called it Turd.
