I watched the stick figure cross the street with his two parcels. In the foggy darkness I couldn’t tell much about him except that he seemed middle-aged and had stringy shoulder-length hair that the wind whipped around his head. Nothing furtive about him-just a guy on his way to somebody’s house, invited guest or deliveryman.
Ullman opened up right away, as he had with me. Let the long-haired man inside, poked his head back out to look up and down the street-if he noticed my car, it didn’t hold his attention-and then quickly shut the door.
For a minute or so I kept my eyes on the window curtain. Neither corner moved. I reached up and unscrewed the dome light, waited another minute, and when Ullman’s door stayed shut I got out and walked up close enough to the van to read the license plate. Personalized: DDTDAWG. Easy to remember, even with a porous memory like mine.
Back in the car, I rolled the window all the way up; I’d done enough freezing for tonight. I thought about following DDTDAWG when he left, but why bother? The license number was enough for me to find out who he was. But I waited anyway, out of curiosity as to how long he’d stay with Ullman.
Too long to be an average deliveryman, not long enough to be an invited guest. A little less than ten minutes. The door opened, out DDTDAWG came, the door closed. He climbed into his van without a glance in my direction, drove away into the fog.
Two minutes later, when the light in Ullman’s front window went out, I took myself out of there, too, with the heater going full blast. I was almost warm by the time I got home.
19
JAKE RUNYON
It was only four thirty when Runyon left Bud Linkhauser and walked out of the trucking company warehouse, but when he called the agency he got the answering machine. Either Tamara was with a client or she’d closed up early for some reason. He put on the Bluetooth device he’d bought when the no-hands cell phone law went into effect, tried again as he was dead-stopped in commute traffic on the San Mateo Bridge approach. Machine again. She must have gone for the day.
He called her cell number. Voice mail. Then he tried her home number. Answering machine.
So he’d have to run a property search himself when he got back to the city. He’d done it before. Easy work if you knew which city and county the property was in, harder when you didn’t, but if Coy and Arletta still owned the rental, it shouldn’t take him too long to find out.
Wrong.
In his cold apartment on Ortega, he booted up his laptop and went through the property records for San Francisco first; then, when that didn’t turn up anything in either Coy or Arletta Madison’s name, he searched the rest of the Bay Area counties one by one. No listing.
Linkhauser had said the property might’ve been inherited by Arletta Madison. Since she controlled the family purse strings, it was possible she’d kept it on the tax rolls under her maiden name. Runyon checked his files. Maiden name: Hoffman. He repeated the county-by-county search. No listing.
Two possibilities, then. The rental property had been sold. Or one or both Madisons still owned it, but the ownership was listed under a different name, such as a family trust. Tamara could find out either way, but he didn’t have her computer skills or search engine knowledge.
He tried her cell number again; she still wasn’t answering. She wasn’t home, either: her machine again.
Wait until tomorrow? That would mean sitting around the empty apartment all evening with the TV on for noise. Bryn had an art class tonight, wouldn’t be home until late. Better to be out and moving. The Madisons might not be willing to talk to him about the rental property, but there was no harm in trying. At least he’d be able to judge by their reactions, Coy’s in particular, whether or not that was where Troy Madison and his girlfriend were hiding out.
There were lights on in the Queen Anne Victorian, but nobody answered the bell. Could be one or both of the Madisons were holed up inside, but if that was the case, why leave all the lights on? And why not check to see who was waiting out here? There was a peephole in the door, but Runyon didn’t hear any footsteps on the hardwood floor inside.
He’d parked his Ford a short way up the block; he went and sat behind the wheel without moving. Might as well wait awhile. People don’t usually leave so many lights blazing when they went out for an entire evening.
Cars came up and down the street now and then, but none of them parked in the vicinity. It was after eight now and there weren’t any pedestrians. Foggy shadows obscured most of the paths and lawns on this edge of Dolores Park.
He hadn’t been there long when he saw the woman.
She was on the far side of 19 ^th Street, coming uphill alongside the park. Alone, bundled in a coat and some kind of cloth cap, walking briskly. He watched her progress because she appeared to be the size and shape of Arletta Madison. If that’s who she was, she’d cross over once she drew abreast of the Madison Victorian.
She didn’t cross the street. Started to, he thought, but she didn’t have time.
A line of trees and low shrubs flanked the sidewalk where she was, with a separating strip of lawn about twenty yards wide. The tall figure of a man came out of the tree-shadow as she passed. Runyon couldn’t see him clearly through the fog, but he had one arm up in front of him, a familiar black shape jutting from a gloved hand. And he didn’t have a face-it was hidden beneath something dark pulled down tight over his head.
Gun. Ski mask.
Runyon reacted instinctively. His. 357 Magnum was locked in the glove box; there was no time for him to go after it. He hit the door handle, piled out of the car. The mugger was ten yards from the woman and closing. She’d heard him and was turning toward him; he lunged forward, grabbing at the shoulder-strap purse she carried. Runyon pounded across the street, his shoes slipping on the wet pavement, yelling at the top of his voice, “Hold it; police officer!”-the only words likely to have an effect in a situation like this.
Not this time.
The mugger’s head swiveled in Runyon’s direction, swiveled back to the woman as she pulled away from him. She made a frightened, chicken-squawking sound and turned to run.
He shot her.
No compunction: just threw the gun up and fired point-blank.
She went down, skidding on her side, as Runyon cut between two parked cars onto the sidewalk. The mugger pumped a round at him then. He was already dodging sideways, onto the lawn, when he saw the muzzle flash, heard the whine of the bullet and the low, flat crack of the weapon. The grass was thick and mist soggy; his feet slid out from under him and he went planing forward on his ass, clawing at the turf and trying to twist his body toward the nearby shrubbery. Out there in the open, with only twenty yards or so separating him from the gun, he made a hell of a target.
But the mugger didn’t fire again. Most of them were cowards and when they lost the elements of surprise and control their instincts were to run. By the time Runyon checked his momentum and squirmed around, this one was running splayfooted back into the park. Shadows and fog swallowed him within seconds.
Runyon had banged the knee on his bad leg in the fall; it sent out twinges as he hauled himself erect, hobbled toward the woman. She was still down but not hurt as badly as he’d feared: sitting up on one hip now, holding her left arm cradled in against her breast. The woolen cap had been knocked askew when she went down; the wind whipped long, stringy hair around the pale oval of her face. When she heard him coming, she looked up with fright-bugged eyes.
Arletta Madison, all right.
She blinked at him without recognition when he hunkered down beside her. He said, “It’s all right, he’s gone now.”