He hit the alley on the balls of his feet with his knees flexed, tucking and rolling even as he landed, tight up against the side of the building. Two more shots ripped down at him, the goose pellets whining and rattling down through the metal struts of the fire escape to gouge the blacktop where he had landed a second before. None hit him.
He heard the squeerk! of metal two stories above even as running footsteps pounded down the alley from the street. Runyan rolled quickly back from the wall and sprang to his feet, so when the cop’s torch beam impaled him he was standing in the middle of the alley, gawking upward.
“Shots!” he cried, turning toward the light, shielding his eyes with one hand, still pointing upward with the other, “Up there!”
The uniformed beat cop swung his light up, service revolver in hand. The fire escape was empty except for tattered remnants of curtain blowing through the gaping second-floor window.
“Second floor!” yelled Runyan.
The cop ran for the mouth of the alley which would take him around to the front of the building, gun still in hand.
Cronin ran lightly down the hall, rage at Runyan’s escape turned to fear. Just as he had rehearsed it in his mind, except now, goddammit, he didn’t have the diamonds. He didn’t have anything. Jesus, lucky it was the sort of hotel it was — nobody even stuck a head out of a room. He threw the shotgun into the suitcase, shoved his feet into his boots, and ran down the hallway toward the front stairs with his laces flapping.
He was at the head of the stairs when the street door opened and the cop came pounding up. He ducked, terrified, around the edge of the stairwell, and the cop ran right by toward the back of the hotel without even a turn of the head.
He went down the stairs very quietly and quickly, keeping to the edges so they wouldn’t creak. It was just over two minutes since he had fired his first shot.
Moyers, standing outside his car and wondering what had happened, saw the big bearded guy come back out, still carrying his suitcase, and go up the hill with his boot laces flapping. Drug pusher, rousted by what had sounded like gunshots, getting out while he could? But if they had been shots, why had the cop let him go? And where was Runyan, who had entered the hotel less than five minutes before?
Runyan slouched to the mouth of the alley, hands in pockets, just another nighttime Tenderloin drifter. He checked and faded back into the shadows without any quick movements.
Uphill across the street was Moyers, standing beside his parked car, staring intently at the entrance of the hotel. Staked out, probably had been there when Runyan had come carelessly home. Damn prison, the way it had dulled his reactions! Would he ever be what he had been, thinking with his gut, survival instincts in control, instead of being distracted by his emotions to the point where they nearly got him killed?
Survival thinking meant getting a wall at his back and keeping a clear field of fire in front of him.
He was loose right now. Nobody had a finger on him. Not Moyers, not whoever had tried to kill him, not whoever had called him, not Cardwell, not anybody. Not even Louise.
He had to make his own moves, follow his own rules, use his own logic. No more counterpunching. From now on the initiative had to be his. Otherwise he was going to be dead.
And in that hallway a few minutes ago, his body had told him what his mind, in his misery, had perhaps forgotten: that he wanted desperately to be alive.
Chapter 13
At 5:30 a.m. the bearded man, no longer bearded and no longer Leo Cronin, went bust at the $100-minimum blackjack table at the Arabian Nights Hotel on the Vegas Strip. Angel Morgan, security manager for the casino, was looking down idly from the security catwalk above the mirrored ceiling when the player took a hit and went bust with an eight.
Angel chuckled. “Hey, Manny, you see who I see?”
Manny Arnheim, the casino manager, was dressed in Western clothes and hand-tooled boots, but looked like Hoagy Carmichael — a limp cigarette even dangled from one corner of his mouth.
“Jesus Christ,” he said in a grating voice, “the fucking clown is back!”
“And bust,” said Angel.
“This surprises you? The man’s a degenerate.”
“Should I call down the street? I hear he’s into them for a pretty good bundle.”
“Naw,” said Manny, losing interest, “comp him at the front desk if he needs it. The guy did us a good turn last year, taking that broad out of here, what was her—”
“Louise.”
“Yeah. Louise. He got her out of here before we had to do something about her...” He shook his head almost sadly. “Good broad, then she gets fucked around in her head and starts wanting to talk to people...”
The big man who was no longer Leo Cronin entered the 11th-floor suite, crossed the wall-to-wall, and opened the sliding-glass door to the balcony. Cool morning desert air came in. He stared at distant purple mountains.
Christ, he’d planned to be here with his pocket full of diamonds and his troubles behind him.
Instead, he had fled San Francisco in a panic, sure that if he looked back he would see red lights flashing. Then the stupid trick downstairs, going bust at blackjack an hour after he hit town. So here he was, riding one of Manny’s comps at the front desk because he was over the limit on his plastic.
They always said a shotgun was a sure thing, shut your fucking eyes and cut down a roomful of people. But he’d missed. Missed! With a fucking shotgun! Fucking Runyan had moved like a snake. He’d never seen anybody move so fast.
So now what? He had to think. Maybe there was still a way. Runyan knew somebody had tried, but he didn’t know who. Louise had said there were others after the stones, and Runyan had been moving around, showing himself, talking with the fence... Hell, for sure he’d think it was one of the others.
So, keep all his options open. Call the airlines, call his office, call Louise. And call room service for some breakfast and a Bloody Mary or two. Maybe he could salvage it after all.
Louise was asleep when the phone started to ring. She knocked it on the floor where the receiver kept making squawking tones. When she found it and brought it up to her face, they became words: “... hell are you doing? I’ve been ringing this goddamn thing for—”
“I was sleeping.” She used her brassy voice.
“Sleeping? It’s six in the morning.”
She sat up under the covers, hugging her drawn-up knees. Her old-fashioned flannel nightgown, shapeless but practical, went with the big brass-steaded bed and the colonial-looking patchwork quilt.
“You called me up to tell me that?”
“I called to say I’ll see you this afternoon.”
“Why didn’t you wait until this afternoon to spoil my day?”
“Goddammit, Louise, do you always have to be that way?”
“ ‘To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life,’ ” she said. “How about that? Stevenson at six a.m.” She realized she was still a little woozy. Two Restorils, two Valiums, and a hot milk with rum and honey in it, just to get to sleep last night. “I suppose I should ask you how your man made out with the diamonds in San Francisco, but you know what? I’m tired of talking with you.”
She hung up the phone.
It started to ring again as she got out of bed and walked across the rag rug to the typing table in front of the window. It was the sort of room one’s grandparents grew up in, hardwood dresser with an oval mirror, family portraits on the walls in cherrywood frames, slow-ticking brass-pendulumed grandfather clock as tall as she was. The bird in the gilded cage. Maybe work would keep her from getting depressed over his return.