The haunting voice of Tosca pleading with Scarpia for her lover’s life filled the room. Still crouched in front of the stereo, he opened a small compartment and removed a small golden platter. He did not see the door of the antique armoire behind him open cautiously. From the same compartment he removed a small plastic bag of coke, which he ripped open to heap on the platter, a one-edged razor blade, and a tiny golden spoon.
Something round and metallic and hollow was pressed against the back of his neck. A hand grabbed an agonizing fistful of his hair and jerked his head back. A voice grated in his ear.
“Scream, I’d love it.”
Gatian had already opened his mouth to do so. He had never known such mingled terror, revulsion, and excitement in his life. His heart felt as if it was going to stop, but he also had an instant and rock-hard erection.
The man pulled him to his feet and walked him across the room to the ornate, mirror-topped coffee table. “Put the tray on the table,” he said, “then sit in the chair.”
Gatian did so, hoping the robber wouldn’t notice his erection. Or maybe he wanted him to. He didn’t know. He was terrified, not thinking straight.
“You... you can have the coke, any cash...”
The pressure of gun against the back of his neck went away. The man, lithe as Norman but more muscular, with an absolutely marvelous build set off by his tight black clothing, walked around the coffee table and sat down on the arm of the couch. Gatian realized the hollow socket of the candlestick he was holding in one hand was the “gun” that had been pressed against the nape of his neck. He looked involuntarily at the stairwell.
“I wouldn’t,” said the man. He made no threatening motion of any sort, but his tone jerked Gatian’s eyes back to him, and shocked recognition brought another terrified frisson.
“Runyan!” he exclaimed. “You’re Runyan!”
“Eight years ago, you fingered a robbery of your father’s wholesale diamond firm. Pretty neat idea. You collect on the insurance, then peddle the stones later at retail. The one trouble was that I ended up in the slammer for seven years.”
Gatian’s mouth was suddenly very dry. “I... I had nothing to do with... any of that, Runyan. I wouldn’t—”
“It looks like the insurance set you up pretty well, but your kind always wants more.” He leaned forward. “Did you want it bad enough to come after me with a shotgun last night?”
Gatian looked into his eyes and was totally still, suspending even his breathing. Runyan answered his own question contemptuously.
“Not you. You’d come in your pants the first time you touched a gun.” He paused speculatively. “Your little friend?”
“Norm...” It came out as a squeak. He tried again. “Norman wouldn’t...”
“Of course not. You wouldn’t put yourself in his hands that way.” Runyan started around the coffee table, then paused. “Stay clear until I get the insurance man off my back, or there won’t be any diamonds. Just...”
He tossed the heavy candlestick high in the air, so he was already jerking open the window as it crashed back down through the mirror top of the coffee table, puffing Gatian’s coke into oblivion.
“...Just seven years bad luck. For someone.” He threw a leg over the sill. “I’ve already had mine.”
Norman came bursting up the stairs in black leather bikini briefs and soft black boots halfway up his thighs. He wore a domino mask. He stopped dead at sight of the chaos.
“What happ—”
“Oh shut up!” exclaimed Gatian in a high hysterical voice. He was down on his hands and knees, trying to salvage his coke. At that moment the duet on the stereo ended.
Chapter 16
Before Runyan had been sent up, Whitey’s had served the best ribs in town. It still did. He dropped the last bone into the rubble on his plate and wiped his fingers with a paper napkin. Whitey’s didn’t run to steaming finger towels.
The chubby black waitress had pudgy thighs which made whish-whish-whish sounds under her black nylon skirt when she moved. Runyan laid a twenty-dollar bill on the counter beside his plate. He was the only white man in the place, which was on Fillmore not far off Ellis Street.
“I heard Sister Sally’s man hangs around here,” he said. The girl’s eyes got old. He chuckled and flicked the bill with his finger. “I’m not heat and I’m not trouble.”
After a long moment, she picked up his check and the bill off the counter. As she did, her finger pointed briefly toward the rear of the restaurant. “Flashy Dude,” she said.
Runyan looked at the mirror behind the counter; the silvering had come off, giving the black young brash-looking man’s reflected image a cloudy Maxfield Parrish effect. He was playing one of the electronic games in the back of Whitey’s, all purple and fox grey and ruffles, as if hoping someone would mistake him for Prince.
Runyan sauntered back to stand very close behind Flashy Dude. He said, “Sister Sally.” The black man became aware of him by stylized degrees, as if coming up from anaesthetic.
“Go fuck yo momma,” said Flashy Dude without turning.
Runyan put a friendly hand on his shoulder and smiled. It was the same smile he had given Jamie Cardwell in the park. His vise-like fingers tightened. Flashy Dude winced.
“Which freeways you want them to find you under, Dude?” he asked in his soft prison-dead voice.
Flashy Dude’s eyes went moist, not so much with pain as with the knowledge that Runyan might only be bluffing, but that he didn’t have the seeds to find out.
Sister Sally’s was on the second floor of a frame house in a totally black neighborhood on Sutter just off Broderick. A block away were the lights and traffic of Divisadero. Runyan went up the terrazzo stairs to the front door of the lower apartment, which was illuminated by a 40-watt ceiling fixture, the bottom of the globe brown and mottled with the bodies of dead moths. The stairway was littered with yellow throwaway shopping newspapers.
The door opened on a chain; music and laughter brought out the smell of smoke and liquor and perfume with them. An impassive eye peered out. The white of the eye was yellow-tinged.
“Sister Sally,” said Runyan. “From the Dude.”
The door was opened wide enough for Runyan to enter but not so wide that he could avoid brushing against the bouncer as he passed. Quick fingers checked for weapons, went away. The living room was dimly lit for a spurious seductive look. In chairs and couches lining the walls were half a dozen white and black women in various combinations of revealing underwear, negligees, camis, teddys, and chemises. All were reasonably young, all were attractive, one was beautiful. None, Runyan was sure, was cheap.
Milling around in the center of the room were several black men with drinks in their hands. Their conversation dipped as Runyan went toward the bar which was set up beside the kitchen doorway, but Chaka Khan from the stereo was loud enough to shatter glass.
Behind the bar was an immense black woman with a round jolly smiling face and achingly white teeth and warm brown eyes that bespoke knowledge of and forgiveness for all sins. She wore a billowing futa of a thin silklike print material, and moved with a great natural dignity that owed nothing at all to age or beauty.
She was mixing a drink with a rhythmic dexterity that was almost music. In the rich mellifluous voice of a gospel singer, she asked, “What’s your pleasure?”
“Taps Turner with a twist,” said Runyan.
She gave a bawdy chuckle and shook her head in wonderment. “Mmmm-mmm, that Dude! Whut I’m gonna do with that child?” She raised her voice. “Ambrose, the gen’man’s just leaving.” As the bald-headed bouncer appeared at Runyan’s elbow, she added, twinkling, “You the wrong color in the wrong part of town at the wrong time of night, boy. You ain’t careful, Taps be playin’ at your funeral.”