“Why spoil your fun?” he said, and wouldn’t say another word on the subject.
They spent the rest of the afternoon at the Department of Motor Vehicles on Fell Street. Runyan read the booklet, took the written test — 100 out of 100 — and then the driving test. He was issued his temporary license.
They were back to her hotel by ten o’clock. The sodium lights of the underground garage gave the cold concrete a golden, almost sensuous glow by which they embraced and kissed until both were slightly dizzy. They went off to the elevators with their arms around one another, so relaxed that their steps were unsteady as a drunk’s.
“We’ll be making an early start in the morning,” he warned.
“And an even earlier start tonight.”
“We’re going to get something straight between us?”
Her muted, silvery laughter followed them through the doorway marked ELEVATOR TO MOTEL.
After nearly a minute, a car door slammed, and casual footsteps echoed hollowly in the empty garage. Moyers strolled past the backs of parked cars until he reached Louise’s. His hand brought the little black cigarette-pack-size box out of his pocket; he bent quickly and reached in under the rear bumper. There was a muted clank as the magnet on the side of the box grabbed the metal of the bumper behind the rubber sheath.
He strolled back to his car and pulled out of the garage. He was pretty sure they weren’t going to try any tricks like taking off at one minute after midnight, because Runyan would think his change of address had taken care of Moyers’s ability to find him again. But just in case, another night in the car. He was used to all-night stakeouts from years of practice.
Runyan might be a hell of a thief; but he was pitiful going up against a professional like Moyers, whose job it was to keep tabs on people who didn’t want tabs kept on them.
The low steady beeping noise which had lulled him to sleep turned to a steady electronic whine. Moyers sat up straight and checked his watch. Nine a.m. An intermittent beep meant the car was motionless; the whine indicated the car had started moving.
There was a square black radio receiver/viewing screen attached to his dashboard. Its glowing red sighting bar was steady. The Toyota appeared, Runyan behind the wheel, and Louise beside him. Probably got a driver’s license the day before, along with all of that camping equipment. He wouldn’t take a chance on a parole violation by driving without one.
Moyers stayed where he was until the Toyota was lost in the traffic ahead; then he pulled out, secure in the knowledge that the transmitter would guide him.
Runyan drove west through the Avenues on Geary Boulevard, toward the Cliff House and Ocean Beach. They swung down past the crumbling fake rock face of Sutro Heights in the grey chill morning fog, then followed the Great Highway south. The Pacific boomed off to their right, occasionally visible over the sea wall and between the shifting pale sand dunes. Louise had the heater on and Runyan had to use the windshield wipers.
“It ought to burn off about eleven,” said Runyan.
He pulled off parallel to the storm fence that helped hold the dunes back from the highway. Wind-whipped sand stung Louise’s face and gritted between her teeth as he led her up to a point above the sea. In the surf far below, the blackened ribs of a wrecked sailing ship formed an oval just visible a foot or two above the sand.
“I read about this in Q,” Runyan called to her above the moan of the wind. “An old British sailing ship from the mideighteen-hundreds. Beached herself here and just rotted away.”
“Couldn’t they salvage it?” she yelled.
“Not in those days. And I guess the storms covered her with sand so everybody forgot about her until last year, when the storms finally uncovered her again.”
The wreckage seemed to have some special meaning for him, but Louise, her teeth almost chattering until the heater took over again, was glad when they returned to the car.
“Will they salvage it now?” she asked.
“Naw. A year or two, the storms’ll cover her up again, and they’ll forget about her for another hundred years or so.” He looked over at her. “I always wanted to go diving in the lagoon at Truk atoll in the Pacific. A whole fleet went down there in World War Two. It would be something to see.”
He felt her eyes on him, turned and caught her questing gaze. He shrugged, almost sheepishly.
“One of the great moments of my life, I must have been ten or so, was when I realized I didn’t have to be a judge like my father, and didn’t have to live in Portland my whole life.” He paused, shrugged again. “From as far back as I can remember, all I wanted was to be free — away, on my own... But...”
“But ‘they’ wouldn’t let you?”
“I wouldn’t let me. I always fucked it up.”
“Yeah,” said Louise, thinking of her own life, “tell me about it.”
They both laughed.
The highway left the sea and joined Skyline Boulevard by Lake Merced. Patches of anemic blue were starting to show through the fog: joggers huffed and puffed along the running paths around the lake. At Daly City, Highway One swept down to Pacifica and the sea once again. Oddly, the ticky-tacky houses faced each other rather than the ocean, as if the remarkable view had been too much for the developers to take.
“Did you come this way the night... that night?”
Runyan laughed. “I know somebody else asking that question about now.”
Louise looked involuntarily around, but there was no way to tell whether a car was following them in the freeway traffic.
Runyan stopped at Shelter Cove for a bucket of the Colonel’s best, with rolls and fries and slaw and cokes. A few miles further on, he pulled over into one of the numerous view areas which flanked the highway.
“A picnic?” she asked in disbelief.
“Man does not live by diamonds alone.”
“You’re just having yourself a hell of a time, aren’t you?”
“I’m trying,” he said with great delight.
The sun was strong now, the fog gone; suddenly a picnic on the beach seemed a good idea. They started down a steep earth path through the greasewood and manzanita toward the sheltered triangle of sand far below.
Excitement tugged at Moyers as he eased into an unpaved pull-off with a good view of the rugged coastline ahead. He dictated into his recorder, “Subject vehicle has stopped at eleven-fifty-one a.m. at a view area on Highway One approximately five miles south of Rockaway Beach.”
He got out, binoculars in hand. Runyan could have come this far south that night, and still gotten back up to Marin in time to go off the freeway and eventually into San Quentin. But he couldn’t be so goddamn gone on the woman that he was just going to take her right to the place where the diamonds were stashed, could he?
At the row of boulders left over when the road had been scraped out of the face of the cliffs, he used the powerful glasses. The Toyota was empty in the view area a quarter of a mile ahead. He scanned down toward the beach below. So suddenly that it startled him, two tiny dots of scrambling color sprang full-size to life as Runyan and Louise, just going in a rush together, hand-in-hand, down the final steep bit of trail to the soft sand of the cove’s beach. He could even read the familiar red Kentucky Fried Chicken logo on their big white paper bag.
That explained the stop at Shelter Cove — a goddamned picnic! And him without a damned thing in the car to eat. He raised the glasses again. They were spreading out their food in the shelter of a big driftwood log. Runyan was clever, he had to give him that. If the diamonds had been hidden here, this was a recon — which Louise would think was just a picnic. Refresh his memory in broad daylight, then come back here at night to get the diamonds. Yeah. Damned clever.