But in essence it remained the seat of Gay Power. The huge rainbow flag that flew permanently at the corner of Market and Castro attested to that. So did the annual Gay Pride Parade that drew thousands from all over the West Coast. So did the big celebration that had taken place there recently, when the U.S. Supreme Court finally struck down the antiquated Texas sodomy law and proclaimed that gay Americans had a constitutional right to private sexual relationships.
None of its ambience had much impact on Runyon as he walked through it. Nor would it have in its early gay-ghetto days. A vice cop he’d known when he was on the Seattle PD had referred to the gay district up there as a “polyglot of perversion,” but he’d never seen it that way. The gay scene, diluted or not, was no different from the straight singles scene-the gay clubs no different, for that matter, from women’s clubs or garden clubs. A little more dangerous late at night, a little more desperate because of the threat of AIDS, but otherwise just people with common interests and outlooks gathering together for companionship, camaraderie, pleasure. Trying to make their lives a little easier, to put a little joy into them. Trying to keep their hurts at bay.
All pleasure was, when you got right down to it, a staving off of pain. The pain of living, the pain of dying. The ones who could manage it were the lucky ones. He wasn’t one of them. There had been no pleasure for him since Colleen died, just the pain. Work was the only thing that dulled the ache, allowed him to go on, and then only for brief periods. Establishing some kind of connection with Joshua might help some, but in the heavy baggage between them there was no room for joy. Understanding, a father-son detente, was the best he could hope for.
So he walked here alone, a misfit among the straights, a misfit among the gays. The proverbial stranger in a strange land. Funny thing was, there was a kind of small, cold comfort in being part of Joshua’s world, his misfit son’s strange land, if only for a little while.
The Dark Spot turned out to be no different from fifty, a hundred other bars he’d visited, gay or straight, on business or otherwise. Blue lights and blue neon so dark it was almost black. Loud music, loud laughter. Men packed along the bar, men dancing, men with their heads together at tables and in dark corners. The few who glanced at him glanced away again immediately. Cop written on his face and the way he moved. Straight cop at that: avoid at all costs.
He stayed just long enough to scan the crowd and satisfy himself that neither Gene Zalesky nor a young, angelic-faced blond nor a redhead with freckles was among them. He spoke to no one. There was nothing for him here alone, no answers to any of his questions. The only way anybody would talk to him in The Dark Spot was if he came with a guide, a member of the fraternity.
Joshua?
Under different circumstances, he could at least ask. But after what Larry Exeter had told him, no. He’d have to find somebody else. Or some other way to get the information he needed.
9
TAMARA
Here she was, back for another fun evening in San Leandro. All set to rock ‘n’ roll.
Yeah. Right.
All set to abuse her tailbone again.
Nobody home at 1122 Willard.
Nobody home at 1109 Willard, either.
Almost eight o’clock and both houses were dark, driveways empty, no cars parked in front of either one. Sure, somebody might be in a lighted room at the back that she couldn’t see from here. Or how about sitting in the dark like a humongous spider? There goes that imagination again, girl. Keep it up and you’ll start scaring yourself, be rolling your eyes and shaking your booty like Mantan Moreland in one of those crappy Charlie Chan flicks. Feets, do your stuff.
Well? Gonna just sit here or gonna move?
She got out of the Toyota-parked in the same puddle of tree-dark as last night, her own little reserved space-and locked the door and crossed the street to 1122. Through the gate, up on the porch, ring the bell, wait, ring the bell again, wait some more-just like last night, deja vu all over again. DeBrissac wasn’t home. Wasn’t answering the farty doorbell, anyway. Dag. Wasn’t anything worked out easy for her these days, seemed like.
Go round the side and up the driveway, look for a light at the rear? Not much point. She retreated to the sidewalk instead. The dark brick face of 1109 drew her gaze, held it and held her still for a few seconds. Front yard still empty, shades still pulled down tight over the front windows. So what? So nothing. Then how come the slithery sensation on her neck, like some bug had crawled under the collar of her blouse?
Back across the street again. Neighborhood seemed quieter than it had last night. Distant hum of traffic, salsa music pulsing a long ways off, no sounds close by. Lights, people in most houses on the block, all kinds of things going on behind closed doors, and yet those two dark houses somehow made it seem empty, lifeless. No, just that brick job there-1109. Kept messing with her mind, kept bringing back what she’d seen last night, the SUV with tinted windows and the big furtive dude and whatever it was kicking and struggling inside that blanket.
A gust of wind put a shiver on her as she unlocked the car. Inside, with the doors locked again, she pressed her cold hands between her thighs. And kept right on looking at 1109. Couldn’t seem to stop looking at it or thinking about it.
Robert Lemoyne. Name of the registered owner of a 2002 Ford Explorer with the license plate 1MQD689; name of the man who’d leased 1109 Willard from Avenex Realty in Union City nine years ago. A half-and-half-African-American father and white mother. Age: forty-seven. Born in Stockton, lived there until high school graduation. No additional education. Carpenter and construction worker-three years, East Valley Construction, Turlock; twelve years, Hollenbeck amp; Son, El Cerrito; eight years, High Country Construction Co., Grass Valley; six years, Brinson Builders, Fremont. Married twice. First, to Dinah Elvers of Oakland, 1977; lasted ten years, divorce obtained by the wife on grounds of irreconcilable differences, no children. Second, to Mia Canfield of Rough and Ready, 1994; lasted seven years, divorce obtained by the wife on same standard no-fault grounds. One child, a daughter, Angela, born in 1995; sole custody awarded to the mother. Financial status: debts like everybody else, but kept most of them current. One felony arrest, in 1986 on a charge of reckless endangerment. No big deal, because the charge had been reduced to leaving the scene of an accident, a misdemeanor. No other brushes with the law, not even an unpaid parking ticket. And no record of nonpayment of child support.
Didn’t seem to be much in any of that. Unless sole custody of the daughter awarded to Mia Canfield Lemoyne meant something.
One other thing that might mean something: Robert Lemoyne apparently lived alone now, all alone in that big house there.
Whatever’d been in that blanket last night was alive, no doubt about that. Animal? If he had a dog, it didn’t bark or make any other noise when he came home at night. And he hadn’t bothered to license it with the city of San Leandro.
Child?
Well, could be he didn’t live alone, was shacking with some single woman that had a son or daughter. Possible. But then where was she last night? Didn’t come home with him, wasn’t in the house before he got there unless she was waiting for him in the dark. Wasn’t there now, either.
Besides… why bundle up a girlfriend’s kid and bring it home stuffed in the back of an SUV? Why do that to anybody’s kid?
One reason. One big ugly word that explained the SUV and the blanket and the struggles and the furtive looks and the run to the house.