He showed up on time for his eleven A.M. appointment. Well-dressed in a suit and tie, freshly shaven except for a scimitar mustache, curly brown hair clipped short. He took an inclusive look around the office when he came in, without appearing to do so, the way a good investigator will in new surroundings. He had a crisp handshake and he made and held eye contact whenever he spoke to either Tamara or me. All of that was on the plus side.
On the negative side he looked as though he might have been or might still be ill. He had a large, compact frame and a slablike face, hammerhead-jawed and blunt-angled, like a chunk of quarried stone; but his clothes hung loosely on him, as if he’d recently lost some weight, and the stone slab had an unhealthy grayish cast and seemed to have developed fine cracks and crumbly edges that had nothing to do with age. There was a distance, an inward-turned reticence about him, too, that made him hard to read. For me it was more like confronting a closed fire door than interviewing a man.
He declined a cup of coffee, sat solid and stiff on one of the clients’ chairs — a waiting posture that didn’t change much throughout the interview. Lot of pressure built up behind that fire door, I thought. If he’s not careful, one of these days he’ll blow out an artery.
Tamara and I had worked up separate sheets of questions for each applicant. We’d also decided not to compare notes until all the applicants had been interviewed, so as to narrow down the field individually before we did it jointly. That way, we wouldn’t be inclined to try to influence each other during the process.
I got the ball rolling with Jake Runyon by asking, “The partial pension — what kind of disability do you have?”
“Far as I’m concerned,” he said, “I don’t nave any.”
“Then why the pension?”
“The department’s idea, not mine. All it is is a slight limp, left leg. You notice it when I came in?”
I said, “No,” and Tamara shook her head.
“Hardly anyone does, most days. Now and then, when the weather’s bad, I get twinges. You might be able to tell then, but you’d have to be paying close attention.”
“These twinges—”
“They don’t keep me off the job. Or from moving as fast as I always have. I can still run hard if I have to.”
“Broken leg what caused the limp?”
“Tibia fractured in three places. Two surgeries to get it fixed right.”
“How’d it happen?”
“High-speed chase in pursuit of a fugitive homicide suspect,” Runyon said. “A truck hit us and he got away. I came out of it lucky. My partner was driving. He came out of it dead.”
“Rough.”
“A shame and a waste. But it happens.”
“If the leg doesn’t cause you problems, why’d you take voluntary retirement?”
“They tried to chain me to a desk after I got out of the hospital the second time. No way. I’m a doer, not a sitter.”
Tamara frowned at that, but she made no comment.
I asked, “Any other physical problems?”
“No.”
“You look like you might’ve lost some weight—”
“I’m fine.” Through compressed lips.
“Have you had a recent physical exam?”
“Six months ago. My health’s good. I’ll get you confirmation if you want it.”
I let it go. “You went straight from the Seattle PD to Caldwell & Associates, is that right?”
“Right. Interviewed with them before I left the department, to make sure I had a job waiting. You know Caldwell?”
“We’ve had some minor dealings. Good outfit. You like working for them?”
“Well enough.”
“Field work the entire five years?”
“Mostly. Outside interviews, surveillance, bodyguard and security jobs, chasing bail jumpers — you name it.”
“Well, we’re a much smaller agency, as you can see. Not much surveillance or security work. Mainly we handle skip-traces, insurance claims investigations, background checks. And the occasional offbeat case that nobody else wants.”
“An familiar territory,” Runyon said. “If anything comes up that I haven’t dealt with before, it won’t take me long to learn the ropes. I’m a quick study.”
I made a couple of notes on his résumé. “Back to Caldwell. Any problems or hassles while you were with them?”
“If you mean black marks on my record, no. Lee Caldwell wouldn’t’ve given me the letter of recommendation if there were.”
“I’m just wondering why you left them,” I said.
“I wasn’t fired or let go. I resigned.”
“For what reason?”
Silence. He just sat there, looking halfway between Tamara and me. His eyes, more black than brown, were shadowed.
“Mr. Runyon?”
“My wife died,” he said.
Stone-faced and flat-voiced. I might’ve taken it for a cold response if it weren’t for what I saw in those shadowed eyes. For just a second, as he spoke the words, the door opened and I had a glimpse of what lay inside. Grief, suffering... emotion so raw and corrosive it was no wonder he had it under such tight guard.
Awkward moment. Tamara and I passed meaningless words of sympathy, the way you do. And she added, “Was it sudden?”
“Yes and no. Cancer. Three months alter the diagnosis, she was gone.” Pause, and then he said, “Twenty years. You think that’s a long time, but it’s not. It’s the blink of an eye.”
Yeah, I thought.
Tamara asked him, “That the reason you quit Caldwell, left Seattle?”
“I couldn’t stand it up there afterward.”
“Why’d you pick San Francisco?”
“Personal reasons.”
“Friends, relatives in this area?” I asked.
“Does it matter?”
“Not unless it has something to do with your work.”
“It doesn’t,” Runyon said. Then he said, in a slow, dragging way as if the words scraped on the membranes of his throat, “My son lives here.”
“Son? You say on your resume that you have no dependents.”
“He’s not a dependent, he’s a grown man with a job of his own.” Runyon glanced at his hands, looked stonily at me. “Twenty years,” he said again. “Blink of an eye.”
“So you moved down here to be near him?”
“More or less.”
“Have you applied with any other agencies since you’ve been in the city? Other jobs of any kind?”
“No. You’re the first.”
“Getting acclimated, spending time with your son?”
“Getting acclimated. I haven’t seen him yet.”
“Oh? How come?”
He shook his head, sharply. “Like I said, it’s personal. I’d rather not talk about it, you don’t mind.”
I said, “Suit yourself,” but I sensed that at some level he did want to talk about it. The something hidden away behind that door was the lonely man’s conflicted hunger for privacy on the one hand, human contact and understanding on the other.
Tamara took over the questioning. “You computer literate, Mr. Runyon?”
“I can operate one of the things.”
“Mac or pc?”
“Mac.”
“Personal habits. You smoke?”
“No.”
“Drink?”
“Not much. Never on the job.”
“Recreational drugs?”
“No. I’ve seen too much of what crack and blow can do.”
“Pot?”
“No.”
“How do you feel about weed? Same category as hard drugs?”
“No. You want my honest opinion, marijuana should be decriminalized.”
“Why?”
“Same reason I think prostitution and all forms of gambling should be legalized,” Runyon said. “Trying to legislate morality is a waste of time, money, and manpower.”
“Uh-huh. Vice is here to stay.”
“Isn’t it?”
She said, “You know I’m a new partner in this agency, right?”