“Just you? Nobody else?”
“Just me.”
More silence. Then, “I have to be careful. If she finds out, I don’t know what she might do…”
“You can trust me. I don’t betray confidences.”
That satisfied Beckett. “You know the big green clock in front of the St. Francis, right by the parking lot?”
“I can find it.”
“Thanks, Mr. Runyon. I’ll see you at ten.” Then, as if to himself before he broke the connection, “I can’t be alone anymore.”
10
JAKE RUNYON
Even on a weekday morning, the Marina Green and the area along the West Harbor yacht basin was packed with joggers, women pushing baby strollers, adults and children on benches and grass taking advantage of the warming sun. Runyon had driven down early because parking at the only part of the Green he’d been to before, near Gashouse Cove and Fort Mason, was at a premium and he’d figured the same might be true at the opposite end. Not so. There were plenty of spaces in the lot on Yacht Road near the St. Francis. So he had twenty minutes to kill until ten o’clock.
The big green clock Beckett had mentioned was easy to spot-a Roman-numeral Rolex atop an old-fashioned standard a dozen feet tall, standing between the parking lot and the tan, Spanish-style yacht club. A rocky seawall ran behind the club on the bay side; stretched out in front was the West Harbor basin where club members’ boats were berthed, a thin forest of masts extending out to Marina Boulevard. In that direction you could see the Golden Gate Bridge and the big sunlit dome of the Palace of Fine Arts.
Runyon was too restless to stand waiting there for twenty minutes. He went the other direction, through a break in the seawall and along a bayfront walkway. From there, if you cared, you had a clear look at the wide sweep of the bay where a few sailboats tacked along and a tourist boat was headed out toward Alcatraz. He paid little attention. Scenic views and panoramas didn’t interest him anymore; hadn’t since Colleen’s death. He noted landmarks to orient himself or for future reference. Otherwise, places were just places, colorless, void of any distinction or attraction.
He got rid of fifteen minutes on the bayfront walk. Beckett still hadn’t showed when he returned to the clock, so he crossed to the concrete strip that ran along the harbor’s upper edge. Wandered a short distance past sailboats, yachts, other large craft in their slips, then back again.
A little after ten, and Beckett still hadn’t put in an appearance. Runyon did some more pacing around under the clock.
Five minutes, ten minutes. He was beginning to wonder if the kid had changed his mind when Beckett finally showed, hurrying along the far edge of the boat basin. Not quite running but moving fast, head down, arms pumping like pistons.
Runyon moved to meet him at the top of the parking lot. He didn’t look much better than he had at the shack at Belardi’s. Pale, nervous, bagged and blood-flecked eyes indicating sleepless nights. The eyes briefly held on Runyon’s, flicked away, flicked back, flicked away.
“Sorry I’m late, Mr. Runyon,” he said. “She almost didn’t let me go out today. I had to promise to be back by noon.”
“Why?”
“We’re meeting with Mr. Wasserman, the lawyer, this afternoon. And having an early dinner with…” Beckett let the rest of what he’d been about to say trail off. “Let’s go over by the slips, okay?”
Runyon followed him to the walkway, where Beckett leaned on the iron railing above the slips. At intervals along here, ramps led down to locked gates that barred public access to the moored craft. Beckett gestured at the nearest gate and said in hurt tones, “They won’t let me in anymore. Mr. Voorhees took away my key.”
Runyon made a sympathetic noise.
“I really liked working for him, you know? You ever see his yacht?”
“No.”
“It’s down a ways, this side.” Beckett set off again in quick, jerky strides. After a couple of hundred yards he stopped and pointed. “There she is, the Ocean Queen. Isn’t she a beauty?”
Runyon looked. All he saw was a yacht-big, sleek, expensive. But in Beckett’s eyes it was a pot of gold at the end of somebody else’s rainbow.
“Man, I wish I had a baby like that,” he said with a kind of wistful hunger. “Maritimo 73, eighty-one footer with a twenty-one-foot beam, two Caterpillar C32 engines, thirty knots cruising speed. Sweet. But Mr. Vorhees doesn’t take her out as often as he should. If I owned her, I’d be cruising all the time. All the time.”
Runyon let him gawk and pine a few more seconds before yanking him back to reality. “What did you want to talk to me about, Ken?”
“What? Oh, God.” The kid’s thin features seemed to curl and reshape themselves, like a Play-Doh face being manipulated between unseen hands. Misery replaced the wistfulness in his eyes and voice.
“Something to do with your sister?”
“She has a gun,” Beckett said.
“A gun. What kind of gun?”
“Little one, with a squarish barrel and pearl handles. She never had one before, she never liked guns.”
A.22 or.25 caliber automatic, probably. Purse weapon.
“Where did she get it?”
“I don’t know. It’s new, I think she bought it.”
“Did she show it to you?”
“No, I found it in her closet. Two days ago. She told me to forget about it, but I… I can’t. Not after what I heard her saying on the phone yesterday.”
“Who was she talking to?”
“That bastard Chaleen. She’s planning something bad with him.”
“Only you don’t know exactly what, is that it?”
“Yeah. I mean no. She was in her bedroom, talking low-I couldn’t hear everything she said. Plans, she always has plans, but she won’t tell me what they are. ‘Everything will be all right, Kenny, you’ll see. Haven’t I always taken care of you?’ Yes, but not always the way she promised she would.”
“Like letting you go to jail for a crime you didn’t commit.”
“Like that, yeah.”
“What else?”
No response.
“Like getting you to help her meet rich yachtsmen? Her ex-husbands, Andrew Vorhees.”
“Jesus. You know about her and Mr. Vorhees?”
Runyon nodded.
“She says she loves him and he loves her,” Beckett said. “I guess that’s so, I don’t know. He’s okay, Mr. Vorhees, he always treated me decent, and we need the money he gives Cory. I understand that. But I don’t understand why she has to have Chaleen, too. It’s like a game with her… one and then another and then somebody else…”
“Does Mr. Vorhees know about her and Chaleen?”
“No. He’d be pissed if he did. Real pissed.”
Runyon said, “Tell me exactly what your sister said on the phone. Everything you can remember.”
“‘Bitch deserves it for what she did.’” That mimicking falsetto again. “‘Be careful, darling, no mistakes. So much at stake for both of us once she’s out of the way.’”
“Who did she mean by ‘bitch’?”
“Mrs. Vorhees.”
“Mentioned her by name?”
“No, but I know that’s who she meant.”
Not conclusively, he didn’t. “Did Cory say when whatever it is is going to happen?”
“Soon. Sometime soon.”
“But not exactly when?”
“No.” Beckett drew a long, shaky breath. Then, in a half whisper, “Even after what Mrs. Vorhees did, I don’t want them to hurt her. I don’t want anybody to be hurt.”
“Of course you don’t. Neither do I.”
“That’s why I called you, Mr. Runyon. I didn’t know what else to do. Cory’s done a lot of bad things, but I never thought she was capable of… of…” The word murder was in his mouth, his lips shaping it, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it aloud.
“Does she know you overheard her conversation?”
“God, no. She’d’ve yelled at me if she did. And pretended I didn’t hear what I heard. She says she never lies to me but she does, all the time now. She lies to everybody. She’s my sister, I love her, but sometimes I think she’s a little, you know, a little crazy.”