Read Online Betrayers (Nameless Detective Novels) by Bill Pronzini - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Bill Pronzini
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property. The residents were up in arms again, for all the good it was doing. Most of them reportedly stayed out of the park on weekends and especially at night. Even with the hard-core dealers and homeless people gone, Latino gangbangers from the Mission and other lowlives still prowled it and muggings were not uncommon.
Few people were out on the lawns and paths when Runyon parked across the street on 19 th . Too cold today, with the sea wind bringing in late-afternoon fog that hid the cityscape views behind tattered folds of gray. The Queen Anne Victorian that belonged to Arletta and Coy Madison was two doors down, its blue-on-blue paint job bright and fresh looking. Runyon went up the stoop, rang the bell. ID’d himself to the woman’s voice that came through a speaker box.
There was a long pause before she said, “All right, I’ll come down.” She didn’t sound too happy about it.
Pretty soon the door opened on a heavy chain and a narrow eye peered out at him through the aperture. He held his license up so the eye could read it. One blink was the only reaction.
She said, “What are you, a bounty hunter?”
“No. My agency operates on a straight fee basis.”
“Same thing, if you’re working for Troy’s bondsman.”
“It’d be easier if we could talk inside, Mrs. Madison.”
“I can’t tell you anything. Have you spoken to my husband?”
“Before I came here.”
“If he doesn’t know where Troy is, why do you suppose I do?”
“I don’t suppose anything,” Runyon said. “I just have a few questions.”
She thought about it for ten seconds. Then she said, “Oh, all right, you may as well come in,” and the chain rattled, the door opened all the way.
The rest of what went with the narrowed eye was older than Coy Madison, somewhere around thirty-five. She had an angular face dominated by a long, almost spadelike chin. Long brown hair was raggedly cut, as if she’d done it herself with a cracked mirror. She wore a not very clean smock over a man’s Pendleton shirt and a pair of Levi’s.
When Runyon was inside, she closed and locked and rechained the door and then turned past him and led him up a flight of stairs that ended in a short hallway. They went down that, through a couple of furnished rooms, and into a huge room at the rear that had been created by knocking out a wall or two and inserting three rows of skylights into the high canted roof. Artist’s studio. A cluttered one full of sculpturesand paintings and the tools to create them, including an acetylene torch outfit.
He didn’t know much about artworks, but he wasn’t impressed by what he saw here. The sculptures, more than twenty of varying sizes, dominated the studio. To his untrained eye they looked like nothing so much as weirdly misshapen root and leaf vegetables made out of scraps of fused metal, glass, straw, and some kind of ropy fibers—hemp, maybe. Big, little; long, short; fat, thin. Some of the tuberous ones had filament-like ends that resembled roots or suckers. The paintings were all over on one side—three or four hung on the wall, a partly finished one on an easel set up on a paint-stained drop cloth, the rest leaning in uneven stacks. Unlike the sculptures, they struck him as amateurish splatterings that had no form or meaning, like the finger paintings kids made in grade school.
“Do you like them? My sculptures?” The words had an expectant, almost eager inflection. That was why she’d brought him back here—to show off her work.
He said politely, “Interesting.”
“ ‘Unique’ is a better word, don’t you think? Anselm Kiefer was an early influence, but of course I’ve refined and developed my own vision and thematic concepts. His pieces tend to be depressive, destructive, while mine are celebrations of the fecundity of life.”
She might have been speaking a foreign language. Runyon nodded and said nothing.
“I’ve had eleven shows now and not a single knowledgeable person has
Few people were out on the lawns and paths when Runyon parked across the street on 19 th . Too cold today, with the sea wind bringing in late-afternoon fog that hid the cityscape views behind tattered folds of gray. The Queen Anne Victorian that belonged to Arletta and Coy Madison was two doors down, its blue-on-blue paint job bright and fresh looking. Runyon went up the stoop, rang the bell. ID’d himself to the woman’s voice that came through a speaker box.
There was a long pause before she said, “All right, I’ll come down.” She didn’t sound too happy about it.
Pretty soon the door opened on a heavy chain and a narrow eye peered out at him through the aperture. He held his license up so the eye could read it. One blink was the only reaction.
She said, “What are you, a bounty hunter?”
“No. My agency operates on a straight fee basis.”
“Same thing, if you’re working for Troy’s bondsman.”
“It’d be easier if we could talk inside, Mrs. Madison.”
“I can’t tell you anything. Have you spoken to my husband?”
“Before I came here.”
“If he doesn’t know where Troy is, why do you suppose I do?”
“I don’t suppose anything,” Runyon said. “I just have a few questions.”
She thought about it for ten seconds. Then she said, “Oh, all right, you may as well come in,” and the chain rattled, the door opened all the way.
The rest of what went with the narrowed eye was older than Coy Madison, somewhere around thirty-five. She had an angular face dominated by a long, almost spadelike chin. Long brown hair was raggedly cut, as if she’d done it herself with a cracked mirror. She wore a not very clean smock over a man’s Pendleton shirt and a pair of Levi’s.
When Runyon was inside, she closed and locked and rechained the door and then turned past him and led him up a flight of stairs that ended in a short hallway. They went down that, through a couple of furnished rooms, and into a huge room at the rear that had been created by knocking out a wall or two and inserting three rows of skylights into the high canted roof. Artist’s studio. A cluttered one full of sculpturesand paintings and the tools to create them, including an acetylene torch outfit.
He didn’t know much about artworks, but he wasn’t impressed by what he saw here. The sculptures, more than twenty of varying sizes, dominated the studio. To his untrained eye they looked like nothing so much as weirdly misshapen root and leaf vegetables made out of scraps of fused metal, glass, straw, and some kind of ropy fibers—hemp, maybe. Big, little; long, short; fat, thin. Some of the tuberous ones had filament-like ends that resembled roots or suckers. The paintings were all over on one side—three or four hung on the wall, a partly finished one on an easel set up on a paint-stained drop cloth, the rest leaning in uneven stacks. Unlike the sculptures, they struck him as amateurish splatterings that had no form or meaning, like the finger paintings kids made in grade school.
“Do you like them? My sculptures?” The words had an expectant, almost eager inflection. That was why she’d brought him back here—to show off her work.
He said politely, “Interesting.”
“ ‘Unique’ is a better word, don’t you think? Anselm Kiefer was an early influence, but of course I’ve refined and developed my own vision and thematic concepts. His pieces tend to be depressive, destructive, while mine are celebrations of the fecundity of life.”
She might have been speaking a foreign language. Runyon nodded and said nothing.
“I’ve had eleven shows now and not a single knowledgeable person has
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