Free Schemers: A Nameless Detective Novel (Nameless Detective Novels) by Bill Pronzini Page B

she said bitterly, “two weekends every month.”
    “I only saw you together once, but you were tentative around him.”
    “What the hell does that mean? Tentative?”
    “No hugs, no kisses. You didn’t even touch him.”
    “Oh, for God’s sake. That’s not true.”
    “It’s true, Bryn. I wouldn’t lie to you.”
    “You’re a fine one to dispense parental advice. How many times did you hug your son when he was growing up?”
    “I didn’t have a choice. You do.”
    “That’s enough! I don’t like being told how to deal with my son!”
    He’d pushed it too hard, made her angry. A fine one to dispense parental advice.
    “All right,” he said, “I’m sorry.”
    “You should be.”
    “I was out of line. I won’t do it again.”
    “Better not if you want to keep this friendship.”
    Quiet again until they were approaching Devil’s Slide on the way back. But she’d been thinking about his perceptions, weighing them; she broke the silence by saying, “Jake? About what you said earlier …”
    “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
    “Just being honest—I know. You were right, I don’t touch Bobby. I’m afraid to touch him, afraid he’ll draw away from me. He’s all I have left. I couldn’t stand to lose him, too.”
    “You won’t.”
    “It’s just so hard,” she said. “So hard.”
    “Don’t let him feel you’re rejecting him and he won’t reject you. I think I’m right about that. Loving close is always better than loving at a distance.”
    I t was after nine by the time they got back to the city. The coffee shop at Taraval and Nineteenth Avenue stayed open until midnight; they had dinner there, in a rear booth. A stranger sitting across from them couldn’t keep his fat eyes off Bryn. The third time he glanced over, Runyon caught his gaze and held it, impaled him until the man shifted both his gaze and his body and kept his attention on his plate, where it belonged. Damn people, anyway.
    He took Bryn home afterward, walked her to the door. Before she unlocked it and went in, she said, “Thank you.”
    “For what?”
    “Putting up with me. Being honest. I’m such a screwedup mess.”
    “Not any more than me and a whole lot of others.”
    “I almost cancelled tonight. So depressed after I saw the doctor.”
    “I’m glad you didn’t.”
    “So am I.”
    “Better now?”
    “Better,” she said. “What you said, about Bobby, about loving close … it makes sense.”
    “When can we get together again?”
    “Not tomorrow. My mother’s night to call.”
    Her mother lived in Denver, she’d told him, and was the only other person she could talk to about personal issues. But only for short periods; the mother tended to become weepy and critical.
    “Wednesday, then?”
    “Yes, Wednesday. Good night, Jake.”
    “Good night.”
    It was a short drive from Moraga Street to his apartment building on Ortega. On the way he turned his cell phone back on. He’d taken to switching it off when he was with Bryn; urgent calls were a rarity in the evening and their time together had become too important to let routine business intrude.
    One voice-mail message, from Cliff Henderson in Los Alegres: “I looked through the trunk in Damon’s garage like you asked. The only thing missing I’m sure about is one of the photo albums. Mostly old pictures taken on hunting and fishing trips—Damon and me, my father,
some of his hunting buddies. No damn idea why that crazy bugger would steal it.”
    Too late to call Henderson back now. He’d talk to him about the missing album in the morning, in person.
    Coming in late to the apartment, facing the emptiness, wasn’t so bad on the nights he was with Bryn. He turned on the TV for noise, booted up his laptop to check his e-mail. All he ever got were occasional business messages and spam, but he always checked it before he went to bed. One e-mail from Tamara tonight, sent after five o’clock, with some more background information on the Henderson