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

got hurt by whoever’s trying to make him look guilty.”
    “Does he have any idea who framed him or why?”
    “No. I don’t, either.”
    “You know that if I do talk to him and he won’t go in voluntarily, I’m legally bound to give him up. I’d lose my license if I didn’t.”
    “I know,” she said in a small voice. “But it’d be a lot better that way than Kelso tracking him down.” Her pale blue eyes appealed to him. “Will you, if I can get him to talk to you?”
    In other circumstances Runyon might have turned her down. The assault and the concussion gave him a vested interest, but the quickest way for a private detective to lose his license was to get involved in a major felony investigation without permission. It just wasn’t his business. But something else was his business—the job he’d come to Gray’s Landing to do. He took a fierce pride in his work; if there was one thing he hated, it was to leave a job, any job, unfinished.
    “All right,” he said, “but it has to be in person, not on the phone.” And if and when he did talk to Jerry Belsize, like it or not, he’d serve him with the subpoena at the same time.

8
    TAMARA
    So here she was. All set for another wild and crazy hiphop Saturday night.
    Livin’ large, partyin’ half the night and doing the nasty the other half. Down and dirty ‘cause she was under thirty. Young and sweet and full of heat. Yeah, baby. You go, girl.
    Except she wasn’t going anywhere. Only hip-hop she’d be doing was sitting around on one hip or the other while she sucked down diet soda and then hopping up to go to the bathroom. Only nasty she’d be doing was in her fantasies, and she didn’t even have enough of them right now to say hello to Mr. V. Only party she’d be going to was the pity party she was throwing for herself. Young and sweet and full of defeat.
    She sighed. Didn’t
have
to stay home on Saturday night. Could’ve called up Vonda or one of the other girlfriendsand gone out roaming . . . except that Vonda and Lucille and Joleen all had steady men or other plans. Could’ve gone out by herself to one of the Mission or SoMa clubs, done the singles crawl, found some other lonely soul to spend the night with . . . except that she’d tried it before and the only guys she’d met were weird, like that stockbroker dude, Clement Rawls, with his blond wig hang-up.
    Six thirty already. No place to go, and the only exercise she was getting was slap-talking herself for being a lump. She didn’t feel like reading or vegging out in front of the tube or even listening to music. The only thing she did feel like was heading out to the nearest Golden Arches and stuffing herself on McGrease. Not that she would. Damn, no. Worked too hard to lose weight to start moving back into Fat City just because she was lonely and depressed and horny and about sixteen other things.
    In spite of herself she wondered what Horace was doing tonight. Playing a gig with the Philadelphia Philharmonic . . . no, symphonies were dark during the summer. Out with Mary from Rochester, doing the town. Or home alone doing each other. Or maybe planning their big October wedding, making out the guest list. Tamara could just imagine him with his face all scrunched up the way it got when it was puzzling on something, saying, “What do you think, Mary, should we send my ex Tamara an invitation or not?”
    Well, damn him and her, too. Second-chair cello, secondviolinist—a couple of second-rate musicians who deserved each other and their second-rate lives in the City of Brotherly Love. She was well rid of that man. Sure she was. She knew it; everybody said so. So why did he keep popping up inside her head like a big black smiley jack-in-the-box?
    Clue in, Tamara. You know why he keeps popping up. Takes time to get over somebody you thought was the love of your life. A lot more time than three months.
    She hopped off the couch and went to pee again. World’s smallest bladder. When she came