Nightcrawlers: A Nameless Detective Novel (Nameless Detective Mystery) by Bill Pronzini Read Free Book Online Page B

floor next to the bed. Scatter of battered thrift-store paperbacks.
    No typewriter or other writing tool, not even a pencil.
    No copies of any of the paperbacks boxed up in the basement, nor any other book that might have been written by him.
    Dancer’s home for more than fifteen years, but it wasn’t a home at all. Living space. Existing space for a broken, friendless, bitter, lovelorn, alcoholic ex-writer. Lonely space. Wasted-life space. Dying space.
    I got out of there, quick. Thank God for Kerry and Emily and the kind of work I had, because without them, given my own loner instincts, I could have ended up occupying a space not much different from Russ Dancer’s.

5
JAKE RUNYON
    Gene Zalesky lived alone on Museum Way, a street high up in the Corona Heights area that dead-ended at the Fairbanks Randall Jr. Museum. The steep, rocky slopes of Corona Heights Park ran along one side of the street; along the other was a curving row of private homes and two-unit flats, all of which had wide-angle views of the Castro District, Bernal Heights, and pieces of the Bay in the distance. The views would add several hundred a month to rental prices, another six figures to a seller’s asking price.
    Zalesky’s address was one of the private homes, a dark wood and stucco job set back a few steps from the sidewalk. An ornate security gate barred the entrance. It told Runyon going in that Zalesky’s job as a systems analyst, whatever that was, for a banking outfit paid well. The interior of the house confirmed it. Antiques of one kind and another crowded the living room; the carpet on the floor was an expensive-lookingwine-red oriental, the threads in an elaborate tapestry on one wall had the glitter of real gold. Velvety curtains were drawn over the expensive view.
    The man himself was in his late thirties, short, dark, and cynical. The cynicism showed in his eyes, the set of his mouth, his voice. It wasn’t the result of his beating; it had been a part of him for a long time, maybe ever since he’d found out that he was different from the so-called norm, an outsider and an object of lesser men’s hate and scorn. His left forearm was in a cast; fading bruises discolored the left side of his face, and there was a bandage over some kind of wound on the right cheekbone. He moved slowly, stiffly—testimony to other bruises, other wounds, beneath the silk robe and pajamas he wore.
    “Sorry I’m not dressed,” he said when he let Runyon in. “Still hurts like hell when I try to put on my pants.”
    “No apology necessary.”
    “One of them kicked me in the ass. I’ve got a bruise on my left buttock the size of a cantaloupe.”
    “Must be painful.”
    “Only when I sit down. I’m going to stand, if you don’t mind, but you go ahead and have a seat.”
    Runyon said he’d stand too. While he was declining the offer of a drink, a fluff ball white cat appeared from behind one of the antiques and came over to sniff at his shoes.
    “That’s Snow White,” Zalesky said. There was pride in his voice, as if he were introducing a relative. “Pure-blood Angora. You like cats?”
    “Yes.” Colleen had owned a cat when he met her. Pure black alley cat named Midnight. Lived with them for the first eightyears they were married, and she’d cried for three days when it died.
    The Angora decided it had had enough of him and his shoes and drifted away. Zalesky made clucking noises; it ignored him, too. “Independent little bastard,” he said affectionately. Then he said, “So you’re Joshua Fleming’s father. I don’t remember him mentioning you until his call a few minutes ago.”
    “We’re estranged,” Runyon said.
    “Oh. I see.”
    “Not for the reason you might think. His mother and I were divorced when he was a baby. She blamed me. So does he.”
    “With just cause?”
    “I don’t think so, but he won’t listen to my side of it.”
    “Young and stubborn. I was like that myself, once, for different reasons. I learned to