Epitaphs

by Bill Pronzini

  “Time’s up,” DeKuiper said.

  I went. Struggling to make my legs move, struggling to hold myself in check, but I went. He waited until I had the door open and was passing through it before he said loudly, “Old fart,” as a parting shot; if he hadn’t waited, I might still have lost the struggle. I slammed the door behind me to cut off his voice, and immediately wished I hadn’t. It was such a damn feeble gesture.

  I kept on walking past my car and out to the Great Highway and along there for a ways before I turned around and came back: working off some of the rage in hard, fast strides. It wasn’t until I was at the car again, about to open the driver’s door, that I realized I was still carrying the copy of Vortex. It was all twisted and crumpled in my hand; I must have been working on it as if it were DeKuiper’s throat.

  I did not quite trust myself to drive yet, so I uncrumpled the paper and opened it out against the steering wheel. At first I wasn’t even seeing it. Then my eyes focused on the newsprint—and my internal temperature began to climb all over again, only this time the anger was partly directed at myself. For being naive, for not telling DeKuiper who I was first thing, for letting him rag me the way he had without tumbling to his reasons. For being a horse’s ass.

  Vortex wasn’t a liberal or alternative newspaper, any more than it was a shopping or neighborhood sheet. It was a sex tabloid—the borderline hard-core type you can buy from vending machines and news dealers in the Tenderloin, Polk Gulch, and the city’s other sleazy neighborhoods.

  On the front page below the fold was a photograph of a naked woman suggestively eating a chocolate-covered banana; on the inside pages were more photos, mostly of interracial couples in poses that left little to the imagination. The South of Market Hot Spots headline didn’t herald an article on comedy clubs or nightclubs, for Christ’s sake; it headed one on sex clubs and leather bars. And the classified ads ...

  FALL IN LOVE WITH MY BEST FRIEND. He’s big, sensitive, responsive, all muscle, solid as a rock, likes to party all night long. And best of all, he’s an adorable Nine!

  I LOVE FAT WOMEN! The bigger the better. Good-looking male, funny, financially secure, sincere in his wish to meet very heavy women black or white, or women willing to grow. Big appetites a plus.

  HINDU MONK seeks liberal atheist who likes snuggling, Kam-Shastra. Serious applicants only.

  WHIP IT GOOD! Old man will train submissive middle-aged woman to be his love slave. Write DeSade, Box 829, this paper.

  Old man—dirty old man. No wonder that was what DeKuiper had accused me of being. He thought I was a regular reader of his scummy tabloid; that I was asking about Gianna Fornessi because I wanted to have sex with her.

  He was a pornographer. The quasi-legitimate variety, but a pornographer just the same.

  And Pietro Lombardi’s granddaughter, who kept company with DeKuiper? What was she?

  Hundred names in friggin paper, box numbers, phone numbers, but no, got to come suckin around after some chick somebody told you about.

  Dating her. Grins, pops, that’s what you are.

  Think she’s high school kid? I’m one?

  Old lady won’t give you any, lookin for one last fling, lookin for kinks, need young meat help you get it up ... heard it all before, man.

  Yeah. Right.

  Gianna Fornessi was a hooker, a high-priced call girl. Full-time pro for the past eight months; probably a part-timer before that, while she was working for Home Draperies.

  Ashley Hansen. Same damn thing.

  Jack Bisconte. Bisconte was their pimp.

  Chapter Seven

  WELL, ALL RIGHT. Now what?

  Two options ... make it three. One: Go straight to Pietro, tell him what I suspected, walk away clean. Two: Keep quiet until I could talk to Gianna personally and confirm my suspicions, and then lay it out for Pietro. Three: Don’t tell him at all. George Ferry’s complaint had been dropped; I had already fulfilled my commitment to the old man. Let him go on believing his granddaughter was the innocent apple of his eye, la bellezza delle bellezze.

  I didn’t like any of them.

  He had a right to know the truth. But did I have a right to force it on him, either as a suspicion or as a confirmed fact? Maybe he’d find it out eventually, some other way—and maybe he wouldn’t. I did not want to hurt him; I did not want her to hurt him. The whole damn thing was a no-win mess.

  I drove downtown, taking the traffic slow and careful, and went up to the office. No Eberhardt; no sign that he’d been back since this morning. He’s not going to walk, I thought again. How could I have scarred his pride that deeply? And yet, I kept remembering the hard look in his eyes, the conviction in his voice when he’d said he was dead serious....

  Among my telephone messages was one from Dominick Marra. Had I found out anything about this man Bisconte? Pietro still had la miseria, better call him up and let him know, hah?

  Pushing it. And they’d keep right on pushing it until they got answers that satisfied them.

  They were some pair. Dominick the aggressor, the spokesperson; Pietro the quiet brooder. Good men, good friends, watching out for each other now as they had for most of their lives. Not asking much, really, even if what they did ask was on the pushy side. All they wanted, when you got right down to it, was to live out what remained of their lives in peace, with their families and their traditional values intact.

  So what happens? Pietro’s favorite granddaughter turns out to be a ficona, a puttana, a scopona—the worst kind of disgrace to an Italian family.

  He’ll take it bad, I thought, if I tell him or he finds it out some other way. Personally, as if it’s his fault. As if Gianna were laughing at him, spitting on his love and devotion, saying to him, “Qual’ rincoglioreito di mio nonno!”—what an old fool my grandfather is!

  I can’t tell him, I thought.

  Damn it, I can’t.

  I ARRIVED AT Kerry’s apartment at a quarter to seven that night, freshly showered and shaved and dressed in a new shirt and my best sport jacket. I wanted this meeting with Cybil to go well; I wanted to make just the right impression. For her sake, as well as for Kerry’s and my own. My involvement with Pietro Lombardi and his family problems had made me all too aware of what it was like to be elderly, and hurting, and alone.

  I rang Kerry’s bell from downstairs in the foyer, rather than letting myself into the building with my key. She buzzed me in right away, and when I got upstairs she was waiting with the door open. I kissed her before I went in—hard. And held her for a few seconds after I was inside. It had been that kind of day.

  “You smell nice,” she said. “Is that the cologne I gave you for Christmas?”

  “Yup.”

  She stood off from me, looked me over. “Look nice, too, you big hunk.”

  “Big hunk of what?”

  She laughed. Good. Now if I could just get a smile out of Cybil.

  “I figured I’d better get cleaned up,” I said, “try to make a good impression. Where’s Cybil?”

  “In the living room. Waiting for you.”

  “Already?”

  “Since six-thirty. You’d better go in.”

  “Aren’t you coming?”

  “She wants to see you alone.”

  “Oh boy.”

  “Go on. It’ll be okay.”

  I headed down the hall to the living room. Kerry went the other way, into the kitchen, where she would no doubt establish a listening post. She has a bundle of good qualities, my lady, and only a few suspect ones. Nosiness is among the latter, not that I was in any position to be judgmental on that score.

  Cybil was sitting on the big sofa facing the fireplace. Not doing anything, just sitting there. She must have heard me coming, but she didn’t turn her head. I took a deep breath, let it out silently, and walked around in front of her.

  At first glance she appeared frail, shrunken, as if I were seeing her through the wrong end of a not-very-powerful telescope—the same impression I’d had the last ti
me I had seen her, the week before Christmas, when Kerry and I picked her up after her flight from L.A. But if she wasn’t the same healthy, strong woman I’d first met several years ago, neither was she the withered, haunted caricature I had driven here from the airport. Some of her former beauty seemed to have been restored, the once-striking resemblance to Kerry. Same long, willowy body type; same generous mouth; same thick-textured hair, though hers was now mostly gray. Only the eyes were completely different. Kerry’s were green, and sometimes hazel, and sometimes almost brown—chameleon eyes that seemed to change color in different shadings of light. Cybil’s were big and tawny, alert again now, penetrating —her best feature, one that had led a fellow pulp writer and unrequited lover named Russell Dancer to nickname her Sweeteyes.

  Some of her former serenity and self-possession had been restored too. Attributes nurtured by growing up poor and working hard for everything she’d attained; that had allowed her to take on the man’s world of pulp fiction in the late thirties and throughout the forties, and to conquer it by writing better, tougher detective stories (the Max Ruffe private-eye series, as by Samuel Leatherman) than 95 percent of her male colleagues; that had kept her from ever having to lean on anyone, including her husband, until Ivan’s fatal heart attack last October had shattered her defenses.

  “Hello, Cybil,” I said. “You’re looking well.”

  “So are you. You’ve lost weight.”

  I’d lost it long before last Christmas, but she had not been in any shape to internalize the fact, if she’d even noticed it. I said, “Forty pounds, give or take.”

  “Diet? Exercise?”

  “Both.”

  “Don’t put it back on.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Sit down,” she said.

  There may have been some nervous stiffness in my tone, but there was none in hers. Her voice was strong, with a little of the old imperiousness. She had no smile for me, but that did not have to mean anything. Her gaze was direct, without animosity. Almost friendly, in fact.

  I sat on one of the chairs between the sofa and fireplace, turning it so that I could face her. She watched me without speaking. Outside, I could hear the wind yammering, the way it does most of the time up here on the Heights. The drapes were closed; otherwise I could have seen gray evening shadows beginning to settle over the cityscape below.

  I was trying to find something to do with my big, awkward hands when Cybil said, “I asked to see you because I owe you an apology.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’ve treated you badly since I’ve been here. It wasn’t right to try to keep you and Kerry apart—it wasn’t fair.”

  “No,” I said, “it wasn’t.”

  She nodded; an honest response was what she’d wanted from me. “I haven’t been myself since Ivan passed away. These past few months ... I look back at them and they’re not quite real, as if someone else lived them in my place. You understand, I think.”

  “I do, yes.”

  “Ivan and I ... well, when you live with someone for so many years, you try to ignore his faults and his prejudices. He had plenty of both, God knows.”

  I didn’t say anything to that.

  “But sometimes they affect you just the same, like a seed that sprouts in a place you can’t see. Intolerance was Ivan’s worst fault, the one I hated most. Yet I’ve been guilty of the same thing, the same intolerant attitude toward you that he had.”

  “I understand that too,” I said. “I’m sure he must have railed against me pretty strongly.”

  “Oh yes. He thought you weren’t good enough for Kerry.”

  “No man would have been good enough for his daughter.”

  “I suppose that’s true. He idolized her.”

  “So do I. What he couldn’t accept was the competition.”

  “He hated you,” she said. “Did you hate him?”

  “No.” Small white lie; there had been times when I’d hated him very much. But the rest of what I said was the truth: “I never wished him ill, Cybil. He was Kerry’s father; I could never wish ill on any man who helped bring her into the world.”

  The words moved her; her tawny eyes glistened. “You love her deeply—I’ve known that from the first. I don’t know how I could have forgotten it.”

  I was silent.

  “She loves you just as deeply,” Cybil said.

  “I hope she does.”

  “Oh, she does.” She sighed, shook her head. “I’ve been a foolish old woman,” she said.

  “No you haven’t. You’ve been grieving, that’s all.”

  Pretty soon she said, “I know you’ve asked Kerry to marry you.”

  “Several times.”

  “Recently?”

  “The last time was about a year ago.”

  “Why won’t she say yes?”

  “Marriage has become an evil concept to her. Confining, restricting. She believes she can make and keep a commitment without legal encumbrances. Fundamentally, I agree with her. But I’m old-fashioned enough to want the ceremony as well as the commitment.”

  “God knows she has reason to feel as she does,” Cybil said, “after the mistake of marrying that Ray Dunston person. But not all husbands are like him.”

  “That’s what I tried telling her.”

  “Two people in love should live together, be together. They should be married.”

  “I tried telling her that too.”

  Kerry, I thought, I hope you’re getting an earful out there in the kitchen.

  “She’s a stubborn woman sometimes,” Cybil said. Small, wry smile. “Just like her mother.”

  “Exactly like her mother. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  We looked at each other—and we were allies. Just like that. Enemies for more than six months, at least as far as she was concerned; and now, in the space of ten minutes, we were a united front against the Kerry Wade Antimatrimonial League. Go figure.

  Abruptly Cybil called, “Kerry. Come in here, dear.”

  Kerry was there in five seconds, looking half relieved and half determined. “You’re not going to change my mind,” she said, “either of you.”

  “About what, dear?”

  “About marriage. I’m not getting married again.”

  Imperturbably Cybil said to me, “My daughter, you know, is an eavesdropper,” and I realized that she’d been aware all along that Kerry was listening in. This was followed by a second realization: She’d deliberately steered our conversation around to the marriage issue. Well, well. The old Cybil, all right. The old spirit.

  Kerry said, “I wasn’t eavesdropping. The walls in this apartment aren’t thick, and you weren’t exactly whispering.”

  “You were eavesdropping,” Cybil said.

  Kerry looked at me for support. I didn’t give her any. Didn’t say anything, just smiled at her—blandly.

  “I think I’d like a cup of decaf,” Cybil said, and then asked me, “Will you join me?”

  “A pleasure,” I said.

  Muttering to herself, Kerry went back into the kitchen. As soon as she was out of sight, Cybil winked at me. Damned if she didn’t.

  NOT LONG AFTER we had our coffee, Cybil said she was feeling tired and excused herself and retired to her bedroom. Kerry and I sat in companionable silence. It was a comfortable room, if a little too feminine for my taste—a good, familiar place where you could sit with someone you loved and do nothing and be perfectly content. I had missed coming here to be with Kerry. Missed it even more than I’d realized.

  At length she said, “Well, I’m glad that’s over.”

  “It wasn’t so bad. In fact, I enjoyed it. Cybil seemed almost her old self again.”

  “I’m glad you think so.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “Well, she’s a lot better than she was. Except that she’s done a complete about-face where you’re concerned and I can’t quite figure out why.”

  “Gremlins,” I said.

  She ignored that. �
��All that marriage nonsense ... it isn’t the first time she’s brought it up with me, you know. In the past few days.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Why do you think. I do not want to get married again.”

  “Have I asked recently?”

  “No, but that doesn’t mean you won’t.”

  I sat enjoying the quiet.

  “Well?” she said. “Are you going to?”

  “Going to what?”

  “Propose to me again.”

  “Not if you don’t want me to.”

  “I don’t want you to.”

  “Then I won’t.”

  “No argument?”

  “Nope. I respect your feelings.”

  “Well, good. So you’ve given up on the marriage issue?”

  “Sure. But I don’t think Cybil has.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I don’t think Cybil has.”

  “She doesn’t have any influence on me.”

  “I didn’t say she had.”

  “So don’t count on her changing my mind—”

  “I’m not.”

  “—because it’s not going to happen.”

  “All right,” I said.

  The good quiet for about a minute. Then Kerry said, “Coconspirators. That’s how the two of you acted. My God, she didn’t want you anywhere near her or me for six months and now she’s conspiring with you to get me back to the altar.”

  “Conspiring?” I said. “You sound paranoid.”

  “Maybe I have a reason to be paranoid.”

  “I don’t think you do.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Mm,” she said.

  Neither of us had anything more to contribute. We sat close together, listening to the night. I wasn’t thinking about Cybil then, or about marriage; I was thinking what a nice room this was, what a good place to spend time with the woman I loved. I felt, sitting there, as I had the day I’d come back from Deer Run.

  I felt that I was home again.

  Chapter Eight

  CRISES—BIG ONES, little ones—are the weeds of human existence. You do battle with one kind or another all your life, uproot a stubborn variety only to find a new one just as stubborn, and no matter how diligent a gardener you are, the best you can hope for is to keep them down to a manageable level. The last root-pieces of the Cybil crisis had been dug up, the ground there finally smoothed out. So of course the Eberhardt weed was now growing fast and sprouting thorns.