Hoodwink

by Bill Pronzini

  “Nice guy.”

  “But they could never prove it, and it took them a while to even accept that it was going on. One by one they stopped writing for him, and finally they threw him out of the group.”

  “When was that?”

  “In ‘49, I think. The year before Action House went bankrupt and Colodny disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?”

  “Well, one day he was in New York, and the next day Action House’s offices were closed and he was gone. Nobody knew where.”

  “There wasn’t anything shady involved, was there?”

  “You mean like embezzlement? No. The company didn’t have any money left to embezzle. He just vanished, that’s all.”

  And turned up in Arizona, I thought, with enough money to buy an entire town. A ghost town, sure, but even ghost towns and the land they’re on didn’t come cheap in 1950. Where did he get the money, if Action House was bankrupt?

  “What did your folks think about Colodny buying a ghost town?” I asked her.

  “They didn’t know about it until today. But I don’t think they were all that surprised.”

  “Why not? It’s not something a person would normally do.”

  “Not most people, but Colodny was always a flake. Back in New York, Cybil says, his big fantasy was to move out West and prospect for gold. No kidding.”

  “Some fantasy,” I said.

  “He’d always been a fan of Western pulp stories; that’s probably where he got the idea. He came from a small town in New Mexico and never really liked New York. He went there because an uncle of his got him the job with Action House. But he was always talking about moving back someday. He had asthma too, that was another reason he wanted to move West—the dry air.”

  “Then what kept him in New York so long?”

  “Money, I guess. He wanted that more than any thing else.”

  “Uh-huh. So where’d he get enough to buy the ghost town?”

  “Nobody knows. None of the others had seen him or heard anything about him since his disappearance thirty years ago.”

  “How did your folks react to the prospect of spending a weekend with him after all that time?”

  “They weren’t exactly overjoyed. But then, thirty years is a long time to hold a grudge.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “a long time.”

  There was a silence, during which Kerry gave me another of her long, probing looks. “Are you thinking it might be one of the Pulpeteers who broke into their room tonight?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Frank Colodny?”

  “Also possible.”

  “Buy why? For what reason?”

  I shook my head. “Unless it had something to do with ‘Hoodwink’ and the extortion letters.”

  “You mean one of the Pulpeteers behind that too? Why?” “I can’t even guess,“I said. “But there are all sorts of things going on here, and I don’t just mean attempted extortion and breaking-and-entering. Tensions that go back much longer than that.”

  She frowned down at her cup. “I suppose I got the same feeling tonight. Only I just don’t see how my folks could be involved.”

  I hesitated. Then I said slowly, “Kerry, look, there’s something else you’d better know. When Dancer knocked Cybil’s purse off the table at the party I got a look at what fell out of it. One of the things was a gun.”

  “A what?”

  “A gun. A .38 caliber snub-nosed revolver.”

  Strong rushes of emotion seemed to make her eyes change color; they got dark again, almost smoky green, and in them you could see her struggling with what I’d just told her. “A gun,” she said. “My God.”

  “It isn’t something she’s prone to doing, then.”

  “Of course not. You think she goes around packing a gun?”

  “Some people do.”

  “She’s not one of those paranoids.”

  “Easy. I wasn’t suggesting she was. Do you have any idea why she’d come to the convention armed?”

  “No. God, I didn’t even know she owned a gun.” For half a dozen seconds Kerry stared at a spot just beyond my right shoulder; then she shook herself, and her eyes lightened again, glistening. “I don’t like this,” she said. “I don’t like any of this one damn bit.”

  “It might be a good idea if you had a talk with her in the morning,” I said. “Maybe she’ll confide in you.”

  “You bet I’ll have a talk with her in the morning. I’d go back up there right now if it wasn’t so late.”

  And that just about finished the conversation. She was too busy worrying questions around inside her head for any more banter or discussion. I called for the check, and we went out through the lobby and into a warm soft breeze off the Bay.

  “Your car close by?” I asked her.

  “In the garage just down the street.”

  “Mine’s the other way. But I’ll walk over with you.”

  “No need. Thanks for the coffee.”

  “Sure. About that raincheck for supper—you could use it tomorrow night if you’re not doing anything else.”

  “Let’s see what Cybil has to say.” The collar of my standard rumpled private eye trenchcoat seemed to be tucked under, all cockeyed in my standard sloppy fashion, and she reached up and straightened it. She had to stand close to me to do that, and I could smell the faintly spicy scent of her breath. “And what kind of day tomorrow turns out to be.”

  “Fair enough.”

  She let me have one of her smiles, patted the trenchcoat collar, and went off toward the lighted front of the parking garage. I watched her for a time, with that spicy scent lingering in my mind, and a kind of afterimage, too, of her coppery hair and the way her mouth looked when she smiled. Then I lifted my head and looked up at the glossy moon hanging overhead—one of those spring moons that bathes everything in silvery light and stirs the blood and makes coyotes stand up all hot and bothered and start baying.

  I felt like doing a little baying myself just then. Damned if I didn’t.

  SEVEN

  The convention was already in full swing when I got back to the hotel at ten the next morning. One of the wide central corridors off the reception lobby was crowded with people and lined with tables of various sizes, some of them draped in cloths that read Registration and Banquet Tickets and Seating and Tours of Sam Spade’s San Francisco. The people were of various sizes, too, and various ages that seemed to start at about fifteen and extend up to semiold duffers like me. Almost everybody was dressed casually—one young guy in a Shadow cape and slouch hat, no less, and one chubby girl in a short skirt and one of those metal brassieres you used to see on the covers of science fiction pulps. As soon as I quit gawking at the girl, I began to feel overdressed in my suit and tie. But then I spotted Bert Praxas talking to a couple of eager-looking kids, and he was also wearing a suit and tie and looked every bit as stuffy as I probably did.

  I didn’t see anybody else I knew in the crowd, 78 *

  so I went over to where Praxas was. He saw me, raised a hand in a “just a second” gesture, and finished telling an anecdote about having to make a last-minute change in one of his Spectre novels because of an unintentional double entendre. Then he excused himself from the kids and joined me.

  Another teenager trotted by just then, this one wearing a Viking helmet and what looked like a motheaten bearskin, and waving a sword made out of wood and tinfoil. I followed him with my eyes, trying to figure out who or what he was supposed to be.

  Praxas said, “Conan the Barbarian.” He was smiling.

  “Pardon?”

  “The Robert E. Howard character from Weird Tales. That’s who the boy is dressed up as.” His smile widened. “This has to be your first convention. You’ve got the usual nonplussed look.”

  “Are there always kids who wear costumes like that?”

  “Oh yes. If you think you’re seeing strange sights here, though, you should go to a science fiction con. It’s an experience.”


  “I’ll bet it is. Why do they do it?”

  “Self-expression,” he said. “A lot of them are lonely, social misfits in one way or another; they crave companionship and attention, and it’s only natural that they gravitate to others with similar interests. But you won’t see many of them here.

  This is more a convention for dealers, collectors, and serious pulp fans.”

  “Like me, huh?”

  “Like you. The huckster room is open, by the way. If you plan to do any buying for your collection, you should go in as soon as possible. The turnover will likely be fast and furious.”

  “Thanks. I’ll do that.”

  But the first place I went when I left him was to the house phones, to call Dancer’s room. There was no answer. I went to the hotel bar next, but it wasn’t open for business yet. He still hadn’t joined the convention crowd, either, nor had anyone else I knew. Which gave me a good excuse to take Praxas’s advice and visit the huckster room.

  The woman sitting at the registration table told me it was nearby on the main floor, just turn right at the end of this corridor. So I did that, and it turned out to be a big rectangular room with wide-open entrance doors and a couple of guys checking name tags. A three-foot-square sign to one side said, Convention Members Only—Shoplifters Will Be Prosecuted. It took me thirty seconds to remember what I’d done with the name tag Underwood had given me last night, and then to consider myself lucky I hadn’t changed suits this morning. When I got inside I was confronted with sales tables lining the walls and arranged in a middle square as well, so that pulp magazines—and some hardcover and paperback books—would loom on both sides of you all the way around. The room was almost as crowded as the registration area, but most of the people seemed to be upwards of twenty-five and to have a much more serious mien as they wandered around or bent over the stacks and boxes and trays of plastic-bagged pulps.

  The whole place made me feel like a proverbial kid in a candy store. This was something I understood; this was my kind of world. I could feel myself grinning, no doubt in a fatuous way, as I started to do some browsing of my own.

  It didn’t take long for the browsing to turn into a shopping trip. I found several issues of Detective Tales, Double Detective, Private Detective, and Detective Fiction Weekly that I didn’t have, plus a coverless Black Mask from 1931 with stories by Horace McCoy and Frederick Nebel. At the end of half an hour I was fourteen pulps richer and fifty-two dollars poorer.

  Then I stopped to admire the display of a Southern California dealer—three 1920s Black Masks with Hammett stories, priced at $125 each, the first issue of Wu Fang at $650, the first issue of the rare hero pulp The Octopus at $800—and to wonder about the incredible inflationary rate of magazines that had sold new forty to fifty years ago for a nickel and a dime. Somebody caught hold of my arm while I was doing that, and when I turned I saw Lloyd Underwood standing there, showing me his stained dentures.

  “Finding a lot of your wants, I see,” he said.

  “Good. I picked up a ‘35 Shadow myself a little while ago, got it in trade for an Operator Five and a Spider. What do you think of it so far?”

  I spent a couple of seconds sorting that out. “The huckster room?” I said finally. “I think it’s fine—”

  “No, I meant the con. Of course we haven’t really gotten under way yet. First panel is at one. Have you seen the auction books yet?”

  “Auction books?”

  “The pulps we’re auctioning on Sunday,” he said. “To help pay for the con. Some very rare items. Our prize is the first issue of Weird Tales— March 23, 1923. You don’t own that one, do you? Not many people do. A beautiful copy.”

  “Sounds expensive.”

  “Opening bid is twenty-five hundred, but we expect to get three thousand at least.”

  Three thousand dollars for a pulp, I thought. Suppose I had plenty of money—would I spend that much on just one magazine? Well, maybe. But then, what the hell would I do with it? I’d be afraid to open it, much less read it, and what good was having a pulp or any other reading material if you couldn’t enjoy what was in it?

  “Come on,” Underwood said, “I’ll show you the display. Do you know many local collectors and dealers?”

  “Not too many, no. I buy mostly through the mail…”

  I didn’t finish what I had intended to say be cause he had hold of my arm and was maneuvering me through the jumble of people. The auction pulps turned out to be every bit as impressive as I’d expected; in addition to the first issue of Weird Tales, there were the first five of Doc Savage, the first G-8 and His Battle Aces, and several 1930s Spicy Mystery and Spicy Detective whose stories used to turn on the kids of my generation with descriptions of nubile breasts, alabaster thighs, and lush hips, and with lots of innuendo and three-dot chapter endings. From there Underwood steered me around to meet a bunch of local people, including the head of the San Francisco Academy of Comic Art and the owner of the San Francisco Mystery Bookstore—so many names and faces that they all blended together and flowed right out of my head. One that stayed with me was a big Italian guy who had a name similar to mine. He also had a large collection of pulps, he said, and claimed to be a writer of mystery and detective fiction. Maybe he was, but I had never heard of him.

  I’d been in there for an hour by then, and Underwood’s antic monologues were beginning to wear on me. Besides which, I was tired of jostling and being jostled and of shaking hands while I tried not to drop or damage the pulps I had bought. It was time I went looking for Dancer and for Kerry. Particularly Kerry.

  When I managed to extricate myself from Underwood and the rest of the crowd I went back to the registration area. There were even more people milling around now, among them one kid wearing a futuristic jumpsuit and a holstered plastic ray-gun, with spaced-out eyes to go with the costume. But I didn’t see any familiar faces until I got to the main reception lobby and glanced over at the elevators,- both Dancer and the dusty pulp artist, Ozzie Meeker, were standing there, each of them loaded down with armfuls of small, framed oil paintings.

  I veered over there and reached them just as one of the elevators opened up and disgorged a bunch of people. Dancer saw me and grinned all over his face—a wet, loose kind of grin. The whites of his eyes had a wounded look, and his breath would have knocked over a horse.

  “Hey, shamus,” he said, “what’s happening?”

  “Not much. Where you headed?”

  “Art Room up on the mezzanine. Got to help Ozzie here set up his display.”

  “Mind if I tag along? I want to talk to you for a minute.”

  “Sure. More the merrier, what the hell.”

  Meeker was holding the elevator, and he watched me from behind his horn-rims with bright, birdlike eyes as Dancer and I moved inside. Up close, the skin of his face had a brown, sun-cracked look, webbed with tiny crosshatches of wrinkles—the skin of a man who spent a good part of his time outdoors, as Colodny obviously did. There was a whiskey smell on him too, but not half as strong, and his gaze was steady and free of the glassiness that showed behind Dancer’s squint.

  He said, “I don’t think we met at the party last night. I’m Ozzie Meeker. You’re the detective, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Best damn detective in the business,” Dancer said in his annoying way. “Solved a couple of murders in Cypress Bay a few years back, you know that, Ozzie? Some shamus, bet your ass.”

  “Interesting,” Meeker said, as if he meant it.

  The elevator stopped at the mezzanine and we got out and turned into the westside corridor. I said to Meeker, “Couldn’t help noticing that you and Frank Colodny had a little altercation last night. Nothing serious, I hope.”

  He shrugged. “Frank and I don’t get along too well anymore.”

  “How could anybody get along with that bastard?” Dancer said. “Screwed Ozzie out of money back in the pulp days too, just like he screwed his writers. Ozzie was the best damn cover artist the pulps ever ha
d. Drew beautiful stuff. You remember his stuff?”

  “Yes, “I said.

  “Got some of it right here. Originals. Never got the recognition he deserved. Did you, Ozzie?”

  Meeker shrugged again. “Do any of us?”

  “Not me,” Dancer said. “But hell, I never deserved any.”

  The Art Room hadn’t officially opened yet, and the doors to it were closed; another guard-type was posted out front. He let us go inside when Meeker showed his name tag. A dozen or so men and women occupied the room, setting up displays of original oils, reproductions, laminated and framed covers, pen-and-ink interior illustrations, old editorial layout sheets, storyboards, and other pulp artwork and ephemera. According to the convention brochure, the material was all owned by private collectors and was being shown by them; the only ex-pulp artist in attendance was Meeker.

  He had been given a place of honor as a result, near the door so his display would be the first you’d see when you came in, and he and Dancer unloaded themselves there. His art, most of which depicted Western gunslingers in various action scenes, was striking; not as good as that done by Eggenhofer, the king of Western pulp artists, but still pretty good. His distinctive signature—his last name inside the loop of a lariat—was prominent on each painting.

  Dancer said, “What time’s the exhibit open, Ozzie?”

  “One o’clock. Same time as Wade’s panel.”

  “Should have time for a couple more belts, hah?”

  “I don’t see why not,” Meeker said.

  I did, but I didn’t say so. Delivering temperance lectures was out of my line.

  go ahead and get started, Ozzie,” Dancer said. “Soon as I talk to my buddy the shamus, I’ll give you a hand.”

  I told Meeker it was nice meeting him and prodded Dancer over into a corner. “That Ozzie’s a hell of a nice guy, you know that?” he said. He gave me one of his sardonic grins, loose and moist at the edges. “Generous with his booze, too. Real generous.”

  “That where you’ve been this morning? With him?”

  “Yup. Since I ran into him in the hall at eight-thirty. We got adjoining rooms. Damn convenient.” He squinted at me. “How long you been here?”