Hoodwink

by Bill Pronzini

  “She could have been lying,” I said doggedly.

  “Why would she lie?”

  “It was just a thought. How long was she in the hallway before I showed up?”

  “Half a minute or so. She’d just come out of the next room past the cul-de-sac, six-twenty-one.”

  “Did she see or hear anything?”

  “Not until you appeared and the gun went off. Listen, get the hell off the maid; her story’s straight, and she’s not involved.” Another jab with the pipe. “And here’s your second reason why nobody could have been hiding in Dancer’s room: how would he have got out after Colodny was dead? What do you think this mythical killer did—wave a magic wand and dematerialize?”

  The smoke in there was beginning to irritate my lungs; I could feel my chest tightening up. Now that I had been off tobacco for a couple of years, I no longer had any tolerance for it. I felt like getting up and opening the window to let in some air. But if I did it would only make Eberhardt more antagonistic than he already was.

  I said, “Dancer told me all the other Pulpeteers have alibis for the time of Colodny’s death.”

  “That’s right,” he said, and then pulled a face. “Pulpeteers. Of all the silly damn names for a bunch of grandfather types. Where’s the dignity in something like that?”

  “They were young when they thought it up.”

  “Pulp writers,” he said. “And private eyes. Bah.”

  “Eb, will you tell me how the alibis break down?”

  “No. Listen, I’ve had enough of your questions.”

  “If none of them is airtight, somebody could have slipped away for a few minutes. Or somebody could be lying to protect somebody else—”

  “Don’t you hear good?”

  “Look, Eb, I’m only—”

  “I said that’s enough!” He slapped the pipe down on his desk; ashes and half-burned tobacco sprayed out over the litter of papers. “Your time’s up. Get the hell out of here. And don’t come sucking around again for free information. I’m sick of looking at your goddamn wop face.”

  There were still some things I wanted to know about besides the alibi breakdown: the typewriter that had been found in Colodny’s hotel room; the bottle of rye whiskey in Dancer’s room. But he was pretty upset, face all blood-dark, and provoking him would only get me upset too. His cutting remarks had already begun to fray the edges of my temper—the one about my “goddamn wop face” in particular. We had traded ethnic insults for thirty years, but this was the first time either of us had ever put malice into one.

  “Okay,” I said, “I’m going. Maybe you’ll decide to be a human being again one of these days. Not to mention a friend. Let me know if that happens.”

  I shoved up out of the chair, pivoted around it, and went over to the door. I had my hand on the knob when he said, “Wait a minute,” in a much quieter voice.

  I came around. “What?”

  The anger had drained out of his face; he was sitting slump-shouldered now, and all of a sudden he seemed old and tired and wasted-looking. He had let down his defenses finally—and what I was looking at was naked anguish.

  “Dana left me,” he said.

  It was a flat statement, without inflection, but there was so much emotion wrapped up in it that I could feel the skin ripple along my back. “Ah Jesus, Eb …”

  “Last Sunday. Week ago today. I went out to Candlestick to watch the Giants play, I came home, she had all her bags packed.”

  “Why!” “Twenty-eight years we’ve been married. Not all of them good, but most of them. I thought it was a good marriage. I thought I was a decent husband.” He let out a heavy breath, picked up the apple briar and stared at it blindly. “I think she’s been having an affair,” he said.

  I tried not to wince. “Is that what she told you?”

  “Not in so many words. But there’ve been signs, little things, little signals for three or four months. And she wouldn’t tell me where she was going. All she’d say was that the marriage wasn’t working, she was going to file for divorce—‘I’m sorry, Eb,’ she said, and out the door. Twenty-eight years, and ‘I’m sorry, Eb,’ and out the door.”

  “Do you… have any idea who it is?”

  “No. Does it matter? I figured, okay, she’s hav ing a fling. I didn’t like it but I could accept it. I had a couple of things in my time, I never told you about them but I did. So did Dana, once, a long time ago. She told me about that one, everything, and I forgave her, and I told her about it both times I strayed, too. It was a good marriage, goddamn it. It was.”

  “Maybe she’ll change her mind, come back …”

  “Not this time. She’s gone. It’s over, finished, she’s gone. But I still love her, you know? I still love the bitch.”

  I did not say anything. What can you say?

  He looked up at me—big, stolid, tough Eberhardt, the original Rock of Gibraltar. And in his eyes there was some of the same mute appeal that I had seen in Dancer’s eyes only a little while ago.

  “What am I going to do?” he said. “What the hell am I going to do?”

  THIRTEEN

  It was one o’clock when I got out of that hot smoky office and out of the Hall of Justice into the cold afternoon wind. I picked up my car and took it over to Sixth and turned uptown toward the Hotel Continental. The heat and the pipe smoke had combined to give me a headache, and what Eberhardt had told me only made me feel worse. A kind of grayness moved through me, thick and heavy like the fog roiling overhead. It had been some while since I had felt this low down.

  Eb and Dana. Christ, I had been best man at their wedding. I had spent hundreds of hours with them over the years. I had suffered through Dana’s good-natured attempts to fix me up with various women and get me married off. I had watched them banter with each other and share the cooking duties at Sunday afternoon barbecues and walk hand in hand at Ocean Beach, Kezar Stadium, Golden Gate Park. Twenty-eight years. Half a lifetime, almost. They had been my friends all that time, and I had thought I knew them; I had thought that if ever there was a perfect marriage, two people made for each other, this was it. Yet all the while they’d been having problems, they’d strayed from each other in more ways than one.

  Standing up there in Eberhardt’s office, listening to him talk about it, I had felt shocked and sad and painfully awkward. And aware of a bitter irony: I had heard it all before, from dozens of clients and prospective clients, men and women both. The same old story—the age-old story. They approach a private detective the way they approach a priest; they make you into a kind of father-confessor, and they tell you everything. And then they ask you to help them do this or do that to repair their shattered lives. Or they say, as Eberhardt had said, “What am I going to do? What the hell am I going to do?”

  I never knew what to say to all those others, and I had not known what to say to Eberhardt. I had no answers for him; I couldn’t do anything for him except to be around if he needed somebody to talk to or somebody to get drunk with. You had to get through it by yourself. It was a little like dying: ultimately you had to face it alone.

  But the trouble with me was, I empathized too much with Eberhardt and all the rest of them: I knew too much about that quality of aloneness. They hurt, so I hurt. The feeling private eye, the tough guy riddled with Weltschmerz—the fictional stereotype. And the hell with those who thought in terms of stereotype rather than in terms of humanity. I cared, that was all. I was me, not any other detective, pulp or otherwise. I was me, and Eb and Dana had split up, and I hurt for both of them.

  I had worked myself into a funk by the time I parked my car and walked down to the Continental. One of those moods where cynicism keeps vying with melancholy and you feel like going off somewhere by yourself to brood. But I had made a commitment to Dancer. I would have to deal with people today whether I felt like it or not.

  There was no one in the lobby I knew. I went over and took a look along the corridor where the convention tables had been set up; they were go
ne. So much for the first annual Western Pulp Con. I tried the Garden Bistro, didn’t find any familiar faces among the late-lunch trade, and tried the Continental Bar next. That was where I found Jim Bohannon and Ivan and Cybil Wade.

  They were sitting at a table near the Queen Anne fireplace, working on what appeared to be Ramos fizzes. Bohannon gave me a solemn smile as I came up, and Cybil let me have one that was not solemn at all. What I got from Ivan Wade was a blank stare. It was dark in there and I couldn’t see his eyes clearly, but I thought that they showed hostility. Because of my relationship with Kerry? I wondered. Or for some other reason?

  Bohannon said, “Didn’t expect to see you today.

  Rest of the convention’s been cancelled, you know.”

  “So I gathered.”

  “Haven’t you had enough of pulp writers?” Wade said. His tone was the same one he had used on Dancer at the party Thursday night: quiet, even, but with an overcoating of venom. “Not to mention their offspring.”

  Cybil said, “Ivan, please.”

  The mood I was in made me bristle a little. But I was not going to get anywhere, or do myself any good, by indulging Wade and making a scene. I said to Cybil, “All right if I join you for a bit?”

  It wasn’t all right with Wade; his expression made that plain even in the murky light. But Cybil said, “Of course,” and he offered no objection. So I took the only empty chair, between Bohannon and Cybil, and sat myself down in it. That put me opposite Wade, who glared at me over the rim of his glass.

  Nobody had anything to say for a few seconds. Wade kept glaring at me, but I told myself again that I was not going to be provoked and ignored him. Bohannon looked vaguely uncomfortable. Cybil, on the other hand, looked to be in good spirits, as if a burden had been lifted from her and nothing much could bother her as a result. Colodny’s death? It would seem that way, judging from her relief at the news yesterday.

  Bohannon cleared his throat. “Have you heard anything more about Dancer?” he asked me. “Has he confessed?”, “No, he hasn’t confessed.”

  “I suppose the police have charged him by now.”

  “They have, but they could be making a mistake.”

  “Mistake?”

  “I don’t think he’s guilty,” I said.

  That sat them all up on their chairs. Wade said, “What kind of nonsense is that? Of course he’s guilty.”

  “Not until it’s proven in court.”

  “But you were there just after it happened,” Cybil said. “You found him with the body …”

  “I also talked to him then, and again this morning. He says he’s innocent and I’m inclined to believe him.”

  “How could he be? All the doors were locked, and Russ and Frank were the only people in the room. How could someone else have done it?”

  “I don’t know yet. But I’m going to try to find out.”

  “You mean you’re working for Dancer?” Bohannon asked.

  “On his behalf, yes.”

  Cybil said, “Do you think one of the other Pulpeteers killed Frank?”

  “That’s the logical assumption, I’m afraid.”

  “It’s also a ridiculous assumption,” Wade said in his supercilious way. “Dancer killed him and that’s that. All your stirring around won’t prove any different.”

  Ignore him, I thought. He’s Kerry’s father, remember?

  Bohannon had begun to look thoughtful. “I don’t know, Ivan,” he said to Wade. “None of us liked Colodny worth a damn.”

  “True enough. But I wouldn’t have killed him. Would you?”

  “Only people I’m likely to kill,” Bohannon said, “are rustlers and outlaws. Which Colodny was, come to think of it—but I mean the fictional kind.”

  “But Dancer would have,” Wade insisted. “It’s obvious he hated Colodny, and he’s always been prone to violence when he was drinking.”

  “Now that’s not true,” Cybil said. “Rowdiness yes, but violence?”

  He gave her the same kind of look he’d been giving me. She gave it right back to him. You could tell just from that what kind of marriage they had; neither of them backed down an inch.

  I said, just to see what would happen, “I understand you and Mrs. Wade were together at the time of the shooting—is that right?”

  Wade put his glare on me again. “What kind of question is that?”

  “A reasonable one.”

  “I suppose you think we weren’t together.”

  “I didn’t say that, Mr. Wade.”

  “I suppose you think one of us was off commit ting some sort of locked-room murder right under your nose. Of all the damned—”

  “Oh Ivan, for God’s sake be civil. The man has a right to ask simple questions. Particularly so if Russ Dancer is innocent. Do you want to see an innocent man go to prison?”

  “For all I care,” Wade said, “Russ Dancer can go to hell.”

  Cybil made an exasperated gesture. “Well, I care,” she said. And to me, “We were together, yes, but I left the room a few minutes past twelve. Ivan didn’t want to attend Frank’s panel, and I did.”

  “You don’t remember exactly what time you left?”

  “No, I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “It was twelve-thirty,” Wade said. “The same time Colodny was shot, according to the newspapers.”

  “You happened to check the time, did you?”

  “Are you calling me a liar?”

  Kerry’s father, damn it. “All right,” I said evenly. “Do you mind telling me what you did after your wife left?”

  “I do mind but I’ll tell you anyway. Nothing. I was reading a book and I went on reading it.”

  Bohannon said, “If you want my whereabouts at twelve-thirty, I was up in the room with my wife. She wasn’t feeling well—still isn’t; arthritis acting up—and I didn’t want to leave her alone.”

  I nodded and looked at Cybil again. “Did you see any of the others when you went downstairs? Praxas, Ramsey, Ozzie Meeker?”

  “No.”

  “Afraid you’re out of luck on those three,” Bohannon said. “As far as talking to them goes, anyhow.”

  “How so?”

  “They’ve checked out already. Police gave us all permission to leave after they talked to us.”

  “I see.”

  “Meeker left last night for the Delta. Waldo headed back to L.A. this morning—he’s driving, so he wanted an early start—and Bert’s spending a few days with one of the convention people.”

  “Do you know which one?”

  “Nope, but Lloyd Underwood could tell you. Some fellow in the Bay Area who runs a small-press publishing house. He’s going to reprint a couple of Bert’s Spectre novels.”

  “Did any of them happen to mention what they were doing when Colodny was killed?”

  “Well … I think Waldo said he was with Underwood around that time, in the auditorium. Meeker was with Underwood, too, just before that—something about Ozzie’s art display.”

  “How about Praxas?”

  “I don’t recall. Bert say something to you, Ivan?”

  Wade picked up his drink and said flatly, “No.”

  “It seems to me,” Cybil said, “that he did say something about being downstairs talking to some fans. But I’m not sure.”

  I asked Bohannon, “Are you also planning to leave today?”

  “Not much reason to stay now,” he said. “We’re booked on a five-o’clock flight to Denver.”

  “What about you, Mrs. Wade?”

  “We’re staying on until Tuesday or Wednesday,” she said. “We don’t get a chance to see Kerry that often, you know.”

  “Where is Kerry today?”

  “Home working on one of her accounts. She’ll be down this evening; we’re having a late dinner.” She smiled at me. “Would you like to join us? We—”

  “The hell he’s going to join us,” Wade said in a voice full of fire and ice, and thumped his glass down on the table. “I’ve had enough of hi
s questions, and I’ve had enough of him. I have no intention of taking a meal with him.”

  I said, “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

  “Well I do, and I don’t like it. I don’t like you, either.”

  It’s mutual, brother, I thought.

  “Ivan,” Cybil said. Warningly.

  But he was not having any of that. His eyes bit into me across the table. “A man your age, a fat, scruffy private detective, sucking around a woman young enough to be your daughter. I won’t have it. You understand me? I won’t have it.”

  Fat, scruffy private detective. “That’s her decision, Mr. Wade,” I said thinly. “Not yours.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  I still had the lid on my control, but it was rattling like one on a pot of boiling water. Either I got away from him right now or I would start to backtalk him, and that would only make things worse between us. And worse for Kerry, too. If the animosity got strong enough, and push came to shove, how could I expect her to make a choice between her father and me?

  I slid back my chair and stood. “I think I’ll be going,” I said. “Thanks for your time. You have a good trip home, Mr. Bohannon.”

  He nodded, looking embarrassed. Cybil showed embarrassment too, but it was sharing space with anger; her eyes were like whips against the side of her husband’s face. I put my back to all three of them and made myself walk slowly out of there.

  Fat, scruffy private detective.

  I went straight to the public telephone booths and shut myself inside of one. It took a minute or so for me to get calmed down; then I found a dime and dropped it into the slot and dialed Kerry’s number. She answered on the fourth ring.

  “Hi,” I said. “It’s me.”

  “Well, hello. I’ve been wondering if you’d call.”

  “I’ve had kind of a busy morning.”

  “You must have. I rang up your apartment at nine-thirty and you were already gone. I thought maybe you were miffed at me.”

  I

  “Why should I be miffed at you?”

  “Because I “wasn’t home last night. Or didn’t you try to call?”

  “I tried to call.”