Hoodwink

by Bill Pronzini

  “My folks insisted I go out to dinner with them,” she said, “and it got to be pretty late. I didn’t get home until after eleven.”

  “You don’t have to answer to me for your time.”

  “Hey, you sound grumpy. What’s the matter?”

  “Not too much,” I said. “I just had a nice little session with your father, that’s all. He called me a fat, scruffy private detective and said I didn’t have any right to be sucking around a woman young enough to be my daughter.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s impossible sometimes. He think’s I’m still a child who has to be protected from myself.”

  “I suppose he gave you the same routine last night.”

  “Not in the same words, but yes.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told him I was a big girl now and he’d realize what a nice guy you were when he got to know you.”

  “What’d he say to that?”

  “I don’t think you want to hear it.”

  “Terrific,” I said. “This has been some damn day. First I let myself get talked into going to work for Dancer—”

  “Dancer?”

  “Yeah. I went down to see him at the Hall of Justice this morning, and I’m still inclined to believe his story; so I’ll try to do what I can for him. Then I find out my best friend’s wife just left him after twenty-eight years. Then I come down here to the hotel and get into a verbal battle with your old man.”

  “Have you seen the newspapers yet?”

  “No, I don’t bother to read them most of the time. Why?”

  “You won’t like what they have to say about you either.”

  “What do they have to say?”

  ” ‘Murder-prone private detective gets involved in another slaying. Pulp collector attends pulp convention where ex-pulp editor fatally shot by ex-pulp writer.’ That’s about the gist of it.”

  “Bastards. They’re having a field day at my expense.”

  “I told you you wouldn’t like it.”

  “Miserable damn day.”

  “What are you going to do now?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m fresh out of ideas.”

  “Why don’t you come over here?”

  “I’m not sure I’d be very good company.”

  “I’ll take the chance. Maybe we can think of something cheerful to do together.”

  So I went over there and we thought of something cheerful to do together. Twice.

  * * *

  I was feeling better when I got home around eight o’clock. Kerry had had to keep her dinner date with her folks, but that was okay; there was the promise of other nights to be shared. Whether her father liked it or not, we seemed to have a thing going. And nuts to him. She liked it and I liked it and we were the only two who mattered.

  But after I had been home an hour or so, while I was swilling down a can of Schlitz and some leftover pizza, I started to brood again. Why should I be so down on Ivan Wade? From what Kerry had told me, he was a decent enough guy who cared about her welfare and her happiness. So maybe he had a legitimate gripe. Maybe I was a fat, scruffy private detective and maybe I was too old for her. And maybe I had gone to her apartment and her bed this afternoon as much to spite him as to be with her—prove I could lay his daughter if I damned well pleased and the hell with him. I did not want to think about what sort of person that would make me, down in the depths of the subconscious.

  Then I started to think about Eberhardt and Dana, and what a lousy thing the breakup of their marriage was, and pretty soon I had managed to brood myself right back into a funk. I had another beer and went to bed, which is one good place to take a funk. But then I made the mistake of reading the news story on Colodny’s murder—I had bought a Sunday paper on the way home, against my better judgment—and it enraged and depressed me all over again. They’d had a field day, all right. The facts were at a minimum: Colodny had died from a gunshot wound, Dancer had been arrested and charged with homicide. The rest of the story focused on the convention, on the Pulpeteers, and on me, and was written more or less tongue-in-cheek. Somebody dies by violence and the journalists treat it as a kind of black-humored joke.

  So I brooded about that for a while. And some more about Kerry, Ivan Wade, Eberhardt and Dana, Dancer caged up down at the Hall of Justice, sweating out a murder rap. Then I got up and had one more beer. But all it did was give me a headache and put a bad taste in my mouth. I took three aspirin and brushed my teeth, and when I crawled back into bed it was almost midnight.

  Tomorrow couldn’t get here soon enough to suit me…

  FOURTEEN

  The empty packing boxes were waiting for me when I got down to my office a little past nine on Monday morning.

  I looked at them without much relish. Last day in the old digs, like it or not. The end of an era; a kind of milestone in the long and illustrious career of Lone Wolf, the last of the red-hot private snoops. From now on it would be business in sedate surroundings. No more dingy office in a dingy building in a dingy neighborhood. No more forties-style atmosphere,- no more Spade and no more Marlowe. Retire the trenchcoat, throw out the slouch hat, get rid of the shiny-bottom suits with the frayed cuffs. The times, son, they are a-changing. Image is everything these days. Nobody pays much attention to anachronisms in the 1980s, especially red-hot private snoop-type anachronisms, except for a bunch of smartass newspaper reporters who ought to know better. And that’s another thing: cut it out with calling yourself private snoop and keyhole peeper and lone-wolf private eye. What you are, you know, is the head of an investigative services firm.

  Nuts, I thought.

  So the old lone wolf took off his trenchcoat, hung it up along with his slouch hat. Then he shot the frayed cuffs on his shiny-bottom suit and ankled across to his desk, where he winked a cynical private eye at the Black Mask poster on one dingy wall. After which he settled down to the business of a new day.

  There weren’t any messages on my answering machine. I disconnected the thing and took it over and plunked it down inside one of the packing cases; that was a start, anyway. While I brewed coffee I wondered if Ben Chadwick had dug up anything yet on Rose Tyler Crawford and the Evil by Gaslight film. But if he had, I decided, he’d have called by now. There was just nothing to do on that angle except to wait it out.

  I shuffled some papers around while the coffee water heated. Opened up my portfolio case and shuffled through the “Hoodwink” manuscript again while I drank my first cup. I had brought the manuscript with me from home because that elusive oddity about it kept scratching at my mind, and I thought if I went over it enough times, I could eventually get a handle on it. Not this time, though. All I got was a coffee stain on one of the pages.

  It was nine-fifty before I finally convinced myself to quit procrastinating and get the damn pack ing over and done with. I had to be out of here by five o’clock, which meant I had to have everything boxed up and a moving company called in by midafternoon. And the longer I hung around here being nostalgic or maudlin or anachronistic, the less time I would have today to do something constructive in Dancer’s behalf.

  I started with the file cabinet and got both drawers empty of files—what was left of them after the office rape—and packed away in short order. After which I took down the poster and the framed photostat of my license and wrapped them in a blanket so the glass would at least stand a chance of survival. Then I went into the alcove, dragging one of the cases after me, and began unloading the miscellaneous crap from the shelves in there.

  That was what I was doing when somebody knocked on the office door. I heard it open a moment later, silence for a couple of seconds, and then Kerry’s voice say, “Hey, anybody here?”

  I poked my head around the corner, over the top of the packing case. “In here.”

  She came through the rail divider, peering around the way a woman does the first time she enters a place, and stopped in the middle of the office. �
�Busy busy, aren’t we?” she said.

  “Never a spare moment.”

  I stood up, wiped my hands on a rag. She was wearing a gray business-type suit with a frilly green blouse under it, and she had her hair fluffed out in a way that was a little different. She looked pretty fine standing there, so I went over and kissed her. That was pretty fine too—at least for me.

  “Ugh,” she said. “What did you have for breakfast?”

  “Why? Bad breath?”

  “Well, a little garlicky.”

  “I guess it’s the pastrami.”

  “Pastrami? For breakfast?” “I don’t like eggs much,” I said.

  “My God. It’s a wonder you don’t have bleeding ulcers.”

  “Not me. I’ve got a bachelor’s stomach—made out of cast iron.” I resisted an impulse to kiss her again and maybe nibble a little on her ear. How would it look if somebody else came in and found a fifty-three-year-old lone wolf nibbling on a pretty woman’s ear? “So how come you came all the way over here from Bates and Carpenter?”

  “It’s all of a dozen blocks,” she said.

  “Long blocks,” I said.

  “I came over because I’ve got an early appointment for lunch and some free time, and I wanted to see this office of yours before you move out of it. I’ve never been inside a private eye’s office before.”

  “What do you think, now that you’re here?”

  “I think you made a very wise decision to move somewhere else. Have you really spent twenty years in this place?”

  “Yep. It’s not all that bad, you know. I mean, it looks more respectable when it’s cleaned up.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “You’ll like the new offices a lot better,” I said with some irony. “Very modern and businesslike.”

  “Oh, I’ll bet. Plush carpets, soft lighting, and tasteful paintings on the walls. The artistic touch, no doubt.”

  I didn’t open my mouth for three or four seconds. Then I said, “What did you say?”

  “Weren’t you listening? I said plush carpets, soft lighting—”

  “No. The artistic touch. That’s what you said.”

  She gave me a funny look but I barely noticed it. Somewhere inside my head a door had opened up, and the thing that had been scratching at it the past two days, the odd thing about the “Hoodwink” manuscript, came popping through. I took a good long look at it. Then I hustled over to the desk, dragged the manuscript out of the portfolio again, and took a good long look at that.

  Kerry came over next to me as I was riffling through the pages. “What’s the matter with you?” she said. “Do you have seizures like this very often?”

  “Not often enough,” I said. “I think I know who wrote the ‘Hoodwink’ novelette. And it wasn’t Frank Colodny.”

  That got her attention. “Then who was it?”

  “Ozzie Meeker.”

  “But he’s not a writer—”

  “Maybe he wanted to be one. It adds up.”

  “What adds up?”

  “Here, look.” I spread the manuscript out on the desk and pointed to the first paragraph on page one. “This sentence: ‘In that moment of silent motionlessness, man and hansom had the aspect of two-dimensional shadows newly sketched on night’s dark canvas, with ink still wet and glistening.’” I flipped over to the last page, indicated the second sentence in the final paragraph. ” ‘The stationary objects in the room seemed to swirl past her, shading into distorted and colorless images much like those in a surrealist composition.’”

  Kerry looked at me sideways. “Artistic references?”

  “Right. The manuscript is full of them. Most writers, professional or amateur, wouldn’t use phrases like ‘two-dimensional shadows,’ ‘night’s dark canvas,’ ‘stationary objects,’ ‘shading into distorted and colorless images,’ ‘surrealist composition.’ ” I riffled the pages again, pointing out a few more at random. “Or ‘the elements of perspective.’ Or ‘the good strong odor of linseed oil.’ Or ‘the overall effect was of something painted with a dry brush.’ “

  “I see what you mean,” Kerry said thoughtfully. “Whoever wrote this almost has to be an artist. And an amateur writer too. But it doesn’t have to be Ozzie Meeker.”

  “No. Except that Meeker is a member of the Pulpeteers. And knows everybody involved. And was here at the convention. And had at least one altercation with Frank Colodny.”

  “Do you think he was involved in Colodny’s death?”

  “If he wrote ‘Hoodwink’ and those extortion letters, it’s good bet he was.”

  “But how?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “What motive would he have for wanting Colodny dead?”

  “Some sort of revenge angle, maybe.”

  “After thirty years?”

  “Colodny disappeared for thirty years, remember?”

  “Mmm. Which could mean that Meeker wrote ‘Hoodwink’ back in the forties and it really was plagiarized for Evil by Gaslight—by Colodny?”

  “Possible. It would explain his sudden disappearance. But Colodny was just an editor, wasn’t he? He didn’t do any writing himself?”

  “Not as far as I know. My folks could tell you.”

  “They’re still at the hotel?”

  “Yes. Dad has a date with some sort of amateur magician’s group today, but Cybil might still be in.”

  I went around behind the desk and rang up the Continental. The line to the Wades’ room buzzed half a dozen times and I was just getting ready to break the connection when Cybil’s voice answered a little breathlessly; I must have caught her on the way out. I told her who was calling and then asked about Frank Colodny.

  “No,” she said, “he never wrote anything himself. Or if he did, it was a well-kept secret. Some editors are frustrated writers, but not Frank; he was satisfied doing what he did.”

  “What about Ozzie Meeker? Do you know if he ever tried his hand at fiction?”

  There was a small silence, as if she were searching her memory. “Well, it seems to me he did say once that he had ambitions along those lines. But not pulp; I think he wanted to do something more serious. I can’t remember if he ever said what it was.”

  “Did he follow through? Write something for publication?”

  “He never spoke of it if he did. Why do you ask?”

  “Just an idea I’ve got. Thanks, Mrs. Wade.”

  Kerry was watching me as I put down the receiver; she had perched herself on the front edge of the desk. “No on Colodny?” she said.

  I nodded. “But yes on Meeker.”

  “But then who wrote Evil by Gaslight! Not one of the other Pulpeteers?”

  “Could be. If ‘Hoodwink’ was plagiarized in the first place.”

  “Then why was it Colodny who was killed?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “And why were extortion letters and manuscripts sent to all the Pulpeteers?”

  “I wish I knew that too.”

  I picked up the phone again and put in another long-distance call to Ben Chadwick’s office in Hollywood. More than ever now I wanted to know the background details on Evil by Gaslight; there was little doubt in my mind that the film, the “Hoodwink” manuscript and extortion letters, and Colodny’s murder were all connected somehow. But all I got was Chadwick’s answering machine and his recorded voice saying he was out of the office. I thought about leaving a message asking him to get in touch as soon as possible because the matter had become urgent, but decided against it and said only that I would call again later today or tomorrow. Chances were I would not be spending much of the day here—and I had already disconnected my own answering machine.

  When I hung up this time Kerry said, “What are you going to do now? About Ozzie Meeker, I mean.”

  That was a good question. I could take all these suppositions and half-truths to Eberhardt, but what good would it do? They were inconclusive, and they had no direct bearing on Colodny’s murder or his case against Dancer.
Besides which, his marital problems were keeping him from being as open-minded as he usually was.

  “I think what I’d better do,” I said, “is have a talk with Meeker. If I handle him right, I might get him to admit something definite.”

  “Talk to him in person, you mean?”

  “Well, if I tried it on the phone he’d probably hang up on me. And I couldn’t gauge his reaction either.” I stood up and came around the desk. “It’s only a two-hour drive up to the Delta. I can be there by midafternoon if I find out his address and get the rest of my stuff packed in a hurry.”

  “Damn,” she said. “I’d like to go with you.”

  “You would, huh?”

  “Yes. It’s fascinating watching you work.”

  “Sure it is. Just like watching the plumbers plumb.”

  “No. I’m serious. It really is.”

  “Is that my attraction for you? The fabled mystique of the private eye?”

  “Frankly, yes—part of it. Private eyes have fascinated me ever since I first read one of Cybil’s pulp stories. You’re not offended, are you?”

  “No,” I said, and I wasn’t. It did not make any difference why she had picked me as a lover; she had picked me, and that was enough. “Fact is, you’re pretty nice to have around. If you hadn’t come around this morning and made that comment about artistic touches, it might have been days before I made the connection. When I get rich I’m going to hire you away from Bates and Carpenter as my secretary.”

  “Oh you are?”

  “Sure. I wouldn’t mind having you around all the time.”

  That last sentence seemed to hang in the air between us for three or fours seconds, heavy with implication that I hadn’t really meant. Or had I? Our eyes locked for those few seconds; then we both moved at the same time. Kerry straightening up from the desk, me hiding my big, awkward hands inside my trouser pockets. Oddly, for the first time in months, I had a craving for a cigarette—and whatever that meant psychologically, I didn’t want to pursue.

  “Well,” she said, “I’d better go have my business lunch. Will you be back in time to have dinner with me tonight?”

  “I should be. If there’s a delay, I’ll call you.”