Twospot

by Bill Pronzini

  It took me a full minute to get to where I could see past the wall of outcroppings. The vineyards ended over there and the land was dry, brown, uncultivated, patterned with bunches of trees growing on hillocks and scattered boulders and rock formations. The road dipped down into a hollow, dipped back up again, and went across another rise. Behind the rise light shimmered again, the kind of up-and-down shimmering that an automobile’s headlamps make on badly eroded road surfaces. The light kept on dancing that way until I cleared the hollow and started up the slope; but then the wavering lessened, became steadier, became just a reflected glow.

  The pick-up had slowed and come to a stop.

  Instinctively I took my foot off the accelerator and let it rest on the brake pedal. A muscle on my right cheekbone began to jump; I took one hand off the wheel and wiped it dry on my pantleg, did the same with the other hand. Twenty yards to the top of the rise. I realized I was trying to hold my breath and let it out noisily between locked teeth. Fifteen yards, ten—and I was onto the crown, looking down the far side.

  At the foot of a hundred yards of gradual slope, the road leveled off for twenty yards and then came to a dead end in front of a sheer, thirty-foot-high limestone bluff. To the left there was a small stream, flowing north to south, and where it passed along the base of the bluff it filled a kind of geological bowl and became a pool. The pool and the bluff were ringed on three sides by madrone and oak and pine, creating one of those backhill spots that families use for picnics and kids use for gameplaying and beer busts. The pick-up was parked twenty feet from the edge of the pool, and its lights reflected off the wrinkled surface of the limestone formation, giving it an eerie look of frozen, rust-colored water.

  I saw all of that in the time it took me to bring the car across the short flat top of the rise, nose it down the other side—three or four seconds. And I saw, too, that neither Rosten nor Alex had yet gotten out of the truck. I had a brief mental image of Alex down there inside, arguing, pleading for explanations, begging for his life, and that kept me from hesitating, wasting time. There was no way I could stop the car and get to them on foot; I had no weapon to use anyway against Rosten’s gun. My only option, my only chance, was to use the one thing in my favor: the element of surprise.

  I braced myself, held tight to the wheel, and came down hard on the accelerator.

  The uneven, chuckholed roadbed made the car bounce crazily up and down as it gathered speed. Through the windshield I watched the pick-up seem to expand in size, watched the doors on both sides because when they heard me coming their first reaction would be to get out of there. When less than thirty yards remained to the bottom of the slope I took my left hand off the wheel long enough to pull the headlight knob. An instant after the lights came on and began throwing weird patterns across the landscape, the passenger door burst open and Rosten started to scramble out with the gun in his hand. The light-glare seemed to blind him; he lost his balance and threw his free hand out to the door to keep himself from falling.

  I stood on the brakes.

  The car sailed across the bottom of the slope, bounced onto and across the short level stretch. Rosten was just starting to shove away from the passenger door, and Alex had the driver’s door halfway open, when I skidded into the back of the pick-up.

  Even though I was braced for it, the impact slammed me forward into the wheel and sent daggers of pain through both arms, through my chest. Metal crumpled with an explosive crunching noise, both headlights shattered, the pick-up’s rear glass shattered; the force of the collision drove the truck forward to the edge of the pool, rocking it like a hobby horse. I had a confused impression of Rosten down on his hands and knees to one side, where the impact must have thrown him, and of Alex’s head and arm thrust through the pick-up’s open side window. Then the fusion of twisted metal separated on the right side, and the Ford’s rear end slewed around to the right and the rear end of my car came around to the left—the same effect as when you snap a stick in the middle. The truck tilted up on two wheels at the edge of the pool, but the rocks there kept it from falling all the way over into the water. The left front tire on my car jolted up against those same rocks; the engine rattled and died.

  I had my left hand on the door handle, and soon as the car came to a shuddering rest I threw the door open and staggered out. Alex was struggling free of the pick-up; I heard him yell something at me. But I was already turned and looking across the hood, looking for and then at Rosten.

  He was still down on all fours, crawling a little, trying to stand up and not making it, and then crawling again. He did not have the gun anymore, but in the darkness I couldn’t tell where it was or if it was what Rosten was heading after. I swung around the front fender of my car, trying not to stumble on the rocks. Alex shouted something else, and in response I yelled over my shoulder, “Find the gun, get the gun!”

  Rosten heard that and heard me coming; his head jerked around and he made another effort to gain his feet, clawing uselessly at the branches of a huckleberry bush for leverage. His left leg would not support his weight: he must have broken a bone or sprained something. He fell back onto his right knee against the bush, with his left leg bent out to the side and one arm coming up to defend himself—but it was too late then, I was on him.

  I kicked his left leg just above the ankle, and he made a bleating agonized sound and lunged at me, and I sidestepped that and threw myself down on top of him shoulder first, like a football defender spearing a ball carrier. The breath went out of him; his body jerked wildly beneath my pinning weight I got him wedged against the base of the huckleberry bush, levered up and managed to set myself for a looping right-hand swing at his head. The blow went past one of his upthrust arms and landed flush on his left temple, snapped his head back and to the right. He made a sighing sound and his body stopped thrashing around under me; I felt him go limp.

  And just that quickly, it was over.

  I got up in slow, painful movements—stood over him trying to drag air back into my constricted lungs. My chest felt numb, hot; the thin dry cough started up. I ran a hand over my face, took the hand down and peered at it. Steady.

  When I looked for Alex I saw him in a flat-footed stance alongside my car, staring over at me; he was holding the gun laxly in one hand. I started toward him, after another couple of seconds, and he moved at the same time—jerkily, as somebody will after a full release of tension. His face was stark and frightened, and his eyes seemed glazed. He looked as sick as a man can look and still be on his feet. I took the gun out of his hand, saw that it was a big plow-handled .357 Magnum, and put it away in my jacket pocket.

  “He was going to kill me,” Alex said. The sickness was in his voice too. “He was going to shoot me with that gun.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “He’s the one—it must’ve been Rosten all along. My God. My God, I’ve known him all my life.”

  I did not answer him because right then, suddenly, reaction set in—just as I knew it would, just as it always does. The detachment with which I had functioned for the past few minutes vanished, and my hands started to tremble and there was a liquidy feeling in both legs that made me think I was going to fall down. I leaned back against the car and sweated and kept on sweating.

  “Why?” Alex was saying. “Why would he want to kill me? Why?”

  He was talking to himself as much as to me, and I had no answers for him anyway. I looked at Rosten; he had not moved. Then I looked at my hands and waited for them to quit shaking.

  18

  It was a good two minutes before the reaction faded and I was all right again. When the sweating stopped and my hands were still I went around to the front of the car to look at the damage. Both fenders and the grill were pretty mangled; the bumper had been torn loose on one side and was hanging at a wobbly angle. The tires were okay. The left fender was buckled down to within an inch of that tire, but the clearance was enough so that it would not scrape against the tread when the car was rolling.<
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  Pain lanced through my chest as I straightened up, made me wince until it went away. I felt my ribs and my breastbone, but there seemed to be no damage beyond a couple of bruises; I could breathe almost normally now, without coughing. I walked to the driver’s door and slid in under the wheel. Alex started to get in on the passenger side, but I waved him away. We were not going anywhere yet —and maybe not for a while if the engine failed to start.

  The first three times I turned the key in the ignition, nothing happened except a grinding stutter. The fourth time, though, it caught and held and seemed to sound healthy enough. I put the transmission into reverse and eased backward away from the pool. The car was drivable, all right, if only for the distance between here and the winery.

  I shut off the engine, got out and went around to where Alex was. He seemed to be coming out of it a little now; there was animation in his face and his eyes had lost their glazed look. He said, “Where did you come from? How did you know we were here?”

  “I saw Rosten take you out of the cellar and I followed you.”

  “God, I thought I was dead. You saved my life again.”

  “That’s what you’re paying me for,” I said bitterly. “Listen, did Rosten tell you anything, give you any explanations?”

  “No. He didn’t say a word the whole time—not a word.”

  “What happened at the cellar?”

  “He just came in and pointed that gun at me and shoved me outside. I’ve known him all my life, but he was like a stranger, a crazy man. I was . . . Jesus, I was petrified.”

  I said nothing. I was thinking that we could wait here for the sheriff’s people to show up, but it might take an hour or better for them to come and find us and I did not care much for the idea of sitting here with Rosten and Alex for that length of time. Which meant transporting Rosten back to the winery. Alex was in no condition to drive or to hold a man at bay with a gun; the only safe way to do it, I decided, was to put Rosten in the trunk.

  I got the key out of the ignition, took it around to the rear, and unlocked the trunk and raised the lid. Just as I did that Alex shouted, “He’s moving over there!”

  Quickly I stepped out to where I could see Rosten. But he was not moving much—just twitches and spasms of his limbs. “Take it easy,” I said to Alex, “he’s not going to give us any more trouble.”

  I took the Magnum out of my pocket, held it down along my right leg, and walked over to Rosten. The twitches and spasms were giving way to more normal movements, a sign of returning consciousness. I stopped a couple of feet from him, heard him make a groaning sound. Then his body stiffened and was still again—and that told me he was awake and functioning mentally, remembering where he was and what had happened.

  “Get up on your feet, Rosten,” I said.

  He stayed where he was, motionless.

  “Get up or I’ll put a bullet in you.”

  That was bluff, but he did not know me nearly well enough to realize it. Another three seconds passed, and then he rolled over slowly and with evident pain and stared up at me out of cold, blank eyes. No hatred, no frustration—no emotion of any kind.

  He said thickly, “I can’t walk. My ankle’s sprained.”

  “You can hobble. Get up.”

  He got up, putting all his weight on his right let. I heard Alex approach behind me and to my right, heard him say to Rosten, “For Christ’s sake, why? Why do you want me dead?”

  Rosten did not even look at him; he was watching the gun.

  I told him where to go and what to do, and he went there and did it. No argument or hestitation; he just climbed into the trunk, grimacing at the pain in his leg, and curled himself into a half-fetal position around my spare tire. His eyes never left the gun; you could see him wanting it the way an alcoholic wants a drink.

  I reached out and up with my left hand, caught the trunk lid—and said quickly and sharply, “Who gave you your orders on the phone tonight, Rosten? Was it Twospot?”

  It was a shot out of left field, but a pretty good one. He reacted: even in the darkness I could see his head jerk, emotion ripple across his face, his eyes flick upward from the gun to meet mine. Then the mask came down again; he looked back at the gun and kept looking at it stoically until I slammed the lid to lock him in.

  Alex said, “Twospot? You know what it means?”

  “No, but Rosten does. And maybe you’ve got some idea.”

  He shook his head. “I told you, I can’t remember where I heard it before.”

  “Well, try—and keep on trying. Rosten’s not alone in this thing, and that means you’re not out of the woods yet.”

  He fixed me with an alarmed stare. “Are you sure Rosten isn’t the only one?”

  “Sure enough. You heard what I said to him; I overheard his end of that conversation.”

  Alex said something sacrilegious in a nervous voice, but I did not bother to respond to it. I pushed him toward the passenger door, went around and took the wheel. And took us away from there.

  I had to drive slowly with the lights broken and the front end in the shape it was; the car made a lot of noise but showed no signs of wanting to quit. Alex sat over against his door with his head in his hands, doing what I had told him to do: trying to remember about Twospot. I did not hold out much hope that he would get anywhere, in his condition.

  But he surprised me, and probably himself. We were back into the vineyards, on the long rumpled section of terrain, when he said abruptly, “I’ve got it.”

  I glanced over at him. “Got what?”

  “Twospot. I remember now, I know where I heard it.”

  “All right—where?”

  “A dinner party down in the city, at the town house. It was Booker who said it.”

  “Booker? In what context?”

  “I can’t remember that. It was after dinner and we were having brandy in the living room. He said something like, ‘How’s the big Twospot project coming? You know, the one a week from Monday at noon.”’

  “Who was he talking to?”

  “I think it was Leo.”

  “Who else was there?”

  “Rosa. Brand and Dockstetter. But they didn’t hear it. They were on the other side of the room.”

  “What was Leo’s reaction?”

  “I’m not sure. I was only half paying attention.”

  Twospot project, I thought. Monday at noon. And I remembered something myself, something from this afternoon. “Monday-noon project,” I said. “So that was what you meant at the fest.”

  “Fest?”

  “You said something to Leo about it while we were eating.”

  “Did I?” He shook his head numbly. “I don’t remember.”

  I was silent for a time, thinking. Then I asked him, “Why were you down at the cellar tonight? Did Rosten call you to meet him there?”

  “No,” Alex said. “Leo woke me up and asked me to go down. He needed a statistical report prepared on our generic—” He stopped suddenly, as if the rest of the sentence had gotten clogged in his throat. When I glanced over at him again I saw that his face had twisted up and he looked even sicker than before. “Oh my God,” he said. “You don’t think Leo could be—?”

  “I don’t think anything yet,” I said, but that was a lie. I was thinking Leo, all right—and something else occurred to me, a possible way to confirm my suspicions against him. It meant stopping at Rosten’s cottage, and unless the county police were already on the scene I would do just that on my own.

  Alex had his head in his hands again; I let him alone with his thoughts. There was a kind of grim excitement inside me now, the sort that a cop feels sometimes when a case is about to break wide open. Things were beginning to make a certain sense to me: the random bits and pieces of this affair finally starting to slot together, like in those intelligence-test puzzles where you have to put multi-shaped blocks of wood into correspondingly shaped holes.

  I began to work with the pieces as I drove. Leo has some sort of big a
nd no doubt unlawful project going for noon tomorrow; Rosten is in it with him, and maybe Mal Howard too. And Booker? No. Booker had not gotten along with either Leo or Rosten, I had testimony to that. And he was a loner, a small-time opportunist looking to marry Rosa Cappellani. Blackmail? That added up: blackmail would fit Booker’s personality well enough. Figure, then, that he found out somehow about the project and put the screws to Leo. Maybe mentioned it to him in front of Alex at that dinner party to goad Leo, push him into paying off.

  Only Leo isn’t having any of that; the project is too important to him and maybe he doesn’t trust Booker, and in any case he was the kind who would never stand still for blackmail. So he decides Booker has to die—and that Alex has to die too, because he’s afraid that Alex will tip himself to the project and jeopardize it. Which made Leo a sick, coldhearted son of a bitch, plotting the death of his own brother. But there are people like that in the world, too damned many of them; and it could be, too, that his evident dislike for Alex had evolved into a homicidal hatred. Whatever his exact motivations, he marks both Booker and Alex for execution.

  On Thursday night he sends Rosten after Alex at the cellar. But wait, why not Booker first? Booker would be the logical first choice because he presented the major threat to the project. Unless Booker was also slated to die on Thursday. Unless Rosten was supposed to literally kill two birds with one stone: knock Alex out, take him away from the cellar to a prearranged meeting with Booker, and then eliminate both of them at once, maybe make it look like an accident. That would explain why I had heard Rosten dragging Alex’s body across the office floor. And why Booker had showed up in his car after the police arrived, looking agitated and perplexed: he could have been waiting for Rosten to come, could have been waiting for the promised blackmail payoff.

  Okay, so far so good. Booker goes back to San Francisco after getting permission from Rosa to stay in the family town house. Figure he calls Leo and demands his payoff Friday night. So Leo sends Mal Howard to keep that appointment—not Rosten because Rosten has already fouled up once with Alex. Gives Howard the slip of paper with the address and the Twospot name typed on it. It would follow that Howard was not supposed to leave Booker’s body in the town house, because of the attention it would call to the Cappellani family; it could be he was to kill Booker and then take the body elsewhere and dump it. Only Booker is on his guard by this time and he’s packing a gun for protection; after a struggle during which he rips Howard’s pocket, Booker manages to wound Howard before Howard can finish him with a blow from the homemade blackjack. And Howard then panics and runs, leaving Booker and the Twospot note on the garage floor.