Breakdown - [Nameless Detective 19]

by By Bill Pronzini

  I cracked the door to make sure nobody was on the walk or on the street in front. Then, hurrying, I left the house to the static vistas and trite messages and never-to-be-realized yearnings that made it—for me, anyway—a museum of sadness.

  * * * *

  The block of Taraval on which the Hideaway stood was Sunday-evening deserted. There were vacant parking spaces directly in front of the tavern; I fitted my car into one of them. It was dark now but the blue-neon cocktail glass above the entrance wasn’t lighted. Burned-out tubing, maybe,

  I thought as I locked the car. The place was open for business, because the familiar shine of lights was visible through the upper third of the window.

  I was wrong on both counts.

  When I opened the door and walked in, I didn’t do it warily because I expected to see a tableau as familiar as the lights. The Sunday night relief man, Sam Cotter, behind the bar mixing drinks, polishing glasses; some of the regulars in their customary places and little groupings, not too many of them yet since it was still early—talking and laughing, reading and knitting, bending elbows in their illusory safe place. I expected the ordinary; I had no reason to expect otherwise.

  What I walked into was a hostage situation.

  * * * *

  Chapter 23

  I stopped just inside the door, the hair pulling all along my scalp. There were an even dozen people in the place, ten of them in a tautly seated bunch at the side tables and wall. Nine of the ten were regulars, among them Frank Parigli, Harry Briggs, Ed McBee, old man Vandermeer, Lyda Isherwood; the tenth was a thin bald man—Sam Cotter, the bartender. Numbers eleven and twelve were on the bar facing the others, like a pair of poorly matched lecturers about to address a small but intent audience. On the bar, not at it—haunches planted on the polished mahogany, legs dangling over the edge.

  Douglas Mikan, pale, sick-looking in a dark-blue suit and tie, rocking a little with both hands pressed tight against his wishbone.

  And nearest me and the door, Nick Pendarves in his usual gray work clothes, three or four days of beard stubble flecking his cheeks, the backbar lights glinting off the barrel of the 9mm automatic in his hand.

  It was dead quiet in there. And dead still. All of them were frozen in position, looking at me. You could smell the fear; it came off all but Pendarves in a thick shimmer that was almost palpable. You could feel the tension too, as brittle as a layer of frost on grass.

  Pendarves broke both the stillness and the silence. He waved the pistol in my direction—a sudden, convulsive movement of his arm. It seemed to set off a spasmodic reaction in the right side of his face; nerves and muscles twitched riotously from temple to jaw, like a nest of worms stirred up under a thin covering. The effect was chilling.

  He said, “Canino, right? Art the fart,” in a thick, slurred voice. But he wasn’t drunk. The thickness was the product of emotions writhing as chaotically as the nerves and muscles in his face. “Come on in, Art the fart. Join the party, the water’s fine.”

  He’d cracked completely under the strain—the last breakdown in a catalytic string that so far had demolished the Lujacks and Frank Hanauer. But Pendarves’s was the worst of all, the kind that creates monsters out of men and situations like this one. It happens so often nowadays that it has lost its once-stunning edge of horror, become almost a cliché: Just another crazy with a loaded gun and a mad-on against the world.

  Unless the crazy happens to be sitting ten feet away, and the loaded gun is pointed at you.

  My body seemed to constrict, draw in on itself—so sharply that I could feel the pressure in my head like a sudden migraine. I took half a dozen slow stiff paces, angling away from him toward the tables. I could see the rest of the room then: empty booths, empty floor. It didn’t look as though he’d shot anybody yet.

  Before I got to where the others were clustered I stopped; I wanted a little distance between me and anybody else. “Hey, Nick,” I said, and licked my lips, and put on a bewildered little smile. “What’s the idea of the gun?”

  “We’re having a party,” he said. He wasn’t smiling; he didn’t sound happy about it. He sounded mad as hell.

  “Sure, Nick. A party. What you need a gun at a party for?”

  “Stupid question. What’s a gun good for, huh?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Shoot somebody with,” he said. His eyes, underslung by sacs of loose gray flesh, were bright and hot. “That’s what a gun’s good for. Shoot people with, right?”

  Douglas Mikan made low moaning sounds. He was still cradling himself, eyes squeezed tightly shut.

  “Shut up, Doug,” Pendarves said.

  The moaning stopped.

  I said, “How long’s the party been going on?”

  The question seemed to interest him. His gaze flicked past me to the others, settled on Ed McBee. “Hey, Ed. How long’s the party been going on?”

  “Hour and a half,” McBee said in a dull, bruised voice. His face, and the faces of the others, showed the terror and strain of those ninety minutes. But there was something else reflected in each face, too—betrayal and utter despair. They had trusted Pendarves, believed in him, and he had turned on them in the most terrible of ways. No matter what else happened here tonight, an integral part of their lives—their sanctuary and their carefully nurtured illusions—lay in ruins around them.

  “What’s it going to be, Nick?” I said. “An all-night party? That what you have in mind?”

  “All night? Uh-uh. Not that long.”

  “How long, then?”

  “Until I get tired of it.”

  “Then what?”

  “You’ll find out. Everybody will.”

  “Sure. But while it lasts, what do you say we keep it small, just those of us here now? What do you say we lock the door, don’t let anybody else in?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Too many people spoil a party—”

  “No, goddamn it, I said no!” The right side of his face went through another series of spasms. His arm jerked a little too, and I was afraid he might fire the gun involuntarily; he had it aimed in my direction. Rusty Tin Man of Oz gone haywire: unpredictable, deadly. “Sit down, Art the fart. What the hell you standing up for? Sit down like everybody else.”

  I didn’t argue with him. I pulled a chair away from one of the tables, positioned it so that nothing separated us but a dozen feet of empty floor. When I sat down I put both feet flat on the linoleum and both hands on my knees, bowed my back forward, and held that position.

  Pendarves watched me with his hot eyes. Then he said to Mikan, “Doug, I need a smoke. Get me a smoke.”

  Douglas just sat there rocking.

  Pendarves elbowed him, hard enough to make him grunt and pop his eyes open. “Oh, God,” he said.

  “Shut up. Get me a smoke. You know where they are.”

  “Nick, please, I’m sick—”

  “You fat slob, do what I told you!”

  Whimpering a little, Mikan fumbled a package of Pall Malls out of Pendarves’s shirt pocket, shook a cigarette loose, and managed to insert it into a corner of Pendarves’s mouth.

  “You want me to smoke it dry, fatso?”

  Douglas fished a Bic from the pocket, lit the cigarette. It took him half a minute; he dropped the lighter twice, flicked the wheel half a dozen times before he was able to spark the flint. Then he had to hold the Bic in both hands to keep the flame steady.

  “Stupid bastard, you almost singed my eyebrow. What’s the matter with you, Doug? Huh?”

  “I’m sick, I’m sick—”

  “And I’m sick of you, whining all the time. Be a man, for Christ’s sake. Art the fart’s a man, aren’t you, Art the fart?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I asked you a question. You a man or what?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “I’m a man.”

  “Hear that, chubby? He’s a man. You be one too.”

  Mikan mumbled something that I couldn’t hear.
<
br />   “Right,” Pendarves said. “Now go get me a beer. I’m thirsty. Make it a Bud ... no, what the hell, something imported. A Beck’s. Make it a Beck’s.”

  Douglas pushed himself off the bar. One of his feet struck a stool and nearly upset it; he fell heavily to one knee, moaning again. Pendarves said, “Clumsy bugger. Get up, get my beer,” and Mikan got up and stumbled away to the far end of the bar where the hatch was.

  Pendarves quit looking at him; his eyes were on me again. “Hey, Art the fart. You want a beer too?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I could use one.”

  “Beck’s or Bud?”

  “Beck’s.”

  “Anybody else want a snort? On me?”

  Silence. Then old man Vandermeer said, “Let us go, Nick. We’ve never done anything to you, we’re your friends. Please let us go—”

  “Shut up, old man. You and your fucking history. Shut up, you hear me?”

  Vandermeer shut up. He seemed to shrink and shrivel where he sat, like a slug doused with salt.

  Douglas was behind the bar now. Sweat shone on his round face, stained the front of his shirt. The beer cooler was almost directly behind where Pendarves was sitting; Mikan got it open, bent out of sight, came up again with two bottles. Pendarves still wasn’t looking at him. He could have leaned forward with no effort at all and cracked Pendarves over the head with one of the bottles. But even if the idea occurred to him, he didn’t do it. Poor sad broken Douglas Mikan did not have enough courage to act to save his own life.

  There was an acrid taste in my mouth—the taste of hate. I made myself sit poker-faced, so what I was feeling wouldn’t show; Pendarves’s gaze remained fixed on me, left eye half-closed in a squint. The cigarette was still pasted wetly in that corner of his mouth, the smoke from it curling upward into a kind of obscene halo.

  Mikan had the two bottles of beer open. He took a clean pilsner glass off the backbar, poured beer into it, set glass and bottle down carefully to Pendarves’s left. Then he picked up a second glass, started away toward the hatch.

  Pendarves was still staring at me. Abruptly his expression changed and he sat up straight; jerked the weed out of his mouth with his free hand and threw it on the floor. The blaze in his eyes was hotter now.

  “Doug,” he said. “Doug!”

  Mikan was at the open hatch. He stopped, turned.

  “Put that other beer down. Don’t bring it out here.”

  I said, “Come on, Nick, I’m thirsty too—”

  “Shut up! Doug, you hear what I said?”

  Douglas mumbled something. Then, louder, “I heard.” He rid himself of bottle and glass, came through and back around to where Pendarves was sitting.

  “Get up here. Move that fat ass of yours.”

  Mikan had difficulty getting his bulk onto the bar; he had to use one of the stools as a stepladder. His chubby hips quivered, jostled the bottle there. Pendarves snatched it out of the way without removing his flat stare from me.

  “What’s the idea, Nick?” I said. “How come I don’t get my beer?”

  “You know what I ought to give you? Huh? A bullet, that’s what. How’d you like a bullet in the head, you dirty bastard?”

  The sweat on me turned cold, clammy. I sat forward a little more, watching his finger on the automatic’s trigger. It hadn’t whitened yet; if it started to whiten I would have to try jumping him . . . if he didn’t just jerk off a shot ... if he gave me enough time. . . .

  “Why would you want to shoot me, Nick?”

  “Art Canino my ass. You’re that damn detective.”

  “What detective?”

  “The one I read about, the one at the factory last night. Chrissake, I should have known. Fucking Lujacks hired a private eye to come around spying on me. Should of blown you away last night too.”

  Little rustlings and throat noises from the others. They were figuring it out too, now, just as Pendarves had.

  His face was twitching again. The gun remained steady, his finger still not quite tight on the trigger. I came close to launching myself out of the chair anyway. The only thing that stopped me was the fear that if I rattled him into firing once, he might keep right on firing before I could get to him, spray bullets all over the room. The automatic looked to be a military model, the kind with a double-action trigger.

  “Nick,” I said, “I’m not your enemy. I hated Coleman Lujack as much as you did. I’m glad he’s dead. He deserved to die.”

  “Bullshit. You were working for him.”

  “No. Not for him, for his brother’s lawyer.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Nick, listen. I know he killed his brother, him and Vega, and framed you for it. I know all about that. You had a right to shoot him. He had it coming.”

  “Dirty bastard,” Pendarves said, and I thought that now he was talking about Coleman Lujack. “Dirty lying bastard.”

  “How did he lie to you?”

  It was ten seconds before he said, “I shouldn’t of done it. But I was pissed. I’d had enough. Damn brother of his tried to run me down like he run down Hanauer, run me down like a dog. You can only take so much, by God. Then you got to start pushing back.”

  The facial spasming had stopped again. And the muzzle of the automatic had dipped a little. I’d gotten through to him, all right, deflected some of his anger away from me and back to Coleman Lujack. Keep him talking, I thought. Get him off his guard.

  “Sure you do,” I said. “How’d you push Coleman?”

  “Leave me alone, that’s all I asked. His brother leaves me alone, I keep quiet about the wetbacks. I never asked for no money. That was his idea. Five thousand bucks. I didn’t even have to say I’d been wrong about who was driving the car. Five thousand just so I wouldn’t say nothing about the wetbacks.”

  “You take the money, Nick?”

  “What kind of man you think I am? Huh? I told him shove his money up his ass.”

  “So instead he made up his mind to get rid of you and his brother both.”

  “Killed his own brother, what kind of son of a bitch kills his own brother? Him and that spick Vega. Then the dirty bastards tried to kill me.”

  “How’d he get you away from your house that night?”

  “Called me up, said we had to talk. Real urgent. Didn’t want to come to my place, didn’t want me to come to his, wouldn’t be good for either of us if we was seen together. Why didn’t we meet up at Stow Lake. I said what the hell you trying to pull. Nothing, he said, just want to save you some grief. Dirty lying bastard. I didn’t think he’d try and kill me. His brother, but not him. Place like Stow Lake, ten o’clock at night ... ah, Christ, I should of known.”

  “Who showed up there? Vega?”

  “Knew something was wrong when I seen that spick. Car full of kids hadn’t of gone by, I hadn’t of seen he had a gun and run like hell, I’d be dead too.” Pendarves’s cheek started to tic again; he reached up and scratched it with his free hand, digging his nails hard enough into the skin to draw blood. “Couldn’t find me in the fog. But I didn’t know where he was neither. Might of still been hanging around, waiting for me to go back for my car. Only one thing I could think to do.”

  “Find a phone and call Douglas and have him come pick you up,” I said.

  “Good old Doug.” He prodded Mikan with his elbow. “You’re my buddy, hey, fatso?”

  Mikan kept his eyes shut; he was rocking again.

  “I told him drive us by my house,” Pendarves said. “Cops all over the place . . . Christ! Right there in my garage they killed him. Knew I couldn’t go to the cops. My word against Coleman’s, they’d never believe me. Nothing I could do but hide out at Doug’s. Wait until they quit looking for me and then take off, get out of the state. Doug scraped some cash together for me, didn’t you, chubby? Good old Doug. Good old Doug and his lousy goddamn postcards.”

  “But then you got to thinking,” I said. “Why let Coleman and Vega get away with what they’d done to you. Why not fix th
em like they tried to fix you.”

  “Yeah. Fix ‘em good.”

  “Doug buy the gun for you?”

  “This baby? Had it since I was in Korea, locked up in a box in my basement. Sent fatso over to see if the cops found it but they didn’t. He didn’t want to bring it, did you, Doug? But I convinced him. He does what I tell him. Fetch, Doug, and he fetches like a fat old dog.”