Scattershot
( Nameless Detective - 8 )
Bill Pronzini
Bill Pronzini
Scattershot
ONE
The bumper sticker said: JOGGING IS FOR JERKS. I stood there in my brand-new blue jogging suit, panting and dripping sweat on the sidewalk, and I thought: Amen, brother. Jogging is definitely for jerks. And horse’s backsides, which was what I had been feeling like as I trotted my beer belly up and down the beach at Aquatic Park. People had kept looking at me-fishermen on the pier, kids, a bunch of black musicians, even a shopping bag lady. Big, shaggy, overweight fifty-three-year-old guy in a blue jogging suit with white piping on it, running splayfooted and puffing like a Clydesdale. That was me, the spectacle. That was the horse’s backside.
Kerry, I thought, I ought to strangle you.
And where was she? Not out here on this fine Sunday morning in July, making a fool of herself in her blue jogging suit with the white piping on it. “I might be a little late,” she’d said on the phone, “so you go ahead and start without me.”
Yeah. She was now forty-five minutes late, and maybe she wasn’t going to show up at all. Maybe she had decided, in her infinite wisdom, that she didn’t want to be seen cavorting in public with a horse’s ass.
The jogging had been her idea, of course-one of her current passions. “You could stand to lose a few pounds around the middle,” she’d said. “And jogging is fun, you’ll see.”
Well, I had seen, all right, and jogging was not fun. Jogging was about the least fun thing I had ever done. Jogging was for jerks.
I kept on staring at the bumper sticker. It was on the front bumper of a 1978 Datsun, and the Datsun was parked near the Aquatic Park pier at the foot of Van Ness, and I was standing on the sidewalk in front of it feeling stupid. I did not want to turn around and go lumbering back for another lap along the beach; I did not want to give the fishermen and the black musicians and the shopping bag lady another show. I wanted to take off my blue jogging suit and stuff it into a trashcan and then go get a nice cold beer somewhere. If it wasn’t for Kerry …
A bald guy wearing a windbreaker came up the path from the beach and went past me to the Datsun. He stopped next to the front fender, laid a possessive hand on it, and narrowed his eyes at me. “Something about my car?” he said.
“I was just admiring your bumper sticker.”
“Yeah?”
“Where did you get it?”
“Why do you wanna know?”
“I want to get one for my car,” I said.
“How come? You’re a jogger, ain’t you?”
“Not anymore. I’m taking the pledge.”
The bald guy considered that. “My brother-in-law’s a jogger,” he said. “He’s also a jerk. That’s why I put the sticker on there. It annoys the hell out of him and my wife both.”
“Good for you.”
“Yeah. I got it in a place at the Wharf. They make them up with anything you want on ‘em, as long as it ain’t obscene.”
“Jogging is obscene enough,” I said.
He nodded sagely, gave me a crooked grin, and got into his Datsun. I turned around and looked at the path to the beach. Then I went the other way, uphill past where my own car was parked to the bocce ball courts. I loved Kerry, I would do just about anything for her, but you’ve got to draw the line somewhere. If she wanted me to lose weight, I would go on a diet; I would even stop drinking beer. But I was damned if I would have a heart attack for her in a blue jogging suit at Aquatic Park.
All of the bocce courts were in use, as they usually were on weekends when the weather was good. Most of the players were elderly Italians from nearby North Beach, and they approached the game with a seriousness that bordered on reverence-making wagers, arguing strategy, tak ing their shots with studied care. Bocce, if you don’t know the game, is mostly like lawn bowling and a little like shuffleboard. The courts are long and wood-sided and dirt-floored, and the balls are made of wood, and you play in teams of three or four to a side. One player rolls a tiny pivot ball from one end of the court to the other; then each player in turn rolls a larger ball, about the size of a softball, toward the pivot, the object being to get as close to it as possible without touching it. “You can make your shot straight at the pivot, or you can bank it off the wooden sidewalls. Or, if you’re trying to knock an opponent’s ball out of the way, when all paths to the pivot are blocked, you can even hurl your ball underhand through the air. It may sound simplistic when you break it down to its basics, but there is a symmetry and tradition to bocce that makes it fascinating. My father used to play it, back when I was a kid in Noe Valley, which is how I learned to appreciate the game. Even now I would come down here once in a while, on a Saturday or Sunday, and spend hours watching the old Italians play. I had also joined in a time or two when they were shorthanded.
I went in and sat down on one of the benches facing the near court; Kerry could find me there easily enough-if she showed up-because it was visible from the street and because she knew I liked bocce. My respiration was back to normal by this time, but I was still marinating in my own sweat. So I made sure to sit in the sun; there was a breeze off the bay, a little nippy, and now that I had avoided cardiac arrest, I also wanted to avoid pneumonia. ‘
A couple of the old men I knew nodded and said hello to me. None of them said anything about my jogging outfit or even raised an eyebrow. That was the nice thing about old-world Italians: they were always polite and never embarrassed anyone in public. The way they figured it, people in general, and probably fifty-three-year-old horse’s backsides in particular, could take care of that well enough themselves.
I had been sitting there for fifteen minutes, absorbed in the match, when Kerry arrived. I saw her come in through the gate, and I felt a little fluttery sensation in the pit of my stomach; she did things like that to me. She was thirty-eight, worked for the Bates and Carpenter ad agency, and was the daughter of a pair of onetime pulp writers; I had met her, and her parents, six. weeks ago during a pulp-magazine convention and a subsequent double-homicide case that had almost got me killed. She liked private eyes because her mother had written a pulp series about one, and she thought I was a pussycat. I thought she was gorgeous. Even in a twin of my blue jogging suit she was gorgeous. She had coppery hair and a generous mouth and greenish chameleon eyes that seemed to change color according to her mood. She also had a good willowy body and a smile that could melt your chocolate bar, as a fellow private cop I know in Hollywood puts it.
She gave me the smile as she sat down next to me, but there was a hint of reprimand in it. “So,” she said, “sitting on your ample duff.”
“I went jogging,” I said.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Look at me. I’m all sweaty.”
“Mm. It wasn’t so bad, now, was it?”
“It was awful. I’m going on a diet instead.”
“Come on, exercise is good for you.”
“So is sitting in the sun like a houseplant,” I said. “You’re an hour late, you know that?”
“I was fiddling with that damned presentation of mine.” She hesitated. “And my father called.”
“Again?”
“Again.”
“The same old crap, I suppose?”
“Yes and no. He wanted to tell me he’s going to New York for a few days on business.”
“Good. Maybe he’ll leave you alone.”
“He’s not influencing me, you know.”
“Isn’t he?”
“No, he isn’t.”
“Then why do you keep saying no?”
“I haven’t said no.”
“You haven’t said yes, either.”
“I just need more time, that’s
all.”
“How much more time?”
“I don’t know. It’s a big decision. …”
“Sure. Your decision, not your father’s.”
“Now look, you, ” she said. Her tone was light, but the lightness seemed a little forced. “Nobody makes my decisions except me. And nobody exerts any influence over me. I’m a big girl; I don’t pay much attention to parental advice anymore. “
“Meaning he was after you again to push me under a bus. “
“Oh God, ” she said. “He doesn’t hate you; he’s just leery of the business you’re in. “
“Yeah. Leery. “
A shout went up from some of the bocce players: one of them had whacked an opponent’s ball with an underhand air shot. I glanced over at them. When I looked back at Kerry she was staring straight ahead and her face had a cloudy, introspective cast. The set of her mouth showed a leaning toward anger.
I knew I was pushing it too much, but I could not seem to help myself. I loved her, and I wanted her so damn badly it was becoming an obsession. The first time I had asked her to marry me, we’d been sitting on the balcony of her Diamond Heights apartment; it had been just after the end of the pulp convention case and I had known her four days. She’d been surprised, flattered-and reticent. She liked me, she said, and maybe she loved me too, but she wanted to be absolutely sure; she had been through one bad marriage, to a schmuck L. A. lawyer named Ray Dunston, and she just wasn’t sure if she wanted to try it again. Okay, I said, so we’ll live together first, what about that?
Maybe, she said. Give me some time to think it over.
So I gave her some time; I didn’t mention marriage or a living arrangement for the next couple of weeks. We went out together, we slept together, we spent good quiet evenings at her apartment and at my Pacific Heights flat. And I thought she was weakening, from things she said, little hints she dropped, and I got ready to bring up the subject again. But then her father called, and she made the mistake of telling him about my proposal, and that was when Ivan the Terrible started his longdistance telephone campaign. With the result that when I did restate my proposal, Kerry put me off. And had been putting me off ever since.
Ivan Wade didn’t like me worth a damn. He thought I was too old for Kerry; he thought I was a fat, scruffy private detective and had told me so to my face during the pulp convention. He was a stuffy, overprotective, humorless old fart, Ivan was. He had seen his daughter through one messy relationship; he did not want to see her through another, which was what he was convinced would happen if she hooked up with me. He was after her all the time about the perils and insecurities of my job, about the difference in our ages, about Christ knew what else that she wasn’t telling me. And he was beginning to wear thin on me. If he didn’t cut it out pretty soon I was inclined to fly down to Los Angeles and confront him about it. Kerry wouldn’t like that, but it seemed to be my only course of action. As it was, I had tried to reason with him through her, which had proved futile. I had even called Kerry’s mother, Cybil, who pretty much approved of me-maybe because I had uncovered and then reburied some skeletons in her closet during the double-homicide thing, or maybe just because she liked me-but that had not done any good, either. Cybil was a forceful personality, but when it came to Ivan the Terrible she seemed more often than not to come off second best.
Kerry had her hands folded on one knee; I put my hand on her laced fingers. “Hey, ” I said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to come on so strong. “
“No, it’s all right, ” she said. But she didn’t smile.
“It’s just that I love you. “
“I know. “
“So make your decision soon, huh?”
“Yes. Soon. “
I looked at her for a time. “Crazy, ” I said.
“What’s crazy?”
“Me. I feel like a kid when I’m around you. “
“You are a kid sometimes. Big, tough private eye. Hah. “
“Hah, “I agreed.
‘ She reached over and straightened the damp collar of my jogging-suit top, and this time I got a smile. “Big, sloppy, persistent kid, ” she said. “All right, kid, let’s go jogging. “
“Uh-uh. I’ve had enough of that. “
“No, you haven’t. You need the exercise. “
“There are other forms of exercise. “
“Like what?”
I told her like what.
She said, “It’s not even noon yet. “
“So?”
“So didn’t you have enough Friday night?”
“Sure. But this is Sunday. “
“We can do that later, you sex fiend. Right now I want to go jogging, and then I want to go to your flat and take a shower, and then I want to have some lunch. “
“Jogging first?”
“Jogging first. Come on. “
Jogging is for jerks, I thought. But I let her prod me up and lead me out of the bocce courts and down toward the beach. Then, by God, I let her start me running and puffing and dripping sweat again, while the fishermen and a bunch of tourists and the black musicians gawked at the sight.
The ordeal lasted an hour. I didn’t have a heart attack, but I was hurting plenty as I drove, with Kerry following in her car, down Van Ness and up to my flat. She got into the shower first, which gave me time to guzzle two cans of Schlitz; I’ll start my diet tomorrow, I thought, the hell with it. Then I took my shower and let the hot water work out some of the muscle knots. Then we had lunch. Then we went to bed.
And for the first time between us, it wasn’t all that good.
Kerry knew it too; we didn’t say much to each other afterward. I asked her to have dinner out somewhere, stay the night, but she said no, she wanted to do some more work on her agency presentation. She left at five-thirty, and when she was gone the flat felt empty and I felt empty. I spent the evening reading one of her mother’s Samuel Leatherman private eye novellas in a 1946 issue of Dime Detective-one of the sixty-five hundred pulp magazines I collect and keep on bookshelves in the living room. That wasn’t very good, either. At eleven I went to bed and lay there listening to the silence and to the mutterings inside my head.
I’m going to lose her, I thought.
Jogging, diets, proposals, love-none of that would make any difference. Ivan the Terrible was going to get his way. Damn it, I was going to lose her.
TWO
Blue Monday.
I was in a funk when I got down to my new offices at nine-twenty-a pale blue funk, two shades lighter than dark blue depression. The place did nothing to buoy up my spirits. It was on Drumm Street, within pitching distance of the Hyatt Regency and the moribund Embarcadero Freeway, and I had been occupying it just about as long as I had known Kerry. The building was newly renovated and the elevators did not clank as they went up and down, — the anteroom and the private inner office had chrome chairs with corduroy cushions and Venetian blinds on the windows; the walls were pastel-colored, the carpet was beige, the telephone was yellow, and the fact that I was blue made it a Technicolor nightmare.
No character, that was the problem with it. My old office, on the fringe of the Tenderloin, where I’d spent twenty years of my life, had been dripping with character: scarred walls, battered furniture, sagging rail dividers, a gloomy alcove with a sink in it that had been old in the days of Sam Spade. That, by God, had been a private eye’s office. This was the office of a salesman or a lawyer or a minor business executive: pleasant, unobtrusive, and sterile. It wasn’t mine. Not even the blowup poster of a Black Mask cover I had hung on one wall made it mine.
I kept telling myself that when I got used to it I would feel more at home here; that given enough time, I could mark it with my individual stamp. But I didn’t believe it. I wished I was back on Taylor Street, in my crumbling old digs, and the hell with what clients and prospective clients thought, the hell with image and being upwardly mobile. I was fifty-three, I had been a private cop for better than two decades, I had made a d
ecent living. What did I want to start changing my life for?
Rhetorical question. Here I was, in my bright, shiny new offices. And here I was, mooning around like a lovesick teenager, all but begging a woman fifteen years my junior to become my wife. I had been a bachelor for fifty-three years, too, and what did I want to change that part of my life for?
Damn, I thought. Damn.
I sat down at my desk and looked out through the Venetian blinds I had just opened. It was a decent day, sunny, a little haze, and I could see some of the activity at the piers along the Embarcadero. The faint moan of a ship’s horn, probably the one on the Sausalito ferry, penetrated the office silence. I sat like that for a time, looking out, thinking too much. Then I got up and put some water on the hot plate for coffee.
In my old office I had kept the hot plate on top of my single file cabinet; here I had a separate little table for it, with jars of instant coffee and dairy creamer and sugar and a package of plastic spoons and another package of styrofoam cups all laid out next to it. Maybe I ought to bring in a tray of doughnuts and cake every morning, I thought; give my clients a real treat. Or, hell, bring in another hot plate and a pasta machine and some marinara sauce, whip up some spaghetti, give them a real Italian meal to go with their real Italian private eye-
The telephone rang.
I had already checked and shut off my answering machine-no weekend messages. So I went over and hauled up the receiver on the pimp-yellow phone and said, “Detective agency,” in my pale blue voice.
A prim, rather stuffy male voice asked me who was speaking. I told him, and he said, “You’re a detective?” and I thought: No, I’m a horse’s ass. But I said, “Yes, that’s right. May I help you?”
“My name is George Hickox. I represent Mr. Clyde Mollenhauer.”
The inflection he put on the second name said that I was supposed to recognize it. But I had never heard of anyone named Clyde Mollenhauer. Or, for that matter, anyone named George Hickox.
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