Schemers: A Nameless Detective Novel (Nameless Detective Novels)

by Bill Pronzini

  “The cemetery vandalism was two and a half weeks ago, you said. Did anything unusual happen around that time, or in the month or so before? An accident of some kind, an altercation, even a few harsh words with somebody—anything that might have triggered this man’s rage?”

  “No. I’ve racked my brains, we all have, and there’s nothing. Nothing. We live quiet, do our jobs, go to church, raise our kids the best way we know how, don’t get on anybody’s wrong side. A faceless enemy like that … I don’t know, I just don’t know.”

  “We have two daughters, nine and thirteen,” his wife said. “Damon has a son, twelve. What if this lunatic decides to go after one of them? We’re at our wits’ end.”

  “The cops have sent out patrols to keep an eye on our homes and businesses. But they can’t watch twenty-four seven.”

  I said, “If you’re looking to hire bodyguards …”

  “No. Not yet, anyway, not unless there’s a threat to the kids. We’ve made our own arrangements to protect them for now. An investigation’s what we want. Thorough, not the kind the cops are giving us.”

  “A fresh perspective,” Mrs. Henderson said.

  “I understand. But I have to be honest with you. There may not be a great deal we or any other private agency can do.”

  “Are you saying you won’t help us?”

  “Not at all. We’ll investigate, but in a case like this, with so little information to go on …”

  “We don’t expect miracles,” Henderson said. “Just do what you can, that’s all we’re asking.”

  I laid out our standard fees, as well as the probable expense account charges, and the amount required as a retainer. The figures didn’t seem to faze them. I had them sign an agency contract, and Tracy Henderson wrote out a check. Then I took down two pages of names, addresses, phone numbers, personal information—everything we’d need to open an investigation.

  Runyon’s body language said that he wanted the job, so I told the clients he’d be handling it. Henderson asked when we’d start. Runyon said he’d drive up to Los Alegres this afternoon.

  Solemn handshakes, and they were gone.

  Runyon said then, “Phantom stalkers are the worst kind. And this one sounds unstable as hell. Okay if we make the investigation a priority?”

  “I think we’d better. Can you shuffle your schedule for the rest of the week? Alex can cover for you if needs be.” Alex Chavez, our part-time operative.

  “Shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “Okay. I’ll photocopy my notes before you head for Los Alegres. And when Tamara gets here I’ll have her get started on deep background checks on the Henderson brothers.”

  “Where is she anyway?”

  “Took the morning off.”

  “That’s not like her.”

  “No, it’s not,” I said. “She must have a good reason.”

  Good reason? Yes and no.

  Tamara showed up at one minute past noon. Bounced straight into my office, high color in her cheeks, big cat-ate-the-canary smile, and announced, “Well, I finally got my groove back.”

  “Come again?”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said, grinning.

  “Huh?”

  “I finally got laid.”

  Well, what do you say to that? If she’d been a man, I might have made a mildly bawdy observation. As it was, all I could manage was a lame “Oh.”

  “Four times altogether,” she said. “Last night and this morning.”

  “Uh.”

  “That’s why I took the morning off. Been so long, I figured I was entitled.”

  “Mm.”

  “Almost a year since the last time, can you believe it? I’d almost forgotten what it feels like.”

  “Ah.”

  “His name’s Lucas Zeller,” she said. “I met him at Vonda’s wedding reception, knows her brother James. Not exactly a brother himself, though.”

  “No?”

  “Fudge swirl,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “Mostly dark with a little white mixed in. Like fudge swirl ice cream. Hot fudge sundae!”

  The conversation was making me uncomfortable, as personal conversations with Tamara sometimes did. As outspoken and uninhibited as she was, she was liable to launch into a blow-by-blow—literally, God forbid—description of her evening and morning activities with the fudge swirl, and that was information I had no desire to tune in.

  “Anyhow,” she said then, sparing me, “nothing clicked between us that day at the reception, not for me, but Saturday he called up out of the blue, said he had tickets to the Zombie Boys concert yesterday—”

  “The which?”

  “Zombie Boys, they’re a hard-rock blowout band, very cool, usually you can’t get tickets.”

  “Ah.”

  “So I said sure. We went out to dinner first, then the blowout, then back to my place and the rest is sweet history. That man is something fierce in bed, you know what I’m saying?”

  I said quickly, “Serious, you and this Lucas?”

  “Doing the nasty is always serious when you haven’t been doing it.”

  “You know what I mean. Potentially serious relationship.”

  “No way. I had enough of that with Horace. All I’m looking for is some fun, a little action. Lucas feels the same. Besides, I think maybe he’s Mama’s boy.”

  “Uh?”

  “Thirty-four, salesman for a company that sells electronic equipment, still lives with his mother. Can you believe it? She was all he talked about at dinner, what a great person she is, all that—almost spoiled the mood. But once we got between the sheets, Mama wasn’t there anymore.”

  “I should hope not.”

  “Whooo! That man’s a real dawg when it comes to—”

  The telephone rang just then. Thank you, Lord, I thought.

  The call was for me, a minor matter I disposed of in less than a minute. Tamara was still standing there, grinning and glowing, when I hung up. To forestall any more discussion of her sex life, I said, “Busy morning here, too, while you were playing. One new case and one surprise call, both oddball.”

  “How so?”

  I told her, the Henderson business first, then about the call from Barney Rivera’s assistant.

  “Rivera, huh?” she said. “You think maybe he’s up to one of his little tricks, for old times’ sake?”

  “I wouldn’t put anything past him,” I said. “Whatever he’s up to, I’ll know in about an hour. And it better be legitimate business. If it isn’t, he’ll be ingesting those peppermints of his through a different orifice than his mouth.”

  2

  Barney the Needle hadn’t changed much in half a decade. He kept me waiting for fifteen minutes before he sent his assistant out to fetch me, and as soon as I walked into his office he showed me his salesman’s grin, pumped my hand, clapped me on the shoulder, and said I was looking pretty good for an old fart—all as if it had been five days instead of five years since we’d last laid eyes on each other.

  We sat down and did some mutual measuring across his big blond-wood desk. He looked the same except for a little less hair and a little more gray at the temples of what was left—a roly-poly little bastard with a cherub’s face, a pit bull’s heart, and a borderline sadist’s sense of humor. The same glass bowl of peppermints was on the desktop; he had an addiction to the things.

  “So,” he said, lacing his hands across his paunch. “Been quite a while.”

  “Yeah. Quite a while.”

  “Lots of happenings in your life since the last time we saw each other. Married, adopted a kid, took in a partner and expanded operations.”

  “Been keeping tabs, have you?”

  “Nah. But word gets around.”

  “Then you know I’m semiretired now.”

  He chuckled. “Sure you are. Just like me. What’d you think of Margot?”

  “Your assistant? Seems competent.”

  “Bet your ass.” Wink, wink. “In the office and in bed
, both.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “No lie,” he said. “I’m laying her.”

  Twice today, people telling me about their sex lives. I didn’t mind it so much from Tamara. From Rivera, it set my teeth on edge. He might or might not have been BS’ing; he’d always had a certain amount of success with women, the type who need somebody to mother. He’d once told me he’d slept with over three hundred women in his life. Even if that were true, which I doubted, he’d had enough conquests to give legitimacy to his bragging. And brag he did, often, to anybody who’d listen, with no consideration whatsoever for the women’s feelings or reputations.

  He winked at me again and popped a peppermint, and I thought: You little prick, how could I have ever considered you a friend?

  “You didn’t crawl out of the woodwork after five years to tell me about you and your assistant,” I said. “What is it you want, Barney?”

  He wasn’t offended. You couldn’t offend him without the aid of a needle twice as big as the one he used. “A job I figured you’d be interested in,” he said. “Soon as the claim came across my desk last Friday, I thought of you. Right up your alley.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Has to do with books, for one thing. Rare books.”

  “I don’t know anything about rare books.”

  “Collect them, don’t you? Mystery books?”

  “No, I collect pulp magazines. Big difference.”

  “Valuable, though, right? Old and valuable.”

  “I suppose so. In the collector’s market.”

  “The policyholder in this case collects vintage firstedition mysteries dating back more than a hundred years. Owns some fifteen thousand volumes, appraised at more than seven million and insured for that amount.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. His collection’s one of the three or four largest in the world.”

  “He must be a multimillionaire.”

  “Inherited money. His old man was the inventor of some gadget used in early jet planes. He’s been with Great Western for twenty years, one of our biggest clients—personal property, accident, three life policies. Never missed a payment on any of them, never filed a claim before this one.”

  “And this one is for?”

  “Eight books allegedly stolen from his library a week ago,” Rivera said, “worth a cool half a million bucks.”

  “Eight books, half a million?”

  Rivera used his computer to consult the case file. “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle, British first edition. The Maltese Falcon and Red Harvest, Dashiell Hammett. The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler. The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain. The Roman Hat Mystery, Ellery Queen. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie, British. Fer-de-Lance, Rex Stout. All inscribed and signed copies in dust jackets except the Doyle and Christie.”

  “My God,” I said.

  “Impressed, huh?”

  “From what I know, those are not only rare first editions but virtually impossible to replace even for a multimillionaire.”

  “That’s what Pollexfen says. Gregory Pollexfen. Name mean anything to you?”

  Poll-ex-fen. Odd name. “No. Where does he live?”

  “Right here in the city. Sea Cliff.”

  “He must be beside himself. I would be if some of my rarest pulps had been swiped.”

  “If the books were swiped,” Rivera said.

  “If?”

  “There’s some question about that. That’s how come you’re here.”

  “Why doubt him, if he’s been such a good risk for twenty years?”

  “The books were taken from his locked library, he says. Double locks on all the windows and the only door, a special security alarm on his house.”

  “Who else has access to the library? Wife, children?”

  “Two other people live in the house—his wife, her brother. A secretary and a housekeeper come in weekdays. But according to Pollexfen, none of them is allowed in the library except in his presence. Same with fellow bibliophiles and any other visitors.”

  “And I suppose he’s the only one with a key to the library.”

  “According to him.”

  “Keys can get stolen or misplaced or copied.”

  “He says that couldn’t have happened.”

  “So if the books really were stolen …”

  “Right, the only person who could’ve done it was Pollexfen. Which he vehemently denies, of course.”

  “If he’s lying, why make up a story like that? There’re dozens of more plausible explanations.”

  “The circumstances, maybe,” Rivera said. “Library locked up and nobody else with access.”

  “That doesn’t quite fly. He could’ve convinced the rest of the household to lie about the security precautions.”

  “Unless he figured they wouldn’t go along or he couldn’t trust them.”

  I said, “Only one reason I can think of why a passionate collector would steal from himself and then file an insurance claim.”

  “Sure. He needs the half mil. Except that Pollexfen doesn’t need it. He’s as financially solid as a rock.”

  “But you still don’t want to give him the benefit of the doubt.”

  “With a half mil payoff at stake? Hell no. Not without a full investigation. Which he says he welcomes. Send out the best investigator we’ve got, he said. But I thought of you anyway.”

  I let that pass. “Did Pollexfen file a police report?”

  “Right away. They haven’t found zip. Incompetents, Pollexfen called them. He’s probably right on that score. What do cops know about rare books?”

  “He told you the books were stolen a week ago, but his claim came in last Friday. Why the delay?”

  “Waiting to see what the police turned up.”

  “All right. Assuming the books were stolen, does Pollexfen have any idea who did it or how it was done?”

  “Nope. It’s impossible, he says, and yet it happened.” Another peppermint disappeared into the Rivera maw. “Hey, I just had a thought. Maybe it was the Invisible Man.”

  I ignored that, too.

  “Locked room, impossible crime—you got lucky with that kind of thing a couple of times, as I recall. That’s the second reason you’re here. If somebody besides Pollexfen did manage to five-finger eight valuable books from a locked library, you’re the only genius I know who can figure out how it was done.”

  Genius. Sure. The needle again.

  He sat there sucking on the peppermint, grinning at me—a grin with an edge of malice. The smug bastard had me hooked and he knew it. And he didn’t waste any time saying so.

  “Irresistible, eh?”

  “Depends. What’re you offering for the job?”

  “Usual rates.”

  “Ours have gone up in five years. We don’t come cheap anymore.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t mind inflation.”

  “You’re one of the few who doesn’t.”

  “Tell you what, old buddy. If you find those missing books and save us the half mil, I’ll authorize a bonus for you.”

  “How much of a bonus?”

  “Oh, say two thousand.”

  I said without missing a beat, “Let’s make it five.”

  “Man, you really have gotten greedy in your old age.”

  “People change in five years. Some people.”

  “Not me. Still the same old Barney.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So okay then. Five thousand.”

  “Put it in writing and we’ve got a deal.”

  No argument. He put it in writing, all cheerful and smiley.

  Barney the Needle, Barney the Sly. He was so damn accommodating because he figured I’d never collect that five thousand bonus—he expected me to fail. That was the real reason he’d brought me in here after five years. To have the last laugh.

  Barney the Shit.

  Tamara said, “Five K bonus? Sweet.”

 
“If I can find those first editions.”

  “Anybody can, you the man.”

  “Screwy case. I should’ve turned Rivera down, bonus or no bonus.”

  “But you didn’t. Too much of a challenge, right?”

  “There’s that. And the prospect of putting the needle right back into his tubby hide. I’d settle for that.”

  “Want me to do a b.g. on Pollexfen?”

  “If you have time. The Henderson case takes priority. You come up with anything there yet?”

  “So far,” she said, “nothing that flies against what they told you about themselves and the brother. No criminal records of any kind, no juicy stuff. Just average folks, looks like.”

  “Who are being systematically stalked. The attacks are too personal to be random. Has to be a motive of some kind.”

  “Psychos don’t need much to get off on.”

  “No, but they do need a trigger. Just about everybody has secrets, past problems of some kind. I doubt the Henderson family is an exception.”

  In my office I went through the printouts Rivera had given me: copies of Gregory Pollexfen’s seven-million-dollar book collection policy and claim, information on his other policies, personal data. Pollexfen must be financially solid; he was putting five figures a year in premiums into the Great Western coffers. Age: two months shy of his sixty-eighth birthday. Health: subpar. Heart ailment, high blood pressure, other maladies that, combined with his age, had sent his life insurance premiums skyrocketing the past couple of years. His present wife, Angelina, number three after a pair of divorces, was thirty-two years his junior. Married to her nine years, no children by her or the other two wives. The interesting thing there was that she was no longer the named beneficiary of his life insurance policy; he’d crossed her out three years ago in favor of two major charities. And his was the only name on the general personal property and book collection policies.

  Why? I wondered. If the marriage was rocky enough to cause him to change beneficiaries, then it was likely he’d written her out of his will, too, leaving her with no more than the standard spousal death benefits required by state law. But if that was the case, why were they still living together?

  After I’d familiarized myself with everything, I put in a call to Pollexfen’s home. He was there; the woman who answered the phone went and got him for me.