Hoodwink nd-7

by Bill Pronzini

  Hoodwink

  ( Nameless Detective - 7 )

  Bill Pronzini

  Bill Pronzini

  Hoodwink

  ONE

  I was sitting tilted back in my office chair, reading one of Russell Dancer’s private eye stories in a 1948 Midnight Detective, when the door opened and Russell Dancer walked in.

  Coincidences happen now and then; I knew that as well as anybody after the Carding/Nichols case I had been involved in a few months ago. But they still jar you a little every time. I opened my mouth, closed it again, blinked a couple of times, and then got on my feet as he shut the door.

  “Hey there, shamus,” he said. He came through the rail divider, gave the scattered cardboard packing boxes a curious glance, and plopped the briefcase he was carrying down on the visitor’s chair. “Remember me?”

  “Remember you? Hell, I was just reading one of your old pulp stories.”

  “You kidding?”

  “Not a bit.” I held the magazine out for him to look at. “One of the Rex Hannigan novelettes.”

  Dancer glanced at the title above the interior illustration, and his sardonic mouth got even more sardonic. ” ‘There’ll be a Hot Crime in the Old Tomb Tonight!’ Frigging editors loved pun titles in those days-the worse the better.”

  I said, “Bad title, maybe, but a good story,” as we shook hands.

  “If you say so. I wouldn’t recognize a word of it after all these years.”

  “Don’t you ever reread your early work?”

  “I don’t reread what I wrote six days ago,” he said. “Besides, all my pulps went up in the fire, remember?”

  I remembered. It had been almost seven years ago, down the coast a hundred miles or so at a village called Cypress Bay. A woman named Judith Paige had hired me to follow her husband because he kept disappearing on weekends and she suspected he was seeing another woman. Paige led me to Cypress Bay-and straight into a nasty triple murder that revolved around tangled relationships out of the past and a twenty-year-old paperback mystery written by Dancer. The novel, through no fault of his own, had almost cost him his life-no doubt would have if he’d been home at his beach shack, instead of celebrating the completion of his latest Western with a bottle and a woman, the night it was deliberately set ablaze.

  “You didn’t replace any of the books and magazines you lost?” I asked him.

  “No.”

  “How come?”

  “Too much trouble,” he said. “I used to keep file copies of most of my published shit, but I kind of lost interest after the fire.” He shrugged. “Guy who wrote all that early stuff is dead and gone anyway.”

  Still the same old Dancer, I thought. Bitter, cynical, full of self-mockery and something that approached self-loathing. He had cared once; you could tell that, and how much talent and promise he’d had by reading the pre — 1950 Hannigan stories. But that had been a long time ago, a lifetime ago, before a combination of things only he could understand had soured and blighted him.

  If he cared for anything now, it was probably money and liquor. He was sober enough at the moment, but there was the faint smell of bourbon on his breath that said he had drunk his lunch and maybe his late-afternoon snack as well. And he had all the physical signs: ruptured blood vessels in his nose and cheeks; the grayish dissipated appearance of his skin; the washed-out blue-gray pupils and bloodshot whites of his eyes. He was at least fifteen pounds thinner than I recalled, and starting to lose some of his dust-colored hair. He had to be about sixty now, and he looked every year of it-every hard, unhappy year.

  Some of what I was thinking must have shown in my face. Dancer grinned at me in a lopsided way, without humor. “Pretty sorry specimen, right?” he said.

  “Did I say that?”

  “You didn’t have to.” He shrugged again. “All writers are drunks, you know. Would-be, borderline, confirmed, sodden, reformed; one stage or another. All drunks, every damned one of us.”

  I had no comment to make on that. Instead I said, “Things been that tough for you lately?”

  “They couldn’t get much tougher. I haven’t made a dime in five months or written much of anything in four. Not because I can’t write any more; because I can’t sell any more.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Market’s tightened up. Competition is stiff from top to bottom, so most of the old-line hacks like me have been squeezed out. Lots of hackwork being published, but it’s either big, specialized crap on assignment or through packagers, or it’s genre stuff done by stable hacks. Not much chance of me getting into one of the stables today; paperback editors are all twenty-five-year-old English Lit majors who never read a goddamn word of paperback fiction before they were hired. They build up their own stables; they only use upward-mobile hacks. My agent’s trying to work out a deal with one of them now-a series of heavy-breathing adult Westerns at three grand a crack. Pun intended. But it’ll never happen.”

  “So how are you getting by?”

  “Scraping, brother. I gave up my apartment three months ago and moved in with a lady friend.”

  “In Cypress Bay?”

  “Near there. In Jamesburg. But she’s not too well off either. She’ll throw me out sooner or later if I don’t bring some bread into the house.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  He lit a cigarette, threw the match in my waste-basket, and glanced around the office. “Doesn’t look like you’re exactly in the chips yourself,” he said.

  “Well, I’m not starving.”

  “Then how come the packing boxes?”

  “I’m moving next week, not being evicted.”

  “Better digs?”

  “A little better, yeah.”

  “Glad to hear it,” he said. “This place is like something out of a forties pulp, you know that? One of the Hannigan stories, maybe. Private eye in a shabby office with stains all over the walls, sitting around waiting for clients to walk in. You wouldn’t happen to have an office bottle, would you?”

  “No,“I said.

  “Too bad.”

  “Sure.” I had begun to feel a little uncomfortable, and I guess that showed in my face, too. Dancer gave me another of his sardonic grins.

  “Don’t worry, I didn’t come all the way up here to put the bite on you,” he said. “I’m not that desperate. Not yet, anyhow.”

  “Just to say hello, huh?”

  “Nope. I’m in town for the convention.”

  “What convention is that?”

  “The pulp convention, what else?”

  “Oh?”

  “You mean you don’t know about it? As into pulps as you are?”

  “I’ve been pretty involved the past couple of weeks,” I said. “Fill me in; it sounds interesting.”

  “Not much to it. Bunch of pulp collectors and fans got together and decided to put on a convention. Going to be an annual event if they don’t lose too much money on this first one. You know the kind of thing: panel discussions, speeches, dealers selling old pulps and books, kids running around asking you for autographs. Guy I know dragged me to a science fiction con about ten years ago. Bored the hell out of me, but I guess some people get off on them.”

  “Why go to this one, then?”

  “Because I’m getting paid for it,” Dancer said. “Not much-what they call an honorarium-but it’s enough to bring me up here for three days. Besides, it’s kind of a reunion.”

  “Reunion?”

  “You ever hear of the Pulpeteers?”

  “No. What’s that?”

  “A private writers’ club back in New “York in the forties. Only those of us who wrote or worked on the pulps could join; more of an excuse to get together once or twice a month and booze it up than anything else. We had maybe a doz
en members at one time or another. Some of them are dead now-only eight of us left.”

  “And all eight are coming to this pulp convention?-“

  “Right,” Dancer said. “Don’t ask me how Lloyd Underwood-he’s the head of the convention committee-managed to dig up all of us, but he did it.”

  “Anyone else whose name I’d know?”

  “Probably. Bert Praxas, Waldo Ramsey, Jim Bohannon, Ivan and Cybil Wade, Frank Colodny.”

  I recognized all of those names. It was a pretty impressive list; the first five were a kind of Who’s Who of pulp writers in the forties, and the sixth, Frank Colodny, had been a well-known editor of the Action House line of pulps.

  I said, “All of them don’t live in California now, do they?”

  “No. Convention people flew Bohannon in from Denver, Praxas from New York, and Colodny from Arizona. Most of us arrived last night.”

  “When does the convention start?”

  “Officially, it starts tomorrow. But there’s a get-acquainted party tonight at the hotel, for the Pulpeteers and some of the convention people. I can get you in if you’re interested.”

  “I’m interested. Which hotel?”

  “The Continental.”

  “Is that where you’re staying?”

  “Right. Room six-seventeen.”

  “How many days does it run?”

  “Until Sunday.” Dancer fumbled inside the rumpled sports jacket he was wearing and came out with an ocher-colored brochure printed, appropriately, on pulp paper. “Here’s the program they sent me. It’ll tell you when the panels are scheduled, what they’ll be about.”

  “Thanks. I’ll read it later.”

  He jabbed out his cigarette in the ashtray I keep on the desk for clients and promptly lit another one. I watched him without a trace of envy. It had been almost two years since I’d quit smoking because of a lesion on one lung that had turned out to be benign-this time. I seldom even thought about cigarettes any more.

  There were a dozen or so seconds of silence. Then Dancer waved his hand in a deprecating way, as if he were annoyed with himself, and said, “Ah hell, I’m jerking you around here. I didn’t just drop by because of the convention. There’s something else.”

  “Uh-huh,“I said.

  “You figured I was after something.”

  “I figured.”

  “Not much gets by you, right?”

  “Me and Hannigan,” I said.

  That got my a nimbly laugh. “Okay. I don’t want much; just a favor.”

  “What kind of favor?”

  “Do a little snooping for me.”

  “What kind of snooping?”

  “There’s something screwy going on and I want to find out what it is. I can’t pay you anything, you know that. But you’re going to be there any way, and I can introduce you around, give you a chance to rap about pulps with me and the other old farts.”

  “Tell me what’s going on that’s screwy.”

  “I can do better than that,” he said. “I’ll show you.”

  He hoisted the briefcase onto my desk, unlatched it, and took out a nine-by-twelve manila envelope. “This came in the mail three days ago. Take a look.”

  I opened the envelope and withdrew its contents-the photocopy of an old forty-page manuscript carbon. You could tell it had been copied from an old carbon from the dog-ears, tears, and faded and smeared typeface. In the middle of the topmost sheet was a one-word title: “Hoodwink.” No author’s name or address appeared in the upper left-hand corner of that sheet nor any of the others.

  “It’s a novelette,” Dancer said. “Set in England in the Victorian era. Psychological suspense, not too bad. You remember a big-budget Hollywood flick came out in 1952, called Evil by Gaslight}” “Vaguely.”

  “Well, the movie was written by somebody named Rose Tyler Crawford. Supposed to be an original screenplay, not adapted from any other medium. But the plot of the movie and the plot of this story are identical. Only difference is the title and the names of the characters.”

  “Plagiarism?”

  “So it would seem.” Dancer took something else out of the briefcase-a plain piece of white paper this time-and handed it over to me. “This came with the manuscript,” he said.

  It was a letter, typed in business format, on a different typewriter from the manuscript, and addressed to Dancer. It said:

  Enclosed is a copy of an original manuscript entitled “Hoodwink” which I have hi my possession. Also in my possession is proof that you are the one who plagiarized it and sold it to Hollywood under the name Rose Tyler Crawford and the title Evil by Gaslight. Bring five thousand dollars ($5,000) with you to the pulp convention in San Francisco. In cash, small bills only. I will contact you there. If you do not bring the money, I will notify your agent and all your publishers that you are a plagiarist. I will also notify the film company which produced Evil by Gaslight, and turn over all material in my possession to the newspapers.

  There was no signature written or typed.

  When I looked up Dancer said, “Well?”

  “That’s my line,” I said. “Are you Rose Tyler Crawford?”

  He made a snorting sound. “Christ, no. I wish I had been, though. Whoever she is or was, she probably made a potful.”

  “Then what’s the point of trying to extort money from you?”

  “You tell me. That’s why I want you to snoop around.”

  “Maybe it’s not extortion,” I said. “Maybe it’s somebody’s idea of a practical joke.”

  “I doubt that; I don’t know anybody clever enough or smartass enough. It might be a publicity stunt for the convention, too-but I talked to Lloyd Underwood and a couple of others this morning, and they say they don’t know anything about it. I don’t see that they’d lie if they did know.”

  “Why did you think it might be a publicity stunt? There’d be no guarantee you’d make it public. And besides, one incident like this wouldn’t be enough to attract attention to a pulp convention.”

  “How about five incidents like this?”

  “What?”

  “I talked to the rest of the Pulpeteers, too,” Dancer said. “Seems I’m just one of a crowd. Each of them also got photocopies of ‘Hoodwink’ and extortion letters identical to mine.”

  TWO

  We spent another fifteen minutes kicking it around. It was screwy, all right. Why would anybody accuse six different writers of plagiarizing the same manuscript and then try to extort money from each one? And why wait thirty years after the alleged plagiarism took place to make the accusations and the demands? It could be some sort of mass extortion ploy, — but the only way one of those can work is if each of the potential victims thinks, first, that the extortionist really does have something incriminating against him, and second, that he’s the only one being victimized. All six of the Pulpeteers could hardly be plagiarists. And the extortionist had to know- at least he did if he was sane-that one of the six would be sure to mention it to another, and pretty soon everybody would know everybody else had been approached. Nobody was going to pay off under those circumstances.

  So what was the point of it all?

  According to Dancer, none of the others had any more of an idea than he did. All of the envelopes, as far as he’d been able to determine, had been mailed in San Francisco, which meant that any one of several million people, including the convention organizers and a few dozen friends, relatives, and casual acquaintances of the six writers, might be guilty. The “Hoodwink” novelette had been unfamiliar to everyone, although they all remembered Evil by Gaslight; the movie still ran pretty often on TV. The author’s style had also been unfamiliar-probably that of a beginner, they all agreed, rather than an established professional.

  Most of the Pulpeteers were inclined to shrug the whole thing off as the work of a crank, but at the same time they were curious and maybe just a little uneasy. Unusual or abnormal behavior, particularly by a party or parties unknown, always tends to make people nervo
us. So when Dancer had mentioned my name to them, the consensus was that it might not be a bad idea to have somebody around who was both a detective by profession and a knowledgeable pulp collector by avocation.

  “Whoever’s behind this might not even be at the convention, you know,” I said. “Chances are it’s all some sort of hoax and you’ll never hear from ‘Hoodwink’ again.”

  Dancer said, “But suppose one of us does hear from him?”

  “Well, that’s a bridge to cross if we come to it.”

  “Then you’ll snoop for us?”

  “Sure, I’ll do what I can. You’ve got me curious too, now. Just don’t expect too much of me wandering around the convention. If I can do anything at all, it’ll probably be through channels.”

  “What channels?”

  “I know a guy down in Hollywood,” I said, “who knows some people in the movie industry. He might be able to dig up something on the background of Evil by Gaslight-something on Rose Tyler Crawford-that’ll tie in with this extortion business.”

  Dancer liked that approach and said so. Then he looked at his watch, wetting his lips the way a man does when he’s thirsty. “Hey, almost five o’clock,” he said. “I’ve got to be moving.”

  I nodded. “Okay if I hang onto the manuscript? I’d like to read it so I know what I’m dealing with.”

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  I asked him about the party tonight, and he told me it started at eight o’clock in Suite M on the fifteenth floor of the Continental. Another handshake, and off he went to do something about his thirst. When he was gone I went and did something about mine too: poured myself a fresh cup of coffee from the hotplate I keep on the file cabinet.

  The hotplate was brand new; the old one, the one I’d bought when I first rented this office twenty years ago, had been badly damaged during that Carding/Nichols case a few months back. The whole office had been badly damaged-torn apart, raped, by a paranoid psychotic who thought my investigative efforts were part of a complex and nonexistent persecution plot. So to go along with the new hotplate, I also had a new desk and chair from a secondhand office-supply company, my old desk and armchair having been scarred and slashed beyond repair. I even had a new poster of my favorite Black Mask cover to replace the one that had been ripped off the wall and shredded out of its frame.