Small Felonies - Fifty Mystery Short Stories

by Bill Pronzini

  At six-thirty, half a dozen Phantom jets from the Air Force base nearby bombarded it with laser missiles. The missiles failed to destroy it; in fact, it seemed to feed on the heat and released energy, so that its growth rate increased even more rapidly.

  In Washington, there was great consternation and panic. The President, his advisers, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff held an emergency meeting to decide whether or not to use an atomic bomb. But by the time they made up their minds it was too late. Much too late.

  The thing was then the size of two city blocks, and still growing, and the range of its gigantic muzzle extended beyond the boundaries of the United States—north-by-northwest, toward the Bering Sea and the vast wastes of Russia beyond . . .

  HOUSE CALL

  (With Jeffrey M. Wallmann)

  It was a few minutes past three o'clock when Christine Taylor parked her compact on San Lorenzo Way, in front of the Morris home and directly behind a dusty Ford station wagon with a personalized license plate that read O HENRY. Both cars seemed out of place in the forested elegance of St. Francis Wood, one of San Francisco's wealthier neighborhoods.

  She took the packages of Beauty Express cosmetics from the seat beside her, closed the car door with her foot, and started up the broad flagstone path that led to the Morris veranda. The house was set apart from its neighbors by stands of eucalyptus and landscaped gardens and lawns; dwarf cypress and shrubbery grew along the veranda and the side walls. The overall effect was of a small country estate rather than a house on an urban street.

  When Chris neared the veranda, peering around the tiered boxes so she could see where she was going, she caught a glimpse of the small discreet sign that said TRADESMEN USE SIDE ENTRANCE. Although she was not a tradesperson in the strictest sense of the term, and had been admitted through the front door three days before, when her first visit here had produced a sale to old Mrs. Roberta Morris, she felt it would be proper to make the delivery at the side entrance. Besides, Mrs. Morris suffered from an inflammation of the joints called brachial radiculitis, coupled with muscle spasms of the trapezius—the old lady had explained this to Chris in great detail—and consequently spent most of her time upstairs in her bedroom. Her live-in maid handled most household matters. Turning onto the path to her left, Chris made her way around to the north side. A thick screen of oleander bushes partially obscured the side entrance from the path, so that you couldn't see the door until you were within a few feet of it. The boxes of cosmetics further hampered her vision; Mrs. Morris had bought over fifty dollars' worth of lotions, powders, and makeup.

  A half-dozen paces from the entrance, she felt the boxes start to slip in her grasp. She was so busy trying to keep them balanced that she didn't hear the door open or see the man who came around the oleanders on a sudden collision course.

  When they ran into each other, the impact sent her sprawling onto the lawn and the packages flying. She landed on her hip, without damage to anything except her dignity, but a startled "Ouf!" came out of her. She pushed onto one knee and stared up at the man standing on the path.

  He was tall, middle-aged, distinguished-looking, dressed in a chalk-striped suit and carrying a black doctor's satchel. He looked almost as amazed as she felt. He also looked harried and preoccupied; running his free hand through his salt-and-pepper hair he asked in a peremptory manner, "Who are you?"

  "Aren't you going to help me up, Doctor?"

  "Oh—yes, of course. Sorry." He extended his hand. Chris took it and let him pull her to her feet. He looked at her, at the packages strewn over the lawn out toward the front of the house. His distracted manner reminded her of her father, who was a resident physician at St. Theresa's Memorial Hospital here in the city.

  "Is Mrs. Morris ill?" she asked him.

  "Yes, but it's nothing serious." He glanced again at the packages, but when Chris bent to restack them he made no move to help her. "Are you making a delivery?"

  "I was about to, yes. Beauty Express Cosmetics. May I ask what's wrong with Mrs. Morris, Doctor? Is it the brachial radiculitis again?"

  He raised an eyebrow. "How do you know about that?"

  "She told me about it the last time I was here."

  "I see. Well, you're right—that's the problem."

  "I hope it doesn't put her back in her wheelchair," Chris said. "She says she hates it when her trapezius muscles get so bad she can't walk."

  "It probably won't come to that. I gave her something to relieve the pain." He looked at his watch. "If you'll excuse me—" And he started away along the path.

  Chris finished stacking the boxes, lifted them in her arms, and hurried after him. When she caught up she said, "I might as well leave too. If Mrs. Morris is ill, I don't want to disturb her."

  The tall man nodded distractedly.

  "Are your offices near here, Doctor?" she asked him.

  "Yes, they are."

  "Then you've done some work at St. Theresa's."

  "That's right, I have."

  "My father is on the staff there, so you probably know him. Vincent Taylor."

  "Why, yes, I do know Vincent. An excellent man."

  "I think so too," Chris said. "I'll mention that we met. Doctor—?"

  "Hoskins." They had reached the sidewalk and he started toward the dusty station wagon. "Sorry again about bumping into you, Miss Taylor," he said over his shoulder. "Have a good day."

  "You too, Dr. Hoskins."

  Chris moved over to her compact and stood watching him get inside the station wagon and drive away. As soon as he had disappeared around the first curve, she tossed her packages into the backseat and ran back up the driveway. When she reached the side entrance she opened the door, not bothering to knock first, and went inside.

  It took her less than thirty seconds to find Mrs. Morris and her maid. They were in the sitting room, bound to a pair of wing-back chairs and gagged with handkerchiefs.

  Swiftly she untied them. She paused long enough to determine that neither of the frightened women had been harmed, then she hurried to one of the downstairs extension phones to call the police.

  "There's been a robbery at Number 79 San Lorenzo Way in St. Francis Wood," she told the officer who answered. "The man responsible claims to be a doctor, but he isn't. He just drove off in a Ford station wagon with a personalized license plate that says O HENRY. If you hurry you probably can catch him before he gets too far away."

  "They did hurry," Chris said to her father that evening, "and they caught him about twenty minutes later, over in Golden Gate Park. The station wagon didn't belong to him; he stole it this morning from a parking lot downtown. His real name is Hammond, not Hoskins, and he's a professional burglar who specializes in robbing wealthy homes. The police found five hundred dollars in cash and all of Mrs. Morris's jewelry in the doctor's satchel."

  "But how did you know he was a thief and not a doctor?" her father asked.

  "He made me suspicious right from the first. So I maneuvered him into saying two things that convinced me he was neither a doctor nor an invited guest of Mrs. Morris."

  "What two things?"

  "I said I hoped Mrs. Morris' brachial radiculitis wasn't serious enough to confine her to a wheelchair again, because she hated it when her trapezius muscles got so bad she couldn't walk. He said it probably wouldn't come to that. But there isn't a doctor alive who doesn't know that brachial radiculitis is an inflammation of the shoulder joints, not the leg joints—or that the trapezius muscles are in the upper back—and that it wouldn't confine anybody to a wheelchair."

  "What was the second thing?"

  "You were, Dad. I got him to say he'd done some work at St. Theresa's, and then I said my father, Vincent Taylor, was on the staff there and he must know you. He said he did."

  "Ah," Philip Taylor said.

  "And if I needed any more proof, there was that license plate on the station wagon. O HENRY. It's doubtful a doctor making a house call would drive a car with a personalized license plate and no caduceus."r />
  Her father nodded. "Now tell me why you were suspicious enough at first to go on and bait your verbal traps."

  "Two reasons," Chris said. "When he knocked me down he didn't ask if I'd hurt myself; he didn't even offer to help me up. A real doctor wouldn't have been that careless. But it's the other thing that really made me suspicious." She reached out and took his hand. "Dad, if you'd been attending a woman like Mrs. Morris, would you have left the house by the tradesmen's entrance when the front door is much closer to the street where you'd left your car? No. And no other physician would either. The front door is always the proper entrance for a visiting doctor."

  Philip Taylor shook his head admiringly. "You're quite a detective, you know that?"

  "Not really, Dad. It was all a simple matter of house calls."

  "House calls?"

  "Sure," Chris said, smiling. "The burglar picked this day to make his, ran into me as I was making mine, and made the mistake of pretending to be a doctor on a medical one. You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out that that's one house call too many."

  DEATHWATCH

  They just came and told me I'm dying. I've got first and second degree burns over sixty percent of my body, and the doctors—two of them—said it's hopeless, there's nothing they can do. I don't care. It's better this way. Except for the pain. They gave me morphine but it doesn't help. It doesn't keep me from thinking either.

  Before the doctors, there were two county cops. And Kjel. The cops told me Pete and Nicky are dead, both of them killed in the explosion. They said Kjel and me were thrown clear, and that he'd come out of it with just minor burns on his face and upper body. They said he hung onto me until another boat showed up and her crew pulled us out of the water. I don't understand that. After what I did, why would he try to save my life?

  Kjel told them how it was. The cops didn't say much to me about it, just wanted to know if what Kjel said was the truth. I said it was. But it doesn't make any difference, why or how. I tried to tell them that, and something about the light and the dark, but I couldn't make the words come out. They wouldn't have understood anyway.

  After the cops left, Kjel asked to see me. One of the doctors said he had something he wanted to say. But I wouldn't let him come in. I don't want to hear what he has to say. It doesn't matter, and I don't want to see him.

  Lila is in the waiting room outside. The same doctor told me that, too. I wouldn't let her come in either. What good would it do to see her, talk to her? There's nothing she can say, nothing I can say—the same as with Kjel. She's been sitting out there sixteen hours, ever since they brought me here from the marina. All that time, sitting out there, waiting.

  They have a word for it, what she's doing.

  Deathwatch.

  The pain . . . oh God, I've never hurt like this. Never. Is this how it feels to burn in hell? An eternity of fire and pain . . . and light? If that's what's in store for me, it won't be so bad if there's light. But what if it's dark down there? Christ, I'm so scared. What if the afterlife is dark, too?

  I want to pray but I don't know how. I never went to church much, I never got to know God. The doctors asked if I wanted to see a minister. I said no. What could a minister do for me? Would a minister understand about the light and the dark? I don't think so. Not the way I understand.

  The lights in this room are bright, real bright. I asked the doctors to turn the lights up as high as they would go and one of them said he would and he did. But outside, it's night—it's dark. I can see it, the dark, pressing against the window, if I look over that way. I don't look. Dying scares me even more when I look at the night—

  I just looked. I couldn't stop myself. The dark, always the dark, trying to swallow the light. But not the black dark that comes with no moon, no stars. Gray dark, softened by fog. High fog tonight, high and heavy, blowing cold. It'll drop by morning, though. There won't be much visibility. But that won't stop the boats from going out. Never has, never will. Wouldn't have stopped us from going out—me and Kjel and Pete and Nicky. It's the season and the big Kings are running. Christ, it's been a good salmon run this year. One of the best in the last ten. If it keeps up like this, Kjel said this morning, we'll have the mortgage on The Kingfisher paid off by the end of the year.

  But he said that early this morning, while we were still fishing.

  He said that before the dark came and swallowed the light. It seems like so long ago, what happened this morning. And yet it also seems like it must have been just a minute or two . . .

  We were six miles out, finished for the day and on our way in—made limit early, hit a big school of Kings. Whoo-ee! They were practically jumping into the boat. I was in the wheelhouse, working on the automatic depth finder because it'd been acting up a little, wishing we could afford a better one. Wishing, too, that we could afford a Loran navigation system like some of the other skippers had on their boats. Kjel and Pete and Nicky were working the outriggers, hauling in the lines by hand. We didn't have one of those hydraulic winches, either, the kind with an automatic trigger that pulls in a fish as soon as it hits the line. The kind that does all the work for you. We had to do it ourselves.

  The big Jimmy diesel was rumbling and throbbing, loud, at three-quarters throttle. I shouldn't have been able to hear them talking out on deck. But I heard. Maybe it was the wind, a trick of the wind. I don't know. It doesn't matter. I heard.

  I heard Nicky laugh, and Pete say something that had Lila's name in it, and Kjel said, "Shut up, you damn fool, he'll hear you!"

  And Nicky said, "He can't hear inside. Besides, what if he does? He knows already, don't he?"

  And Kjel said, "He doesn't know. I hope to Christ he never does."

  And Pete said, "Hell, he's got to have an idea. The whole village knows what a slut he's married to . . ."

  I had a box wrench in my hand. I put it down and walked out there and I said, "What're you talking about? What're you saying about Lila?"

  None of them said anything. They all just looked at me. It was a gray morning, no sun. A dark morning, not much light. Getting darker, too. I could see clouds on the horizon, dark hazy things, swallowing the light—swallowing it fast.

  I said, "Pete, you called my wife a slut. I heard you." Kjel said, "Danny, take it easy, he didn't mean nothing—" I said, "He meant something. He meant it." I reached out and caught Pete by the shirt and threw him up against the port outrigger. He tried to tear my hands loose; I wouldn't let go. "How come, Pete? What do you know about Lila?"

  Kjel said, "For Christ's sake, Danny—"

  "What do you know, goddamn you!"

  Pete was mad. He didn't like me roughing him up like that. And he didn't give a damn if I knew—I guess that was it. He'd only been working for us a few months. He was a stranger in Camaroon Bay. He didn't know me and I didn't know him and he didn't give a damn.

  "I know because I was with her," he said. "You poor sap, she's been screwing everybody in the village behind your back. Everybody! Me, Nicky, even Kjel here—"

  Kjel hit him. He reached in past me and hit Pete and knocked him loose of my hands, almost knocked him over board. Pete went down. Nicky backed away. Kjel backed away too, looking at me. His face was all twisted up. And dark—dark like the things on the horizon.

  "It's true, then," I said. "It's true."

  "Danny, listen to me—"

  "No," I said.

  "It only happened once with her and me. Only once. I tried not to, Danny, Jesus I tried not to but she . . . Danny, listen to me . . ."

  "No," I said.

  I turned around, I put my back to him and the other two and the dark things on the horizon and I went into the wheelhouse and shut the door and locked it. I didn't feel anything. I didn't think anything either. There was some gasoline in one of the cupboards, for the auxiliary engine. I got the can out and poured the gas on the deck boards and splashed it on the bulkheads.

  Outside Kjel was pounding on the door, calling my name. I lit a match and thr
ew it down.

  Nothing happened right away. So I unlocked the door and opened it, and Kjel started in, and I heard him say, "Oh my God!" and he caught hold of me and yanked me through the door.

  That was when she blew.

  There was a flash of blinding light, I remember that. And I remember being in the water, I remember seeing flames, I remember the pain. I don't remember anything else until I woke up here in the hospital.

  The county cops asked me if I was sorry I did it. I said I was. And I am, but not for the reason they thought. I couldn't tell them the real reason. They wouldn't have understood, because first they'd have had to understand about the light and the dark.

  I close my eyes now and I can see my old man's face on the night he died. He was a drunk and the liquor killed him, but nobody ever knew why. Except me. He called me into his room that night, I was eleven years old, and he told me why.

  "It's the dark, Danny," he said. "I let it swallow all the light." I thought he was babbling. But he wasn't. "Everything is light or dark," he said. "That's what you got to understand. People, places, everything, the whole world—light or dark. You got to reach for the light, Danny. Sunshine and smiles, everything that's light. If you don't you'll let the dark take over, like I did, and the dark will destroy you. Promise me you won't let that happen to you, boy. Promise me you won't."

  I promised. And I tried—Christ, Pa, I tried. Thirty years I reached for the light. But I couldn't hold onto enough of it, just like you couldn't. The dark kept creeping in, creeping in.

  Once I told Lila about the dark and the light. She just laughed. "Is that why you always want to make love with the light on, sleep with the light on?" she said. "You're crazy sometimes, Danny, you know that?" she said.