Jackpot (Nameless Dectective)

by Bill Pronzini

  “That’s enough,” I said. The edge was sharpening in me. I shoved my chair back and got on my feet.

  “Hey,” Littlejohn said, “hey, where you going?”

  “To work,” I said. “I’ve got a client and a job to do.”

  “Don’t get your balls in an uproar, for chrissakes. We can work this out so you’re happy, Frankie’s happy, everybody—”

  “No we can’t. There’s nothing to work out. I don’t want any part of it.”

  “You will when you hear the numbers, kid. I haven’t told you the numbers yet.” He jumped up, caught my arm, breathed his goat’s breath in my face. But he was no longer an amusing Hollywood crackbrain; he was a silly, uncaring, jerkoff exploiter and I did not want him touching me. I shoved his hand away as he said, “Fifty thousand for the story rights. Fifty K, right? And another twenty K for the consultancy, plus a slice of the profit pie. Two points, maybe three, how about that? Huh? Is that maple syrup on the old waffles?”

  Numbers, just numbers; and foolish words like lines of dialogue in a bad film about somebody trying to convince somebody else to make a bad film. I shook my head at him, started away.

  “No, wait, baby—”

  “Good-bye, baby.”

  I left him standing there among all the staring customers. And took myself straight out of the hotel and slowly downhill to where I had parked my car.

  There was just no way to make somebody like him understand. He floated on the surface of existence, in a boat made of money and make-believe. How could I make him understand that it was my life we had been discussing, my life, and that I could not turn it over to him? Nor any part of it—all the things that had shaped it, good and bad, and made me who and what I am. If I gave my life to him and Frankie Eldorp, they would distort it, cheapen and trivialize it, and in the end negate it: turn me into a chunk of meaningless prime-time boffo entertainment viewed by millions for two hours between Miller Lite and Mitsubishi commercials and promptly forgotten the instant it was off-screen. The real me would be forgotten soon enough after I was gone, but at least my life would stand as I had lived it in the real world, not as some minor-league Stallone had interpreted it in a phony world of glitter and painless death.

  A man’s life has little enough dignity. If he is any kind of man, he owes it to himself to preserve what little there is.

  Chapter 3

  JERRY POLHEMUS lived on Ninth Avenue in the inner Sunset, a few blocks from Golden Gate Park. His building had three units, one per floor, which meant that they were good-sized flats rather than apartments. He occupied the second floor, with at least two Asian families crowded together above him—there were a bunch of different Vietnamese or Laotian names on that mailbox in the vestibule—and a Hungarian couple below. One of the city’s typically heterogenous neighborhood residences.

  I pushed the button under Polhemus’s mailbox—four times. Nobody home. Almost eleven of a Saturday morning, and the weather was a little better today; the sun seemed to be threatening to shine through the gray, though if it did make an appearance, it probably wouldn’t stay around long. No weekend slugabed, Polhemus. Places to go and things to do.

  I turned out of the vestibule, onto the sidewalk. And a voice high above me said in broken English, as if God were just learning the language, “You look for Jerry?”

  I stopped and turned and tilted my head upward. A middle-aged Vietnamese or Laotian woman was leaning out of a third-floor window. In one hand was a dust mop that she was shaking vigorously; the wind caught the dust from it and swirled it around her head in a gray nimbus.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “I hear bell,” she said. “Very loud.”

  “Do you know where I might find him?”

  “Work. Saturday morning, work.”

  “Where?”

  “Carpet-clean place. You know?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Which one?”

  “Irving Street, not far. Over Nineteen Avenue.”

  “Can you tell me the name?”

  She quit shaking the dust mop and shook her head instead, just as vigorously. “Irving Street, over Nineteen Avenue.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Okay,” she said, and pulled her head back in and slammed the window shut for no particular reason that I could figure. Maybe she just liked to slam windows.

  I drove downhill to Irving, found a place to park, hunted up a public telephone booth, and looked in the Yellow Pages under “Carpets & Rugs—Cleaning and Repairing.” There was only one place on Irving: Basic Carpet Cleaners, “Put Your Rugs and Carpets in Caring Hands,” Saturdays 9:00-1:00. And the street number located it a couple of blocks west of 19th Avenue.

  When I walked into Basic Carpet Cleaners fifteen minutes later, a scowling fat guy in a suit and tie confronted me across a wide, bare counter. Prominent on the wall behind him was a sign that lied shamelessly, SERVICE WITH A SMILE.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “Does Jerry Polhemus work here?”

  “He does. Are you here about a carpet or rug?”

  “No. It’s a personal matter.”

  That deepened his scowl. “Jerry has work to do.”

  “I won’t take up much of his time.”

  “Is it important?”

  “The person I represent thinks so.”

  “Represent? What do you mean, represent?”

  The edginess Bruce Littlejohn had instilled in me was gone now, dissipated by routine activity. But there was enough of a residue left to lower my tolerance level to the point of perversity. So I smiled at the fat guy. Didn’t say anything, just smiled. It made him nervous; he was the sort who would always become nervous when people smiled at him for no reason, because he would think they had ulterior and probably nefarious motives.

  At length he said, “Jerry’s in the warehouse. You’ll have to use the alley entrance.”

  There was a closed door in the wall behind him that I would have bet led directly into the warehouse. I smiled at him some more, for ten seconds or so, until he began to twitch; then I said, “Thanks. I’ll be sure to mention you in my report,” and turned for the door.

  Behind me he said, “Report? What report?” And I went out, paused on the sidewalk, and smiled at him one last time through the glass.

  I walked around to the alley and down it to Basic’s backside. The warehouse doors were open, the opening filled with a van that had the company name and slogan painted on it. Inside the warehouse, two young guys in coveralls were working at a big steam-cleaning machine. The thing made plenty of noise, so there was no point in my trying to make myself heard above it. I squeezed inside past the van, maneuvered around stacked, tagged, and various-sized rolls of floor covering, and stopped near where the two guys were working.

  They both frowned at me. One of them shut off the machine and the other said, “Help you?” but not as if the prospect pleased him. This was one hell of a cheerful place of business. You could find more good humor in an undertaking parlor.

  “I’m looking for Jerry Polhemus.”

  “That’s me. What do you want?”

  “We talk in private?”

  “Why? What about?”

  “David Burnett.”

  The name rocked him a little—much more than it should have. That surprised me. So did the sudden nervous tic on his jaw, the flicker of something in his eyes that might have been fear. He was quick to get his defenses up, though. And quick to tell the co-worker that he’d be right back, then to lead me out into the alley.

  The first thing he said there was, “You a cop?”

  “Now why would you think that?”

  “You look like one.”

  “I’m a private investigator,” I said.

  “... No shit?”

  “You want to see my license?”

  Headshake. “Who you working for?”

  “David Burnett’s sister.”

  “Allyn? Why’d she hire a detective?”

  “She wants to know what drove her broth
er to suicide.”

  “I don’t know anything about it,” Polhemus said. “Christ, I told her that at the funeral.”

  I let him stew a little while I looked him over. Mid-twenties. Short, stocky without being fat. Good-looking in a weak, characterless way. Brown hair and a bushy brown mustache that seemed longer on one side than the other and gave his face a slightly lopsided appearance. His eyes were bright, nervous, like a bird’s eyes. Scared about something, I thought, and trying like hell to hide the fact.

  I said, “He ever mention suicide to you? Give you any indication he was thinking about taking his own life?”

  “Hell no. Why should he?”

  “So you were surprised when you heard the news?”

  “Sure I was. Wouldn’t you be surprised if your best friend offed himself?”

  That much was truth, I thought. Or half-truth, because he was also holding something back. You get so you can feel it when people lie or half lie to you.

  “Burnett strike you as troubled the week before his death?”

  “No. But I didn’t see much of him that week.”

  “He told his sister he lost all the money he won in Reno, and more besides. Gambled it away with the sports books. That what he told you?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, that’s what he said.”

  “What did you think?”

  “Think?”

  “Didn’t you find it odd?”

  Now his fear was beginning to show through the camouflage he’d thrown up. He seemed to realize it, and shoved his hands into the pockets of his coveralls as if he were afraid they might start to shake and really give him away. He wet his lips before he said, “What you mean, odd?”

  “His sister says he never gambled for high stakes. So why all of a sudden would he lay down big bets with the sports books?”

  “Greed, why else.”

  “Got a taste of big money and wanted more.”

  “Yeah. Dave was a greedy bastard.”

  “Bastard? I thought he was your best friend.”

  “Sure he was. So?”

  “Then why call him a greedy bastard?”

  “Because he was. You don’t have any pals who’re greedy?”

  “A couple. But I wouldn’t refer to them as bastards if they’d killed themselves last week.”

  No answer. He was literally biting his tongue.

  I said, “You and Dave have some kind of falling out?”

  “No. What makes you think that?”

  “Over money, maybe? The money he won up in Reno?”

  “I told you, no.”

  “You were with him when he hit the Megabucks jackpot.”

  “So what?”

  “One of the big casinos, was it?”

  “Yeah. One of the big casinos.”

  “Which one?”

  “Coliseum Club. What difference does that make?”

  “Lot of fanfare in places like the Coliseum Club when there’s a big jackpot payoff,” I said. “Plenty of glory for the winner. The guy he happens to be with, though, gets zip.”

  “That’s for fuckin’ sure.”

  “But Dave was your buddy. He probably gave you a cut of his winnings—a small slice of the pie, at least a few crumbs. That how it was, Jerry?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Or maybe he didn’t give you anything at all. Maybe that’s why you called him a greedy bastard.”

  “I said it’s none of your goddamn business!” His voice had taken on a shrill edge.

  “And then he blew the whole wad,” I said. “And ran up a debt besides. He borrowed money from his sister to help pay it off. He hit you up for a loan too?”

  “No.”

  “Would you have given him money if he had?”

  “I don’t have any to loan out.”

  “Uh-huh. So what do you think? You think he killed himself because he was in deep and couldn’t raise enough to pay off the sports books? Or did he have some other reason?”

  “I told you, I don’t know!”

  “Seems out of character for a happy-go-lucky guy to knock himself off just because he loses money gambling, gets himself in debt. You’d think his philosophy would be easy come, easy go. Unless money meant a lot to him?”

  “Everybody likes bucks.”

  “Some more than others. How about you?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “What would you do if you got your hands on two hundred thousand bucks? How would you spend it?”

  I had worked him into a pretty good state: fear, confusion, anger. He couldn’t seem to keep his feet still; shuffled them around like a kid with a full bladder. But you can push somebody just so far. Then he either pushes back or breaks and runs.

  Polhemus was the kind that broke and ran. “That’s enough bullshit questions,” he said. “You’re not a cop, you’re nobody, I don’t have to talk to you.”

  “Why not, unless you’ve got something to hide?”

  “Leave me the hell alone,” he said. “You hear? You bother me again and I’ll call the cops on you.”

  There was no force or conviction behind the threat; it was nothing more than a lame exit line. He swung away from me and hustled himself back inside the warehouse.

  Lies and half-truths, I thought as I walked around to where I had parked the car. Polhemus’s responses had been loaded with one or the other. But why? And why was he so frightened? It was possible that he had somehow managed to get hold of a portion of David Burnett’s jackpot winnings, and was covering up the fact—but then why would Burnett have lied to his sister about the sports books, sold back the car and presents he’d bought, borrowed a thousand dollars from her? I couldn’t see where a theft by Polhemus would explain Burnett’s suicide, either.

  Puzzling.

  Maybe it wasn’t such a simple, clear-cut tragedy after all.

  Chapter 4

  RUSSIAN HILL is one of the city’s oldest residential neighborhoods; and if you believe research studies, like the one some outfit did in the early seventies, it is also the choicest urban area in the country. Steep hills, odd little cul-de-sacs, sweeping bay views, easy access to downtown, the Financial District, and North Beach—and extortionate rents and condo purchase prices that nowadays keep out the riffraff. You can still find a few struggling writers, would-be artists studying at the Art Institute, aging hippies still living in their sixties dreamworld, but the high rents have forced them to share quarters in clusters and will eventually force them out altogether. Mostly, now, the Hill’s residents are Old Money and white-collar New Money, those young go-getters who would toss a glass of vintage Napa Valley chardonnay in your face if you called them Yuppies. The wealthy types might know—and tell you if they do—that in the 1890s the Hill was a mecca for the influential San Francisco literary crowd: Ambrose Bierce, Frank Norris, George Sterling. But they probably don’t know—and wouldn’t tell you if they did—that it was the site of the city’s first public hanging, back in the Gold Rush days. Or that their home or garden may have been built atop the graves of some murdered Russian sailors; according to legend, that was how the Hill got its name.

  The apartment David Burnett had shared with Karen Salter was on Russian Hill, not far from the old renovated firehouse on Green Street. But it was not in one of the fancy dowager buildings or shiny new high rises; it was in a structure that had probably been built between 1906 and 1910, since most of the original buildings on the Hill were destroyed in the big quake, and been denied a face-lift ever since. It was also situated above a dry cleaners, and surrounded by enough taller structures so that its windows would offer no particularly desirable view; and judging from the size of the building, the apartment itself wouldn’t be very large. All of these things would help keep the rent down to an affordable level. If Karen Salter had that rara avis, a fair-minded landlord, she might actually be one of the few Hill residents who was getting a bargain.

  Street parking on Russian Hill is always difficult; on Saturdays it is virtually impossible to fi
nd a legal space. So, because the world is a perverse place and sometimes the perversity works in your favor, I found a slot fifty feet uphill of the dry cleaners. Some idiot behind me didn’t want to let me park. He kept blowing the horn in his Porsche while I jockeyed into the space, and when the traffic going the other way thinned he roared around me and shouted out his window, “Stupid schmuck!” There had been a time, not so long ago, when I let people like him—the real stupid schmucks—prod me into an angry response. No more. I have a higher boiling point now. Much higher.

  The entrance to Karen Salter’s apartment was a recessed doorway between the dry cleaners and the building next door. The mailbox still had both their names on it—K. Salter, D. Burnett—which told me something about K. Salter. I rang the bell. And was about to ring it again when a female voice said through the squawk box, “Yes? Who is it?”

  I identified myself and told her why I was there, mentioning Allyn Burnett’s name. The voice said, “Oh, yes, just a second,” and I waited for ten before the lock-release buzzer sounded.

  Inside was a flight of stairs, at the top of which was a door. The door opened when I was halfway up and a young woman looked out, but it was dark in the stairwell and I couldn’t see her clearly until I got up to where she was. Twenty-six or -seven, attractive in a pug-nosed, gamin sort of way. Dark hair cut short and rumpled now, as if she hadn’t bothered to comb it this morning. Nor had she applied makeup of any kind, not even to cover the dark half-circles that formed cups for her eyes. Her small, round body was encased in blue jeans and an old Cal sweatshirt, both of which were splotched with paint and varnish stains. She also wore one rubber glove—the other was in the gloved hand, along with a drippy paintbrush. Waves of smell came off her and the brush: paint stripper, one of the stronger varieties.

  She let me have a brief impersonal smile and her ungloved hand. “Allyn called this morning. She said she’d hired a detective and that you might stop by to see me.”

  “I hope I haven’t come at a bad time.”

  “No, no. I’m refinishing a table. You don’t mind if I keep working while we talk? The gunk I’m using dries fast and if it gets hard I’ll have to start all over again. I’ve got the window open back there, so the smell isn’t too bad.”