Case File - a Collection of Nameless Detective Stories

by Bill Pronzini

  I told him — as much as he needed to know right away. It took him a couple of minutes to believe me, but when I showed him the photostat of my investigator's license and told him what he would find in the wreckage, he was convinced. He left me to use his car radio, because the other cop was still at the wrecked VW and yelling for an ambulance and a tow truck; Paige and his partner were wedged inside, and he couldn't tell if they were dead or alive.

  I was pretty shaky for a while, but by the time the ambulance and the tow truck arrived I was all right. A couple of guys went to work on the VW with blowtorches. When they got Paige and the other one out, they were still alive but cut up and unconscious; Paige had a broken leg, too. The ambulance took them away to the nearest emergency hospital.

  The county officers escorted me to the police station in South San Francisco, where I made a formal statement. None of the cops was too pleased that I had given chase after the robbery, instead of notifying the law like a good citizen was supposed to do, but they didn't make an issue of it. They let me go on home after a couple of hours.

  I had bad dreams that night. But they could not have been any worse than the dreams Judith Paige would be having . . . .

  In the morning I learned, through my friend Eberhardt at the Hall of Justice, that Paige was an ex-con — four years at San Quentin for armed robbery — who'd figured that his job as a real estate salesman wasn't paying off and wasn't likely to. Two months ago, he'd reestablished contact with another armed robber he'd met in prison, and they had worked out the liquor store heists. The other guy's name was Stryker.

  The rest was about as I'd figured it. Stryker, alert and strung out after the holdup, had spotted me coming out of the lot after them. They'd figured me for a heroic-citizen type, and at first they'd thought of trying to outrun me; but the VW didn't have all that much power, they had no idea how good a driver I was and they didn't want to risk alerting a cop by exceeding the speed limits. So they'd hit on Cynthia Street — and although they refused to admit it to the police, they would have killed me if they'd succeeded in forcing me off the road.

  As for why Stryker had been on foot that night — and why they'd used Paige's VW, with its distinctive WALLY P license plate, instead of Stryker's car — the reason was so simple and ironic that it made me laugh sardonically when I heard it. Stryker lived down the Peninsula, near South San Francisco, and he was married, and his wife had insisted on using their car to attend an audition: she was a singer, and there was a job she badly wanted in the city. So he'd given in, notified Paige and then had her drop him off at the shopping center on her way into San Francisco.

  Crooks, I thought. Christ!

  There was irony, too, in the fact that Paige had apparently been faithful to Judith all along. He had married her because he loved her, or had some kind of feeling for her. If she hadn't suspected him of playing around, and come to me, he and Stryker might have carried on their string of liquor store heists for quite a while before they screwed up and got themselves caught.

  The police had been the ones to break the news to Judith Paige last night; better them than me. But I knew I had to see her again anyway: it was one of those things you have to do. So I drove out to the Parkside district late that afternoon and spent twenty minutes with her — twenty long minutes that were not easy for either of us.

  She told me she was going to file for divorce and then go home to Idaho, which struck me as the wisest decision she could have made. She would meet another guy there someday, and she'd get remarried, and maybe then she would be happy. I hoped so.

  I would never see her again in any case, but the future would still bring another Judith Paige. There is always another Judith Paige for somebody in my business. One of these days she would walk into my office, and I would hear the old story again — the old, sad, sordid story.

  Only that next time it would probably be true.

  SIN ISLAND

  When the Iberian Airlines jet came in sight of the Balearic island of Majorca, ninety miles off the southern coast of Spain, I took my nose out of the pulp I'd been trying bleary-eyed to read and put it over next to the window glass. Far below, the island sat basking in the cobalt blue of the Mediterranean like a huge amulet reflecting the early-morning October sun. I could see a jagged, pine-covered mountain range running along the western peninsula; deep green valleys and terraced hills and sheer cliffs falling away to small inlets and strips of white beach; an almost symmetrical patchwork of green and brown fields running through the interior.

  I yawned and stretched and rubbed at my gritty eyes. It had been a long trip, close to twenty-four hours all told — San Francisco to London, London to Madrid, Madrid to Majorca's capital city of Palma — and I had never been able to sleep much on airplanes. But now that it was almost at an end, I began to perk up a little. It wasn't every day that I got to go someplace halfway around the world.

  The buildings of Palma came into view as we banked low over the water and began our landing approach: old-fashioned, dun-colored architecture, both Moorish and Spanish, interlaced with modern, steel-and-glass office and apartment buildings and dozens of high-rise luxury hotels ringing the wide sweep of the harbor. Pretty soon the dusty tan of the Son San Juan Airport appeared ahead of us. I watched the runway rush up to meet us, felt the jar as the wheels touched down.

  Well, I thought, here you are, guy. Sin Island, the playland of Europe, home of the Jet Set and the Idle Rich. Wine, women and a year-round mean temperature of sixty-five degrees. Are the stories they tell true? Is it really all that easy to get laid here?

  As we rolled to a stop near the terminal, I wondered if my bank account was sturdy enough to stand three or four days at one of those luxury hotels I'd seen from the air. If everything went well in Palma Nova, the job that had brought me here would be finished in a few hours and I would be on my own; and the return-trip ticket in my coat pocket was paid for and good anytime. A couple of days of lying in the sun, of finding out whether or not a middle-aged, bearish guy with a beer belly could attract some female companionship, was not too much of a vacation to give myself. After all, the chances were I'd never have another opportunity like this one.

  I was still a little disbelieving of my good fortune. Thirty-six hours ago I had been sitting in my office in San Francisco, staring out the window at a threatening sky and wondering where the Indian summer we'd been promised was, when an attorney named Bathsgate called; he wanted to know if I had a valid passport, and if so, would I be available for a job which entailed an immediate trip to Europe. I told him I had a passport — I had applied for it a few years ago for an abortive trip to Central America and used it once to go to West Germany on a job — and said I was available, all right, depending on what it was I was supposed to do in Europe. He gave me an address up on Russian Hill and told me I would be expected within the hour.

  The address turned out to be one of those imposing, turn-of-the-century mansions clinging majestically to the fog-shrouded hill; in clear weather it would command an impressive view of the Bay. A butler who must have been seventy and who had skin like fine old parchment let me in, conducted me up a marble staircase and into a darkened bedroom.

  The man lying propped up in the bed was about the same age as the butler, with haggard gray features and sunken cheeks and eyes that had known a lot of pain. A wheelchair, faintly grim in its emptiness, sat beside the bed. The butler announced me, and when he was gone the man in the bed said, "I am Millard Frost."

  It surprised me a little. Millard Frost was a multimillionaire and a dominant figure in West Coast shipping for more than forty years, founder of Frost Lines, Inc. He had once been strong, forceful, outspoken, but this sick old man was just a shadow of that dynamic individual. As I took the chair he indicated near the foot of his bed, I remembered that he had been stricken with some kind of spinal disease about two years before, leaving him bedridden.

  He had, he said, what he hoped to be a simple reason for wanting the services of a private
detective; you could hear in his voice the echoes of the strength and force of will he'd once had. I sat with my hat on my knees and listened attentively. Frost went on to say that I had been chosen by Bathsgate, his attorney, on the basis of my record of integrity and discretion, and because I was fully bonded. Men who operated major corporations, who were in the public eye, could ill afford the wrong kind of publicity and would not tolerate dishonesty. Did I understand?

  I said I did.

  From the night table at his elbow, he took a small sheet of flimsy paper that he identified as an overseas cable. He had received it from his son, Dale, an hour before I was summoned. He handed it to me with thin, gnarled fingers and told me to read it.

  It said:

  DAD NEED TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS CASH URGENT. NO TIME TO WAIT FOR BANK TRANSFER CAN SOMEBODY BRING SOONEST PLANE. WILL EXPLAIN LATER. DALE.

  Frost began talking again as soon as I lifted my eyes from the cable. He explained that Dale was twenty-two and had graduated that June from one of the Ivy League colleges back East; but before accepting an executive position with Frost Lines, Inc., he had wanted to spend a year traveling around Europe — a sort of youthful last fling before settling down to the sobriety of the business world.

  Dale had entered Spain toward the end of July, after a period in France and England. Majorca was an attractive lure, and he'd fallen in love with the island; he had written to his father that he would be staying on there for an indefinite period, that he had rented a villa in Palma Nova, one of the sun-and-fun areas on the southern coast. Since then he had corresponded faithfully, once a week, if only a line or two; the last letter had arrived three days ago. It had given no indication that the youth was in any financial difficulties. His regular monthly allotment, which I assumed to be substantial enough although Frost did not mention the sum, had seemed to be taking care of his needs more than adequately.

  One part of my job was to deliver the ten thousand dollars Dale had asked for; even without explanation, the fact that his only son needed the money was enough for Millard Frost. But Frost did want to know what was behind the sudden request, and that was the second part of my job: to find out, directly or indirectly, and to let him know immediately by telephone. For these two things, Frost would buy my round-trip plane tickets, incur any necessary expenses and pay me five hundred dollars besides.

  I took the job without even having to think about it.

  Frost had already authorized one of his banks to have the ten thousand delivered to him, and a messenger showed up with it a few minutes later. The old man counted the money, returned it to the chain-lock briefcase it had come in and handed it over to me; I was not to let it out of my sight until it was delivered. Then he got on the phone and ordered somebody to make the ticket bookings with the airlines, to send a wire to Dale letting him know someone was coming. And then he gave me the address of Dale's villa and two hundred dollars in cash for expenses.

  He did not say anything else to me, or offer to shake my hand. I left him staring out the bedroom window at the overcast sky, hiding his feelings behind his mask of suffering . . . .

  I'd had to clear Spanish Customs in Madrid when I came off the London flight, and I'd been a little worried about it at the time; if they opened the briefcase and saw the ten thousand dollars, there were liable to be questions and delays, even though I had an explanatory letter prepared by Millard Frost for just that reason. But all the Customs officers had checked had been my passport. Here on Majorca, nobody bothered to do even that much, since the Iberia flight was from Madrid and Majorca was a Spanish possession.

  I went straight from the plane to the baggage-claim area and picked up the one suitcase I'd had time to pack. At an exchange booth, I traded a fifty-dollar bill for close to 3,500 pesetas. Then I walked out to where a line of taxis waited in front of the terminal. I poked my head through the open passenger window of the first one in line and asked the driver if he spoke English. He said, "A little bit, senor," and I said, "Good enough," and got into the back seat and told him where I wanted to go.

  It was pretty hot for October; we rode with the windows rolled down — automobile air conditioning was probably a luxury few people could afford over here—and I took in the sights like any other tourist. Palma Nova was some twenty-five kilometers from the airport, on the western end of the Bahia de Palma. Traffic was heavy, but the Spaniards seemed to drive with a certain amount of disregard for life and limb, and my driver was no exception. We made it out there in about twenty minutes.

  It was an attractive if touristy village: streets and galleries lined with expensive souvenir and curio shops, a couple of discos, a profusion of sidewalk bars and cafés, and a dozen or so hotels similar to the ones in Palma. On the left was the beach, long and narrow and jammed with near-naked humanity ranging in skin tones from pure white to an almost gold-black.

  Near the cutout circle that served as the village center, we turned off to the right and climbed up into low brown hills overlooking the sea. The driver made a couple more turns, then swung onto a short, graveled dead-end street. At its end, a small tile-roofed villa, its facade covered with purple bougainvillea, sat partially hidden behind a high stone wall. There was a gate in the wall off to one side, and a silver MG roadster sitting on the drive inside, pointed toward the Street; Millard Frost had told me Dale had bought the MG in England and brought it to Spain on the Southampton-Bilbao car ferry.

  I paid the taxi driver a couple of hundred pesetas, added another fifty for a tip and went in through the gate. On the porch, I rang the bell. The door opened right away, and I was looking at a tall, thin youth wearing a mod-design shirt and a pair of flared slacks with a wide and ornate leather belt. His black hair was long and a little unkempt. Eyes like a pair of Spanish olives flicked over me, over the briefcase in my left hand.

  I said, "Dale Frost?"

  "Yes. You're from my father?"

  "That's right." I introduced myself, set down my suitcase and gave him my hand. He took it, released it almost immediately and stepped back a little.

  "Did you bring the money?"

  "I brought it. Do you mind if I come in?"

  "Why?"

  "I'd like to talk to you for a minute."

  "I've got things to do," he said. "I don't have time to talk."

  "Come on, Dale. I won't take up much of your time. And I'll need you to sign a release for the money, to prove that I delivered it."

  He hesitated. Then he said, "All right, come in, then," without any enthusiasm for the idea.

  Inside, it was dark and a little cooler. The furnishings were sparse; a long refectory table took up most of one-half of the room lengthwise. Through an archway I could see a terrace, and beyond it in the distance the sparkling blue of the Mediterranean. I said, "You wouldn't happen to have a beer, would you? I could sure use one."

  "Sorry, no."

  "Well, I'll take anything you've got that's tall and cold."

  "I don't have a thing, I'm sorry." He wiped the palms of his hands on his slacks. "Look, mister, I don't mean to be rude or anything, but I really have got things to do. Can we get this over with? You can get a beer or something in one of the cafés down on the strip."

  I studied him for several seconds without speaking, watching his eyes; he kept avoiding my gaze. He's not only nervous, I thought, he's scared. "Your father's worried about you, Dale," I said. "He thinks you might be in some kind of trouble."

  "I'm not in any trouble."

  "Why do you need ten thousand dollars so badly?"

  "That's none of your business."

  "No," I said, "but it is your father's business."

  "I'll discuss it with him when the time comes."

  "I think he'd like you to discuss it with me."

  "Is that what he said?"

  "He wants to be sure everything is all right."

  "I told you, everything is fine."

  "Then you shouldn't mind telling me why you need so much cash."

  "I don't
have to tell you anything," he said angrily. "Why don't you just give me my money and leave me alone?"

  "My instructions from your father," I said, stretching the truth a little, "were to find out why you need it first."

  "I don't believe you. I know my father better than that." He took a step toward me. "Give me my money."

  "Look, son —"

  He took another step and punched me quick and hard just under the left eye. With his other hand, he plucked at the briefcase and pulled it out of my fingers as I staggered backward. My calves hit the low, hammered-copper top of a coffee table, and I lost my balance and went over it and down. The back of my head cracked into the linoleum flooring; pain erupted behind my eyes, blurred my vision. I rolled over and pushed up onto my hands and knees, shaking my head, hearing the front door slam.

  I got unsteadily to my feet, put a hand up to where he'd hit me; the fingers came away bloody. By the time I got to the front door and threw it open, the silver roadster was just shooting out of the drive with its tires making banshee noises on the pavement. It skidded to the right and was gone behind the high front wall.

  I stood there for some time, holding onto the door, until I could no longer hear the MG's engine. Then I went back inside and hunted up the bathroom and inspected my cheek in the mirror. There was a gash in it a half-inch long, trickling blood. I found some antiseptic and a gauze bandage in the medicine cabinet and fixed the cut up so that the bleeding stopped. The place where my head had struck the floor was sore to the touch, and I had a hell of a headache, but there was nothing I could do about that. There weren't any aspirins in the cabinet or anywhere else on the premises.

  The villa had five rooms—two bedrooms, the front room, the bathroom and a kitchen. From an old roll top desk in the front room, I dredged up a monthly statement from a Palma Nova café called Senor Pepe's; it was for a substantial sum, and I gathered from the itemization that Dale spent a good deal of his time there. I made a mental note of the address.