Case File - a Collection of Nameless Detective Stories

by Bill Pronzini

  One of the bedrooms contained nothing at all. In the other one, on the nightstand beside the big double bed, was a small color photograph in a cardboard frame. It was of a girl about twenty, very blond, with bronzed skin and bright blue eyes; I thought she was probably Scandinavian. Across the lower left-hand corner, written in a neat feminine hand, were the words: For my Dale from his Brita. I slipped the photo out of its frame and put it into the pocket of my slacks.

  Back in the front room, I stood looking around one last time without seeing anything I had overlooked. My head throbbed dully. Well, all right. I didn't have much to go on, but I had started with less before. I picked up my bag, moved out into the thick heat that was Majorca in the early afternoon and went to find out what kind of trouble Dale Frost was in.

  Senor Pepe's had a rust-colored tile roof, whitewashed stucco walls and a lot of vine-draped arches inside and out. I threaded my way through a cluster of bamboo tables on the promenade in front, all of which were occupied by noisy tourists drinking gin-and-tonics and cuba libres, and went inside.

  Behind an L-shaped bar, a short, sandy-haired guy in his late twenties was filling a cooler with bottles of San Miguel beer. He had a clipped, sandy goatee and an air of sober industriousness. I stepped up to the bar and put my bag down and sat on one of the stools. When the sandy guy looked up at me, I said, "I'll take one of those cold, if you've got it."

  "I do," he said. He was British, or maybe Scottish; I couldn't tell which. He pulled another of the bottles from beneath the ice and popped the cap and poured a glass for me. I drank a third of it, took a breath and drank another third. It had been a long walk from the villa, and my throat was parched and my head felt as if it were full of drums.

  I asked the sandy guy, "Are you on here regularly?"

  "Aye. I'm the owner."

  "Then you probably know a young fellow named Dale Frost. An American, rents a villa up on Calle Lluch."

  "Sure, I know Dale. He used to come in most every night. One of my best customers."

  "Used to come in?"

  "Well, I haven't seen much of him lately."

  "Why is that?"

  He shrugged. "I couldn't tell you. They come and they go."

  "How long ago did Dale stop being a regular?"

  "About three weeks ago." He gave me a quizzical look.

  "Why would you be asking?"

  "I represent his father," I said. "There's been a small misunderstanding—or maybe I should say a lack of communication."

  "Oh, I see."

  He didn't see at all, but I was not going to enlighten him. I said, "Do you have any idea where Dale has been keeping himself these past few weeks?"

  "Sorry, no, I don't."

  "Do you know any of his friends?"

  "Dale has a lot of friends, mister," the sandy guy said. "Popular chap, good-looking, plenty of money."

  "Anyone in particular?"

  "Male or female?"

  "Anyone who might be close to him."

  He smiled and winked at me. "Dale has been close to several ladies, if you know what I mean."

  I took the snapshot of the young, tanned blond girl out of my pocket and let him see it. "Is she one of them?"

  "Aye," he said. "That's Brita. Quite a bird, that one. Dale brought her in here a couple of times."

  "Where can I find her?"

  "She works in a Swedish bar in Magalluf. The Little John."

  "Where would Magalluf be?"

  "Just up the road. Half a kilometer."

  "How do I find the Little John?"

  "It's on the main street. You can't miss it."

  I paid him for my beer, got him to give me a few other names of people Dale knew and went out into the heat again. I had noticed a line of taxis in the village center; I walked back there and got into the nearest one and had the driver take me to Magalluf, which looked to be an extension of Palma Nova. He let me off before a small restaurant-bar set into a line of shops on an esplanade well back from the street.

  A young, dark-haired guy with a thick mustache that formed three sides of a frame for thin lips was behind the bar inside. I asked him if Brita was there.

  "Yes, she's here," he said in Swedish-accented English.

  "Could I talk to her?"

  He shrugged and went away through a door. I walked over to a row of booths against the right-hand wall, sat down in one of them. I lit a cigarette and rubbed sweat from my forehead with a napkin and wished it wasn't so damned hot. I was not used to this kind of heat in October.

  After a couple of minutes the door behind the bar opened and the dark-haired guy came out and held it for the girl just behind him. She was taller than I expected from the photograph, a little fuller in the hips; she wore a miniskirt and a frilly blouse and gold-loop Gypsy earrings. I tried not to stare at her legs as she came from behind the bar and slipped into the booth opposite, but they were very good legs. And a man never stops looking.

  "I am Brita," she said. She brushed a heat-dampened wisp of blond hair away from her eyes. "Lars said you wish to talk to me?"

  "Yes. About Dale Frost."

  Her smile turned sad. "Dale?"

  "Do you mind?"

  "No, I guess I don't."

  I told her my name and where I was from and that I represented Dale's father. Then I said, "I understand you know Dale pretty well, Brita."

  "Well," she said, "I was going to bed with him."

  It was such a matter-of-fact statement that it made me think about generation gaps and wonder how I would feel about today's sexual freedom if I had ever gotten married and raised a daughter. I lit another cigarette to have something to do with my hands.

  "You're not . . . seeing Dale anymore?" I asked her.

  "No."

  "How long has it been since you've talked to him?"

  "About two weeks, I think."

  "Why did the two of you break up?"

  "It was because of this boy he became friends with."

  "What boy is that?"

  "An American boy like Dale. Peter York."

  Peter York was one of the names the sandy guy at Senor Pepe's had given me. "You don't like this York, Brita?"

  "No. Not his girlfriend either, always talking silly. They make a fine couple, I think, with their green eyes like jungle cats. I hated to look at them; they made me cold."

  "Did you and Dale have an argument about York?"

  She nodded emphatically. "I told him if he kept Peter as a friend, I didn't want him to be my friend anymore. I told him he was going to get in a lot of trouble because of Peter, but he wouldn't listen. He just got mad and went away."

  "What kind of trouble did you mean?"

  She studied me for a couple of seconds. "I guess I better tell you," she said. "I should have told somebody before this, but I didn't know who. I don't want Dale to be hurt; he's a nice boy, except for that Peter."

  "What about Peter?"

  "I think he takes drugs," Brita said.

  "You think so—but you're not sure?"

  "No. I heard some things."

  "What sort of things?"

  "About drug parties."

  "Do you know what kind of drugs?"

  "Marijuana. And maybe that LSD."

  "Did Dale ever use them?"

  "Not with me. Not until he met Peter, maybe."

  "You're afraid Peter talked him into it?"

  "Yes. He wouldn't listen to me, but he listened to Peter, I think."

  Yeah, I thought. And maybe that was why Dale had needed that ten thousand dollars so urgently. You can buy a hell of a lot of pot or speed or LSD with that kind of money—and the people who sell it are always in a hurry for their payoff.

  I asked Brita, "Where does Peter live?"

  "In a chalet near Cala Ratjada."

  "Where's that?"

  "On the other side of the island."

  "How do I get there?"

  She told me. "Dale is a nice boy," she said then. "Really, he is. I hope you can make him
understand about Peter, about those drugs."

  "So do I," I said.

  The harbor at Cala Ratjada was studded with better than a hundred small fishing smacks and trollers, bobbing at anchor on the still blue water. They supplied most of the island's fresh seafood—prawns, squid, raya, denton, a dozen other varieties. That information had been provided, along with a small Spanish Seat sedan and a topographical map of Majorca, by an English-speaking guy in the rental agency I'd located in Palma Nova.

  The cross-island drive had taken an hour and a half; the road was pretty good, but only two lanes, and there had been a lot of traffic. I circled through the fishing village-cum-resort, followed the road along the rim of rocky promontories on the northern side of the harbor. It was late afternoon now, and the setting sun was laying a path of golden fire across the open sea as I swung out onto the Pta. des Farayos.

  There wasn't much out there. The road was unpaved, little more than a rutted lane; barren rock and dry grass and a few stunted cypress trees dominated the terrain. Brita had said that York's chalet was the middle one of three balanced on the cliffs there.

  When the first rust-colored tile roof came into sight, I pulled the Seat off onto the verge and stepped out. A gentle sea breeze had come up, and there was a crisp brackish smell in the air; it was not nearly as hot as it had been in Palma and Palma Nova.

  I walked up the trail until I got to where I could see the three chalets. They were built of rough stone blocks, with glass-bead curtains serving as doors on two of them and green louvered shutters over the facing windows. I stood in the shade of a cypress tree and studied the one in the middle. It seemed deserted. There was no sign of a car, of people; nothing stirred at the other two cottages.

  I lit a cigarette and waited there for a couple of minutes while I smoked it. Then I went across to the center chalet, stopped in front of the curtained doorway. Evidently nobody worried much about burglary out here. But then, with the political situation in Spain being what it was, lawbreakers would be dealt with harshly by La Guardia Civil. Very harshly. Which was one more reason why I needed to find and talk to Dale Frost as soon as possible.

  "Hello inside!"

  The beads made a faint tinkling sound in the sea breeze; that was all there was to hear. I hesitated for a moment, and then I said to hell with it and pushed aside the bead strings and stepped inside.

  It was dim in there with the shutters closed. I could make out a table, four chairs, a blackened hearth with a lot of bottles and pottery on a board shelf above it. Through an archway on my right was a bedroom with a couple of unmade cots and not much else. Straight ahead were two more archways, with what looked to be a small kitchen set between them; beyond the second one I could see a balcony jutting out toward the Mediterranean.

  I moved slowly across the main room and stepped out onto the balcony. But only by two paces; then I stopped and backed up into the arch. I have a problem with vertigo, and there seemed to be nothing underneath the balcony except five hundred feet of empty space and then the rocky shore. There wasn't much to see out there anyway -just a couple of towels spread out for sunbathing and a woman's floppy straw hat. Off to my right, the sun-fire was almost blinding in its reflection off the ocean.

  A quick search of the bedroom netted me nothing either. But while I was conducting it, something jarred in my memory. I was standing there thinking hard on it when the glass-bead curtains clicked suddenly in the other room.

  When I went out there, he was standing just inside the doorway, staring in my direction. On his right and a little behind him was a girl with braided hair, dressed in shorts and a sleeveless blouse and wearing an Indian headband. I hadn't heard the roadster drive up; I thought that they must have parked it back where I'd left the rented Seat.

  The kid wore the same outfit he'd had on earlier in the day, and his long black hair was wind tangled. In his right hand was the briefcase containing Millard Frost's ten thousand dollars.

  "Hello, Peter," I said.

  Peter York didn't move; his gaze was steady, his expression dispassionate. The girl clung to his arm, looking nervous and frightened.

  He said finally, "So you know."

  "Yeah. I know."

  "How?"

  "Something a girl named Brita told me today," I said. "About Peter York, and about how she didn't care for green eyes. You've got green eyes, sonny—like Spanish olives—but I'd be willing to bet Dale Frost doesn't."

  York said nothing. His hand tightened around the handle of the briefcase; he moved his feet apart a little.

  I said, "It was a clever little idea you had. Get Dale to tell you what you need to know about his father, put him out of commission, then send that overseas cable and sit back at his villa and wait for somebody to bring you the money. You must have wanted that ten thousand pretty bad not to wait four or five days for a bank transfer and then force Dale to pick it up for you."

  He watched me—sullen, silent.

  "You might have gotten away with it," I said, "If you hadn't panicked this morning. That was pretty stupid, you know, hitting me and grabbing the money. If you'd hung onto your nerve and made up some explanation for needing the cash, and forged Dale's signature on the release, I'd probably have been satisfied."

  The girl took a step forward. "Listen —"

  "Shut up, Nina," York told her.

  I said, "Where's Dale Frost?"

  "How should we know?"

  "Where is he?"

  "Blow it out your ass, fatso."

  "You little bastard, where is he!"

  I started to move as I spoke, and York dropped the briefcase and shoved the girl away. His right hand dropped to the pocket of his flared slacks. I sensed what he was going for, but he was quick and I only had time for two more steps before he came out with the knife. He held it extended in front of him—a long, thin switch knife that gleamed darkly in the shadowed room.

  I stopped moving. "What do you think that's going to get you, York?"

  "Freedom, that's what. Nina and me, we're making a good buy tonight in Palma—ten kilos of good Algerian hash – and nobody's going to stop us. With the customers I've got lined up, that ten thousand is worth five times as much on the streets. Fifty thousand is big money, man."

  "Big enough to kill for?"

  "Yeah—that big."

  "How about Dale Frost? You use that knife on him, too?"

  York was silent. But the girl, Nina, pushed frightened words into the stillness. "Dale's not dead; we didn't kill him. We tried to get him to go in on the hash deal with us. He said he'd think it over, and we had it all arranged, and then he wouldn't go through with it. We had to have the money, you see? There wasn't any other way to get it."

  "Where is he?"

  "The chalet next door. It's vacant, and we put him in there and doped him to keep him out of the way. But we're not going to kill him . . . ."

  "No?" I said. "Ask your boyfriend about that now."

  "Peter?" she said to York. "Peter, please, I don't want anything to do with murder!"

  "You'd better listen to her, York. Put the knife up."

  "Suppose you take it away from me." His face was white and tense. The girl kept on pleading, but for him she wasn't even there.

  He came toward me holding the knife out in front of him, palm turned up, moving the blade in slow little circles. I did not look at his face; you can't defend yourself against a knife by looking anywhere except at the knife. The muscles in my stomach were knotted, and I could feel the fear flowing through me like hot wax. A knife is the most terrifying of weapons.

  But I had anger, too—the dark, dangerous kind—and I stood my ground and let him come. I wanted him to think I was paralyzed by terror. His fingers were loose around the knife's handle; I watched them, waiting. When he made his move, the fingers would tighten in reflex an instant early.

  The sound of our breathing was harsh and unnaturally loud in the small room. Sweat rolled down from under my arms. I could feel a tic trying to sta
rt up below my left eye, but I didn't dare blink. Just that much time would give him —

  The fingers tightened; York made a noise in his throat and lunged forward with the knife.

  I twisted to one side, sucking in my belly, arching my back. The underhand slash cut through the thin material of my shirt, hung up there without breaking skin. I got his wrist in my left hand and his elbow in my right and brought my knee up and his arm down at the same time. There was a cracking sound; York screamed and the knife slid free of my shirt, dropped clattering to the floor. He went down to one knee beside it, but there was no more fight left in him. He didn't move as I kicked the knife to one side, then picked it up and closed it and put it away in my pocket.

  The girl came away from the wall where she'd been huddled, knelt beside York and tried to put her arm around him. He shoved her aside roughly, moaning; his eyes were dull and wet with pain. I went away from them, outside. Delayed reaction set in then, the way it always does after something like this: shaking, nausea, cold sweat. But it did not last long, and when it was over it purged the fear and the dark anger, and I was all right again.

  I went looking for the silver MG, found it not far from the Seat. I opened the engine compartment and jerked off the rotor and put that in my pocket, too. York and Nina wouldn't get far on foot before I reported to the Spanish authorities.

  Dale Frost was where the girl had said he would be, unconscious but breathing more or less normally. I spent a couple of minutes trying to bring him around, but whatever they'd doped him with, it was potent: his eyelids didn't flutter and he didn't make a sound. He was tied up with some heavy twine; I cut it loose with York's knife, then carried him down to the rented sedan and laid him on the back seat.

  I did not see York or the girl as I got into the Seat and drove away from there.

  Standing on the balcony of my hotel room in Palma the following night, I smoked a cigarette and looked out at the cars rushing along the brightly lighted Paseo Maritimo, at the harbor of Palma beyond. Far out, near the breakwater, I could see several night-fishing boats that were probably in search of anchovies; each of them had a single yellow lantern attached to a center mast, and from this distance they looked like sluggish fireflies on the black water.