Undercurrent nd-3

by Bill Pronzini

  Favor acknowledged and signed out, and Quartermain called through to Donovan at the Cypress Bay station and issued his surveillance request. The remainder of the five minutes went by silent and tense, and then Favor came on: negative. Quartermain instructed him to maintain his search until no longer feasible, then he slammed the handset back on the transceiver unit and took us out onto the highway again.

  I said, "Winestock won't go far, if running is what he's got in mind."

  "I know that, but I'm thinking about the bald man. Winestock might have led us right to him."

  "There's still time. It'll work out."

  "Sure," he said. "Sure it will."

  Beach Road came up on the right, and Quartermain slowed and made the turn. We went down the road past the trailer encampment and out onto the bluff face. The wood-sided station wagon of the morning was no longer parked there, and it was otherwise vacant. Quartermain edged up to the guardrail on the left and darkened the car.

  I said, "Dancer's car-what I think is Dancer's car- is gone. Maybe he's out somewhere, too, for one reason or another."

  "That's all we need."

  The wind blowing in from the sea was chill and damp, and the mist out of the horizon shifted and undulated low over the black carpet of the sea. I pulled up the collar on my suit jacket as we crossed to the set of stairs that led downward to the beach shack.

  We paused on the landing, looking down. The house was shrouded in darkness. You could see the breakers spitting foam and spray as they soared up and over the series of bird-limed boulders on either side of the structure, further down; and you could hear the dull throb of the sea's heart, and the sandy whisper of the wind, and the faint sighing of the old, sea-wormed boarding.

  "It looks deserted, all right," Quartermain said.

  "Do we go through the motions here, too?"

  "We might as well. You never know."

  We started down the sand-coated steps, moving carefully; the stairs were too narrow for more than one person at a time, and I led the way. We were a third of the way down, and I had my head up looking at the shack, when a flash of flickering red-orange illuminated the night sky immediately to the rear of it.

  I stopped, thinking: What the hell was that? The flaring reddish brightness diminished into a dull glow, and all at once I thought: Fire, oh Jesus, fire!

  I lunged forward, yelling it over my shoulder to Quartermain, running now and hanging onto the railing to keep from losing my balance on the sand-slick boards. I could hear Quartermain cursing steadily behind me. I jumped the last five steps, stumbling, bringing myself upright-and the running figure materialized to the left rear of the shack, racing diagonally toward the rock jetty on that side.

  Quartermain saw him at the same time, and he shouted "Stop! Halt there! Police officer!" as we pounded around the side of the shack and down the incline toward the ocean. The running figure slowed momentarily, looking back over his shoulder, and for that instant he was clearly outlined against the pale, starlit black of the sky. Short, wedge-shaped, thick-chested. And even at that distance, because he wore no head covering of any kind, I could see the faint gleam of his bare crown.

  The balding guy-the goddamn balding guy.

  He swung his head frontally again and kept on running, almost to the rocks down there. Quartermain began to shout again, more in rage than with any thought of the words having an effect. I stayed abreast of him several more steps, and then I thought about the shack and looked back and the glow had brightened somewhat, wavering and flickering. I made one of those instantaneous decisions you have to make in moments of crisis, and shouted to Quartermain, "I'm going to the house!"

  He ran on in his loose, shambling way-and the guy was at the rock jetty now, clambering up over the eroded boulders. I took myself out of it, turning, and ran to the sun porch at the rear of the shack, caught the log railing and lifted myself up and over. The drapes were still open across the plate-glass rear wall, and I could see the smoke billowing in there and the flames in a shimmering cherry-yellow pyre; Dancer's bookshelves, the entire left-hand wall, were ablaze.

  I went to the porch door, caught the knob and hit the wood paneling with my shoulder at the same time. It banged inward and I was inside, with my right arm up to protect my face. The searing heat of the flames washed over me, and the smoke burned like acid in my lungs, gagging me, taking away my breath. My eyes began to sting and water, and I slitted them, blinking rapidly, looking around the room. Nobody on the floor, nobody on the smoldering furniture-no sign of Dancer. A gasoline can lying to one side, flaming, told me all I needed to know about the origin of the fire.

  I ran across to the center hall, coughing violently now, and looked into the kitchen. Empty. I threw open the doors to the bedroom and bathroom, and there was no one in either of them; the place was unoccupied-and that told me something, too. I looked back into the front room, but the fire had begun to spread rapidly and the smoke and flames formed an impenetrable barrier; the roar of the inferno was deafening.

  Turning, I stumbled to the front door. It was key-locked, and the key was gone. I hit the panel a couple of times with my shoulder, but it failed to give. Panic formed in the pit of my stomach, clawing. I kicked it down and plunged through the bedroom door, with the smoke and the heat coming hungrily in after me, and got to the window and tugged at the sash and felt it yield and threw it all the way up. My fingers fumbled at the catch-lock on the shutters, snapped it free, and I shoved them apart and dragged myself over the sill and fell onto the sandy ground outside. Half crawling, half running, I got away from there and around onto the slope that fell away to the murmuring surf.

  I knelt with my head hanging down, coughing and retching and sucking cold salt air fishlike through my open mouth. When I could breathe again, when some of the burning pain subsided in my lungs, I got my head up and saw Quartermain running toward me from the direction of the near rocky jetty. He was alone, and I did not need to ask to know that he'd come up empty; but at least he appeared to be unhurt.

  He got to me and took my arm and helped me up. "Are you all right? Christ!"

  "I think… so."

  "Dancer?"

  "Not in there. It's empty."

  "Bastard got away. He went over the boulders and up a steep bluff down the way. I heard a car engine, and by the time I got up there he was gone. If I'd worn my goddamn gun, I might have had him-son of a bitch, anyway!"

  Panting, I pivoted and looked at the shack. Smoke rolled up into the misty sky in thick clouds, and you could see flames licking with curled orange tongues through the shingled roof. As I watched, the rear glass wall shattered from the intense heat, bursting smoke and glistening shards and more tongues of fire outward. There was nothing we could do; the place was a damned tinderbox.

  Quartermain's face looked hellish in the dancing light. "We'd better get up to the car before a spark catches the stairs," he said savagely, and we ran in a wide sweep toward the bluff and along it to the stairs. I could feel the heat again and taste the smoke as we scrambled up. I stopped on the landing, hanging onto the railing and looking down at the flaming shack; Quartermain continued on to the car, and a moment later I could hear him shouting into the transceiver's handset.

  I stayed where I was, letting the cool sea wind act as a balm on the heat-reddened surface of my face. Breathing was still a problem, but I thought that it would be all right after a while. A minute or two slid away, and I began to think about the blazing bookshelves and the can of gasoline and the emptiness of the shack, and what meaning those facts had. I turned and went over to the car.

  Quartermain was leaning wearily against the roof, the handset still in his fingers and the door open; his iron- colored hair was disarrayed, jutting up and out at angles from his scalp. I said, "I think I know why the fire was set, Ned."

  He moved his head in a quadrant and put his eyes on mine; they contained a thinly controlled fury. "Say it."

  "There was a can of gasoline in there; the bald guy dou
sed it over Dancer's bookshelves and touched them off. Dancer wasn't home, but the guy still set the fire-and because there were better places to soak up the gasoline, he had to have picked the bookshelves for a specific reason."

  Quartermain saw it immediately. "To destroy any copies of The Dead and the Dying Dancer might have had."

  "Yeah."

  "But why?"

  "He doesn't want us to read that book," I said. "There's something in it, something in the writing itself. It has to be that way. What the something is we'll know when we read the book-or he figures we will."

  "How does he know we haven't already read it?"

  "Maybe by my actions, and yours-the police. Maybe we'd be doing things differently if we knew why the book was important."

  Quartermain straightened, and his canted eyelids came down. "All right, then," he said. "We've got to read the book."

  "The sooner the better."

  "Where did you say Paige's copy was-the one I gave you?"

  "My unit at the Beachwood, on the nightstand."

  "Then we'd better get it."

  "Fast." I said. "Before something happens to that one, too."

  He called through to Donovan again; Favor had returned to the Cypress Bay station-there was still no report on Winestock-and Quartermain told him to get over to the Beachwood and into my cottage for the book. Favor said he was on his way.

  Leaning inside, Quartermain replaced the handset. Then we went over to the stairs again, and the shack was nothing more than a black-and-orange shell now; the roof had collapsed, and sparks drifted and flared in a brilliantine, joyless fireworks display. By the time the county fire equipment got there, not much would be left, not much at all.

  Quartermain said tightly, "If that bastard came here to get rid of copies of The Dead and the Dying, why wouldn't he be thinking about Dancer too? Dancer wrote the damned book."

  "He might have been. Maybe, if Dancer had been here, he was supposed to go up along with the shack." I paused grimly. "Or it could be he already got to Dancer, somewhere else."

  "I don't want to think about that possibility," Quartermain said. And then, with sharp frustration: "Goddamn it, I don't understand what's going on. I don't understand any of this. Who in God's name is that guy?"

  "Yeah," I said, "who?"

  I could hear ululating sirens in the distance, coming down from the north and then coming west from Highway 1 along Beach Road, very loud now. Pretty soon a couple of bright-red county pump engines and a fire marshal's car and a State Highway Patrol unit came out to fill the bluff face with darting light and screaming noise. I retreated to Quartermain's car, and he went over to talk to the marshal. Black-uniformed, white-helmeted men came off the trucks and went to work with hoses and pumping units, and after a time they began playing streams of pressurized water down onto the burning shack.

  I sat on the front seat of the car, with the door open and my feet on the ground. My chest was band-tight, but I could breathe all right now if I took the air in short, shallow inhalations. Pain rushed through my temples and behind my eyes, dull and heavy, and I felt vaguely nauseated.

  Quartermain came over finally, and I stood up. He said, "You look rough. How do you feel?"

  "I'll make it."

  "I can radio for a doctor."

  "I don't need one."

  "All right."

  We watched the firemen working with their hoses. The smoke drifting to the south and commingling with the incoming mist formed a curtain of black-flecked gray- ness over the stars. With the noise created by the men and the pump engines, and local residents attracted by the arrival of the fire units, I could no longer hear the sound of the surf. It would have been no comfort anyway.

  The transceiver set began to make crackling noises. Quartermain slid in under the wheel, motioning me around to the other side, and closed the door. When I got in on the passenger side, and shut that door, I could hear Favor's voice saying, "… here at the Beachwood now, Ned. Orchard gave me a key to the cabin, but once I got inside I could see that something was wrong. The rear glass door was open, and when I checked I found jimmy marks on the lock."

  Oh, I thought. Oh, oh, oh.

  Quartermain hit the Send switch. "What about the book?"

  "It's gone," Favor said.

  Fourteen

  We left the bluff face and Beach Road immediately, and drove to the Beachwood in Cypress Bay. The book was the only thing missing, nothing else had been touched, and it seemed obvious the balding man-it had to have been him, all right-had used the cover of darkness to come over the hedge or gate into the cottage's private rear garden. Favor had dusted the sliding door and the nightstand with his kit, but there were no prints; the guy had wiped everything clean. Quartermain told him to get in touch with a local artist named Vance, who did portrait work for them from time to time, and to have him waiting at the station to work up a drawing; then we drove over to Bonificacio Drive to talk to Beverly Winestock.

  Neither of us expected any help from her-she was too fiercely loyal to her brother for one thing; and I had my doubts he would have told her where he was going tonight-but Quartermain had to talk to her anyway. At the moment, there was no one else he could talk to.

  Beverly answered the door fully dressed-and still cool, still distant. But her eyes contained a touch of fear, and there were strain lines etched at the corners of her mouth. She was worried, apprehensive, and trying desperately not to show it. She noticed the condition of my face and clothing immediately, and what little color existed in her cheeks drained away. Had something happened, was Brad-?

  Quartermain told her, succinctly, about the fire-gutting of Dancer's cabin, and the reason for it, and the theft of Paige's copy of The Dead and the Dying from my motel cottage. None of it seemed to have much effect on her; it was, I thought, as if she knew her brother was involved in all of this, but not the why or the how of his involvement. Quartermain began to question her, but she gave him nothing in response. No, she didn't know where her brother had gone tonight; no, she knew of no connection between Brad and a man answering the description of the balding guy; no, she had no idea why Dancer's book was so important, she had never read it and she knew nothing about it. She wanted to know what it was we suspected Brad of, and Quartermain told her only that he seemed to have information which would assist the investigation into the death of Walter Paige and the location of the balding man. Well, she said, she didn't know anything about Paige's death and she was certain Brad didn't either, we were misguided if we thought he did. There was sincerity in her voice, but you could tell she was holding an intangible something back and would keep on holding it back as long as necessary to protect her brother.

  Quartermain gave it up, finally; we left her looking far more worried than she had already been, and drove to City Hall. The only thing cheering or positive waiting for us there was the news that Judith Paige had met her flight out of Monterey on time, had arrived safely at San Francisco International, and had been transported home to Glen Park by someone on the Airport Detail. Donovan had obtained the license number of Russell Dancer's car from Sacramento, and broadcast that as well as the description of Dancer that I had supplied, but there was no word as yet on man or vehicle. Winestock, too, was still among the missing. Quartermain had changed the surveillance request on him to another pick-up order, and had also posted a man at the Winestock house to bring him in if he happened to show up there undetected.

  The balding guy's description had also been broadcast to all local and state units, but the type of car he was driving was still unknown and there was not much chance of his being picked up until a picture of him could be circulated. Favor was waiting with the artist, Vance-a short, fat man with bright eyes-to take care of that.

  The four of us went to Quartermain's office, and I left them there to use his private bathroom and its stock of first-aid supplies. I stripped down to my underwear and washed off in cool water and put salve on a still-reddened area across my left cheekbone. Th
ere was not much I could do about the charred odor which permeated my clothing, but I brushed coat and trousers as best I could and washed a streak of dirt out of the front of my shirt. Then I dressed again and ate half a dozen aspirin for my headache and combed my hair and went in to join the others.

  We spent the next forty minutes working with Vance on a drawing of the balding guy. Quartermain had only glimpsed him briefly at Dancer's, but I had seen him fairly close up in the park the day before and I was able to supply enough details-and Vance was skillful enough- so that we came up with what I thought was a pretty good likeness. Once I was satisfied Vance could not improve his sketch, Quartermain told the artist to make printed copies for local distribution and to get the likeness on the wire to Sacramento for possible criminal identification. Vance nodded and left immediately.

  I sank wearily into the free armchair next to Favor, and Quartermain said, "You look pretty well frayed at the edges. Maybe you'd better go back to the Beachwood and try to get some sleep."

  I felt wrung out, but still uneasily keyed up and wide awake; the last thing I seemed to want was bed and rest. I said, "If it's all the same, I'll sit it out with you."

  "No objections," he said. "But it may be a long night."

  "It's been a long one already. I can stand it, I think."

  He called out for coffee and sandwiches, and the stuff arrived in a couple of minutes; they apparently had some kind of kitchen facility in the building. I tried one of the sandwiches without much interest, and then found I was hungrier than expected. I put away three of them and two cups of coffee.

  There had not been much talking done about things since Beach Road, although Quartermain had apparently briefed Favor while I was in the bathroom, and we were ripe for it now. Quartermain said to us, "Well, all right, what have we got altogether? We've got a dead man named Walter Paige; an unidentified woman who slept with Paige just before he was killed; a bald man who also saw Paige shortly before he was killed, who was seen with Brad Winestock, who set fire to Russell Dancer's home, who broke into the Beachwood, and who damned well wants to keep anyone from reading a twenty-year-old paperback mystery novel. We've got the book itself-or rather, we don't have it and we don't know why it's important; we don't have Winestock, either, or Dancer. And then there's Paige trying to rent a vacant store in Cypress Bay for some unknown reason; and two local families acting peculiar, if nothing else, about their relationship with the dead man; and a missing writer who had some kind of trouble with the dead man six years ago; and Winestock's sister covering up in some way for her brother. Add it all together and what does it make? Nothing but a goddamn pot of confusion. So how do we make sense out of it? What's the common denominator? The book?"