Undercurrent nd-3

by Bill Pronzini

  "That's the way it looks for now," I said. "It's at least a major part of the key, although it might not necessarily explain Paige's woman's part, or Paige's death for that matter."

  "You don't think the bald guy killed Paige?"

  "It's not a certainty, especially now that he's gone to so much trouble to suppress copies of Dancer's book. If he killed Paige, why didn't he take the book out of Paige's bag on Saturday? It was sitting there in plain sight."

  "He might have been too intent on murder to notice it," Favor said. "Or, if his motive had nothing directly to do with the book itself, he might not have thought about it until later on."

  "The woman could even be his motive," Quartermain said, "assuming the possibility that she was his property and Paige was cutting him out. Sure, the two of them were buddy-buddy in the park, but the bald man could have gone to the Beachwood later for some reason, caught Paige and the woman together, lost his head, and killed Paige in a jealous fury."

  "Another possibility could be that the woman is entirely innocent of anything except sleeping with Paige. His death could have been the result of a falling out with the bald man, something that happened between them after the woman left Paige's cottage-and, as you say, Ned, despite their apparent friendliness in the park. Something connected with the book, maybe."

  Quartermain nodded thoughtfully. "That book," he said, and looked at me. "Did you happen to read any of it this morning?"

  "The jacket blurb and the first five pages of text," I answered. "That's all."

  "Enough so you can tell us what the thing's about?"

  "Not really. As far as I know, this guy comes home from the Korean War and gets mixed up with a bunch of hoods and some hard-assed dames; one of the women, I gathered, talks him into some sort of double-cross and the two of them go on the run with two hundred grand."

  "There's not much in that, is there?"

  "Not much."

  "Well, what about the characters? Recognizable as anybody from around here-any of the involved parties? That could be what this is all about; Dancer could have written about some of our local people, thinly disguised, and opened some closets in the bargain…"

  "I don't think so," I said. "The book is almost twenty years old, remember-and Paige, for example, was in his early thirties and the others are all pretty much in the same general age bracket. And the novel's protagonist and the first of the women seemed standard types-no special characteristics."

  Quartermain finger-combed his hair tiredly. "All right, the hell with it for now. Let's look at some other things. For instance, how the guy knew you had a copy of the book at the Beachwood."

  "He had to have been tipped off about it," I said. "There's no other way he could have known. I took it from here directly to the motel this morning, and I doubt if I was being watched at the time."

  "Who knew you had it?"

  "I mentioned it to everyone I talked with, but as far as I can remember, the only one I told that it was in my possession was Beverly Winestock."

  "I thought as much. She told her brother, and Winestock told the bald guy-probably by telephone, either just before or just after we paid our first visit to the Winestock house. Once he knew you had the book and that questions were being asked about it, he figured it was only a matter of time before it was read, so he went after Paige's copy and any that Dancer might have had."

  "Which means he knew beforehand that Dancer lived in this area," I said. "Winestock might have told him, or Paige, or he could know Dancer personally even though Dancer claims not to know him."

  "Where do you think Winestock went tonight? The bald guy was at the Beachwood and down doing the job on Dancer's place."

  "Maybe to wait for him to come back," Favor said. "Monterey, since that's where I lost Winestock, or somewhere north or east of here-not Cypress Bay, though."

  I shifted in my chair. "There's a pattern to this thing somewhere, a kind of wheel with Paige and that book and the bald man as the hub, and Winestock and Beverly Winestock and the Lomaxes and the Tarrants-some of them, at least-as the spokes. It's nebulous as hell, but it's there. If we only had the book…"

  "Or Dancer," Quartermain said. "Listen, you collect pulp magazines. How easy would it be to dig up another copy of The Dead and the Dying, assuming Dancer can't or won't help us? How fast could it be done?"

  "An obscure paperback title like that-it might take considerable time and effort. I know a couple of book dealers in San Francisco that specialize in magazines and used paperbacks. If they don't have it in stock-and chances are they wouldn't-they could put a line out to other dealers or to collectors of crime fiction who might have it or know where it could be gotten. All of which would take time, as I said. And I've got the feeling time is an important factor; the bald guy has got to know we'll dig up a copy of the book eventually, and yet he still went to a hell of a lot of trouble tonight to get rid of immediately available copies."

  "I thought of that, too, and it only complicates things that much more. How the hell could a time element enter into it?"

  "No ideas," I said, "and no guesses."

  "Ditto," Favor said.

  Quartermain slumped back in his chair; the purplish bags under his deep-set and slant-lidded eyes made him look like a kind of Oriental hound. "If Dancer doesn't turn up by morning, and with the right answers, you can call those book dealers of yours and get them to work," he said to me. "There's a place in Monterey, I think, that handles used paperback books and we'll try them too. Other than that, there's nothing we can do about the book. No goddamn thing at all."

  None of us seemed to feel much like talking after that, and a brooding, waiting silence formed thickly in there. I sat and stared at nothing and wanted a cigarette and kept on resisting the urge. A sunburst clock on one wall ticked away the minutes loudly and monotonously, and I saw that we were now two hours into a new day-into a new month, too, for that matter, since Sunday had been the last day of April. Monday. Blue Monday-or black Monday, take your choice. Some choice.

  More time passed, and nothing happened. Three A.M. Four A.M. Quartermain sat tipped back in his chair, his eyes closed, and Favor began to snore gently in the armchair beside mine. The warm room and the inactivity and the lack of sleep and the physical enervation began to exact their toll on me as well; you can resist for only so long. I was down in that vague, heavy, slow-motion world between sleep and wakefulness, drifting toward oblivion, when Quartermain's telephone bell went off.

  I came up out of my chair convulsively, pawing at my eyes and looking blankly around, my heart plunging in my chest and my head banging malignantly. When the misty remnants of sleep dissolved, I saw Quartermain swiveling around to drag up the phone receiver and Favor sitting forward in his chair, smoothing his mustache in an unconscious gesture that made him look more than ever like a silent-movie comedian. I sat down again and dry-washed my face, listening, but Quartermain said "Yeah" and "Christ!" and "Right away" and that was all.

  I looked up at him as he replaced the handset. His mouth was pinched tight at the corners and his nostrils were flared and his eyes were hot, bright chunks of blue, like dry ice smoldering.

  Favor said, "What is it, Ned?"

  "That was the State Highway Patrol. They've just located Winestock's Studebaker."

  "Where?"

  "Spanish Bay, just south of Pacific Grove."

  "What about Winestock?"

  "He's in it," Quartermain said. "Shot twice in the chest and stone-cold dead."

  Fifteen

  Dawn had begun to streak the eastern sky by the time we got out to Spanish Bay, on the northwestern shore of the Monterey Peninsula. In the cold gray light the panoramic landscape of cypress and windswept, bone-white sand dunes had a hushed and primitive look, like a tiny portion of nature that had long ago been suspended in time. The sea beyond provided the only motion; it was a rippling gray-green, the combers high and capped with garlands of white froth as they crested and rolled downward in long, graceful sweeps
to the beach.

  Just after we began to skirt the boundary of the Asilomar Beach State Park, the small cluster of cars appeared among all that quiet beauty like a giant's thoughtlessly discarded litter. They were drawn close together near a low fan of cypress, two-thirds of the way along an unpaved lane that led toward the symmetrically spaced dunes and the splendor of the Pacific. Favor cut off the siren we had used to make time from Cypress Bay and took us down the lane. As we approached the cluster, I could distinguish five vehicles: a State Highway Patrol unit, an unmarked sedan, a Pacific Grove Police Department tow truck, a county ambulance, and Brad Winestock's faded-blue Studebaker. Both doors on the driver's side of the Studebaker were standing open, and several men were grouped in a tight knot nearby, talking among themselves and watching our arrival.

  Favor pulled up behind the sedan, and the three of us got out into a wind that was chill and yet tinged with the spring warmth that would come with the rising sun. Four of the seven men on the scene were official: a local patrol investigator named Daviault, two patrol officers in uniform, and an assistant county coroner. The other three were a pair of ambulance attendants and the driver of the wrecker, who would tow Winestock's car into Pacific Grove or Monterey for the crime-lab technicians. Quartermain introduced me briefly to Daviault, and he accepted my presence without question.

  He led us to the Studebaker, and we looked inside. Winestock was in the back, sprawled across the seat face up; his eyes were protuberant, with much of the whites showing-as if the impact of the bullets or the intensity of his dying had been enough to half pop them from their sockets. There was coagulated blood on the front of his windbreaker, and some on the seat beneath him-but altogether, very little. That, and the fact that both wounds were visibly centered on the upper part of his chest, said that he had died swiftly.

  I turned away, dry-mouthed, and Quartermain asked the two uniformed patrolmen, "Were you the ones who found him?"

  "Yes, sir," one of them said. "We were cruising Sunset Drive and we spotted the car down here; at first we thought it might be kids parked for the night, and we came down to chase them off. When we got close enough, we saw that it was the Studebaker on our pickup sheet. We found him inside there, just the way you see him."

  "How long ago was that?"

  "A little more than an hour."

  "Did you check the hood then for engine heat?"

  "Yes, sir. It was cold."

  "Do you patrol this area regularly?"

  "Once or twice a night."

  "Had you been along here earlier?"

  "No, sir. This was our first swing through."

  Quartermain said to Daviault, "What about the gun?"

  "No sign of it."

  "Anything in the car?"

  "Nothing unusual. Same for the trunk."

  "Outside it?"

  "No," Daviault said. "The road surface won't sustain tire impressions, as you can see."

  "No leads at all then."

  "Nothing we've been able to turn up so far."

  Quartermain looked at the assistant coroner. "Can you make a preliminary guess as to how long he's been dead?"

  "A rough guess, if that's what you want."

  "I'll take it for now."

  "From the temperature and condition of the body, I'd say no more than six hours, no less than three."

  "Do you think he was killed in the car or somewhere else?"

  "Difficult to tell. There are no exit wounds, so he's still carrying the two bullets inside him; no powder burns, so he was apparently shot at a distance. That might be significant, considering the close confines of the car. Then again, there's a little blood on the seat and he didn't bleed much after he was shot; death was likely instantaneous, or very close to it."

  I moved away from the group and stood looking out to sea; I had heard all there was to hear for now, even though they were still talking it through. Some distance offshore, on a group of tiny rock islands, the dark shapes of cormorants and loons moved and fluttered and sat in sentinel-like motionlessness-and nearby a sleek black or brown sea lion came up out of the water like an iridescent phantom. The peach color of dawn had spread and modulated into soft gold, consuming the gray, and it would not be long before sunrise. It was going to be another fine spring day.

  But the climate, as they say, was one of violence.

  And pain, I thought. And grief. First Judith Paige-the rape of innocence. And now Beverly Winestock-the bitter fruits of too much family loyalty, and another kick in the groin for a woman who seemed to have been kicked too many times already. How many more were going to suffer? Yeah, how many more? Because it wasn't over yet, and two men were dead already, and Dancer was still missing, and murder and violence invariably beget murder and violence. The tremors beneath the surface of it all had gathered strength now, had become more volatile, had begun to foment further destruction, and you knew with a kind of fatalistic insight just what to expect before it was finally ended…

  After a time Quartermain came over and said, "We'll be going now; there's nothing more for us here. We've got other things to do."

  "All right," I said. I did not ask him what it was we had to do, because the answer was obvious. And it was nothing I cared to put into words just then; the contemplation of it was bitterly cheerless enough.

  She opened the door and looked out at the three of us standing there under the bougainvilleaed arbor-and she knew. It was all there in our faces, unmistakable and irrefutable. Her right hand went out and clawed whitely at the doorjamb, supporting her weight there; her left hand came up to her throat, clutching at the neck of her quilted housecoat in that pathetic little gesture women involuntarily seem to make at such times. Her face was the color of winter slush and her eyes were sick little animals hiding in caves formed by ridges of bone and taut, purplish skin; she was no longer ethereal, no longer hauntingly beautiful, she was on old woman facing the loss of the only real loved one she had in the world. I could not look at her directly any longer. I turned my head away, with emptiness and helplessness heavy inside me; it was the way I had felt facing Judith Paige's grief and the way I would feel facing any grief at all. And I wondered why I had come, knowing what it would be like-why I had not stayed in the car, why I had not asked them to let me off at City Hall, why I did not get out of it and go the hell home.

  Quartermain said gently, "May we come in, Miss Winestock?"

  She just stood there, motionless, a chunk of gray stone wrapped in bright-colored quilt. Then her mouth and her throat worked, and she got the words free. She said, "It's Brad, isn't it? He's dead, isn't he?"

  Hesitation. You never know what to say, or how to say it. So you pause-and when the pause becomes awkward you say it as Quartermain said it; you say, softly "I'm sorry."

  "Oh God," she said. "Oh my God." She was still standing absolutely still: no hysterics, no tears. Just "Oh God, oh my God." And somehow, there in the cold dawn, it was worse than if she had fainted or cried or broken down completely.

  There was more heavy silence, and then Quartermain said again, "May we come in, Miss Winestock? It would be better than trying to talk out here."

  In mute answer she pushed herself away from the door-jamb and moved stiff-legged down the hall-an animated figurine, brittle and graceless. Favor, Quartermain, and I followed her through the archway and into the parlor. It was dark in there, with the curtains closed, and I touched the wall switch to chase away some of the shadows with suffused light from an overhead fixture. Beverly sat down on one of the chairs, her arms flat on the chair arms; her eyes seemed to be seeing inward instead of outward, glistening like rain puddles under a streetlamp.

  We took seats here and there, and the silence grew and became awkward again. Quartermain cleared his throat, and she said "How did it happen?" in a flat, dull voice.

  Quartermain answered simply, "He was shot."

  The eyes closed, briefly. "Murdered, you mean?"

  "Yes."

  "Who did it? This bald man you kee
p asking about?"

  "We don't know yet, Miss Winestock."

  "But you think it might have been that man."

  "There's a good chance of it, yes."

  "Where did you find him-Brad?"

  "Spanish Bay. In his car."

  "I see. And you say he was shot?"

  "Yes."

  "Did he seem to have had much pain, can you tell me that?"

  "No, I don't think he did. No."

  "That's good," she said. "That's something anyway."

  "Miss Winestock…"

  "Can I see him? I'd like to see him."

  "I'll have a car take you to Monterey. But there are some questions first. Do you feel up to answering a few questions?"

  "Yes. All right"

  "Were you telling the truth last night-that you didn't know where your brother had gone?"

  "Yes."

  "And about the bald man?"

  "I don't know who he is. I'd tell you if I had any idea."

  "Before he left, did your brother make any phone calls?"

  She nodded. "One. Just after you'd gone."

  "Did you hear any of the conversation?"