Betrayers (Nameless Detective Novels)

by Bill Pronzini

  He said, “So what the hell you doing here?”

  “Vonda didn’t tell you about me and Lucas Zeller?”

  “We don’t talk much since she married her white Jew.”

  “Yeah, well, Lucas and I had a thing a couple of weeks ago.”

  “Uh-huh.” James scratched one long finger through his beard, looking at her narrow eyed. “Why’d you hook up with that ugly dude anyway? You that hard up for a man?”

  Tamara said between her teeth, “Wasn’t nobody else asking.”

  “No surprise there.” But his eyes were on her body, roaming. “Lost some fat around your middle, looks like.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Stand to lose some more.”

  She bit off a sharp comeback, said instead, “You’re not exactly buff yourself, my man.”

  “I’m not your man, and damn glad of it.” Lopsided grin. “You may be hard up, but I’m not. Saw the fox I was with at the wedding, right? She gives me all the lovin’ I can handle.”

  Fox? “Cat” was a better word—sleek black cat with claws and a big red tongue in a big red mouth. “I’ll bet she does,” Tamara said.

  “So what you want from me?”

  “I’m looking for him.”

  “Who? Zeller?”

  “His name’s not Zeller.”

  “No? Well, I could give a shit less.”

  “I know that.”

  “Then what you doing here, bugging me?”

  “Answers to a few questions, James, that’s all I want.”

  “Yeah? What’d you ever do for me?”

  “Been a good friend to Vonda, helped her out a couple of times when she needed it. How about that?”

  Now the scowl was back. But then he said, “What’d the dude do, throw you over for some guy?”

  “No.”

  “Vonda tell you he’s on the down low?”

  “You know she did.”

  “He give you a disease?”

  “No. I had myself tested.”

  “So?”

  “The man’s more than just on the down low,” Tamara said. “He’s a thief and maybe worse. Stole the real Lucas Zeller’s briefcase, wallet, identity, and some cash from his checking account. Stole his identity.”

  James took that in, not saying anything. The look he gave her then was a little less hostile. “You sure about all that?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Well, you know that much, how come you can’t find him? Hot-shit de-tective like you.”

  “Not enough information yet.”

  “Who you working for, the real Zeller?”

  “No. For myself.”

  “Uh-huh, I get it. The woman-scorned bit.”

  “Let’s cut out the bullshit, James, all right? I need some help and I’m not ashamed to ask for it. Even from you. You gonna talk straight to me or you just gonna go on dissing me?”

  For a few seconds she thought she’d pushed him too hard, that he’d go off on her and chase her out. But he didn’t. Stared at her for half a minute, then let loose a grunting sound, leaned back in his chair, and said, “All right, sweet cheeks, do your thing. But don’t take too long. I got work to do.”

  Sweet cheeks. She hated that name, even more than she hated Pop calling her Sweetness, and James knew it. But she knew better than to call him on it. Stay cool, Tamara.

  “Where’d you meet him?” she asked. “Some sort of event at Moscone Center, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah. Sports memorabilia show.”

  James was into sports in a big way. Football, basketball, baseball, golf . . . you name it, he followed it, and sometimes bet on games and matches. Liked rubbing elbows with black players for local teams, current and retired, and not just out of hero worship. Business reasons, too. He was always looking to connect with somebody who might do him and Three Brothers Construction some good.

  “So what happened?” she asked. “He approach you or the other way around?”

  “He did. Real friendly. Too fuckin’ friendly.”

  “But you didn’t figure it that way at first.”

  James didn’t say anything. His silence was answer enough.

  “He say what his business was?”

  “Investments.”

  “That’s all? Just investments?”

  “That’s all.”

  “Try to hustle you?”

  “No.”

  “Say anything about the sports club he wanted you to join?”

  “Not then. But that friend of his brought it up.”

  Tamara jumped on that. “Friend? What friend?”

  “Dude that brought him to the show.” The scowl darkened. “I should’ve known they were queers right then. Little guy kept giving me looks like I was a hunk of raw meat and he was a junkyard dog.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Hell, I don’t remember.”

  “Come on, James; it’s important. Think about it, try to remember.”

  “. . . Easy.”

  “What’s easy?”

  “Told me to call him Doctor Easy, everybody did.”

  “He didn’t give you his real name?”

  “Dawkins, Hawkins, something like that.”

  “Doctor Easy Dawkins? Doesn’t sound right—Wait. Initials? E.Z.?”

  “Whatever.”

  “You remember what kind of doctor?”

  “One of those spine snappers.”

  “Chiropractor? Here in the city?”

  Shrug. “Gave me a business card, but I didn’t look at it.”

  “You still have it?”

  “Threw it away on my way out.”

  “I don’t suppose Zeller had a business card?”

  “No. Asked for one of mine and I gave it to him. Didn’t see any reason not to.”

  Tamara asked, “What’d they tell you about the club?”

  “Brought it up real casual. Said they were big sports fans, got together once or twice a month with some other guys to kick back, have a few drinks, watch videos and films. Five of them now, was I interested in being number six?”

  “And you said?”

  “No. Fan clubs ain’t my thing.”

  “So then what happened with Zeller? After the sports show, I mean.”

  “Christ, woman, how many questions you gonna ask? I told you, I got work to do.”

  “Just a few more. Zeller call you up or what?”

  “Or what. Showed up here a couple days later. Walked right in without an appointment, same as you did.”

  Scoping out the place, she thought, to get an idea of how much James was worth.

  “Said he was in the neighborhood, thought he’d stop by. Said he’d enjoyed meeting me at the show, figured maybe we could have a few drinks, get to know each other better. Tried to get me to change my mind about joining that goddamn club.”

  “Hint around that it was a switch-hitters thing?”

  “Not that time,” James said. “I told him I still wasn’t interested. He didn’t push it and I figured that was the end of it. And then bam, next week he shows up at the wedding reception.”

  “How’d he know about it?”

  “I don’t know, saw Nancy’s invitation, maybe—she had it on her desk. Dude’s got more balls than a basketball team, showing up the way he did, claiming I invited him. I never saw him come in. Must’ve been there awhile before I spotted him and threw him out.”

  “Saw him one more time, right?”

  “Couple of days later. Showed up here again like nothing ever happened. Walked right in—Nancy was out to lunch.”

  “One last try to hook you into the club.”

  “Yeah.” Some of the old fierce burn had come into James’s eyes. “Invited me to a meeting that weekend. Said the other guys were professional people or businessmen, all married men and none of ’em judgmental. Then he laughed like something was funny. Said, well, except one man who was but wouldn’t be.”

  “Was but wouldn’t be what? Judgmental?”

>   “Fuckin’ double-talk.”

  “All married men? Including himself?”

  “What he said.”

  “Give you any of their names?”

  “No.”

  “Tell you where the meeting was?”

  “SoMa loft belongs to one of ’em. Said we’d watch some rare Super Bowl film one of ’em had, have a few drinks, have a good time—maybe experiment if we felt like it, but only one-on-one and strictly in private. All very discreet. That was the word he used, ‘discreet.’ We were standing over there by the door and he starts telling me all this and leaning up close, putting his hand on my arm and looking at me the way the little bugger did at the show. Plain as hell then where he was coming from.”

  “You accuse him of being on the down low?”

  “Damn right. Him and his buddies. He just shrugged, said did it matter if they were? I told him yeah, damn straight it mattered, and then I threw his ass out. I should’ve busted his head for him.”

  “Too bad you didn’t.”

  “You know the last thing the fucker said? Said he guessed he’d misread me. Misread me! All along he thought I was a switch-hitter like him!”

  James had worked himself into a brooding rage by then, glowering all over his face. She wouldn’t get anything more out of him—lucky she’d gotten as much as she had. She slipped on out of there herself before he started venting his rage on her. The way he was sitting, rigid, staring back into his bitter memory, he didn’t even see her go.

  6

  When I came into the condo, Kerry was out on the balcony with the sliding glass door wide open. Ordinarily there wouldn’t have been anything unusual in that. We live in Diamond Heights, on the side of one of San Francisco’s seven hills, and on clear days and nights the balcony view is pretty alluring. But the day had turned even colder as night approached; the wind swirling in through the open door had an arctic bite. And she was standing out there at the railing with her hair tangled and streaming, arms folded, wearing nothing but a light sweater and skirt.

  I went out to stand beside her. She looked my way, gave me a wan little smile. There was color in her face from the cold and her eyes were teary. Not from the wind; the unhappy expression in them said she’d been crying. That scared me. The first thing I thought of was her breast cancer, in remission now but always and forever a lingering fear.

  “Hey,” I said, “what’re you doing out here?”

  “Trying to decide what to do.”

  “About what?”

  “I’m glad you’re home,” she said.

  “Me, too. Do about what? Kerry, you haven’t been to see your oncologist . . . ?”

  “No, it’s nothing like that.”

  “Cybil?” Her mother was eighty-seven and in failing health.

  “No. Cybil’s all right.”

  “Then what?”

  She sighed and unfolded her arms. Extended one fisted hand in my direction to show me what was on her palm.

  Rough-textured, bronze-colored tin box, about the size of the ones sore-throat lozenges come in, with the same kind of hinged lid. Plain, no markings except for a few scratches and dents.

  “Open it,” she said.

  I flipped up the lid. Inside was a rectangle of cotton, and when I poked inside that I found a clear plastic tube, about three inches long, mostly full of a white powdery substance. I knew what the substance was even before I pulled the little cork stopper in one end of the tube, licked a finger, and tipped out enough for a bitter taste on the tip of my tongue.

  Cocaine.

  The relief I’d been feeling died in a sensation like an acid burn. “Where’d you get this?”

  “I found it. A few minutes ago.”

  “Where?”

  “In Emily’s room.”

  “Oh, Christ, no.”

  “I went in to get my Roget’s,” Kerry said. “She was using it last night and I needed to look up a word. The box was on her desk, in plain sight, and when I picked up the thesaurus I accidentally knocked it off. It popped open when it hit the floor.”

  Emily. Sweet, smart, intelligent, forthright, straight-arrow Emily. Not your typical rebellious thirteen-year-old; just the opposite, in fact. In the four years since Kerry and I had adopted her, she’d never given us any cause to distrust her. Not once.

  I put the tube back into its cotton nest, closed the tin box, and slipped it into my coat pocket. “Come on,” I said, “let’s go inside. It’s freezing out here.”

  “Yes.”

  We went in and I shut the door. The living room was cold now, even though I could hear the furnace pumping warm air through the vents. I took Kerry’s hands in mine, chafed them until I could feel some of the chill go away.

  “Did you find anything else?”

  “No. Just what’s in the box.”

  “But you looked. Searched her room.”

  “You know I did. I had to, didn’t I?”

  “Sure you did. I would’ve done the same.”

  The privacy thing. We had a pact in this family: always respect one another’s right to privacy. Even under the circumstances, Kerry felt guilty at breaking the pact. Was that what Emily had counted on, why she’d left the box on her desk in plain sight? Flaunting it because she felt safe? No, that wasn’t like her. But hell, it wasn’t like her to bring drugs home in the first place.

  Kerry said, “I keep telling myself it’s not as bad as it looks. That there must be some innocent explanation.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Something. We had the drug talk with her, didn’t we? Both of us?”

  “Yeah, we had the drug talk.”

  “She swore she’d never have anything to do with drugs.”

  “She probably meant it at the time. But thirteen’s a bad age, you know that. And peer pressure can be more persuasive than parental pressure.”

  “But my God . . . pot’s bad enough, but cocaine . . .” Kerry sank heavily into her chair. “Maybe she hasn’t tried it yet. Maybe somebody gave it to her and she’s just thinking about it.”

  “Maybe.”

  “But you don’t think so.”

  “I don’t know what to think. I’m as hammered by this as you are.”

  “It’s after five. She should be home by now.”

  “Where’d she go after school?”

  “The library to study with a couple of her friends. So she said.”

  “Don’t start doubting her, babe.”

  “Aren’t you doubting her? After this?”

  “I’m trying to keep an open mind.”

  “So am I. Oh, God, I hate this—I fucking hate it!”

  Kerry almost never used the f word. And hearing it from her didn’t have any effect on me; I felt like using it myself. Neither of us had been this upset since the early stages of her breast cancer.

  To calm both of us down, I went into the kitchen and poured her a glass of wine and opened the beer I’d been wanting for myself. The alcohol did its job, but there was no enjoyment in the after-work drink now. The beer seemed bitter, left a lingering sour aftertaste.

  “When she gets home,” Kerry said, “let me do the talking. You just back me up.”

  “Always,” I said.

  Emily came in fifteen minutes later. All breezy and bouncy as usual—until she saw Kerry and me in the living room, standing like a couple of stone statues. She stopped, her smile sliding away, and blinked her brown eyes and said, “What’s the matter?”

  Kerry told her, flat voiced, to take her coat off and then come back in and sit down.

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  “Just do what I asked.”

  Emily looked at her, looked at me, bit a corner of her lip, and sidled off to hang up her coat. When she came back, Kerry and I were both sitting down again in our side-by-side chairs. Emily went around and perched on the couch with her knees together and her hands in her lap, her gaze on a neutral point between us.

  She looked very young sitting there an
d at the same time almost grown-up: lipstick, eye shadow, a sweater too tight and a skirt too short for my liking. A real beauty in the making, the only worthwhile gift she’d gotten from her screwed-up birth parents. Those big brown eyes, creamy skin, delicate bone structure, long silky hair, a trim body that was already filling out noticeably. Heartbreaker someday. Males would swarm around her—probably had started to already, though she didn’t talk much about boys. Or have any boyfriends yet, as far as Kerry and I knew.

  They grow up so damn fast these days, I thought. Everybody says so—it’s not just my perception. They’re kids—Emily had been ten when she first came into our lives—and then all of a sudden they’re virtual adults with adult attitudes, needs, vices. No transition period, or so it seemed. No time for an extended childhood and a slow easing into the grown-up world, as there had been with my generation. We hadn’t been adults, hadn’t considered ourselves adults, until seventeen or eighteen; nowadays kids stopped being kids as early as twelve. Or thirteen.

  Nobody said anything for a minute or so. We all just sat there. Up to me to get this started because I had the tin box in my pocket. I took it out and set it on the coffee table between us, unopened.

  Emily looked at it, closed her eyes, opened them again. “You’ve been in my room,” she said. Not accusing, not sullen or angry—emotions she seldom expressed. She sounded hurt.

  Kerry said, “I went to get my thesaurus. The box was right there on your desk.”

  “That’s supposed to be my private space.”

  “I just told you—I wasn’t snooping. How long have you been using drugs?”

  “I don’t use drugs. Never.”

  “Are you going to tell us you don’t know what’s in there?”

  “I didn’t, not at first.”

  “But now you do.”

  “It’s cocaine, isn’t it.” Statement, not a question.

  “And you’ve been thinking about trying it.”

  “No.”

  “Don’t lie to us, Emily. The evidence is right there in front of you.”

  “I’m not lying. I don’t lie, Mom; you know that.”

  “Then where did this box come from?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Why can’t you?”

  “I just can’t.”

  “It doesn’t belong to you. Who gave it to you?”