Betrayers (Nameless Detective Novels)

by Bill Pronzini

  Breakfast this morning hadn’t been any more productive. She’d sat at the table with her eyes on her plate, picking at her food, speaking in polite monosyllables when she spoke at all. Kerry had brought up the cocaine again, quietly, but Emily’s nonanswers were the same as the night before. “I promised I wouldn’t tell. I can’t break my promise. I’ve never tried drugs of any kind.”

  I believed the last statement. She simply did not lie; it wasn’t in her nature. If there were such a thing as an Honest Teenager of the Year Award, she’d win it hands down. Reassuring, but there was still the box and that tube of coke. And her steadfast and misplaced loyalty to whoever they belonged to.

  What do you do in a situation like this? How do you find the answers without stirring up a hornet’s nest?

  What the hell do you do?

  Despite my lack of enthusiasm, I went to work anyway. That had always been my escape—Kerry’s, too—from unpleasant and difficult personal problems. Retreat into the job the way Emily retreated into music and other people buried themselves in books or films or booze.

  Patterson Realty Company, Inc., was a storefront hole-in-the wall on Balboa near 46th Avenue, within hailing distance of the Great Highway and Ocean Beach. Coming to this part of the city always gave me pangs of nostalgia, even on a day and in a mood like this one. It was where Playland-at-the-Beach used to be, and Playland—a ten-acre amusement park in the grand old style, once the largest on the West Coast—had been where I’d spent a good portion of my youth.

  Playland. Some exciting place when you were young and full of piss and vinegar. Attractions galore. Laughing Sal, the gap-toothed, red-haired plaster icon at the entrance, whose cackling mechanical laugh scared the hell out of generations of little kids. Shooting galleries. Sideshow lures that included a two-headed duckling and a radiation-deformed carp. The Fun House with its moveable sidewalk and “spinning wheel” and mirror maze. The creaky old Big Dipper roller coaster, the Whip, the Aeroplane Swing, the Dodg-’Em cars, and other rides. The penny arcade called Knotty Peek and the Tip-a-Troll and Ring-the-Bottle games.

  The first date I went on as a teenager was to Playland. And the night I lost my virginity, in the backseat of my old Chevy coupe parked out on Land’s End, was after another Playland date—both the girl and me with our hormones raging after a succession of thrill rides on the Big Dipper and the Whip. Memory’s a funny thing. I remember the girl’s name, Cricket, and the sensations she stirred in me, but her face is dim and everything else about her is a total blank; yet all I have to do is close my eyes and I can see Playland exactly as it was, in every detail—I can even smell the popcorn and saltwater taffy, the hot dogs and bull-pup tamales, all the rich odors mixed together with the tang of cold salt air, and I can hear the shrieks and excited laughter of the kids.

  All gone now. Nothing left of the park except bright ghost-images in the memories of graybeards like me. The city closed Playland down in the late sixties, allowed it to sit abandoned for a few years, and then demolished it on Labor Day weekend of 1972. Condos and rental apartment buildings took over those ten acres and more besides: Beachfront Luxury Living, Spectacular Views. Yeah, sure. Luxuriously cold gray weather and spectacular weekend views of Ocean Beach and its parking areas jammed with rowdy teenagers and beer-guzzling adult children.

  It made me sad, looking at those characterless buildings, thinking about Playland. Getting old. Sure sign of it when you started lamenting the long-dead past, glorifying it as if it were some kind of Utopia when you knew damned well it hadn’t been. Maybe so, maybe so. But nobody could convince me Beachfront Luxury Living condos were better than Laughing Sal, the Big Dipper, and Knotty Peek, or that some of the dead past wasn’t a hell of a lot more desirable than most of the screwed-up present.

  There were two desks inside the Patterson Realty Company offices, each of them occupied when I walked in. The man was long and lean, forty or so, wearing a brown suit that didn’t fit him very well, owner of a gap-toothed smile and greedy eyes that locked onto yours and hung on as if they couldn’t bear to let go. The woman was a few years younger, with short hair dyed henna red, a thin red mouth, and too much makeup on her narrow face; her choice of clothing wasn’t too appealing, either, a pale green pantsuit and yellow blouse that clashed with her hair. Allan and Doris Patterson. First impression: real estate bottom-feeders. Just the kind you’d expect to find in the front row at a city-held tax auction.

  They were glad-hand friendly until I told them who I was and that I was investigating the harassment of Margaret Abbott. No more smiles, then. Allan Patterson’s gaze quit hanging on to mine and never quite came back again. Off with the sheep’s clothing and out jumped the wolves with fangs bared.

  “That Alvarez woman hired you, I suppose,” Patterson said with more than a little nastiness.

  “My client’s name is privileged information.”

  “Oh, sure. Privileged. Damn her, she’s out to get us.”

  “Why would Helen Alvarez be out to get you?”

  He said, “She’s an old busybody who ought to mind her own business,” as if that answered the question.

  “The point is, Mrs. Abbott is being harassed and I’m trying to get to the bottom of it.”

  “Well, my God,” Doris Patterson said, “why come to us about that? We don’t have anything to do with it.”

  “We’re not vandals,” he added. “Do we look like vandals?”

  Loaded question. I didn’t answer it.

  His wife said, “What earthly good would it do us to subject the Abbott woman to petty vandalism? We’ve already lost her property, thanks to that bleeding-heart judge.”

  “I’m not here to accuse you of anything,” I said. “I just want to ask you a few questions.”

  “We don’t have anything to say to you. We don’t know anything; we don’t want to know anything.”

  “And furthermore, you don’t give a damn.”

  “You said that, I didn’t. Anyway, why should we?”

  “Because an old woman in trouble deserves a little compassion?”

  “Not that crazy old woman. Or her even crazier friend. Not after all we’ve been put through, all the legal fees they cost us.”

  Patterson said, “If you or the Alvarez woman try to imply that we’re involved, or that we’re in any way exploiters of the chronologically gifted, we’ll sue for defamation of character. I mean that—we’ll sue.”

  “Exploiters of the what?” I said.

  “You heard me. The chronologically gifted.”

  Christ, I thought. Old people hadn’t been old people—or elderly people—for some time, but I hadn’t realized they were no longer even senior citizens. Now they were the “chronologically gifted”—the most asinine example of newspeak I had yet encountered. The ungifted agency types who coined such euphemisms ought to be excessed, transitioned, outsourced, offered voluntary severance, or provided with immedate career-change opportunities. Or better yet, subjected to permanent chronological interruption.

  So much for the Pattersons. A waste of time coming here; you couldn’t get them to admit to anything even remotely illegal or unethical, no matter what you said or did. All the interview had accomplished was to confirm Helen Alvarez’s low opinion of the pair. I’d be satisfied if it turned out they had something to do with the vandalism and scare tactics, but hell, where was their motive? Opportunistic assholes, yes; childishly vindictive tormenters, no. And unfortunately there is no law against being an asshole in today’s society. If there was, 10 percent of the population would be in jail and another 10 percent would be on the cusp.

  Charley Doyle, Mrs. Abbott’s nephew, worked for a glass-service outfit in Daly City. I called to see if he was in, and he wasn’t: out on a job and not expected to return until late afternoon.

  I spent the rest of the morning checking in with Helen Alvarez—no further incidents at the Abbott home—and then interviewing several of Mrs. Abbott’s neighbors. None of them had anything enlightening to te
ll me. A few had opinions, though, as to who was responsible for the vandalism; the Pattersons topped the list, followed by Everett Belasco’s “bums or street punks.”

  I had no appetite, so I skipped lunch and drove downtown to the agency. Tamara had promised to do some background checking on the principals in the case and I thought there might be something in the data to give me a direction to move in. But she wasn’t there; Jake Runyon was holding down the fort. The background info wasn’t there, either. Usually she prints out Internet material, my computer skills being what they aren’t, and leaves the papers on my desk. No papers today. And no note of explanation.

  I asked Runyon, “Tamara say when she’d be back from lunch?”

  “No. Just to lock up if she wasn’t here by the time I was ready to leave. Everything okay with her?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “She doesn’t seem herself lately. Took a bite out of me this morning for a mistake in my Bower case report that wasn’t a mistake.”

  “I’ve noticed it, too,” I said. “Distracted. Worked up about something personal she doesn’t want to talk about, probably. She didn’t do background checks I asked for yesterday—and that’s a first for her.”

  Runyon had nothing to say to that. He was reticent when it came to personal matters himself. The best field investigator I’d ever worked with, but a private man, inwardly focused much of the time, weighed down with grief over the lingering cancer death of his second wife a couple of years ago. But lately it seemed as if he was finally starting to let go of his grief. He was more relaxed, less determined to wrap himself cocoonlike in his work. Reason for the change: Bryn Darby, the graphic designer and artist he’d met a couple of months ago. Their relationship seemed to be developing legs; for his sake, I hoped so.

  Runyon went off to interview somebody on the bail-jump case he was working for Abe Melikian, and I went back into my office to take care of some routine business. But I wasn’t alone for long. Ten minutes later, Tamara banged in.

  “Banged” is the right word. She shouldered open the door, slammed it shut behind her, and stomped into her office. I got up to look in through the open connecting door. She was shedding her coat; instead of hanging it up, she pitched it onto the client’s chair; and when it slid off onto the floor, she left it there. Good Tamara was on vacation again, Bad Tamara once more the temp in residence.

  “Hey,” I said, “what’s up, kiddo?”

  “Nothing,” she said. She sounded frustrated as well as grumpy. “Waiting’s a bitch.”

  “Waiting for what?”

  “Just waiting, that’s all.”

  “If you want to talk—”

  “I don’t. Just want to get back to work.”

  “On those background checks I asked for yesterday?”

  “What? Oh . . . yeah. Meant to do them this morning, but I got sidetracked.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d do them now. Unless you’ve got more pressing business.”

  “No. Get right on it.”

  I felt that I ought to say something more to her, try to draw her out a little, but you can’t get through to Bad Tamara. Reason, subtle probing, the fatherly or mentor approach . . . none of it works. All you can do is ride out the storm until Good Tamara decides to come home again.

  10

  It didn’t take Tamara long to run the checks on the various individuals I’d encountered so far in the Abbott case. All but two had spotless records, the Pattersons among them unless you counted questionable ethics and business practices. The other two had only minor blemishes on their records, though one of the blemishes was of some potentially relevant interest.

  Charley Doyle, the nephew, had been arrested twice, once on a D & D charge and once, five years ago, for causing a traffic accident while drunk that landed a forty-four-year-old Millbrae woman in the hospital with minor injuries. For the latter he’d paid a hefty fine and lost his driver’s license for a year; he was lucky the injured woman hadn’t sued him. Mrs. Alvarez’s brother, Leonard Crenshaw, was a parking scofflaw—twenty-two unpaid parking tickets dating back several years—and had been arrested once at age eighteen on a charge of malicious mischief. He and two other dummies had broken into an abandoned house in the Excelsior District and trashed it for no reason other than pure deviltry. A judge had ordered him and his cohorts to pay damages and sentenced them to two hundred hours each of community service.

  Once a vandal, always a vandal? Pretty thin, but something to keep in mind just the same. And to ask Helen Alvarez and Crenshaw about the next time I saw them.

  At a little after three I drove out to Dependable Glass Service, on Mission a half mile or so beyond the San Francisco–Daly City line, to see what I could find out from Charley Doyle. I’d been told he’d be back in the shop by three thirty, and he had been. But then he’d immediately signed out for the day; I missed him by five minutes. Glaziers evidently had the same sweetheart thirty-six-hour workweek as plumbers and other union tradespeople.

  I told one of the office workers that I needed to talk to Doyle on an urgent matter regarding his aunt. That bought me his home address, which was also in Daly City. In my car I looked up the street and a route on one of the sheaf of maps I keep in the glove box. Newer cars nowadays are equipped with GPS navigators that make printed maps pretty much obsolete; Kerry has one in hers. But mine is fifteen years old, and even when I trade it in, as I figure I’ll need to do fairly soon, it’ll likely be for a used pre-GPS model. I’m a Luddite when it comes to modern technological advancements. A lighted computer screen on my dashboard and a disembodied mechanical voice giving me directions and chastising me if I didn’t follow them to the letter would only make me uncomfortable. I prefer to get my directions the old-fashioned way.

  Doyle lived in a two-story, twelve-unit apartment building at least thirty years old, its stucco and wood façade showing signs of advanced age and not much TLC. What had once been a front lawn bisected by a cracked concrete path was now two rectangles of brown hay almost tall enough for harvesting. I went into an open foyer and found the mailbox marked: C. Doyle and pushed the the bell button. Nobody answered the ring.

  I was about to give it up when a man came clumping down the inner stairs and out through the entrance door. Little guy about my age, who looked as if he’d had the same hard and neglected life as his place of residence: shaggy white hair, untrimmed white beard, yellowish eyes with tiny threads of blood swimming in the whites. He gave me an uninterested glance, would have brushed right on by if I hadn’t moved a little to block his way.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “I’m looking for one of your neighbors, Charley Doyle.”

  “So?”

  “He doesn’t seem to be home.”

  “So?”

  Like talking to the former vice president. Same snappish, snotty tone. “Would you have any idea where he might be? Some place he goes after work?”

  “Why?”

  “I need to talk to him. It’s about his aunt.”

  “So?”

  “Look, I’m just trying—”

  “Fat Leland’s,” he said.

  “. . . How’s that again?”

  “Bar.”

  “Where?”

  “Mission.”

  “Where on Mission?”

  He threw me a go fuck yourself look, stepped around me, and went away.

  I said, “So long, Dick,” but if he heard me he didn’t care enough to respond.

  Fat Leland’s was less than a mile from Dependable Glass Service. Typical neighborhood blue-collar tavern, moderately crowded and noisy when I walked in. I wedged in at the bar, caught the barman’s attention, ordered a draft Anchor Steam, and when he brought it asked if Charley Doyle was there.

  He was. Sitting in a booth with a hefty, big-chested blonde who reminded me of a woman my former partner, Eberhardt, once mistakenly came close to marrying. Schooners of beer, two mostly full, two empty, sat wetly on the table between them. But all they had eyes for at the m
oment was each other. They were snuggled in close together, rubbing on each other and swapping beer-flavored saliva. They didn’t like it when I slid in across from them, and Doyle liked it even less when I told him who I was and why I was there.

  “I don’t know nothing about it,” he said. He was a big guy with a beer belly, loose, wet lips, and dim little eyes. Two brain cells and one of them is usually passed out drunk, Helen Alvarez had said. Good description. “What you want to bother me for?”

  “I thought you might have some idea of who’s behind the vandalism.”

  “Not me. Old lady Alvarez thinks it’s them real estate people that tried to steal my aunt’s house. Why don’t you go talk to them?”

  “I already did. They deny any involvement.”

  “Lying bastards,” he said.

  “Maybe. You been out to see your aunt lately?”

  “Not since I fixed her busted window. Why?”

  “Well, you’re her only relative. She could use some moral support.”

  “Some what?”

  “Comfort. A friendly face.”

  “Yeah, well, she’s got Alvarez and her brother to take care of her. She don’t need me hanging around.” He helped himself to a long pull from his schooner, smacked his lips. The blonde nuzzled his shoulder and gave him a vacuously adoring look. “Besides, she gives me the creeps.”

  “Your aunt does? Why?”

  “She’s about half-nuts. What’s that disease old people get? Al something?”