Deadfall (Nameless Detective)

by Bill Pronzini

  That was the way things stood—more or less in limbo—when I got to the office at nine o’clock on a Thursday morning, one week after the shooting. Eberhardt wasn’t in yet; he likes to keep executive hours, a habit that irritates me sometimes because the agency is mine, not his, and he wouldn’t be a part of it if I hadn’t felt sorry for him after his early retirement from the SFPD a couple of years ago and taken him in as a full partner. Still, coming in late most mornings was a minor annoyance. He was a good man to work with where and when it counted—a good friend. All things considered, the partnership had turned out much better than I’d expected it would.

  I got coffee brewing on the hot plate and wished there were some way to turn the heat up; it was cold and drizzly outside and chilly in here. But no, the landlord—Sam Crawford, a cigar-smoking fat cat who owned buildings in every slum and depressed neighborhood in the city and referred to his tenants as “my people” —had decreed that the cost of heating this building was much too high. And to insure that the real estate outfit on the first floor, the Slim-Taper Shirt Company on the second floor, and us on the third floor didn’t try to countermand his dictates, he kept the furnace turned on just twelve hours each day, as required by San Francisco law, and had it regulated so that just enough heat reached the radiators to maintain a sixty-degree maximum, no matter what the weather was like outside. Consequently, on mornings like this you had to either wear heavy sweaters or keep your overcoat on while you worked. The only reason Eberhardt and I were still here was that office space was at a premium in the city these days; we couldn’t have found a place as large as this, anywhere in the general downtown area where we needed to be, for less than the eight hundred a month we were paying Crawford. The son of a bitch knew that as well as we did. If you’d asked him he would have said he was taking care of “my people” by regulating the heat instead of raising the rent. He was a cutey, he was. About as cute as a vulture on a fence post.

  Without taking off my coat I sat down and poked through the papers on my desk. Not much there; things were a little lean at the moment. I had wrapped up some work for the plaintiff in a civil case yesterday, a simple skip-trace two days before that; and last Saturday I’d had the matter of Alfred Henry Umblinger, Jr., and his unpaid-for Mercedes XL wrapped up for me.

  The reason Alfred Henry and his lady friend, Eileen Kyner, hadn’t shown up at her house was that they’d been on a gambling and boozing spree in Nevada. At approximately four A.M. on Saturday, they had staggered out of a casino in downtown Reno, gotten into the Mercedes parked in a nearby lot, and Alfred Henry had gunned it out into the street. Unfortunately for him, the street happened to be occupied at the time by a Reno police car on patrol. The cops up there take a dim view of drunks running into them at four A.M., particularly deadbeat drunks from California, so Alfred Henry was still in the slammer. Eileen Kyner had bailed herself out and come home; she had not bailed Alfred Henry out because, she had told the police, he (a) had lost a thousand dollars of her money playing blackjack; (b) had made a drunken pass at one of the lady blackjack dealers when he thought she’d gone off to the potty; (c) was lousy in bed anyway; and (d) deserved to rot in jail, schmuck that he was, for doing something so monumentally stupid as mating his Mercedes with a police car. The Burlingame auto dealer who actually owned the Mercedes was not amused, considering that Alfred Henry’s monumental stupidity had caused several hundred dollars’ damage to the front end of said Mercedes. Once the damage was repaired he’d either have somebody drive it back from Reno or sell it up there at a loss, just to be rid of it. As for me I got paid for my time even though I hadn’t managed to repossess the Mercedes; it wasn’t my fault Alfred Henry was a drunken schmuck as well as a deadbeat.

  All I had working now was a background investigation on a guy in San Rafael who had applied to Great Western Insurance for a very large double indemnity policy on his life. Insurance companies get edgy when private individuals apply for such policies. Skeptics and cynics all, they worry that maybe there is some ulterior motive behind the application. Fraud, for instance. Such as an intention to commit suicide under the guise of a fatal accident. My job was to gather as much background material on the individual as possible and turn it over to the insurance people; I could also provide a recommendation, if I was so inclined, but they were the ones who made a final decision as to whether or not to issue a policy. If they did issue it and they got burned, they couldn’t put the onus on me. Not legally, anyhow. There were a couple of companies in the Bay Area who had got burned and who had refused to hire me anymore because of it. But I didn’t have to worry about that happening with Great Western: their chief claims adjustor, Barney Rivera, had been a poker buddy for years. He threw a good deal of business my way, and I handed it back with plenty of care.

  I was looking through the application and the other papers Barney had given me yesterday when I heard the door open. I glanced up, expecting to see Eberhardt, but instead I was looking at somebody I had never expected to see again: Tom Washburn.

  He said formally, “Good morning. I’d like to talk to you, if you have the time.”

  “Of course, Mr. Washburn.”

  He shut the door, looked briefly around the office before he came ahead to my desk. The place didn’t seem to make much of an impression on him, but that was all right: it had never impressed me either. It had once been an art studio and the owner of the studio had got permission to put in a skylight; the skylight was the place’s only attractive feature. Otherwise it was just a big room full of furniture, a couple of pieces of which—Eberhardt’s mustard-yellow fiberboard file cabinets—were pretty hideous to look at. Also hideous to look at was a hanging light fixture that just missed being obscene, intentionally on the part of its manufacturer or otherwise.

  Washburn sat stiff-backed on one of the clients’ chairs, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped. He was wearing black shoes, black slacks, a black shirt, and a black leather coat—a typical getup for some gays in the city. But it didn’t look right on him, and the thought struck me that it was a mourning outfit. There was no question that the death of his lover had affected him profoundly: his face was pale, haggard, with discolored pouches under his eyes; and the eyes themselves had a tragic, haunted look. I felt a sharp twinge of pity for him. I understood what he was going through, because I had known too many others who had suffered the same kind of pain. It was what I would have been going through myself if I had lost Kerry the way he had lost Leonard.

  I said, “Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

  He didn’t answer for a time. Then he seemed to shiver slightly and said, “Yes, all right. It’s cold in here.”

  “The landlord’s a jerk. He won’t allow the heat turned up past sixty.”

  I got up and poured two cups of coffee. When I asked him if he took anything in his he said no, just black. I gave him his cup, took mine around the desk, and reoccupied my chair. He sat holding the cup between both hands, as if they were cold; they were pale hands, delicate-looking, the skin almost translucent, so that you could see the fine blue tracery of veins running through them.

  At length he said, “I came here because I want to hire you. I don’t know what else to do, who else to turn to. You were kind the night Leonard … the night it happened, and I thought …” He let the words run out and looked down into his cup, as if he might find more words in there.

  “Hire me to do what, Mr. Washburn?”

  “Find the man who killed Leonard.”

  “There’s nothing I can do that the police aren’t doing,” I said gently. “Give them enough time and they—”

  His head jerked up. “Enough time? My God, they’ve had a week, haven’t they? They haven’t found him yet. They won’t find him, damn them, because they won’t listen to me. They simply won’t listen. ”

  “Listen to you about what?”

  “About the phone call and the missing money,” he said. “About Leonard’s brother, Kenneth. I can’
t make them believe me!”

  “Take it easy,” I said, “slow down a little. You think there’s a connection between Kenneth’s death and Leonard’s?”

  “I don’t think there is, I know there is.”

  “How do you know it? Leonard’s last words aren’t really much to—”

  “No, not that. The call last week, three days before Leonard was shot. The man on the phone.”

  “What man?”

  “I don’t know. A stranger—a voice I didn’t recognize.”

  “He called you, this stranger?”

  “No, he was calling Leonard. He thought I was Leonard.” Washburn quit talking, gave me a muddled sort of frown, shook himself like a cat, and then said, “Am I making any sense?”

  “You’re starting to. Just go slow. This man on the phone mistook you for Leonard?”

  “Yes. I’d just come home from work; Leonard wasn’t in yet. I said hello and this man’s voice said, ‘Mr. Purcell?’ Then he went right on talking before I could tell him I wasn’t.”

  “What did he say?”

  “I can quote his exact words. He said, ‘Your brother didn’t fall off the cliff that night, Mr. Purcell. He was pushed. And I know who pushed him.’ ”

  “That’s all?”

  “Not quite. I was shocked; I said, ‘Who is this? What do you want?’ He said, ‘Money, Mr. Purcell, that’s what I want.’ I heard Leonard’s car just then, and I was so upset I blurted out that I wasn’t Mr. Purcell, that Mr. Purcell had just come home and would take the call. He hung up without another word.”

  “Did you tell Leonard all this when he came in?”

  “Of course.”

  “How did he take it?”

  “He said the man must have been a crank. He said Kenneth’s death had been an accident, there was no question of that.” Washburn’s mouth quirked bitterly. “The same things the police said. But Leonard was as upset as I was. I knew him so well—I could always tell when he was upset. He and his brother were very close; he just hadn’t been himself since Kenneth’s death. If there was even a remote chance Kenneth’s fall wasn’t an accident, Leonard would have pursued it.”

  “Did the man call again?”

  “Not as far as I know. But I’m convinced he contacted Leonard later on, at his office.”

  “Even though Leonard didn’t mention it to you?”

  Washburn nodded emphatically.

  “What makes you so sure?” I asked.

  “The missing money. Two thousand dollars from the house safe.”

  “Two thousand cash?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a lot of money to keep around the house.”

  “I suppose so,” he said. “But the safe is hidden in the master bathroom; Leonard had it specially built. No one could find it if he didn’t know it was there.”

  I had heard that one before; professional burglars fell all over themselves laughing when they heard it. But all I said was, “Why did the two of you need that much cash on hand?”

  “Grocery money. Mad money. Spur-of-the-moment trips to Nevada. Emergencies. All sorts of reasons. We each put in a percentage of our income every month.”

  I said, “Nevada?”

  “Leonard liked to gamble. Poker, blackjack, roulette. Nothing compulsive; he only went three or four times a year. I usually went with him. And he won more than he lost, so I didn’t mind. Gambling was his only bad habit.”

  “When did you find the two thousand missing?”

  “The day after the … after Leonard’s death. The police asked me to make an inventory to find out if anything was missing.”

  “Was anything missing, other than the cash?”

  “No. The safe hadn’t been touched; there was still five hundred dollars left in it. No one but Leonard and I had the combination. No one but Leonard could have taken the money.”

  “And you think he took it to pay this mysterious caller. For the name of the person who allegedly murdered his brother.”

  “Yes,” Washburn said. “He had absolutely no other reason to take that much cash out of the safe.”

  “What about for gambling purposes?”

  “That’s what the police think. Leonard sometimes gambled here in the city—just poker—but he never used house money unless he asked me first, and then only if it was for a Nevada trip. Besides, the most he ever risked at one sitting was two hundred dollars. He had an ironclad rule about that.”

  “Did he tell you when he took house money for other reasons?”

  “Usually.”

  “Why not this time? Why would he buy information that way without confiding in you?”

  “You’d have to have known Leonard,” Washburn said, and there was something different in his voice now: a kind of sadness seasoned with hurt and a touch of bitterness. “He was a very private man. We loved each other, and yet when it came to his family and his business, he … well, sometimes he shut me out. Particularly where his brother was concerned.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Kenneth didn’t like me, didn’t like anyone who wasn’t straight. He told Leonard once that he didn’t want anything to do with his faggot boyfriend, and Leonard didn’t stand up to him. It was as if, underneath, he … he was ashamed of me.” Washburn looked away, over at Eberhardt’s empty desk. He seemed very small, sitting there—and very alone. “Anyhow,” he said after a time, “that was why I wasn’t invited to the party the night Kenneth died.”

  “Was Leonard invited?”

  “Oh yes. And he went, even though he knew it hurt me.”

  I was beginning to get a picture of what kind of man Leonard Purcell had been. And I didn’t particularly like what I saw. I watched Washburn finish what was left in his cup, put the cup down carefully on the edge of my desk. Watched him hunch a little inside his jacket. Damn Sam Crawford and his mandates about the heat.

  I said, “More coffee, Mr. Washburn?”

  “No, thank you. It’s a bit too strong for me.”

  “I can add some water …”

  “No, really, I’m fine.”

  I got up and poured another half-cup for myself. When I sat down again I said, “About Kenneth. How did he feel about Leonard being gay?”

  “I don’t really know. I suppose he ignored it, as if it were a temporary aberration on Leonard’s part. Leonard was married once, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know.”

  “For five years. Ruth divorced him when she found out he had male lovers.” A faint smile. “I was one of them.”

  “Do you know his ex-wife?”

  “No, not really.”

  “Was the divorce bitter or amicable?”

  “Not as bitter as it might have been, I guess—Leonard didn’t talk about that much, either. She did let him have the house.” Pain moved through his expression again, like something dark and restive just beneath the surface of his features. “He really loved that house. So did I, until … well, now it’s as dead for me as he is.”

  “How long had you been living there with him?”

  “Two years, ever since Ruth moved out. It was a permanent relationship.”

  “I’m sure it was.”

  “We were going to be married one day,” he said.

  I knew that gays sometimes had unofficial wedding ceremonies, without benefit of marriage licenses, presided over by ministers from the Unitarian church or some other liberal congregation. But I did not want to discuss that sort of thing with Washburn. It was a private matter, and painful for him now—and I was still old-fashioned enough to feel uncomfortable with some of the more open and iconoclastic attitudes of the homosexual community.

  I said, “Let’s get back to the man on the telephone. Do you have any idea who he might be?”

  “No, none.”

  “Was he young, old?”

  “Young—twenties or thirties, I’d say.”

  “Black, white, Oriental?”

  “I’m not sure. Latin, perhaps.”

  “Di
d he have an accent?”

  “A faint one. I couldn’t quite place it.”

  “Anything else distinctive about his voice?”

  “No. No, I don’t think so.”

  “Did he sound educated?”

  “Well, he used proper English. But he didn’t seem very well-spoken.”

  “Any other impression of him?”

  “I’m afraid that’s all.”

  “If what he said to you is true he must either have been at Kenneth’s house that night and witnessed what happened, or he’s close to someone who was there and witnessed it.”

  Washburn worried his lower lip for a time. Then he said, “He didn’t strike me as the type Kenneth would invite to one of his fancy parties. His friends were mostly rich people.”

  “An acquaintance of one of the guests, then?”

  “Kenneth’s daughter,” Washburn said musingly. “She’s the wild type.”

  “Wild in what way?”

  “Oh, you know, drugs. The whole scene.”

  “Where does she live, do you know?”

  “With some fellow on Mission Creek. She has a houseboat there. At least she did a few months ago.”

  “‘What’s the fellow’s name?”

  “I don’t remember Leonard mentioning it.”

  “What’s her name? Purcell?”

  “Yes. Melanie Purcell. Kenneth’s daughter by his first marriage.”

  “Would you know if she was at the party that night?”

  “I’m not sure. I think she might have been.”

  “What can you tell me about the other guests?”

  “Very little, I’m afraid. Alicia is the person to ask.”

  “Kenneth’s widow?”