Blowback nd-4

by Bill Pronzini

  “How about this Knox and Talesco? That's their names?”

  “Right, Sam Knox and Karl Talesco. Well, the same is true with them as with Bascomb. But who knows what goes on inside people's heads?”

  “Cody said the two of them are practically inseparable.”

  “Yeah, they've been good friends for years.”

  “You known them long?”

  “Ten years. They run a freight line out of Fresno.”

  “They been here the same time as the Jerrolds before?”

  “No. Ditto Cody. And this is Bascomb's first season.”

  “Either or both of them married?”

  “Knox used to be. Talesco's like me, an old bach.”

  “For what it's worth, Cody thinks they might be closet gays.”

  “Oh bullshit,” Harry said. “Guys like Cody give me a pain in the ass. They see two men together a lot, close friends, right away they think there's got to be something sexual between them. Knox and Talesco are as straight as you and me.”

  “Fair enough. Now, who's in which cabin?”

  “Cody's in Two, Knox and Talesco in Four, Bascomb in Five, the Jerrolds in Six.”

  I nodded, and then I said I would spend the rest of the afternoon wandering around the camp, seeing what I could see, meeting Mrs. Jerrold and the others. “Will you be at your cabin?”

  “Working in the shed, probably,” he said.

  “Well, I'll drop down later. If I haven't found out anything, there's always those old times to kick over.”

  “Make it around six-thirty,” he said. “I caught three fat bass this morning and I thought I'd fry them for supper.”

  “Sounds good.”

  When he had disappeared into the trees, I went into the cabin and took off my shirt and washed some of the sweat off with water that was piped in directly from the lake. There was a small sign in the bath alcove, and another over the cabinet sink, that told you this and reminded you not to drink any of it. I took a lightweight knit pullover out of my bag, slipped it on, and recombed my hair; the image the mirror gave back to me looked presentable enough, if a little drawn and a little tired.

  Outside again, I made my way through the pines, following the narrow path that wound through the camp. Cabin Four seemed to be deserted; Knox and Talesco were apparently still out on the lake. Cabin Five also appeared deserted, and I would have moved on if, in the stillness, I had not heard the soft sound of a woman's laughter. It came from behind the cabin, and it was followed by the murmur of a man's voice; then there was silence again. I hesitated, because if something was going on back there, I was not sure I wanted to walk in on it. Still, I did not like the idea of circling around through the trees to where I could spy down on the rear of the cabin. Maybe part of the reason I didn't like it was because it was stereotypical; the other part of the reason was that I might make enough noise for them to hear me.

  So I went along the side of the cabin, quietly, and stopped before I reached the rear corner and listened again. Silence. A fat green fly drifted lazily through a beam of sunlight; a small brownish-yellow chipmunk stared down at me from a low bough on a lodgepole pine, forepaws tucked under its chin in a way that made it seem to be meditating. High up in one of the other trees, an unseen jay screeched like a whiskey-voiced harridan. Behind the cabin, still nothing. All right, I thought-and I backed off a couple of steps, made enough noise with my feet to send the chipmunk scurrying out of sight, and then walked out to where I could see them.

  Only there was not much to see. It was about as innocent a scene as you could imagine. A lanky guy wearing chinos and sneakers and a blue polo shirt was sitting on a pine stump in close to where half a cord of firewood was stacked against the cabin wall; his left arm cradled a large sketchpad and his right hand held a piece of charcoal poised over it. Fifteen feet away from him, sitting tailor-fashion in a patch of bright green grass, was a busty redhead in white flared-bottom slacks and the kind of sleeveless pullover that looks as if half of it is missing and leaves the stomach bare. Both of them were looking toward me, the guy-Bascomb-without much of any expression and Angela Jerrold with guileless interest.

  I felt both relief and disappointment and was not sure which of them was the stronger. I put on a smile and said, “Hi. I was just wandering around, getting acquainted with the camp, and I heard voices back here and thought I'd come introduce myself. I hope I'm not intruding.”

  “No, that's all right,” Bascomb said, but he did not smile.

  Mrs. Jerrold got to her feet, slowly, and whether consciously or unconsciously she made it seem like a showcase number. Nothing overt; it was all subtle suggestion. When she moved toward Bascomb-as I moved toward him from a different angle, like a pair of cops converging on a subject-there was no exaggerated hip-sway or breast-bouncing. Her movements were clean and economical; she knew what kind of body she had, and that it was so ripe already, artifice of any sort would only have spoiled its effect.

  She had a smile for me, even if Bascomb didn't. She said, “Are you a new guest?”

  I said I was, for a few days at least, and we exchanged names and shook hands all around. Bascomb's was hard and firm, Mrs. Jerrold's soft and firm. He was about forty, good-looking in a smooth, ascetic way, with silvering hair combed into a widow's peak and eyes that were gray, steady, unreadable. She was a couple of years on the fair side of thirty, and she wore her hair in long layered waves that made her look a little like Raquel Welch. Her breasts were very large, too, the type that some men found exciting; I thought they were a little too much of a good thing. Her skin was a rich light-brown color, silky in texture, and her mouth was sensual without being pouty. Up close this way she projected an aura of sexuality that was almost hypnotic; in spite of myself, I could feel the palms of my hands turn moist and I found my eyes settling on her twice as often as they did on Bascomb.

  She said, “My husband and I are in Six, the next cabin down. He went out hunting, and so I came up here to bother Walt for a while.”

  “Hardly a bother,” Bascomb said dryly.

  “I've been trying to get him to sketch me ever since we met,” she said to me. “Walt's an artist, you know.”

  “So I see.”

  She took the sketchpad from him and held it up so that both of us could look at the charcoal drawing on the open page. It was pretty much finished-a very good likeness of her as she had looked sitting in the plot of grass. But in his portrayal he had taken some of the softness out of her, some of the veneer-if that's all it was-of innocence. Her beauty as he had interpreted it was almost that of a predator.

  Mrs. Jerrold seemed not to notice this; or if she did, she did not change expression. She asked me, “What do you think?”

  “Nice work,” I said.

  “Oh yes. Walt, you must let me have it.”

  “Won't your husband mind?”

  “Why should he?”

  “You can answer that better than I can.”

  “He won't mind. He appreciates good artwork.”

  “I'm sure he does.”

  Bascomb said that last a little stiffly, looked at her for a long moment, and then took the sketchpad back. He tore out the drawing, handed it to her, said “Nice meeting you” to me, and went over and sat on the stump again. Dismissed, both of us. I watched Mrs. Jerrold frown slightly, as though with annoyance, and I thought that if they were putting on an act for my benefit, they were good at it. So far I was buying the whole thing.

  Her frown smoothed away after six or seven seconds, and she said, “Well, I should be getting back, I guess. Thank you again for sketching me, Walt; it's been fun.”

  “Hasn't it,” Bascomb said without inflection. He was sketching again and he did not look up.

  She put her smile on for me. “Are you going down by the lake?”

  “I'd planned on that, yes.”

  “Good. You can walk me to my cabin, if you like.”

  “Sure.”

  I said something to Bascomb about seeing him lat
er; he did not answer, but when Mrs. Jerrold and I started away, toward the side of the cabin, I sensed him watching us.

  We went down through the trees on the narrow path. She walked close to me, and twice her body touched mine-breasts and hips; it may have been accidental, but then again, it may not have been. Eventually she said, “Why are artistic people always so moody?”

  “I don't know,” I said.

  “I'll bet you're not in the arts.”

  “No.”

  “You look like a teamster or longshoreman.”

  “Do I?”

  “Oh, I meant that favorably. I'm not a snob.”

  Good for you, I thought. “Actually,” I said, “I've got a mundane white-collar job. What does your husband do, Mrs. Jerrold?”

  “Call me Angela, won't you? Well, Ray is in advertising. He owns his own firm, you know; he's devoted his life to building it into what it is today, which is a very successful business, but of course he's not satisfied. He'll do anything to make it even more successful, to bring in more money and bigger clients.”

  “He sounds like the American Dream in action.”

  That got me a wry look. “If the American Dream is a nervous breakdown or a coronary before the age of fifty, then, yes, I guess he is. He's never learned how to relax; even up here, our one vacation of the year, he spends half of the time in The Pines telephoning Los Angeles on business matters. My God, do you know that the only times we go out at home is when he's wining and dining customers or potential customers?”

  She delivered all of this innocuously enough, but if you wanted to do some reading between the lines, you did not have to try very hard to come up with an invitation, real or imagined. And which one was it? I wondered. At fifty, or coming in on fifty, I had a belly from too much beer and too much deli food, and a gray plodding shaggy look. Not much there for someone like Angela Jerrold. Unless she was a nympho, or at least had catholic tastes to go with the old roving eye. The other possibilities were that she was as innocent as she appeared, and frankly personal even with strangers, and too witless or careless to understand what sort of impact she had on men; or that she knew exactly what impact she had on me, and that she was, as Cody had described her earlier, “nothing but a prickteaser.”

  Well, the only way I was not going to find out which of these fitted the real Angela Jerrold was by making a pass at her. I might have liked it-a part of my mind had already gone through the kind of fantasy sexual encounter you sometimes have when you meet a woman as sybaritic as this one-but too many things would get in the way. Things like moral attitudes and business ethics and friendship and even the fear of rejection that had lingered on since my youth. Funny how rigidly a man will adhere to the code of conduct that has governed his life, even when that life may soon be ended by something as terrible as lobar carcinoma.

  I said, “You must spend a lot of time by yourself.”

  “Oh, we have quite a few friends. It could be worse.”

  “Sure. Things can always be worse than they are.”

  “It's here at the lake that I sometimes get lonely. I mean, with Ray in The Pines so much, or out fishing or hunting with Harry Burroughs, I have to amuse myself. I hate that; I enjoy people.”

  “There are the other guests.”

  She smiled. “Yes. Thank God for that.”

  I would have liked to press it further-she had taken it in each of the three possible directions, and yet in none of them-but before I could say anything else we came out of the trees into the cleared area where Cabin Six was situated. And sitting there on the porch, with his shirt off now and a tumbler of colorless liquid in one hand, was Ray Jerrold.

  He did not remain sitting for long. He saw us at about the same time I saw him, and he got up in one quick jerky motion and came down the porch steps as if they were carved out of blocks of ice. That drink he was holding was either gin or vodka, and it was by no means his first. When he reached solid ground he stopped and leaned his left hand back against the porch railing; his face was damp and splotchy, and even from where Mrs. Jerrold and I had come to a standstill thirty feet away I could see the same half-wildness in his eyes that there had been when he braced Cody.

  He said, “So you found another one, huh?”

  “Another one what?” she said.

  “You think I'm blind? That what you think?”

  “Ray, you shouldn't drink so much in this heat-”

  “Don't tell me how much I can drink.”

  “I was only-”

  He cut her off. “Where you been?”

  “Up visiting Walt Bascomb.”

  “Him too,” Jerrold said. “Jesus Christ.”

  “Now, honey-”

  “Don't give me that honey crap.”

  “Ray, for heaven's sake!”

  “Get over here. Now, damn it.”

  She gave me a look that had embarrassment and apology in it, and maybe just a touch of fright; then she said softly, “Thanks for walking me down, I'll see you again,” and went over to where Jerrold was. He watched her all the way, the fingers of his right hand tight around the tumbler, and when she brushed past him and started up the steps, I tensed a little, leaning forward on the balls of my feet, because I was afraid he might make a grab at her. But he just let her go on past him without moving anything except his head; his eyes followed her all the way into the cabin.

  When the screen door banged shut behind her, his head snapped around to me like a doll's on an elastic pivot, and he raised the hand with the glass in it and pointed it in my direction, and the hand shook enough to rattle the ice cubes audibly. “I don't know who you are, mister,” he said, “but I'm telling you this: Stay away from my wife. You and all the rest of them in this place, sniffing around her ass like a pack of dogs in heat. I won't stand for it much longer, you hear?”

  “I hear,” I said. If I had said anything else, it would only have provoked him; he was in no condition to listen to what anyone had to say except himself.

  I went along the path to where it looped into the trees again and snaked down toward the lake, and he watched me all the way, just as he had watched his wife, without moving any part of his body other than his head. Once I got into the trees I stopped looking back; but when I was far enough into them so that he could no longer see me, I stepped off the path and doubled back slowly and quietly until I had a screened view of the cabin.

  Jerrold was still standing there at the foot of the porch steps, still staring off toward the empty path. Watching him stand like that, completely motionless, made me uneasy. Another full minute went by, and then, as if there had been no abnormal time lapse, he raised the tumbler and kept it raised until it was empty. Then he went up the steps and slammed his way inside the cabin.

  I waited five more minutes, listening, but there was nothing to hear. Whatever was going on in there, if anything was going on, it was a quiet confrontation.

  But I did not like the way this thing was shaping up. It was like watching something bubble and froth in a pot-sooner or later, unless you turned the heat down or off, it was going to boil over, and if that happened, somebody was liable to get hurt. Badly.

  Four

  I went down to the lake, to a shallow inlet and a small rocky strip in the open center of the horseshoe which Harry's guests could use as a bathing beach if they felt like it. It was deserted, as were the area over by the dock and the jumble of cobbles and outcroppings that marked the shoreline in the other direction. It was nearly five-thirty now, but the day had not cooled off any yet; in the hazy sky to the west the sun looked like the bottom of a brass pot. There was not a whisper of a breeze, and the surface of the lake was perfectly flat and smooth and seemed to have no depth, as if it were a piece of curiously blue-stained flatland stretched out between the foothills.

  My clean shirt was already damp with sweat, the back of my neck ran with it, and despite the fact that I had rolled on some deodorant before leaving San Francisco, I could smell myself a little. I dropped down on o
ne knee and ducked a hand in the lake. Icy cold, even on a blistering summer day like this one, because it was fed by underground runoff from snow melting at the higher elevations. Well, I had never minded cold water, and a swim might be nice; I had even remembered to bring a suit with me.

  So I returned to my cabin and changed into my trunks and then came right back down again. I passed Six both ways, in the open, but there was no sign of either of the Jerrolds and nothing but silence from inside.

  I had my swim, and the water cooled me off all right. But after five minutes and no more than a hundred yards of breaststroking, I started to have trouble with my breathing. I told myself it was just the coldness of the lake-and knew as I did so that that was only a part of it. A small part of it.

  It's not malignant, I thought. The lesion is not malignant.

  Behold, a pale horse, I thought, and his name that sat on him was Death…

  I swam in and dried off with a towel I had brought from the cabin. Then I sat there on a flat rock in the sun, feeding on the heat like Winslow, the old man in Chandler's Black Mask story “The Curtain,” and after a while the chill evaporated from between my shoulder blades. When it got to be too hot-nothing but extremes for me today, it seemed-I decided I would go over to Harry's cabin and help myself to another beer.

  While I was getting ready to do that the buzzing of an outboard became audible on the dry air, coming in from the north side of the lake. I looked over in that direction, and a minute or so later I could see the skiff and the two good-sized guys in it, Knox and Talesco. From the angle at which they were traveling, it looked as though they were headed for the pier. I rolled up my towel, put my shirt on, walked over to the pier, and went out along it to where the other skiffs were tied near the end. Then I plunked myself down in front of the outermost boat and tugged at the painter to bring the stern around and pretended an examination of the Johnson outboard while I watched the two of them approach.

  When they got close enough for the guy at the tiller to cut off the engine and let them drift in, I stood up and gave them a friendly wave. The one on the bow seat lifted a hand slightly in what might have been a salute, but the other one didn't make any sort of acknowledgment; neither of them looked particularly cheerful, or particularly curious about who I might be.