Double

by Bill Pronzini

  I was halfway to the bar and beer when I noticed that I wasn’t the only conventioneer who’d fled to this sanctuary: Sharon McCone was over at one of the tables near the windows, deep in conversation with a stylishly dressed older woman I’d seen earlier in the convention room. Well, at least she’d found somebody else to talk to. I considered going over and joining them, but they seemed to be enjoying each other’s company and I had never been any good at rolling in as a third wheel for polite chitchat. I kept on going to the bar and plunked myself onto a stool and ordered a Miller Lite from the barman. It came ice cold, along with a frosted stein. Score one for the Cantina Sin Nombre.

  While I worked on the beer, I decided I might as well see what the convention had to offer, so I opened up the information packet the guy at the registration table had given me. Lots of great events, all right. All guaranteed to insure a fun-filled, informative “weekend in the sun,” as the Society’s flyer had put it.

  Tonight, for example, after the usual welcome speeches, I could go to a pair of stimulating panel discussions: “Questional Ethics and Practices of Private Detectives” and “The Investigator and Group Dynamics: A Sociological Overview.” I could also attend the first of several product demonstrations, put on by an L.A. supplier of handguns and other self-defense weapons. Tomorrow morning I could attend a film dramatization called A Day in the Life of a Typical Investigator. Or a seminar on “Interpersonal Relationships with Law Enforcement Officers and Government Officials.” Or two more provocative panel discussions: “Modern Techniques of Hotel Security” and “Electronic Eavesdropping: Morality Versus Legal Admissibility.”

  Then on Sunday, if I was still thirsty for more knowledge, I had my choice of two films on various investigative techniques, some demonstrations involving computers and electronic surveillance products, and/or a fifth and final panel, sure to be the most stirring of all, entitled, “Seidenbaum’s Method of Directive Interrogation: A Creative Debate.” And then—the high point of the convention—the Society’s annual awards dinner Sunday evening, at which no less than two politicians and six interpersonally relating law enforcement officers, government officials, and private investigators would speak, no doubt in great depth and detail, and handsome little ebony plaques would be presented to those members of the Society who had “distinguished themselves in the field of investigative service” during the previous calendar year. I looked for my name among the nominees, but it wasn’t there. The only one I recognized was a guy from Boston; I knew him and his methods, and as far as I was concerned he was a wisecracking, borderline psychotic who operated under a moral code that was anything but and who ought to have been tossed in jail a long time ago. But then what did I know, really, an ordinary slob like me?

  But that wasn’t all. Oh no. The Society and the Casa del Rey weren’t about to let the rest of the evening go to waste. There would be a postprandial cocktail party in the Marimba Room, featuring free champagne, and after that there would be dancing “until the wee hours” to the Latin melodies of Pedro Martinez and his world-famous Mexican Bandit Band.

  I closed the information packet. I drank the rest of my beer. I thought: God, what if my heart can’t stand the excitement of it all? What if I keel over right in the middle of one of the Latin melodies of Pedro Martinez and his world-famous Mexican Bandit Band?

  I ordered another beer. And I was trying not to cry into it when a familiar voice said behind me, “Hiding in dark bars already?” I glanced up into the back-bar mirror, and it was McCone sailing by on her way out; she waved when she saw me looking at her. By the time I thought of something clever and unfatherly to say to her, she was gone and I was alone again.

  McCone, I thought, if you keep disappearing all weekend, who the hell am I going to talk to?

  Well, I had one other prospect, anyway—one guy I had never met but with whom I had corresponded and spoken to on the telephone and who shared a couple of common interests. He wasn’t a private investigator ; he didn’t have anything to do with the convention, even though he would probably come and hang around for most of it. His name was Charley Valdene and he was a painting contractor who lived in Pacific Beach, up the coast a way. I had traded pulps with him off and on over the past several years; he collected mystery and detective titles, as I did, but more selectively—only those that contained stories about private detectives. He also collected anything else written or drawn or aired that involved the exploits of P.I.s. He’d cheerfully admitted that he had a private-eye fixation. Always dreamed of being one, didn’t have the brains or the courage for the job—his self-analysis—and so he’d devoted himself to the species vicariously.

  I could understand that sort of obsession all too well, because I’d had —still had—one something like it myself: it was the pulps I read as a youth that had led me to become, first, a cop and then finally to hang out my own shingle. And I had never forgotten that early desire to emulate the pulp-detective heroes of my youth, even though I never would, never could, because the world they’d inhabited was a make-believe world, and their era was long gone. But I kept trying. I would go on trying, too, until the time came to plant me somewhere. So what if I was obsolete? To hell with seminars and panels and electronic surveillance equipment and group dynamics and Seidenbaum’s Method of Directive Interrogation. You are what you are.

  I poured more beer, and when I lifted my glass I happened to glance into the mirror again. McCone’s stylish lady friend was still sitting at the table by the window. Somebody else had joined her—a handsome wavy-haired guy in a Madras jacket and white slacks—and the two of them appeared to be having an argument of some kind.

  It wasn’t any of my business. But then I’m a detective, and detectives are curious types, and I was bored besides; so I kept on watching them. The woman seemed pretty upset. She said something to the man in a low angry voice, and he sat there relaxed, one leg crossed over the other, and laughed at her. Her voice got louder when she spoke again, so this time I could hear the words.

  “Goddamn you, Rich, stop bothering me like this. I’m warning you —leave me alone!”

  People at nearby tables were looking at them. The woman was aware of it; she said something else, lowering her voice, and got up out of her chair. The wavy-haired guy got up too and blocked her way when she came around the table. She tried to push past him; he caught her arm, not gently, and held her.

  Well, I don’t like scenes like that; I don’t like men putting rough hands on women in public. I swung around and got off my stool and went toward them. Nobody else in the Cantina Sin Nombre moved at all—except for the bartender, who was heading for the telephone.

  “Let go of me, Rich,” the woman said to the guy. Her tone had a cold deadly edge to it.

  He said, “You’re making a scene,” as if he was amused by the idea.

  “No, you’re making it. I’m head of security at this hotel, remember? I’ll have you arrested, I mean that.”

  “Do you, Elaine? You wouldn’t want me to start telling tales out of school, now, would you?”

  She was paper white, and she looked frightened as well as angry. She made an effort to pull away from him; he hung on, hurting her because she winced. And that was when I got to them. I clamped my hand onto his shoulder, not too hard but not too lightly either, and arranged my mouth into a smile as I spoke.

  “Some trouble here?”

  The guy turned his head to look at me. There was no anger or hostility in his expression; it was just a look, shadowed with vague annoyance. He was in his late twenties, the wavy hair was dark brown, and he had funny eyes—gray-blue, with small pupils and little lights that burned down deep in them, like secret fires.

  He said, “Let go of my shoulder.”

  “Sure. As soon as you let go of the lady’s arm.”

  “This is none of your business.”

  “You let go, I let go. How about it?”

  The funny eyes crawled on my face for about five seconds. Then he smiled—secret amusem
ent to go with the secret fires—and released the woman’s arm. When I took my hand away from his shoulder, he brushed at the place where it had lain as if he were afraid I might have somehow contaminated him.

  The woman was rubbing at her forearm, where his fingers had left dark red marks. “Get out of here, Rich,” she said to the guy. “And don’t come back, do you hear?”

  “Oh, of course,” he said lazily. “Sure thing.” He straightened his jacket, winked at me, smiled at her, said “See you soon, dearheart,” and took himself away across the room. Some people at one of the tables gawked at him as he passed, and I heard him say to them, “Nothing to worry about, folks. Just a little spat between lovers. Enjoy your drinks and have a nice day.” Then he was gone.

  When I looked at the woman again she was making gestures to the bartender, who still stood behind the plank with the telephone receiver in his hand; asking him tacitly if he’d called anybody. He shook his head and put the receiver down. He might have been throwing a switch, too, because the hush that had fallen over the room broke just then and the customers started whispering to each other and shifting around in their chairs.

  The woman brought her attention back to me. Her anger was gone, but some of the fright still clung to her expression. She was nice-looking in a severe sort of way, with sculpted, close-cropped brunette hair frosted with gray and a well-preserved figure; she could have been anywhere from forty to fifty. One of the convention name tags was pinned to the front of her beige suit coat: Elaine Picard—Chief of Security Operations, Casa del Rey, San Diego.

  “Thank you for stepping in,” she said. “It really wasn’t necessary, but thank you anyway.”

  “Well, I don’t like to see women being mauled. Especially a friend of a friend.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t—?”

  “I noticed you talking to Sharon McCone a while ago,” I said. “Sharon’s a friend of mine.”

  “Oh, I see. Yes, she and I used to work together. Are you with the convention too, then?”

  “Yep. Also from San Francisco.”

  I told her my name and she nodded, but she was only half listening to me. Her thoughts were elsewhere, probably on the guy named Rich. She was still rubbing at her forearm.

  I said, “Did he hurt you much?”

  “What? Oh, my arm. No, it’s all right.”

  “The way he was hanging on, he might have broken something.”

  “I doubt that. He always stops short of committing a felony in front of witnesses.”

  “Does that mean he’s bothered you like this before, in public?”

  “Yes. He’s a nuisance.”

  “Old boyfriend?”

  “No. Just . . . an acquaintance.”

  “Maybe you ought to get a restraining order to keep him away from you.”

  “Restraining order?” She smiled faintly, almost painfully, as if something had struck her funny in a macabre sort of way. “No, he’s not dangerous. I can handle him.” She paused, as if the conversation was making her uncomfortable, and then said, “Well. If you’ll excuse me?” and gave me her hand.

  “Sure. Nice meeting you, Miss Picard.”

  “Yes. Same here. I’m sure we’ll see each other again during the convention.”

  Before she left, she detoured to the bar and told the bartender to pour a round of drinks on the house and to tear up my tab. So I nursed a third bottle of Miller Lite—Kerry wouldn’t have approved, but what the hell, I had to get some pleasure out of this weekend—and when it was gone it was almost five o’clock and the Cantina Sin Nombre was filling up with thirsty conventioneers. I fled to my walk-in luxury closet upstairs.

  The bed was soft, at least. Hard beds play hell with my back, and I don’t care what anybody says about them being good for you. I sat on it and picked up the telephone and called the Bates & Carpenter ad agency in San Francisco. And, wonder of wonders, Kerry was not only in but available.

  “Well, I’m here in San Diego,” I said when she came on the line. “Safe if not sound.”

  “That’s good. How was the flight?”

  “Okay. They gave me a clunker to drive at the airport, so I’m right at home on that score. But the hotel’s too fancy. I feel like I ought to be using the service entrance. Besides, I can’t figure it out.”

  “Figure what out?”

  “The hotel. It looks like Wuthering Heights but it’s got a Spanish name and so does its bar and nightclub, and the band that plays here is called the Mexican Bandit Band. What do you think that means?”

  “I don’t even want to guess,” she said. “How’s the convention so far?”

  “It hasn’t started yet. But I met a blonde with a forty-two-inch bust who wants me to come up and service her later. I guess I might as well do it.”

  “What kind of service?” Kerry said. “The Private-Eye Special—in at ten, out at ten-oh-five?”

  I sighed. “I hate snappy comebacks,” I said.

  “That’s because you can never think of one yourself.”

  We went on like that for a while, bantering the way lovers do, and by the time we said good-bye I was pining away for her. Who needed a blonde when you could run your fingers through rich red hair as soft as velvet? Who needed a forty-two-inch bust when you could snuggle up to seven inches less around the chest but a whole lot more elsewhere, all of it slender and smooth and—

  Cut it out, you horny old fart. It’s only Friday and you just got here.

  I tried to call Eberhardt, to find out if any business had come our way during the day and to tell him what a terrific time I was having so he’d want to go to next year’s convention; that way I could get even with him. But he wasn’t at the office. And he wasn’t home yet either.

  Which left me with nothing much to do except to read one of the pulps I’d brought along as trade items for Charley Valdene. At six o’clock I got up, not without great reluctance, and combed my hair and put my suit coat back on and rode the elevator down to the mezzanine.

  The convention was in full swing. Hundreds of people milling around and chattering and fondling voice recorders and wiretaps and each other, a riot of swirling color and half-naked flesh and name tags and plastic wine cups and glistening machinery. I stood outside the elevator for a time, taking it all in and marshaling my courage. And then, like a soldier on a suicide mission, I girded my loins and gritted my teeth and plunged into the midst of it with no hope at all.

  5 McCONE

  As I drove back to my parents’ home in the Mission Hills district of the city, a kind of low, flat mood stole over me. I had spent very little time in San Diego during the past ten years, and now that I was here for what might be an extended visit, nothing felt right.

  The city had changed, of course. Where there had once been a funky auto ferry from Coronado Island to the mainland, there was now a white soaring expanse of bridge. New, tall buildings lined the downtown streets. And the town limits had spread, shopping centers and housing tracts obliterating what had once been wild canyons.

  But the biggest change was really in the people. I looked at my mother and father and saw they had more wrinkles and tired easily. My sister Charlene, down from Los Angeles for the week with her four kids, was pregnant again, and her poor color and lack of appetite told me this time things weren’t going so well. John, naturally, had his troubles. Joey, my other brother, was still trying to decide what to do with his life, but his willingness to try everything and settle on nothing wasn’t as charming as it had been five years ago. Patsy, my littlest sister, wasn’t even here; she lived on a farm up near Ukiah, and Lord knew when I’d ever see her again—or if we’d have anything to say to each other when we did.

  And then there were my old friends. I’d come down two days ago and, since my mother had spread the word, the phone had immediately started ringing. The calls led to a gathering the next night at my friend Donna’s house, out in an area of expensive homes near San Diego State. And that had been a disaster.

  First there
was Donna, who had married a guy from our high-school class. He had done well in computers. They had a four-bedroom house with a pool; two children, a boy and a girl, well behaved as far as I could tell; country club membership; boat at a Mission Bay marina; twice-yearly trips to Hawaii.

  And Donna was scared to death of me.

  She had perched on the edge of the couch waiting for the others to arrive and asked polite questions—how was my family, was I settled in my new house yet, was I glad to be back in San Diego? And all the time she watched me, nervously, warily, as if she expected me to do something peculiar. Then the others had arrived: Tina, a new embittered divorcée; Janey, still teaching school, still looking for Mr. Right; Connie, now a bank vice-president, married to “another professional”; Amy, wife of a professor at State, looking comfortable and sloppy as ever.

  And they were all afraid of me too.

  To ease the tension, we had had some wine, and then some more wine. And when the questions started to flow, I realized what was wrong. Despite the fact they were all different from one another, I was more different yet. In fact, to them I was strange. After all, I was a detective. I consorted with underworld characters, I carried a gun, I had—for God’s sake—even shot a man to death. The questions went on and on; I could see the vicarious excitement gleaming in their eyes; and when I finally couldn’t take it anymore, I had escaped early.

  I didn’t like to put much stock in old adages, but now I saw the truth in the one about not being able to go home again.

  The street was crowded with cars when I pulled up to my parents’ home at the end of the cul-de-sac. Getting out of the MG, I spotted their next-door neighbor, Mr. Murphy, and realized some things never change. He was sweeping his sidewalk, pushing the dead leaves and twigs down onto the walk in front of my parents’ house. And when he saw me, he leaned on the broom and glared.