Double

by Bill Pronzini

  “Hi, Mr. Murphy,” I called, and waved.

  He glowered harder and turned his back. I smiled and went up the front walk. You’d think he’d have mellowed with the years, but no, Mr. Murphy, along with the pyramids of Egypt and a few other immutables, would go on and on. He’d never forgive the McCones for their too numerous kids and cars and parties that sometimes brought the cops. He’d never forget the night that John and Joey had toilet-papered the trees in front of his house. Mr. Murphy would go on glaring and sweeping as long as there was breath in his body.

  And somehow that pleased me. It gave me the stability that had been missing during the last two days.

  I pushed open the front door and went in, dumping my purse on the table in the hall. The place was a big, rambling ranch house. Originally it had stood on an acre of land, but as more kids had arrived and more room was needed, it had expanded until it sprawled haphazardly toward all four lot lines. Bedrooms had been added in one direction, and in the other the kitchen had been moved twice, until it was now at the extreme end of the house. From year to year nothing had ever been in the same place; in a way it was like moving without ever having to pack.

  Ahead of me was the old living room, which had been converted into a playroom, and beyond that what was left of the backyard—the part with the pool. The pool had been there when Ma and Pa had bought the house, but it had later been cracked by a sonic boom from the fighter planes at Miramar Naval Air Station. My parents had sued the Navy, but had never been able to prove their case, and since they couldn’t afford to repair the pool, eventually they’d had a couple of loads of dirt hauled in, filled it, and turned it into a vegetable garden. We’d always had plenty of zucchini and corn and melons, and since we hadn’t been raised to expect luxury, it was no hardship to drive to the beach for a swim.

  I went through the playroom, stepping carefully over stuffed animals and games, and went outside. The brick barbecue was going full blast, but no one was to be seen. Taking a shortcut around the grape arbor, I entered the kitchen by the side door.

  My mother stood at the center chopping block, making hamburgers. Her long hair, red streaked with gray, was fastened on the top of her head with a couple of barrettes, and beads of perspiration stood out on her forehead. When she heard me close the door, she turned and said, “Aha! There’s the prodigal daughter. Did you get registered at the convention all right?”

  “Yes.” I grinned at her and then at Charlene, who leaned heavily against the refrigerator, her shape reminiscent of the back end of a Volkswagen Beetle. She was a curly haired towhead, like the rest of my siblings. Although there is an eighth Shoshone Indian blood in the McCone family, I’m the only one it came out in—a genetic accident unkindly labeled a “throwback.” I’ve taken plenty of abuse in my time because of that label.

  My Uncle Ed was at the opposite counter, wrapping ears of corn in tinfoil. I went over and hugged him; his shiny bald head came exactly to my chin. “Where’s Aunt Clarisse?” I asked. “And where are the kids?”

  “Clarisse took them off to the bedroom so Charlene could get some peace,” Ma said. “She’s telling them stories.”

  “Uh-oh.” I glanced at Charlene, and she shrugged. Aunt Clarisse was a good storyteller, but she had a lurid imagination. The kids would probably be unable to sleep tonight, after being regaled with tales of witches, ogres, and dismemberment.

  “And Joey?” I asked.

  “Picking up his date,” Charlene said.

  “A date?”

  “Her name’s Cindy.”

  “A new one, of course.” Joey changed ladies as quickly as he changed careers.

  “Yes.” Charlene grinned companionably at me. “This one’s a computer programmer.”

  “My, he’s coming up in the world.”

  “Don’t scoff,” my mother said. “Programmers make good money. Maybe she’ll marry him and support him.”

  “And where, while all this preparation is going on, is Pa?”

  “The garage, of course. You can fetch him when you put the corn on.”

  “And John?”

  Ma patted the last hamburger into shape—none too gently—and slapped it down on the plate. “Your brother John has taken himself off into the canyon—with a six-pack.”

  “Hmm.”

  She turned from the chopping block, wiping her hands on her apron. “Sharon, I wish you’d talk to him. At least make him join the party. You always could talk to him better than any of us.” The vertical lines between her brows deepened, and her mouth turned down woefully.

  “I’ll see what I can do, Ma.” I patted her arm and went to take the platter of corn from Uncle Ed. “You want to help me with these, Charlene?” I said.

  “Sure.” She pushed away from the fridge and waddled out the door after me. “God,” she said when we were out of earshot of the kitchen, “Ma’s as bent out of shape as John is.”

  “Well, it’s not easy being asked to raise two more kids at her age—especially after what she went through with us.”

  “I know.”

  I set the platter down on the edge of the barbecue and looked for the tongs. As usual, they had fallen off into the dirt. I brushed them off on my jeans and started putting the corn on the coals. “Even with Nicky leaving you alone as much as he does,” I went on, “you’ve never come down here from L.A. and dumped your kids in Ma’s lap.” Ricky was Charlene’s musician husband; he had a pattern of getting her pregnant and then going out on tour with his country-and-western group. As soon as the baby was born, he’d return and work at local gigs until the next rabbit test came up positive.

  “Yeah, that’s me—good old self-sufficient Charlene.” Her mouth twisted bitterly.

  I looked sharply at her. “Now what did I say wrong?”

  “Nothing. It’s not you. Maybe I’m just tired of always being the dependable one.”

  “Don’t you go causing problems now! It’s bad enough with—”

  “Don’t worry.” Her wonderful smile lit up her face and, with her mop of curly hair, she looked just like her three year old. “I’ll be good.”

  “You better. I’m going to find Pa now.”

  The garage was at the extreme side of the lot, beyond the bedroom wing. As I approached, I could hear my father’s guitar, and his reedy voice raised in song.

  “But if there be dishonesty

  Implanted in the mind,

  Breeches nor smocks nor scarce padlocks

  The rage of lust can bind. . . .”

  I stopped, listening. The song was a new one. For years, my father had concentrated his musical talents on Irish folk ballads, but my mother had informed me in one of our weekly phone calls that his interests had expanded recently to American songs—and the bawdier the better.

  “Whores will be whores, and on the floors,

  Where many have been laid. . . .”

  Quickly I knocked on the side door of the garage. The guitar issued one last plaintive chord and fell silent.

  “Enter, if you must,” Pa called.

  I entered. He was seated on his workbench—a big man with a full head of snowy-white hair. When he saw me, his ruddy face broke into a smile.

  “You caught me at it, Shari,” he said, using the pet name only he called me.

  “What’s this with the dirty songs, Pa?”

  He stood up and laid the guitar on the bench. “A man’s got to have an interest in life—that’s mine.”

  I looked around the garage, with its lathes and drills and sanders. Ever since he’d retired after thirty years in the Navy, Pa had been a cabinetmaker. “I thought your interest was carpentry.”

  “That’s my work; there’s a difference.” He came over and put an arm around me. “You’re not going to begrudge your own father a little pastime, are you?”

  “No, Pa. Sing all the dirty songs you like—I’ll even join in.”

  He gave me a mock-pained look. “Please don’t. You know you can’t sing worth a damn. I suppose your moth
er sent you for me.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Frankly, I’d rather stay out here. Parties, family gatherings . . .” He shut off the light and followed me outside.

  “Frankly, Pa, I’d rather stay here with you.”

  “What, you don’t like your family?”

  “I love my family. But I think it’s going to be kind of a hectic evening.”

  “What other kind do we ever have?” He stopped, his eyes studying my face fondly. “Your mother asked you to talk to John, didn’t she?”

  “Yes.” I felt a sudden flash of resentment. Here I was, home two days, and already the burden of family responsibility was being heaped on me.

  “See what you can do, Shari,” Pa said, his face suddenly lined. “He needs help, and it’s something he can’t accept from the rest of us. Maybe he can from you.”

  “Maybe,” I said somewhat ungraciously.

  “Try it.”

  “All right, all right!” I turned and went toward the rear of the property where it backed on the canyon.

  This part of the city was full of little finger canyons that stretched behind what looked like ordinary square lots. The canyons were overgrown with scrub oak, eucalyptus, and Torrey pine, and all kinds of animals, from chipmunks to coyotes, lived in them. For a time when I was small, we had had ducks in the yard, but one by one they fell prey to coyotes that would hop the fence at night. Finally one had even got our proud black cat, Gilroy, and after that my mother had said no more pets.

  I took off my high-heeled sandals and stepped over the place where the rough rail fence had been pushed down ever since my childhood. There was a series of stone steps that my father had set into the side of the hill so his kids wouldn’t break their necks climbing down. I followed them deep into the canyon, toward the ruins of our treehouse.

  My mother had been right—John had taken himself into the canyon. He sat on a log under the oak that held the shell of our abandoned aerie, drinking a beer. Ma had been wrong about the beer, however; it was not one six-pack, but two.

  He heard me coming and looked around, his fine blond hair falling against his forehead. With a shock, I saw how much the last few months had aged him: there were worry lines like my mother’s between his eyebrows, and his blue eyes were peculiarly without light.

  “Welcome.” He gestured with the beer can. “I take it this means supper is almost ready.”

  “Not yet. I just wanted to escape the crew up there.”

  “Ma sent you.”

  I’d never been able to fool my older brother. “Yeah, she did.”

  “Poor Ma. She worries too much. Have a seat. You want one of these?” He reached for the six-pack.

  “Sure.”

  He pulled a can from the plastic holder, cracked it, and held it out to me. It was a Schlitz, the brand Wolf drank before he got svelte and switched to beer-flavored water. “Thanks.”

  “What does Ma want you to do, talk me out of the custody fight?” John asked.

  “No, just talk you into joining the party.”

  “I’m not in much of a party mood.”

  “I can understand that.”

  “She did tell you about the custody fight, though.”

  “A couple of weeks ago, on the phone.”

  “Is that why you came down here?” His responses to those around him had become the self-centered ones of a person in pain.

  “No, I came down for a convention of private eyes.”

  He laughed harshly. “That must be something to see.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can picture you all, comparing notes on the best place to buy your deerstalker hats.”

  I smiled faintly. “I think that was Sherlock Holmes. Private eyes are supposed to wear slouch hats.”

  “Do you?”

  “No.”

  “Does anyone?”

  “Probably not.”

  We were silent for a moment, sipping beer.

  Finally I said, “John, are you really going to go through with this custody suit?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you stand a chance of winning?”

  “Maybe. I’ve got to try. They’re my kids, and they belong with me.”

  “Ma said you’ve been offered reasonable visitation rights.”

  He crumpled his beer can and tossed it down the hillside into a clump of manzanita. “It’s not the same thing, Shar. I want to be with my kids every day, the way Pa was with us. I don’t want to see them every other weekend and a month in the summer. I want to be there, to teach them things, to help them when they have problems, not—”

  “I understand how you feel.”

  “Do you?” He turned to me, and I saw that in spite of his anger, his eyes were still oddly dead. “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you were the smart one of all of us. I don’t mean it as something against you, Shar. I admire you for it. You didn’t fuck up. You got a good job after high school and then you went off and put yourself through college, and then you got another good job. You own a house, you’ve got a life of your own. You never got married and had kids and put yourself in a position where you could lose everything—and everybody.”

  “You make me sound pretty cold.”

  “No, but you play it safe.”

  Did I? I wondered. I thought of Don, and of how I could lose him—in so many ways, at any time. Not being married was no guarantee against shattering loss.

  John cracked another beer and took a swig. “A few months ago I thought I had it all. I’d gotten my contractor’s license, bought a house —hell, I hadn’t even had so much as a speeding ticket in a year. I thought it was all together, and then that bitch comes to me and says get out. ‘Get out, you don’t meet my needs anymore.’ Meet her needs! I thought I was meeting them, working eighteen hours a day. But no, I don’t consider her needs, don’t listen to her. There’s no one else, the bitch says, but she doesn’t want me around anymore.”

  He wasn’t going to refer to his wife by her name. I remembered Tina, the embittered divorcée at the party the night before; she’d called her ex-husband “that bastard” the whole evening.

  “So you want to punish her by taking the kids away?”

  “No! All I want is my kids. And I’m going to have them.” He looked off over the canyon, his jaw thrusting forward in determination. “There’s no reason a man can’t be as good a parent as a woman.”

  “I guess not.”

  “There isn’t.”

  “I agreed with you.”

  He laughed bitterly. “Yeah. You give it lip service, like Charlene does, and like Patsy did when I talked to her on the phone last week.”

  “But?”

  “But you don’t really believe it. Underneath, you’re just like Ma.”

  “John, all I think you should do is consider what you’re getting into. You don’t even have a job now.”

  “I could go back to housepainting, I guess. That’s what I did before I got the contractor’s license.”

  “And then what? You’d be working hard, then coming home and cooking, and getting them ready for bed. Helping them with their homework, doing laundry. There’d be doctor’s appointments, P.T.A. . . . Good Lord, think of it.”

  “Lots of women do all that. And more.”

  He was right. But some people—male or female—are equipped to cope, and some aren’t. I knew my brother; he’d always been a little bewildered by the world of day-to-day reality.

  John waited. When I didn’t respond, he said, “Ah, hell, I knew you wouldn’t understand. Why don’t you just go back up there with the rest of them.” He motioned toward the house.

  “John—”

  “Just go.”

  This discussion wasn’t getting us anyplace, so I went.

  Halfway across the yard, I turned and looked back at the canyon. The sun was falling behind it, and the shapes of the bushes and trees were twisted and elongated in the shadows. I’d
never liked that canyon since our proud black cat had disappeared into it—and I liked it even less now.

  6 “WOLF”

  Charley Valdene was a character. And then some.

  He showed up at the convention wearing a belted trench coat and a slouch hat, which caused quite a stir among all those muumuus and party dresses and Bermuda shorts. They wouldn’t let him into the convention room, because he wasn’t a registered member of the Society, but he hung around out on the mezzanine gawking at people and introducing himself and generally acting like a kid in a toyshop. Some of the conventioneers were put off by him—I heard one call him a “buffoon” and another say snootily that the image he presented was “just the kind of idiotic stereotype our profession is trying to live down.” But most of the people seemed to find him charming and refreshing. It was a good thing I did too, because he latched onto me first thing—I was hanging around the mezzanine myself, where it wasn’t so crowded—and peppered me with questions and comments.

  He was about fifty, pudgy, crackling with energy and enthusiasm; bald as an egg under the hat, as I found out later, except for a thin dangly fringe of sand-colored hair. He had fat red cheeks and a fat red nose like Santa Claus, pale blue eyes full of candlepower, and a voice so deep it sounded as if it were coming out of a well. Or maybe out of a geyser: his words seemed to erupt from his mouth, tumbling over each other and wet with spray.

  After about an hour he insisted on taking me to dinner. But not at the hotel, he knew a much better place, did I like cannelloni, sure he knew I would because I was Italian, a much better place, cannelloni and garlic bread and sour red wine, that was their specialty, it was out near his house in Pacific Beach and I’d come there afterward of course, see his collection of private-eyeiana. I said okay; anything was better than sitting in on a sociological overview of the private detective and group dynamics.

  The restaurant he took me to was a little place with about a dozen tables. The cannelloni and garlic bread and red wine lived up to his advertising; it was the kind of fare that would have brought smiles and approving nods in any kitchen in San Francisco’s North Beach. We had espresso afterward, and homemade spumoni ice cream. And throughout the meal, he kept asking questions about this or that case of mine—the more public ones, because damned if he hadn’t studied up on them through back issues of the S.F. newspapers on file in the San Diego Library.