Nameless 08 Scattershot

by Bill Pronzini

  “That what you say. You’re so observant, you let something happen to him right under your nose.” She took a deep breath and let me have her best shot. “This is all your fault, you bum.”

  “Look, Mrs. Hornback—”

  “If my husband isn’t found, and if I don’t recover my money, you’ll hear from my attorney. You can count on that.” There was a clattering sound, and the line began to buzz.

  Nice lady. A real princess.

  I lay back down. I was still half groggy, and pretty soon I went back to sleep. And then the damned phone went off again, sat me up the way it had before. I focused on the clock: 7:40. Conspiracy against my sleep, I thought, not altogether coherently, and fumbled up the handset.

  “Wake you up, hotshot?” a familiar voice said with some relish. Eberhardt.

  “What do you think?”

  “Sorry about that. I’ve got news for you.”

  “What news?”

  “Abut that funny business up on Twin Peaks last night.”

  “What about it?”

  “Your boy Hornback’s been found.”

  I stopped feeling sleepy; the fuzziness cleared out of my head. “Where?” I said. “Is he all right?”

  “In Golden Gate Park,” Eberhardt said. “And no, he’s not all right. He’s dead, been dead since last night sometime. Stabbed in the chest with what was probably a butcher knife.”

  SIX

  I got down to the Hall of Justice at nine-fifteen— showered, shaved, and full of coffee. It was another nice day, clear skies, a little windy. The sunshine softened the austere gray lines of the Hall, made it look less grim than usual. But none of the people on the front steps or in the lobby seemed to be smiling. And neither was I as I rode the elevator up to General Works.

  Eberhardt was in his office, gnawing on one of his briar pipes and looking his usual sour self. He was a big, somewhat awkward man, my age, with the general appearance of having been put together with a lot of spare parts, half of them angles and half of them blunt planes. His close-cropped hair was turning gray, and a lot more silver had come into it in the past month. His wife, Dana, had left him for another man, after twenty-eight years of marriage, not long before I’d met Kerry. He had taken it hard and he was still taking it hard; he was not the kind of man who got over things easily.

  . He avoided my eyes when I came in, as he’d done on each of the half-dozen occasions I had seen him the past few weeks. A week after Dana moved out of their Noe Valley house, he had shown up drunk and disheveled at my flat at 6:00 A.M., after having picked up a woman in a bar and taken her home for the night, and he’d confided that he hadn’t been able to perform sexually. It was no major crisis, from a psychological point of view, but for a man like Eberhardt, that kind of failure and that kind of admission had been profound. He wouldn’t have told me sober, and I knew he kept brooding about it, and so he had let a certain reserve build up between us. I could not seem to break through it, to get our friendship back to what it had always been.

  Looking at him now, I saw that his eyes were bloodshot and his hands just a little unsteady. I wondered if he was still drinking. The last time I’d seen him, two weeks ago, he had told me he was off the booze and coping. But I had my doubts.

  He waved me to a chair. “You want some coffee?”

  “No. I had some before I left home.”

  “Suit yourself,” he said. “I’ve been rereading Klein’s report. You do get mixed up in the damnedest cases.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  “One of these days you’re going to get in over your head. And you’ll wake up some morning with your tail in a sling.”

  “I play by the rules, Eb, you know that.”

  “Just the same, you better watch yourself.”

  “All right.”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  I let a small silence build. Then I said, “What have you got on Hornback?”

  “Nothing much. Guy out jogging found the body at six-forty, in a clump of bushes along JFK Drive. Stabbed in the chest, like I told you on the phone; single wound that penetrated the heart, probable weapon a butcher knife. ME says death was instantaneous. That takes care of your suicide theory.”

  “I guess it does.”

  “No other marks on the body,” he said. “Except for a few small scratches on the hands and on one cheek.”

  “What kind of scratches?”

  “Just scratches. The kind you get crawling around in the woods or underbrush—or the kind a body gets if it’s been dragged through the same type of terrain. The ME will know more on that when he finishes his postmortem.”

  “What was the condition of Hornback’s clothes?”

  “Dirty, torn in a couple of places. Same thing applies.”

  “Anything among his effects?”

  “No. The usual stuff—wallet, handkerchief, change, a pack of cigarettes, and a box of matches. Eighty-three dollars in the wallet and a bunch of credit cards. That seems to rule out a robbery motive.”

  I said, “I don’t suppose there was any evidence where he was found.”

  “None. Killed somewhere else and then dumped in the park.”

  “Like up on that Twin Peaks lookout,’ I said.

  “So it would seem. Hornback’s blood type was AO; it matches the blood on the front seat of his car.”

  I watched him break his briar in half and run a pipe cleaner through the stem. The room was too hot; a portable heater rumbled and glowed in one corner. He seemed to crave heat lately, as if he could not get warm—some sort of psychological reaction to his domestic troubles. I could feel sweat forming on my neck and under my arms.

  “Hornback’s wife thinks you’re a bum,” he said.

  “Yeah, I know. She called me this morning.”

  “Klein got back a little while ago from breaking the news to her. He says she blames you for her husband’s death. He also says she made some thinly veiled accusations.”

  “What kind of accusations?”

  “That maybe you killed Hornback.”

  “What!” “On account of you wanted the money he allegedly stole for yourself. She thinks maybe you’ve got it right now.”

  “She’s crazy,” I said. “Christ!”

  “Maybe so. But that kind of woman can stir up a lot of trouble. That’s what I meant about your waking up some morning with your tail in a sling.”

  “She can’t do anything to me.”

  “No? Your story is pretty screwy, you know.”

  “I can’t help that. It’s the truth.”

  “Sure. But it’s still screwy, and there’s still no explanation for what happened to Hornback. If I didn’t know you, hotshot, I’d be taking a pretty close look at you myself right now.”

  “Come on, Eb. Quit putting the needle in me.”

  “Is that what you think I’m doing?”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Ah, go on, get out of here. I got work to do. But listen—keep yourself available. Just in case there are any new developments.”

  “I’m always available,” I said.

  “Sure you are. Always.”

  I stood up, went to the door. When I got there I stopped and turned around. Eberhardt was tamping tobacco into his briar from an oilskin pouch, scowling as he did it.

  “Eb …”

  “No, I haven’t heard from Dana,” he said without looking up.

  “Did I ask?”

  “You were about to.”

  “.. . Eb, are you okay?”

  “Just dandy.”

  “I mean—”

  “I know what you mean. Don’t worry about me.”

  “But I do. That’s what friends are for.”

  “Worry about your own love life. How’s Kerry, by the way?”

  “Fine.”

  He hesitated. And then for the first time he raised his eyes to meet mine, and there was something in them that I could not quite read. “She’s a good woman, and you’re a lucky bastard to have her,�
� he said. “Keep her happy. Don’t let go of her.”

  A hollow sensation seemed to open up in my stomach. I was careful to keep my voice neutral as I said, “I won’t.”

  “Good. Now go on, beat it. I’m tired of looking at your ugly face.”

  I went on and beat it.

  There were no messages on the answering machine in my office and no mail to speak of. I opened the Venetian blinds to let in some sunlight—I needed sunlight this morning, and plenty of it—and then sat down and called Bates and Carpenter.

  Kerry wasn’t in. “She’s gone to an early lunch with Mr. Carpenter,” her secretary said. “May I take a message?”

  I said, “Just tell her I called.”

  “Shall I have her return the call?”

  “No. I’ll get back to her this afternoon.”

  I swiveled around in my chair and stared out the window. Out to lunch with Jim Carpenter. First dinner, now lunch. Very cozy. It was just business on Kerry’s part, of course—I said that to myself half a dozen times. But what about Carpenter? I knew he wasn’t married; Kerry had told me that. What if he was a ladies’ man? What if his favorite pastime was screwing his female employees? Kerry hadn’t mentioned whether he was that way or not… and why hadn’t she?

  Nuts, I thought. She wouldn’t go to bed with him under any circumstances. She’d worked for Bates and Carpenter for over a year; if she was inclined to succumb to Carpenter’s charms, whatever the hell they happened to be, she’d have done it long before this. Besides which, she was a monogamous woman, and it was me she was keeping company with these days; she had climbed into the sack with me just two days ago, for Christ’s sake.

  Yeah, I thought, but it wasn’t very good for either of us. So maybe she’s tired of me and ready to look elsewhere. Maybe she agrees with Ivan the Terrible that she’s better off with a young man instead of an old bum. Maybe she already succumbed to Carpenter’s advances, had an affair with him before I knew her, and now she’s weakening again.

  Things like that, all sorts of speculations, kept rambling through my head. I couldn’t get rid of them, and because I couldn’t, I felt stupid and childish and morose. And guilty, too. If she was taking up with Carpenter, or even thinking about taking up with him, it was at least partly my fault. I’d been putting too much pressure on her to marry me. I’d spent too much time bad-mouthing her old man. Ivan the Terrible may have been something of a shit, but he was still her father. How could I blame her if she chose him over me?

  I brooded some more. Eberhardt and his marital problems got mixed up in it; I kept drawing parallels between his situation and mine, and I kept hearing him say, “She’s a good woman, and you’re a lucky bastard to have her. Keep her happy. Don’t let go of her.” That made me feel even more morose, finally drove me out of the office and down to the restroom at the end of the hall. I looked at myself in the mirror over the sink. Why don’t you soak your head, you silly ass, you? I thought. Which seemed like a good idea, so I ran cold water from the tap and went ahead and did it.

  When I came back I opened the Speers file again and tried to work. I needed to work; I needed to rechannel my hyperactive imagination. But the first thing that stared up at me was the full-color photograph of Lauren Speers. Red hair like Kerry’s, only more flamelike. I turned the photo facedown and picked up one of the newspaper clippings and read the first paragraph six times without any of the words making sense.

  The telephone rang.

  I hauled up the receiver and said, “Detective agency.”

  “This is George Hickox. Clyde Mollenhauer’s secretary.”

  Now what? “Yes, Mr. Hickox?”

  “About Saturday—Mr. Mollenhauer has an additional request.”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re to wear a tuxedo,” he said.

  “A what?”

  “A tuxedo. You do know what a tuxedo is, don’t you?”

  “I have some idea, yes,” I said between my teeth. “May I ask why?”

  “Each male guest will be wearing a tux,” Hickox said. “Mr. Mollenhauer feels you’d look out of place without one, in the event you should come in contact with any of the guests.”

  “I see.”

  “If you don’t own a tuxedo, I suggest you make arrangements to obtain one. The requirement is firm.”

  “I’ll rent one right away.”

  “Do that,” he said and hung up in my ear.

  I held the receiver at arm’s length and gave it the finger. Do this. I thought. Which was not very bright; I slammed the thing down. Tuxedo. Me in soup-and-fish and packing a rod, on guard over expensive presents at a wedding reception in Ross. The eighth wonder of the world.

  It took me five minutes to find the Yellow Pages;

  they were hidden away in the back of one file cabinet. I looked up a place that rented tuxedos and gave them a call. The weekend rental fee was fifty dollars, plus a deposit, but that was all right because I was not going to pay for it; Clyde Mollenhauer was going to pay for it. If there was one item that came under the heading of expenses, it was a goddamn tuxedo.

  I told the guy what size I wore, arranged to pick up the tux on Friday afternoon, and then went back to the Speers file. The call from Hickox had shaken me out of my mental doldrums, at least; this time I managed to concentrate on what I was reading. Or rereading. No new angles presented themselves—not where Lauren Speers was concerned, anyhow. But I did begin to realize that maybe I had been approaching the hunt from the wrong direction.

  None of Speer’s relatives or friends might be willing or able to tell me where she’d disappeared to, but what about relatives or friends of Bernice Dolan? Assume Dolan had gone wherever Speers had gone. It was a reasonable assumption; she was Speer’s secretary, and the manager of her apartment building had told me she hadn’t been home for weeks. All right, then. Find Dolan, and the chances were I would also find Speers.

  There was almost no information on Bernice Dolan in the file. I weighed possibilities. The best one seemed to be a canvass of her apartment building; even if none of her neighbors knew where she’d gone, they might be able to provide some useful facts on her background. If that didn’t pan out, I could try pumping the Examiner society editor again—maybe some of Speers’s acquaintances as well. And if that didn’t work, I could resort to calling all the Dolans in San Francisco and the other Bay Area counties, on the chance that she was a native and had relatives living here. I had begun to work up a little enthusiasm by this time. I closed up for the time being, went to where I’d left my car. Getting out was a good idea. It was too damned quiet inside my office. And with Kerry on the one hand, and Edna Hornback and her insinuations on the other, it was too damned noisy inside the dusty cave of my head.

  SEVEN

  I got lucky for a change. Twenty-five minutes after I arrived at Bernice Dolan’s building, I found out where she’d gone.

  The building was on Greenwich, over near Fill-more, in the heart of Cow Hollow—a three-story, six-unit job that faced toward the bay. The manager let me in, but he had no additional information for me; he didn’t know any of Dolan’s friends or any of her background. As far as he was concerned, she kept pretty much to herself.

  Her apartment was on the second floor, and there was nobody home in the other apartment across the hall. I went upstairs and talked to a chubby woman with her hair in curlers, who didn’t know Dolan at all, or claimed not to, and who thought I was either trying to sell her something or bent on raping her; she kept edging the door closed as we talked, until her nose and mouth were all that were visible beyond an inch-wide crack. Then her face vanished altogether and I heard a couple of locks snap into place. She was definitely not a trusting person.

  The second apartment on that floor belonged to a heavy-set bearded guy with long bristly hair and a mashed-in snout, all of which features combined to make him look like a hairy pig. When he opened the door and breathed on me I smelled the odor of sour red wine. Sure, he said, he knew Bernice Dolan. She
was a terrific lay, Bernice was; they’d got it on together on Christmas Eve, after a party. Small tits, though, he said. Very small. No, he hadn’t seen her recently. Maybe she’d found herself a sugar daddy somewhere, he said, and winked at me. Wouldn’t surprise him if she had. She really was a terrific lay, despite her small tits. It was too bad about those tits, he said. Otherwise she would really be a fox.

  I left him to his wine and his anatomical hangups and went downstairs again. It was my intention to go all the way down to the first floor, to talk to the occupants of the sixth apartment, but when I got to the second floor I saw a woman with a bag of groceries unlocking the door across from Dolan’s. I got over to her just as she popped the door open.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “I’d like to talk to you for a moment, if I may.”

  She hadn’t seen or heard me coming, and at the sound of my voice she jumped half a foot and almost dropped the bag of groceries. She was about forty, and she had nice brown eyes. That was about all you could say for her in the way of looks; she was so plain and frumpy that I found myself feeling sorry for her. But it was probably just as well, under the circumstances. At least she didn’t think I was there to rape her.

  “My God,” she said, “you scared the life out of me.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

  “Well. You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that.” She gave me an appraising look. “What did you want?”

  “I’m trying to locate Bernice Dolan,” I said. “I thought you might know what’s become of her.”

  “Why do you want to locate Bernice?”

  “A small business matter.”

  “She’s not in trouble, is she?”

  “Not that I know of. Why do you think she might be?”

  “Oh, well, she’s a little wild, you know.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Men,” she said. “Bernice is crazy about men.” She paused. “You’re not one of them, are you?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Good. Don’t misunderstand: I like Bernice. It’s just that she’s irresponsible. Men and money and fancy possessions, that’s all she ever talks about.”