Bones (The Nameless Detecive)

by Bill Pronzini

  I pulled into a Chevron station near Broadway, the main downtown arterial. And pumped my own gas while a fat, indolent teenager looked on, waiting to take my money. Self-service at gas stations is one of my pet peeves. High prices, and you do all the work yourself. What the hell did attendants like this one do to earn their salary? Not much, that was for damned sure. Instead of walking over to where he was, I got back into the car so that he had to move his fat in order to get paid. Small satisfaction, but you take your satisfactions where you can these days.

  I took another one by sitting there at the pump for an extra couple of minutes while I dug a Redwood City street map out of the bag of maps in the glove compartment and looked up Stambough Street, Dancer's last known address. Only it wasn't Stambough, it was Stambaugh: I had mistaken an a for an o in the scrawled return address on Dancer's Christmas card envelope. Stambaugh Street was only a few blocks from where I was, not far off Broadway—more or less downtown and more or less close to the SP tracks.

  But I didn't go there directly after I left the nonservice station. I stopped instead on Broadway and went into the first cafe I saw to eat lunch. I was hungry, and Dancer isn't somebody you want to deal with on an empty stomach.

  I took my copies of Axe Marks the Spot and Axe of Mercy with me, and skimmed through them while I ate. Neither one had an Italian villain in it. I couldn't recall which of the others did have; it had been too long since I'd read them. I would have to go see Kiskadon later on and check through his copies.

  With a cheese omelette and a glass of iced tea under my belt, I drove to Stambaugh Street. The number I wanted turned out to be a somewhat seedy rooming house near a block-long thrift store: a sprawling, two-story Victorian with turrets and gables and brick chimneys, all badly in need of paint and general repair. Two sickly palm trees grew in a front yard enclosed by a picket fence with a fourth of the pickets broken or missing altogether. Nice place. Every time I crossed paths with Dancer, he seemed to have tumbled a little further downhill.

  I parked in front and went through the gate and up onto the creaky front porch. There was only one entrance and no marked mailboxes to identify who lived there. Just a doorbell button and a small card above it that said ROOM FOR RENT—SEE MANAGER. I tried the door, found it locked, and pushed the bell. Pretty soon somebody buzzed me into a dark hallway that smelled of Lysol and, curiously, popcorn. The somebody—a woman—was leaning out of a doorway beyond a flight of stairs, giving me a squint-eyed look.

  I went over to her. The door was marked MANAGER and the woman was about fifty, gray-haired, wearing sequin-rimmed glasses. She had a face like something in an old, discolored wallpaper pattern—the gargoyle kind.

  “Something I can do for you?” Brillo-pad voice, like Lauren Bacall with a sore throat.

  “I'm looking for a man named Russell Dancer.”

  Her mouth got all quirky with what I took to be disgust. “Him,” she said. “You wouldn't be a cop, would you?”

  “I wouldn't. Why?”

  “You look like a cop. Dancer's been in jail before.”

  “In Redwood City, you mean?”

  “Sure. He been in jail somewhere else too?”

  He had, but I wasn't about to tell her that. “What was he arrested for?”

  “Drunk and disorderly, what else? You a bill collector?”

  “No.”

  “Process server?”

  “No. He does still live here?”

  “Yeah, he lives here. But he won't much longer if he don't start payin his rent on time. He's just like my ex—a deadbeat and a bum. This was my house, I'd throw him out on the fuckin street.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Right out on the fuckin street,” she said.

  “What's his room number?”

  “Six. Upstairs.”

  “He in now?”

  She shrugged. “Who knows? If he ain't you can probly find him at Mama Luz's, over on Main. That's where he does his drinkin when he don't do it here.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don't mention it. You a friend of his?”

  “Religious advisor.”

  “What?”

  “His religious advisor. I'm teaching him how to love his neighbor. Maybe you'd like a few lessons too.”

  “Fuckin wise guy,” she said, and shut the door in my face.

  I went upstairs, found the door with the numeral 6 on it, and whacked it a couple of times with the heel of my hand. Nobody answered. On impulse I tried the knob: Dancer had forgotten to lock it, or just hadn't bothered. I poked my head inside. Just a room, not much in the way of furnishings; clothing strewn around, an empty half-gallon jug of Lucky Stores generic bourbon, a scatter of secondhand paperbacks that had probably come out of the thrift store nearby. I didn't see any sign of a typewriter or a manuscript or anything else that a professional writer ought to have lying around.

  I shut the door and went back downstairs and out into the warm sunshine. It was a nice day down here, cloudless, with not much wind; the Peninsula is usually ten to twenty degrees warmer than San Francisco and this day was no exception. I left my car where it was and hoofed it along Stambaugh to Main Street. Mama Luz's wasn't hard to find. It was half a block to the west, and its full name, spelled out on a garish neon sign, was Mama Luz's Pink Flamingo Tavern. Some moniker for a sleazy neighborhood bar. I crossed the street, shook my head at the scrawny pink flamingo painted on the front wall, and went through an honest-to-God set of batwing doors.

  The interior wasn't any better than the exterior. The usual bar arrangement, some warping wooden booths, a snooker table with a drop light over it, and a mangled jukebox that looked as if it had been mugged: broken glass top, caved-in side, and a big hole punched or kicked in its midsection. I would not have liked to meet the guy who had done all that damage, even if he'd been justified.

  There were four people in the place, including an enormous female bartender. Two of the customers were blue-collar types nursing beers; the third was Dancer, down at the far end, draped over a newspaper with a cigarette hanging out of his face and a glass of something that was probably bourbon close at hand. He was reading with his nose about ten inches from the newsprint, squinting through the cigarette smoke as if he might have gone myopic; he was the type who would go on denying that he needed glasses right up to the day he went blind. He didn't notice me at first, as engrossed as he was, so I had a chance to take stock of him a little.

  He had changed in the two years since I'd last seen him, and none of it for the better. He was about sixty-five now and looked every year of it: sagging jowls, heavy lines and wrinkles and age spots on his face and neck, a lot more ruptured blood vessels in his cheeks, and a rum-blossom nose W.C. Fields would have admired. There wasn't much left of his dust-colored hair; age spots littered his naked scalp as well. He looked dissipated and rheumy and too thin for his big frame, as if the flesh were hanging on his bones like a scarecrow's tattered clothing. The thought came to me that he was going to die pretty soon, and it gave me a sharp twinge of pity and compassion. He'd screwed up his own life—we all do to one extent or another—but he hadn't had many breaks, either, and very little luck. At sixty-five he deserved better than a furnished room near a thrift shop, a stool in Mama Luz's Pink Flamingo Tavern, and death staring at him from the bottom of a whiskey glass.

  “Hello, Russ,” I said.

  His head came up and he peered at me blankly for a couple of seconds. Then recognition animated his features, split his mouth into a bleary grin, and he said, “Well, if it isn't the dago shamus! What you doing here?”

  “Looking for you.”

  “Yeah? Christ, it's been what, two years?” He stood up, more or less steadily—he'd had a few but he wasn't drunk—and punched my arm. He seemed genuinely glad to see me. “You lost some weight, paisano. Looking good.”

  “So are you,” I lied.

  “Bullshit. Listen, sit down, sit down, have a drink. You've got time for a drink, haven't you?”

 
“Sure. If you've got time to talk.”

  “Anything for you, pal, after what you did for me. Hey, Mama Luz! Drag your fat ass down here and meet an old friend of mine.”

  The enormous female behind the bar waddled our way. She was Mexican; she must have weighed at least three hundred pounds, all of it encased in a tentlike muumuu thing emblazoned with pink flamingos; and she wore so much powder and rouge and makeup that she resembled a mime. She might have been one, too: she didn't say a word, even when Dancer told her who I was. All she did was nod and stand there waiting.

  “So what'll you have?” Dancer asked me. “You still just a beer man?”

  “Always. Miller Lite, I guess.”

  “Miller Lite, Mama. Cold one, huh? Give me another jolt too.” She went away to get the drinks and Dancer said, “So how'd you track me down?”

  “Card you sent me last Christmas.”

  “Social call or you working?”

  “Working. You might be able to help.”

  “Me? How so?”

  “The job has to do with a pulp writer named Harmon Crane. Cybil Wade told me you might have known him.”

  A corner of his mouth twitched. “Little Sweeteyes,” he said. He was talking about Cybil, not Crane. “How is she?”

  “Fine.”

  “And that son of a bitch she's married to? Tell me he dropped dead of a coronary, make my day.”

  “No such luck.”

  “He'll outlive us all—like Nixon. You still seeing her daughter?”

  “We're engaged, more or less.”

  “Good for you. Tell Sweeteyes I said hello, next time you talk to her. Hell, give her my love.” He grinned lopsidedly and drained what was left in his glass. Still carrying the torch, I thought. He'd carry it right into the grave with him.

  “About Harmon Crane, Russ. Did you know him?”

  “Old Harmie—sure, I knew him. Met him at a writers' lunch the first time I came out here from New York. I'd read his stuff, he'd read mine. We hit it off.”

  “That was early 1949?”

  “Spring, I think. I hadn't made up my mind to move to California yet, but I figured I would if I could find a place I liked. Tried L.A. first; forget it. So I came up to Frisco.”

  “You get to know Crane well?”

  “We palled around a little, got drunk together a couple of times. Even tried collaborating on a pulp story, but that didn't work out. Too much ego on both sides; believe it or not, I had one back then.”

  “You had reason. You know what I think of Rex Hannigan.”

  “Yeah. But Hannigan was a second-rate pulp private eye compared to Johnny Axe. You remember the Axe series?”

  “I remember.”

  Dancer chuckled, as if something funny had just tickled his memory. “Harmie had a hell of a sense of humor. Always good for a laugh. Last book he wrote, Axe gets framed for a murder of a guy that owns a soup company, see, so Harmie called it Axe-Tailed Soup. Perfect title, right? But his editor wouldn't let him use it. Too suggestive, she said; some blue-nose out in the Bible Belt might read a dirty double meaning into it and raise a stink. The editor, this shriveled-up old maid named Bangs, Christ you should have seen her, this Bangs broad wants him to come up with another title quick because the production department and the art department are all set to move. So Harmie waits a couple of days and then sends the new title by collect wire, no comment or anything, just one line. What do you think it was?”

  “I don't know, what?”

  “‘How about A Piece of Axe,’” Dancer said, and burst out laughing. I laughed with him. “Man, Bangs almost had a shit hemorrhage and Harmie almost got thrown out on his ear. But he figured it was worth it.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I remember another time,” he said, “we were kidding around with titles for mystery novels—you know, trying to see which of us could come up with the worst one using the word death. Things like Death Plays Pattycake and Death Gets a Dose of the Clap. But Harmie won hands down. Best title for a tough-guy mystery I ever heard.”

  “What was it?”

  “Fuck You, Death.”

  That didn't strike me quite so funny, considering the way Harmon Crane had died, and I didn't laugh much. Not that Dancer noticed; he was too busy reaching for the fresh highball Mama Luz had set in front of him. He suggested we take our drinks to one of the booths, and we did that.

  He said as he lit another cigarette, “How come you're interested in Harmie? Christ, he's been dead what … thirty-five years? He did the Dutch, you know.”

  “I know. That's why I'm interested.” I explained it to him briefly. “Were you still in San Francisco when it happened?”

  “No. I went back to New York the end of September, to tie up some loose ends. I'd finally made up my mind to settle out here, but I didn't make it back to California until early the next year.”

  “Were you surprised when you heard about Crane's suicide?”

  “Yeah, I was. I never figured him for the kind who'd do the Dutch. I mean, he was one funny guy. But then I knew he had problems, a whole pack of 'em.”

  “What kind of problems?”

  “His marriage. That was the big one.”

  “Oh? I thought he was happily married.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “His widow.”

  “Yeah, that figures. She always did pretend she was Cinderella and Harmie was some poor schmuck of a Prince Charming.”

  “What was the trouble between them?”

  “They weren't fucking,” Dancer said. Leave it to him to choose the most delicate phrasing whenever possible.

  “Why not?”

  “She didn't like it. An iceberg in the sack.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Were they doing anything about it?”

  “You mean was she seeing a shrink?”

  “Yes.”

  “Uh-uh. She wouldn't go. Wouldn't discuss the deed with Harmie, let alone some stranger.”

  “No sex at all between them?”

  “Not in close to a year, when I knew him.”

  “Did he talk much about it?”

  “Some. When he was looped.”

  “Was he seeing other women?”

  “Harmie? Nah, I doubt it. He wasn't the type.”

  “A year is a long time to do without sex,” I said.

  “I used to think so too. Not anymore.”

  I let that pass. “He must have loved her quite a bit, to put up with that kind of relationship.”

  “I guess he did.” Dancer showed me another of his lopsided grins. “Love does crazy things to people. Always has, always will.”

  “What other problems did Crane have?”

  “The booze, for one; he put it away like water. And one of his ex-wives was bugging him.”

  That was news. I asked, “Which one?”

  “Some broad he married when he was in college, I forget her name.”

  “Ellen Corneal.”

  “If you say so.”

  “What was she bugging him about?”

  “Money, what else? She was broke, she'd heard how well Harmie was doing, she figured he'd float her a loan for past services.” Dancer laughed sardonically. “He sure knew how to pick his women.”

  “Did Crane give her the money?”

  “No. Told her to bugger off. But she kept pestering him anyway.”

  “Was she living in San Francisco at the time?”

  “He didn't say. But if she wasn't, she was close by.”

  “You know anything about her? What she did for a living, whether she was remarried—like that?”

  “Nothing. Harmie didn't say much about her.”

  “How upset was he that she'd shown up in his life again?”

  “Not nearly as upset as he was about not getting laid.”

  “He seem depressed the last time you saw him?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “Were you in touch with him
after you went back to New York?”

  “Nah. Dropped him a note but he didn't answer it. Next thing I knew, he was dead.”

  “You get to know any of his friends while you were out here?”

  “Don't recall any.”

  “But you did meet some of them.”

  “One or two, I guess.”

  “His lawyer, Thomas Yankowski?”

  “Name doesn't ring a bell.”

  “Adam Porter? Stephen Porter?”

  “No bells there either.”

  I had run out of questions to ask. I drank some of my beer while Dancer lit yet another cigarette; then I said it had been good talking to him again and that I appreciated his help, and started to slide out of the booth. But he reached over and caught hold of my arm.

  “Hey, come on, don't rush off,” he said. “You didn't finish your beer.”

  “I'm working, Russ, remember?”

  “Sure, sure, but you've got time for one more, haven't you? For old times' sake? Hell, it's been two years. Who knows how long it'll be till we hoist another one together.”

  He was a little drunk now, and inclined toward the maudlin; but there was also a kind of pathetic quality in his voice and manner—a tacit reaching out for a little companionship, a little kindness, that I couldn't bring myself to ignore. He was a lot of things, Dancer was, and one of them was lonely. And maybe another was afraid.

  I said, “All right—one more. And I'll buy.”

  I spent another twenty minutes with him, talking about this and that—a rehash of the pulp convention two years ago, mostly, and how grateful he was to me for clearing him of the murder charge. Just before I left him I asked how he was doing these days, how things were in the writing business.

  “Hack business, you mean,” he said. The sardonic grin again. “It's lousy. Worst I've ever seen it. Too many hacks and not enough free-lance work; they're lined up around the block trying to get an assignment.”

  “I thought you had a deal to do a bunch of adult Westerns.”