Blowback (The Nameless Detective)

by Bill Pronzini

  The lake was small, maybe a half-mile wide and a quarter-mile long. Forestland grew to the water's edge in a full half-moon to the north and east; to the west there was a high bluff and a grassy meadow rising in a gentle slope beside it. Harry Burroughs' fishing camp was at the south end, and its buildings were the only ones anywhere on or near the lake. All of the surrounding land was owned by either the state or the county, I couldn't remember which, and through a friend on the real-estate board Harry had managed a long-term lease for the portion on which he had built his camp. One of these days, though, at least some other parts of the lakefront property were going to undergo development—a fact he did not much care to think about.

  The first view you had of the camp was when you came down out of the trees and neared the graveled circle that served as a parking area. There were six cabins, set into a rough wide horseshoe shape and sweeping inland from the lake, but the only one visible from here was Harry's, the largest and the one nearest the parking circle; the others were hidden by pines and other forest growth. Extending into the lake fifty yards from Harry's front door was a short narrow pier, and tied to the end of it were two fourteen-foot, oak-hulled skiffs with five-horsepower outboards.

  His ten-year-old jeep was parked in the circle, along with four cars: a new dark-brown Cadillac, a dusty Rambler station wagon, a 1972 Ford, and an expensive yellow Italian sports job. I pulled my car in beside the Rambler and got out into the hot, dry mountain air.

  Nobody came to meet me, and the camp looked empty for all I could see. I went over to Harry's cabin and up onto the log-railed porch and rapped on the door. There was no response. So I came down again and walked around to the far side, to where there was a large Coca-Cola cooler that I knew he always kept well-stocked with beer and soft drinks. I helped myself to a can of Schlitz, popped the tab, and drank a third of it before I lowered the can. It had been a long drive from San Francisco.

  The beer brought on an instant craving for a cigarette, as beer often did with me; I made an effort to blank my mind against it. I had not had any trouble doing that during the drive—I had managed to concentrate enough on the road and on the radio broadcast of the Giants game. My chest felt all right, maybe a little tight; I wondered if the thin mountain air, the summer dust, would have any effect on my lungs.

  But I did not want to think about my lungs.

  I drank more of the beer and looked around and still did not see anyone. Behind Harry's cabin was a shed with the doors spread open. I wandered over there and looked inside and saw the same things I had seen the last time I was up for a visit: another skiff up on davits, several rolls of heavy canvas for added protection of the boats during the winter months, an uncluttered workbench along one wall, shelves of paint and motor oil and other items neatly stored. Unlike me, Harry had always been a fastidious man.

  I finished the beer and turned back toward the lake. A young guy wearing only a pair of gabardine slacks came out of the trees from the direction of the first of the guest cabins. He saw me, paused, and then walked over casually. He was tall and lean, with one of these bronzed beachboy physiques and a lot of shaggy flax-colored hair that covered his ears and curled up on the back of his neck. A thick, stylish mustache right-angled down on either side of his mouth, forming three sides of a frame for the kind of lips some women would call sensuous.

  He smiled crookedly as he approached. “Well,” he said, “new blood in no man's land. You joining our happy little group?”

  “For a day or two.”

  “I wish I could say the same thing. You alone?”

  “I'm alone.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said, and stepped around me to the cooler, lifted the lid, and took out a beer. When he had it open he sipped a little, made a face, and gave me his crooked grin again. “This stuff is rat piss, you know? I like imported beer if I have to drink it at all.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Sure. I'm Todd Cody. Vegas.”

  I told him my name and where I was from. He gave no indication of wanting to shake hands, and that and the beer comment made me decide I was not going to like him much. I said, “Do you know where Harry is?”

  “Burroughs? Nope. I've been taking a nap; too damned hot to do anything else.”

  “You been here long, have you?”

  “Two weeks. With another two to go, unless I can get time off for good behavior.”

  “How's that?”

  “My old man,” Cody said. “He sends me to places like this periodically, when he thinks I've been getting out of hand. If I don't go, he stops sending checks. So I go. I suffer, but I go.”

  So that was the way it was. I said, “It takes all kinds.”

  “Sure,” he agreed. He thought I was talking about his old man.

  In the hot stillness I heard the distant hum of an outboard, and I turned to look out over the lake. A fourth skiff was just pulling out from the southwest shore, heading across the lake at an angle away from the camp. There were two men in it, the one at the tiller wearing what looked like a jungle helmet; they both appeared good-sized and they were both wearing white T-shirts.

  Cody said contemptuously, “Knox and Talesco.”

  “Guests here too?”

  “Yeah. You're in for a treat when you meet them.”

  “Why is that?”

  “A couple of machos straight out of Hemingway,” he said. “But wherever you see one, the other's not far away. Closet fags, if you want my opinion.”

  I didn't. I said, “Who else is staying here right now?”

  “Guy named Bascomb, an artist or something. Spends all his time painting and sketching. A real fun dude.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Jerrold,” Cody said. The crooked smile again, with a leer in it this time. “You're also in for a treat when you meet little Angela—a genuine treat. The lady is a fox of the first order, you know what I mean?”

  But that question turned out to be rhetorical, because a voice called sharply “Cody! You, Cody!” and turned both our heads toward the rear of Harry's cabin.

  There were two men on the narrow, irregular path that came down out of the woods to the immediate right of the shed. One was several steps in front of the other, moving with purpose and what appeared to be anger. I didn't know him, but the second man was Harry Burroughs.

  The grim-looking guy came up to where Cody and I were and stopped and planted his feet. He wore beige corduroy slacks and a thin cotton pullover and a fisherman's hat festooned with flies, patches, bits of felt, and buttons that said things like You Should Have Seen the One That Got Away; held easily in the crook of his right arm was a Winchester automatic shotgun. He was big and heavy-chested, with a tangle of unruly black hair and penetrating gray eyes that looked a little wild just now. White ridges of muscle made half-crescents at the corners of his clamped mouth; his face was glossy with beads and runnels of sweat.

  He looked straight at Cody, and I was not even there. “All right,” he said thickly, “where's Angela?”

  Cody seemed amused. “How would I know, Jerrold?”

  “You haven't seen her, is that it?”

  “Not since yesterday.”

  “You're a goddamn liar.”

  “Hey, now wait a minute …”

  Harry came up, glanced at me in a disturbed way, and put a hand on this Jerrold's arm. “Take it slow, Ray. Cool down.”

  “The hell I will. This—”

  “Ray, ease off now.”

  “Big man,” Cody said to Jerrold. He tried to curl his Up like Bogart used to do, but it only came out looking silly. “If you don't trust your wife, or me, or any of the others, why'd you go off hunting or whatever with Burroughs? You hand out plenty of freedom, and then you come in playing the outraged husband—”

  Jerrold said “You son of a bitch!” and took a step forward with his free hand balling into a fist. Cody flinched, backed away, but Harry tightened his fingers on Jerrold's arm and pulled him back.

 
“Let it alone, Ray, come on. Go on over to your cabin, Angela's probably there waiting for you.”

  Jerrold stood there with those half-wild eyes cutting away at Cody's face like sharp-pointed sticks. Cody took it all right now, but the amusement was gone and his eyes were wary. I was afraid for a moment that Jerrold would erupt again; you don't like to see a man that strung out, that near some kind of breaking point—and you particularly don't like to see it when he's carrying a shotgun that is sure to be loaded.

  But nothing happened. Fifteen or twenty seconds passed, and then Jerrold said “You'll get yours, boy,” and wheeled away and stalked down along the lakeshore.

  Harry said to Cody, “You'd better not push him. You can push a man just so far.”

  “What's that supposed to mean?”

  “You know what it means.”

  “Why don't you mind your own business?”

  “What happens at this camp is my business.”

  “Listen,” Cody said, “this Angela is nothing but a prickteaser. You think I'm going to mess with a fox like that?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Shit. Why doesn't Jerrold pick on one of the other dudes—Bascomb, for instance? She's always after him to paint her.”

  “Maybe Bascomb doesn't look or act like a guy on the make.”

  “Shit,” the kid said again, a little petulantly this time. Then, abruptly, he went off around the front of the cabin.

  Harry gave me a faint wry smile, and we shook hands. Compact and sinuous, he had pale green eyes and a long jaw and sun-weathered features, and he was wearing his standard all-season outfit: khakis and an army fatigue cap over clipped brown hair. The weapon he was carrying was an eight-shot .22 rifle.

  “Good to see you, buddy,” he said. “I'm just sorry it has to be under these circumstances. You been waiting long?”

  “Fifteen minutes,” I said. “Is Jerrold the problem you've been having?”

  “Both of the Jerrolds. And Cody. And maybe one or more of the other three guys I've got staying here.”

  Over in the parking circle a car engine started up, revved a couple of times, roared at seven or eight thousand rpms for several seconds, and settled into a throbbing rumble. The Italian sports job, I thought. It and Cody were a natural for each other. The engine howled again, tires spun gravel, and away he went up the county road.

  Harry took off his cap and sighed and rubbed sweat from his forehead with the back of his free hand. “I've got a fan inside. Why don't we get a couple of beers and talk in there.”

  “Suits me,” I said.

  Harry's cabin was essentially one large room with exposed crisscrossing beams, unvarnished knotty-pine walls, and a pair of curtained-off alcoves that served as bedroom and bathroom. It had a massive fieldstone fireplace, a handmade gun rack that contained an old Marlin lever-action rifle and a Mossberg .410-gauge pump gun, a floor-to-ceiling cabinet filled with fishing gear and an assortment of intricate flies I knew he had tied himself, orderly stacks of outdoor books and magazines on a handmade bookshelf, an old mohair sofa, two overstuffed Naugahyde chairs, a dining table made out of heavy pine with benches instead of chairs, and kitchen facilities along part of the back wall. It was a warm, comfortable, masculine room—exactly the kind you would expect a confirmed bachelor and woodsman like Harry to build for himself.

  After we entered he fitted the .22 rifle onto the gun rack, put a portable electric fan on the floor in front of the hearth, and indicated the two overstuffed chairs. We sat in them, facing the fan, and sipped at the beer. Harry wore a brooding expression; his face seemed more lined than I remembered it. But then, maybe mine did to him too.

  I said, “So let's have it. What's going on here?”

  He sighed heavily this time. “I'm not sure. At least, I'm not sure of part of what's going on, if anything is. The only part I'm positive about is that Jerrold is functioning on the ragged edge of a breakdown. He's been coming up here for two weeks each of the past four summers, and he's always been nervous and excitable; but not nearly as bad as this year. He's in advertising in L.A., one of these live-for-business guys.”

  “I take it he's also the jealous type.”

  “In spades. The kind of husband who thinks every guy is making a pass at his wife behind his back, and that she might be catching one here and there. Possessive and obsessive, and getting worse every day, the way it looks.”

  “Has he got any cause here?”

  “I don't know,” Harry said. “Mrs. Jerrold is a looker, goes around about half-naked most of the time; she's also the open, friendly sort. I just haven't been able to tell if it stops there.”

  “She's the only woman in camp?”

  He nodded. “And that just makes it worse.”

  “Any trouble with her and guests in the past?”

  “Not that I could tell.”

  “All right, so she may or may not be playing around. But the point is, Jerrold thinks she might be, and you're afraid of what he might do if it turns out he's right.”

  “That's it.”

  “Well, Christ, why don't you just send the two of them packing?”

  “It's not that simple.”

  “Why isn't it?”

  “Because I owe Ray Jerrold five thousand dollars,” he said. “I was having some problems the second year he came up here, and we got to talking, and it turned out he was willing to make a long-term loan that I couldn't get from any bank. I borrowed seventy-five hundred, and so far I've paid back twenty-five hundred. But if I throw him out, he's the kind who'd demand the rest of the money as his pound of flesh—and I just don't have it. I don't have anywhere near that much.”

  I swallowed some of my beer. The fan was not doing much for the heat in there, and not doing much for me except clammily drying the sweat under my arms. “Okay then,” I said, “I can understand your position. What did you think I could do?”

  “Keep an eye on things, watch Mrs. Jerrold and the rest of them and see if there really is something going on.”

  “And if it turns out there is?”

  “Then I send the guy packing immediately, no matter who he is. But I've got to know for sure first.”

  “That part of it is all right,” I said. “What I don't care for at all is Jerrold. You said yourself he's close to a breakdown. Suppose he goes over the edge? Suppose he decides he doesn't need proof and gets it into his head to just go and let loose at his wife or Cody or some of the rest of us? That kind of thing has happened before, it can happen again.”

  “Maybe it's not that bad.”

  “Maybe it is.”

  “Okay,” he admitted, “okay, maybe it is. That's the other reason why I want you here. I can't call in the cops and I'm not sure I can handle a serious crisis on my own. I need a man with professional experience, professional training.”

  “Some favor,” I said.

  “I'd pay you if I could afford it—”

  “I wouldn't take your money, Harry.”

  “Will you do it?”

  I did not like any of it much, but I liked even less the prospect of driving back into San Francisco and waiting there for Tuesday and the pathologist's findings from the sputum test. There was really not much difference, I thought, in facing a potential metastasizing tumor or a potential psychotic—and yet, forced up against it, I would take the psychotic every time. I wondered if other men would feel the same way; I wondered if, despite more than twenty years of military service and city police duty that had involved no small amount of personal danger, I was in some ways a coward.

  And the hell with that. In some ways we're all cowards.

  “Yeah, I'll do it,” I said. “But I don't know how long I can stay. I've got to take care of some … business in San Francisco fairly soon.”

  “The Jerrolds are supposed to leave for home on Saturday,” Harry said. “Could you stick it that long?”

  You can call Dr. White from here, I thought, don't forget that. Call him on Tuesday afternoon. Then—

/>   No. Worry about then when the time comes.

  “I'll stick it as long as I can, Harry.”

  He nodded. “Thanks, buddy,” he said. “I won't ask for any more than that.”

  Three

  The cabin Harry gave me was Number Three, well up into the trees toward the center of the camp and positioned back into a kind of niche that had been hollowed out of the slopeside. You could not see any of the lake from there. It was shady, a little cooler, very quiet except for the natural sounds of birds and squirrels and summer insects. Random shafts of sunlight slanted down to the needled ground, hard and yellow and solid-looking, like spires of pure quartz gold.

  Inside, the cabin had an old blackened wood-burning stove, twin rollaway beds, a table and two wooden chairs, a rattan settee and a rattan captain's chair, a standing water cooler in one corner, and a heavy insulating mat rug on the floor. Against one wall was a cabinet sink and a two-burner kerosene cookstove; a closed door at the rear led to the shower and toilet facilities. Short on luxury, long on simple comfort. I could have lived there the year-round with no trouble at all.

  I had packed a single bag with a few things before leaving my flat, and I put it down on one of the beds, along with my fishing gear. Harry set the bag of groceries he'd insisted on carrying on the side of the cabinet sink. Then we went out again and sat down together on the porch steps.

  I said, “I'm going to need to know a few more things.”

  “Whatever I can tell you,” he said.

  “How long has this thing been building with the Jerrolds?”

  “Ever since they came in a week ago yesterday.”

  “He was strung out when they got here?”

  “It looked like it to me.”

  “Were all your other guests here then?”