Blowback (The Nameless Detective)

by Bill Pronzini

  Harry lighted one of his little cigars. “Now it gets hairy again,” he said.

  “Maybe not.”

  “Sure,” he said grimly. “Maybe not.”

  Time dragged on. Eight o'clock, eight-fifteen, eight-thirty. Jerrold did not show up again. The air began to swelter, making sweat flow thinly under my arms; the sky had a hard glazed-blue look, like something made out of polished turquoise.

  Harry said finally, “Maybe I ought to go over and ask him straight out when they're planning to leave.”

  “If you can do it without pushing.”

  “I won't push him, don't worry.”

  He started down off the porch, but before he had gone three steps Mrs. Jerrold appeared on the beach, walking in our direction. Harry stopped, glanced back at me. I made a small gesture for him to stay where he was so I could hear what she had to say when she came up.

  She had her hair tied in a bun today, and the sun made it shine with glossy red highlights, the same color as burgundy wine. She wore a pair of loose-fitting shorts and another one of those sleeveless, abbreviated blouses, and she was carrying a small woven-straw handbag. The glance she gave me was cursory, as if she was embarrassed—or annoyed—at what had happened on the beach last night; she gave her attention to Harry.

  He said, “About ready to head off, Mrs. Jerrold?”

  “No, not just yet.” She did not sound either pleased or displeased. It didn't seem to make much difference to her either way. “Ray has some things he wants to do in Sonora first. I imagine it will be early afternoon before we can get on our way—around one o'clock. You don't mind if we stay the morning, do you?”

  “Not at all,” Harry lied. “No problem.”

  “Ray wants to know if you'll help with the luggage.”

  “Sure. I can get it now if you want.”

  “Well, we're not packed yet.” She opened the handbag and handed him what looked to be a check. “He asked me to give you this.”

  Harry took it and tucked it into his shirt pocket without looking at it. “Thanks. Just let me know when you're ready.”

  She smiled at him, transferred the smile to me for all of a second, and moved back the way she had come.

  Harry came up beside me. “Jesus, one o'clock.”

  “I don't care for it either,” I said. “But if he's going to be off in Sonora, it won't be so bad. I've got to go into The Pines myself around ten.”

  “What for?”

  “I have to make a couple of phone calls, and I've got to see Kayabalian again. He hired me yesterday to help find the missing carpet, working backward from San Jose—I didn't tell you that.”

  “How long'll you be?”

  “An hour or so. I'll be back well before one.”

  “You have to go in this morning?”

  “Kayabalian's leaving before noon,” I said. “I need the money too, Harry.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

  He went inside and got a deck of cards, and we made a halfhearted attempt 1:0 play gin rummy. Seconds and minutes crawled away, and my nerves started to fray badly—but it was not Jerrold, it was the telephone call I would have to make from The Pines to Dr. White, and the results of the sputum test. Malignant or benign. Benign or malignant. The answer was just an hour or two away now, I was standing right up against it, and there was no denying the fact that I was as gut-scared as I had ever been in my life.

  At nine-fifteen Jerrold came hurrying alone across the beach. When he passed in front of us, he had nothing to say, did not even look in our direction. He got into the Caddy and wheeled it around and took it away, not driving as fast or as recklessly as he had yesterday.

  Harry let out a long, heavy breath. “Man,” he said.

  I had nothing to say.

  The hands on my watch crept forward sluggishly. Nine twenty-five. Nine-thirty. Nine thirty-five. Cody came down from his cabin and spread out a towel on the beach and then lay down there in the sun. I liked him better lying out where he could be seen, especially now that Jerrold was gone and Mrs. Jerrold was alone in Cabin Six.

  Nine-forty.

  And nine forty-five.

  I don't want to go, I thought, I don't want to make that goddamn call.

  “I'd better get into The Pines,” I said.

  “By noon, huh, buddy? Just be back by noon.”

  “Sure. Hang in there.”

  Just hang in there.

  And I left him on the porch and got into my car and drove onto the country road, and the throbbing sound of the engine was like a litany in my ears: malignant, benign, malignant, benign, malignant malignant malignant…

  Fifteen

  There was a big Concord-type stagecoach and a team of horses drawn up in front of The Pines General Store, and a couple of hundred kids and adults crowding the sidewalks and spilling out into the street around it. All of them were clapping their hands in time to the raucous music created by a pair of fiddlers up on the second-story veranda, and watching another guy and a girl in Western garb perform a high-stepping dance routine on top of the coach. A banner draped over the veranda railing said: Hangtown Stage Depot • Historic Tours of the Gold Country • Passengers Board Here.

  Traffic was backed up on both sides of the coach, because there was barely enough room for two cars to squeeze past it and each other, and because everybody was rubbernecking. You could not park anywhere in that block; and all the other slots looked to be filled. I turned off onto one of the side streets and hunted around for five minutes before I found a place three blocks away.

  I walked back up to the main street, crossed it and made my way toward the hotel. The fiddlers quit playing when I was abreast of the stage, and the dancers bowed to the crowd, and there was a burst of cheering and applause. When it died down the guy on the coach launched into a pitch about visiting a gold mine and a ghost town, seeing the Mother Lode as the forty-niners saw it because this was an authentic replica of the old Hangtown Stagecoach-only three bucks a head. The kids whooped it up and their fathers reached for wallets and billfolds, and while the fiddlers started up again with “Turkey in the Straw,” the guy got down and began collecting money and passing out tickets.

  The whole thing had a taint of phoniness about it, of sleaziness wrapped in a veneer of gaiety, like a carnival sideshow. The “authentic replica” had a railed platform tacked onto the back, where the boot should have been, so more people could ride and more three-dollar tickets could be sold; the red and yellow and gold floral designs on the coach panels were pasted-on decals; the wheels were painted a gaudy red, white and blue in honor of the bicentennial; and the springs were made of undisguised steel. They'd take the kids out for an hour and point out a couple of landmarks and bring them back full of half-truths and puffed-up legends. Cheap entertainment and an ersatz history lesson on the one hand, unabashed commercialism on the other—and who the hell cared if a distorted mockery was made of the lives and times of a million dead pioneers? Now was all that mattered; live it up, make a buck, and pretend to care about things like heritage and human endeavor. That was the modern way, all right. You used yesterday and you lived for today and you seldom thought about tomorrow.

  Until, maybe, you ran out of tomorrows.

  Until you faced the prospect of becoming a forgotten piece of history yourself.

  I went into the hotel and shut the door against the noise and the music and the phoniness. The lobby was deserted except for the same clerk behind the desk. He recognized me and gave me a wary nod, as if he thought I might stir up more trouble. The hell with you, I thought, and looked over at the telephone booth, and took a couple of deep breaths, and then walked to the booth and shut myself inside it.

  Cloudman first. I found a dime in my pocket, dialed the Sheriffs Department in Sonora. But the deputy who came on said that Cloudman was out and didn't know when he'd be back, did I want to leave a message? It was hot in the booth and sweat had popped out on my face; I could taste it on my upper lip as I gave the deputy my nam
e, asked him to tell Cloudman I had called and would call back again later today.

  When I rang off I got the rest of my change out and laid it on the little shelf under the phone; then I opened my address book to the W's and stared at the number of Dr. White's office in San Francisco. And kept on staring at it, just standing there, feeling my heart begin to pump at a faster tempo and my chest tighten up until there was a dull, hollow pain in the center of it. Wetness trickled down my cheeks, my throat was dry and scratchy—and the cough came on thinly, dragging up bitter phlegm. The sound of it seemed to fill the cubicle with small echoes, like whispers half-heard through the walls of a room.

  I opened the door a few inches and leaned against the jamb until my lungs quieted. In my mind, then, I seemed to hear White's smooth professional voice: “I'm sorry, I'm afraid I have bad news for you …”

  And then I heard it say, “You have nothing to worry about, the sputum cytology was negative; the lesion is benign…”

  Bad news. Nothing to worry about.

  Malignant.

  Benign—

  I shook myself and felt my lips flatten in against my teeth as I lifted the receiver again, caught up a dime and dropped it in the slot. The clatter of the coin falling, the buzz of the dial tone and then the ratchet of the dial when I spun the O all sounded too loud in my ears, as though my hearing had suddenly grown sensitized. I dialed the 415 area code and the first two digits of White's number, put my finger in the hole of the third digit.

  And my hand began to shake and I could not stop it, it might have belonged to someone else, and the other hand too when it reached out convulsively and slammed the receiver back into its cradle.

  Malignant, benign, malignant, benign, malignant…

  I could not do it, I could not make the call.

  Goddamn you, you goddamn coward, you've got to face it sooner or later. What's the sense in putting it off any longer? Make the call!

  But my legs turned me around and my hands shoved me out of the booth, and I groped my way to one of the lobby chairs and sat in it with the sweat streaming out of me. I had steeled myself for this moment for days now, and I had been functioning all right, even with the fear and the doubts—but now that the time had come my nerve had deserted me. I took out my handkerchief and mopped away the wetness, and realized as I did so that the desk clerk had come out and was standing three feet in front of me, looking nervously worried.

  He said, “Are you all right, sir?”

  “Yeah, I'm all right.”

  “You look pale as a ghost. You're not having some sort of attack, are you?”

  “I'm not going to die in your lobby, if that's what you think.”

  His mouth turned prim. “I was only trying to help, sir.”

  “Sure,” I said. “It's okay—everything is fine.”

  “Do you want a glass of water… ?”

  “No. I just want to sit here a minute.”

  He hesitated, and then went away reluctantly; but when he got behind the desk again he made a pretense of sorting a batch of mail while he watched me with up-from-under glances.

  I thought: Maybe I can't do it because it's too cold and impersonal this way. Long-distance telephone, you can't look at his face and he can't look at yours, there's nothing to hang onto but the words themselves. “Hello, Doctor, I'm calling from Tuolumne County to find out if I'm going to die pretty soon.” No, not that way—there's no dignity to it. A man should have a little dignity in a thing like this, a little human contact. A doctor's office, yes, that was the place for death sentences or reprieves; not a phone booth in a hotel lobby, with fiddlers playing outside and kids squealing for a ride on an authentic replica of the Hangtown Stagecoach.

  All right, then. Try to get away from here as soon as possible, drive straight to White's office if you can get back before close of business; otherwise, first thing tomorrow morning. You can do it that way, can't you? You won't lose your nerve again?

  I can do it that way, I thought, and knew that I was not lying to myself. This was not something you could run away from, or postpone for more than a few long hours. If you tried it, the not-knowing would become unbearable, and you would still have the answer to face eventually.

  I began to feel a little better; I had myself under control again. After a time I got: up and found the restroom and washed my face with cold water, opened my shirt and used a wet paper towel to sponge off the drying perspiration on my chest and under my arms. The face in the mirror looked pale, all right. Pouches under the eyes, puffiness at the cheekbones and around the mouth. Old bear, Erika had called me, and I had thought then that it was a cute little pet name; I wouldn't have liked it at all now.

  When I came back into the lobby and looked over at the desk clerk, I had a small twinge of embarrassment at the way I had treated him. I walked over there and said, “Look, I'm sorry if I snapped at you a while ago. I guess the heat is starting to get to me; I felt pretty dizzy there for a minute.”

  “No need to apologize, sir,” he said, but there was still an injured stiffness in his tone. “Is there something I can do for you?”

  “Well, you can get me Charles Kayabalian on the phone.”

  “Certainly.”

  We went through the switchboard-and-extension-phone routine, and Kayabalian was in and ready to see me in his room. So I climbed the stairs to the second floor, found the number he had given me, knocked, and went in when he called out that the door was unlocked.

  He was wearing a sports jacket today, no tie, and he looked cool and rested. He could hardly have missed noticing the way I looked, but he had the grace not to say anything about it. Instead he motioned me to a chair and said, “I've got that list of names and addresses for you.”

  “Right.”

  The chair was one of those lumpy pseudo-Victorians, made for people with better posture than I had; I sat on it gingerly and watched Kayabalian open a briefcase that was sitting on a writing desk, take out two sheets of paper. He brought them to me and stood there while I glanced over them. Most of the addresses were in San Jose, but there were two in San Francisco and one in Fresno. Under each one he had written out a paragraph of information on the individual: occupation, connection with Terzian, relevant personal data.

  I asked him a couple of questions, made a note or two of my own, and said finally that I guessed I had everything I would need for the time being.

  He asked, “Would you like an advance against your fee and expenses?”

  “That's not necessary,” I said. Under other circumstances I would have taken his check, but even though I kept telling myself I would follow through for him no matter what Dr. White had to tell me, I could not make myself forget the frightening possibility of things like hospitals and further tests and maybe even an urgent need for surgery. “We can take care of a retainer after I get to work.”

  He nodded. “Do you know yet how you stand with your time?”

  “Not exactly,” I said. “I'll let you know later today or early tomorrow, if that's all right.”

  “Yes. You can reach me at my office, or at home after seven.”

  He gave me another business card, this one with his telephone number written on the back. We said a few more things to each other, and then he got his briefcase and a small overnight bag—he was ready to check out—and we went downstairs together and shook hands and said good-by in the lobby.

  Outside, the Hangtown Stagecoach had gone off with its first load of kids, but the fiddlers were still working on the veranda and there was still a crowd in front of the General Store. A guy in buckskins and an Indian headdress was circulating there, selling balloons and souvenirs—a red-haired guy with freckles. Nobody seemed to think it odd, or if they did, none of them cared.

  And people wondered why native Amerinds were so angry these days…

  I got my car and fought the main street traffic until the county road intersection; I was the only one who turned off. The temperature had picked up another few degrees, but th
ere were clouds massing above the peaks to the east, restless and soiled-looking, and the sky in that direction had a kind of dull silvery sheen, like an old dime. If the high-altitude winds blew those clouds down here, it would rain later in the day. I wished it would rain right now—break the heat and clear the dryness out of the air and settle that damned red dust.

  When I came around one of the turns two miles from the camp, driving mechanically, half my mind on the road and half of it brooding about the abortive telephone call, a deer bounded out of the undergrowth thirty yards in front of me and darted across the road. I said something in alarm and jammed my foot down on the brake; the car slewed to the left and for an instant I thought it was going off into the trees. But when I pulled the wheel around and eased up on the brake pedal, the rear tires held traction and the thing settled on a point and came to a sharp stop. The deer had vanished into the woods on the other side.

  I sat there for a minute and thought that that would have been all I needed, an accident with the car. Once I started moving again, I drove more slowly, watched the road ahead more carefully—and I was more aware of my surroundings than I might have been otherwise.

  Ahead on the light, around another turn, was the bare hillside and the abandoned pocket mine partway up. High to the left of the mine were a few trees, and below the trees was the crumbling outbuilding, its roof sagging a little to the left. The hillside directly behind the building was bare, rocky—

  I hit the brakes again, not quite so hard this time, and the car bucked to a halt in another swirl of dust. I shoved the shift lever into park and got out and stared up toward the mine. Then I opened my wallet, took out the folded triangle from Bascomb's sketchpad. Not much of the roof in the sketch showed, but it might have been canted to the left like the one up there. The trees and the rocky hillside looked about right too.