Undercurrent (The Nameless Detective)

by Bill Pronzini

  Quartermain gave it up, finally; we left her looking far more worried than she had already been, and drove to City Hall. The only thing cheering or positive waiting for us there was the news that Judith Paige had met her flight out of Monterey on time, had arrived safely at San Francisco International, and had been transported home to Glen Park by someone on the Airport Detail. Donovan had obtained the license number of Russell Dancer's car from Sacramento, and broadcast that as well as the description of Dancer that I had supplied, but there was no word as yet on man or vehicle. Winestock, too, was still among the missing. Quartermain had changed the surveillance request on him to another pick-up order, and had also posted a man at the Winestock house to bring him in if he happened to show up there undetected.

  The balding guy's description had also been broadcast to all local and state units, but the type of car he was driving was still unknown and there was not much chance of his being picked up until a picture of him could be circulated. Favor was waiting with the artist, Vance—a short, fat man with bright eyes—to take care of that.

  The four of us went to Quartermain's office, and I left them there to use his private bathroom and its stock of first-aid supplies. I stripped down to my underwear and washed off in cool water and put salve on a still-reddened area across my left cheekbone. There was not much I could do about the charred odor which permeated my clothing, but I brushed coat and trousers as best I could and washed a streak of dirt out of the front of my shirt. Then I dressed again and ate half a dozen aspirin for my headache and combed my hair and went in to join the others.

  We spent the next forty minutes working with Vance on a drawing of the balding guy. Quartermain had only glimpsed him briefly at Dancer's, but I had seen him fairly close up in the park the day before and I was able to supply enough details—and Vance was skillful enough— so that we came up with what I thought was a pretty good likeness. Once I was satisfied Vance could not improve his sketch, Quartermain told the artist to make printed copies for local distribution and to get the likeness on the wire to Sacramento for possible criminal identification. Vance nodded and left immediately.

  I sank wearily into the free armchair next to Favor, and Quartermain said, "You look pretty well frayed at the edges. Maybe you'd better go back to the Beachwood and try to get some sleep."

  I felt wrung out, but still uneasily keyed up and wide awake; the last thing I seemed to want was bed and rest. I said, "If it's all the same, I'll sit it out with you."

  "No objections," he said. "But it may be a long night."

  "It's been a long one already. I can stand it, I think."

  He called out for coffee and sandwiches, and the stuff arrived in a couple of minutes; they apparently had some kind of kitchen facility in the building. I tried one of the sandwiches without much interest, and then found I was hungrier than expected. I put away three of them and two cups of coffee.

  There had not been much talking done about things since Beach Road, although Quartermain had apparently briefed Favor while I was in the bathroom, and we were ripe for it now. Quartermain said to us, "Well, all right, what have we got altogether? We've got a dead man named Walter Paige; an unidentified woman who slept with Paige just before he was killed; a bald man who also saw Paige shortly before he was killed, who was seen with Brad Winestock, who set fire to Russell Dancer's home, who broke into the Beachwood, and who damned well wants to keep anyone from reading a twenty-year-old paperback mystery novel. We've got the book itself—or rather, we don't have it and we don't know why it's important; we don't have Winestock, either, or Dancer. And then there's Paige trying to rent a vacant store in Cypress Bay for some unknown reason; and two local families acting peculiar, if nothing else, about their relationship with the dead man; and a missing writer who had some kind of trouble with the dead man six years ago; and Winestock's sister covering up in some way for her brother. Add it all together and what does it make? Nothing but a goddamn pot of confusion. So how do we make sense out of it? What's the common denominator? The book?"

  "That's the way it looks for now," I said. "It's at least a major part of the key, although it might not necessarily explain Paige's woman's part, or Paige's death for that matter."

  "You don't think the bald guy killed Paige?"

  "It's not a certainty, especially now that he's gone to so much trouble to suppress copies of Dancer's book. If he killed Paige, why didn't he take the book out of Paige's bag on Saturday? It was sitting there in plain sight."

  "He might have been too intent on murder to notice it," Favor said. "Or, if his motive had nothing directly to do with the book itself, he might not have thought about it until later on."

  "The woman could even be his motive," Quartermain said, "assuming the possibility that she was his property and Paige was cutting him out. Sure, the two of them were buddy-buddy in the park, but the bald man could have gone to the Beachwood later for some reason, caught Paige and the woman together, lost his head, and killed Paige in a jealous fury."

  "Another possibility could be that the woman is entirely innocent of anything except sleeping with Paige. His death could have been the result of a falling out with the bald man, something that happened between them after the woman left Paige's cottage—and, as you say, Ned, despite their apparent friendliness in the park. Something connected with the book, maybe."

  Quartermain nodded thoughtfully. "That book," he said, and looked at me. "Did you happen to read any of it this morning?"

  "The jacket blurb and the first five pages of text," I answered. "That's all."

  "Enough so you can tell us what the thing's about?"

  "Not really. As far as I know, this guy comes home from the Korean War and gets mixed up with a bunch of hoods and some hard-assed dames; one of the women, I gathered, talks him into some sort of double-cross and the two of them go on the run with two hundred grand."

  "There's not much in that, is there?"

  "Not much."

  "Well, what about the characters? Recognizable as anybody from around here—any of the involved parties? That could be what this is all about; Dancer could have written about some of our local people, thinly disguised, and opened some closets in the bargain . . ."

  "I don't think so," I said. "The book is almost twenty years old, remember—and Paige, for example, was in his early thirties and the others are all pretty much in the same general age bracket. And the novel's protagonist and the first of the women seemed standard types—no special characteristics."

  Quartermain finger-combed his hair tiredly. "All right, the hell with it for now. Let's look at some other things. For instance, how the guy knew you had a copy of the book at the Beachwood."

  "He had to have been tipped off about it," I said. "There's no other way he could have known. I took it from here directly to the motel this morning, and I doubt if I was being watched at the time."

  "Who knew you had it?"

  "I mentioned it to everyone I talked with, but as far as I can remember, the only one I told that it was in my possession was Beverly Winestock."

  "I thought as much. She told her brother, and Winestock told the bald guy—probably by telephone, either just before or just after we paid our first visit to the Winestock house. Once he knew you had the book and that questions were being asked about it, he figured it was only a matter of time before it was read, so he went after Paige's copy and any that Dancer might have had."

  "Which means he knew beforehand that Dancer lived in this area," I said. "Winestock might have told him, or Paige, or he could know Dancer personally even though Dancer claims not to know him."

  "Where do you think Winestock went tonight? The bald guy was at the Beachwood and down doing the job on Dancer's place."

  "Maybe to wait for him to come back," Favor said. "Monterey, since that's where I lost Winestock, or somewhere north or east of here—not Cypress Bay, though."

  I shifted in my chair. "There's a pattern to this thing somewhere, a kind of wheel with Paige and th
at book and the bald man as the hub, and Winestock and Beverly Winestock and the Lomaxes and the Tarrants—some of them, at least—as the spokes. It's nebulous as hell, but it's there. If we only had the book . . ."

  "Or Dancer," Quartermain said. "Listen, you collect pulp magazines. How easy would it be to dig up another copy of The Dead and the Dying, assuming Dancer can't or won't help us? How fast could it be done?"

  "An obscure paperback title like that—it might take considerable time and effort. I know a couple of book dealers in San Francisco that specialize in magazines and used paperbacks. If they don't have it in stock—and chances are they wouldn't—they could put a line out to other dealers or to collectors of crime fiction who might have it or know where it could be gotten. All of which would take time, as I said. And I've got the feeling time is an important factor; the bald guy has got to know we'll dig up a copy of the book eventually, and yet he still went to a hell of a lot of trouble tonight to get rid of immediately available copies."

  "I thought of that, too, and it only complicates things that much more. How the hell could a time element enter into it?"

  "No ideas," I said, "and no guesses."

  "Ditto," Favor said.

  Quartermain slumped back in his chair; the purplish bags under his deep-set and slant-lidded eyes made him look like a kind of Oriental hound. "If Dancer doesn't turn up by morning, and with the right answers, you can call those book dealers of yours and get them to work," he said to me. "There's a place in Monterey, I think, that handles used paperback books and we'll try them too. Other than that, there's nothing we can do about the book. No goddamn thing at all."

  None of us seemed to feel much like talking after that, and a brooding, waiting silence formed thickly in there. I sat and stared at nothing and wanted a cigarette and kept on resisting the urge. A sunburst clock on one wall ticked away the minutes loudly and monotonously, and I saw that we were now two hours into a new day—into a new month, too, for that matter, since Sunday had been the last day of April. Monday. Blue Monday—or black Monday, take your choice. Some choice.

  More time passed, and nothing happened. Three A.M. Four A.M. Quartermain sat tipped back in his chair, his eyes closed, and Favor began to snore gently in the armchair beside mine. The warm room and the inactivity and the lack of sleep and the physical enervation began to exact their toll on me as well; you can resist for only so long. I was down in that vague, heavy, slow-motion world between sleep and wakefulness, drifting toward oblivion, when Quartermain's telephone bell went off.

  I came up out of my chair convulsively, pawing at my eyes and looking blankly around, my heart plunging in my chest and my head banging malignantly. When the misty remnants of sleep dissolved, I saw Quartermain swiveling around to drag up the phone receiver and Favor sitting forward in his chair, smoothing his mustache in an unconscious gesture that made him look more than ever like a silent-movie comedian. I sat down again and dry-washed my face, listening, but Quartermain said "Yeah" and "Christ!" and "Right away" and that was all.

  I looked up at him as he replaced the handset. His mouth was pinched tight at the corners and his nostrils were flared and his eyes were hot, bright chunks of blue, like dry ice smoldering.

  Favor said, "What is it, Ned?"

  "That was the State Highway Patrol. They've just located Winestock's Studebaker."

  "Where?"

  "Spanish Bay, just south of Pacific Grove."

  "What about Winestock?"

  "He's in it," Quartermain said. "Shot twice in the chest and stone-cold dead."

  Fifteen

  Dawn had begun to streak the eastern sky by the time we got out to Spanish Bay, on the northwestern shore of the Monterey Peninsula. In the cold gray light the panoramic landscape of cypress and windswept, bone-white sand dunes had a hushed and primitive look, like a tiny portion of nature that had long ago been suspended in time. The sea beyond provided the only motion; it was a rippling gray-green, the combers high and capped with garlands of white froth as they crested and rolled downward in long, graceful sweeps to the beach.

  Just after we began to skirt the boundary of the Asilomar Beach State Park, the small cluster of cars appeared among all that quiet beauty like a giant's thoughtlessly discarded litter. They were drawn close together near a low fan of cypress, two-thirds of the way along an unpaved lane that led toward the symmetrically spaced dunes and the splendor of the Pacific. Favor cut off the siren we had used to make time from Cypress Bay and took us down the lane. As we approached the cluster, I could distinguish five vehicles: a State Highway Patrol unit, an unmarked sedan, a Pacific Grove Police Department tow truck, a county ambulance, and Brad Winestock's faded-blue Studebaker. Both doors on the driver's side of the Studebaker were standing open, and several men were grouped in a tight knot nearby, talking among themselves and watching our arrival.

  Favor pulled up behind the sedan, and the three of us got out into a wind that was chill and yet tinged with the spring warmth that would come with the rising sun. Four of the seven men on the scene were official: a local patrol investigator named Daviault, two patrol officers in uniform, and an assistant county coroner. The other three were a pair of ambulance attendants and the driver of the wrecker, who would tow Winestock's car into Pacific Grove or Monterey for the crime-lab technicians. Quartermain introduced me briefly to Daviault, and he accepted my presence without question.

  He led us to the Studebaker, and we looked inside. Winestock was in the back, sprawled across the seat face up; his eyes were protuberant, with much of the whites showing—as if the impact of the bullets or the intensity of his dying had been enough to half pop them from their sockets. There was coagulated blood on the front of his windbreaker, and some on the seat beneath him—but altogether, very little. That, and the fact that both wounds were visibly centered on the upper part of his chest, said that he had died swiftly.

  I turned away, dry-mouthed, and Quartermain asked the two uniformed patrolmen, "Were you the ones who found him?"

  "Yes, sir," one of them said. "We were cruising Sunset Drive and we spotted the car down here; at first we thought it might be kids parked for the night, and we came down to chase them off. When we got close enough, we saw that it was the Studebaker on our pickup sheet. We found him inside there, just the way you see him."

  "How long ago was that?"

  "A little more than an hour."

  "Did you check the hood then for engine heat?"

  "Yes, sir. It was cold."

  "Do you patrol this area regularly?"

  "Once or twice a night."

  "Had you been along here earlier?"

  "No, sir. This was our first swing through."

  Quartermain said to Daviault, "What about the gun?"

  "No sign of it."

  "Anything in the car?"

  "Nothing unusual. Same for the trunk."

  "Outside it?"

  "No," Daviault said. "The road surface won't sustain tire impressions, as you can see."

  "No leads at all then."

  "Nothing we've been able to turn up so far."

  Quartermain looked at the assistant coroner. "Can you make a preliminary guess as to how long he's been dead?"

  "A rough guess, if that's what you want."

  "I'll take it for now."

  "From the temperature and condition of the body, I'd say no more than six hours, no less than three."

  "Do you think he was killed in the car or somewhere else?"

  "Difficult to tell. There are no exit wounds, so he's still carrying the two bullets inside him; no powder burns, so he was apparently shot at a distance. That might be significant, considering the close confines of the car. Then again, there's a little blood on the seat and he didn't bleed much after he was shot; death was likely instantaneous, or very close to it."

  I moved away from the group and stood looking out to sea; I had heard all there was to hear for now, even though they were still talking it through. Some distance offshore, on a group
of tiny rock islands, the dark shapes of cormorants and loons moved and fluttered and sat in sentinel-like motionlessness—and nearby a sleek black or brown sea lion came up out of the water like an iridescent phantom. The peach color of dawn had spread and modulated into soft gold, consuming the gray, and it would not be long before sunrise. It was going to be another fine spring day.

  But the climate, as they say, was one of violence.

  And pain, I thought. And grief. First Judith Paige—the rape of innocence. And now Beverly Winestock—the bitter fruits of too much family loyalty, and another kick in the groin for a woman who seemed to have been kicked too many times already. How many more were going to suffer? Yeah, how many more? Because it wasn't over yet, and two men were dead already, and Dancer was still missing, and murder and violence invariably beget murder and violence. The tremors beneath the surface of it all had gathered strength now, had become more volatile, had begun to foment further destruction, and you knew with a kind of fatalistic insight just what to expect before it was finally ended . . .

  After a time Quartermain came over and said, "We'll be going now; there's nothing more for us here. We've got other things to do."

  "All right," I said. I did not ask him what it was we had to do, because the answer was obvious. And it was nothing I cared to put into words just then; the contemplation of it was bitterly cheerless enough.