Step to the Graveyard Easy

by Bill Pronzini

  Cape had played a couple of courses like this one in the Chicago area. Golf had been part of his salesman’s persona, a comfortable, outdoors way to schmooze Emerson’s clients and prospective clients. He’d never been very good at the game. Nor developed the passion for it some people did. It had been a means to an end, a take-it-or-leave-it pastime that he didn’t miss at all. The new Cape, standing here looking out over all that green opulence, was as alien to golf as the old Cape would have been to the bunch of skydivers in Phoenix.

  He parked in a large lot, went up onto the path that separated the lot from the woodsy grounds and led around to the clubhouse. When he passed a screen of oleanders, a section of lawn opened up and let him see another path bordering one of the fairways. A gardener’s cart stood there, two people talking beside it. The dark, pudgy man in uniform was probably one of the grounds crew; the tall woman in white blouse and shorts was Lacy Hammond.

  She was facing Cape’s way, recognized him. She broke off her conversation with the gardener and cut across the lawn in long, loose strides to intercept Cape before he reached the clubhouse.

  “Hello, salesman,” she said. Sober this morning, and apparently none the worse for yesterday’s drinking. “You do get around.”

  “I might say the same for you.”

  “I live in this area. You don’t.”

  “Play golf, do you?”

  “When the mood strikes. I’m pretty good, too. Been whacking balls since I was twelve.”

  “I’ll bet you have.”

  She let him hear her bawdy laugh. “You don’t look much like a ball-whacker yourself.”

  “I used to be. Not anymore.”

  “So what’re you doing here? No, wait, let me guess. Baby sister?”

  “And her husband. I’ve been invited to lunch.”

  “My, my. You really must be some salesman.”

  “I told you yesterday,” Cape said, “I’m not selling anything.”

  “Then how come the free lunch?”

  “It won’t be free. I’ll pay for my own.”

  “Andy won’t like that. He enjoys throwing his money around. Sometimes he even throws some my way.”

  “And you don’t duck when he does.”

  “I don’t drop it, either. Lacy plays catch with both hands.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Money and men both,” she said. Her voice was bantering, but her gaze was analytical. “Two hands, squeeze hard, hang on tight.”

  “And use ’em up fast, money and men both.”

  “Why not? The using up works both ways.”

  “Pretty cynical attitude.”

  “You could benefit from it. If you played your cards right.”

  Cape said, “I won’t be in Tahoe long enough,” and started away.

  She called after him, “You give up easy, salesman.”

  “That’s the way I do everything these days,” he said without turning. “Easy.”

  13

  Andrew Vanowen said, “You’re not what I expected, Cape.”

  “No? What did you expect?”

  “Older man, glib, not so low-key.”

  “Should I take that as a compliment?”

  “He didn’t mean it that way,” Stacy Vanowen said.

  “Stacy.” Sharp, but without looking at her. As if he were telling a pet to be quiet.

  She smiled faintly, looked out through the tall window on her right. A slant of sunshine lay across that side of her face, along her bare shoulder and arm. On the lake, on the glass, the sunlight glittered hotly. On her it seemed cooler, a paler shade, like light rays on sculptured white marble. Reach over and touch her, and she’d have a marble feel—cool, smooth, surface-soft. The type of woman who would never sweat, even when she was making love. Direct opposite of her sister.

  Of her husband, too. He was like something made out of bone and tightly strung wire, covered with tanned rawhide and powered by a generator tuned so high you could hear it hum and crackle. He attacked his crab cocktail as if it were an enemy. The crab cocktails had been waiting along with the Vanowens when Cape was shown to their table in the packed, beam-ceilinged restaurant. One for him as well. Ordered in advance. He hadn’t touched it. And wouldn’t.

  Through a red mouthful, Vanowen asked, “What is it you do, exactly?”

  “Do?” Cape said.

  “Your livelihood. What’s your business?”

  “You might say I’m retired.”

  “From what?”

  “The rat race.”

  “That’s an evasion.”

  “Not really. I used to work for a manufacturing firm in Illinois, and I got fed up with the grind.”

  “And now you collect photographs of people you don’t know and travel around selling them, is that it?”

  “No, that’s not it. Everybody seems to think I’m a salesman. That’s what I used to be. It’s not what I am today.”

  “Everybody’s a salesman.”

  “Not me. Not anymore.”

  “Perhaps Mr. Cape is simply a good Samaritan,” Stacy Vanowen said. “They do exist, you know.”

  “Not in my experience.” Vanowen finished his cocktail, shoved his plate aside, scrubbed at his mouth with his napkin, looked at his watch, rotated an expensive ring on his left hand—platinum, with a circle of fat diamonds—gestured to the waiter, and said as if there’d been no pause, “Everybody has motives. Everybody’s got an agenda.”

  “Not me,” Cape said again.

  Stacy Vanowen said, “I’d like to see the photos, Mr. Cape.”

  He handed her the glossies. Before she could separate them, her husband snatched them out of her hand. He glanced at the two of her, scowled at the one of himself. “This is the studio portrait I had taken for the BusinessWeek article last year. What the devil?”

  “Let me look at them, Andy.”

  He allowed her to reclaim the photos. “How could somebody get hold of that one? Magazine didn’t use it after all, some kind of space problem, and they sent it back. I don’t remember what I did with it.” He asked her, “Do you?”

  “You said you were going to burn it.”

  “I thought I did.” Vanowen rotated the fancy ring again, his eyes still on Cape. “I take lousy photographs. Thought this one was all right at first, but I’m glad BusinessWeek didn’t use it. Makes me look stiff, like I’ve got a broom handle stuck up my ass.”

  Cape said, “Maybe this copy came from the photographer.”

  “I doubt it. He’s a friend of mine, he wouldn’t sell or give away any copies without my permission.”

  “Did you give out any to friends or business associates?”

  “No. My secretary might have, but she usually mentions that sort of request. I’ll ask her about it.”

  “I don’t like this,” Stacy Vanowen said. “These pictures of me…”

  Cape asked her, “Can you tell when they were taken?”

  “It had to’ve been recently, within the past month or so. I’ve only owned this beige outfit a few weeks.” She hugged her arms. “They make me feel cold. As if I’ve been… violated.”

  “Damn right it’s a violation,” Vanowen said. “These people you told Vince Mahannah about, Cape, the ones in San Francisco—”

  “Boone and Tanya Judson.”

  “Grifters, cardsharps.” He made an angry gesture, shifted in his chair, leaned back, leaned forward. “Why did they have these photos? What’s their game?”

  “I don’t have any answers for you, Mr. Vanowen.”

  “The poker scam idea doesn’t make sense. My wife isn’t a player, she never gambles at all. She—”

  He broke off as more food arrived. Three orders: one seafood salad, two plates of some kind of fileted whitefish. Cape glanced at his fish and then ignored it.

  Stacy Vanowen said, “What if it’s some kind of kidnapping scheme?”

  Her husband jumped as if she’d goosed him. “Kidnapping?”

  “It’s possible, Andrew. We’re well
off, aren’t we?”

  “They wouldn’t need seed money for something like that,” Cape said.

  “That might’ve been just a lie to mislead you.”

  “There’s also the photo of Vince Mahannah. Why include him if you and your husband are kidnapping targets?”

  “God, I don’t know. Who knows how people like that think?”

  “It’s a big jump from convention-circuit con games to a capital offense. I don’t see those two making it.”

  Vanowen said, “You’re no expert, Cape.”

  “You’re right, I’m not.”

  “All right, then. We don’t know what they’re up to, that’s the bottom line.” Vanowen poked at his filet, banged the fork down without eating, pinched the ridge of muscle along his lower lip instead. “Mahannah passed on their description, but I want to hear it from you. In detail.”

  Cape obliged.

  “Total strangers,” Vanowen said. “Stacy?”

  “Yes. To me, too.”

  “Well, if either of them shows up around here, they’ll damn well be sorry—”

  His shirt pocket buzzed. Cell phone. He had it out and switched on and jammed against his ear in three fast movements. He said, “Vanowen,” listened, said, “How much?” and listened again. Then he said, “Twenty minutes,” and made the cell disappear as swiftly as he’d produced it.

  His wife said, “You’re leaving, I suppose.”

  “Have to. Business. You go ahead and finish your lunch.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Eat it anyway.” Vanowen snaked a hand inside the pocket of his sand-colored slacks, brought it out clutching a checkbook. Inside was a loose check, already made out. He dropped it on the table, used one finger to slide it over toward Cape.

  Cape ignored it, just as he’d ignored the crab cocktail and the fileted whitefish.

  “Go ahead,” Vanowen said, “take it.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “It’s for two hundred and fifty dollars.”

  “I wouldn’t care if it was twenty-five hundred or twenty-five thousand. I don’t want your money.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Because I didn’t earn it. Because I don’t take money for offering a helping hand. Because I spent most of my life letting myself be bought in one way or another. Because I’m tired of everybody I’ve met the past two days misjudging me and my motives. Take your pick.”

  Vanowen stared at him as if he were a new and baffling species. Abruptly he got to his feet. He said to Cape, “Suit yourself,” said to his wife, “I don’t know what time I’ll be home,” and power-walked his way out of the restaurant.

  Cape picked up the check, tore it into small pieces, and dropped the pieces onto his plate. He said, “Classic type A, your husband. He’ll have a massive coronary someday, if he doesn’t slow down.”

  “I’ve told him the same thing. He won’t listen.” She sighed, pushed her salad around on the plate. “He can be overbearing and abrasive, and he thinks money is God and he’s one of its disciples. But he’s a decent man underneath. Really, he is.”

  Cape doubted that. Andrew Vanowen, as far as he was concerned, was just what Justine had led him to believe—an arrogant, high-powered asshole. Stacy Vanowen knew it, too, despite what she’d said. The knowledge was in her eyes, in the tight line of her mouth.

  He said, “I’ll take your word for it.”

  After a time she said, “Those people, the Judsons or whoever they are…”

  “What about them?”

  “Do we have anything to fear from them? Your honest opinion.”

  “I doubt it. Whatever their game was, it’s likely I sidetracked it when I took their cash and got hold of those photographs. And I’d be willing to bet it was nothing as heavy as a kidnapping.”

  “That’s reassuring. Anyway, it’s our problem now. You’ll be leaving Tahoe soon, I suppose.”

  “Soon enough. Your friend Mahannah invited me to sit in on his poker game tomorrow night.”

  “Oh? Are you going to?”

  “Haven’t made up my mind yet.”

  Pick, pick at the salad. “When you do leave, where will you go?”

  “Reno, maybe. North from there or east into Utah. Depends on my mood at the time.”

  “I envy you,” she said. “Sometimes I wish I could just get in my car and drive and keep on driving.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “I’m a woman, for one thing. Women alone are targets.”

  “Not if they’re careful.”

  “You can’t be careful twenty-four/seven, can you?”

  “You have a point. Nobody can.”

  “Besides, I’m married and I love my husband and most of the time I’m reasonably content with my life. I leave the free-and-easy lifestyle to my sister.”

  “Lacy?”

  “How do you know her name?”

  “I met her. Yesterday, at your house. She didn’t tell you?”

  “No, she didn’t.”

  “I’m not surprised. I gathered you’re not close.”

  “I wish we were. What did she say about me?”

  “Nothing worth repeating.”

  “I can imagine.” Pause. “I suppose she… came on to you?”

  “Not exactly. Why, does she come on to most men she meets?’

  “More often than not.” Disapproval in her tone, and a hint oi malice in what she said next. “My sister never met a penis she didn’t like.”

  Cape’s laugh put a tint of color in her cheeks.

  “That probably sounds prudish,” she said. “But the truth is, I’m just a little jealous. Lacy has always done exactly what she wants and I’ve always been the good girl, the practical one.”

  “I’d say she’s a little jealous of you, too.”

  “Not of who I am. Of what I have. She—Oh, God, why am I talking like this? I don’t know you and you don’t really care about my family situation.”

  Cape said nothing.

  “You’re not eating,” Stacy Vanowen said. “Aren’t you hungry?”

  “I like to make my own choices from a menu.”

  “Oh, I see. Another of my husband’s less than endearing traits. He thinks he knows what’s best for everybody.”

  “I’ve stopped letting other people make my decisions for me,” Cape said, “even the small ones. Pretty liberating.”

  “I wish I could do the same.”

  “One of these days, maybe you will.”

  “Yes,” she said, “maybe,” but she didn’t sound as if she believed it.

  A piece of paper was tucked under one of the Corvette’s windshield wipers. Note written in purple ink and a bold scrawl: Easy does it, salesman. 246 Lake Summit Road, Cave Rock. Any time after 7 o’clock. The signature was the single letter L.

  Cape smiled faintly, folded the note, and put it in his shirt pocket. Two reasons to stay, now. Vince Mahannah’s poker game tomorrow night, tonight an attractive woman who had never met a penis she didn’t like.

  Why not?

  14

  Cape returned to the clubhouse, found a public phone, and called Vince Mahannah. He said, “I’ve decided to take you up on your invitation.”

  “Good. I was hoping you would.”

  “What time?”

  “We usually start around nine.”

  “Suits me.”

  Mahannah gave him an address in Glenbrook, on the Nevada shore, and directions; Cape wrote them down. “Get here earlier if you want something to eat. Plenty of food, drinks.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “The other matter,” Mahannah said. “You had lunch with the Vanowens? Gave them the photographs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Their reaction?”

  “Angry wait-and-see on his part.”

  “That’s Andy. And Stacy?”

  “Worried. She brought up the subject of kidnapping.”

  “What? I don’t see it that way.”

  “
Neither do I.”

  “Andy reassure her?”

  “No. He had other business on his mind. I did what I could after he left.”

  “You spent time with Stacy alone?’

  “A few minutes.”

  “What do you think of her?”

  “Attractive,” Cape said, “and unhappy.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “General impression. And some things she said.”

  “About what?”

  “Her marriage, for one.”

  “You asked her about her marriage?” Edge in Mahannah’s voice now. “Her private life?”

  “I didn’t ask. She volunteered.”

  “What, specifically?”

  “Nothing, specifically.”

  “You wouldn’t be planning to see her again, would you?”

  “No reason to.”

  “Then don’t. Any problems she might have are none of your business. You understand?”

  That edge—protectiveness, the kind that went beyond simple friendship. Possession or unsated hunger, one or the other.

  “I understand,” Cape said.

  Time on his hands. The rest of the day until seven o’clock. He took the Corvette east on Highway 50, up into the mountains, then down a steep grade into Carson City.

  Not much to interest him there. Silver-domed capital building, state museums, a few casinos. Small-town feel. He drove on to SR 341, turned off and wound up into the hills to Virginia City.

  More to his liking. Home of the Comstock Lode, the silver strike that had helped build San Francisco and finance the Union Army during the Civil War. Lots of old buildings restored to give the place a nineteenth-century boomtown ambience. Touristy, but not too bad. He wandered the hillside streets, drank a beer in the Bucket of Blood Saloon, let an old-fashioned one-armed bandit steal a few dollars in another saloon, took a tour of Piper’s Opera House, where Edwin Booth and Lotta Crabtree had performed in Virginia City’s heyday.

  On one of the upper streets was a brick church, St. Mary’s in the Mountains. He went in and sat for a time in the cool emptiness. First church he’d been in since St. Vincent’s in Rockford. No reason for staying there as long as he did; no amazing grace to save a wretch like him. Just that he liked the atmosphere—history mixed with piety. Another good, quiet place to sit and think.