Scenarios nd-29

by Bill Pronzini

  The luminous dial on my watch showed five minutes to nine when Cohalan showed up. Predictably early because he was so anxious to get it over with. He came down too fast for the conditions; I heard the squeal of brakes as he swung over and rocked to a stop near the trash barrel. I watched the shape of him get out and run across the path to make the drop and then run back. Ten seconds later his car hissed past where I was hidden, again going too fast, and was gone.

  Nine o'clock.

  Nine oh five.

  Nine oh eight.

  Headlights probed past, this set heading east, the car low-slung and smallish. It rolled along slowly until it was opposite the barrel, then veered sharply across the road and slid to a crooked stop with its brake lights flashing blood red. I sat up straighter, put my hand on the ignition key. The door opened without a light coming on inside and the driver jumped out in a hurry, bulky and indistinct in a heavy coat and some kind of head covering; ran to the barrel, scooped out the briefcase, raced back and hurled it inside; hopped in after it and took off. Fast, even faster than Cohalan had been driving, the car's rear end fishtailing a little as the tires fought for traction on the slick pavement.

  I was out on Kennedy and in pursuit within seconds. No way I could drive in the fog-laden darkness without putting on my lights, and in the far reach of the beams I could see the other car a hundred yards or so ahead. But even when I accelerated I couldn't get close enough to read the license plate.

  Where the Drive forks on the east end of the buffalo enclosure, the sports job made a tight-angle left turn, brake lights flashing again, headlights yawing as the driver fought for control. Looping around Spreckels Lake to quit the park on 36th Avenue. I took the turn at about half the speed, but I still had it in sight when it made a sliding right through a red light on Fulton, narrowly missing an oncoming car, and disappeared to the east. I wasn't even trying to keep up any longer. If I continued pursuit, somebody-an innocent party-was liable to get hurt or killed. That was the last thing I wanted to happen. High-speed car chases are for damn fools and the makers of trite Hollywood films.

  I pulled over near the Fulton intersection, still inside the park, and used the car phone to call my client.

  Cohalan threw a fit when I told him what had happened. He called me all kinds of names, the least offensive of which was "incompetent idiot." I just let him rant. There were no excuses to be made and no point in wasting my own breath.

  He ran out of abuse finally and segued into lament. "What am I going to do now? What am I going to tell Carolyn? All our savings gone and I still don't have any idea who that blackmailing bastard is. What if he comes back for more? We couldn't even sell the house, there's hardly any equity…

  Pretty soon he ran down there too. I waited through about five seconds of dead air. Then, "All right," followed by a heavy sigh. "But don't expect me to pay your bill. You can damn well sue me and you can't get blood out of a turnip." And he banged the receiver in my ear.

  Some Cohalan. Some piece of work.

  The apartment building was on Locust Street a half block off California, close to the Presidio. Built in the twenties, judging by its ornate facade; once somebody's modestly affluent private home, long ago cut up into three floors of studios and one-bedroom apartments. It had no garage, forcing its tenants-like most of those in the neighboring buildings-into street parking. There wasn't a legal space to be had on that block, or in the next, or anywhere in the vicinity. Back on California, I slotted my car into a bus zone. If I got a ticket I got a ticket.

  Not much chance I'd need a weapon for the rest of it, but sometimes trouble comes when you least expect it. So I unclipped the. 38 Colt Bodyguard from under the dash, slipped it into my coat pocket before I got out for the walk down Locust.

  The building had a tiny foyer with the usual bank of mailboxes. I found the button for 2-C, leaned on it. This was the ticklish part; I was banking on the fact that one voice sounds pretty much like another over an intercom. Turned out not to be an issue at all: The squawk box stayed silent and the door release buzzed instead, almost immediately. Confident. Arrogant. Or just plain stupid.

  I pushed inside, smiling a little, cynically, and climbed the stairs to the second floor. 2-C was the first apartment on the right. The door opened just as I got to it, and Annette Byers put her head out and said with excitement in her voice, "You made really good-"

  The rest of it snapped off when she got a look at me; the excitement gave way to confusion, froze her in the half-open doorway. I had time to move up on her, wedge my shoulder against the door before she could decide to jump back and slam it in my face. She let out a little bleat and tried to kick me as I crowded her inside. I caught her arms, gave her a shove to get clear of her. Then I nudged the door closed with my heel.

  "I'll start screaming," she said. Shaky bravado, the kind without anything to back it up. Her eyes were frightened now. "These walls are paper thin and I've got a neighbor who's a cop."

  That last part was a lie. I said, "Go ahead. Be my guest."

  "Who the hell do you think you are-"

  "We both know who I am, Ms. Byers. And why I'm here. The reason's on the table over there."

  In spite of herself she glanced to her left. The apartment was a studio and the kitchenette and dining area were over that way. The briefcase sat on the dinette table, its lid raised. I couldn't see inside from where I was, but then I didn't need to.

  "I don't know what you're talking about," she said.

  She hadn't been back long; she still wore the heavy coat and the head covering, a wool stocking cap that completely hid her blond hair. Her cheeks were flushed-the cold night, money lust, now fear. She was attractive enough in a too-ripe way, intelligent enough to hold down a job with a downtown travel service, and immoral enough to have been in trouble with the San Francisco police before this. She was twenty-three, divorced, and evidently a crankhead: she'd been arrested once for possession and once for trying to sell a small quantity of methamphetamine to an undercover cop.

  "Counting the cash, right?" I said.

  "… What?"

  "What you were doing when I rang the bell. Fifty thousand in fifties and hundreds. It's all there, according to plan."

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "You said that already."

  I moved a little to get a better scan of the studio. Her phone was on a breakfast bar that separated the kitchenette from the living room, one of those cordless types with a built-in answering machine. The gadget beside it was clearly a portable cassette player. She hadn't bothered to put it away before she went out; there'd been no reason to, or so she'd have thought then. The tape would still be inside.

  I looked at her again. "I've got to admit, you're a pretty good driver. Reckless as hell, though, the way you went flying out of the park on a red light. You came close to a collision with another car."

  "I don't know what-" She broke off and backed away a couple of paces, her hand rubbing the side of her face, her tongue making little flicks between her lips. It was sinking in now, how it had all gone wrong, how much trouble she was in. "You couldn't have followed me. I know you didn't."

  "That's right, I couldn't and I didn't."

  "Then how-?"

  "Think about it. You'll figure it out."

  A little silence. And, "Oh God, you knew about me all along."

  "About you, the plan, everything."

  "How? How could you? I don't-"

  The downstairs bell made a sudden racket.

  Her gaze jerked past me toward the intercom unit next to the door. She sucked in her lower lip, began to gnaw on it.

  "You know who it is," I said. "Don't use the intercom, just the door release."

  She did what I told her, moving slowly. I went the other way, first to the breakfast bar where I popped the tape out of the cassette player and slipped it into my pocket, then to the dinette table. I lowered the lid on the briefcase, snapped the catches. I had the case in my hand when she
turned to face me again.

  She said, "What're you going to do with the money?"

  "Give it back to its rightful owner."

  "Jay. It belongs to him."

  I didn't say anything to that.

  "You better not try to keep it for yourself," she said. "You don't have any right to that money…

  "You dumb kid," I said disgustedly, "neither do you."

  She quit looking at me. When she started to open the door I told her no, wait for his knock. She stood with her back to me, shoulders hunched. She was no longer afraid; dull resignation had taken over. For her, I thought, the money was the only thing that had ever mattered.

  Knuckles rapped on the door. She opened it without any hesitation, and he blew in talking fast the way he did when he was keyed up. "Oh, baby, baby, we did it, we pulled it off," and he grabbed her and started to pull her against him. That was when he saw me.

  "Hello, Cohalan," I said.

  He went rigid for three or four seconds, his eyes popped wide, then disentangled himself from the woman and stood gawping at me. His mouth worked but nothing came out. Manic as hell in his office, all nerves and talking a blue streak, but now he was speechless. Lies were easy for him; the truth would have to be dragged out.

  I told him to close the door. He did it, automatically, and turned snarling on Annette Byers. "You let him follow you home!"

  "I didn't," she said. "He already knew about me. He knows everything."

  "No, you're lying…"

  "You were so goddamn smart, you had it all figured out. You didn't fool him for a minute."

  "Shut up." His eyes shifted to me. "Don't listen to her. She's the one who's been blackmailing me-"

  "Knock it off, Cohalan," I said. "Nobody's been blackmailing you. You're the shakedown artist here, you and Annette-a fancy little scheme to get your wife's money. You couldn't just grab the whole bundle from her, and you couldn't get any of it by divorcing her because a spouse's inheritance isn't community property in this state. So you cooked up the phony blackmail scam. What were the two of you planning to do with the full hundred thousand? Run off somewhere together? Buy a load of crank for resale, try for an even bigger score?"

  "You see?" Annette Byers said bitterly. "You see, smart guy? He knows everything."

  Cohalan shook his head. He'd gotten over his initial shock; now he looked stricken, and his nerves were acting up again. His hands had begun repeating that scoop-shovel trick at his sides. "You believed me, I know you did."

  "Wrong," I said. "I didn't believe you. I'm a better actor than you, is all. Your story didn't sound right from the first. Too elaborate, full of improbabilities. Fifty thousand is too big a blackmail bite for any crime short of homicide, and you swore to me-your wife too-you weren't guilty of a major felony. Blackmailers seldom work in big bites anyway. They bleed their victims slow and steady, in small bites, to keep them from throwing the hook. We just didn't believe it, either of us."

  "We? Jesus, you mean… you and Carolyn…?"

  "That's right. Your wife's my client, Cohalan, not you-that's why I never asked you for a retainer. She showed up at my office right after you did the first time; if she hadn't I'd probably have gone to her. She's been suspicious all along, but she gave you the benefit of the doubt until you hit her with the fifty-thousand dollar sum. She figured you might be having an affair, too, and it didn't take me long to find out about Annette. You never had any idea you were being followed, did you? Once I knew about her, it was easy enough to put the rest of it together, including the funny business with the money drop tonight. And here we are."

  "Damn you," he said, but there was no heat in the words. "You and that frigid bitch both."

  He wasn't talking about Annette Byers, but she took the opportunity to dig into him again. "Smart guy. Big genius. I told you to just take the money and we'd run with it, didn't I?"

  "Shut up."

  "Don't tell me to shut up, you son of-"

  "Don't say it. I'll slap you silly if you say it."

  "You won't slap anybody," I said. "Not as long as I'm around."

  He wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his jacket. "What're you going to do?"

  "What do you think I'm going to do?"

  "You can't go to the police. You don't have any proof, it's your word against ours."

  "Wrong again." I showed him the voice-activated recorder I'd had hidden in my pocket all evening. High-tech, state-of-the-art equipment, courtesy of George Agonistes, fellow PI and electronics expert. "Everything that was said in your office and in this room tonight is on here. I've also got the cassette tape Annette played when she called earlier. Voice prints will prove the muffled voice on it is yours, that you were talking to yourself on the phone, giving yourself orders and directions. If your wife wants to press charges, she'll have more than enough evidence to put the two of you away."

  "She won't press charges," he said. "Not Carolyn."

  "Maybe not, if you return the rest of her money. What you and baby here haven't already blown."

  He sleeved his mouth again. "I suppose you intend to take the briefcase straight to her."

  "You suppose right."

  "I could stop you," he said, as if he were trying to convince himself. "I'm as big as you, younger-I could take it away from you."

  I repocketed the recorder. I could have showed him the. 38, but I grinned at him instead. "Go ahead and try. Or else move away from the door. You've got five seconds to make up your mind."

  He moved in three, as I started toward him. Sideways, clear of both me and the door. Annette Byers let out a sharp, scornful laugh, and he whirled on her-somebody his own size to face off against. "Shut your stupid mouth!" he yelled at her.

  "Shut yours, big man. You and your brilliant ideas."

  "Goddamn you…"

  I went out and closed the door against their vicious, whining voices.

  Outside the fog had thickened to a near drizzle, sucking the pavement and turning the lines of parked cars along both curbs into two-dimensional black shapes. Parking was at such a premium in this neighborhood there was now a car, dark and silent, double-parked across the street. I walked quickly to California. Nobody, police included, had bothered my wheels in the bus zone. I locked the briefcase in the trunk, let myself inside. A quick call to Carolyn Cohalan to let her know I was coming, a short ride out to her house by the zoo to deliver the fifty thousand, and I'd be finished for the night.

  Only she didn't answer her phone.

  Funny. When I'd called her earlier from the park, she'd said she would wait for my next call. No reason for her to leave the house in the interim. Unless-

  Christ!

  I heaved out of the car and ran back down Locust Street. The darkened vehicle was still double-parked across from Annette Byers' building. I swung into the foyer, jammed my finger against the bell button for 2-C and left it there. No response. I rattled the door-latched tight-and then began jabbing buttons on all the other mailboxes. The intercom crackled; somebody's voice said, "Who the hell is that?" I said, "Police emergency, buzz me in." Nothing, nothing, and then finally the door release sounded; I hit the door hard and lunged into the lobby.

  I was at the foot of the stairs when the first shot echoed from above. Two more in swift succession, a fourth as I was pounding up to the second floor landing.

  Querulous voices, the sound of a door banging open somewhere, and I was at 2-C. The door there was shut but not latched; I kicked it open, hanging back with the. 38 in my hand for self-protection. But there was no need. It was over by then. Too late and all over.

  All three of them were on the floor. Cohalan on his back next to the couch, blood obscuring his face, not moving. Annette Byers sprawled bloody and moaning by the dinette table. And Carolyn Cohalan sitting with her back against a wall, a long-barreled. 22 on the carpet nearby, weeping in deep broken sobs.

  I leaned hard on the doorjamb, the stink of cordite in my nostrils, my throat full of bile. Telling myself it was not
my fault, there was no way I could have known it wasn't the money but paying them back that mattered to her-the big payoff, the biggest bite there is. Telling myself I could've done nothing to prevent this, and remembering what I'd been thinking in the car earlier, about how I lived for cases like this, how I liked this one a whole lot…

  Season of Sharing

  I stepped out of my office and looked over the garland-laden railing of the upstairs catwalk at the floor of Pier 24-1/2. Six o'clock and the annual charity Christmas party for staff members of the various businesses housed there had just begun.

  The cars that we customarily parked downstairs had been removed to the street; a buffet table and bar in the center of the huge space was already surrounded; the loving cup for the best decorations-nonecumenical, as many of us practiced Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, or no religion at all-sat on its pedestal, to be awarded at the end of the festivities. We called this event the Season of Sharing party, because we solicited cash and noncash donations for a designated charity, with one firm handling the collection and disbursement on a rotating basis. This year's cause was a group called Home for the Holidays, dedicated to housing and feeding homeless people during the season.

  A party with a serious purpose, but that didn't mean we hadn't enjoyed preparing for it and wouldn't have a great time celebrating. The decorations this year were exceptional all around. My office manager, Ted Smalley, had opted for a galactic theme in this time of worldwide dissension, hanging from the garland silver stars, moons, planets, and crystal beads to represent the Milky Way. The architects on the opposite catwalk, Chandler amp; Santos, had fashioned a cityscape of colored lights and neon tubing; and their neighbors, a group of certified public accountants, had suspended cardboard cutouts of people of all races and genders holding hands. Below was a miniature Santa's Village, complete with electric tram (marketing consultants); a forest of small live fir trees dusted in realistic-looking snow, where replicas of various endangered animals took refuge (ecological nonprofit); swirls of rich, colorful cloth that a fan moved in a kaleidoscopic pattern (fashion designer); a Model T Ford with Santa at the wheel and presents in the rumble seat (car leasing agency). One of these would win the big loving cup perched on the high pedestal for best of show.