Snowbound

by Bill Pronzini

  “I thought of that, I told you I thought of everything. The hell with it. It’s not that hard to build a new cover somewhere. And the FBI’s been looking for Ben Hammel for eight years for the bank job he was in on in Texas. He’s still walking around.”

  “I’m not Ben Hammel, and I don’t want my ass in that kind of sling. There’s a damned good chance the cops would connect us up with Greenfront, too-and the chance we’d run into trouble taking over here and people would get killed. Murder One heat, either way. We wouldn’t last a week anywhere in the country.”

  “Oh, bullshit,” Kubion said. “How much play can a thing like this get in Connecticut? In Florida? In goddamn Puerto Rico? A few days and it dies off. Sure, the fuzz keeps right on looking. But you both know how simple it is to change what you look like. You grow a beard for a while; half the men in the nation wear beards these days, and how can some cop identify you when you’re wearing a face full of whiskers? You cut your hair or let it grow or dye it another color. You gain weight or you lose weight or you wear padding. You live quiet, don’t spread any money around. You know all the tricks as well as I do. And we’re split up, that’s another thing; three guys in three different parts of the country who don’t look anything like the ones who ripped off Hidden Valley, California.”

  Brodie said, “Damn it, none of it makes sense. Even if we could stay on the loose, where are we? Say we could take as much as thirty grand out of here: that’s only ten thousand apiece. How long is ten bills going to last each of us? We’d have to look for a new score inside of three months, and with all the heat still on. How many pros are going to want one of us in on a job carrying that kind of blister?”

  “So we play it solo for a while. We’ve all worked solo before. The heat will die, it always dies sooner or later.”

  “For God’s sake, they’d have our names; they’d know exactly who did the job. That kind of heat doesn’t die.”

  “Hell no, it don’t,” Loxner said.

  “I’ll tell you a way the cops won’t get our names at all, a way to come out of it free and clear and to hell with this cabin,” Kubion said.

  “What way?”

  “Set fire to the church or blow it up before we go on the snowmobiles. Don’t leave any witnesses who can identify us, waste them all.”

  Loxner gaped at him the way you would at something under a decaying log. Brodie’s shoulders jerked involuntarily. “Hey, hey, hey,” he said. His voice was incredulous. “What kind of freaky talk is that? Jesus, what do you think we are?”

  “Okay, okay, then forget that. But listen-”

  “We listened enough already,” Loxner said, “I don’t want to listen to no more. We don’t want no part of what you’re laying down here, no part of it.”

  Brodie said, “Earl, what’s got into you? You’re all of a sudden after this valley like you got a hard-on for the place, you’re acting like a crazy amateur-”

  Kubion was on his feet in one swift motion, upsetting his chair. His cheeks had suffused with dark blood, and his eyes were like a pair of live embers. He slapped the table with the flat of one palm, hard enough to topple Loxner’s empty ale bottle and send it clattering to the floor. “Call me a crazy amateur, you son of a bitch, call me a crazy amateur!”

  Loxner and Brodie were standing now as well, backed off a couple of steps, muscles tensed.

  “You stupid pricks, can’t you see the kind of thing this is? A whole valley, a whole valley, nobody ever did anything like it. Well? Well?”

  Watching him, Brodie and Loxner remained silent.

  Kubion took a breath, released it sibilantly-and as suddenly as it had come, the rage drained out of his face. “All right,” he said, quiet-voiced, “all right then, all right,” and turned and walked out of the kitchen.

  Very softly Loxner said, “Oh man!” He went to the refrigerator and took out another ale and popped the cap and swallowed half of it without lowering the bottle. Then: “Things are bad enough without shit like that. The last thing we need is shit like that, Vic.”

  Brodie did not say anything.

  “He gave me the creeps with all that crazy talk,” Loxner said, “that funny look in his eyes. It was like he’s a different person all of a sudden, you know what I mean?”

  Brodie’s mouth was pinched in at the corners, his eyes grimly reflective. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

  Nineteen

  Black-edged clouds began to drift over Hidden Valley Friday afternoon, obliterating the pale sun and giving the air a dry, ice-tinged quality; but it did not snow again until very early Saturday morning, and then nothing more than a light dusting which would not interfere with work on the slide. When Matt Hughes came down Lassen Drive a few minutes past 8 A.M., the village seemed bathed in a soft luminosity created by the snow’s whiteness reflecting light filtered through the low cloud ceiling. Under normal circumstances, such a view would have pleased him-the serene beauty of a mountain valley, his valley, in literally its best light-but he barely noticed it now; he had too many divergent things preying on his mind.

  There was the slide, of course: all the problems it had caused, the extra work it made for him as mayor. There was Peggy Tyler, whom he had seen several times since their lovemaking in Whitewater Tuesday night but whom he had not spoken to for their mutual protection; whose lush and eager body glowed in his memory, exciting him with fresh and consuming desire and filling him with a sense of frustration because he could do nothing about it.

  And, finally, there was Rebecca.

  Her sudden outburst Thursday evening at dinner had upset him considerably. He loved her deeply, and yet it was a kind of reverent, detached love: the love of an art connoisseur for a masterpiece which he alone possesses. From the moment he had met her, Hughes had never been able to think of her in sexual terms; the act of physically entering her body had never given him pleasure or satisfaction-just as fondling the fragile surfaces of his masterpiece would give the art connoisseur no pleasure and no satisfaction. Sex for Matt Hughes was a savage, primitive urge totally disassociated from love. It was sweating flesh and moaning frenzy and animalistic release with women like Peggy Tyler, women who instilled no reverence in him, women who dazzled his senses and sated completely his carnal hunger.

  He wanted only to have Rebecca near him, to know that she was there and that she was his; he wanted only to believe in her and worship her in some of the same way he believed in and worshiped God. He wished desperately that he could explain this to her, but of course he had never tried; she would not have understood. And he lived in constant fear that she would find out about his continual affairs-as she had found out about the Soda Grove waitress several years ago-and that she would, instead of once again forgiving him, decide to leave him. He couldn’t bear that. But still he yielded each time the primitive forces inside him demanded it, as if he were two different men, as if he were a kind of sensually emotional schizophrenic.

  Did she suspect the current affair with Peggy? Or had her outburst Thursday only been the result of neglect and some of those same base desires which were present in all beings? The latter, of course; he refused to think otherwise. After he had recovered from his initial shock, he had tried to make himself go upstairs and take Rebecca into his arms and make love to her, but he had not been able to do it. He had never been able to correlate the primitive with the reverent; it was one or the other, and he simply could not touch or devote himself to his wife during those times when he was pouring out his lust into the bodies of other females.

  The situation had grown worse over the past two days. Rebecca had not spoken a word to him since Thursday, and the atmosphere at home was strained and uncomfortable. The careful juxtaposition of his two lives had been momentarily and maddeningly imbalanced; he needed both Rebecca and Peggy now, he needed the status quo, and he did not have any of them. There had to be an answer, a way to restabilize things, but he had not as yet been able to figure out what it was.

 
Maude Fredericks had already opened the Mercantile, as she did on most mornings, when Hughes arrived. He went into his office and put through a call to Soda Grove. The slide status, at least, was still quo: progress slow but steady, no fresh snow slides to complicate matters. He came out into the store again, built a fire in the potbellied stove, and went to work.

  The day seemed to drag on interminably. Rebecca and Peggy, Peggy and Rebecca-first one and then the other, endlessly cycling in his thoughts. He found himself wishing Peggy would come in and was both relieved and disappointed when she did not. He thought of calling Rebecca but didn’t; there would have been no point in it, there was nothing he could say to her yet. Depression formed inside him like a thick, damp mist.

  At four o’clock Hughes stopped trying to find things to do to occupy himself, left Maude to close up, and drove home through the same light, steady snow which had fallen all day. When he entered the house, it seemed filled with a tangible emptiness, and he knew immediately that Rebecca was not there. Gone into the village, he thought; probably to visit with Ann Tribucci. He listened to the empty silence and felt his depression deeper. In the kitchen he made a light scotch and water and took it into his study and sat tipped back in his leather recliner, sipping the drink and brooding.

  And after a time he began to think about Peggy again, about Tuesday night in the Whitewater motel room. His scrotum tightened painfully, and sitting there, he had a full and pulsing erection: the primitive in him screaming for her-now, today, tonight. But there was no way, not until the pass was cleared. Too dangerous for them to meet in Hidden Valley and no place to meet even if they dared to risk it. She couldn’t come here to his house, and he couldn’t go to hers, and the Mercantile was no good because of its central village location. No other place Mule Deer Lake, he thought suddenly. The Taggart cabin.

  Hughes leaned forward in the recliner, pulling it into its upright position. The Taggart cabin. Yes-and it wasn’t all that dangerous if they were very, very careful. But did they dare? Would Peggy be willing? Some of the depression had evaporated now, and an almost boyish recklessness throbbed inside him. They could get away with it, and he needed her, he needed her. Call Peggy, call her right now, take the chance…

  Impulsively he stood up and started across the study to the extension phone on his old rolltop desk. And stopped halfway there, touched by abrupt fear. No; it was utter foolishness. They could be seen, they could be recognized, and what then? The affair would become public knowledge, and Rebecca would leave him for certain then; she would have no alternative. Public disgrace, his position in the valley irreparably damaged-he could lose everything that mattered in his life. Besides, it would only be another few days until the pass was open again. They could resume their Whitewater meetings in a week or so, perhaps next Friday or Saturday night. He could wait that long, couldn’t he?

  He felt the burning, demanding ache in his genitals and was not sure that he could.

  Rebecca, he thought with a kind of desperation, if only I could make love to Rebecca tonight. It would solve both his immediate problems; it would make things all right again. But the savagery of his need made it impossible; it was Peggy his body craved, Peggy, Peggy, and he would be completely and unquestionably impotent if he Impotent.

  Impotence!

  That was the answer to his marital dilemma; it had been the answer all along. Of course: impotence, it was so obvious he had never even thought of it before. All he had to do was to tell Rebecca that certainly he wanted to make love to her, but that it was; at the moment, physically impracticable-he had for some time been suffering from sexual incapacity. He had wanted to tell her long before now, he would say, but had been too ashamed to admit it; he was seeing a doctor in Soda Grove, taking hormone treatments to rectify the problem-although to date they had been frustratingly ineffective. She would believe him; there was no reason why she shouldn’t believe him. She would be sympathetic and understanding, and there would be no more outbursts, no more periods of uncomfortable silence between them. Then, when the affair with Peggy came to its inevitable conclusion in another few weeks and he was once again able to bring himself to make love to his wife, he would tell Rebecca that the treatments had finally produced positive results. It would be just as simple as that.

  Hughes felt immediate relief-one problem taken care of, he was sure of it-but the mitigation was tempered by his urgent desire for Peggy. He thought again of the Taggart cabin, of how easy it would be for them to use it as a meeting place. Nothing could go wrong, nothing would go wrong; the gamble was no greater than any of the others he had taken during the past seven years, and in that time no one in Hidden Valley had suspected a thing, they would have no reason to suspect anything now. A cautious hour or two, that was all, and just tonight, never again in the valley. After tonight he would be able to wait until next Friday with no difficulty at all. If he went through with it, there would be no more immediate quandaries with his personal life; he could have Rebecca and Peggy and the status quo, all his again and all tonight.

  The recklessness, the excitement swept through him again. Rationalization and his hungry loins had decided the argument: he knew he was going to call Peggy and make the suggestion to her. Quickly, he went to the extension phone-and from there he could look through the study window at the darkened, restlessly clouded sky. It would keep on snowing for some time yet, the night would be very dark. Very dark. He caught up the receiver and then hesitated. What if her mother answered? Disguise his voice, that was it; put his handkerchief over the mouthpiece. He fumbled the folded square of cambric from his back pocket and draped it around the handset, at once realizing that he was being melodramatic and taking a kind of adventurous ebullience in the fact. Then he flipped open the county directory and found the Tylers’ number and dialed it rapidly.

  Peggy’s voice said, “Hello?” on the sixth ring.

  Hughes pulled the handkerchief away, releasing the breath he had been holding. “Peggy?”

  Pause. “Matt, is that you?”

  “Yes. You can talk all right?”

  “My mother is over at the Chiltons. But you took a chance, calling like this.”

  “I know. I had to talk to you.”

  “That damned slide,” she said. “It’s going to be such a miserably long time until we can be together again.”

  “It doesn’t have to be,” Hughes said fervently. “Peggy, listen, I’ve just thought of something-a way and a place we can meet.”

  “You mean here, in the valley?”

  “Yes. Tonight. I’ve thought it out, and it’s safe as long as we’re careful. Do you want to do it?”

  “I don’t know, Matt…”

  “Peggy, I keep thinking about you, I can’t get you out of my mind. I have to see you. Please, Peggy.”

  Pause. “Tell me your idea.”

  “The Taggart cabin at Mule Deer Lake,” Hughes said. “The first one on the eastern shore, the one that sits by itself at the edge of the lake. Well, I’ve got the keys to it; the Taggarts always leave them with me when they go back to Red Bluff in the fall. We can spend a couple of hours there early tonight, say seven o’clock. And we won’t turn on any lights, so that if somebody does pass the cabin, they won’t know anybody is inside.”

  “We couldn’t take both our cars.”

  “No, just mine. You can walk to the stand of trees where Sierra Street forks into the two lake roads, going along the west slope where nobody would see you. I’ll pick you up there.”

  “What if somebody notices your car at the cabin or sees it drive up? The Markhams and the Donnellys live on the eastern shore of the lake.”

  “Their homes are both well down the shore. It’ll be dark at the lake-no moon; the snowing will keep visibility down — and we’ll drive to and from the cabin with the headlights off. Somebody would have to be outside and peering along the road in order to see us, and that’s hardly likely. The only other occupied place at the lake is the cabin where those two San Francisco busi
nessmen are staying, and it’s sheltered from the road by trees. As far as the car goes, I’ll park it in the Taggarts’ garage; the entrance is open and faces away from the road, and you can’t see into it from there.”

  “Somebody could still notice you leaving the village or returning,” Peggy said. “They’d wonder about it.”

  “If I’m ever asked, I’ll say I decided to go for a short drive, just to get some air, and stopped for a while and walked around. That’s why we’ll meet so early-for that reason, and because of my wife and your mother too. Nobody would question an explanation like that; why should they? It’ll look like I’m alone in the car anyway, since you’ll be scooted down on the seat. Peggy, I’m desperate to see you, and I’ll take the gamble if you will. We’ll be very careful; nothing can happen if we’re careful.”

  There was a prolonged silence this time, and Hughes said her name questioningly. Peggy said then, “I really don’t think we ought to chance it, but I’m desperate to see you, too. And terribly horny. Are you terribly horny, Matt?”

  Hughes had an erection again. “Yes!”

  “Then-all right. You’ll pick me up at the fork at seven?”

  “At seven. I don’t want to have to stop but a second, so hurry as fast as you can when you see the car.”

  “I will.”

  They said good-byes, and Hughes cradled the handset. He was sweating. He crossed to the lamp table beside his recliner, lifted his drink, drained it, and then looked at his watch: five forty-five. Leaving the study, he went upstairs and took a shower and doused himself liberally with body talc and changed into fresh clothes; came downstairs again and ate a light supper. The kitchen wall clock told him it was six forty when he had finished-time to leave. He would have to stop at the Mercantile to pick up the keys to the Taggart cabin.