Deadfall nd-15

by Bill Pronzini

  “Thank you,” she said. “Good night.”

  “Good night, Mrs. Purcell.”

  I put the handset down, thinking, Brrr! Hot stuff, hell; underneath that sexy exterior she’s a chilly piece of goods. Going to bed with her would be like going to bed with a block of ice. You’d wake up in the morning with some of your parts frozen solid.

  I took off my suit and put on my old chenille bathrobe, the one Kerry hated and was always threatening to throw out-grounds for break-up of our relationship if she did. A Bud Light and a 1937 issue of Strange Detective Mysteries helped me unwind. Paul Ernst’s “Madame Murder-and the Corpse Brigade” made me hungry, for some reason; at least my stomach was growling when I finished it. There was some chicken left over from last night. Most of it, in fact, since Kerry had refused to eat more than one wing, saying, “I hate burnt chicken.” Well, it wasn’t burnt, not too badly anyhow. All you had to do was scrape off the black crap here and there and the rest of it went down just fine. I gobbled four pieces and some cold zucchini-with-parmesan, opened another beer, and returned to the living room and Strange Detective Mysteries.

  The damn telephone rang again just as I was entering the bang-up finale of “Idiot’s Coffin Keepsake” by Norbert Davis.

  Grumbling, I put the magazine down and went to answer it. And this time it wasn’t anybody I wanted to talk to-the last person I wanted to talk to, as a matter of fact. It was the Reverend Raymond P. Dunston, and the first thing he said was, “I would like to speak to my wife. Please put her on the line.”

  I swallowed the first two words that came to me and held my tongue and my temper for a good ten seconds. When I felt I could speak in a rational and reasonable tone I said, “In the first place, Dunston, you don’t have a wife; you have an ex-wife. And in the second place, she isn’t here.”

  “I called her apartment,” he said. “She isn’t there. She isn’t working late at her office, either.”

  “She’s gone out to dinner with a friend.”

  “What friend?”

  “A lady friend.”

  “What is the friend’s name?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “Is she coming there afterward?”

  She wasn’t, but I said, “Well? What if she is?”

  “ ‘Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned?’ ” he said. “ ‘Can one go upon hot coals, and his feet not be burned? So he that goeth in to his neighbor’s wife; whosoever toucheth her shall not be innocent.’ Proverbs, six: twenty-seven through twenty-nine.”

  “Now listen, Dunston-”

  “It is you who should listen,” he said. “Not to me but to the word of God. Kerry Anne is my wife. She is my wife. ‘Bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.’ Genesis, two: twenty-three and twenty-four.”

  “Quote the Bible all you want,” I said, “it doesn’t make any difference. Kerry isn’t your wife, she doesn’t want to be your wife, she’ll never be your wife again. That’s the way it is, so you might as well face-”

  He hung up on me.

  I strangled the receiver for a time and then slammed it down. But my aim wasn’t very good: it hit the base unit glancingly and knocked the thing off the nightstand, and when it fell it landed on my right instep. I hopped around on the other foot, cussing, and tripped on a corner of the bedspread and sprawled sideways across the bottom of the bed and cracked my funny bone on the frame. When I recoiled from that I slid off onto the floor and banged down on both knees. I heaved myself up raging, feeling like a fool, and the phone was lying there in two parts and a beeping noise was coming out of it. I wanted to kick it to shut it up, but I had enough sense to know that if I did I would probably break a toe or my whole damn foot. I sat on the bed-let the thing beep, the hell with it-and alternately rubbed my elbow and my instep, the two places that hurt the most, while I thought dark thoughts.

  Dunston, I thought, this is not going to go on much longer. It is going to be resolved, Dunston, one way or another, even if I have to put in a long-distance call to God myself.

  After a while the dark thoughts went away, leaving the feeling of foolishness behind. I sighed, got up, made the phone whole again, and limped into the living room. And crawled back into “Idiot’s Coffin Keepsake,” which was right where I belonged.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Saturday morning, early, I drove down to Mission Creek again.

  It was another sunny day, cool and cloudless, and some of the boat people were out and about, doing various things to their crafts. Richie Dessault wasn’t among them and neither was Melanie; and I didn’t get an answer when I boarded their houseboat and banged on the door astern. I walked around on both sides of the superstructure, trying not to act like a suspicious character as I looked at each of the four windows- at them, not through them, because all four were either shuttered or draped. If anybody was inside, he or she wasn’t making a sound.

  I stepped off onto the board float, and a voice said nearby, “Looking for somebody?” It was a guy on the boat adjacent to the east, an ancient but freshly painted sloop with the name Wanderer painted on the bow. He was about seventy and wore a sailor’s hat, a sweatshirt, and a pair of faded denims-one of those crusty types who have spent so many years on or around the sea they look as if they’ve been preserved in salt-cake. He also looked wary, which told me my non-suspicious-character act needed some work.

  I said, “Richie Dessault or Melanie Purcell, either one. Have you seen them?”

  “Her this morning. Not him.”

  “How long ago did you see her?”

  “Twenty minutes, maybe.”

  “Leaving here?”

  “Yep. On her way to Blanche’s.”

  Blanche’s was a waterfront cafe down near the Fourth Street drawbridge. I said, “How do you know she was going there?”

  “She was on foot. No place to walk to down that way except Blanche’s.”

  “Was she alone?”

  “Yep.”

  “You wouldn’t have any idea where Dessault is, would you?”

  “Nope. You a policeman?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Look like one. Wouldn’t mind it if you busted Dessault. Her too, for that matter.”

  “Sounds as though you don’t like them much.”

  “Don’t like ’em at all.” He made a disgusted noise. “Drugs-all the time, drugs. What’s the matter with kids nowadays, you tell me that? Smoke that crap, suck it up their nose, shoot it in their veins. Don’t make any sense to me.”

  “Me neither,” I said.

  “So you gonna bust ’em?”

  “No. I’m not a policeman.”

  “What are you, then?”

  “Just a guy who’s having some trouble with God, among other things.”

  “Huh?” he said. Then he said, “Oh, one of those, ” and turned away and moved quickly astern, to escape any attempt I might make at pamphlet distribution, proselytizing, and/or money-begging.

  I sighed and walked to the nearest ramp and climbed up to the embankment. I was not having a good day so far, probably because I had not had a good night. Alicia Purcell. Dunston’s phone call. Sleeping alone and not sleeping very well. Dreams again: Leonard Purcell crawling through his own blood, me down on my knees holding something alive and wiggling in my hands, something I knew was his soul. And now it was Saturday, the first day of the weekend, a day to enjoy life a little-except that Kerry had some shopping she wanted to do, and there wasn’t anything pleasurable or relaxing I felt like doing alone. All I felt like doing was working. This Purcell business-Leonard and Kenneth both-kept tumbling around inside my head, frustrating me because there were so damned many angles to it. I was convinced that Tom Washburn was right, there was a definite link between the two deaths; but what link? I couldn’t make the angles fit the right pattern without more information, without a clearer idea
of the common denominators, and until I did make them fit I was not going to have much peace.

  Blue Saturday. Blah Saturday. But maybe not, you never know; maybe the day would turn out to be a good one after all. You just have to plug away and hope for the best.

  It was not far down to Blanche’s-I could see it clearly from where I stood, a weathered, rust-red building with a long pier behind it jutting out perpendicularly into the creek-but I didn’t feel much like walking. I got into the car and drove down there and parked among a scattering of other cars. The place didn’t seem crowded, judging from the number of cars, and it wasn’t. There was one customer at an inside table, another picking up his breakfast from a woman behind an order counter; neither of them was Melanie Purcell. I went out through a side door, onto the pier. Seven or eight people were sitting out there, at wooden tables set among a jungley profusion of potted plants and trees, and dozens of green gallon wine jugs that served as vases for a variety of flowers.

  Melanie was there, sitting alone at a table next to the pier’s picket-fence railing. She wore shorts and a baggy T-shirt; her legs were so thin they were like white stalks. She was drinking coffee and fiddling with a mostly uneaten blueberry muffin, and she didn’t look happy. She looked even less happy when I came up to her and said, “Hello, Melanie. Nice day, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, shit, you again. What do you want now?”

  “A few minutes of your time. Mind if I sit down?”

  “I don’t have to talk to you,” she said.

  “That’s right, you don’t. Where’s Richie today?”

  Some sharp emotion-I took it to be pain-darkened her eyes and pulled her mouth out of shape. She looked away from me before she said, “None of your business where he is.”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “Sure I know. Why wouldn’t I know?”

  “What’s the secret, then?”

  “There’s no secret.” I sat down across from her as she spoke. She looked at me again, but the one cockeye made it seem as though her gaze was still somewhere else. Her expression had changed to one of bluff and anger. “What do you care where Richie is?”

  “I want to ask him some questions,” I said.

  “What questions?”

  “About Danny Martinez.”

  “Who?”

  “Danny Martinez.”

  “I don’t know anybody named Danny Martinez.”

  “No? Well, Richie does.”

  “Am I supposed to care about that?”

  “You should. Danny Martinez knows who murdered your father.”

  Her mouth opened, closed again; the surprise seemed genuine. “You’re crazy,” she said. “You’re full of shit.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Kenneth wasn’t murdered,” she said.

  I still didn’t say anything.

  “You’re making it up,” she said. “There’s nobody named Danny Martinez.”

  “Yes there is. He used to work for Cabrillo Market in Moss Beach, delivering groceries and liquor. He made a delivery to your father’s house the night he died, right about the time he died. He saw or heard what happened. A couple of weeks ago he contacted your Uncle Leonard and tried to sell him the name of the person who pushed Kenneth. Maybe he did sell him the name; maybe that’s why Leonard was shot. I don’t know yet. I won’t know until I find Martinez.”

  She was shaking her mouse-brown head. “I don’t believe you,” she said. “I don’t believe any of that.”

  “It’s true, Melanie.”

  “No,” she said. Then she said, “Even if it is, what does Richie have to do with this Martinez?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know. He was at the Martinez farm in Moss Beach yesterday afternoon. I saw him there. The place is deserted now; Martinez split for Mexico a couple of weeks ago. I think Richie was searching the house.”

  “You’re lying,” she said.

  “Why would I lie to you?”

  “You’re trying to get something on Richie-”

  “Melanie,” I said, “where is he?”

  “I’m not going to tell you!”

  “Did he come home last night? Has he been home since yesterday afternoon?”

  She got up fast, so fast she almost upset her chair. “You son of a bitch!” she said, loud enough so that her voice carried to everyone on the pier. They all turned to look at us. “I don’t have to listen to any more of this! You hear me? No more of this!”

  Her face had gotten red and she was trembling; she had worked herself into a state, and quickly. I stood up, too, and just as I did a brawny guy in a sheepskin vest came over from one of the nearby tables. He said to Melanie, “Some trouble here, kid?”

  I said, “No trouble,” but she said, “He tried to pick me up. He offered me money to go to a motel with him, the goddamn creep.”

  Ah Christ, I thought, that’s all I need.

  The guy put his eyes on me. He was one of these macho types, the kind that see themselves as champions of law, order, and virtue — the kind to whom violence is the answer to every problem and Stallone’s Rambo is the great American hero. This attitude of blind-leap heroism and distorted patriotism was rampant in the country these days. Nobody seemed to be thinking much anymore, including the politicians; it was all might makes right, action and reaction, and never mind how many innocent people might get hurt in the process.

  True to form, the guy balled up his fists and said, “That right, asshole? You try to molest her?”

  “No, it’s not right.”

  “She says it is.”

  “She’s playing games. Look at her.”

  “Pervert,” Melanie said between her teeth. She was backing away now, fading into the small crowd that had gathered from the other tables. “Lousy goddamn pervert.”

  “I ought to break your face,” the guy said to me.

  “Lay a hand on me, you’re in big trouble. Melanie, come back here!”

  But she was moving away now, not looking back. I wanted to go after her, but if I made a move the brawny guy would jump me. The rest of them were liable to jump me, too; it was that kind of potentially ugly scene. I stayed where I was and let her go.

  “You’re the one who’s in trouble, pal,” the guy said. “Hey, somebody go call the cops.”

  “I am a cop,” I said, making it sound tough. “How about that, asshole?”

  It was the only way to handle the situation, the only way to keep it from turning any uglier; I was not about to get myself manhandled on little Melanie’s account if I could help it. And it worked, too: it took the edge off their righteous anger, made them uncertain and suddenly uneasy.

  “Cop?” the brawny guy said.

  “You got it. That girl is a suspect in a murder case. Her name is Melanie Purcell, she lives down on the creek. Maybe one of you knows her. Her uncle was murdered last week.”

  One of them did know her, one of the other men. He said, “Yeah, that’s right. He’s right.”

  The brawny guy said in a backing-down voice, “Then why’d she say you tried to pick her up?”

  “Why the hell do you think? So she could get away. Now do we break this up and let me get on with my job or do you people want some hassle for obstructing justice?”

  They broke it up, muttering among themselves. All except the brawny guy; he was reluctant to let go of his chance to play Rambo. Before it could occur to him to ask for my ID, I shoved past him and went off the pier and alongside the cafe and out through a side gate. There was no sign of Melanie, and I hadn’t seen which way she’d gone-not that I gave much of a damn right then. Even if I caught up with her again I wasn’t going to get anything more out of her, not today.

  I got into the car. The brawny guy had come out of Blanche’s and was standing by the gate watching me. And as I swung out onto Fourth Street I saw him writing on a piece of paper-my license number, probably, just in case he’d let a dangerous sex offender escape after all.

  Do-gooders and damn fools, I thou
ght. World’s full of both nowadays, and the problem is you can’t tell one from the other anymore. I wasn’t even sure which one I was, not on most days and definitely not on this true blue Saturday.

  I went to the office, something I try to avoid doing on weekends because I really don’t like the place much, thanks to the fine greedy hand of Sam Crawford. The air was stale from the smoke from Eberhardt’s cheap tobacco, and I wanted to open a window; but the night chill still lingered and it wasn’t warm enough outside to let in fresh air, not unless I wanted to sit around shivering. Something was going to have to be done about Crawford, too, but not right now. Right now he was at the bottom of the list.

  I filled the coffee pot from the bottle of Alhambra water, put it on to heat, and sat at my desk. The piece of paper with Ruth Mitchell’s name and telephone number- apparent telephone number-was still lying on my blotter. I picked it up and squinted again at the last digit in Eberhardt’s scrawl. Then I scooped up the phone and dialed the number that hadn’t been answered yesterday, the one with a two as the final digit.

  Five rings, and a woman’s voice said hello.

  “Ruth Mitchell?”

  “No, she’s not here right now. This is her sister Claudia. May I help you?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” I said. “She called my office yesterday and left a message.” I added my name and the fact that I was a private investigator.

  “Oh yes,” the woman said. She sounded disapproving, as if she thought contacting a private detective, no matter what the reason, was a lapse of good judgment. “She told me about that.”

  “Do you know why she called?”

  “Well, about Leonard, of course. She was married to him once, after all.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “She heard you were investigating his murder. She wants to know if you’re making any progress.”

  “How did she hear about me?”

  “She called the police again. They told her.”

  “Again? She’s been in touch with them before?”

  “Yes. But I just don’t know why she should care.” The disapproval was sharper now. “The way he treated her, cheating on her with men… my God!”