Bleeders

by Bill Pronzini

  Kerry and Emily were still foremost in my mind. Another call to the condo? Kerry might be home by now. If not, I could talk to the kid; it wasn’t her bedtime yet. That was where she’d be, though, in her room with Shameless the cat, listening to music or reading or fooling around with her computer or maybe just staring off into space. She spent more and more time in there, drawn deep inside herself. Communication had become increasingly difficult. It wasn’t that she was despondent or dissatisfied with us, her new school, her new life. She was simply not there much of the time. Lost or maybe hiding in a place neither Kerry nor I nor anyone else could go.

  So what would I say to her if I called now? “Hi, I’m sitting out here in the fog in Golden Gate Park, getting ready to catch some bad guys, and I just thought I’d call and see if you’re all right and remind you to brush your teeth before you go to sleep.” She didn’t need to hear my disembodied voice on the phone. She needed me there with her, to hold her and try again, lamely if earnestly, to make her understand that her life wouldn’t always be full of pain and loss and loneliness and uncertainty. To convince her that someday she’d be happy again.

  Six months an orphan. Six months ... not much time at all. Unless you’re ten years old and everything you’ve known and believed in and trusted for those ten years has been ripped apart; the past and its relative comforts suddenly dead, the future impossible to imagine, and all you have to cling to in the present is a couple of relative strangers old enough to be your grandparents but with no experience whatsoever in raising a child your age or in finding meaningful ways to give you the constant reassurance you need. In that case, it was a hell of a long time. It might even seem like a piece of forever.

  Hard. So damn hard for all of us. Cybil, Kerry’s mother, helped as much as she could, but Cybil was eighty years old and led an active and productive life of her own over in Marin County. Friends and neighbors had been helpful, too, dependable and supportive, but they were strangers seldom seen and even harder for a child to relate to. What Emily needed were full-time parents, and what she was getting was a collection of part-time caregivers. It wasn’t nearly enough. And because it wasn’t, the strain was starting to tell on everyone concerned.

  The best thing would’ve been for either Kerry or me to quit working and devote the necessary time to Emily’s welfare. But that was not going to happen. We’d been at our jobs too many years; we were too set in our ways; neither of us was that selfless. It had nothing to do with finances; money was not a motivating factor in our lives. We loved Emily, but we loved our work more because it defined us, sustained us, gave us purpose. At our ages we were simply incapable of making that kind of sacrifice. If one of us did, it would likely lead to resentment and do the child more harm than good.

  But that didn’t change the fact that we were committed to Emily, to the bargain we’d made. The right time for her to be handed over to Child Welfare, made a ward of the court, and put in a foster home had come and gone; we’d all of us seen to that. Emily by making it plain to all concerned, including the judge at the adoption hearing, that she did not want to live with anyone but Kerry and me. Cybil by working on us repeatedly, breaking down our reservations. The two of us by talking it out endlessly, waffling back and forth but knowing in our hearts we were soft touches and in the end would give in because it was what we wanted, too. Once we were granted custody, it was too late for any other viable alternative. To back out now, simply because we were having the problems we’d expected to have and had yet to find ways to bridge the wall of years and need, was unthinkable. We’d hate ourselves if we did that; and more importantly, abandoning Emily at this point might damage her almost as much as losing her real parents had. She was so fragile she might never recover.

  So that was not going to happen, either. What would happen: We’d continue to do the best we could, take care of her and be there for her as often as we could, give her as much love and support as we knew how. The crisis period would ease eventually, the wounds would begin to heal as she grew toward adulthood. We had to believe that. No, not just believe it. Somehow we had to make it happen.

  Sitting there in the dark, thinking these thoughts, added to my discomfort. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Now and then a car drifted by, its headlights reflecting off rather than boring through the wall of mist. The ones heading west may have been able to see my car briefly in dark silhouette as they passed, but none happened to be a police patrol, and nobody else was curious enough or venal enough to stop and hassle me.

  I shifted position for the tenth or twentieth time, to ease an incipient cramp in my right ham. A thin coating of fog-damp had formed on the windshield, so I turned on the ignition long enough to use the wipers. There was condensation on the inside of the glass, too, even though I had the driver’s window rolled partway down; I cleared that away with my hand. Must be close to nine now, I thought. I gave in to the urge to check my watch. Right: six minutes to nine.

  And that was when Cohalan showed up, predictably early because he was anxious to get this part of it over and done with.

  He came barreling along Kennedy Drive too fast for the conditions; I heard the squeal of brakes as he swung over and rocked his white Camry to a stop near the trash receptacle. I watched the dark shape of him step out and run across the path, the heavy briefcase a squarish bulk banging against his leg. He made the drop, ran back at the same speed. Ten seconds later the Camry hissed past where I was hidden, again traveling too fast, and was gone.

  Nine o’clock.

  I sat upright now, a little tensed, both hands on the wheel.

  Nine-o-five.

  Headlights put a glare on the wet road surface, but they were high and bright—truck lights. An old stakebed rumbled past without slowing.

  Nine-o-eight.

  Another set of beams appeared, this one belonging to a small car heading east. As it approached, I saw that it was low-slung, dark-colored. Vintage MG. It rolled along slowly until it was opposite the barrel, then veered at a sudden sharp angle across the road, its brake lights flashing blood-red, and rocked to a stop. I reached out to tighten fingers around the ignition key. The door over there opened without a light coming on inside, and the driver jumped out in a hurry, indistinct in a coat and some kind of head covering; ran to the barrel, scooped out the briefcase, ran back, and hurled it inside.

  I had the engine started and in gear as the driver hopped in. Fast takeoff, even faster than Cohalan had fled the scene, the sports car’s rear end fishtailing slightly as the tires fought for traction on the slick pavement. I was out on Kennedy and in pursuit within seconds.

  There was no way I could drive in the fog-laden darkness without putting on my lights. 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 check the license plate.

  Where the Drive forks on the east end of the buffalo enclosure, the MG made a tight-angle left turn, brake lights flaring again, headlight beams yawing as the driver fought for control. Scared, maybe stoned, and a little crazy to be driving so recklessly on this kind of night. I took the turn at about half the speed. I still had the MG in sight as we looped around Spreckels Lake toward the park exit on 36th Avenue, but it would have taken stunt-driver skills to catch up.

  The stoplight at 36th and Fulton glowed a misty red when the sports job reached the exit. The driver, without slowing, made a sliding right turn through the red, narrowly missing one oncoming car and causing another to brake and skid sideways. The MG came close to spinning out of control and into a roll that probably would have killed the reckless damn fool at the wheel. Caught just enough traction as horns brayed angrily, and disappeared, swaying and roaring on Fulton to the east.

  The near-accident shook me up a little. If I tried to continue pursuit, somebody—an innocent party, maybe—was liable to get hurt or killed, and that was the last thing I wanted to happen. High-speed car chases are for lunatics and the makers of trite action films. I p
ulled over to the side of the road, still inside the park, and sat there for a minute or so until my pulse rate slowed to normal. Thinking I should have anticipated something like this, should have handled the whole thing differently. Too late now. Be thankful that somebody hadn’t got hurt or killed and that my overloaded conscience had been spared yet another heavy burden.

  Cohalan threw a fit when I rang him on the car phone and told him what had happened. He called me all kinds of names, the least offensive of which was “incompetent idiot.” I 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 his old self-pitying 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 again. I waited through about five seconds of dead air. Then he said, “All right,” followed the words with a gusty sigh, and added, “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.” He banged the receiver in my ear.

  Some Cohalan. Some piece of work.

  And now, by God, it was my turn.

  THREE

  THE APARTMENT BUILDING WAS ON LOCUST Street a half block off California and close to the Presidio. Built in the twenties, judging from its ornate brick-and-plaster 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.

  I drove by slowly, looking for two things: a parking place and the low-slung black MG. I found the car easily enough—it was squeezed into a too-narrow space at the end of the block, its front wheels canted up onto the sidewalk—but there wasn’t space for my car on that block, or the next, or anywhere in the vicinity. Back on California, I quit hunting and pulled 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 stepped out.

  The building on Locust had a tiny foyer with the usual row of built-in 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: The squawk box stayed silent and the door release buzzed instead. Cocky. Hyped on drugs, adrenaline, or both. And just plain greedy-stupid.

  I pushed inside, climbed the stairs to the second floor. Apartment 2-C was the first on the right. The door opened just as I reached it, and Annette Byers poked her head out and said with shiny-eyed excitement, “You made real good—”

  The rest of it snapped off when she got a clear look at me; the excitement gave way to confusion and sudden alarm, froze her with the door half open. 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 bleat and tried to kick me as I crowded her inside. I caught her arms, then gave her a shove to get clear of her, and nudged the door closed with my heel.

  “I’ll start screaming,” she said. Shaky bravado, the kind without anything to back it up. Fright showed through the bright glaze in her eyes. “These walls are paper thin, and I got a neighbor who’s a cop.”

  That last was a lie. I said, “Go ahead. Be my guest.”

  “Who the hell do you think you are—”

  “You know who I am, Annette. 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 none-too-clean or tidy studio, and the kitchenette and dining area were on that side. The big cowhide briefcase sat on the dinette table, its lid raised. I couldn’t see inside from where I stood, but then I didn’t need to.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

  She hadn’t been back very long; she still wore the heavy coat and a wool stocking cap that completely hid her streaky blond hair. Her cheeks were flushed—the cold night, money, lust, methamphetamine, now fear. She was attractive enough in a too-ripe way, intelligent enough to hold down a job with a neighborhood travel service, and immoral enough to have been in trouble with the law before this. Twenty-three, single, and a crankhead: She’d been arrested once for possession and once for trying to peddle meth to an undercover cop. Crystal meth, the worst kind there is.

  “Counting the cash, right?” I said.

  “ ... What?”

  “What you were doing when I rang the bell. It’s all there—seven hundred and fifty hundred-dollar bills, according to plan.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You said that already.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I moved a little to get a better scan of the studio. Sitting area on my left, sleeping arrangement behind that with a Chinese-style folding screen hiding the bed. I located the telephone on the breakfast bar that partitioned off the kitchenette, one of those cordless types with a built-in answering machine. The gadget beside it was a portable cassette recorder. She hadn’t bothered to put the recorder away before leaving tonight; there’d been no reason to. The tape would still be inside.

  I looked at her again. “I’ve got to admit, you handle that MG pretty well. Reckless as hell, though, the way you went flying out of the park on a red light.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You came damn close to causing a fatal accident. If you had, you’d be facing a manslaughter charge right now. Think about that.”

  “I don’t know what—” She broke off and backed away a couple of paces, one hand rubbing the side of her face, her tongue making snakelike flicks between her lips. It was sinking in, how it had all gone wrong, how much trouble she was in. “You couldn’t’ve followed me. I know you didn’t.”

  “That’s right, I couldn’t and I didn’t.”

  “Then how—?”

  “Think about that, too. You’ll figure it out.”

  Silence. And then sudden comprehension, like a low-wattage bulb coming on behind her eyes. “You ... you knew about me all along.”

  “You, the plan, everything.”

  “The plan? But ... how could you? I don’t—”

  The downstairs bell made a sudden racket. Her gaze jerked past me to the intercom unit next to the door. She sucked in her lower lip, bit down hard on it.

  “Now I wonder who that can be,” I said.

  “Oh God ...”

  “Don’t use the intercom, just the door release.”

  She did what I told her, moving as if her joints had begun to stiffen. 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, fastened the catches. I had the case in my left hand when she turned to face me again.

  She said, “What’re you gonna do with the money?”

  “Give it back to its rightful owner.”

  “Jay. It belongs to him.”

  “Like hell it does.”

  “Try to keep it for yourself, I’ll bet that’s what you’re really gonna do.”

  I had nothing to say to that.

  “Well, it won’t happen.” She stamped her foot. “You hear me? You don’t have any right to that money!”

  “You dumb-ass kid,” I said disgustedly, “neither do you.”

  She quit looking at me. When she made to open the door I told her no, to wait for his knock. She stood with her back to me, shoulders hunched, face pale.

  Knuckles on the door. She opened it then without hesitation, and he blew in talking fast the way he did when he was keyed up. “Oh, baby, baby, we di
d it, we pulled it off.”

  “Shit! You’re not supposed to be here now....”

  “I know, but I couldn’t wait.” He grabbed her, started to pull her against him. And that was when he saw me.

  “Hello, Cohalan,” I said.

  He went rigid for about five seconds, then disentangled himself from Byers and stood gawping at me. His mouth worked, but nothing came out. Manic as hell in his office, talking a blue streak—nerves and a hit or two of speed. He was a crankhead the same as her; that was the real reason he’d gone out to the john earlier. But facing me 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 then swung snarling on Annette Byers.

  “You let him follow you here!”

  “I didn’t. He already knew about me. He knows everything.”

  “No, how could—”

  “You stupid dickhead, you didn’t fool him for a minute. Not for a minute.”

  “Shut up!” His eyes shifted to me. “Don’t listen to her. She’s the one who’s been blackmailing me, she—”

  “Knock it off, Cohalan,” I said. “Nobody’s been blackmailing you. You two are the bleeders—a cute little shakedown to steal your wife’s money. You couldn’t just grab the bundle without facing theft charges, and you couldn’t get any of it by divorcing her because a spouse’s inheritance isn’t community property. So you cooked up the phony blackmail scam. What were you planning to do with the cash? Try to run it up into a big score in the stock market or in Vegas? Buy a load of crystal meth for resale, maybe?”