Hoodwink

by Bill Pronzini

  “But he didn’t.”

  “But he might have.”

  “Would it have bothered you much if he had?”

  She gave me a look. “Don’t ask dumb questions.” * “Okay.”

  “You’ve almost been killed before, haven’t you.”

  “A couple of times. No more than most public cops.”

  “I don’t like that part of your job at all.”

  “Neither do I. But pulp private eyes get shot at all the time, and bashed on the head all the time too. I’ve only been shot at a couple of times and never bashed on the head.” I paused. “And I’ve only been seduced once.”

  “Oh?”

  “By you.”

  “Phooey,” she said. “I’m going in to use the loo. Do you want another beer?”

  “You bet.”

  She got up, wrinkled her nose at me, and went inside. I sat there and looked at the dark waters of the Bay, the lights of the city, the lopsided moon. And my mind was full of all sorts of things.

  Eberhardt, for one. He was looking a little better, starting to cope with the breakup of his marriage, but I would have preferred it if he were less of an introvert. Like me, he tended to brood too much about things, and brooding never did you any good in the long run. Would Dana come back? It did not seem that way; it seemed she was gone for good. He’d live with it if she was. But he wouldn’t be the same. I knew him well enough to understand that and to feel the sense of loss: he would not be the same man.

  I had the Wades on my mind too. Cybil because of the way she had opened up to me, what she had told me about her past; Ivan because in his eyes I was nothing but a fat, scruffy private detective. I’d wanted to talk to both of them again—to tell Cybil I had found and destroyed the photograph without looking at it, and to see if I couldn’t make peace with Ivan—but they had left for Los Angeles last night. Cybil had wanted to stay a while longer, Kerry said, but Ivan had book commitments. So off they went.

  And of course I had Kerry on my mind. All over my mind, in fact. All of the thoughts were pleasant, but some of them—the same ones that had been there when I first started running around Arizona—were also unsettling. Very unsettling because they kept intruding and would not be pushed away.

  I told myself that you had to take time, lots of time, to weigh the pros and cons. On the one hand there was Eberhardt and Dana, Cybil and Colodny, infidelity and divorce,- you could not overlook things like that, especially now, when they hit so close to home. But on the other hand there were other things like moonlight, perfume, woolly vests, warm hands, soft lips, a spicy sense of humor, compatibility, gentleness—togetherness. Two by two, wasn’t that the way it was supposed to be on this earth? No man is an island, no man should live his life alone.

  I’m fifty-three years old, I thought, I’ve been alone most of my life. What the hell do I want to think about togetherness for?

  But the answer to that was obvious, even to a slow type like me. It was that which made the world go round, the many-splendored thing, the thing that created babies and dreams and happiness—and lots of heartaches too. Fifty-three years old and in love again, in love for real. Well, if that wasn’t the damnedest thing. If that wasn’t the silliest damn thing for an old lone wolf.

  Right, Mr. Marlowe?

  You bet, Mr. Spade.

  When Kerry came back, I had a funny feeling I was going to ask her to marry me….

  The end.

  Table of Contents

  Bill Pronzini - Nameless Detective

  Hoodwink

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO