Twospot

by Bill Pronzini

  After I was done with that I shaved off the gray stubble on my cheeks. Then I put on a change of clothes from my overnight bag, went out and hunted up a copy of the San Francisco Chroniclemorning habit—and took it into a cafe on St. Helena’s picturesque main street.

  Over eggs and toast and coffee I had a look at what was going on in the world. Most of the front page concerned Fidel Castro, who had been in Washington the past three days for talks with the President—his first visit to the United States in nearly twenty years, and naturally a controversial one. There had been another demonstration by Cuban exiles protesting his presence in the country, but like the others before it, it had been small and well controlled. The President was quoted as saying that the talks were proving successful, which the political columnists were interpreting to mean that re-establishment off diplomatic relations with Cuba was imminent. Castro and his entourage were expected to leave Washington today for a swing through other parts of the U.S., including a brief one-day visit to San Francisco on Monday. On the local scene, the mayor was being roasted by right-wing opponents for inviting Castro. And there was more flap over water rationing; and the Gay Task Force was planning another human rights demonstration. I read Herb Caen’s column: he was grousing again about the infighting in San Francisco’s city government. I turned to the Sporting Green, and one of the columnists there was alleging that the 49ers would be a .500 team at best this year because of poor coaching and dissension between players and management.

  So much for the news. And so much for breakfast. I finished the last of my coffee refill, left the paper to enlighten somebody else, and walked back to the hotel. It was eight-thirty and time to put in a call to the hospital to find out what the situation was with Alex Cappellani.

  But I did not find out much, as it developed. The nurse who answered my call said that his condition was “satisfactory,” a term which can mean anything at all; that was all she would tell me because I was not a relative and because the injury to Alex was a police matter. When I asked her if he could have visitors, or at least take a call, she advised me firmly that the family had issued instructions that he was not to be disturbed.

  I hesitated, thinking: Now what? I could leave a message and then hang around here for the day, on the chance that Alex was well enough to want to get in touch with me and to see me. But that would mean paying out another twenty dollars for the room, and it might also mean a wasted day. I decided the best thing to do was to go back to San Francisco and get a report ready for him of my findings on Jason Booker. So I gave my name to the nurse and requested that Alex be told when possible that I had called and that I could be reached either at my office or at my flat.

  I got my things together then and checked out and headed home for the first time since Tuesday.

  The Napa Valley is some seventy-five miles northeast of San Francisco, a good two-hour drive, and it was eleven o’clock by the time I came across the Golden Gate Bridge. The weather had been warm and clear in St. Helena, but in the city it was cold and foggy—one of those thick, wind-blown fogs that blanket the hills and drift like wisps of smoke through the streets. I drove straight downtown, left my car in the parking lot on the corner of Taylor and Eddy, and hurried over to the tired old Victorian building on the fringe of the Tenderloin where I have my office.

  There was nobody in the dark lobby. One of the other tenants, a guy who ran a mail-order business, had gotten mugged in there six months ago—the Tenderloin has one of the highest crime rates in the city—and ever since then I make it a point to look around when I come in. I opened up my mailbox and pulled out three days’ accumulation of mail: two letters and two pieces of junk advertisement. A sign on the elevator grill said that the elevator was out of order. Again. So I climbed the stairs to the third floor, and there weren’t any muggers up there either.

  The office was just a single room, with a little alcove off of it that contained a sink and some storage shelves; if you needed the toilet, there was one down at the end of the hall with a broken seat and a paper dispenser that never had any paper in it. A low rail divider separated the room into two halves. My desk was behind it, in front of the windows facing Taylor Street, and there were a couple of client chairs over there, and a filing cabinet with a hotplate on top of it. On this side of the divider was an old leather couch and another chair and a table with some magazines that had never been read. Except for the poster I had had made during the summer and tacked up on one of the walls, it was pretty much the same arrangement and the same decor I had opened business with after leaving the San Francisco cops fourteen years ago.

  The poster was a blow-up of the cover of a 1932 issue of Black Mask and depicted a guy holding a couple of guns and standing in front of a suit of armor; it also featured a story by one of my favorite pulp writers, Paul Cain. It looked a little gaudy up there, and was probably inappropriate for a business office; but what the hell, everybody has a hobby and pulp magazines—reading them and collecting them—are mine. have been fascinated by the pulps ever since I was a kid, and it was that fascination that led me into police work, led me eventually to become a private investigator : I wanted to be a detective just like the ones I read about in the pulps. Up until this summer, when my outlook on so many things had begun to change, that fact had nagged at me—that I had built my whole life as an emulation of the fictional private eye, made myself into a kind of functional cliché. Now, it did not seem to matter. It was my life and I enjoyed what I was doing. What difference did it make how or why I had become what I was? And if I were to lose a client because I collected pulps and had a Black Mask cover on my office wall, then I was better off without that kind of client.

  The steam radiator was clanking away and it was warm in there, but a little musty from being closed up for three days. I unlatched the window and raised the sash a few inches. Then I put fresh water into the coffeepot, the pot on the hotplate, and sat down at my desk to look at my mail.

  A fifty-dollar check from a furniture store that had hired me to do a skip-trace on one of their clients, and a letter from a guy who said he was the vice-president of the Northern California Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America and wanted to know if I would be a speaker at one of their monthly meetings. I put the check into my wallet and the letter into my basket until I had time to answer it; the idea of speaking to a group off mystery writers appealed to me.

  I called my answering service, and there were a couple of messages. The one that interested me most was from Leo Cappellani, who had called at nine-forty this morning and who wanted me to get in touch with him at the winery’s San Francisco office as soon as I came in.

  I frowned a little as I put down the phone. How had Leo found out I was a private detective? From Alex, maybe? I lifted the receiver again, started to dial the number the answering service girl had given me.

  And the office door opened and Leo Cappellani walked in.

  I blinked at him, cradled the handset and got up on my feet. He glanced around the office, took in the Black Mask poster on the wall; but there was nothing in his face to show what he thought about any of it. He was wearing a conservative brown business suit today, and he looked crisp and successful and a little imposing, like a banker or a corporation lawyer. I noticed as he came up to the rail divider that his eyes were sharp and peremptory—as his mother’s were, but nothing at all like Alex’s mild expressive brown eyes.

  “Good morning, Mr. Cappellani,” I said. “I just came in, just got your message. I was about to call you.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Well, I was on my way to an early lunch and I thought I’d stop by on the chance you’d returned.”

  I invited him to have a chair, and he came in and took the one in front of my desk. I said then, “How is Alex?”

  “Not seriously hurt. He has a scalp wound and a mild concussion.”

  “Then he was able to talk to the police?”

  “Yes. But he had nothing to tell them about the man who assaulted him. He was
sitting at the desk with his back to the door, and the door was open. He heard a sound just before he was hit, but he didn’t get so much as a glimpse of the man.”

  “He doesn’t have any idea who it could have been?”

  “None.”

  “Was anything taken from the office?”

  “No. Nothing at all.” Leo crossed his legs and watched me with those sharp black eyes. “Now you can relieve my curiosity, if you don’t mind.”

  “About what, Mr. Cappellani?”

  “About why you didn’t tell any of us last night that you’re a private detective.”

  “It didn’t seem to be relevant,” I said.

  “That remains to be seen. Are you working for my brother?”

  “Did he tell you I was?”

  “No.”

  “Was he the one who told you I’m a detective?”

  “No. One of the sheriff’s deputies let that slip to Shelly after you’d gone. The deputy didn’t say you were working for Alex, but the implication was that you are and that you told the police why he hired you. I’d like to have that same information.”

  “Why?”

  “Because my brother is headstrong and inclined to act at times without good judgment.”

  “And you think hiring a private detective is a lack of good judgment?”

  “If his reason involves family matters, yes.”

  “What sort of family matters?”

  “Any sort. Alex may not value our privacy, but my mother and I do. If he has hired you to poke around in our affairs, we have the right to know about it.”

  Sure, I thought, and you’re going to know about it pretty soon. But not from me. “Look, Mr. Cappellani,” I said carefully, “I’m sorry, but if I am working for your brother, and he didn’t want to discuss the matter with anyone, then I’m afraid I can’t discuss it either. You value your privacy and I value the ethics of my profession ; I can’t breach a confidence.”

  His mouth tightened a little. “You’ve already breached confidence, it seems, by talking to the police.”

  “That’s not quite the same thing. Whatever I might have said to the police, it was in the interest of helping to get to the bottom of the attack.”

  “Are you saying whatever Alex hired you to do has a bearing on what happened last night?”

  “No, sir, that’s not what I’m saying. I don’t know what has a bearing on the attack last night. I’m bound by law to inform the police of anything, anything at all, that might be related to a felonious act; but I’m not bound to inform anybody else without the consent of my clients. I don’t mean that to sound tough and unsympathetic to your feelings. It’s just that I have to run my business my way, as you have to run your business your way.”

  He kept looking at me, frowning, and it got pretty quiet in there. But then, abruptly, his mouth loosened and his face smoothed, and he said, “All right, you’ve made your position clear.” He stood up, turned toward the divider.

  I said, relenting a little, “Mr. Cappellani?”

  He pivoted to face me again.

  “I wouldn’t worry too much about your brother’s motives,” I said. “And I don’t think it’ll be long, either, before he decides to confide in your and your mother.”

  That got me another long, searching look. “I’ll accept that,” he said finally. And then he gave me a faint smile. “You’re an interesting man. It’s not often you meet someone with convictions these days.”

  There was nothing I could say to that.

  Leo said, “I didn’t intend to come on like a hardnose, or to seem ungrateful for all you did at the winery, and I apologize. The past fourteen hours have been bewildering, is all.”

  “Sure. I understand.”

  He nodded, and turned again, and went across the office and out through the door.

  I thought as he closed it after him: you’re a pretty interesting man yourself, brother. The difference between him and Alex was like night and day. Leo was one of these complex types you can never quite get a handle on, with hidden qualities and changeable moods and what seemed to be a strong sense of family pride and of personal conviction; and Alex was easygoing, extroverted, not particularly proud, not particularly dogmatic. I wondered if Alex favored his father, as Leo appeared to favor his mother.

  The coffee water had come to a boil. I made a cup of instant and then dragged my old portable typewriter in front of me and began to type up my report on Jason Booker. I was half through it, hunting and pecking with my forefingers, when the telephone rang.

  I hauled up the receiver and identified myself, and a woman’s voice said, “This is Shelly Jackson.”

  Neither the name nor the voice registered immediately. “Shelly Jackson?” I said.

  “How soon they forget. Last night, at the winery.”

  “Oh—Shelly. Excuse the blank reaction; I never did get your last name. Are you still up in the Valley?”

  “No. I’m back here at the winery offices. So you’re a private detective, huh?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I’ve never met a private eye before,” she said. “How about getting together for lunch today?”

  “Sure, all right. But I thought you didn’t lik cops.”

  “I don’t. You know The Boar’s Head, on Vallejo?”

  “I know it.”

  “One o’clock okay with you?”

  “Fine.”

  “See you then, big man.”

  I replaced the handset. Well, I thought—and wondered why she wanted to have lunch with me. Because she was curious, as Leo was, why a private detective had been up at the winery to see Alex? Probably. But then again, maybe she had something else on her mind.

  I locked up the office and went to find out.

  5

  The Boar’s Head was a popular restaurant and tavern at Vallejo and Sansome, not far from the Embarcadero and the ugly elevated freeway that spoiled the view of the waterfront piers, the Ferry Building, the Bay beyond. The area used to be industrial and was dotted with old brick warehouses that, in recent years, had been converted into office buildings. One of those ex-warehouses, a block and a half away on Vallejo, housed the San Francisco offices of the Cappellani Winery.

  The place was modeled after a British pub: black-beamed ceiling, heavy wood tables and chairs and booths; walls decorated with boar heads and dart boards and old English hunting prints. The bartenders and waiters all wore derby hats and dispensed Guinness stout and English beer and ale, along with thick meat and poultry sandwiches from a long chefs table up front.

  Most of the lunch crowd had already gone by the time I came in at five of one, but it was still far from empty. I looked around for Shelly, did not see her; I did, however, notice two other people I knew—Logan Dockstetter and Philip Brand—sitting in a booth toward the rear and having what appeared to be an argument. I sat down in another booth diagonally across from them, where I could see the entrance. Neither of them noticed me. They were too wrapped up in whatever it was they were arguing about, Brand making angry gesticulations and Dockstetter stiff-backed and glaring.

  The waiter appeared beside me, and I ordered a pint of Bass ale, and he went away again. Brand and Dockstetter were still going at each other across the aisleway, not making much effort to keep their voices down. Because of that, and because there was no one else carrying on a conversation in the immediate vicinity, I could hear most of what they were arguing about.

  “I tell you, Logan,” Brand was saying in his deep, precise voice, “we damned well are in trouble. I ought to know, for God’s sake I’m the accountant ”

  “You’re also a silly pessimist,” Dockstetter said.

  “You’re the one who’s silly. You won’t admit what is staring you in the face. Sales are down, we’ve had complaints about the quality of our estate-bottled varietals, we’ve had a miserable harvest. And now God knows what more complications there might be with Alex.”

  “Alex? What happened to him last night has nothing to
do with the winery.”

  “How do you know that? None of us knows what the attack on him has to do with.” Brand made another waving gesture. “The point is, we’re in trouble and the sooner we all admit it, the sooner something can be done about it.”

  “Such as what?”

  “Such as getting rid of Paul Rosten and Jason Booker, to begin with. Rosten has turned into an incompetent winemaker; he’s old-fashioned and ultra-conservative and he’s gotten careless. I don’t know why Mrs. Cappellani keeps him on, unless it’s because he’s been with the family for so long. Or because he’s been sleeping with her all these years.”

  Dockstetter said something I didn’t catch.

  “Well, it wouldn’t surprise me,” Brand said. “And Booker—all he ’s interested in is getting next to Mrs. Cappellani himself. A disgusting man. You can almost feel the friction between him and Rosten, or at least anyone with perception can feel it.”

  Silence from Dockstetter.

  Brand said, “And I still say we ought to increase our production of generic table wines ...”

  There was more, but it was all shoptalk that did not mean much to me. In the middle of it the waiter returned with my pint of ale. I took a long draught, lowered the stein again, and with its bottom made interlocking circles of wetness on the table while I listened to Brand finish his diatribe over there.

  Dockstetter said stiffly, “I’ve told you and told you, Philip, I don’t agree with any of that. Mrs. Cappellani is an intelligent woman, she’s done a marvelous job with the winery since that bastard husband of hers died. If you were right, she would have taken action herself long ago. Or Leo would have.”