Twospot

by Bill Pronzini

  She cut me off with an impatient slicing gesture. “I’m well aware of that,” she said, “and I did not bring you here to undertake a private investigation. Nor do I particularly want advice from you.”

  “Then why am I here, Mrs. Cappellani?”

  “I want to hire you to act as Alex’s bodyguard.”

  “Bodyguard,” I said. But sure, it figured.

  “I want you to go everywhere he goes, live with him, stay at his side twenty-four hours a day.”

  “Uh-huh. For how long?”

  “Until the person behind this madness is caught.”

  “That might be a long time,” I said, and thought but didn’t add: And it might be never.

  “I realize that.”

  “It could also cost you a substantial amount of money.”

  “I do not give a damn,” she said stiffly, “how much it costs. This is my son’s life we’re discussing here.”

  “I wasn’t trying to be insensitive, Mrs. Cappellani; I was only stating a fact.” I shifted my gaze to Alex again. “How do you feel about this?”

  “I don’t like it much,” he said. “But I’m scared and I don’t mind admitting it. Good and scared.”

  I nodded and said nothing else. The two of them watched me, Alex expectantly, Mrs. Cappellani calculatingly. I swung away from them and walked across to the nearest of the bookshelves and scanned the titles while I did some thinking. Military history, political history, wines and winemaking; no fiction of any kind. There had not been much romanticism in Frank Cappellani’s soul, apparently; the same kind of no-nonsense practicality that his wife exhibited.

  Behind me she said, “We’re waiting.”

  I turned and came back to them. “I don’t carry a gun,” I said. “I don’t even own one. I don’t like them much.”

  “I see. Which means you refuse to carry one even under special circumstances.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Then perhaps we should find someone else who will.”

  Before I could say anything to that, Alex said, “No,” and got abruptly to his feet and came over to me. “Listen, will you take the job if you don’t have to carry a gun?”

  I hesitated. The truth was, I did not care for personal bodyguard work. The responsibility was too great; if something happened in spite of my efforts, I would have to shoulder the blame—it would be on my conscience. Still, I was already mixed up in this business, I knew most of the people involved, I was curious about what lay behind it all, and I needed the damned money.

  Mrs. Cappellani’s mouth had puckered up as if she were tasting lemons. “He isn’t interested,” she said to Alex, and there was disdain in her voice; now it was me she was talking around. “There’s no point in wasting any more time with him.”

  Alex ignored her. To me he said. “I trust you. Christ knows, I need somebody to trust right now. And I watched you in the apartment yesterday, when that Howard character tried to break in. You know how to handle yourself in a tight situation, and you don’t need a gun to do it. Take the job, will you? For God’s sake.”

  I let out a breath. He was like a frightened puppy, and how do you turn your back on a frightened puppy? I said, “I’ll have to make a telephone call first.”

  “To whom?” From Mrs. Cappellani, acknowledging my presence again. She wanted me as badly as Alex did, I realized—either because he had convinced her earlier that I was the only man for the job, or for reasons of her own.

  “You can listen in if you like. May I use your phone? It’s a longdistance call.”

  “Of course.”

  The thing was anchored on one side of the desk; I went over to it and picked up the handset. One of the two buttons marked “Open Line” was already depressed. I dialed the 415 area code for San Francisco and then the number of the Hall of Justice. Frank Hastings turned out to be in his office, despite the fact that it was Sunday, and he came on the line right away.

  I told him where I was and why I was here and what I had been asked to do. “I wanted to check with you before I take the job,” I said. “If you have any objections I’ll back off.”

  He thought it over for a couple of seconds. “Just bodyguard work, nothing else?”

  “Right. If anything should come up that you’d be interested in, you’ll hear about it right away.”

  “Go ahead, then.” He paused. “Just take it easy out in those vineyards this time. No more nighttime wrestling matches.”

  I smiled a little. “Not if I can help it. Thanks, Frank.”

  “Keep in touch,” he said.

  I rang off and turned to look at Alex and Mrs. Cappellani. They were both staring at me, standing side by side.

  “All right,” I said. “You’ve hired yourselves a bodyguard.”

  15

  Twenty minutes later, with money matters settled, Alex took me up to my room on the second floor rear, adjacent to his room. It was spacious but cluttered with the sort of old dark mismatched furniture that people replace individually with more modern fixtures, can’t bear to get rid of for sentimental reasons, and tuck away in guest rooms like this one. The windows overlooked the cellars and the pond and the green-and-brown vineyards beyond. There wasn’t a connecting door between the two rooms, but there was a connecting bathroom that amounted to the same thing.

  I was only going to be staying here tonight, since Alex had told me he was planning to return to San Francisco in the morning; otherwise Mrs. Cappellani would have had to send somebody down to my flat for toiletries and changes of clothes, or I would have had to go down there myself with Alex for company. He had not sounded happy about returning to San Francisco; he still wanted to crawl into a hole for the duration, and the one that looked best to him was right here. But he had obviously decided —no doubt with his mother’s help—that it was best for him to keep his mind occupied by keeping up a pretense of normal activity. I could just hear the old dragon telling him that there was no shame in being afraid, only in letting others see just how frightened you really were.

  After I had looked the room over I said, “What about today, Alex? You have any plans?”

  “I’d like to get shit-faced drunk,” he said.

  “That won’t help any.”

  “I know that.” He smiled in an ironic, humorless way. “There’s a fest this afternoon; we’re all supposed to go.”

  “Fest?”

  “Wine fest. There are a lot of them in the Valley around this time, after the crush. This one’s being put on by the Simontaccis; they own one of the big vineyards a few miles up the Silverado Trail, and we buy most of their grapes.”

  “Do you want to go?”

  “Christ no. Music, dancing, picnic lunches—it makes me cold just thinking about it. But I’ve got to go anyway. The Simontaccis have been having these things for twenty years and the Cappellanis always attend in full force. It’s tradition, good PR.”

  “Under the circumstances, I’d think you could bow out gracefully.”

  “Tell that to Rosa. She’s going, and so are Leo and Rosten and Shelly and the rest of the people from here and from the office. She thinks I ought to go too. So I’m going—and you’re going.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Don’t look at me like that. I’m not a mama’s boy, despite appearances. It’s just that she’s one hell of a tough woman and I’ve learned the hard way that it’s easier to let her call the shots.”

  “Does Leo feel that way too?”

  “He wouldn’t admit it but he listens to her as much as I do.”

  “Is he already here?”

  “Yeah. He came up last night.”

  “Does he know about this bodyguard idea?”

  “No. Not yet. Nobody knows but you and me and Rosa.”

  “They’ll all have to know eventually.”

  “So they’ll know,” he said, and it was obvious by his tone and his expression that he did not care for the idea. Pride, probably—the Cappellani pride that Leo had alluded to and that was
obvious in Rosa. Don’t let anyone know how frightened you really are. “Look, the fest doesn’t start until one o’clock and I don’t feel like being cooped up in here until then. You know anything about winemaking?”

  “Not much, no,” I said.

  “Then let’s go down to the cellar. I’ll show you around.”

  So we went downstairs again and out into the sunlit morning. On the way I didn’t see any sign of Mrs. Cappellani, who was probably still in her late husband’s office, or of the silent maid. Or of anyone else. But when we walked down the lane and turned onto the road, I saw Leo and Paul Rosten come out from the direction of the nearest small cellar and start toward us.

  Beside me Alex said softly, “Here we go.”

  I said, “I’ll handle the explanations if you want.”

  “Yeah.”

  When the four of us came together on the road, Rosten was wearing a grave expression and Leo no expression at all. Neither of them seemed surprised to see me—maybe because too many surprising things had happened in the past few days.

  “You do get around, don’t you,” Leo said to me. But there was no irony in the words; it was just a statement. He appeared cool and imperturbable, and the image was enhanced by his countrysquire-casual outfit: a tailored white short-sleeved bush jacket and the kind of faded denims that cost upward of forty dollars.

  “Your mother asked me to come up, Mr. Cappellani.”

  “Oh?”

  “She’s concerned that there might be another attempt on Alex’s life,” I said. “She thought it would be a good idea to have me around for a few days.”

  “I see.”

  Abruptly Alex said, with some challenge, “You don’t mind, do you, Leo?”

  “What sort of question is that? Why should I mind?”

  “You didn’t like the idea of my hiring a private detective in the first place. You’ve made that plain enough.”

  “That’s an entirely different matter; you were meddling in Rosa’s private affairs. Now that Booker has been killed and your life is in jeopardy, we need all the help we can get.”

  “Thanks for your concern.”

  “Is that sarcasm, Alex?”

  Alex just looked at him.

  Around the cold nub of a Toscana cigar, Rosten asked me, “Are you going to be investigating what’s happened?”

  “Private detectives aren’t allowed to work on murder cases,” I said.

  “Well, the police don’t seem to be getting anywhere.”

  “They will. They just need time.”

  Leo said, “Have you had bodyguarding experience?”

  “Enough.”

  “Good. Then I’ll feel better about things with you watching over my brother.”

  Alex did not like that. “The hell with this crap,” he said, and pushed between Leo and Rosten and started down the road again in short choppy strides.

  I nodded to Leo, to Rosten, and went after Alex. When I caught up with him I said, “Take it easy. You won’t do yourself any good if you let things get to you.”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “You don’t get along with your brother, is that it?”

  “He’s a bastard. He’s just like my mother—thinks he’s superior, thinks I’m a weakling and a fool.”

  He had nothing more to say after that, and we crossed the gravel yard and entered the cellar in silence.

  For the next hour he showed me the grape crushers and the French continuous action wine presses and the testing laboratory and the bottling plant; he told me how grapes were vinified, how varietals were made, how samples were taken from dozens of different grapes and vines so that the total sugars and total acids could be measured for the best balance. It was all a little like being with a programmed automaton: a steady stream of facts and figures, with no interest or enthusiasm whatsoever. There was nothing I could do to bring him out of his funk, nothing I could say to reassure him; I just let him drone on, asking polite questions now and then to keep him going.

  It was past noon when we came out of the bottling plant, and he had turned restless and sullen by then. He said, “We might as well go back to the house. It’s almost time for the goddamn fest.”

  So we went back to the house. And a little while after that we filed out again with Rosa and Leo and got into the Lincoln Continental—it belonged to Leo—and drove off through the vineyards in an atmosphere of grim silence. Like people on their way to a funeral instead of a fest.

  There were at least a hundred people at the Simontacci place, considerably more than I had expected, and the party was already in full swing. Picnic benches had been set out under oak and pepper trees in the side garden of a rambling old brick house—the house and its two outbuildings sat in the middle of several hundred acres of foothill vineyards—and a couple of guys in peasant costume strolled among them, playing Italian polka music on a pair of accordions. Woman in brightly colored skirts and dresses and men in crisp white shirts danced together or talked among themselves; a dozen or so children ran around playing games the way kids do. Two small wine casks sat on chocks to one side, tended by a jovial mustached man, and beyond there were a long brick-sided barbecue pit and two tables overflowing with salads and a dozen different kinds of antipasto. The air was pungent with the smoky aroma of barbecuing chicken.

  An elderly type in Neapolitan country garb greeted the Cappellanis; I gathered that he was the head of the Simontacci family. Other people joined them, and there was a lot of handshaking and vocal gaiety that struck me as being a little forced: everyone was aware of the recent events and trying to pretend that they weren’t. Nobody paid any attention to me.

  I drifted over to one of the pepper trees and stood watching Alex. He had the sort of half-panicked look on his face a person gets when he wants desperately to be alone somewhere and finds himself instead in the middle of a crowd. In less than a minute he broke away from the group, hurried over to where the wine casks were, and got a large glass of red wine from the bartender. Then he went to one of the empty picnic benches and sat down and worked on the wine, not looking at anybody, withdrawing into himself. It was obvious he did not want company; I stayed where I was under the pepper tree.

  More people arrived, among them Paul Rosten and Logan Dockstetter. Dockstetter was alone—I did not see any sign of Philip Brand—and his pinched face was gaunt-eyed and troubled. Lovers’ quarrel? Or was there something else on his mind? He spent a couple of minutes saying hello to Rosa and Leo and a few of the others, and then, like Alex, made for the bartender and the wine casks.

  Time passed, and the party got louder and gayer. I did not enjoy it much. I wasn’t here for festive reasons, that was one thing; and another was that these people were all strangers—even the Cappellanis—and I did not belong to their way of life, pleasant as it might have been. It gave me an uncomfortable feeling, as if I were an interloper.

  Alex had two more large glasses of wine and his face took on color, and he began to come out of himself a little; he spoke to some of the others, circulated in a hesitant way. But it was the kind of loosening that is sometimes double-edged: you need more and more alcohol to maintain it, and the more you drink the more likely your mood will eventually shift back into an even deeper depression. If he gets drunk, I thought, then what? Do I step in and handle him myself, like a keeper? Or do I let his mother take care of—A voice at my elbow said, “Well—look who’s here.”

  I blinked and turned my head, and it was Shelly.

  She was dressed in a flared Mexican skirt and an opennecked white blouse with puffy sleeves, and she had her head cocked to one side, smiling at me in that bold way of hers. Dapples of sunlight made her auburn hair shine with red-gold highlights. Looking at her, I felt a faint stirring of sexual need; my attraction to Shelly Jackson seemed to be sharpening a little more each time I saw her.

  She said, “I had a feeling you might be around, after that business with Alex in San Francisco yesterday.”

  I smiled back at her. “You
know about that, huh?”

  “Word gets around. So do you—for somebody who isn’t working for the Cappellanis.”

  “You might as well know,” I said. “I’m working for them now.”

  “As a bodyguard, maybe?”

  “Is that a lucky guess?”

  “Educated guess.” She glanced over the crowd and settled her gaze on the wine casks. Alex was there again, waiting for a refill. His face had a damp, glazed look now that had nothing at all to do with the warmth of the afternoon. “Poor Alex,” she said. “He really doesn’t know how to cope with a crisis, does he.”

  “It isn’t easy for anybody to cope with two attempts on his life.”

  “No, I suppose it isn’t. Her eyes turned sober. ”Do the police have any clues yet?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you going to watch over Alex for the duration?”

  “Maybe; that’s up to him and Mrs. Cappellani.”

  “Well, it’ll be nice to have you around for a while.”

  “Will it?”

  “I think so.” The bold look again. “Weren’t you supposed to call me? It seems to me you said something about that at lunch the other day.”

  “I did call you, as a matter of fact,” I said. “Friday night and yesterday morning.”

  “I came up here Friday night. What did you have in mind?”

  “Dinner, a show. Something like that.”

  “Something like that,” she said. “Well, right now you can buy me a glass of wine.”

  We walked over to the casks. Aelx had drifted away again, but Dockstetter was there for a refill of his own. As we approached, Rosten came up from the opposite direction and jostled Dockstetter’s arm and made him spill some of his wine over the sleeve of his cashmere jacket; it looked like an accident, but Dockstetter wheeled around and gave him a withering glare.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he snapped.

  “Sorry,” Rosten said. “It was an accident.”

  “Oh—was it?”