Scenarios - A Collection of Nameless Detective Stories

by Bill Pronzini

  "Why don't you move?"

  "Where to? I can't afford no place better than this."

  "No better room, maybe, but why not another neighborhood? You don't have to live on Sixth Street."

  "Wouldn't be much better, any other neighborhood I could buy into. They're all over the city now, the ones like Baxter and Elroy. Used to be it was just Skid Road and the Tenderloin and the ghettos. Now they're everywhere, more and more every day. You know?"

  "I know."

  "Why? It don't have to be this way, does it?"

  Hard times, bad times: alienation, poverty, corruption, too much government, not enough government, lack of social services, lack of caring, drugs like a cancer destroying society. Simplistic explanations that were no explanations at all and as dehumanizing as the ills they described. I was tired of hearing them and I didn't want to repeat them, to Eddie Quinlan or anybody else. So I said nothing.

  He shook his head. "Souls burning everywhere you go," he said, and it was as if the words hurt his mouth coming out.

  Souls burning. "You find religion at Folsom, Eddie?"

  "Religion? I don't know, maybe a little. Chaplain we had there, I talked to him sometimes. He used to say that about the hardtimers, that their souls were burning and there wasn't nothing he could do to put out the fire. They were doomed, he said, and they'd doom others to burn with 'em."

  I had nothing to say to that either. In the small silence a voice from outside said distinctly, "Dirty bastard, what you doin' with my pipe?" It was cold in there, with the hard bright night pressing against the window. Next to the door was a rusty steam radiator but it was cold too; the heat would not be on more than a few hours a day, even in the dead of winter, in the Hotel Majestic.

  "That's the way it is in the city," Eddie said. "Souls burning. All day long, all night long, souls on fire."

  "Don't let it get to you."

  "Don't it get to you?"

  ". . . Yes. Sometimes."

  He bobbed his head up and down. "You want to do something, you know? You want to try to fix it somehow, put out the fires. There has to be a way."

  "I can't tell you what it is" I said.

  He said, "If we all just did something. It ain't too late. You don't think it's too late?"

  "No."

  "Me neither. There's still hope."

  "Hope, faith, blind optimism—sure."

  "You got to believe," he said, nodding. "That's all, you just got to believe."

  Angry voices rose suddenly from outside; a woman screamed, thin and brittle. Eddie came off the bed, hauled up the window sash. Chill damp air and street noises came pouring in: shouts, cries, horns honking, cars whispering on the wet pavement, a Muni bus clattering along Mission; more shrieks. He leaned out, peering downward.

  "Look," he said, "look."

  I stretched forward and looked. On the sidewalk below, a hooker in a leopard-skin coat was running wildly toward Howard; she was the one doing the yelling. Chasing behind her, tight black skirt hiked up over the tops of net stockings and hairy thighs, was a hideously rouged transvestite waving a pocket knife. A group of winos began laughing and chanting "Rape! Rape!" as the hooker and the transvestite ran zigzagging out of sight on Howard.

  Eddie pulled his head back in. The flickery neon wash made his face seem surreal, like a hallucinogenic vision. "That's the way it is," he said sadly. "Night after night, day after day."

  With the window open, the cold was intense; it penetrated my clothing and crawled on my skin. I'd had enough of it, and of this room and Eddie Quinlan and Sixth Street.

  "Eddie, just what is it you want from me?"

  "I already told you. Talk to somebody who understands how it is down there."

  "Is that the only reason you asked me here?"

  "Ain't it enough?"

  "For you, maybe." I got to my feet. "I'll be going now."

  He didn't argue. "Sure, you go ahead."

  "Nothing else you want to say?"

  "Nothing else." He walked to the door with me, unlocked it, and then put out his hand. "Thanks for coming. I appreciate it, I really do."

  "Yeah. Good luck, Eddie."

  "You too," he said. "Keep the faith."

  I went out into the hall, and the door shut gently and the lock clicked behind me.

  Downstairs, out of the Majestic, along the mean street and back to the garage where I'd left my car. And all the way I kept thinking: There's something else, something more he wanted from me . . . and I gave it to him by going there and listening to him. But what? What did he really want?

  I found out later that night. It was all over the TV—special bulletins and then the eleven o'clock news.

  Twenty minutes after I left him, Eddie Quinlan stood at the window of his room-with-a-view, and in less than a minute, using a high-powered semiautomatic rifle he'd taken from the sporting goods outfit where he worked, he shot down fourteen people on the street below. Nine dead, five wounded, one of the wounded in critical condition and not expected to live. Six of the victims were known drug dealers; all of the others also had arrest records, for crimes ranging from prostitution to burglary. Two of the dead were Baxter, the paraplegic Vietnam vet, and his bodyguard, Elroy.

  By the time the cops showed up, Sixth Street was empty except for the dead and the dying. No more targets. And up in his room, Eddie Quinlan had sat on the bed and put the rifle's muzzle in his mouth and used his big toe to pull the trigger.

  My first reaction was to blame myself. But how could I have known, or even guessed? Eddie Quinlan. Nobody, loser, shadow-man without substance or purpose. How could anyone have figured him for a thing like that?

  Somebody I can talk to, somebody who'll understand—that's all I want.

  No. What he'd wanted was somebody to help him justify to himself what he was about to do. Somebody to record his verbal suicide note. Somebody he could trust to pass it on afterward, tell it right and true to the world.

  You want to do something, you know? You want to try to fix it somehow, put out the fires. There has to be a way.

  Nine dead, five wounded, one of the wounded in critical condition and not expected to live. Not that way.

  Souls burning. All day long, all night long, souls on fire.

  The soul that had burned tonight was Eddie Quinlan's.

  Bomb Scare

  He was a hypertensive little man with overlarge ears and buck teeth—Brer Rabbit dressed up in a threadbare brown suit and sunglasses. In his left hand he carried a briefcase with a broken catch; it was held closed by a frayed strap that looked as though it might pop loose at any second. And inside the briefcase . . .

  "A bomb," he kept announcing in a shrill voice. "I've got a remote-controlled bomb in here. Do what I tell you, don't come near me, or I'll blow us all up."

  Nobody in the branch office of the San Francisco Trust Bank was anywhere near him. Lawrence Metaxa, the manager, and the other bank employees were frozen behind the row of tellers' cages. The four customers, me included, stood in a cluster out front. None of us was doing anything except waiting tensely for the little rabbit to quit hopping around and get down to business.

  It took him another few seconds. Then, with his free hand, he dragged a cloth sack from his coat and threw it at one of the tellers. "Put all the money in there. Stay away from the silent alarm or I'll set off the bomb. I mean it."

  Metaxa assured him in a shaky voice that they would do whatever he asked.

  "Hurry up, then." The rabbit waved his empty right hand in the air, jerkily, as if he were directing some sort of mad symphony. "Hurry up, hurry up!"

  The tellers got busy. While they hurriedly emptied cash drawers, the little man produced a second cloth sack and moved in my direction. The other customers shrank back. I stayed where I was, so he pitched the sack to me.

  "Put your wallet in there," he said in a voice like glass cracking. "All your valuables. Then get everybody else's."

  I said, "I don't think so."

  "What?
What?" He hopped on one foot, then the other, making the briefcase dance. "What's the matter with you? Do what I told you!"

  When he'd first come in and started yelling about his bomb, I'd thought that I couldn't have picked a worse time to take care of my bank deposits. Now I was thinking that I couldn't have picked a better time. I took a measured step toward him. Somebody behind me gasped. I took another step.

  "Stay back!" the little guy shouted. "I'll push the button, I'll blow us up."

  I said, "No, you won't," and rushed him and yanked the briefcase out of his hand.

  More gasps, a cry, the sounds of customers and employees scrambling for cover. But nothing happened, except that the little guy tried to run away. I caught him by the collar and dragged him back. His struggles were brief and half-hearted; he'd gambled and lost and he knew when he was licked.

  Scared faces peered over counters and around corners. I held the briefcase up so they could all see it. "No bomb in here, folks. You can relax now, it's all over."

  It took a couple of minutes to restore order, during which time I marched the little man around to Metaxa's desk and pushed him into a chair. He sat slumped, twitching and muttering. "Lost my job, so many debts . . . must've been crazy to do a thing like this . . . I'm sorry, I'm sorry." Poor little rabbit. He wasn't half as sorry now as he was going to be later.

  I opened the case while Metaxa called the police. The only thing inside was a city telephone directory for weight.

  When Metaxa hung up he said to me, "You took a crazy risk, grabbing the briefcase like that. If he really had had a bomb in there . . ."

  "I knew he didn't."

  "Knew he didn't? How could you?"

  "I'm a detective, remember? Three reasons. One: Bombs are delicate mechanisms and people who build them are cautious by necessity. They don't put explosives in a cheap case with a busted catch and just a frayed strap holding it together, not unless they're suicidal. Two: He claimed it was remote-controlled. But the hand he kept waving was empty and all he had in the other one was the case. Where was the remote control? In one of his pockets, where he couldn't get at it easily? No. A real bomber would've had it out in plain sight to back up his threat."

  "Still," Metaxa said, "you could've been wrong on both counts. Neither is an absolute certainty."

  "No, but the third reason is as close to one as you can get."

  "Yes?"

  "It takes more than just skill to make a bomb. It takes nerve, coolness, patience, and a very steady hand. Look at our friend here. He doesn't have any of those attributes; he's the chronically nervous type, as jumpy as six cats. He could no more manufacture an explosive device than you or I could fly. If he'd ever tried, he'd have blown himself up in two minutes flat."

  The Big Bite

  I laid a red queen on a black king, glanced up at Jay Cohalan through the open door of his office. He was pacing again, back and forth in front of his desk, his hands in constant restless motion at his sides. The office was carpeted; his footfalls made no sound. There was no discernible sound anywhere except for the faint snap and slap when I turned over a card and put it down. An office building at night is one of the quietest places there is. Eerily so, if you spend enough time listening to the silence.

  Trey. Nine of diamonds. Deuce. Jack of spades. I was marrying the jack to the red queen when Cohalan quit pacing and came over to stand in the doorway. He watched me for a time, his hands still doing scoop-shovel maneuvers—a big man in his late thirties, handsome except for a weak chin, a little sweaty and disheveled now.

  "How can you just sit there playing cards?" he said.

  There were several answers to that. Years of stakeouts and dull routine. We'd only been waiting about two hours. The money, fifty thousand in fifties and hundreds, didn't belong to me. I wasn't worried, upset, or afraid that something might go wrong. I passed on all of those and settled instead for a neutral response: "Solitaire's good for waiting. Keeps your mind off the clock."

  "It's after seven. Why the hell doesn't he call?"

  "You know the answer to that. He wants you to sweat."

  "Sadistic bastard."

  "Blackmail's that kind of game," I said. "Torture the victim, bend his will to yours."

  "Game. My God." Cohalan came out into the anteroom and began to pace around there, in front of his secretary's desk where I was sitting. "It's driving me crazy, trying to figure out who he is, how he found out about my past. Not a hint, any of the times I talked to him. But he knows everything, every damn detail."

  "You'll have the answers before long."

  "Yeah." He stopped abruptly, leaned toward me. "Listen, this has to be the end of it. You've got to stay with him, see to it he's arrested. I can't take any more."

  "I'll do my job, Mr. Cohalan, don't worry."

  "Fifty thousand dollars. I almost had a heart attack when he told me that was how much he wanted this time. The last payment, he said. What a crock. He'd come back for more someday. I know it, Carolyn knows it, you know it." Pacing again. "Poor Carolyn. Highstrung, emotional . . . it's been even harder on her. She wanted me to go to the police this time, did I tell you that?"

  "You told me."

  "I should have, I guess. Now I've got to pay a middleman for what I could've had for nothing. . . no offense."

  "None taken."

  "I just couldn't bring myself to do it, walk into the Hall of Justice and confess everything to a cop. It was hard enough letting Carolyn talk me into hiring a private detective. That trouble when I was a kid . . . it's a criminal offense, I could still be prosecuted for it. And it's liable to cost me my job if it comes out. I went through hell telling Carolyn in the beginning, and I didn't go into all the sordid details. With you, either. The police. . . no. I know that bastard will probably spill the whole story when he's arrested, try to drag me down with him, but still. . . I keep hoping he won't. You understand?"

  "I understand," I said.

  "I shouldn't've paid him when he crawled out of the woodwork eight months ago. I know that now. But back then it seemed like the only way to keep from ruining my life. Carolyn thought so, too. If I hadn't started paying him, half of her inheritance wouldn't already be gone . . ." He let the rest of it trail off, paced in bitter silence for a time, and started up again. "I hated taking money from her—hated it, no matter how much she insisted it belongs to both of us. And I hate myself for doing it, almost as much as I hate him. Blackmail's the worst goddamn crime there is short of murder."

  "Not the worst," I said, "but bad enough."

  "This has to be the end of it. The fifty thousand in there. . . it's the last of her inheritance, our savings. If that son of a bitch gets away with it, we'll be wiped out. You can't let that happen."

  I didn't say anything. We'd been through all this before, more than once.

  Cohalan let the silence resettle. Then, as I shuffled the cards for a new hand, "This job of mine, you'd think it pays pretty well, wouldn't you? My own office, secretary, executive title, expense account. . . looks good and sounds good, but it's a frigging dead end. Junior account executive stuck in corporate middle management—that's all I am or ever will be. Sixty thousand a year gross. And Carolyn makes twenty-five teaching. Eighty-five thousand for two people, no kids, that seems like plenty but it's not, not these days. Taxes, high cost of living, you have to scrimp to put anything away. And then some stupid mistake you made when you were a kid comes back to haunt you, drains your future along with your bank account, preys on your mind so you can't sleep, can barely do your work. . . you see what I mean? But I didn't think I had a choice at first, I was afraid of losing this crappy job, going to prison. Caught between a rock and a hard place. I still feel that way but now I don't care, I just want that scum to get what's coming to him. . ."

  Repetitious babbling caused by his anxiety. His mouth had a wet look and his eyes kept jumping from me to other points in the room.

  I said, "Why don't you sit down?"

  "I can't sit. My nerves
are shot."

  "Take a few deep breaths before you start to hyperventilate."

  "Listen, don't tell me what—"

  The telephone on his desk went off.

  The sudden clamor jerked him half around, as if with an electric shock. In the quiet that followed the first ring I could hear the harsh rasp of his breathing. He looked back at me as the bell sounded again. I was on my feet too by then.

  I said, "Go ahead, answer it. Keep your head."

  He went into his office, picked up just after the third ring. I timed the lifting of the extension to coincide, so there wouldn't be a second click on the open line.

  "Yes," he said, "Cohalan."

  "You know who this is." The voice was harsh, muffled, indistinctively male. "You got the fifty thousand?"

  "I told you I would. The last payment, you promised me..."

  "Yeah, the last one."

  "Where this time?"

  "Golden Gate Park. Kennedy Drive, in front of the buffalo pen. Put it in the trash barrel beside the bench there." Cohalan was watching me through the open doorway. I shook my head at him. He said into the phone, "Can't we make it someplace else? There might be people around. . ."

  "Not at nine p.m."

  "Nine? But it's only a little after seven now—"

  "Nine sharp. Be there with the cash."

  The line went dead.

  I cradled the extension. Cohalan was still standing alongside his desk, hanging onto the receiver the way a drowning man might hang onto a lifeline, when I went into his office. I said, "Put it down, Mr. Cohalan."

  "What? Oh, yes. . ." He lowered the receiver. "Christ," he said then.

  "You all right?"

  His head bobbed up and down a couple of times. He ran a hand over his face and then swung away to where his briefcase lay. The fifty thousand was in there; he'd shown it to me when I first arrived. He picked the case up, set it down again. Rubbed his face another time.