Zigzag

by Bill Pronzini

  “Good, thanks. Anything else?”

  “A little on the Erskines, yeah,” she said. “Still working on the other stuff you asked for. All I’ve got so far is the name of the hospital—South Bay Memorial.”

  “What should I know about the Erskines?”

  “Not much that I can see. Marian Erskine’s estimated worth is around fifteen mil. Inherited money—her father was an electrical engineer, invented some kind of device that he patented and sold to the aerospace industry for megabucks back in the seventies. She’s fifty-one, married and divorced twice before she hooked up with Peter Erskine. He’s lasted the longest so far—six years. No children. Longtime member of a group called the International Psychical Research Society; makes an annual four-figure donation to it. Used to be proactive in charity work before her heart attack.”

  “Heart attack? When was that?”

  “Three months ago. Bad one—she nearly died.”

  No wonder she looked as she did, why Erskine was so solicitous and disapproving of her cognac drinking. Alcohol coupled with nervous tension and undue excitement is a potentially lethal combination in a heart patient. But I wondered why neither of them had mentioned the coronary to me. Too painful and too personal a subject, maybe. And irrelevant to the task I was being hired for.

  “Peter Erskine,” Tamara said. “Age thirty-six. Born and raised in Los Gatos. No prior marriages. Went to work for a brokerage firm in Silicon Valley straight out of high school, worked his way up to a low-level sales position. Met Marian Erskine at a charity tennis tournament at one of the country clubs down there—he plays and so did she before the heart thing. Not long after they were married, he opened his own business—stockbroker and financial advisor—with her backing. Doesn’t seem to’ve made much of a success at it. Has an office with one employee in Menlo Park.”

  “He’s a good-looking guy. And she’s considerably older and in poor health. How good is the marriage?”

  “You mean is he the type to put his balls in other courts?” I winced at that, and she grinned. “Well, I don’t know, I didn’t do any digging along those lines. But if a young guy’s not getting much at home, wouldn’t be any surprise if he went out prowling now and then. Real careful like, though. Wouldn’t want to lose his meal ticket.”

  “Don’t be so cynical.”

  “Hah,” she said.

  I took the thin sheaf of printouts she handed me into my office and sat at my desk to go over them. I skimmed through a couple of brief newspaper accounts of the fatal freeway accident. Erskine’s version, that Vok had caused it by inattentive driving, was corroborated by witnesses. Vok had been taken to and had died in South Bay Memorial Hospital, the reason for that destination being twofold: it was relatively close to the scene of the accident and it had a trauma unit.

  The background info on the Voks was scanty, evidently all that was available; Tamara is nothing if not thorough. He’d been fifty-two, his wife forty-nine, at the time of their deaths. Both of Lithuanian descent. Antanas (Lithuanian for Anthony) Vok had been born in the Baltic state and immigrated to the U.S. with mother and father, now both deceased, at age twelve, and as an adult had become a naturalized citizen; Elza Vok had been born in this country. No children. Next of kin unknown. They’d lived at 1936 Dillard Street #4 in San Jose, where he’d worked as a butcher for one of the medium-sized supermarket chains and she as a cleaning woman. Nothing on their religious beliefs or alleged cult ties, of course. Devotees of witchcraft and black magic don’t advertise the fact.

  The printout on our clients contained a few more details, such as Peter Erskine’s office address and the name of his sole employee, a woman named Melanie Vinson, but none that held my attention. Joseph Lenihan’s blog write-up did.

  The header on it was “Dead Men Rise Up Never?” The tone of the piece was a curious mix of flip-hip—the kind of wry light touch reporters gave to “silly season” stories back in the day—and serious occult-themed speculation. Lenihan’s style, I supposed, for all his blog entries. No names were used, as Tamara had said, just terms such as “accident victim of European descent” and “prominent Peninsula resident.” Antanas Vok’s last words to Peter Erskine were quoted verbatim: “I will return from the dead and destroy you as you have destroyed me. You will die a death far more terrible than mine. This I vow in the name of Satan, my lord and master, with whom I have made an eternal covenant.” The passing of the black host was also mentioned in some detail.

  Lenihan went on to say that, according to the unnamed “reliable source” he’d gotten this information from, the recipient and his wife were “consumed with terror and immediately fled the room” and that later they had “refused all requests for an interview about the incident.” He then wrote: “Subsequent investigation revealed undeniable evidence that the dead man worshipped the devil and took part in Satanic rituals and blow-your-mind sex orgies.” And finished up with: “Is it possible that a dead dude in league with Lucifer can wreak vengeance on the living? Only time will tell.”

  Assuming the Vok quote was accurate, and it probably was since Lenihan also knew about the black host, the “reliable source” had to be somebody who was in the hospital room at the time. The nurse Erskine had mentioned? Or had Lenihan managed to track down the tall, heavyset, stoic party related to or acquainted with the Voks?

  The “undeniable evidence” verifying the devil worship was given as “a bone-freezing collection of grimoires, drawings of pentagrams and other black magic symbols, correspondence describing blood sacrifices, and other weird de Sade type stuff.” Some of the titles of the grimoires, or manuals for invoking demons and spirits of the dead, were listed: Malleus Maleficarum. The Golden Bough. The Book of Eibon. The Grimoire of Pope Honorius. And two in German, which apparently Vok had been conversant in: Die Walpurgisnacht im Westphalialeben and Den Nederwelt von Renaissanischer Zeit.

  How Lenihan knew all this wasn’t stated, though there was a sly inference that he’d managed to gain access to the couple’s apartment after Vok’s death, just long enough to view its contents and take some notes. Whether he’d also appropriated any of the books or other items was an unanswered question. He did say that all of the evidence “mysteriously disappeared shortly afterward,” the inference there being that he’d gone back for a second look and found the apartment cleaned out.

  That was all. Anything more I would have to try to pry out of Lenihan himself. If I could get him to talk to me in the first place.

  The address Tamara had found for him was in Santa Clara, north of San Jose; she’d also gotten his telephone number. A page of background info told me he was forty years old, unmarried, and—no surprise—a pothead with one arrest for possession, another plus a hand-slap conviction for minor dealing. Writing creature features was apparently an avocation; his main source of income came from repairing computers for college students and others who couldn’t afford topline service, work he did from home.

  I pulled the desk phone over and tapped out his number. The voice that answered said, “Lenihan’s Service, at your service,” in a slow and mellow drawl, as if he might already be a little stoned.

  I gave him my name, nothing more, and asked if he’d be home for the next couple of hours. He said, “No plans to go anywhere. Computer problem? I specialize in PCs, but I do Macs, too.”

  “We can discuss the problem when I get there. Hour, hour and fifteen minutes okay?”

  “Any time. I’ll be here.”

  7

  Santa Clara is another upscale South Bay community, not as affluent as Atherton but still a desirable nesting place for what’s left of the upper middle class. It’s also the new home of what used to be the San Francisco 49ers. I say used to be because many of the homegrown city dwellers like me who loyally supported the team at Kezar and Candlestick for decades were none too happy with the move forty-three miles south to the glitzy new, superexpensive, poorly situated Levi’s Stadium—a stadium that could have and should have been built on available c
ity land next to AT&T Park in downtown S.F.

  Sure, winning the bid to host the 2016 Super Bowl was a major coup for the organization and a financial boon for San Francisco despite the South Bay location of the game. But that’s not enough to mollify me and many of the other faithful in the city and the North Bay. If anything, it makes the move seem even more of a defection, a fan-base shift that amounts to a collective slap in the face of the old guard. As far as we’re concerned, the ownership should be forced to drop San Francisco from the team name and replace it with something generic and more honest—the Golden State 49ers, for instance, following the lead of the pro basketball franchise when the Warriors quit playing their games in the city back in 1971.

  As fashionable as most of Santa Clara is, it has its pockets of lower-income housing. Joe Lenihan lived in one of these, in a nondescript apartment house not far off the 101 freeway. His unit was on the second floor, rear. I rang his bell, identified myself when his voice came over the intercom, and he said, “Come on up; door’s open,” and buzzed me in.

  The front section of what was probably his apartment’s living room had been turned into a kind of business anteroom by the addition of wall-to-wall blue curtains. The space was crammed with two tables and two chairs facing each other across the larger table. A couple of desktop PCs and a laptop wearing name tags sat on the smaller table, evidently repaired and awaiting customer pickup.

  A couple of seconds after I entered, the curtains parted and I had my first look at Joe Lenihan. He wasn’t what I’d expected any more than Peter Erskine had been. The image I’d had was of a bearded, somewhat scruffy neo-hippie reeking of pot smoke. He was the antithesis of that: clean-shaven, with gray-flecked brown hair trimmed short and clear hazel eyes; dressed in a loose sport shirt and corduroys that were old and somewhat frayed but clean. And not even a stray whiff of marijuana came from him or from behind the curtains. You’d think that at my age and as many years as I’ve been in business, I would know better than anyone not to fall into the preconceived-notion trap.

  He had a welcoming smile for me, but it dimmed somewhat when he saw that my hands were empty. “No computer? I don’t sell them, you know, just repair them.” I’d been wrong about his voice, too: slow and mellow was apparently his natural way of speaking.

  “Computers isn’t the reason I’m here, Mr. Lenihan.”

  “No?” His expression brightened again. “You wouldn’t be connected with the media, would you? Come to offer me a writing gig?”

  “Sorry, no,” I said, and then lied a little. “But I’ve read your blog.”

  “Well, one of the chosen few. A pleasure.” The smile tilted a little, self-deprecatingly. “Assuming you don’t have a complaint about one of my entries, that is.”

  “No complaints. Just some questions about a particular piece you wrote last year.”

  “Which one?”

  “The one called ‘Dead Men Rise Up Never?’ About the devil-worshipping accident victim and his deathbed vow.”

  “Oh, sure. Real weird true story. What about it?”

  “I’d like some information on your sources.”

  Lenihan had beetling brows; one of them arched upward into a boomerang shape over a narrowed eye. The upcurve of his mouth was wary now. “Why? After all this time?”

  “Professional reasons.” I showed him the photostat of my license.

  The other eyebrow humped up to make two boomerangs. The smile stayed, the wariness vanished. “No shit,” he said in a pleased sort of way. “How come a private eye’s interested in devil worshippers?”

  “Not that per se, just Antanas Vok and the cult he belonged to.”

  “Antanas Vok. So you know his name.” Then, eagerly, “Why do you want to know my sources? Who’re you working for?”

  “That’s confidential.”

  “The guy in Atherton? Did something happen to him?”

  “Confidential.”

  “Yeah, well, so are my sources.” Pause. “But maybe we could work something out. What’s in it for me if I tell you?”

  “Satisfaction in helping solve the problem I’m investigating.”

  “Hah.”

  “All right. How about twenty bucks?”

  “Well, I can always use extra cash,” Lenihan said, “but I can use a good story more. Maybe you don’t know it, but I’m kind of a jack-of-all-trades. Freelance journalist as well as blogger and computer repairman.”

  “Uh-huh. But all I can let you have is the twenty.”

  “Not even a little something I can build a story on?”

  “Not even a hint.”

  He thought it over, nibbling on a corner of his lower lip. Pretty soon he said, “Well, what the hell. Make it fifty bucks and you’ve got a deal.”

  “Fifty’s a little steep.”

  “Not for what I have to tell you.”

  “All right, done.” I could afford not to quibble; the money would come out of Peter Erskine’s pocket eventually, not mine. I took two twenties and a ten from my wallet and laid them on the table between us, but I kept my hand on the bills when Lenihan reached for them. “After you’ve told me and I’m sure you’re being straightforward.”

  “Hey,” he said, and now he sounded wounded and put-upon, “one thing I don’t do is lie for personal gain. Not even to my friends.”

  “Good for you. Who told you about Vok’s vow of vengeance?”

  “The nurse who was in the room at the time. Ellen Bowers.”

  “Why did she confide in you?”

  “We hook up now and then, Ellen and me. She knows I’m into the world of weird and this Vok thing was right up my alley.” A sly grin. “I showed her my appreciation with dinner and a good fuck.”

  My reaction to that was an expressionless stare, to let him know I was not going to play the see-what-a-stud-I-am-wink-wink game. “What did she have to say about the other man in the room? You didn’t mention him in your blog piece.”

  “What other man?”

  “Relative or friend of Vok’s, apparently.”

  “Yeah? Well, I can’t help you there. Ellen never mentioned anybody else being in the room.”

  “Sure about that?”

  “Positive. I’d’ve put it into the write-up if she had.”

  “Did you ask her who claimed the bodies of Vok and his wife?”

  “Nobody claimed them.”

  “Oh?”

  “Ellen checked for me,” Lenihan said. “No next of kin located and nobody else came forward. Both bodies planted at county expense.”

  I mulled that over for a few seconds before I asked, “Did you turn up any names in the Voks’ apartment—other individuals who might be involved in this cult they belonged to?”

  “Ah … I can’t answer that.”

  “No? Why not?”

  He looked a little sheepish now. “Well, the truth is, I went there, but the place was locked up tight and I couldn’t convince the building manager to let me in.”

  “Then how did you find out about the books and the other black arts stuff the Voks had?”

  “I didn’t.” The grin again, and a shrug. “Details make for a better story, whether they’ve been confirmed or not. Poetic license, you know?”

  “Meaning you made up that part of it?”

  “Well, not completely. The grimoires I listed are all genuine volumes, and I figured there were bound to be pentagrams and other shit linking the Voks to a devil cult.”

  Some journalist. “But you don’t know that there was.”

  “No. But Vok admitted to Satan being his lord and master. Pact with the devil, right?”

  “That doesn’t mean it’s true,” I said. “He was dying, angry, probably not in his right mind.”

  “You’re forgetting the black host. Ellen saw him shove it into the guy’s hand. The wife nearly freaked when she saw it, so it must’ve been genuine. That and the vow makes Vok a devil worshipper in my book.”

  But not in mine, not necessarily. “Does Ellen Bowers
still work at South Bay Memorial?”

  “Yep.”

  “On duty today, would you know?”

  He shook his head. “We’re not that close.”

  “But you do have the hospital’s phone number?”

  “Sure. Ellen’s, too, if you want it.”

  “Both.”

  “Do I get the fifty bucks then?”

  I told him yes, and he said he’d have to get the numbers from his cell. He went away through the curtains, came back pretty soon with them scrawled on a piece of notepaper. When I took my hand off the bills, he made them disappear as if by a little magic trick of his own.

  He grinned again. “Nice doing business with you,” he said. “Hope you find what you’re looking for.”

  I didn’t answer him, or return his salute as I turned to leave. I may have to deal with people who have shoddy morals and ethics, and who think nothing of cavalierly adding to the misinformation on the Internet, but I don’t have to be polite to them.

  8

  In the car I called South Bay Memorial to find out if Ellen Bowers was on duty today. She was, but currently assisting on a surgery and unavailable until after two o’clock. So I programmed the Voks’ former address, 1936 Dillard Street, into the GPS and let the thing guide me down 101 into San Jose.

  The address was in one of the poorer parts of the city, a mixed neighborhood with Hispanics dominating. The building was a somewhat run-down, six-unit apartment house flanked by a bodega on one side, another apartment building on the other. Cooking odors old and new clogged the air in the narrow foyer. Pasted above the name Rodriguez on the mailbox for apartment #1 was an old DYMO label with the word Manager on it. I pushed the bell, waited, pushed it again. Just as I was about to try for a third and last time, the intercom crackled and a voice said, “Yeah? What is it?” The crackling was so bad I barely understood the words, and couldn’t tell if the voice was male or female.

  I gave my name and said I was there on a business matter, but none of it got through to whoever was on the other end. There was some staticky chatter that I couldn’t understand at all; another attempt on my part didn’t get through, either. The intercom shut off, and a few seconds later the door to a ground-floor apartment popped open and a guy in an armless undershirt came out. He peered through the front door glass at me, yanked it open, and snapped irritably, “Goddamn thing don’t never work right,” as if the intercom’s failings were my fault. “What you want? Selling something, we don’t want it.”