The Stalker

by Bill Pronzini

  They entered the house through the glass-enclosed archway off the patio, stepping into the parlor. It was dark in there, shadowed and with very little color. The furniture was old and heavy and ponderous and expensive. An imposing scrolled desk sat on one side of the room, and on the rear wall, in close proximity to one another, were a religious mural and an oblong painting of a nude girl on blue velvet; a few people had been shocked by the impact of that juxtaposition, Drexel thought amusedly.

  He went to the hall table and retrieved his mail. There was a telephone bill, and an advertisement for some real estate development called Whispering Echoes in Southern Oregon, and a two-week-old copy of the Philadelphia Inquirer. He put the phone bill in a slot marked PAYABLE in the wooden back of the desk, and the advertisement in the fieldstone fireplace; he took the newspaper to a brocade couch and began to peel off the mailing wrapper.

  Fran said, “Why do you take newspapers from all over the country? Have you got relatives or something in Illinois and North Dakota and Pennsylvania?”

  If only you knew, sweets. But he said, “No, it’s just a hobby. Some people collect stamps or coins or old rubbers. I collect newspapers.”

  She blushed again. “Want some coffee?”

  “Fine.”

  She disappeared into the kitchen. Drexel lighted one of the thin black cheroots he affected, and spread the paper open. He began to scan it with practiced expertise, chuckling a little at Fran’s reaction to the idea of anyone collecting old rubbers. But the smile left his face abruptly when his eyes fell on the headline in the upper left-hand corner of Page Four: EUGENE BEAUCHAMP DIES IN PRIVATE PLANE CRASH. Holy Jesus, he thought. He put out the cheroot and read the accompanying story carefully; then he refolded the paper and laid it on the cushion beside him.

  He stood and began to pace the muted Navajo rug, his mind working coldly, methodically, weighing and considering.

  Fran came in a moment later. “Honey, there isn’t any cream. Do you want—?”

  “Shut up,” Drexel said without looking at her. “Shut the hell up.”

  “But I—”

  “I told you to shut up. Get out of here. I’ll call you later.”

  “Larry, what is it? What’s the matter?”

  “Damn you, do what I say!”

  A mixture of hurt and confusion made liquid form at the corners of her amber-colored eyes. She stood rigidly for almost ten seconds, and then she said, “All right, then!” and ran toward the hallway that led to the front entrance. The sound of the thick, arched wooden door slamming behind her caused faint reverberations to drift through the dark house.

  Drexel continued to pace, still weighing, still considering. Finally, having made a decision, he went to the scrolled desk and unlocked the bottom drawer on the right side with a key from his pocket case. Inside, there was an old ersatz-leather scrapbook and a smaller, clothbound address book. He took the address book out and opened it and studied the facing page.

  After a moment, he turned and went to where the telephone sat on an oddly shaped driftwood stand near the arched patio entrance.

  2

  United Airlines Flight 69, non-stop from Philadelphia, arrived at San Francisco International Airport at 1:26 P.M., four minutes ahead of schedule. One of the first passengers to disembark—when the mobile exit ramp had been locked into place at the fore and aft doors—was a small, rather nondescript man who walked with a noticeable limp. He had ridden the blue-carpet coach, and had slept through a technicolor movie with Gregory Peck and the passage of the two-limit cocktail cart and the distribution of chicken cordon bleu by two blonde stewardesses with portrait smiles; but as soon as the wheels of the DC-8 had touched the approach runway, he had been instantly alert, piercing sand-colored eyes peering intently through the window on his left, fingers drumming impatiently on a thin leather American Tourister briefcase which had never left his lap.

  He passed through the railed observation area at Gate 30, and moved with surprising speed for a limping man along the north wing of the terminal. Outside the glassed outer wall, fog eddied in gray waves, like mounds of steel wool, across the pattern of concrete runways—but he took little notice of it.

  In the main lobby, a blue and white sign above a set of escalators read: BAGGAGE CLAIM. He rode down to the lower level and waited by the huge revolving baggage carousel which was designated by his flight number. Some of the other passengers began to arrive, and a fat woman wearing an incongruous plumed hat came over to stand beside him. She had sat across the aisle on the plane.

  “This takes forever,” she said in a strident voice. “You’d think the airlines would be more efficient. Things haven’t changed a bit since my first flight to San Francisco in 1947. Not a bit, mind you.”

  The limping man glanced at her briefly, and then looked away. The first pieces of luggage began to flow out of the conveyor chute in the center of the sloping chrome carousel.

  “Look at that,” the fat woman said, pursing her lips and pointing one huge arm at the chute. “They come out of there so fast, they get all banged up when they hit the sides. My best overnight bag has a crease on one end because of that. Why can’t they find another way to get the luggage out of the plane, some way that doesn’t damage everything you own.”

  The limping man unwound two fingers from the handle of the briefcase and began to tap them irritably against the leather. He said nothing.

  “If there’s another crease in any of my bags, I’m going to demand the terminal replace it with a new one,” the fat woman said. “They’re responsible, after all.”

  A dun-colored pasteboard suitcase with a cracked plastic handle came out of the chute. It slid down to the rubberized bumper ringing the bottom sides of the carousel. When it had revolved to where he was standing, the limping man lifted it out quickly. The woman said, “You’d better examine the end of it. It probably has a crease in it, just like my—”

  “Shut up, you fat ugly useless bitch,” the limping man whispered softly, fervently. He turned and began to walk rapidly toward the south end of the level.

  The fat woman made a surprised hennish sound deep in the folds of her throat. Spots of crimson fired her cheeks. She raised one trembling arm and pointed it after him, still making the sounds; fat jiggled on her upper arm like an inverted gelatin mold. The other passengers watched her. They had not heard the limping man’s words.

  A moment later, he stopped at an enclosed booth representing one of the car rental agencies. A man in an ostentatious Madras jacket smiled unctuously at him from behind the counter. “Yes, sir?”

  “I want a compact Chevrolet or Ford, light-colored, quiet engine.”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  “I’ll need it for a week. Ten days at the most.”

  “May I see some identification, please? Driver’s license and any major credit card.”

  The limping man set the pasteboard suitcase on the floor at his feet and took his wallet from the inside pocket of his faded brown suit jacket; he did not set the briefcase down. The unctuous man studied the driver’s license and an oil company credit card in the proffered wallet, nodded, and then consulted a list by his left elbow. “Would a Ford Mustang be acceptable, sir?”

  “That’s all right.”

  The unctuous man lifted a telephone, spoke briefly into it, and then rotated a pad of contract forms. The limping man filled out the single-page contract, signed it, and was given the last two pages in a card folder upon which the clerk had written the license number of the Ford Mustang and the stall where it could be located in the outside parking area.

  The limping man picked up the pasteboard suitcase, went quickly to the far end of the level, and stepped through a door into the gelid afternoon.

  Ice drops stung his skin and the wind whipped mercilessly at his sparse brown hair; but he seemed oblivious to the cold as he walked among the rental cars to his designated stall. A bearded boy in a white uniform with the agency’s name in bright blue across the back waited t
here for him. The boy looked at the card folder, inclined his head, and held the door open. The limping man ignored a tip-waiting hand and slid beneath the wheel of the Mustang. The keys were in the ignition.

  He proceeded through the parking area fronting the airport and entered the northbound ramp leading onto the James Lick Freeway. The speedometer needle climbed to seventy and seemed to lock there; the limping man drove with both hands competently on the steering wheel, his eyes leaving the broken white line before him only to check the side-and rear-view mirrors prior to changing lanes.

  Fifteen minutes later, he bore right at the Skyway and Central Freeway junctions, following the Skyway to the Seventh Street exit. He had been in San Francisco only once previously—two months ago-but he had memorized this route, and several others, with precise care. He had been over each more than once.

  At Sixth Street, he crossed Market to enter Taylor; at the corner of Taylor and Geary, he turned into a parking garage. He left the Mustang with an attendant and carried the two cases along Geary to a small, unpretentious hotel called the Graceling.

  Fingers again working in metronome cadence on the surface of the briefcase, he spoke to the polite, if somewhat bored, hotel clerk and signed the register. An aging bellhop with a faintly sour smell about him responded to the clerk’s summons, picked up the limping man’s suitcase, and led him over to a self-service elevator at the near end of the lobby. On the fourth floor, the bellhop unlocked the door to Number 412, placed the key on the lacquered dresser inside, laid the suitcase on an aluminum luggage rack near the window, and then returned to the doorway. He stood waiting. The limping man’s eyes, unblinking, met the bellhop’s liquidy blue ones; after a moment, the bellhop coughed nervously, averting his gaze, and retreated into the hallway.

  When he had closed and locked the door, the limping man sat on the wide double bed and opened the briefcase with a tiny key from the breast pocket of his suit. From inside, he extracted a thick ten by-thirteen manila envelope and put it on his lap; he did not touch the heavy Ruger .44 Magnum Blackhawk revolver which lay in a chamois cloth at the bottom of the case.

  Opening the manila envelope, he removed two sets of three folders each, both sets being fastened with thick, sturdy rubber bands. The folders were of the type used by college students for term paper assignments, and were of different colors. Those in one set were blue, gray, and red; those in the second were yellow, green, and orange. He glanced cursorily at the first set—blue and gray and red—and then returned it to the manila envelope. He slid the rubber band from the second set and placed its three folders side by side on the floral bedspread.

  Each contained several sheets of ruled notepaper filled with lines of writing in an almost illegible backhand, and a Mobil Oil Travel and Street Map. The writing consisted of daily journal-like reports, over a two-week span, which the limping man had made on his first trip to California two months previous; they were detailed with names, numbers, dates, places, habits, and observations.

  He sat staring at the names inked in large block letters on the front of each folder. Which one next? he asked himself silently. Well, it didn’t really make a great deal of difference, it would all be over within the week anyway—for him, and for each of them.

  At length he selected the yellow folder, lay back on the bed, and began to study its contents, even though he had long since committed to memory each fact represented there.

  It wasn’t the money at all.

  But Steve will believe it is, Andrea Kilduff thought. Oh yes, that’s exactly what he’ll believe.

  She drove the little tan Volkswagen carefully, allowing five carlengths between herself and the station wagon ahead. She was just coming into San Rafael now, some twenty miles north of San Francisco, and the Saturday afternoon traffic on U.S. Highway 101 was badly congested. Andrea wished she hadn’t put off leaving the city so long—what had she expected to happen, sitting there in that virtually empty café on Parnassus for more than two hours: her conscience or guardian angel or something to come and sit on the stool beside her like in those silly television commercials and talk her out of it? Well, it wouldn’t be long before she reached Duckblind Slough, and she was thankful that Steve hadn’t decided on Antioch or Stockton, both of which had also been under consideration that summer six years ago; driving in heavy freeway traffic always unnerved her, especially when any appreciable distance was involved.

  Tiny, almost doll-like, she possessed that type of finely boned, aesthetic face which is coveted by fashion photographers and portrait painters. She felt, without vanity, that her mouth was just a little too small, her luminous black eyes under feathery natural lashes just a little too large; but each, in fact, contributed subtly yet prominently to a fragile, almost Dresden beauty. Her legs were perfectly proportioned in relation to her size, and her breasts were well defined, if rather small—she had always thought men disliked small breasts, but Steve had told her once, in bed, that the big-boob myth was just that, a myth, propagated by some Madison Avenue ad agency with a brassiere account, anything more than a mouthful was just wasted anyway. On this day, she wore a pair of tailored tweed slacks, a cardigan sweater, and a pale green silk scarf over her short ebon hair.

  Watching the car ahead of her cautiously, she thought: He won’t recognize the real reason I’ve gone. If it enters his mind at all hell reject it, because he doesn’t know, hasn’t any idea, what has happened to him these past few years. And the terrible thing is, no matter what I do, he almost surely never will.

  A person is able to endure just so much—emotionally as well as physically—wasn’t that a true fact? Alone in the apartment last night—listening to silence, waiting for Steve to call and knowing that he hadn’t gotten the cannery job, of course, that he was brooding childlike in his motel room the way he had done before—Andrea had been struck with the realization that since this was by no means the final failure, was in fact simply another link in the chain, it was also by no means the final night she would be left listening to silence, waiting for him to call or to come home with the news that still another job hadn’t gone through, still another opportunity had been cast adrift on the wind. She saw herself twenty years hence, hair graying, skin already crosshatched with furrows and lines and purplish wrinkles; she saw herself without hope, dying inside by degrees—the way it had already become with Steve—and she was terrified.

  Even though she still loved him deeply, the thought of watching him become less and less of a man through the coming days and months and years was inconceivable. And there was nothing she could do to prevent it; failure in the past precluded success in the future, how long could you beat your head against the proverbial stone wall without even so much as chipping the mortar? She had to leave then, quickly and quietly, like a thief in the night, without tearful good-byes, bitter good-byes, without the painful, useless explanation. Andrea knew that if she waited for Steve to come back, and came to that final confrontation, she would not be able to handle things, would not, very possibly, be able to leave at all. She had tried to write him a short note, but the right words refused to come; after five attempts, five “Steve darling” salutations, she had given it up. When she had had time to prepare herself, after a few days alone to put it all together, she would call him and tell him the simple truth—even though he wouldn’t believe it. Then ...

  Well, she would have plenty of time in the next few days to consider then.

  Shivering a little, even though the windows were tightly rolled up and the Volkswagen’s heater was turned to high, and with a conscious effort of will, she gave her full concentration to driving.

  It wasn’t until she had gone another five miles, leaving San Rafael behind her, that Andrea felt the wetness on her cheeks and realized she was crying.

  3

  It was a voice out of the past, dimly remembered in that first groping effort at placement but then becoming violently, jarringly, familiar; an insinuating, phlegmatic voice saying very distinctly over a telephone
wire, “Steve? Steve Kilduff?”

  Standing in the hallway, between the kitchen and the bedroom, Kilduff gripped the receiver so tightly that the tendons in his wrist began to ache. The back of his neck had suddenly grown cold.

  “Steve?” Drexel asked again. “Is that you?”

  “Yes,” he answered finally. “Hello, Larry.”

  “A long time, baby.”

  “Not long enough.”

  “Maybe yes, maybe no.”

  “Our agreement is still binding.”

  “Not now, it isn’t ”

  “What makes now special?”

  “I think we’d better get together, Steve.”

  “Why?”

  “I can’t go into it over the phone.”

  “Granite City?”

  “Granite City.”

  “How important?”

  “Damned important.”

  “Discovery?”

  “Maybe. I’m not sure.”

  Dear God, Kilduff thought.

  Drexel said, “But not the way you’re thinking.”

  Steve transferred the receiver from his left hand to his right, wiping the moist palm on the leg of his trousers. There was a dry, lacquered taste in his mouth. “All right,” he said slowly. “When?”

  “Tonight.”

  “Where?”

  “We’d better make it your place,” Drexel said. “Can you get rid of your wife for the evening?”

  “She’s already gone,” Kilduff said, a trace of bitterness coming into his tone. He didn’t offer to elaborate. “Why does it have to be here?”

  “Halfway house.”

  “I don’t get you.”

  “Between Bodega Bay and Los Gatos.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Los Gatos.”

  “And Bodega Bay?”

  “Jim Conradin.”

  “Will he be here, too?”

  “If I can reach him.”