Hoodwink nd-7

by Bill Pronzini

  “Oh, is that so? Why not?”

  “Because you’re an obnoxious drunk.”

  “Hah?”

  “Convention organizers aren’t interested in drunks. Neither are college faculties. And neither are the fans; they don’t care to watch sodden hacks stumbling around making fools of themselves.”

  It got quiet among the five of us. Wade had spoken softly, evenly, but each of the words was like an arrow coated with venom. Dancer opened his mouth, closed it again as if he were still casting around inside his head for a suitable comeback. He had absorbed abusive remarks from Bo hannon and Cybil Wade and Ramsey, but they had each had a bantering quality; he could deal with a few harmless insults among old cronies. But he didn’t seem to know how to handle the real thing-a combination of dislike and disgust.

  Ten seconds went away. And finally Dancer found words, so inadequate after all that silence that they were an anticlimax: “So I’m a drunk and a hack, Ivan, so what?”

  “So nothing,” Wade said. “So you’re a drunk and a hack, that’s all.”

  Dancer did not get angry, or laugh, or shrug it off. Wade’s words seemed to have cut deep inside him, sliced into a nerve somewhere. Pain showed on his face, but it was not self-pity this time-it was hurt just as genuine as Wade’s disgust, a reflection of the festering spiritual anguish that had made him a drunk in the first place.

  His eyes shifted away from Wade, flicked over Ramsey and Praxas to me, and then focused downward on the empty glass in his hand. Without saying anything, he turned from us and went to the bar.

  Ramsey said, “You put it into him kind of deep, didn’t you, Ivan?”

  “Did I?” Wade said. He shrugged, his face impassive. “If you’ll all excuse me …” And he went away too, over toward the windows.

  “What was that all about?” I asked Ramsey and Praxas. “Something between the two of them?”

  “You could say that,” Ramsey answered.

  “Mind if I ask what it is?”

  “It’s a long story,” Praxas said. “And ancient history.”

  Which meant that he didn’t want to discuss it. Neither did Ramsey, judging from his expression. So I let it drop; it was none of my business, really. Unless it had a bearing on the extortion business, and that seemed doubtful.

  Dancer came back from the bar with a fresh drink. But he didn’t rejoin the three of us; he plopped himself down in a chair not far away and stared out at the mosaic of city lights. Then, almost at once, he began to sing. Not in the loud boisterous way of most drunks at a party; in a subdued and dolorous voice that barely carried to where we were standing. I could just make out the words-the same four-line, mostly Spanish verse over and over, not so much a song as a chant. Or a lament.

  “No tengo tabaco, “No tengo papel, “No tengo dinero- “Goddammit to hell. While the three of us were listening to that, not saying anything, Jim Bohannon came wandering over. He stopped beside me, cocked his head in Dancer’s direction, and said to Praxas, “Some things don’t change much in thirty years, I reckon.”

  “Apparently not.”

  Ramsey saw me looking puzzled. “Russ used to recite that verse at Pulpeteer meetings,” he said, “every time he dived into the sauce. Drunker he got, the more he’d feel sorry for himself; and the sorrier he felt, the more he’d recite. Used to drive us crazy.”

  “Well, at least he’s learned to be quiet about it,“Bohannon said.

  I asked, “Did he make it up himself?”

  “No. It’s an old cowboy lament, from down along the Mexican border-”

  There was a sudden commotion behind us, in the center of the room: loud voices and the sound of glass shattering. Bohannon and I both spun around; all the party noises seemed to stop at once, including Dancer’s singing. Twenty feet away two men stood facing each other, a broken highball glass and a streak of wetness and melting ice cubes like a dividing line on the carpet between them. One of the men was the scrawny ex-editor, Frank Colodny. The other one I didn’t know; he was a dusty, sixtyish guy wearing hornrimmed glasses and an ancient sports jacket with elbow patches.

  Colodny had his right hand up, forefinger extended and shaking within an inch of the other guy’s chin. His face was congested and his eyes had bright, hot little lights in them. “Stay the hell away from me, Meeker, I’m warning you.”

  “Say that a little louder,” the man named Meeker said. He looked just the opposite of Colodny-calm and coldly deliberate. “Let everybody hear it.”

  “You crazy bastard-”

  “Louder, Frank. Louder.”

  Colodny seemed to have a belated awareness of his audience; he lowered his arm, licked his lips, and backed off a step. Then he clamped his lips together, made them disappear into a thin white slash. And swung around and stalked out of the suite, brushing past a startled-looking Lloyd Underwood who had hurried in and was half blocking the entrance.

  The other man, Meeker, watched him go with a faint, humorless smile plucking at the corners of his mouth. When Colodny had disappeared, Meeker sat on his heels and began to pick up the broken shards of glass. And as if that was a cue for the rest of us, the frozen tableau dissolved and people began moving around and talking again, letting the mood of the party regenerate like new skin over a minor wound.

  “No tengo tabaco, “No tengo papel…”

  Bohannon said, “Now what the devil is Frank so heated up about?”

  “That’s a good question,” Praxas said. “He seemed jittery and upset when he got here.”

  I asked, “Who’s the fellow named Meeker?”

  “Ozzie Meeker. An oldtimer like us.” ‘“A writer? I don’t recognize the name.”

  “No. An artist,”

  “He worked with Frank at Action House in the forties,” Ramsey said. “Did most of the detective and Western covers, and some of the interior black-and-whites.”

  “His name wasn’t in the convention brochure, was it?”

  Praxas shook his head. “I understand Lloyd Underwood wasn’t able to locate him until after the brochures were printed. But he’s exhibiting some of his work in the Art Room.”

  “Nostalgia got to him, same as it got to us,” Bohannon said. “He was one of us for a while, you know.”

  “The Pulpeteers, you mean?” I asked.

  “Right. He started coming to meetings in the late forties, after he went to work for Action House. He and Colodny were always friendly back then. Wonder what set them off now, after all these years?”

  Nobody seemed to know.

  “No tengo dinero- “Goddammit to hell…”

  The little group we made began to break up one by one. Ramsey drifted off to the bar for another drink; Bohannon’s wife, a pleasant gray-haired lady, came over and got him and took him away to meet someone; and one of the convention organizers, or maybe just a fan, collared Praxas and began asking him questions about The Spectre’s sex life. Which left me standing by myself, listening to Dancer sing his monotonous little lament. And wondering about things like the.38 in Cybil Wade’s purse, Dancer’s dislike for Colodny, the sudden tension between Colodny and Meeker, the deeper-seated tension between Dancer and Ivan Wade.

  Not that there was much point in my worrying about any of it. I had no particular desire to involve myself in a lot of private, thirty-year-old interrelationships among ex-pulp writers. Despite what Dancer had gone around telling people, the old lone wolf was here to enjoy himself more than he was here to work at detection.

  And one of the ways I might like to enjoy myself started toward me just then, smiling in her frank, attractive way.

  Kerry Wade.

  FIVE

  She had a small snifter of brandy in her left hand and a bottle of Lowenbrau in her right. So when she stopped in front of me, I said with spontaneous and devastating cleverness, “Two-fisted drinker, are you, Miss Wade?”

  Which probably made me seem like a half-wit. Made me feel like one, anyway, when she extended the bottle, saying, “The bartender told me y
ou’d asked for a beer earlier. Room Service finally decided to deliver some, so I thought I’d play waitress.”

  I said, “Oh. Um, thanks.” And thought: God, you’re sharp tonight, just full of urbane remarks and sparkling repartee. No wonder you’re such a hot number with the ladies-you klutz, you.

  Kerry seemed faintly amused; maybe klutzes appealed to her sense of humor. “It’s not Miss Wade, by the way. It’s Mrs. Dunston.”

  “Oh,“I said again.

  “But I don’t use the Dunston anymore. Not since my divorce two years ago.”

  I started to say “Oh” a third time, caught myself, and said, “So you’re a divorced lady,” which was even dumber.

  “Mm-hmm. How about you?”

  “No.”

  “No what? No, you’re not divorced?”

  “No. I mean, I’m not married.”

  “Never been?”

  “Never been.”

  “A bachelor private eye,” she said. “Do you carry a gun in your shoulder holster and have a beautiful secretary and keep a bottle in your desk drawer?”

  “No to all three.”

  “How come?”

  “I don’t like guns much, secretaries are too expensive, especially beautiful ones, and I drink only beer.”

  “That’s better,” she said.

  “Better?”

  “You were all flustered there for a minute. I was afraid you were one of these men who don’t know how to talk to a woman. Either that, or you were gay. You’re not, are you?”

  “Me? God, no.”

  “Good.”

  “I wasn’t flustered, either,” I lied.

  Her smile broadened; I was not fooling her at all.

  “Are you also a writer, Miss Wade? Or should I call you Mrs. Duns ton?”

  “Neither one. Try Kerry. No, I’m not a writer. I had aspirations once, and maybe a little inherited talent, but my parents did everything they could to discourage me. It’s probably a good thing they did.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Being a writer isn’t all people think it is.”

  “It’s been a good business for them, hasn’t it?”

  “For my dad it has. At least most of the time.”

  “But not for your mother?”

  “No. She hasn’t written a word in twenty-five years.”

  “I didn’t know that. How come?”

  “She isn’t able to write any more,” Kerry said. Some of the lightness had gone from her voice. “She wants to, but she just can’t. It’s hell for her. But then, if she was writing that would probably be hell for her, too. It was when she was doing her pulp stories.”

  “I’m not sure I follow that.”

  “It’s the nature of the business. Professional writing isn’t glamorous or exciting; it’s a lot of hard work, for not all that much money and no real security, and on top of that it’s the loneliest profession in the world. ‘Always having to live inside your own head,’ is the way my father puts it. Plus it’s one of the most stressful professions. That’s why the percentage of alcoholics and suicides among writers is double or triple that of just about every other business.”

  “I didn’t know that, either,” I said.

  “Most laypersons don’t.”

  “Laypersons?”

  “Well, nonwriters. Are you a chauvinist, by any chance?”

  “Not me.”

  “Fictional private eyes usually are,” she said, and a sort of bawdy gleam came into her eyes. “In fact, most of them seem to be obsessed with male-dominant sex. The gun they all carry is a phallic symbol, you know; every time they shoot somebody with it, it’s like having an orgasm.”

  “Uh,“I said.

  She laughed. It was a nice laugh, a little bawdy to match the gleam, and it did things to what was left of my shriveled libido. No wonder she made me feel flustered; I had not slept with a woman in months, and I was not used to outspoken, attractive, horny-eyed ladies coming on to me in the first place. And Kerry Wade was coming on to me, no doubt about that.

  Wasn’t she?

  I thought it might be a good idea to change the subject; otherwise I was liable to tuck my foot into my cheek in place of my tongue. “You didn’t answer the question I asked a little while ago,” I said. “About what you do. For a living, I mean.”

  Her eyes laughed at me this time. I would have given anything to know what was going on behind them, what she was thinking about me. “I’m an advertising copywriter for Bates and Carpenter.”

  “That’s a San Francisco firm.”

  “One of the largest.”

  “Then you live in the Bay Area?”

  “Here in the city. On Twin Peaks.”

  That surprised me a little. The convention brochure said that Ivan and Cybil Wade lived in North Hollywood, and so I had automatically assumed Kerry was also from Southern California. There were notions in my head already, but the fact that she lived in San Francisco gave me a few more. If she really was coming on to me …

  “Well,“I said in my sophisticated way, “how about that?”

  “Mmm. Where do you live?”

  “Pacific Heights.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “That’s a nice neighborhood.”

  “Yep. But it’s an old building, and I’ve had my flat and the same benevolent landlord for more than twenty years. Otherwise I couldn’t afford it.”

  “Do you really own twenty thousand pulp magazines?”

  “Is that what Russ Dancer told you?”

  “It is. Not true?”

  “Not true. More like sixty-five hundred.”

  Mention of Dancer made me aware that he was no longer singing his little lament. I glanced over at the chair he’d been sitting in, but it was empty now, — the party crowd seemed to have thinned out somewhat, and I didn’t see him anywhere else in the room either. Gone to the John, maybe. Or to his own room to sleep it off. No tengo Dancer, in any case, and that was probably just as well.

  “Looking for somebody?” Kerry asked.

  “I was just wondering what had happened to Dancer.”

  “Don’t worry about him. He’ll be drunk the whole weekend, now that he’s seen Cybil again, but he won’t bother anybody. He seems to stop just short of being obnoxious.”

  “Why would seeing your mother send him on a four-day binge?”

  “You mean you couldn’t tell?”

  “Tell what?”

  “He’s in love with her. He has been for thirty-five years.”

  “So that’s it.”

  “He had it so bad, Cybil says, that he even tried once to talk her into divorcing my father and marrying him. That was back around 1950, just before he left New York and moved out here.”

  “Your father knew about this?”

  “Sure. He and Cybil never had any secrets from each other.”

  “Well, that explains why he doesn’t like Dancer,” I said.

  “You noticed that much, at least. Dad hates him, I think; he didn’t even want to come here when he found out Dancer would be on the program. But Cybil talked him into it. It’s all water under the bridge as far as she’s concerned.”

  “Then she’d hardly be afraid of Dancer, would she?”

  “Afraid of him? Lord, no. She’s not afraid of anybody. She’s as tough as Max Ruffe used to be ‘in her stories.”

  Yeah, she is, I thought. And she’s packing a rod just like Ruffe did, too. How come? I wanted to ask Kerry, but this did not seem to be the time or place to spring that kind of question. Besides which, as I kept telling myself, it was none of my business. Not unless Cybil intended to take potshots at somebody. And I doubted that.

  Kerry finished what was left of her brandy, and I asked her if she’d like another. She said, “I don’t think so. Two drinks are my limit on an empty stomach.”

  “No dinner tonight?”

  “Nope. I had to work late.”

  “You must be pretty hungry, then.”

  “Getting that way. Want to buy me a
sandwich?”

  “Sure.”

  “Is that a serious offer?”

  “Italians are always serious when it comes to food,” I said, which was the first semiwitty line I had managed in her presence so far. “There’s a coffee shop down in the lobby. Or we could go over to Rosebud’s on Geary.”

  “Rosebud’s sounds good,” she said. “We’ll have to stop by my folks’ room first, though; I left my coat there. Just let me get the key.”

  I watched her move away to where Cybil and Ivan were talking to another couple, and I thought: So maybe she really is coming on to me-how about that? I felt pretty chipper. My somewhat bruised male ego had taken a much-needed stroking in the past few minutes-and never mind what it was she saw or thought she saw in me. Never mind the erotic fantasies, either that were starting to simmer in the back of m) dirty old brain. It was just nice to find an attractive woman who found me attractive in turn, even if it never led to anything more than a late-night supper at Rosebud’s English pub. She made me feel awkward and comfortable at the same time, which is a stimulating way to feel, and I liked her frankness and her sense of humor and the way her coppery hair seemed to ripple with reflections of light. In fact I liked everything about her so far.

  She came back after a couple of minutes, and I finished the last of my beer and we went out. On the way to the elevators I asked her, “What would you say if I told you I became a private detective because I wanted to be like the private eyes I read about in the pulps?”

  “You mean tough and hard-boiled?”

  “No. Just a private eye-doing a job, helping people in trouble.”

  “In other words, being a hero.”

  “Well… in a way, yes.”

  “Then I’d say you made a good choice. I’m partial to heroes myself, all kinds, even if it’s not fashionable any more. The world would be a much better place if there were more heroes and fewer antiheroes. Not to mention fewer politicians.”

  I liked that too.

  We took a down elevator and got off on the tenth floor. The Wades’ room was 1017, just down the left-hand hallway-a suite, judging from the jux position of numbered doors on that side. Kerry got out the key her mother had given her, scraped it into the latch, unlocked the door, and pushed it open. She reached inside for the light switch, but when she flipped it nothing happened.