Labyrinth (The Nameless Detective)

by Bill Pronzini

  But then the bow straightened, and I saw that the boat was going to bypass me this time by a good fifteen yards. The light jerked back the other way. Greene had no idea where I was; he was hunting blind in the fog. I stopped swimming and treaded water, so that only my head bobbed above the surface. I was afraid of giving my position away with splashes and churned-up foam.

  The Kingfisher drew abreast—and growled past without changing trajectory.

  I lowered my head, flailed out again. The cramp in my calf was worse now: hot wire of pain jabbing all the way up to the hip.

  Stroke.

  Stroke.

  Leg stiffening up.

  Stroke.

  Agony.

  Stroke.

  How much farther? Head up. More of the center float visible, boat moored in the right-hand slip rearing up black but distinct, left-hand slip empty. Twenty yards, maybe less.

  Stroke.

  Leg on fire.

  Stroke.

  The diesel sound—I could no longer hear it except as a low rumble. Greene, the boat, where were they now?

  Drifting in the swells forty or fifty yards distant.

  Throttle shut off, just drifting.

  Movement on deck near the starboard gunwale; a mass of heavy shadows, distorted by the fog. Then they seemed to separate, amoebalike. I thought I saw a blackish lump drop down over the side, thought I heard a splash.

  Kellenbeck? Dead, dumped overboard?

  Swim!

  Flex the leg, suck in air, crawl forward. Pain. Numbness. Heart hammering in a wild cadence. Not enough air; gasps and whimpers coming out of my throat.

  Stroke.

  Stroke.

  Less than ten yards.

  Stroke.

  Engine sound climbing again.

  Leg locked up, useless, can’t swim anymore—

  —dog-paddle then, dog-paddle—

  —almost there, get there—

  —and the edge of the float came up in front of me and I hauled one leaden arm out of the water and fumbled at the slick wood, felt the sharp rib of a barnacle cut into my palm. Got a grip on the upper rim of the float and hung on, pulling myself in against it.

  Behind me the throb of the diesel grew louder.

  I managed to get both forearms onto the float, tried to heave myself up out of the water. But I had no strength left; my whole body trembled with exhaustion and the pain in my leg was hellish. Clinging there, I twisted to look back over my shoulder.

  The spotlight and the Kingfisher’s bow were pointed straight toward the marina channel a few yards to my left.

  Get away from here, I thought, get into the other channel.

  Fingers clawing at the boards, I pulled myself toward the right-hand corner of the float. The troller was nearing the channel ; Greene throttled down and I saw the black hull buck in the swells, the bow drift left until he corrected. The light flicked toward me—

  I heaved around to the channel side just before it swept over the float. Pulled my hands down and shoved the palms against the barnacled underside to hold my head low in the water, beneath the float’s upper edge. Above and beyond me, the light illuminated the rigging and wheelhouse of the boat moored in the near slip. And then cut away as the Kingfisher passed into the channel.

  Some of the desperation faded; my mind was sluggish, but I had control of it. Control of my breathing too. I pushed up, dragged forward to the inner corner. Heard the troller’s engines whine into reverse. Heading into his slip, I thought. But then what? Did Greene think I was still somewhere out in the bay? That I had drowned? That I had made it in here? He might just leave the boat and make for Kellenbeck’s Cadillac—but it was more likely he would take that flashlight of his and prowl the floats, searching for me.

  Stay where I was, hide under the float if he came this way, wait him out? No good. The numbness was spreading and I was beginning to feel almost warm; I knew what that meant well enough. The frigid water had robbed me of body heat: Another few minutes and I would no longer be able to feel or do anything, I would lose consciousness, I would freeze and then drown. I had to get out of the water, even if it meant exposing myself. And I had to do it in the next minute or so, before Greene finished docking the Kingfisher.

  I anchored both forearms on the float again, squirmed upward. But my shoulder and back muscles, and the lower half of my body, were so weak it was like trying to boost up a two-hundred-pound slab of meat; I managed to get my breastbone over the edge and that was all. I hung there, kicking with my good leg, straining frantically to keep from sliding backward.

  The engine sound decreased to an idling rumble: Greene had maneuvered into his slip.

  I threw my right arm out, clutched at the float’s inner edge to hold myself in position—and my chilled fingers brushed over a rusted iron ring imbedded there, part of a rope tied through it. Cleat. And the bow line on the boat above me. I caught hold of the rope and tugged on it. The boat made a creaking noise, rocked forward; the line slackened enough for me to get it looped once around my wrist. Then I put my left hand down flat on the boards, heaved up, pulled back on the rope at the same time. Flopped my body from side to side. Heaved, pulled, flopped until my chest, stomach, abdomen cleared the edge—

  —and I was out of the water and dragging myself forward, knees scraping over the rough wood.

  Across the opposite channel the Kingfisher’s spotlight and running lights winked out. The diesel shut down. Silence settled around me, broken only by the fog bells and the wheezing plaint of my breathing.

  Thin gusts of wind stung my face, cut through the numbness and took away the false feeling of warmth; I began to shake with chills as I lifted back into a kneeling position. When I got my right foot planted and a two-handed grip on the bow line I hoisted and levered myself upright. Almost fell when I tried to put weight on the cramped leg; it buckled and pitched me sideways against the boat. I let go of the rope, grabbed onto the gunwale to steady myself.

  The wheelhouse blocked off my view of Greene’s slip. Blocked off his view, too. Nothing stirred in any other direction except tracers and puffs of fog. I swung myself on board, good leg first, and hobbled to the port wheelhouse bulkhead. Eased along it and around to the aft side.

  Unlike Greene’s, this wheelhouse had a door; it was shut, but when I depressed the latch it popped open. Into the heavy blackness inside. Shut the door again. Down on all fours so I would not bang into anything and make a carrying noise. Then I crawled over to the helm and lifted up to peer through the mist-streaked windshield.

  The pale nightlights let me see part of the float where Greene’s slip was. And he was there, moving away from the ramp toward the bay end. Going to look for me, all right. Near the end he stopped and raised his arm: A shaft of light stabbed out from that big flash of his, swept back and forth in a restless arc over the water. Pretty soon he turned onto the right-angled outer arm, shone the beam across the channel toward where I was. I ducked down, stayed down until the hazy glow disappeared from the glass.

  When I raised up again he was hurrying back toward the ramp. I might have lost sight of him in the fog except that he still had the flash switched on; I could see it flicking out between the moored boats—and I could follow it all the way past the ramp and around onto the connecting walkway.

  Coming out here, too.

  I crawled back along the bulkhead, feeling with my hands. Storage locker aft, near the door—but it was padlocked. I groped above it. Touched cold metal that my fingers told me was a wood-handled steel hook, attached to the bulkhead with clips. Gaff, for hooking and holding heavy fish. Weapon. I took it down, crept back under the wheel. Knelt there gripping it across my chest.

  The sodden clothing clung like a wrapping of ice; tremors racked me and I had to lock my teeth together to keep them from chattering. The cramp had loosened a little, but the leg still ached. All of me ached: muscles, joints, bones. My face was stiff with saltcake; the rest of my skin had a puckered feel, cold and hot at the same tim
e, as if with fever.

  Pneumonia, I thought.

  Flickers of light shone beyond the windshield, went on past. Muffled slap of Greene’s shoes on the float outside. Could he tell I had come out of the water there, climbed on board this boat? No. Float was already wet, sloshed over, and the deck was wet too from the dripping mist. He might decide to check out each of the moored boats, but that wasn’t likely; take too much time, and he could not be sure of what had happened to me. For all he knew I had made it to shore and was already on my way to summon the cops. He just could not afford to hang around much longer.

  Another ten seconds passed.

  Come on, you son of a bitch. Move out, start running.

  Ten more seconds.

  Light in the glass again, centered there for an instant. Then it moved off. Footfalls, fading.

  Darkness except for the nightlights.

  Silence.

  I let out a breath through my nostrils. But stayed where I was for a time, listening. Still no sounds from outside. Raised up again, leaned close to the windshield. Emptiness across the way, no movement of any kind. Faint movement of light far down to the right, though, reflected off the fog—Greene over on the float?

  Half a minute. Forty seconds.

  And the beam reappeared, hazed and steady, on the walkway at the shore end. Moved along there and around onto the west-side float, dancing out again between the boats. Stopped at the Kingfisher, traced a path up across the deck, splashed over the wheelhouse. Probed inside. Vanished.

  More waiting, face pressed close to the glass. One minute. Two. Three. The light poked back out, retraced across the deck and down onto the float. Shut off again in front of the ramp. Four beats. Black silhouette: Greene climbing up the metal ladder, something large and squarish in his right hand. Suitcase?

  Then he was gone, swallowed by the mist and the darkness.

  I used the gaff as a fulcrum to push myself onto my feet. Left leg took my weight now, but I would have to favor the right just in case. I leaned against the binnacle, staring out. More waiting, to make sure he didn’t decide to come back.

  Emptiness.

  Okay, enough. Enough. Back along the bulkhead to the door, out on deck. Over the gunwale, still hanging onto the gaff, and down the float to the connecting walkway.

  Stillness.

  Around to the ramp. Up the ladder in cautious movements, to peer down the ramp at the highway.

  Deserted highway: Kellenbeck’s Cadillac was gone.

  Onto the ramp, along the ramp. Stumbling a little now; legs wobbly, threatening to give out. The wind welding clothing to skin, making me shake like a man with palsy.

  Drop the gaff, cross the road. Packed-dirt driveway there, leading up to where houselights glowed behind the screen of fog. Up the driveway. Stumbling again, falling, getting up. House taking shape—gray hexagonal thing with a wrap around porch and switchback stairs leading up. Climb the stairs, lean panting beside the door. Knock on the door. Somebody coming, somebody opening up—

  And it was over.

  God—it was over.

  TWENTY

  The next few hours were a time I lived through with a kind of schizoid detachment: part of me seemed to retreat, to become a disinterested observer, while the other part continued to operate more or less normally. Temporary reactional dysfunction, the psychologists call it, induced by a period of intense physical and emotional stress. And the hell with them and their fancy labels.

  The people who lived in the house were the Muhlheims, a couple of artists in their forties. They were helpful and solicitous types and the first thing they tried to do was to get me out of my wet clothes; but all I could think about was using the phone. Muhlheim wrapped a blanket around me while I called the county police in Santa Rosa. I used Eberhardt’s and Donleavy’s names to get through to a lieutenant named Fitzpatrick and laid out the story for him in clipped sentences, some of which I had to repeat because of the way my teeth kept clacking together; the only thing I omitted was mention of the private eye as a horse’s ass: my breaking into the Kellenbeck Fish Company. Fitzpatrick asked a couple of terse questions, and my answers and the urgency in my voice seemed to convince him I was telling a straight story. He instructed me to stay where I was, said he would take care of contacting other police agencies.

  When I hung up I let Muhlheim show me to the bathroom. He and his wife had listened to my end of the conversation with plenty of interest, but to his credit he did not try to question me. He gave me some dry clothes—we were about the same size—and left me alone to strip and take a five-minute, steaming-hot shower. Which only just dulled the edge of my chill, but which at least stopped the shaking.

  Mrs. Muhlheim had a pot of hot tea and another blanket waiting when I came out. Plus some salve for the barnacle cuts on my hands. Ten more minutes passed, most of it in silence; the tea warmed me a little more. Then there was a sharp rapping on the front door. And things began to happen.

  Two highway patrolmen. Questions. A guy from the Coast Guard station at Doran Park. A pair of county Sheriffs deputies. More questions. Another highway patrolman. A telephone call to Santa Rosa made by one of the deputies. And after that they took me out of there, bundled in an old overcoat offered up by Muhlheim, and down to the Highway Patrol substation south of Bodega.

  Fitzpatrick, a youngish guy with an authoritarian manner, arrived from Santa Rosa. More questions. Report from the Coast Guard: They had fished Kellenbeck’s body out of the bay near the marina, shot once through the heart. A doctor showed up, summoned by somebody along the line, and spent a little time examining me. No fever, he said, no other signs of incipient pneumonia. He gave me some pills to swallow, told me to see my physician if I developed any serious symptoms, and went away.

  Eberhardt called from his home—Fitzpatrick had notified the Hall of Justice and they in turn had contacted Eb—and I was allowed to talk to him. In concerned tones he asked how I was. I said I was fine, wonderful, that son of a bitch Greene had come within minutes of killing me dead. Then I told the story all over again, for the fifth or sixth time. I’ll get back to you in the morning, he said. Yeah, I said.

  Greene was still at large. But there was an All-Points Bulletin out on him, Fitzpatrick told me—it was only a matter of time. The head of the Alcohol and Firearms Unit office in San Francisco called. I got to talk to him, too, and answer some more questions, and listen to him tell me he would send agents up in the morning to interrogate me “when you’re feeling better.”

  I was so tired by this time, from all the talk and the pills and the physical and mental strain, that I had trouble holding my head up. I asked Fitzpatrick if I could please, for Christ’s sake, be taken somewhere so I could get some sleep. Yes, he supposed I had been through enough for one night. Damned right, I thought. Put you up at The Tides Motel, somebody said, that okay? Just dandy.

  Out of there finally and into a car, Fitzpatrick driving. Where was my car? he asked. Up by the Kellenbeck Fish Company. Keys? Lost in the bay, they were in my overcoat pocket, but there’s another set in a little magnetic box behind the rear bumper. He’d have somebody pick it up and bring it to the motel.

  Motel. Check-in. Room. They went away, saying they would talk to me again in the morning. Bed. Sleep. Dreams of ice and water, guns and darkness, dead faces floating at the bottom of the sea.

  Long, bad night . . .

  A knocking on the door woke me. I sat up a little groggily and it took me a few seconds to orient myself, remember where I was. Gray light in the room, filtering in through half-closed drapes over the window. I squinted at my watch It was a good old waterproof Timex and still ticking away, undamaged by the salt water last night; the hands read eight-twenty-five.

  I swung my feet out, sat on the edge of the bed. The knocking came again. I called, “Just a minute,” and then stood up in a tentative way, testing my legs. Stiff, with a faint weakness in the joints. Same feeling in my arms. My head was stuffy and there was congestion in my lungs,
the kind I used to have before I gave up cigarettes. Otherwise I seemed to be in reasonably good shape for what I had been through.

  I put on Muhlheim’s clothes and went over and opened the door. Fitzpatrick. He asked me how I was, but not as if it mattered a great deal to him, and handed me my car keys.

  “Greene?” I said.

  He shook his head. “Not yet. But we’ll get him, don’t worry.”

  “I’m not worried. Just eager.”

  “Sure. Federal agents are here; they said they’d be over to see you later this morning. So don’t go anywhere for awhile.”

  “How about after I see them? Can I leave for home then?”

  “You can as far as I’m concerned,” Fitzpatrick said. “But stop by the substation before you go; there’s a statement waiting for you to sign.”

  After he left I went into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. Beard stubble, puffy eyes, mottled skin, hair sticking up every which way like a fright wig: face to scare little children with. I turned out of there, put on Muhlheim’s overcoat, left the room, and hunted up my car. Reversed the procedure, carrying my overnight case, and then went to work on the beard stubble with a razor.

  While I shaved I did some heavy thinking for the first time since early last night. Not about Greene and what had happened in the bay; that brush with death, and my own foolishness that had led to it, was something I did not want to relive. What I did think about was the bootlegging and the murders of Jerry Carding and his father. And about all the questions that were still unanswered, the one major question that was still unanswered.

  Who had murdered Christine Webster?

  The mental work got me nowhere. And yet, if I kept going over things enough times, maybe there was something I knew and could remember—like the little things I had known and remembered about Kellenbeck and the Cardings. Maybe . . .

  The telephone rang just as I finished toweling off. I went into the other room, picked up the receiver. And listened to Eberhardt’s voice say, “It’s me. How you feeling this morning?”