Shackles

by Bill Pronzini

  I repeated it, committing it to memory: “Two-one-nine-six-three Roseville Avenue, Carmichael.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Did he give a telephone number?”

  “Yes, I think so …”

  She found it and read it out, and I repeated it, too, so I wouldn’t forget it.

  When I thanked the two of them for their help, Hennessey said, “Any time. Wait’ll I tell the wife we helped out a private eye. She’ll wet her pants.” He winked at me, winked at Wilma, and said, “She might even give me a little tonight.”

  Wilma sighed, pursed her lips, and sat down at her desk. Hennessey grinned. And I went away from both of them.

  AFTERNOON

  There were no rental car agencies in Sonora; I had learned that last night, from the desk clerk when I checked into the motel. So after I left Rite-Way Plumbing and Heating, I found my way to the bus station. The next bus to Sacramento wasn’t until tomorrow morning, but there was a one o’clock coach to Stockton. I spent nearly ten of my remaining dollars on a one-way ticket. Stockton was some sixty miles south and a little west of Carmichael, a sprawling northern suburb of Sacramento; it was also about the same distance from Sonora. I could rent a car there this afternoon and be in Carmichael sometime early this evening. The sooner I had a car and the freedom of mobility it provided, the better off I would be.

  From a phone booth I called Sacramento County information and asked for a Carmichael listing for James Lanier. I half expected to be told that there wasn’t one, after seven years, but the operator punched in his computer without comment and an electronic voice gave the same number Wilma had read to me. So Lanier was likely still at the same Roseville Avenue address. I could confirm that by checking the local directory when I got to Carmichael.

  I had gotten several quarters and I used those to call Bates and Carpenter in San Francisco. I had tried dialing Kerry’s home number twice more last night, the last time at a quarter to eleven, and she still hadn’t answered. Nothing ominous in that, or even significant, but it preyed on my mind just the same.

  When the call went through I said to the woman on the switchboard, “Kerry Wade, please.” There was a click, another ringing sound, and then another click and Kerry’s secretary, Ellen Stilwell, said cheerfully, “Ms. Wade’s office.”

  She knew my voice, Ellen did—I had called Kerry often enough at the agency—so I deepened and roughened it when I asked, “Is Ms. Wade in?”

  “May I ask who’s calling?”

  “Then she is in?”

  “Yes, she is. Your name, please, sir?”

  Relieved, I tapped the box with the handset, jiggled the cradle at the same time to make it seem as though there was something wrong with the line, and then hung up. All right. Kerry was alive, safe, well enough to be at her job; now I could put my mind at ease at least where she was concerned.

  I went to a café not far away and drank coffee and made myself eat a piece of apple pie. Back at the bus station, I bought a newspaper and caught up on the news. Nothing much had changed in three months: political scandals, corporate scandals, religious scandals, small wars like rehearsals for another big one, all sorts of killing on the individual level. Lots of changes taking place everywhere—change is systemic in all walks of life, sometimes subtle and sometimes not so subtle—and yet certain fundamental things never change. I thought of the line from the Peter, Paul, and Mary song: When will they ever learn? Rhetorical question; moot point. We’ll never learn. We’ll never learn our way smack into the middle of Armageddon, and then we’ll say, with the last words we’ll ever speak, “How could this have happened? How could we have let this happen?”

  The bus left on time. I sat in the back and stared out the window and tried not to fidget. The impatience that Wilma and Hennessey had rearoused in me this morning wouldn’t go away. Outside the bus there were green trees and hillsides and then long, barren stretches of cattle graze as we came down out of the foothills into the upper reaches of the Central Valley; inside me there was turmoil, and the knowledge that I was no different from the rest of mankind. Each of us likes to believe we’re unique, special. But when something profound happens, something like being chained up alone in a mountain cabin for ninety days, you realize the truth—that in you, as in everyone, there is a thing that crawled up out of the primordial slime a hundred million years ago, a thing so savage and elemental that it can, if you let it loose, overwhelm your humanity and reduce you to its level. This is the thing that causes war, that brutalizes and destroys, that keeps us from ever really being civilized creatures. This was the one thing I was about to unleash … even though I knew what it was and what it might do to me. I hadn’t learned. I thought I had but I hadn’t and in a way that was the most terrible truth I had ever had to face about myself.

  We arrived in Stockton a little past three-thirty. A cab driver took another three dollars of my money to deliver me to an Avis office, where I rented a Toyota Tercel—the only nonluxury car they had available—that I could drop off at any Avis outlet in northern California. The woman who waited on me examined my driver’s license, wrote down my name on the rental agreement, and ran off my MasterCard without a flicker of recognition.

  It felt odd to be behind the wheel of a car again after so long a time. And I was not used to driving small foreign cars like this one. It wasn’t until I got out of Stockton proper and onto Highway 99 that I began to relax. And once I relaxed, I felt a sense of release. I was in control again. From here on in, until the hunt was finished, I would not have to rely on anybody but myself.

  EVENING

  I ran into rush hour traffic above Elk Grove and 99 stayed jammed all the way through Sacramento, so that it was six-thirty when I finally reached Carmichael. I stopped at a Union station just off the freeway and went to one of two public telephone booths to look up James Lanier. The directory had been vandalized in that booth, the whole middle section ripped out; and in the other booth there was no book at all. Life in the enlightened eighties. I talked one of the attendants into hunting up the station’s private directory, which turned out to be over a year old. Lanier was listed in there, at least, and at the same Roseville Avenue address.

  The attendant sold me a Carmichael street map for two of my last five dollars. I sat in the car with it for ten minutes, first locating Roseville Avenue and then tracing a route from where I was. The distance was three or four miles. Just a short hop … but it took me half an hour to get there, because I made a wrong turn somewhere and got lost and had to stop and study the map again to retrace and refigure the route. I was sweating and drawn tight when I finally pulled up in front of 21963 Roseville Avenue.

  Nobody was home.

  The house was dark, no car under the carport to one side; and nobody answered when I went up and rang the bell.

  I sat in the car for a time, still hot and tense, and stared at the house. Typical tract rancher, nothing special about it under its night cover except that the front yard was neatly and lushly landscaped. Not the kind of place you’d expect to find a madman living in, or a link to a madman either. Except that madmen and those who nurture them live in the same places sane people do, from any city’s Skid Row to the stately homes and expensive flats of Washington, D.C., and McLean, Virginia. You can’t always tell a book by its cover, you can’t always tell the lunatics of the world by their cover.

  Pretty soon I started the car, drove around until I noticed a Denny’s, went in there and ate something—I don’t remember what—and killed more time over three coffee refills. It was 9:15 when I pulled up in front of the Roseville Avenue house for the second time.

  Still dark, still nobody home.

  Now what? I could sit here and wait, but there were people in the neighboring houses, lights blazing in the two flanking Lanier’s. A man sitting in a strange car in a neighborhood like this would have a cop asking him hard questions inside of half an hour. A better idea was to drive around some more, keep checking back periodically—for
a while, anyway. I was already tired, headachy, gritty-eyed: the long day and the constant tension taking their toll. Make eleven o’clock the cutoff, then. If nobody showed up by eleven, go find a motel and try to get some sleep and then come back early in the morning.

  So I drove aimlessly, keeping to major thoroughfares so I wouldn’t get lost again. And I returned to 21963 Roseville Avenue three more times, the last one at five minutes past eleven. And still nobody was home.

  I’d seen a motel near the Denny’s where I’d eaten; I went there, took a room. The woman at the desk was fat and middle-aged and friendly, and it was plain that she found me at least a little attractive. She smiled when she handed over my key. I smiled back, turned away—and as I did that I was conscious of the weight of the .22 in my jacket pocket and I found myself thinking, with a flash of self-hatred: No, you can’t always tell a lunatic by his cover.

  * * *

  The Second Day

  * * *

  EARLY MORNING

  Someone was home when I returned to 21963 Roseville Avenue at 8:30 A.M. A ten-year-old Buick stood under the carport, and down on his knees among the flowers and shrubs in the front yard was a man in gardening clothes—a bald man who looked to be in his early sixties.

  I parked across the street. It was a warmish, sunny morning and there was a good deal of activity along the block: kids on their way to school, men and women backing cars out of driveways, mothers with toddlers in tow and babies in carriages. By daylight, it had the look of an older, once attractive and solidly middle-class neighborhood that was now starting to slide a little; some homes needed cosmetic and structural repairs, some yards had been allowed to deteriorate into weed patches; even the shade trees that lined its sidewalks had a ragged appearance. The middle class was a rapidly diminishing segment of this country’s population; in another ten years, those families that still qualified would have moved elsewhere, upscale or maybe just sidescale, and this neighborhood would be on its way to becoming a suburban slum tract. Another of the Great American Dreams in remission.

  Lanier’s was the best kept house on the block. It had been repainted and reroofed not long ago, the lawn was a thick healthy green and well barbered, the flower beds were weed-free. The yard of a meticulous person, one who enjoyed gardening enough to be doing it at 8:30 in the morning.

  The bald man was transplanting a nursery tray full of small yellow flowers; and he was so engrossed in the task that he didn’t seem to hear me a. I walked up the brick path toward him. It was only when I stopped a few feet away and said, “Mr. Lanier?” that he straightened on his knees and looked my way.

  “Yes?”

  No recognition on his face or in his voice; just a small smile and a mild curiosity in mild blue eyes. Everything about him was mild and nondescript: Mr. Average American working in his garden. I reminded myself that you can’t judge a man by his cover—but I had the feeling that if he was involved in what had been done to me, it was in the most peripheral of ways.

  “You’re James Lanier?”

  “Yes, that’s right?”

  “Do you or did you own a summer cabin on Indian Hill Road near Deer Run?”

  “Why … yes.” He put down the trowel he’d been using, got slowly to his feet. There was an odd methodical quality about his movements, as if it wasn’t natural to him to move that way; as if he had once been a quick, energetic man who had undergone some kind of physiological or maybe psychological change. “Has something happened?”

  “Happened?”

  “At the cabin.”

  “Then you still do own it?”

  “Yes, I do. But I haven’t been there since … in more than three years. Has the new tenant done something to the place?”

  “Tenant. Meaning you’ve rented it to someone?”

  “I haven’t, no. Richards and Kirk handled the transaction for me, as they always do.”

  “Who would Richards and Kirk be?”

  “My realtors. And you? Who would you be?”

  I told him my name. And I showed him the photostat of my investigator’s license.

  “I don’t understand,” he said. His curiosity was a little stronger now, but I had the impression that it was superficial—that he didn’t really care who I was or why I was here or what might have happened at his Deer Run cabin. “Is the new tenant some sort of criminal?”

  “I’m afraid so, Mr. Lanier. That’s why I’m trying to find him. I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me his name.”

  “I don’t remember it, I’m sorry. Susan has all the paperwork on the transaction.”

  “Susan?”

  “The woman I deal with at Richards and Kirk. Susan Belford.”

  “Can you tell me when the cabin was rented?”

  “In October, I think it was. No, early November. Susan was very pleased because it was for six months over the winter. That was the first time she was able to rent it over the winter.”

  “Would you do me a favor, Mr. Lanier?”

  “Favor?”

  “Call Susan Belford and ask her to give me the name of the man who rented the cabin. His name and address.”

  Lanier considered that. “All right,” he said at length. “If the man is a criminal … yes, all right.” He started toward the house, stopped after half a dozen steps, and turned to me again. “Is it nine o’clock yet?”

  I looked at my watch. “No, not yet. Fifteen minutes.”

  “Richards and Kirk doesn’t open until nine. Would you like to come in and have a cup of coffee while we wait?”

  “If it’s no trouble.”

  “Not at all.”

  He went onto a narrow porch, opened the door, led me into a bright, clean, comfortably furnished living room that had the stamp of an old-fashioned woman on it: antimacassars on the arms of a couch and two chairs, knick-knacks on tables and wall shelves, a framed embroidered wall motto that said: Dear House, You Are Very Small—Enough Room for Love, That’s AIL On an end table was an overlarge photograph of a woman in an ornate silver frame. I glanced at it as we walked by. Smiling, buxom woman of about sixty, as nondescript in her way as Lanier was in his.

  I said politely, indicating the photo, “Your wife?”

  It stopped him as suddenly as if I had caught his arm and yanked him still. And such an expression of naked pain came over his face that it made me wince. It lasted only a moment or two; then the mildness smoothed his features again, like a veneer over scarred wood. “My wife Clara,” he said in his emotionless voice. “She … died three years ago last December.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you. She was …” He broke off, stood rigidly for a few seconds, lost in some brief, sharp memory. Then he smiled his small smile and said, “Please sit down,” and went through an archway toward the rear of the house.

  I sat on one of the chairs. I could see the wall motto from there: Enough Room for Love, That’s All. And I looked elsewhere, because it made me feel Lanier’s pain again. There was no impatience in me today, for some reason; it seemed to come and go, like a malarial fever.

  Lanier came back with a full coffee service on a silver tray, set in on a coffee table, poured for both of us. I said I would have mine black, and as he handed me my cup he said, “I always load mine with cream and sugar. You learn to do that in the service.”

  “What branch were you in?”

  “Air force. Twenty years. I probably should have stayed in; Clara thought I should have. She never minded the travel …” He broke off as he had before, as a memory took hold of his mind. Pretty soon he said, as if there had been no long pause, “But I had a good job offer. Electronics company in Sacramento. Design work, good salary—jobs like that don’t come along every day.”

  “No,” I said, “they don’t.”

  He sat down with his coffee. “Bought this place, bought the cabin in Deer Run, sent our daughter to college. Ruth’s .married now, lives in Menlo Park—her husband teaches history at the junior college there. I tried to g
ive them the cabin after Clara … well, I knew I wouldn’t go back up there alone. But they didn’t want it. Too isolated, Ruth said. She never did like it much and Jim, well, he prefers water to mountains. They have a sailboat, spend most of their free time sailing on the Bay—” Abruptly he quit talking. Blinked, seemed to shake himself, and then said in a different voice, “I’m babbling. Bad habit of mine. I don’t know why I do it.”

  I knew. But I said, “Don’t apologize, Mr. Lanier.”

  “Ruth says I should get out more, see people, do things. She’s right, of course. I belong to the Moose Lodge and I go down there two nights a week now, play cards, play chess. Bowl one night a week too. But that’s only three nights. Movies once in a while, but what else can I do? Go to seniors dances, try to meet someone else? My God, I—” He stopped again, took a breath. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m boring you. You don’t want to hear my tale of woe.”

  “I don’t mind. I know what it’s like for you.”

  He raised his head. “You’ve lost someone too? Someone you loved deeply?”

  “Not the way you have. Not permanently.”

  “Cancer,” he said with sudden savage anger, “goddamn cancer. I watched her die. I watched her waste away and die and there was nothing I could do. She was always such a strong woman, rosy-cheeked, healthy … she weighed ninety-six pounds when she died. Ninety-six pounds.” And he began to cry.

  There was nothing for me to do or say. I sat there with the coffee cup and saucer in my hands and watched him mourn and thought about Kerry, what she’d been through the past three months, because that is what you do in this kind of situation: You turn a stranger’s grief inward, personalize it.

  Lanier’s breakdown lasted less than a minute. I watched him take control of himself, the way you take hold of something with both hands. When he looked at me again it was with embarrassment. I wanted to tell him not to be embarrassed, there was no shame in weeping over the tragic loss of a loved one; but those words from me would have sounded hollow, and he wouldn’t have listened to them anyway because he was already on his feet, moving away from me. He stood facing the empty fireplace, drying his eyes and face with a handkerchief. When he turned back toward me his movements were once more slow and methodical and his expression was a studied blank. The emotion had been dammed up again behind the wall of mildness and disinterest.