The Snatch - [Nameless Detective 01]

by Bill Pronzini

  I sat staring at the dead phone, and then put it back in its cradle very carefully. I looked up at the clock on the wall, and it was past eleven now. There was not enough time to contact the District Attorney’s Office of San Mateo County and have Donleavy or one of their other men get up here. I could call Eberhardt, but there did not seem to be much sense in it; the woman could be, and probably was, a crank after all. If not, however, if she did know something important and she thought I wasn’t completely alone, I would be running the risk of losing her altogether.

  It was mine to follow through, something or nothing.

  * * * *

  12

  It was very cold in Golden Gate Park.

  I parked Erika’s Valiant on John F. Kennedy Drive, directly opposite the shallow expanse of Lloyd Lake around which the Portals of the Past were located, and got out into an icy wind blowing harsh over the all but deserted lawns and trees and paths of the park. I pulled the collar on the overcoat up around my neck and bunched my shoulders inside the heavy garment and walked across the empty roadway to where a narrow dirt path skirted the lake’s left bank.

  Overhead, the coldly pale sun was visible through an approaching haze of fog. Reflections of light danced on the surface of the lake, interspersing patches of translucent blue on the leaden patina of the calm water. On the far bank, to the right of where the lake turned into the mouth of a tiny green valley, a narrow waterfall bubbled whitely over a rock stairway.

  Ducks, like playful toys, floated on the surface of the lake, making no sound. A lushly grown slope capped with fanning, stilted cypress trees paralleled the path on my left; great bushes of chrysanthemum grew there, and ringed the lake at intervals—explosions in white, tipped in pink.

  I followed the lane until I reached the first portal, a tall marble-and-stone affair with a stone bench set into the arch. The bronze plaque at the base said that it was the Portal of Residence of A. N. Towne, Vice-President and General Manager of Southern Pacific Railroad, a relic of the conflagration of April 18, 1906.

  I sat down on the bench, carefully, with my legs splayed out in front of me like a pregnant woman’s in deference to the healing wound in my belly. My watch said that it was a couple of minutes before twelve. I pressed my hands deep into the pockets of the overcoat and sat there with the wind blowing cold across my face, watching the ducks floating woodenly on the lake’s glasslike surface. It was all very peaceful, almost pastoral, in its serenity.

  I thought with philosophical cynicism: My own private Walden Pond—except that it isn’t mine and it isn’t private, it’s nothing more than nature compressed by man-made structures on all sides, nature reduced to a small and inexorably diminishing sanctuary that will, someday, be swallowed and digested in the name of that sterile, soulless, meaningless term Progress.

  And then I stopped thinking thoughts like that, because they never got you anything in the long run except manic-depressive, and turned my head toward the road to watch for the woman’s approach; if she was coming at all, she would probably come from the east or west along there.

  A couple of cars went by, and a young couple in matching green trenchcoats and heavy mufflers, trailing a black Scotch terrier on a chain leash. A few seagulls flew overhead, adding raucous cries to the humming lament of the wind. Twelve o’clock came and went, and it got colder sitting there on the bench; my fanny felt as if it were planted in a block of ice.

  12:10.

  I’ll give her another five minutes, I thought, and that’s all. I did not think it was a good idea for me to be out in the cold like this, with that wound the way it was; I had heard somewhere that you were especially susceptible to pneumonia when you had been injured, and that would be all I needed just now.

  I shifted my chilled feet and touched my tongue to my wind-chafed lips, and then I saw her come into view from beyond the slope at my back, walking hesitantly along Kennedy Drive. She looked over at me, and paused, and walked on a little way and stopped and looked over at me again. She was making up her mind. I sat there without moving, letting her reach a decision, and finally she came over to where the path began and started toward me with these little hesitant steps, head bobbing up and down as she moved like a bird approaching an unfamiliar feeder.

  She wore a heavy blue shag coat with huge dark-wood buttons, and a lighter blue scarf over her hair and knotted under her chin. A pair of gray tweed slacks peeked out at the bottom of the coat. As she came closer, I could see that she was maybe twenty-six or -seven, very thin, very pale. Wispy bangs were visible beneath the scarf: a lusterless brown.

  She stopped when she was about twenty feet away and stood there as if she expected me to jump up and make a rush at her. When I didn’t move, it seemed to reassure her; she came forward finally, with a kind of resolution, and stood in front of me.

  She said, “You’re the detective?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I answered.

  “Are you alone?”

  “Yes.”

  She looked around with a furtiveness that was almost a theatrical burlesque. Her eyes were wide and wet and colorless, slightly protuberant under all but nonexistent lashes, and her mouth was a pale oval in the marmoreal cast of her face. She looked like the stereotyped conception of a small-town maiden librarian.

  Her gaze came back to me again and she said, “Is it all right if I sit down there with you?” a little breathlessly.

  “Of course.” I moved over, and she seated herself with her knees together and flattened the skirts of her shag coat over her knees with the palms of thin, very white hands.

  “I ... I guess you think I’m a little crazy, asking you to meet me like this,” she said.

  “I imagine you have your reasons.”

  “I just don’t want to ... to make any rash decisions, that’s all. I mean, I don’t want the police to have anything to do with this until I make up my mind what’s right.”

  “You said you knew something about the man who kidnapped the Martinetti boy,” I said. “Paul Lockridge.”

  “Yes, well, I think so,” the librarian said. “I mean, I’m not sure. Not really sure.”

  “What is it you’re not sure of, Miss—?”

  She did not fall for that. She said, “You must understand, I’m just not sure.If I was . . . well, that poor little boy, I wouldn’t want anything to happen to a little boy.”

  “I’m certain you wouldn’t.”

  She took a long, quavering breath. “I think this Lockridge is the man my sister has been . . . seeing for the past few weeks.”

  “Your sister?”

  “Yes. She’s two years younger than I am, and a little . . . well, a little wild. We share an apartment, and one night this fellow came around to pick her up for a date and I think ... it might have been Lockridge. I mean, I only saw him that one time but I think he’s the man.”

  “Have you spoken to your sister about this?”

  “No. But she’s very frightened about something, I can tell. She’s really very frightened. She’s been . . . away for several days, and when she finally came home this morning she was terribly nervous and upset.”

  “Where had she been?” I asked.

  “I don’t know that,” the librarian said. “I asked her, but she wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Is your sister at your apartment now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does she know you’re here with me?”

  “No. I didn’t want her to know, not before I talked to you. There are some things I want to be sure of before I say anything to her.”

  “And that’s why you called me,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  I looked off at the lake for a moment. The ducks were still floating on its surface, quietly motionless. A couple of gulls buzzed them like P-51’s after a ground target, and they sat there with the cool imperturbability of middle-aged spinsters at afternoon tea. The gulls flew off, screaming obscenities into the wind.

  I looked again at the librarian and said, “Wha
t kind of things did you expect me to tell you?”

  “She’s never been in trouble before, you know. Never. She’s a good girl, really. What . . . what would happen to her if she just made this one mistake and got involved with the wrong kind of man?”

  “Not much, maybe,” I said. “It would depend on the extent of her involvement.”

  “I think she was ... in love with this man. Love is blind, isn’t that what they say?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s what they say.”

  “She couldn’t have known very much about the kidnapping,” the librarian said. “Not Lorraine ... I mean, not my sister, no.”

  “If she gives herself up, voluntarily, things could go fairly easy for her. She might even get off with nothing more than a probationary slap on the wrist.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “It would be up to a judge, of course.”

  “But the chances would be good, wouldn’t they?”

  “They would be, yes,” I said, “assuming that nothing has happened to the boy. That he’s returned unharmed to his parents.”

  A look of infinite horror blanched her already white face the color of bright snow. “Well, of course he’s all right! Lorraine would never ... oh my God, no, no, he’s fine, he must be!”

  “Look,” I said, “why don’t you take me to her? Maybe I can—”

  “No, I don’t want you to see her! Not yet. Please, I have to do this my own way. I have to talk to her first, don’t you see?”

  I just looked at her.

  “She’s my sister,” the librarian said in this tiny, fierce voice. “I don’t want her hurt or frightened any more than she already has been. I want to help her.”

  “Listen,” I said, “there’s a little boy missing. He may be sick or hurt, and he’s almost surely a hell of a lot more frightened than your sister. He’s got a family down in Hillsborough, torn apart by grief and tension, sitting by the telephone and waiting and not hearing anything. What do you think it’s like for them, for that boy, while you sit around making up your mind what to do?”

  “Lorraine is my family! The only family I have!” There were tears in her colorless eyes now, glistening, but the steadfast determination was strong in them nonetheless. “I can’t ... I can’t just turn her over to the police! Not without being absolutely sure. Don’t you think I’ve thought about that little boy? Don’t you think I’ve gone through hell since I first saw those pictures in the paper last night?”

  “All right,” I said, and I made my voice softer, gentler. I was running the risk of alienating her completely, and the more I watched her, the more I listened to her, the more I felt that what she was telling me was the truth; she was not a crank, and she was not the type who saw menace under every lamppost and disaster in every ringing of the telephone. Her concern for her sister was consumingly and unshakably genuine; in spite of her earlier protestations, she was as positive as could be that Lockridge was the guy who had been dating Lorraine, and that Lorraine, by her actions, knew something about the kidnapping.

  I said, “What is it you want to do now? Go back home alone and talk to your sister? Try to find out for certain if she’s involved?”

  “Yes, that’s what I want.”

  “And if she is, then what?”

  “Why . . . why, we’ll come to you, Lorraine and I,” she said. “And the three of us will go to the police together.”

  “That’s fine,” I said quietly, “but suppose she doesn’t want to go to the police? Suppose she runs away instead?”

  “No!” the librarian said positively. “No, she wouldn’t do that.”

  “You’re absolutely sure?”

  “Yes!”

  “If you’re wrong, and she does run away, you could be sent to prison for aiding and abetting a felon—as an accessory after the fact in the commission of a major crime. Have you thought about that?”

  “I don’t care about myself! Lorraine won’t run away, so it doesn’t matter. I know my sister, she wouldn’t do that!” She jumped up onto her feet. “I made a mistake calling you! I shouldn’t have called anyone!”

  “Take it easy,” I said. “Just take it easy now.”

  “I’m not carrying any identification,” she said grimly. “If you think you can take me to the police and make me tell you who I am and where Lorraine is, I won’t say a word. I won’t, I mean that!”

  “I’m not going to try to take you anywhere,” I said. “You can handle it however you want to. I’ll go along with your wishes.”

  Some of the defiance went out of her eyes. “You will? You’ll let me do this my way?”

  “Yes, however you want to do it.”

  “It’s the best way, it really is.”

  “If you think so, all right.”

  “I’ll go to Lorraine right now. I’ll tell her what you said, and if ... if she’s really involved she’ll listen to reason.”

  “I hope she will.”

  “Oh yes, yes, she will.”

  “Okay, then.”

  “I’ll call you after I’ve talked to her,” the librarian said. Her hands moved like thin white spiders along the front of her coat. She was not half as convinced of her sister’s reasonableness as she tried to make out, but she did not want me to know that. “I’ll call you at your office, and we’ll come there and meet you. Will that be all right?”

  “Yes, that’s fine,” I said.

  “It won’t be long, really it won’t.”

  “I’ll be waiting for your call.”

  “Thank you . . . thank you.” She smiled, tentatively, fleetingly, and it was ghastly in the ivory pallor of her face. “You’re very understanding. You are, you know.”

  I said nothing.

  She pivoted and started along the path, moving with that birdlike motion of her head and those quick little steps. She went twenty yards and stopped and whirled around, and I was still sitting there watching her. Her head jerked frontally again and she walked to the road and stopped and looked back at me with a surreptitious motion that might have been humorous in another situation. I had not moved. She turned to the right, west on Kennedy Drive, and disappeared from sight past the densely grown slope.

  I kept on sitting there, trying to hold down the sense of urgency that was growing deep inside me and making the knife wound throb with a muted intensity. I thought: Foolish little girl, loyal little girl, goddamn naive little girl! I was sorry for her, and sad for her, and it did not help to know that I was going to betray her. But there were bigger evils, stronger motives and emotions, involved here; her problems, her fears, were going to be swallowed and absorbed the way life seemed to have swallowed and absorbed her—completely and mercilessly—from the very beginning. It was the cold, hard way of things.

  I had to give her some time, some assurance that she was not being followed; she would be stopping every twenty or thirty yards to look over her shoulder. I let her have another minute, and that was all the waiting I could take. I got up and walked as quickly as I was able near the end of the path and stepped off it and went to where I could look beyond the slope at the gentle curve of the drive. She was nowhere in sight.

  The urgency grew stronger. Christ, I thought, maybe I waited too long at that. I moved in a half-running, half-shuffling gait across the roadway and got into the Valiant and started it and took it forward. As I drove, my eyes roamed both sides of the drive for some sign of that distinctive blue coat and scarf. If she had cut south across the rolling verdant lawns toward Metson Lake or Elk Glen Lake or the Golden Gate Park Stadium, I should have been able to see her; but the wind-swept, leaf-strewn greensward was void of humanity.

  Ahead on the right, the narrow Marx Meadow Drive angled back behind Lloyd Lake and the Portals of the Past, to join eventually with the cross-over from 25th Avenue that emptied into the main north-south boulevard, Park Presidio. I looked along there as I passed it, but it appeared to be empty. Damn! She could have gone onto any one of the numerous paths winding throug
h the trees and thick undergrowth on the right, honeycombing the area and leading on a dozen street exits. And yet, the librarian had not seemed like the type to go wandering through the cold, dark wood, even in the middle of the day; she would want to stay on the main, traveled areaways as much as possible . . .

  I saw her then.

  I came around a shallow curve, and she was walking in a diagonal trajectory across the expanse of lawn to the north, to where 30th Avenue came timidly into the park and blended into Kennedy Drive. She walked with surprising quickness in that odd way of hers, head bobbing forward into the wind, not looking back now. She had apparently satisfied herself that I was not going to follow her.