Scenarios nd-29

by Bill Pronzini

  Charlotte Keim said, "The ecological nonprofit display."

  "Also possible. Among the branches of one of the fir trees."

  "The only problem with that is, the way the little forest is set up, he'd have had to go into the display itself. That would be inviting attention."

  "Have a look anyway."

  Ted came in just then, shaking his head. "Nothing among the galactic decorations."

  "Check the Model T next. Inside and out."

  Neal said, "I'll go with him."

  The three of them left together. I said to Kerry, "You also lost sight of Kennett for a time. Where was he when you spotted him again?"

  "Over by Santa's Village, on his way toward the loving cup.,

  "The village is too small to hide anything," Sharon said, "even something as small as a computer disc."

  "What about the cup? If it's hollow, he could've dropped it inside."

  "It's hollow, but Kennett isn't very tall and the way the cup sits on the pedestal, he'd've had to stretch up on his toes. Too conspicuous. People would've noticed and wondered."

  "Then it's got to be either the Model T or the fir trees."

  But it was neither one. We waited restlessly until first Charlotte and then Ted and Neal returned empty-handed. Neal said, "I even got down on my hands and knees and checked underneath the car, just in case. You should've seen the looks I got."

  I'd been ruminating. Now I said, "We've been going on the assumption that if I hadn't come in unexpectedly and caught him, Kennett would've kept the disc on his person until the party ended. But remember how he's dressed. If he'd had it in his pocket, as tight as those leather pants are, the outline would've showed."

  "You're right," McCone said. "He wouldn't run that kind of risk. If he'd intended to keep it on him, he'd've worn looser clothing."

  "Which means he planned to hide it all along. Someplace he'd picked out in advance, someplace he'd be sure to have easy access to later." I looked at Kerry. "You said Kennett was walking by Santa's Village. Straight past it toward the trophy?"

  "… Come to think of it, no. He was moving at an angle."

  "From which direction, left or right?"

  "Right. An angle from the right."

  "So he didn't go more or less on a straight line through the crowd. He veered off to the right first, then veered back again."

  "The bar and buffet are in the center, but farther back. What else is over that way?"

  "Nothing, except-"

  Mick said, "Home for the Holidays."

  I said, "Be generous."

  Ted said, "And this year it's Chandler amp; Santos' turn to disperse the donations."

  McCone said, "That's it! That's where the disc has to be."

  That was where, all right. Kennett's unfunny private joke, his own personal donation to the homeless. Right through that little slot into the Season of Sharing Fund barrel as he passed by.

  McCone

  I wanted to go straight down and retrieve the disc, but Wolf persuaded me not to. This was a highly sensitive matter, and it wouldn't do to bring it to the attention of everyone in the pier. In the end I sent Ted, Charlotte and Neal out to keep an eye on Kennett, and Wolf, Kerry, and I settled down to wait till the end of the party.

  The minutes, and then the hours, dragged by. Kerry went downstairs to fetch us food from the buffet, but after nibbling on a canape, I pushed my portion aside and let Wolf finish it off. He is one of the calmest men I know in tense situations, patiently waiting it out until the proper time to take action. He once told me how he chafes while on long surveillances, but from his manner that night I never would have guessed it. Of course, the current situation had given him the perfect excuse not to mingle with the crowd..

  Neal stuck his head through the door at a few minutes after eleven. "The pier's locked down and the clean-up crews're assembling."

  Downstairs, party wreckage was everywhere: dirty plates and glasses, a sprinkling of confetti, balled up napkins, spills and splotches. The decorations-even Santa's Village, next to which the trophy sat-looked as tired as the people who had volunteered to remain to deal with the mess. I spotted Nat Chandler and Harvey Santos, partners in the architectural firm, hauling a barrel full of canned goods up the stairs to their offices. Tony Kennett wasn't in sight.

  Mick was leaning casually on the cash-donations barrel-standing guard without being too obvious about it. I went over to him, asked, "Where's Kennett?"

  "He went up to Chandler amp; Santos' offices about ten minutes ago. Probably waiting inside, planning to liberate the disc after the partners lock up and go home."

  Nat and Harvey were coming back downstairs now. I signaled to them.

  "I want you to witness this," I said when they came over.

  Wolf lifted the slotted lid of the barrel. It was three-quarters full of cash, coins, and checks. I plunged my hand into the donations and felt around.

  "What're you doing?" Harvey asked.

  "You'll see."

  My fingers touched a flat, round object encased in a thin plastic pouch. "Got it!" I said to Wolf and pulled it from the barrel.

  As Nat and Harvey exchanged puzzled glances, I looked up at the catwalk in front of their offices. Kennett stood at the rail watching us. I held up the disc. Even at that distance I could see his shoulders sag and his face crumple.

  "WOLF"

  A fter the police had been summoned and Tony Kennett hauled off to jail, McCone invited her staff and Neal and Kerry and me back up to her office for a celebratory libation. I'd forgotten all about my Christmas present, which Sharon had slipped into a desk drawer during our earlier session. But she and the others hadn't forgotten. She brought the package out and handed it to me with a little flourish.

  "With thanks and love from all of us," she said.

  Embarrassed, I said, "I haven't gotten anything for any of you yet…"

  "Never mind that. Open your present, Wolf."

  I hefted it first. Not very heavy. I stripped off the paper, took the lid off the gift box-and inside was another, smaller box sealed with half a pound of Scotch tape. Ted's doing; I could tell from his expression. So I used my pocket knife to slice through the tape, opened the second box, rifled through a wad of tissue paper, and found two plastic-bagged issues of Black Mask, and not just any two issues: rare, fine-condition copies of the September 1929 and February 1930 numbers, each containing an installment of the original six-part serial version of Hammett's The Maltese Falcon.

  When I looked up, they were all grinning at me. I said, "How'd you know these were the only two Falcon issues I didn't have?" Funny, but my voice sounded a little choked up.

  "I told them," Kerry said. "I checked your pulp collection to make sure."

  "And I found the copies through one of my friends in the antiquarian book trade," Neal said.

  "They must've cost a small fortune."

  McCone waved that away. "What they cost doesn't matter. You not only helped close the Patterson case, and to get the disc back tonight, but you've been a good friend for a long time. It's the Season of Sharing with friends, too."

  I just sat there.

  Kerry said, "Aren't you going to say something?

  Only one thing came to mind. It didn't seem to be enough, but Kerry told me later that it was all that was needed. "Happy holidays, everybody."

  Wrong Place, Wrong Time

  Sometimes it happens like this. No warning, no way to guard against it. And through no fault of your own. You're just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Eleven p.m., drizzly, low ceiling and poor visibility. On my way back from four long days on a case in Fresno and eager to get home to San Francisco. Highway 152, the quickest route from 99 west through hills and valleys to 101. Roadside service station and convenience store, a lighted sign that said "Open Until Midnight." Older model car parked in the shadows alongside the restrooms, newish Buick drawn in at the gas pumps. People visible inside the store, indistinct images behind damp-streaked
and sign-plastered glass.

  I didn't need gas, but I did need some hot coffee to keep me awake. And something to fill the hollow under my breastbone: I hadn't taken the time to eat anything before leaving Fresno. So I swung off into the lot, parked next to the older car. Yawned and stretched and walked past the Buick to the store. Walked right into it.

  Even before I saw the little guy with the gun, I knew something was wrong. It was in the air, a heaviness, a crackling quality, like the atmosphere before a big storm. The hair crawled on the back of my scalp. But I was two paces inside by then and it was too late to back out.

  He was standing next to a rack of potato chips, holding the weapon in close to his body with both hands. The other two men stood ten feet away at the counter, one in front and one behind. The gun, a long-barreled target pistol, was centered on the man in front; it stayed that way even though the little guy's head was half turned in my direction. I stopped and stayed still, with my arms down tight against my sides.

  Time freeze. The four of us staring, nobody moving. Light rain on the roof, some kind of machine making thin wheezing noises-no other sound.

  The one with the gun coughed suddenly, a dry, consumptive hacking that broke the silence but added to the tension. He was thin and runty, mid-thirties, going bald on top, his face drawn to a drum tautness. Close-set brown eyes burned with outrage and hatred. The clerk behind the counter, twenty-something, long hair tied in a ponytail, kept licking his lips and swallowing hard; his eyes flicked here and there, settled, flicked, settled like a pair of nervous flies. Scared, but in control of himself. The handsome, fortyish man in front was a different story. He couldn't take his eyes off the pistol, as if it had a hypnotic effect on him. Sweat slicked his bloodless face, rolled down off his chin in little drops. His fear was a tangible thing, sick and rank and consuming; you could see it moving under the sweat, under the skin, the way maggots move inside a slab of bad meat.

  "Harry," he said in a voice that crawled and cringed. "Harry, for God's sake…"

  "Shut up. Don't call me Harry."

  "Listen… it wasn't me, it was Noreen…"

  "Shut up shut up shut up." High-pitched, with a brittle, cracking edge. "You," he said to me. "Come over here where I can see you better."

  I went closer to the counter, doing it slow. This wasn't what I'd first taken it to be. Not a hold-up-something personal between the little guy and the handsome one, something that had come to a lethal crisis point in here only a short time ago. Wrong place, wrong time for the young clerk, too. I said, "What's this all about?"

  "I'm going to kill this son of a bitch," the little guy said, "that's what it's all about."

  "Why do you want to do that?"

  "My wife and my savings, every cent I had in the world… he took them both away from me and now he's going to pay for it."

  "Harry, please, you've got to-"

  "Didn't I tell you to shut up? Didn't I tell you not to call me Harry?"

  Handsome shook his head, a meaningless flopping like a broken bulb on a white stalk.

  "Where is she, Barlow?" the little guy demanded.

  "Noreen?"

  "My bitch wife Noreen. Where is she?"

  "I don't know…"

  "She's not at your place. The house was dark when you left. Noreen wouldn't sit in a dark house alone. She doesn't like the dark."

  "You… saw me at the house?"

  "That's right. I saw you and I followed you twenty miles to this place. Did you think I just materialized out of thin air?"

  "Spying on me? Looking through windows? Jesus…"

  "I got there just as you were leaving," the little guy said. "Perfect timing. You didn't think I'd find out your name or where you lived, did you? You thought you were safe, didn't you? Stupid old Harry Chalfont, the cuckold, the sucker-no threat at all."

  Another head flop. This one made beads of sweat fly off.

  "But I did find out," the little guy said. "Took me two months, but I found you and now I'm going to kill you."

  "Stop saying that! You won't, you can't…"

  "Go ahead, beg. Beg me not to do it."

  Barlow moaned and leaned back hard against the counter. Mortal terror unmans some people; he was as crippled by it as anybody I'd ever seen. Before long he would beg, down on his knees.

  "Where's Noreen?"

  "I swear I don't know, Harry… Mr. Chalfont. She… walked out on me… a few days ago. Took all the money with her."

  "You mean there's still some of the ten thousand left? I figured it'd all be gone by now. But it doesn't matter. I don't care about the money anymore. All I care about is paying you back. You and then Noreen. Both of you getting just what you deserve."

  Chalfont ached to pay them back, all right, yearned to see them dead. But wishing something and making it happen are two different things. He had the pistol cocked and ready and he'd worked himself into an overheated emotional state, but he wasn't really a killer. You can look into a man's eyes in a situation like this, as I had too many times, and tell whether or not he's capable of cold-blooded murder. There's a fire, a kind of deathlight, unmistakable and immutable, in the eyes of those who can, and it wasn't there in Harry Chalfont's eyes.

  Not that its absence made him any less dangerous. He was wired to the max, and outraged and filled with hate, and his finger was close to white on the pistol's trigger. Reflex could jerk off a round, even two, at any time. And if that happened, the slugs could go anywhere-into Barlow, into the young clerk, into me.

  "She was all I ever had," he said. "My job, my savings, my life.. none of it meant anything until I met her. Little, ugly, lonely.. that's all I was. But she loved me once, at least a little. Enough to marry me. And then you came along and destroyed it all."

  "I didn't, I tell you, it was all her idea…"

  "Shut up. It was you, Barlow, you turned her head, you corrupted her. Goddamn traveling salesman, goddamn cliche. You must've had other women. Why couldn't you leave her alone?"

  Working himself up even more. Nerving himself to pull that trigger. I thought about jumping him, but that wasn't much of an option. Too much distance between us, too much risk of the pistol going off anyway. One other option. And I'd damn well better make it work.

  I said quietly, evenly, "Give me the gun, Mr. Chalfont."

  The words didn't register until I repeated them. Then he blinked, shifted his gaze to me without moving his head. "What did you say?"

  "Give me the gun. Put an end to this before it's too late."

  "No. Shut up."

  "You don't want to kill anybody. You know it and I know it."

  "He's going to pay. They're both going to pay."

  "Fine, make them pay. Press theft charges against them. Send them to prison."

  "That's not enough punishment for what they did."

  "If you don't think so, then you've never seen the inside of a prison."

  "What do you know about it? Who are you?"

  A half-truth was more forceful than the whole truth. I said, "I'm a law officer."

  Barlow and the clerk both jerked looks at me. The kid's had hope in it, but not Handsome's; his fear remained unchecked, undiluted.

  "You're lying," Chalfont said.

  "Why would I lie?"

  He coughed again, hawked deep in his throat. "It doesn't make any difference. You can't stop me."

  "That's right, I can't stop you from shooting Barlow. But I can stop you from shooting your wife. I'm off duty but I'm still armed." Calculated lie. "If you kill him, then I'll have to kill you. The instant your gun goes off, out comes mine and you're also a dead man. You don't want that."

  "I don't care."

  "You care, all right. I can see it your face. You don't want to die tonight, Mr. Chalfont."

  That was right: He didn't. The deathlight wasn't there for himself, either.

  "I have to make them pay," he said.

  "You've already made Barlow pay. Just look at him-he's paying right now. Why put him ou
t of his misery?"

  For a little time Chalfont stood rigid, the pistol drawn in tight under his breastbone. Then his tongue poked out between his lips and stayed there, the way a cat's will. It made him look cross-eyed, and for the first time, uncertain.

  "You don't want to die," I said again. "Admit it. You don't want to die."

  "I don't want to die," he said.

  "And you don't want the clerk or me to die, right? That could happen if shooting starts. Innocent blood on your hands."

  "No," he said. "No, I don't want that."

  I'd already taken two slow, careful steps toward him; I tried another, longer one. The pistol's muzzle stayed centered on Barlow's chest. I watched Chalfont's index finger. It seemed to have relaxed on the trigger. His two-handed grip on the weapon appeared looser, too.

  "Let me have the gun, Mr. Chalfont."

  He didn't say anything, didn't move.

  Another step, slow, slow, with my hand extended.

  "Give me the gun. You don't want to die tonight, nobody has to die tonight. Let me have the gun."

  One more step. And all at once the outrage, the hate, the lust for revenge went out of his eyes, like a slate wiped suddenly clean, and he brought the pistol away from his chest one-handed and held it out without looking at me. I took it gently, dropped it into my coat pocket.

  Situation diffused. Just like that.

  The clerk let out an explosive breath, said, "Oh, man!" almost reverently. Barlow slumped against the counter, whimpered, and then called Chalfont a couple of obscene names. But he was too wrapped up in himself and his relief to work up much anger at the little guy. He wouldn't look at me either.

  I took Chalfont's arm, steered him around behind the counter and sat him down on a stool back there. He wore a glazed look now, and his tongue was back out between his lips. Docile, disoriented. Broken.

  "Call the law," I said to the clerk. "Local or county, whichever'll get here the quickest."

  "County," he said. He picked up the phone.

  "Tell them to bring a paramedic unit with them."

  "Yessir." Then he said, "Hey! Hey, that other guy's leaving."