Bindlestiff (The Nameless Detective)

by Bill Pronzini

  “Why don’t you call me when you get back? Or do you want me to call you next week sometime?”

  “I’ll call you, I guess. And give you a definite answer then.”

  “Fine.”

  We said good-bye, and I put the receiver down. That damn fantasy ran around inside my head again. Some selfless saint. Jeanne Emerson wanted to tell the world how noble I was, and all I could think about was what it would be like to go to bed with her.

  Well, it was harmless speculation. Even if she was interested in me personally, which I didn’t believe for a minute, I had no intention of pursuing things with her. Maybe I would consent to letting her do the article, but that was as far as it would go. I was in love with Kerry; I would be a fool to do anything to jeopardize my relationship with her, now that we had something solid together. The last thing I needed was another complication in my life.

  I started out of the bedroom—and the telephone rang again behind me. I thought it might be Kerry, because we had a date for dinner and she hadn’t been sure what time she would be through with work; but when I picked up the receiver, an unfamiliar woman’s voice said my name and asked if I was the private investigator.

  I said I was, and she said, “My name is Hannah Peterson. I understand my sister hired you this afternoon.”

  “If your sister is Arleen Bradford, she did.”

  “Yes. Well, I wonder if I could stop by and talk to you about that? I’m in the city now, downtown; I could be at your place in about fifteen minutes. That is, if the address in the phone book is correct.”

  “It is. What did you want to talk about, Mrs. Peterson?”

  “Couldn’t I tell you in person? It would be so much easier.”

  I remembered what Arleen Bradford had told me about her sister. If that verbal portrait was reasonably accurate, I was probably not going to like much whatever it was Hannah Peterson had to say to me. But then, I was inclined to take anything Miss A. Bradford had to say about anybody with several grains of salt. It wouldn’t hurt to talk to Mrs. Peterson, find out what was on her mind.

  “Come ahead, then,” I said.

  “Thanks a lot. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  I cradled the receiver and went into the living room. Usually the place was a mess; I was something of a slob when it came to housekeeping. But now that I was going to be working out of the flat for a while, until I had enough money in reserve to afford new offices, I had cleaned up the place and resolved to keep it that way. It looked pretty good. I had even dusted the shelves flanking the bay window, where nearly all of my six thousand remaining pulps were displayed.

  My arm was starting to bother me a little; it hurt sometimes in the afternoon and early evening. It stiffened up just from using it in normal activity—particularly if I was out in cool or cold weather. The therapist I’d been going to the past three weeks had given me a set of exercises to do when that happened. I had other exercises to do, too, to strengthen the damaged motor nerve. The chances were good, she said, that in time I would regain full use of the hand—“less than two percent impairment,” was the way she put it—and have only occasional stiffness. She was very upbeat about the whole thing, one of these cheerful optimists ; on good days she bolstered my spirits and on bad days she depressed me. You pays your money and you takes your chances. I’d know for sure which way it was going to go in another few months.

  So I went through the series of exercises, went through them a second time. The hand and arm felt better when I was done, and so did I. I went out into the kitchen and made myself a cup of coffee. I was just starting to drink it, using my left hand to grip the handle, when Hannah Peterson showed up.

  In answer to her ring I went and buzzed her in downstairs, then opened the apartment door and waited for her to climb the stairs. I don’t know what I expected her to be like—a slightly more appealing version of Arleen Bradford, maybe—but she was some surprise. Honey-blond hair, sloe eyes, one of those pouty Marilyn Monroe mouths painted the shade we used to call shocking pink; tall, svelte, with good hips and better breasts encased in a white pants suit that had gold threads woven through it. But there was nothing of the dumb blonde about her. If anything, she was street-wise; the sloe eyes were shrewd and calculating, and just a little hard, and when she put them on me it was like being slapped and caressed at the same time. A ballbuster, I thought. The kind who went through men like a bad wind, leaving a wreckage of broken hearts and broken spirits in her wake. No wonder Arleen Bradford hated her and probably hated men, too. There wasn’t a straight male on this earth who would look twice at prim little Arleen when fast Hannah was around.

  She gave me her hand and a sultry smile, smacked me again with those eyes. She was after something, all right, and it wasn’t me. But what she didn’t know was that I was on to her. And that I found Kerry—and Jeanne Emerson, too, for that matter—a hell of a lot more exciting than I could ever find her. Blond hair and big boobs have never done much to melt my chocolate bar, as the Hollywood folks say.

  So I took the hand, let go of it again, made my own smile impersonal, said, “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Peterson. Come in, won’t you?” and backed away from her.

  The heat coming out of her eyes cooled a little as she stepped inside; she seemed momentarily nonplussed, as if she couldn’t understand why I was not responding to her. I turned away from her to shut the door. When I turned back again the bewilderment in her expression was gone: she thought she had me pegged now. The smile changed shape and became a sly sort of smirk. She said, “Thank you again for letting me stop by,” and the tone of her voice was different, too, with the sex bleached out of it—a kind of just-between-us-girls intimacy.

  For Christ’s sake, I thought, she thinks I’m gay!

  It struck me funny and I almost laughed out loud. San Francisco has the largest, most outspoken and well-publicized homosexual population in the country; a lot of people who don’t live here, who only come to the city occasionally or not at all, seem to think just about every other male or female is of the lavender persuasion. I hadn’t reacted to Hannah Peterson the way she expected, ergo I must prefer boys. It was ridiculous—but the world is full of ridiculous people.

  I managed to keep a straight face, so to speak, and decided not to say anything to alter her misconception. Let her think I wore lace panties and kept a male harem; what the hell. If she knew the truth she would only turn the sex on again. And I did not want to have to deal with that.

  I said, “Sit down, Mrs. Peterson. I’ve got some coffee in the kitchen if you’d like a cup.”

  “No thanks. I won’t stay long.” She sat on the couch, crossed her legs, and got a pack of cigarettes out of her purse. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  “Go right ahead.”

  She lit up, letting her eyes wander around the room as she exhaled smoke. “You have a nice apartment,” she said. “It’s so, um, masculine.”

  I said, because I couldn’t resist, “An interior decorator friend of mine designed it.”

  “He’s very good.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “He’s a sweetie.”

  “All those old detective magazines are a nice touch. Do you actually read things like that?”

  “Oh no, they’re just for decoration . . . because I’m a private eye myself. But I’m going to get rid of them one of these days; they collect dust.”

  “I imagine they must.”

  “Besides, they’re full of stories about murder and violence and human fiends doing all sorts of disgusting things to women. Detective work isn’t really like that, you know.”

  A faint frown line appeared on her forehead, as if she might be tumbling to the fact that I was putting her on; but then it smoothed away and she nodded seriously. She may not have been a dumb blonde, but she sure as hell was a credulous one.

  But the joke had gone far enough; this was supposed to be a professional discussion. I said, “What was it you wanted to talk to me about, Mrs. Peterson?”

  “M
y father. That photograph of him in the paper and my sister hiring you to find him.”

  “You saw the photograph, did you?”

  “Yes. I came into the city to do some shopping—I live in Sonoma—and I stopped for a drink afterward at the St. Francis. There was a copy of the Examiner in the lounge. Well, I called Arleen right away, and she told me she’d hired you to go up to Oroville and look for Dad.”

  “And?”

  “I think she made a mistake. I’m here because I’d like you to reconsider doing what she wants.”

  “You mean you don’t want your father found?”

  “He doesn’t want to be found,” she said.

  “Oh? How do you know that?”

  “He told me as much himself. The last time I talked to him, before he went off to ride the rails.”

  “I don’t think I understand.”

  “You have to know Dad. Up until he lost his job with the government, he led a very uneventful life. I guess Arleen told you he’s always been fascinated by trains and by the hobo life. Well, losing his job gave him the chance to go ahead and do what he’d always dreamed about doing.”

  “Being a hobo,” I said.

  “Yes. Spending the rest of his life around trains. He doesn’t really care about money, you see. Not at all. Uncle Kenneth’s twenty thousand dollars wouldn’t matter to him if he knew about it; he’d go right on being a hobo.”

  “He’s still entitled to it.”

  “But he wouldn’t bother to claim it, that’s the point. He’d want Arleen and me to have it.”

  “Your sister doesn’t seem to think so,” I said.

  “Of course not.” She punched out her cigarette in the coffee-table ashtray. “Arleen . . . well, Arleen is strait-laced; she thinks she knows what’s best for everybody. She’s always tried to run my life and Dad’s. Frankly, he was fed up with her. That’s one of the two reasons he told me, and not Arleen, when he decided to go on the road.”

  “What’s the other reason?”

  “He knew I’d understand because I’ve always loved trains, too—anything to do with trains. I guess his interest in them rubbed off on me when I was a kid.”

  “Have you had any contact with him over the past year and a half?”

  “No. He wanted it that way.”

  “Doesn’t that bother you?”

  “Not really. We’ve never been close; closer than he and Arleen, but not tight. Anyhow, even if you went to Oroville and found him, he wouldn’t call her any more than he would try to claim his inheritance. He doesn’t want anything more to do with Arleen. He only wants to be left alone.”

  “That ought to be his decision to make, don’t you think?”

  “But he’s already made it,” she said. She sounded faintly exasperated, as if she were trying to get an obvious point across to somebody who wasn’t very bright. “He told me he never wanted to see or hear from Arleen again. It would only upset him if you found him and told him about Arleen seeing his photograph in the paper and hiring you. It wouldn’t do any of us any good.”

  “Except maybe your sister.”

  “Oh, damn my sister. She’s a frump and she’s made Dad’s life, and mine, miserable for years. You met her; can’t you see what kind of person she is?”

  I had seen that, all right. And I saw what kind of person Hannah Peterson was, too. Five would get you ten she cared a hell of a lot less about her father than she cared about her half of the twenty-thousand-dollar bequest. And that she harbored the same deep-seated sibling hatred as Arleen had for her. They were quite a pair, these two. Maybe Charles Bradford would be better off if I didn’t find him and try to toss him back into the clutches of his offspring.

  But that was not my decision to make. And I found it difficult to believe that Bradford would want Arleen and Hannah to have his twenty thousand dollars; he’d probably want to claim the money even if he never used it, just to keep them from getting their claws on it.

  I said, “All of that may be true, Mrs. Peterson, but I don’t see that I can turn down the job just because you want me to.”

  Her nostrils pinched up; she was starting to get angry. “If it’s the money I’ll pay you whatever amount Arleen is giving you—”

  “It’s not the money,” I said. “If I go along with your wishes, what’s to stop your sister from hiring another detective?”

  “You could always tell her you went to Oroville and you couldn’t find Dad. That would satisfy her.”

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry, I can’t do it. I’ve already agreed to the job; it’s a matter of professional ethics—”

  “Professional ethics!” she said, as if they were a couple of four-letter words. “I read about you in the paper, too. I know what kind you are.”

  “You do, huh? I don’t think so, lady.”

  “You bet I do.” She got to her feet, glaring at me; it was the kind of look that could cut a hole in a piece of steel. She was on the verge of throwing a tantrum. “You’re just like my sister—a nasty little piece of work who won’t listen to reason. I hope they take your license away again. I hope you go straight to hell.”

  I stood up too. “Good-bye, Mrs. Peterson.”

  “You damned fag!” she said, and stormed over to the door and went out and slammed it shut behind her, hard enough to shake the pulps on their shelves.

  I sat down again. I was angry myself, but it didn’t last long. What was there to be angry about, after all? Hannah Peterson was a spoiled and greedy thirty-three-year-old sex object, and I had just stuck a pin in her balloon and deflated her. Score one for the side of manipulated males everywhere.

  Then I thought: You damned fag, you—and burst out laughing.

  Chapter 4

  “She actually thought you were gay?” Kerry said. She seemed to think that was the most comical thing she’d ever heard; there were tears of mirth in her eyes. “Lord, I wish I’d been there to see it!”

  “It was some session, all right,” I said.

  “It must have been.” She wiped her eyes on her napkin, and then put one elbow on the table and cupped her chin in her hand and gave me her oh-you’re-such-a-delightful-man look. “There’s never a dull moment in your life when you’re working, is there? First you take a job to go chasing after a hobo, then you have a run-in with a sex bomb who thinks you’re gay. Wow.”

  I couldn’t tell whether or not she was putting me on. She had an off-the-wall sense of humor, and I suspected that she took a great deal of satisfaction in keeping me off balance whenever she could. Sometimes she made me feel awkward and confused, sometimes she made me angry, and sometimes she made me feel like a jerk. But none of that did anything to change my attitude toward her. She was so damned attractive it made me ache a little just to look at her: shiny auburn hair, wide mouth, green eyes that changed color according to her mood, and a body—as Raymond Chandler once wrote—to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window. She was also intelligent and mostly fun to be with, and I loved her like crazy.

  Jeanne Emerson? I thought. Hannah Peterson? Give me Kerry Wade any old time.

  It was a little after seven o’clock and we were sitting in a cozy Japanese restaurant on Irving Street, near the University of California Medical Center, having sashimi and chicken yasai and cups of hot sake. And I had just finished telling her all about my day: Arleen Bradford, my imminent trip to Oroville, and Hannah Peterson. Other diners were looking at us because of Kerry’s outburst of laughter—not that I cared much.

  I said, “It’s still a pretty routine job. If I get lucky and Bradford is still in Oroville, I’ll be back home tomorrow night.”

  “Maybe so. But you’ve got to admit, it does have its unusual elements.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  “You know,” she said, “I’ll bet he really is enjoying himself.”

  “Who? Bradford?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not so sure. The man’s down-and-out. And being a hobo is a hell of a road to have to
travel, once you get started on it.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Hoboing has its romantic aspects. Besides . . . ‘Every man on his grave stands he, and each man’s grave is his own affair.’”

  “Huh?”

  “Two lines from a poem about hoboes I read once. They just popped into my mind.”

  “Pretty profound stuff,” I said. “But I still say it’s a hell of a road to have to travel.”

  “You don’t think it can be adventurous?”

  “Not as far as I’m concerned.”

  “You mean you’ve never wanted to ride the rails, just once, to see what it was like?”

  “No.”

  “Well, suppose you have to go up to Washington to find Bradford. How will you travel?”

  “Drive, I guess.”

  “It’d be faster by train,” she said. “You could always hop a freight and pass yourself off as one of the tramps.”

  “Is that supposed to be funny?”

  “No, I’m serious. That’s what I’d do if I were you. Just for the experience.”

  “That kind of experience I don’t need.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m too old for it, for one thing.”

  “You’re not any older than Charles Bradford.”

  I had a mental image of myself huddled in the corner of a dusty boxcar, staring out at a lot of dark, empty terrain, listening to the rhythm of the wheels and the locomotive’s whistle echoing in the night. It wasn’t a very pleasant image. It made me feel cold.

  “No thanks,” I said. “The closest I intend to get to a freight train is the Oroville hobo jungle. And the sooner I get out of there, the better I’ll like it.”

  A lock of her auburn hair had fallen over one eye, giving her a vaguely sultry look, like a redheaded Lauren Bacall. She brushed it away and took a thoughtful bite of her chicken yasai. “What’s a hobo jungle like, anyway?” she asked. “I’ve never been anywhere near one.”

  “Good. They’re not very pretty. And not very safe either. Not everybody who beds down in them is one of your romantic vagabond types.”

  “No?”

  “No. Fugitives ride the rails, too—thieves, murderers, you name it. And toughs, jackrollers.”