Bleeders

by Bill Pronzini

  “I love you, too. Always.”

  Emily murmured, “Please come home soon,” and I said I would, and they went away. And I was alone.

  Instead of going downtown to the agency, I found myself driving aimlessly for a time with the radio tuned to a music station, the volume up high so I would not have to listen to the sounds inside my head. Then, without any conscious intent, I was back in Daly City—at the police station on Sullivan Avenue. Inside, I asked for Lieutenant Fuentes and was told he was off duty. My name and ID got me an audience with another plainclothesman attached to the Dain case; his name was Erdman. He thought I was there to deliver the file, and when he found out I wasn’t and that I had no new information to impart, he adopted that faintly hostile, faintly arrogant attitude some cops have toward citizens they perceive to be uncooperative. He wouldn’t tell me anything about the progress of their investigation, despite my personal involvement. Ongoing and privileged, he said. We’ll contact you if there are any developments you need to know about, he said. And don’t forget to bring that file as soon as possible, he said.

  It made me angry. I wanted to say to him, “Listen, you son of a bitch, how would you feel if you’d come within one second of dying last night? You have any idea what it’s like to have a revolver misfire when the muzzle’s pressed against the back of your head?” But I held my tongue and my temper and walked away from him, out into the thinning fog. He was insensitive, self-involved, but he wasn’t my enemy. Right now I had only one person to worry about, and it was not Fuentes or anyone connected with the bald man or even Baldy himself.

  The one person, one potential enemy was me.

  I sat in the car, reminding myself that I was in a state of crisis, vulnerable and prone to overreaction and misjudgment. I needed to take things very slow, to think carefully before I acted. I needed to maintain perspective and distance. In short, and in spite of what I’d thought and felt in the immediate aftermath last night, I needed to stay out of the investigation and on the sidelines. Let the law handle it—Fuentes, that asshole inside, any other police agency that might come into the case. They’d find Baldy sooner or later. Might have a line on him already. It wasn’t my job and I had no real, lasting desire to see him dead or to dance on his grave. Justice, not revenge. Revenge was a fool’s game—I’d learned that lesson after my escape from the mountain cabin, at the end of a hunt for the sad, sick bastard responsible for those three months of hell. Since then, I’d grown to hate violence in all its forms, vowed never to harm another living creature. Let a judge and jury pass sentence on Baldy, let society execute him if the sentence was death. Life in prison without possibility of parole would be even more fitting. Years, decades behind bars ... that was less than he deserved, maybe, but punishment enough for murdering Carolyn Dain and almost murdering me.

  Except that he hadn’t almost murdered me, he had murdered me. The gun misfiring didn’t change that. He’d put it to my head, he’d said, “Lay still, you old fuck,” meaning lay still forever, you old fuck, and he’d pulled the trigger. Clear intent, cause and effect. I was still alive but he’d murdered me last night.

  Then there was Emily. If I’d let her go inside the house with me, or if she’d gotten out of the car too soon and he’d spotted her, he’d have shot her dead, too. A ten-year-old kid, and he’d have executed her without hesitation or compunction. Kill one, kill two—kill three.

  Take things slow, think carefully before acting, maintain perspective ... yes. Stay out of the investigation, let the cops handle it? No. He murdered me, he might have murdered my little girl. How could I stay out of it?

  Nobody answered the bell in Annette Byers’ apartment. On the mailbox marked 1-A, L. Timmerman, was a Dymo label reading “Bldg Mgr”; I rang that bell. No response there, either. I tried the other apartments, found one woman home, but she hadn’t seen Byers yesterday or today, nor anyone answering Jay Cohalan’s description.

  I drove around the neighborhood, looking for her MG. Gone. Nor was Cohalan’s Camry anywhere in evidence. It was possible the two of them were on the run, or maybe holed up someplace together. And just as possible that the Daly City cops had located them, or Cohalan at least had gone in voluntarily when he learned of his wife’s death. I had no real reason to suspect the pair anyway, without a definite link between one or both and Baldy.

  Saturday-afternoon quiet in the office. I sat at my desk with the paper file on the Dain-Cohalan case spread out in front of me. Tamara kept all our records on computer disk, but in deference to my technophobia, she printed out all pertinent information as well. I kept the printouts for open investigations and those for closed ones dating back six months in my old file cabinet.

  Possibilities were what I was looking for—names, details, anything worth checking on. There were two. Annette Byers had not been Cohalan’s first extramarital fling, according to what his wife had told me, and my investigation had turned up one other name: Doris Niall, a programmer with a dot-com outfit in his office building. That was before I’d confirmed his relationship with Byers, so I’d had Tamara do a little digging on Ms. Niall. She had a brother who’d been in and out of trouble since he turned sixteen—half a dozen arrests for drug-related offenses, tours in the juvenile detention center and the San Francisco county jail. Steve Niall. Present activities and whereabouts unknown.

  The other possibility was a Byers connection. When she’d been busted for selling meth, she hadn’t been alone; also arrested in the sting was one Charles Andrew Bright, age 28. She’d got off with little more than probation, but Bright had been slapped with a felony conviction that had gotten him a year as a state minimum-security guest. His relationship with Byers wasn’t clear, and I hadn’t bothered to clarify it because it hadn’t seem relevant at the time.

  I looked up both Steve Niall and Bright in the phone directories for San Francisco and half a dozen other Bay Area cities and counties. No listing for either man.

  All right. Tamara. I rang the number of the apartment she shared with her cello-playing boyfriend. Nobody home. I left a message to call me as soon as she came in, car phone or home phone. With her computer skills and contacts, it shouldn’t take her long, even on the weekend, to track down some of the available data on Niall and Bright. And maybe get a line on what the Daly City cops had turned up so far; she had a friend, Felicia Jackson, who worked in the SFPD’s communications department.

  And meanwhile?

  Deliver the file to the Daly City cops ... except that after my little run-in with Erdman I had no intention of rushing it out there. I considered other options. Only one had any appeal, the one that called for direct action and held the best chance, slim as it was, for a lead to Baldy.

  The bottom drawer of my desk is a catchall for miscellany. I rummaged around in there until I found the pick gun somebody had given me years ago. Eberhardt? I seemed to remember it had come from him when he was still with the SFPD, confiscated from a hot-prowl professional burglar and delivered to me as a birthday joke. Some joke.

  A pick gun is a homemade tool that has a hand grip, a trigger, a lockpick for a barrel, and a little knob on top that you twist to adjust the spring tension. Insert the lockpick and pull the trigger, and the pick moves up and down at a rapid speed; when you have the tension just right, it bounces all the pins in a cylinder lock at once. It’s a lot faster than using hand picks and tension bars to release the pins one at a time, but less reliable. It doesn’t work in all locks, deadbolts and most newer varieties, and like Baldy’s revolver last night it has a tendency to jam. Most professional burglars refuse to use one. I had never used this one or any other myself; I’d kept Eberhardt’s little present as a souvenir, not a functional business tool. I’m not the kind of detective who believes in illegal trespass, except in extreme circumstances.

  Like mine, now.

  When you’re hunting your own murderer, anything goes.

  EIGHT

  ON THE WAY OUT CALIFORNIA I STOPPED AT A neighborhood hardware store and b
ought a can of 3-in-1 oil. The pick gun had gone unused for so long it needed lubrication. I helped myself to one of the free shopping papers from a rack at the storefront, spread it open on the car seat. A couple of shots of oil, then I tested the trigger action, pick movement, and tension knob. Still a little balky. I gave it another squirt, wiped off the excess, tried it again. Seemed to work okay then, but whether or not it would get me into Annette Byers’ building and her apartment was still problematical.

  I was on Locust Street, scouting for a parking place, when the car phone buzzed. Tamara. I made myself listen patiently to her expressions of concern, delivered the appropriate responses, then told her what I wanted her to do.

  She said, “How come you don’t trust the cops to find this bald guy?”

  “It’s not that I don’t trust them. They’ve got their resources, we’ve got ours—we might be able to turn up a lead before they do. Besides, I shouldn’t’ve held on to that damn money in the first place, no matter what the client wanted. I feel responsible.”

  “For the woman’s death? Might’ve happened anyway.”

  “And it might not have.”

  “Not your fault.”

  “I know that, but I still feel responsible.”

  Three-beat. Then, “You sound like a man with an agenda.”

  “Meaning what? That this is personal? Damn right it is.”

  “What happens if you find him before the law does?”

  “Nothing happens. I’m not a vigilante, Tamara.”

  “I know it, but do the cops? Does the bald dude?”

  “You going to give me an argument?”

  “No sir, not me.” In a softer voice she said, “Must’ve been pretty bad last night.”

  “Yeah, pretty bad. Can you get to work right away?”

  “Nothing on my plate except what’s left of a crappy pizza. I’ll see if I can get hold of Felicia first thing.”

  “Call me as soon as you find out anything. If I don’t answer, keep trying until I do.”

  I was on Clay now, a couple of blocks from Byers’ building, and I spotted a parking space opposite the Presidio Heights Playground—the first I’d come across in ten minutes of circling. Tight fit, but I got the car maneuvered into it. The fog had all but burned off here; I walked to Locust through pale sunshine and blustery wind, the pick gun in one pocket and my .38 in the other.

  Still nobody home. Or at least nobody answering the bell. The vestibule, the sidewalk, the street in front—all empty. I stooped to peer at the locking mechanism on the entrance doors. Flush-mounted cylinder lock, a steel lip on the doorframe to protect the bolt and striking plate. It had been there awhile, seen a lot of use; that was good because pick guns work best in old locks.

  I unpocketed the thing, slid the pick into the keyhole, worked the knob to adjust the tension, and squeezed the trigger. It made a small chattering noise, vibrating in my hand, but nothing happened. I fiddled with the knob, tried again. Nothing. Another adjustment, another squeeze. Nothing. I gritted my teeth, got set to try again. And stopped and just stood there.

  For Christ’s sake, I thought, what am I doing?

  The angle of daylight was such that the door glass acted as a mirror: my cloudy reflection stared back at me. I was sweating and I looked a little wild-eyed and the facial Band-Aids and bruises completed an image to frighten children. Standing here with a burglar tool in my hand like a demented sneak thief, hearing clicks in my head instead of voices.

  “You damn fool,” I said under my breath, but that only added to the Halloween image. Not thinking clearly. Not acting like a rational man or a professional detective. Get a grip, goddamn it!

  I put the pick gun away in my pocket, cleaned the sweat off my face. All right, use your brain. Think. There are other ways to get into a building, into a locked apartment. Risky, all of them, but a hell of a lot more reasonable than playing stupid Watergate games in broad daylight.

  I took a couple of slow breaths, calming down, and then rang the bell for 1-A, L. Timmerman, Bldg Mgr. And this time a male voice said through the intercom, “Yes?”

  “Mr. Timmerman?”

  “Yes, what is it?”

  “Police business.”

  There was a murmur that might have been “Oh, shit.” After which he said, “Right away,” and the door buzzer sounded.

  Just like that, you horse’s ass, you.

  I went in, and a skinny guy about fifty with protuberant front teeth like a beaver’s was coming out of a door labeled 1-A. Before he shut the door I could hear noise from a TV set tuned to a college football game, crowd sounds and the overheated voices of a pair of announcers. When he got a good look at me he blinked and his jaw dropped an inch or so. He said in a surprisingly deep baritone, “What happened to you?”

  I told him the truth. “Run-in with a dangerous felon.”

  “I hope he got the worst of it.”

  “Not yet, but he will.”

  “You here about the Byers woman?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, I told that lieutenant, what’s his name, Fumente....”

  “Fuentes.”

  “Right, Fuentes. I told him and the city cop ... uh, officer with him everything I know early this morning. Which isn’t much. Like I said to them, I mind my own business.”

  “I’d like a look inside her apartment, Mr. Timmerman. Check on something that might have been overlooked. You mind opening it up for me?”

  Ticklish moment. If he asked to see ID, I’d show him my investigator’s license with my thumb over the part that said I was a private not public detective. If he wanted to see the entire license or a badge, I would back off and walk away. Impersonating a police officer is a felony; so far I hadn’t made that claim, at least not directly, and I wouldn’t if push came to shove.

  But he’d already taken me at face value. And he was anxious to cooperate; he didn’t want trouble with the law any more than I did. He said, “No, sir, I don’t mind. Just let me get my passkey.”

  On the second floor, when he’d finished unlocking the door to Byers’ studio, I said, “You go on about your business, Mr. Timmerman. I’ll let you know when I’m done so you can lock up again.”

  “Sure thing. Take your time. I’m not going anywhere today, just watching the Cal game on TV”

  The apartment seemed even more disarrayed than it had on Thursday night, but probably not as a result of the police visit. The Chinese partition had been knocked askew, revealing the bed—a double without a headboard—and the fact that the none-too-clean sheets and blankets had been pulled loose and were trailing on the floor, either by a restless sleeper or as the result of vigorous lovemaking. In the wall behind the bed a closet door stood open; most of the hangers in there appeared to be empty. Next to the closet was a cheap maple dresser, all its drawers open, part of a black net brassiere caught on the knob of one.

  I moved over there for a closer look. All that remained in the closet were a couple of inexpensive dresses, a blouse that lay crumpled on the floor, and a pair of scuffed sandals. Three of the dresser drawers had been cleaned out; the fourth contained the black bra, some wadded-up pantyhose, and the husks of two long-dead flies.

  Packed up and long gone, I thought. In a hurry, from the looks of it.

  In the bathroom I opened the medicine cabinet. The usual clutter, but no toothbrush or prescription medicines or other essentials. Nothing essential to me, either. I wasted a couple of minutes checking inside the toilet tank and other possible hiding places, doing it out of thoroughness rather than hope. If there’d been anything to find, Fuentes and the San Francisco cop would have turned it up this morning.

  I went out to the kitchenette. The lid to the tape compartment on the answering machine was open; if Byers had replaced the tape I’d confiscated on Thursday, Fuentes had carted the new one away. I poked through drawers and then took them all the way out to see if anything had been taped underneath or behind. Looked inside the cupboards, the small refrig
erator, and the even smaller stove. Peered into corners and crannies. Nothing. Under the sink was a garbage bag about a third full. The contents didn’t appear to have been disturbed; the two cops had either overlooked or ignored the bag. I used two fingers on each hand to sift through it.

  Coffee grounds, empty cans, a shriveled apple, a sour-smelling half-and-half container, a few wadded-up yellow sheets from the five-by-seven pad by the phone. And another sheet from the pad that had been folded and torn into several little pieces. The wadded ones were meaningless—part of a grocery list, tic-tac-toe games, and the kind of doodles people make when they’re talking on the phone. I fished out as many of the torn scraps as I could find and fitted them together, puzzle fashion, on the breakfast bar until I could read what was written there.

  Dingo 4.15 V.V.S.

  Meaningless, too, maybe. And maybe not. The 4.15 could be a time . . . a reminder to meet somebody named Dingo at V.V.S., whatever that was. Or was it some kind of code message? The handwriting was Byers’—same as the grocery list—and the fact that it had been torn up rather than wadded like the other throwaways made me wonder if she’d done it to make sure somebody—Cohalan?—didn’t happen to see it. I scraped the pieces together, slipped them into my wallet.

  There was nothing else for me here. After I put the garbage bag back where I’d found it, I made one more pass through the studio just to make sure and then got out of there.

  Downstairs I knocked on Timmerman’s door. He said when he opened up, “All through?” He didn’t seem particularly interested; he had one ear cocked to the football game blaring away behind him, the crowd and the announcers engaging in the kind of frenzy that follows a touchdown.

  “All through. You can lock up any time.”

  “Yes, sir. Right away.”

  On my way to the car I wondered if he would mention me if the police contacted him again. If he did, they could make trouble for me with the State Board of Licenses. Worry about that if and when. Right now it didn’t seem to matter much.