Bill Pronzini: Shackles

His name wasn’t Brit; he was a Brit. That was why his voice had sounded so odd and stilted to me. He had disguised it, Americanized it, to keep me from realizing that he was British.

His name was Neal Vining.

Expatriate son of a London antiquarian book dealer. Twenty-six years old, married to an American woman and working for a San Francisco bookseller named John Rothman when I exposed him as a thief and a near murderer. He had devised an ingenious plan to steal rare books, maps, and etchings from Rothman’s shop, after which he’d sold them to unscrupulous collectors; he was intelligent, well educated, amoral, and totally ruthless. When he’d realized that I was onto him he had tried to use his car to run me-and Kerry, who had been with me at the time-off a steep, curving street into Glen Park Canyon. It had been luck as much as anything else that had kept him from succeeding and almost cost him his own life instead.

But none of that, none of it, warranted or explained what he had done to me here the past three months.

“Recognize me, eh?” he said. He was making no effort now to conceal his accent and it was discernible enough, if blunted somewhat by his years in this country and in prison. “I can see it in your face.”

“I recognize you, Vining.”

“I thought you would. It’s too soon for you to have forgotten who I am.”

“I never forget a man who tries to kill me,” I said. “When was it you tried the first time? Five years ago?”

“Almost six.”

“The judge gave you ten years’ hard time. But how many did you serve? Four, five?”

“Four years, ten months, thirteen days.”

“You’re young-that’s not much time behind bars.”

“Isn’t it?” He shifted slightly on the cot, so that the lamplight struck his eyes; the hate in them burned like foxfire. There was so much hate in this room that it was almost a third entity, a force comprised of pure negative energy. “How did you get free of the leg iron? I still can’t believe you managed it.”

“Look at me. That ought to give you an idea.”

“… You’re thinner. Much thinner.”

“Close to forty pounds.”

“I don’t… Christ, you lost enough weight to slip it off?”

“With the help of some soap and Spam grease.”

“When? You were still shackled in mid-January. And there’s hardly any food left…”

“A week ago.”

“You stayed here waiting for me to return? No, you couldn’t have… you got that pistol somewhere…”

“Another cabin nearby,” I said. “And no, I didn’t wait here for you. I tracked you down. Followed you up here tonight from Elk Grove-Sixty-two Cordilleras Street, Elk Grove.”

The hate in his eyes seemed to burn hotter for a few seconds. “How did you find out I’ve been living with Midge?”

“Frank Tucker.”

“Oh, of course. I might have known. I don’t suppose you shot Tucker, killed him?”

“No. I hurt him some, though.”

“Did you? Good! How did you hurt him?”

“I busted his head with a piece of wood.”

He smiled; it seemed almost to cheer him. “Will he die?”

“I doubt it.”

“Too bad. A slow lingering death-that’s what I wish for him.”

“I thought the two of you were friends.”

“My God-friends!”

“You stayed with him last October, in his apartment in Sacramento.”

“Yes, well, I’d just been released from Folsom and I needed a place. I didn’t know Midge then.”

“What about your wife?”

“My ex-wife,” he said bitterly. “She divorced me after I went to prison. My father disowned me at the same time. Not a bloody word from either of them since.”

“Why did you stay with Tucker, if you hate him so much?”

Vining smiled again-a dark, unreadable smile this time. “I had my reasons,” he said.

“Such as establishing an address so you could rent this cabin.”

“That’s one.”

“Where did you get the money?”

“Oh, I had a bit put away.”

From selling the rare books and other items he’d stolen from John Rothman, probably. I remembered that not all of the money he’d received had been recovered. At his trial he’d claimed to have spent it and refused to budge from that story.

I said, “Is that what you’ve been living on since you got out? Or are you in on Rix’s loan-sharking and pornography scams too?”

“I don’t know anyone named Rix.”

“You gave him as a personal reference to the real estate outfit in Carmichael.”

“Did I? Yes, that’s right-Tucker’s friend. I asked Tucker for the name of someone who would lie for me and he provided this fellow Rix. He also provided the gun I used to abduct you. He was very accommodating, Tucker was.”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me, is he involved in those scams you mentioned?”

“He was. He won’t be much longer. Neither will Rix.”

“You’ve put the police on them?”

“That’s right.”

The dark smile again. “Quite the detective. Quite the fucking detective.”

I didn’t say anything.

“But you didn’t put the police on me ,” Vining said. “Instead you followed me up here. I suppose you intend to kill me?”

I still didn’t say anything.

“I don’t care, you know,” he said. “I really don’t, not anymore.” A thought seemed to occur to him then; he frowned, and the timbre of his voice had changed slightly when he said, “I do care about Midge, though. She had nothing to do with any of this. She knows nothing about it.”

“I didn’t think she did.”

“Not a bloody thing.”

Are you worried about her? Of course you are. You’re afraid I’ll do something to Ms. Wade . His words, on the way up here that first night. The irony was sharp, and yet it gave me no satisfaction, no desire to remind him of it and goad him with it. Maybe because I was so tired and wired, wired and tired, and I just wanted to get this done, the rest of the questions and then the other thing, so I could rest. Or maybe because other of his words that first night had also come back to me: I could torture you with the idea. Make you think I intend to harm your woman. It’s tempting, I’ll admit… but I don’t think I’ll do it. No need for it, really. There’s such a thing as overkill, after all .

“I told her nothing about me,” he was saying, “not even… nothing. She never asked. Knew me only a week when she invited me to move in with her, share expenses-into her house, not her bed. That’s the way she is, trusting. Leave her alone, will you? She’s been hurt enough in her life.”

“I won’t go near her.”

“… No, no you won’t. I believe you.”

“This is just between you and me.”

“Yes. Well, then, one other thing before you shoot: Did you suffer? During the time you were chained here?”

“You know I did.”

“Tell me how much.”

“No, goddamn you.”

“Why not? Dying man’s last request.” Another of those dark, unreadable smiles. “The provisions for thirteen weeks-was that maddening too? Thirteen instead of twelve or sixteen?”

I stared at him. “The number doesn’t mean anything. You set that up along with the rest.”

“Of course. I knew you’d try to find meaning in it. Such a smart detective. But a good red herring will fool even the best, eh?”

“Why, Vining? Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you do it, all of it? Why do you hate me so much?”

“Don’t you know? You seem to know everything else.”

“No, I don’t know. It can’t be just because I had a hand in sending you to prison-”

“Had a hand in it? That’s a bloody laugh. You were totally responsible. If it hadn’t been for you…” The words seemed to choke him up; he coughed his throat clear. “You destroyed me, destroyed my life !”