Bill Pronzini - The Other Side Of Silence

When she broke the connection, he said, “Now call the Golden Horseshoe, tell them you won’t be in tonight. Make up an excuse.”

“Hey, listen, they don’t like us calling in at the last minute. You want me to lose my job?”

“Just keep doing what you’re told.”

She grumbled some more but she did it. “Now what?”

“Now we wait for Bobby J. to call.”

“For how long? It might be hours before he checks his messages. Once he went off someplace and didn’t call for three damn days…”

“Hours, days, it doesn’t matter,” Fallon said. “As long as it takes.”

Candy was a poor waiter. She fidgeted on the couch, she got up and walked around, she threw dagger glares at him every couple of minutes. Once, after an hour, she unleashed a tirade of four-letter words that he didn’t respond to. He sat in the same place with the Ruger on his lap, watching her, the tension in him tamped down under a layer of cold patience. For the most part he kept his mind blank, and when he did think, it wasn’t about her or Jablonsky. Casey and Kevin. Timmy. Death Valley and the desert solitude.

Two hours.

The windows were curtained and as dusk settled outside, the room darkened. He told Candy to turn on a couple of lamps. When she’d done that, she stood scowling down at him, her arms folded across her heavy breasts. The robe was still open, showing more freckled white flesh.

“I need a drink,” she said. “Steady my nerves.”

“It’s your house. Help yourself.”

“Liquor’s out in the kitchen.”

“So’s the back door.”

“Come with me then, for Chrissake-”

Her cell phone rang.

The sudden fluttery ringtone made her jump. She looked at Fallon, did the lip-licking thing again, and flipped it open. Bobby J. The conversation lasted less than a minute. Fallon stood close to her, holding the Ruger where she could see it, to make sure she’d didn’t try to warn Jablonsky.

“He’s coming,” she said.

“Alone?”

“Yeah. Alone.”

“Where was he calling from?”

“Golden Horseshoe. Finally checked his goddamn messages when he saw I wasn’t there.”

Fallon took the phone from her, made sure it was switched off, then slid it into the pocket with the cartridges from the Saturday night special. “Shouldn’t take him more than half an hour.”

“So what when he gets here? You start shooting up the place?”

“It’s not going to be like that. As long as you keep your mouth shut when he comes in.”

Twenty-seven minutes had ticked off on Fallon’s watch when headlights flashed across the dark front window and he heard the Mustang slide noisily into the driveway. He said to Candy, “Stay there and keep still,” and got up and moved over at an angle between her and the door.

Hard steps on the porch. The door opened inward, toward where Fallon was standing so that the man coming in didn’t see him until he was three paces inside and flinging the door shut behind him. His eyes picked out Candy on the couch, shifted, and when he saw Fallon he froze.

Fallon thumbed the Ruger to full cock. “Guess who, Bobby J.,” he said.

UP CLOSE, IN A lighted room, Bobby J. was pretty much what Fallon had expected. Squat and blocky in slacks and a white T-shirt that showed off his pecs and the fire-breathing dragon tattoo that covered his right wrist and extended a couple of inches up his hairy forearm. Ice-blue eyes, empty except for a predatory cunning-the eyes of a man who cared about no one but himself, who was capable of any act that benefited or protected Bobby Jablonsky. Flat, hard features. The kind of aggressive, tough-guy look and manner that attracted women like Candy.

Outwardly he reminded Fallon of a kick-ass drill sergeant he’d known at Fort Benning, a career soldier who had been in Nam and talked about killing men as casually and dispassionately as an exterminator talked about killing bugs. Every grunt who’d encountered him feared his wrath and hated his guts. The difference between the sergeant and Jablonsky was on the inside. The sergeant had discipline, moral fiber, the stones and steel it took to lead men and fight battles. Bobby J. was all hardshell belligerence, powerful only when he had the upper hand; down deep where it counted, he was a coward. You could break him if you handled him right. You couldn’t have broken the sergeant with a sledgehammer.

The Ruger didn’t seem to scare Jablonsky, but he respected it enough not to make any stupid moves. He stood flatfooted, hating Fallon with those empty eyes. Fallon gave it back to him, just as hard and implacable.

“What the fuck you doing in my house?” Growly tough-guy voice to go with the tough-guy demeanor.

“It’s not your house.”

Candy said from the couch, “I couldn’t help it, Bobby. He just came busting in with that gun-”

“How long’s he been here?”

“I don’t know, three hours. More.”

“He do anything to you?”

“No. Just looked around and made me call you.”

Jablonsky said to Fallon, “How’d you find out where I live?”

“It wasn’t hard. I know a lot about you.”

“Yeah? What do you know?”

“I know about your deal with Court Spicer, for one thing. I know you were down in Laughlin and Bullhead City last night.”

“Wrong, man. I ain’t been down there in months.”

“He said you raped somebody,” Candy said. “Is that right? Did you?”

“No. What’d you tell him about me?”

“Nothing. He wanted to know where you were last night, I told him I don’t have a clue. Out raping somebody else, for all I know.”

“Shut your mouth,” Bobby J. said to her, and then to Fallon, “You’re not a cop. Who the hell are you? What you want with me?”

“Payback for what you did to Spicer’s ex-wife and son-”

“I never done nothing to that kid.”

“-and for what you and Clem Vinson were planning to do to me Sunday night.”

“How’d you know-” The shape of his expression changed; he rotated the cat’s-eye ring on his finger, closed the hand into a fist. “Yeah. That stupid Arbogast.”

Fallon let him believe it.

Candy said, “What’s this about you and Clem?”

“Didn’t I tell you to shut up?”

“Fuck you, Bobby.”

“Say that once more and I’ll kick your face in.”

Fallon said, “You like to beat up on women, don’t you? Makes you feel like a big man.”

“Yeah, the way you feel with that gun in your hand. Put it down, then we’ll find out who’s the big man.”

“I’ve got a better idea.” Fallon glanced at Candy. “You keep a flashlight in the house?”

“… Flashlight? Why?”

“Go get it. And don’t come back with anything else.”

She got up, glared at Bobby J., and disappeared into the kitchen.

Jablonsky said, “You want to run your mouth to me, all right, but don’t say nothing more in front of her.”

“I don’t intend to.”

In half a minute Candy was back with a short, stubby flashlight. He motioned for her to come around behind the couch, took the light from her, motioned for her to sit down again. The beam was strong and steady when he switched it on to test it. He shoved it into his empty jacket pocket.

“Okay,” he said to Bobby J. “Now we go for a ride.”

“What the hell you mean, a ride? Where?”

“You’ll find out.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you, man.”

“Yes, you are. Give me any trouble, I’ll blow a hole in your kneecap. You can’t even imagine the pain.”

“You wouldn’t do that. Not with a cannon like that, in this neighborhood.”

No, he wouldn’t, but Bobby J. didn’t know that. “Try me,” he said.