Bill Pronzini: The Vanished

In my open suitcase I located a package of cigarettes. I tore it open and lit one, drawing in the smoke, coughing, inhaling again. My hands were still trembling; I had not been in a slugging fight in ten years, and never one like this. I was too goddamn old for anything as physical as this, and the reaction was setting in. I thought: He’s like a bull, all right, just like a bull. How the hell did I take him?

I sat on the bed and smoked and trembled, and finally I began to feel a little better. The throbbing gentled in my head, and some of the terrible weakness in my legs and arms went away. I walked into the bathroom again and drank a glass of water and came out and looked down at Holly. He was stirring now, moaning deep in his throat.

He rolled over onto his back, and I saw that he looked as bad as I did-blood all over him, cuts, torn clothing, his nose twisted to one side and still flowing, a tooth missing in the front. I backed off a couple of steps, thinking: I hope he doesn’t try to start it up again, I don’t think I can handle any more. There was a writing desk in one corner of the room, and I went there and took the heavy redwood chair and stood it between Holly and me. If he made another play, I was going to use the chair on him and the hell with it.

Holly lay with his eyes shut, his belly heaving like a giant bellows as he sucked in breath through his broken nose and ruined mouth. Then he moaned and rolled over again and crawled up onto all fours; he shook his head, shook it again, prying his eyes open. He raised one hand, rubbed the back of it across his face, and then he saw me and my hands tensed on the back of the chair.

But he just knelt there, looking at me with his vacuous eyes. After an interval he let the lower half of his body relax, rolling his left hip onto the floor and resting his weight on that and on his left arm. He forced words through his thick lips, ‘You beat me. Nobody ever beat me before, and you beat me.’

‘You son of a bitch.’

‘You’re tough,’ Holly said. ‘You’re a tough guy.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Oh yeah, I’m a tough guy.’

‘Nobody ever beat me before.’

There was a certain respect in his voice, as if he held no more anger or animosity toward me, as if I was now a kind of hero for having beaten him. The bloody mask of his face was expressionless, but I had that feeling of grudging worship and it made me uneasy. I wanted to hate him, and yet I could not do it with him the way he was-a sort of huge child, a worshiping Brahma child. I stood there, trembling, watching him.

‘I waited for you two hours,’ he said. ‘You didn’t come.’

‘How did you know where to find me?’

‘Roxbury ain’t big.’

‘Yeah.’

‘I know Mr. Jardine. He said you was in number five.’

‘All right, now the big question: why?’

‘Huh?’

‘Why did you jump me?’

‘You upset Mrs. Emery today.’

‘Oh, that’s some fine reason.’

‘You’re a friend of his, that other one.’

‘What other one? You mean Sands?’

‘Yeah, him.’

‘I’m not a friend of his, I’m just trying to find him.’

‘That ain’t what you told Mrs. Emery.’

‘Did she send you after me?’

‘She don’t know nothing about it.’

‘It was all your idea, huh?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Just because of Sands.’

‘He killed Miss Diane. And you’re his friend.’

‘Christ!’

‘You deserved same as he got,’ Holly said.

I stared at him. A vague chill touched my back, staying on there in the saddle of it. ‘What?’ I said. ‘What did you say?’

He pressed his thick bluish lips together.

‘Did you jump Sands the same way you did me, Holly?’

Silence.

‘Goddamn it, Holly, did you?’

‘Yeah,’ he muttered.

‘Why?’

‘I told you. He caused Miss Diane to die. I heard him tell Mr. and Mrs. Emery what he done, and Mrs. Emery she started screaming for him to leave and Mr. Emery was all excited and took to drinking like he does, and when that guy left I just went after him. I had to do something. The Emerys, they’re just like my folks, they been real good to me. Miss Diane was real good to me, too, before she went away. I couldn’t just let that guy walk away without doing nothing.’

‘Where did you jump him? Here at the motel?’

‘No.’

‘Well, where?’

‘I followed him in the truck. I offered him a ride.’

‘You took him somewhere?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Where?’

‘To Hammock Grove.’

‘What’s that?’

‘A picnic place out at the end of Coachman Road.’

‘And then what?’

‘I hit him a few times.’

‘You beat him up.’

‘Yeah. He wasn’t tough at all.’

‘What did you do then?’

‘I left him there. I drove away.’

‘Was he alive?’

He stared up at me. ‘I never killed nobody.’

‘You’re sure he was alive?’

‘I told you, didn’t I?’

‘Was he unconscious?’

‘I guess so.’

‘Where did you leave him?’

‘In Hammock Grove.’

‘Where in Hammock Grove?’

‘By the bridge.’

‘What bridge?’

‘There’s this bridge goes across a little creek,’ Holly said. ‘When you first come in to the picnic area.’

‘All right. What time of day did all this happen?’

‘In the afternoon.’

‘What time?’

‘I dunno. It was still light out.’

‘And afterward you went home, back to the Emery farm?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Do the Emerys know what you did?’

‘No, I never told nobody.’

‘And you never saw Sands again?’

‘No,’ Holly said. ‘Can I get up now? My head hurts.’

I kept my hands on the chair back. ‘Get up, then.’

It took him several seconds. He stood, finally, swaying a little, as if he were very dizzy. He said, ‘You hurt me plenty.’

I did not answer.

He moved then, away from me, into the bathroom. I watched him running water into the basin, as I had done, washing the blood from his face. He did not look into the mirror. He picked up the same towel I had used and buried his face in it, and then threw it down again and came out into the main room, blinking at me.

‘What you going to do?’ he said. ‘You going to take me to the police?’

I just stared at him.

‘I don’t like to be locked up. I can’t stand that.’

‘You can’t go around jumping people like you’ve been doing.’

‘I won’t do it no more.’

‘How do I know you won’t?’

‘Well, I won’t.’

‘All right,’ I said, ‘get out of here.’ I was near exhaustion now, and even if I wanted to take him in I did not think I was capable of it. I would pass out before we got halfway to the City Hall, with him docile or not. ‘Go on, Holly, go home.’

‘You won’t come bothering Mrs. Emery no more, will you?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I won’t come around there any more.’

‘I got nothing against you now,’ Holly said. ‘You beat me, and nobody ever done that before. You’re a tough guy.’

He staggered over to the door and got it open and looked at me with that pathetic, battered rubber mask; then he went out into the night, pulling the door shut behind him.

I moved directly to the light switch and put the room in darkness. I sat on the bed and took the rest of my clothes off and lay back with the blanket over me, trying to think; but it was no good, it was just no good.

I let sleep wash over me, wrapping the throbbing pain in it. Tomorrow I could think, tomorrow…

I awoke to a consummate aching stiffness of every muscle in my body.

It was after nine and there was sunlight in the room, shining dustily in long, pale shafts on the bare redwood floor. I lay for a time with my eyes closed against the light, very still, listening to the hammering of surf within the confines of my skull. It began to ebb, finally, and I allowed the blankness upon which I had been concentrating to be filled by returning thoughts of last night.