Bill Pronzini - Zigzag

He said it was a pleasure to meet me, which was probably a lie, and welcomed me to EverYoung with a little programmed speech about helping to achieve whatever my personal goals might be. After which he asked the same question the young woman at the desk had asked. I looked him straight in the eye and gave him the same answer.

His reaction to Melanie Joy Holloway’s name was to lose the smile, his lips pulling into a tight line. I watched him struggle to regain his professional composure, then prodded him off balance again by saying, “She’s the reason I’m here, but it’s not to sign up for an exercise program. I have a few questions about your relationship with her.”

“Why? What for? Who’re you?”

I let him see the photostat of my license. The confused look on his handsome face confirmed my opinion of his mental acuity. “What the hell?” he said in a lowered voice. “I haven’t seen Mel in more than a year. You want the truth, I hope I never see her again.”

“Is there someplace private we can talk?”

“... Huh?”

“Too public out here, wouldn’t you say?”

“I just told you—” He wagged his head as if to clear it. The young woman at the desk was watching us; Jacklin saw that, too, and it made up his mind for him. “Yeah, okay. Follow me.”

I trailed him into the rear of the building, through the weight and exercise room, and through an open door. Massage room: metal table, towels on racks, glass-doored cabinet full of emoluments, curtained alcove for changing in privacy. The mingled smells of body oils, disinfectant, and stale sweat assumed miasmic proportions when Jacklin shut the door.

“Listen,” he said, turning toward me, “if that bitch is in trouble again, you’re talking to the wrong guy. I don’t know anything about it.”

“Bitch, Mr. Jacklin?”

“You heard me right. Bitch plain and simple.”

“Was she in some kind of trouble when the two of you were together?”

“What?”

“In trouble again, you said. Again.”

“Mel was always in some kind of trouble back then.”

“What kind, specifically? With the law?”

“Nah, nothing like that.” He gnawed on his lower lip with the sort of bright white teeth you see in dental ads. “What’s this all about, anyway? You working for Melanie’s father or something?”

“I can’t tell you that. Privileged information.”

“Yeah, well, it’s going on two years since I laid eyes on her. I don’t get how what happened that long ago has to do with me.”

“Probably nothing,” I said. “I’m just gathering information. Which one of you broke off your relationship?”

A little silence. Then he lifted and lowered a shoulder and said, “It sure as hell wasn’t my idea. I thought we were tight, real tight.”

“The kind of tight that could lead to marriage?”

“Yeah, maybe. So?” Jacklin said sullenly. “She kept throwing out signals, telling me she loved me every time we got it on together. Then all of a sudden... boom, good-bye, Conner. No explanation, nothing. Pretended I didn’t exist after she came back from wherever she disappeared to.”

“Disappeared? When was that?”

“Summer. Early summer.”

“Middle of June?”

“Around then, yeah.”

“For how long?”

“Week, two weeks, I don’t remember exactly.”

“Any idea where she might’ve been all that time?”

“No.” Jacklin went to lean against the massage table, his hands gripping its beveled edge. “But I figure maybe she hooked up with some guy and shacked up with him somewhere for a week or two. I wouldn’t put it past her the way she was then.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And then something heavy must’ve happened. The guy beat her up or got her wasted on crystal meth or something and she ended up in jail or the hospital for a week or two. That’d explain it, right?”

“It might.”

“But not the rest of it. Why she dumped me and quit dealing with her old friends.”

I asked, “When did you last see her?”

“Right before she disappeared. She was gonna spend the weekend at this Indian casino up north.”

“The Graton in Rohnert Park?”

“Yeah. How’d you know that?”

“You didn’t go with her?”

“No. I had a private session that Saturday.” The near smirk that crossed Jacklin’s mouth told me the “private session” had had little or nothing to do with personal fitness training.

“Did she go with anybody else?”

“Not that I know of. She wanted us to make a weekend of it. Pissed when I begged off.”

“Did she often go to the Graton Casino by herself?”

“Now and then. She had a thing for the place. Didn’t matter to her if anybody was with her or not. All she wanted to do was gamble, park her ass at a roulette or baccarat table for hours at a stretch. Not me, man. Waste of time and money.”

“Make large bets, did she?”

“Yeah, sometimes, if she hit a winning streak. Not that that happened very often.”

“How large?”

“Biggest single bet I ever saw her make was five hundred.”

“Did she ever win big?”

“Nah. A couple grand once at baccarat, but she blew it all the next day.”

“So she lost more often than she won.”

“Got that right. Tossed away dollars like they were pennies.”

“How heavy were her losses?”

“Thousands sometimes. Eight K once when I wasn’t with her. Didn’t bother her.” Jacklin’s mouth twisted into a bitter little sneer. “Why should it? Her old man’s rich as hell.”

“Did he know how much she was losing?”

“Sure, he knew. Kept after her to quit, threatened to cut her off if she didn’t cool it.”

“Maybe he finally got through to her,” I said. “Maybe that’s the reason, or part of the reason, she altered her lifestyle.”

“No way,” Jacklin said. “Mel never paid any attention to her old man when I knew her, just went ahead and did what she wanted and bragged about it afterward. He was just blowing smoke with his threats.” The sneer again. “Daddy’s baby girl and she knew it.”

“Then how do you account for the change in her?”

“I can’t, man. Neither can anybody else. She blew off all her chick friends the same time she did me, wouldn’t tell anybody why. Holloway wouldn’t tell me, either.”

“You spoke to him?”

“Once, for about five minutes, and he did all the talking.”

“When was that?”

“After she came back home from wherever she disappeared to.” The bitterness was palpable in Jacklin’s voice now. “Showed up here one day, said Mel was through with me and if I knew what was good for me I’d never try to see her again. Prick even waved a check in my face. Five thousand bucks, for Christ’s sake, like he was firing me from some fucking job.”

“And you turned it down?”

“Like hell I did. I was entitled to something after what the bitch did to me, wasn’t I? Even a lousy five K to sign a paper promising I’d never have anything to do with her again?”

On the way back to the city, I made an effort to put what I’d learned from Conner Jacklin together with the other bits and pieces into a credible scenario that would explain Melanie Holloway’s brief disappearance and its aftermath. Jacklin’s theory of a pickup who’d physically abused her and/or fed her heavy doses of hard drugs was reasonable enough. A couple of weeks in jail or a hospital somewhere would explain the disappearance, all right. The hush-up afterward, too; Vernon Holloway was the type to take whatever steps necessary to avoid negative publicity for himself and his reckless daughter. It might also explain Melanie’s lifestyle change, whether Jacklin thought so or not. The experience, if it was a bad one, could have scared the hell out of her and made Holloway finally lay down the law.