Bill Pronzini - Zigzag

I pulled the desk phone over and tapped out his number. The voice that answered said, “Lenihan’s Service, at your service,” in a slow and mellow drawl, as if he might already be a little stoned.

I gave him my name, nothing more, and asked if he’d be home for the next couple of hours. He said, “No plans to go anywhere. Computer problem? I specialize in PCs, but I do Macs, too.”

“We can discuss the problem when I get there. Hour, hour and fifteen minutes okay?”

“Any time. I’ll be here.”

Santa Clara is another upscale South Bay community, not as affluent as Atherton but still a desirable nesting place for what’s left of the upper middle class. It’s also the new home of what used to be the San Francisco 49ers. I say used to be because many of the homegrown city dwellers like me who loyally supported the team at Kezar and Candlestick for decades were none too happy with the move forty-three miles south to the glitzy new, superexpensive, poorly situated Levi’s Stadium — a stadium that could have and should have been built on available city land next to AT&T Park in downtown S.F.

Sure, winning the bid to host the 2016 Super Bowl was a major coup for the organization and a financial boon for San Francisco despite the South Bay location of the game. But that’s not enough to mollify me and many of the other faithful in the city and the North Bay. If anything, it makes the move seem even more of a defection, a fan-base shift that amounts to a collective slap in the face of the old guard. As far as we’re concerned, the ownership should be forced to drop San Francisco from the team name and replace it with something generic and more honest — the Golden State 49ers, for instance, following the lead of the pro basketball franchise when the Warriors quit playing their games in the city back in 1971.

As fashionable as most of Santa Clara is, it has its pockets of lower-income housing. Joe Lenihan lived in one of these, in a nondescript apartment house not far off the 101 freeway. His unit was on the second floor, rear. I rang his bell, identified myself when his voice came over the intercom, and he said, “Come on up; door’s open,” and buzzed me in.

The front section of what was probably his apartment’s living room had been turned into a kind of business anteroom by the addition of wall-to-wall blue curtains. The space was crammed with two tables and two chairs facing each other across the larger table. A couple of desktop PCs and a laptop wearing name tags sat on the smaller table, evidently repaired and awaiting customer pickup.

A couple of seconds after I entered, the curtains parted and I had my first look at Joe Lenihan. He wasn’t what I’d expected any more than Peter Erskine had been. The image I’d had was of a bearded, somewhat scruffy neo-hippie reeking of pot smoke. He was the antithesis of that: clean-shaven, with gray-flecked brown hair trimmed short and clear hazel eyes; dressed in a loose sport shirt and corduroys that were old and somewhat frayed but clean. And not even a stray whiff of marijuana came from him or from behind the curtains. You’d think that at my age and as many years as I’ve been in business, I would know better than anyone not to fall into the preconceived-notion trap.

He had a welcoming smile for me, but it dimmed somewhat when he saw that my hands were empty. “No computer? I don’t sell them, you know, just repair them.” I’d been wrong about his voice, too: slow and mellow was apparently his natural way of speaking.

“Computers isn’t the reason I’m here, Mr. Lenihan.”

“No?” His expression brightened again. “You wouldn’t be connected with the media, would you? Come to offer me a writing gig?”

“Sorry, no,” I said, and then lied a little. “But I’ve read your blog.”

“Well, one of the chosen few. A pleasure.” The smile tilted a little, self-deprecatingly. “Assuming you don’t have a complaint about one of my entries, that is.”

“No complaints. Just some questions about a particular piece you wrote last year.”

“Which one?”

“The one called ‘Dead Men Rise Up Never?’ About the devil-worshipping accident victim and his deathbed vow.”

“Oh, sure. Real weird true story. What about it?”

“I’d like some information on your sources.”

Lenihan had beetling brows; one of them arched upward into a boomerang shape over a narrowed eye. The upcurve of his mouth was wary now. “Why? After all this time?”

“Professional reasons.” I showed him the photostat of my license.

The other eyebrow humped up to make two boomerangs. The smile stayed, the wariness vanished. “No shit,” he said in a pleased sort of way. “How come a private eye’s interested in devil worshippers?”

“Not that per se, just Antanas Vok and the cult he belonged to.”

“Antanas Vok. So you know his name.” Then, eagerly, “Why do you want to know my sources? Who’re you working for?”

“That’s confidential.”

“The guy in Atherton? Did something happen to him?”

“Confidential.”

“Yeah, well, so are my sources.” Pause. “But maybe we could work something out. What’s in it for me if I tell you?”

“Satisfaction in helping solve the problem I’m investigating.”

“Hah.”

“All right. How about twenty bucks?”

“Well, I can always use extra cash,” Lenihan said, “but I can use a good story more. Maybe you don’t know it, but I’m kind of a jack-of-all-trades. Freelance journalist as well as blogger and computer repairman.”

“Uh-huh. But all I can let you have is the twenty.”

“Not even a little something I can build a story on?”

“Not even a hint.”

He thought it over, nibbling on a corner of his lower lip. Pretty soon he said, “Well, what the hell. Make it fifty bucks and you’ve got a deal.”

“Fifty’s a little steep.”

“Not for what I have to tell you.”

“All right, done.” I could afford not to quibble; the money would come out of Peter Erskine’s pocket eventually, not mine. I took two twenties and a ten from my wallet and laid them on the table between us, but I kept my hand on the bills when Lenihan reached for them. “After you’ve told me and I’m sure you’re being straightforward.”

“Hey,” he said, and now he sounded wounded and put-upon, “one thing I don’t do is lie for personal gain. Not even to my friends.”

“Good for you. Who told you about Vok’s vow of vengeance?”

“The nurse who was in the room at the time. Ellen Bowers.”

“Why did she confide in you?”

“We hook up now and then, Ellen and me. She knows I’m into the world of weird and this Vok thing was right up my alley.” A sly grin. “I showed her my appreciation with dinner and a good fuck.”

My reaction to that was an expressionless stare, to let him know I was not going to play the see-what-a-stud-I-am-wink-wink game. “What did she have to say about the other man in the room? You didn’t mention him in your blog piece.”

“What other man?”

“Relative or friend of Vok’s, apparently.”

“Yeah? Well, I can’t help you there. Ellen never mentioned anybody else being in the room.”

“Sure about that?”

“Positive. I’d’ve put it into the write-up if she had.”

“Did you ask her who claimed the bodies of Vok and his wife?”

“Nobody claimed them.”

“Oh?”

“Ellen checked for me,” Lenihan said. “No next of kin located and nobody else came forward. Both bodies planted at county expense.”

I mulled that over for a few seconds before I asked, “Did you turn up any names in the Voks’ apartment — other individuals who might be involved in this cult they belonged to?”