Bill Pronzini - Zigzag

“Ah... I can’t answer that.”

“No? Why not?”

He looked a little sheepish now. “Well, the truth is, I went there, but the place was locked up tight and I couldn’t convince the building manager to let me in.”

“Then how did you find out about the books and the other black arts stuff the Voks had?”

“I didn’t.” The grin again, and a shrug. “Details make for a better story, whether they’ve been confirmed or not. Poetic license, you know?”

“Meaning you made up that part of it?”

“Well, not completely. The grimoires I listed are all genuine volumes, and I figured there were bound to be pentagrams and other shit linking the Voks to a devil cult.”

Some journalist. “But you don’t know that there was.”

“No. But Vok admitted to Satan being his lord and master. Pact with the devil, right?”

“That doesn’t mean it’s true,” I said. “He was dying, angry, probably not in his right mind.”

“You’re forgetting the black host. Ellen saw him shove it into the guy’s hand. The wife nearly freaked when she saw it, so it must’ve been genuine. That and the vow makes Vok a devil worshipper in my book.”

But not in mine, not necessarily. “Does Ellen Bowers still work at South Bay Memorial?”

“Yep.”

“On duty today, would you know?”

He shook his head. “We’re not that close.”

“But you do have the hospital’s phone number?”

“Sure. Ellen’s, too, if you want it.”

“Both.”

“Do I get the fifty bucks then?”

I told him yes, and he said he’d have to get the numbers from his cell. He went away through the curtains, came back pretty soon with them scrawled on a piece of notepaper. When I took my hand off the bills, he made them disappear as if by a little magic trick of his own.

He grinned again. “Nice doing business with you,” he said. “Hope you find what you’re looking for.”

I didn’t answer him, or return his salute as I turned to leave. I may have to deal with people who have shoddy morals and ethics, and who think nothing of cavalierly adding to the misinformation on the Internet, but I don’t have to be polite to them.

In the car I called South Bay Memorial to find out if Ellen Bowers was on duty today. She was, but currently assisting on a surgery and unavailable until after two o’clock. So I programmed the Voks’ former address, 1936 Dillard Street, into the GPS and let the thing guide me down 101 into San Jose.

The address was in one of the poorer parts of the city, a mixed neighborhood with Hispanics dominating. The building was a somewhat run-down, six-unit apartment house flanked by a bodega on one side, another apartment building on the other. Cooking odors old and new clogged the air in the narrow foyer. Pasted above the name Rodriguez on the mailbox for apartment #1 was an old DYMO label with the word Manager on it. I pushed the bell, waited, pushed it again. Just as I was about to try for a third and last time, the intercom crackled and a voice said, “Yeah? What is it?” The crackling was so bad I barely understood the words, and couldn’t tell if the voice was male or female.

I gave my name and said I was there on a business matter, but none of it got through to whoever was on the other end. There was some staticky chatter that I couldn’t understand at all; another attempt on my part didn’t get through, either. The intercom shut off, and a few seconds later the door to a ground-floor apartment popped open and a guy in an armless undershirt came out. He peered through the front door glass at me, yanked it open, and snapped irritably, “Goddamn thing don’t never work right,” as if the intercom’s failings were my fault. “What you want? Selling something, we don’t want it.”

“I’m not a salesman. You’re Mr. Rodriguez?”

“I asked you what you want.”

“To talk to the manager. Is that you?”

“No, my wife, but she’s at work.” He didn’t say why he wasn’t also at work, but then maybe he had a night job. And a tolerant employer, if so, since he reeked of beer. “No empty units, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

“It’s not. What I’m looking for is some information on a couple who lived here over a year ago. The Voks — Antanas and Elza Vok.”

“Them two.” Rodriguez scowled at me. He was a big guy, forty or so, with hairy arms and chest and a hanging beer gut that hid the belt buckle on his trousers. “They’re dead, killed in a car smash. Why you want to know about them?”

“I’m trying to locate their next of kin.”

“Why? What for?”

“Can you help me, Mr. Rodriguez?”

“No. I mind my own business, man. Besides, them other guys was pretty damn creepy.”

“What other guys?”

“The two come around here and took some of the Voks’ stuff away.”

“When was this? How soon after the car smash?”

“Morning after he died in the hospital.”

Fast work, if Rodriguez’s memory was accurate. The kind that suggests urgency and purpose.

“Can you describe the men?” I asked.

“After a year? Come on, man.”

“I’d appreciate it if you’d try to remember.”

He didn’t have to try very hard; he remembered them, all right. Pretty soon he said, “One was like the Voks. You know, foreign.”

“Lithuanian?”

A fat shoulder lifted, dropped again.

“What about the other one?”

“White guy. Butt ugly, built like an ox. They wasn’t the painting brothers, that’s for sure.”

“Painting brothers?”

“Yeah. Sign on the door of the van they had.”

“The Painting Brothers, that was the company name?”

“No, no. The brothers’ name was the same as that guy used to be on late-night TV. The talk show guy.”

“I don’t watch late-night TV.”

“Leno, man. L-e-n-o. Leno Brothers Painting.”

“Do you recall where the business was located?”

“Nah. My memory ain’t that good.”

“How old would you say the two men were?”

“Not as old as the Voks. I didn’t look at them too close. Creepy, like I said.”

“In what way?”

“Just creepy,” Rodriguez said. “You know how you meet somebody, strangers, you get these vibes tell you you don’t want to have nothing to do with them? Like that.”

“Were you the one who let them into the Voks’ apartment?”

“Not me. My wife took ’em up.”

“How did you and she know they were authorized to remove the Voks’ belongings?”

“They had a paper.”

“What kind of paper?”

Another shrug. “Maria was okay with it. Didn’t think they was as creepy as I did... ain’t nothing much bothers her. Anyway, why should we care? Sooner they got the stuff out, sooner we could rent the unit again. The owner don’t like empty apartments.”

“Did they take everything the Voks owned?”

“Left the furniture,” Rodriguez said. “Clothes, too. Crappy stuff, all of it. We had to dump the clothes at Goodwill. But not the furniture — new renters didn’t have none of their own, and they didn’t care it was crappy.”

“What exactly did the men haul away?”

“Cartons full of stuff. Took ’em a couple of hours.”

“Any idea what was in the cartons?”

Shrug. “Don’t know, don’t care.”

“Were you or your wife ever in the apartment when the Voks lived in it?”

“Hell, no. They didn’t want nobody in there. Kept to themselves, never had much to say.”

“Did they have many visitors?”

“Not that I seen. Never paid no attention.” Rodriguez belched beerily and squinted down his nose at me. “Hey, all these questions. How come you want to know so much about the Voks?”