Bill Pronzini: Zigzag

The man behind the plank looked to be in his mid-forties, thick through the chest and shoulders, lantern jaw, a tonsure of light-colored hair around the back of his skull and a lone patch in front like a tiny island in a dry lake bed. He looked me over long enough to determine I was a stranger, but he seemed welcoming enough when he said, “Afternoon. What’ll it be?”

“Anchor Steam, draft if you have it. And some conversation.”

“The beer I got.”

He moved down the bar to fill a glass. When he brought it back and set it down, I said in a lowered voice, “Are you Joe Buckner?”

“That’s right. Why?”

“I’d like to talk to you about Ray Fentress.”

That put him on his guard. “Why?” he said again.

“You know what happened to him?”

“Yeah, I heard. Who’re you?”

I said, “The man who found him and Floyd Mears,” and added my name and a reminder of my profession.

“I don’t believe it,” Buckner said.

“You don’t believe what? That I’m who I say I am?”

He leaned forward. “No, that Ray shot it out with some backwoods marijuana dealer. That’s bullshit, plain and simple.”

“Not according to the evidence.”

“Yeah, well, whatever. But the Ray I knew was no killer. And no damn pothead. He had bad asthma, he couldn’t stand smoke.”

“So his wife told me.”

“Doreen? How do you know her?”

“She doesn’t believe the evidence, either — she thinks he had some other reason for going to see Mears. She came to my office yesterday, begged me to try to prove her right. She told me you were a good friend of her husband’s; that’s why I’m here.”

“Good enough not to blow him off like most of his other so-called friends when he got sent to prison. The only one besides me who’d have anything to do with him when he came home was Pete Retzyck. Doreen give you his name, too?”

“Yes. You know Retzyck, I take it.”

“Sure I know him. He’s a regular here like Ray was. Two of them used to go hunting together.”

“Do you happen to know if he works Saturdays?”

“I don’t think so. But I can tell you where he lives. He—”

The blowsy blonde rattled her glass on the bar and called out in a wheedling tone, “Hey, Joe, I’m dry here, Joe.”

Buckner said to me, “Just a minute,” and went down to the blonde. “No more, Angie, I told you that before. You’re over the tab limit.”

“One more, huh? Just one?”

“No.”

“C’mon, sweetie, be nice. Just a little one?”

“Go home, Angie.”

“I’m good for it, you know that; I always pay my tab.”

“Yeah, sure you do. A few bucks a month, like interest on a credit card.”

She looked my way, looked at the beer drinkers. “Would one of you gentlemen be so kind as to buy a lady one little drink?”

None of us answered her. I knew her type well enough — alone, lonely, desperate for companionship, and looking for solace in the bottom of an empty glass when it wasn’t forthcoming — and I felt a little sorry for her. But not enough to act as an enabler for her alcoholism.

Buckner said, “You going to walk out under your own power, or you want me to carry you?”

“Well, all right, you don’t have to get tough about it.” She lifted herself off the stool with the aid of the beveled edge of the bar. “I’m never coming back here again. Pay my tab with a check. You’ll never see me again.”

“Promises, promises,” one of the beer drinkers said. For some reason the other two thought this was funny. The blonde glared at them, straightened her skirt, and went out with a slow, walk-a-straight-line kind of dignity.

Buckner came back to me. “Drunks,” he said. Then he said, “I’ll tell you something about Doreen. Woman’s a saint. Ray, well, he was no world-beater, but she stood by him through the rough patches, waited for him while he was in Mule Creek. Visited him whenever she could; I drove her up there a couple of times myself. Loyal, you know?”

“Uh-huh.”

“So you do a good job for her, man; don’t try to take advantage.”

“I won’t. You don’t have to worry about that.”

He nodded his head, then flicked it sideways. “That’s another thing I can’t figure,” he said. “Ray doing what he did that got him put in prison. Driving drunk, resisting arrest, assaulting a cop. Just not like him at all.”

“No?”

“Hell, no. He wasn’t a heavy boozer, didn’t usually drink more than a few beers. I only seen him drunk a couple of times in the ten years I knew him. Not aggressive, neither. No fights, no trouble. Easygoing.”

“Why was he drinking heavily that night?”

“He never told nobody. But he wasn’t his old self for a month or so before it happened, all wound up about something and hitting the sauce kind of hard — I figure it must’ve been money worries. You know, bills piling up and all that.”

“One of those rough patches you mentioned.”

“Yeah. Him and Doreen, they were doing all right until she had some female problems a few years ago that cost a bundle. They didn’t have no health insurance.”

Like too many others in this best of all countries. “How often did you see Ray after he got out?”

Buckner hesitated before he said, “Twice. We had a meal together a couple of days after.”

“Did he say anything at all about the Russian River?”

“No.”

“Ask you for a loan?”

“A loan? No. Why should he?”

“He told his wife he was going to.”

“Yeah? That doesn’t make sense. I don’t have an extra pot to piss in and he knew it. What would he want a loan for?”

“To help finance a move to Arizona or New Mexico. You knew about that?”

“Sure, Ray told me. He was stoked about it, making a new start somewhere that was better for his asthma, buying an orchard farm. That was always his big dream.”

“Buying a farm? How would he pay for it?”

“Money Doreen saved while he was away. She worked two jobs after he went to jail. Worked like a dog.”

I didn’t doubt that. But her two jobs were department store clerk and part-time housecleaner, neither of which paid well enough to cover monthly bills and leave enough left over to build the kind of stake it takes for a property purchase. The impression I’d had from her was that the amount of her savings was modest at best. And their chances of getting a bank loan, with his record, were slim and none. Ray Fentress might just have been blowing smoke. Either that, or he expected to make a substantial score on his own. By robbing a small-time pot dealer at gunpoint?

While I was ruminating, one of the beer drinkers called for a refill. Buckner went to accommodate him, and when he returned he said, “Listen, I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but I guess you oughta know as long as you don’t say anything to Doreen about it. She’s had enough grief as it is.”

“That bad, whatever it is?”

“No. It’s just... ah, hell, I don’t know if it means anything or not. Just keep it to yourself, all right?”

“If I can. I’m obligated to inform a client of anything directly related to my investigation.”

“I don’t see how this could be related.”

“Then it’ll just be between you and me.”

“Okay, then. Second time I saw Ray was in here two days before he was killed, with a woman I never seen before.”

“You know who she was?”

“Mary something, that’s all. Thing was, Ray didn’t expect me to be here.”

“Oh?”

“Late afternoon and I was working nights that week. I come in early, like I do sometimes, and the two of them was in one of the booths over there, drinking beer with their heads together. Ray jumped a little when he saw me, had this kind of guilty look on his face. You know, like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.”