Bill Pronzini - A Wasteland of Strangers

“You son of a bitch,” I said.

“Now, now, don’t be nasty—”

“Nasty! What’s the idea of writing crap like this?”

“To make the public aware of potential—”

“Bullshit. You did it to get back at me.”

“Why would I want to get back at you?”

“Because I won’t sleep with you. Because you think I slept with John Faith last night and you’re jealous. My God, you did everything but name him outright and brand him a homicidal maniac.”

“Well, he may be one.”

“... What are you talking about?”

“Seen following two little girls this morning. Stalking them. A pervert and a predator—”

“I don’t believe it. Who saw him? Who told you that?”

“I have my sources,” he said, but his grin had faded and so had his self-satisfied slyness. “Don’t know anything about the man, do you? Except how much of a beast he is in bed—”

“I didn’t sleep with him.”

“What?”

“I didn’t sleep with him, damn you. I tried to pick him up, but he turned me down and walked out. So you’ve played your vicious little game for nothing.”

He drained his glass, reached out to the pitcher, and slopped it full again. His hands weren’t steady.

“You’re disgusting, Doug,” I said. “A disgusting, mean-spirited, irresponsible drunk.”

My anger kindled anger in him. “You can’t talk to me that way—”

“I’ll talk to you any way I choose. That editorial gives me the right. You hate yourself and the whole world, but that’s not enough so you take it out on everybody else. Some pretty insufferable bastards live in this town, but I thought you were better than most. Kinder, at least. But you’re one of the worst. I don’t want anything more to do with you.”

“You don’t mean that, Storm.” Whining now.

“Don’t I? Get off my porch and off my property. And don’t come back, not for any reason. If you do, I’ll call the police and have you arrested for trespassing.”

For a few seconds he stared at me without moving. The hate in his eyes was for me now, as well as for himself. Then he guzzled his drink, lurched to his feet, and deliberately smashed the glass on the floor before brushing past me to the stairs, muttering, “Slut. Whore of Pomo.”

“That’s what it all comes down to, isn’t it?” I shut my ears to whatever else he had to say, and went inside to soak away my anger and wait for John Faith’s call.

Zenna started in as soon as I walked in the door. Didn’t ask how the Redding trip had gone, didn’t give me even a minute of peace. Mouth like a snake’s, that woman: Half the time when she opens it, venom comes spewing out. There’s an old proverb, or maybe a curse — Buddhist or something — that says gossips and troublemakers and hatemongers are doomed to spend eternity hanging by their tongues. If it’s true, a force somewhere already has a noose ready with Zenna’s name on it.

She wasn’t like that when we first started going together. Or if she was, I didn’t see it. Too much in love in those days, or maybe too blinded by testosterone. Good-looking woman and I wanted her badly, but she wouldn’t give in, made a lot of whispered promises about how it would be after we were married, and finally I was the one who gave in. And it wasn’t worth waiting for. I may’ve thought so back then, but not anymore. Except for Stephanie... but she’d come along too quick, and when the doctor told Zenna she couldn’t have any more, that was when she changed or got worse. Poking her nose in everybody’s business, yakking about people behind their backs, hunting dirt every place she went and with everybody she dealt with. Self-righteous, holier-than-thou. The worst kind of hypocrite.

More than ten years I’ve put up with it, mostly for Stephanie’s sake. But I work hard, too hard sometimes, and I don’t ask for much or want much out of life, and when I can’t even get the little I do ask... well, every man has his limits. Is it any wonder I’ve been driven past mine?

No, it isn’t. The wonder is that it didn’t happen sooner.

“... tell you, Howard,” she was prattling on now, “that man is one of Satan’s own. Something terrible will happen if he’s allowed to run loose on our streets. You mark my words.” Shrill, that voice of hers, like a razor slicing into my eardrums.

“What makes you so sure?” I asked wearily.

“If you’d seen him you wouldn’t have to ask that question. He has an evil face. Pure evil.”

“Man can’t help how he looks.”

“Howard, he’s been in Pomo two days now. And all he does is drive around in that old car of his, hardly saying a word to anybody. Just looking .”

“Looking at what?”

“Everything. Our house, this morning. Driving by so slowly he was hardly moving and staring right at our house.”

“So? Maybe he likes this kind of old-fashioned style—”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Howard! That’s not it at all. I know why he was staring. It gives me chills just thinking about it.”

“You figure he’s a rapist, I suppose? Hot after housewives?”

“You’re not funny, not one little bit. Rape is serious enough, but there are worse crimes.”

“Such as?”

“Kidnapping. Child molesting.”

“Jesus, Zenna!”

“Blaspheme all you like, but you weren’t here and I was. Our house wasn’t all he was staring at — he was staring at Stephanie and Kitty Waylon, too. Watching them on their way to school.”

She’d been saving that, easing into it for maximum effect; I could tell by the way she said it, with a kind of triumph mixed in with the fearful condemnation. Still, the words gave me a chill. I’d lost all love and respect for my wife, but Stephanie... I loved that kid more than anything else in the world.

“Are you sure? You weren’t just imagining the worst?”

“I was there, wasn’t I? I know what I saw. If I hadn’t stepped out on the porch just then, the Lord knows what might’ve happened.”

“What did you do?”

“Ran out and got the girls and drove them to school.”

“Did he say anything to them? Try to get them into his car?”

“No. They didn’t even know he was there.”

“What’d he do when you ran out?”

“Drove away. He saw me, that’s why.”

“Has he been back?”

“No, thank the good Lord. But the police haven’t seen fit to do their duty; he’s still in town, up to the devil knows what. Claire Bishop saw him less than an hour ago—”

“You called the police?”

“Well, of course I called the police.”

“And they said what?”

“What they always say. They’ll look into it. But I told you, they haven’t done anything — he’s still roaming around free.”

The edge was off my concern now. I’d been through this kind of thing too often with her — too damn often. Another false alarm, another pot of trouble stirred and boiled for little or no reason. The only danger Stephanie was likely in was from too much exposure to her mother.

I snapped open a beer, drank half before I lowered the can. It didn’t take away the sour taste in my mouth. “Made a bunch of other calls, too, I’ll bet. All your cronies.”

“Cronies? What kind of word is that to use?”

“The mayor? You call him, too?”

“No, I didn’t call Mayor Seeley.”

“The newspaper?”

That produced one of her tight little smiles. “Yes, I called the Advocate. I spoke to Douglas Kent himself. He listened to what I had to say. And he did something, at least.”

“What did he do?”

“Wrote an editorial,” she said, and the triumph was in her voice again-sharper this time, almost savage in its serf-satisfaction. She pushed today’s issue under my nose. “Right there on the front page. Read it, Howard, then you’ll see. Go ahead and read it.”