Bill Pronzini - A Wasteland of Strangers

Time, then, to take the boat out. I’d been cooped up too long; alone on open water was much better than alone in a box. I was shrugging into my pea jacket when something smacked against the front door. I tensed until I remembered that this was Friday. Paper delivery, later than usual. I went and got it.

Front-page editorial: STRANGERS IN OUR MIDST.

What in God’s name is the matter with Douglas Kent? I thought angrily when I finished reading it. He might as well have headed this crap AN INVITATION TO VIOLENCE.

I did it.

Oh God, I did it, I took the money!

All afternoon I worried that I wouldn’t have enough nerve when the time came, the anxiety building as the bank clock crept toward six. Wasn’t until I said good night to Fred and Arlene and locked the rear door behind them that I knew for sure I was going through with it. And then, even while I was doing it, it all seemed to be some kind of waking dream — everything happening in slow motion, real and yet not real. Half of me watching the other half: Empty the vault of every bill except one-dollar notes. Carry the bags to the rear door. Set the time lock and close the vault. Tear up the printed list of serial numbers and flush the scraps down the toilet. Falsify some of the set of numbers on the computer and consign the rest to cyberspace limbo. Unlock the back door, make sure the lot was clear. Carry the bags out two at a time. Relock the door and get into the car. Seemed to take hours; my watch said forty-five minutes. Three quarters of an hour, 2,700 seconds, to steal $200,000.

I’m still sitting here behind the wheel, another three or four minutes gone, waiting for my hands to stop shaking. I need a drink desperately, but I don’t dare stop anywhere before I get home. I feel numb, awed. All that money stuffed into six plastic garbage bags, the kind we use in the paper-towel hampers in the bathroom. Garbage bags! I want to laugh, but I’m afraid if I do I won’t be able to stop.

Calm, everything depends on remaining calm. Can’t stay here much longer... suppose a patrol car comes in and the officers see me sitting alone in the dark? Mustn’t do anything to call attention to myself, arouse suspicion. If only my hands will steady enough so I can drive. Once I’m home, with a stiff jolt of scotch inside me, I’ll be all right. Even if Ramona notices how wired I am, it won’t matter. Won’t be there long, just long enough to pack. One thing worked out, the story I’ll tell her: Have to drive down to Santa Rosa; Harvey Patterson called and the real-estate deal may be on again after all, could mean big money for us, lot of details to be worked out in a hurry so I’ll probably be gone all weekend, might even stay over until Monday morning and then drive straight up to open the bank. Maybe she’ll believe it and maybe she’ll think I’m up to something, but she won’t try to stop me. Questions, yes, Ramona the parrot with her bright little bird eyes, but I can handle her questions. She won’t tell anybody I’m away for the weekend — I’ll swear her to secrecy, claim the real-estate deal has to remain hush-hush for the time being. She’ll sulk, but she’ll do what I say. I don’t have anything to worry about from Ramona.

On the road no later than eight-thirty, out of this damn prison for good. But I won’t head south. East. Spend the night somewhere beyond Sacramento, up in the Sierras. Not sure yet where I’ll go from there, but I’ll have plenty of time to make up my mind. Have to make it as far away from Pomo as possible by Monday morning, that’s definite. Means a lot of driving, careful driving with the precious cargo in the trunk, but that can’t be helped. I’ll manage. Have to get rid of the Buick at some point, but maybe that can wait until I get to wherever I’m going. Some place I can settle in unobtrusively for a long, quiet stay. Change my appearance before I get there, too — dye my hair, buy a pair of glasses. Then rent a house or cabin with no close neighbors, hole up for a month, two months, even longer just to be safe. The FBI investigation has to’ve been back-burnered by the first of the year. Then I can travel again, go somewhere warm, somewhere exciting, Florida Gold Coast maybe, where I can start spending some of the money. Start living again.

But that’s all in the future. First things first. Start the car, drive away from here, drive home. Can’t go anywhere without going home first.

Christ, why won’t my hands stop shaking?

Out there in the dark, Anthony kept shouting my name. He’d sounded annoyed at first, then kind of exasperated; now he was just pissed. He had a flashlight from the car and he kept shining it here and there over the trees and bushes, trying to find me. But he didn’t even come close to where I was hiding under a big pile of dead branches and oak leaves.

“Irish, goddamn it! You better come out, man. I’ll leave you here, I mean it, I’ll drive off and you can freakin’ walk home. That ain’t gonna make things any better. Trish? Shit, Trisha!”

The flashlight beam danced and stabbed. It was hard, white, like frozen light, and it kept cutting weird wedges and strips out of the dark — parts of tree trunks and limbs, ferns, rocks, like pieces in the magazine montage on the wall of my room. Don’t like all those pieces... I’m still stoned. Three joints, way too many. Why’d I think it’d be easier to tell him if I smoked some dope first? Stupid. Weirded me out and made him horny. Come on , querida, I’m getting lover’s nuts. Oh yeah? Come on, Anthony, I’m already pregnant with your kid. Wham. No more lover’s nuts, huh, Anthony?

It ain’t mine. I always used a rubber.

At least one time you didn’t.

It ain’t mine. You been screwing somebody else.

That’s the lowest, Anthony. You know better.

I don’t want no freakin’ kid!

You think I do?

Get rid of it.

No.

You want me to marry you? No way, man.

What happened to “I love you, Trish”? Just bullshit to get into my pants, right?

I ain’t getting married. Lose the kid or we’re quits.

I knew it. I knew it’d be like this. I knew it!

Slapped him, hard, harder than I ever thought I could hit anybody. And then out of the car, into the woods. And here I am.

“One more minute, Trisha. That’s all you got.”

Jerking light, pieces of the night. But I couldn’t see him at all. Good. I never wanted to see his crappy, lying face again.

“I mean it. One minute and I’m outta here, I’m history.”

Fuck you, Anthony. You’re already history.

I lay there shivering, waiting for him to go away, get the hell out of my life. The wind up here on the Bluffs was like ice, even down low to the ground where I was. The water in the lake must be like ice, too. Black ice. Deep, black ice.

“Okay! That’s the way you want it, man, it’s on your head. I’m gone.”

The light blinked out. So dark again I couldn’t see a thing through the leaves, not even the shapes of the oak branches swaying in the moany wind overhead. But I could hear him crunching around out there, heading back to his junky TransAm. Door slam, revving engine. Light again, spraying the trees, spraying the bare ground out toward the cliff edge as he swung away onto the road. Run, you asshole, go ahead and run. And the light faded away and he was gone and I was alone. Stoned and pregnant and all alone.

He wouldn’t come back. If I knew him, he’d go find Mateo and the two of them’d buy some coke or crank and really get whacked. If I knew him... only I didn’t. I thought I did and how he felt about me, but I was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. My mistake. My kid. All alone.