Bill Pronzini - A Wasteland of Strangers

“Anyone mention her name to you recently?”

“Nope. You think we have mutual friends, Chief?”

“I don’t think anything,” he said. “I’m grabbing at straws. I’ve been trying to find her all morning, all over town.”

“How come? She do something?”

“Personal matter.”

“Uh-huh. Well, you know how Indians are.”

“... What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Never around when you want ’em, always off doing what pleases them. They’re not the same as us.”

That touched off a scowl. He said snottily, “Don’t like Indians much, do you, Harry? Or anybody with a different skin.”

“You saying I’m a racist? Me?”

“Oh hell no, not you.”

“Look here, you don’t have any call to insult me just because you can’t find your woman.”

“She’s not my woman.”

“No? Somebody’s woman, that’s for sure.”

He laid his hands on the counter and leaned toward me, so suddenly that I couldn’t help stepping back. “Don’t play games with me. You have something to say, spit it out.”

I spit it out, all right. Might not have — might not’ve even thought of it — if I hadn’t been in such a low-down mood and if he hadn’t started throwing his weight around and accusing me of being a racist. As it was, I felt like sticking it to him a little. Sticking it to somebody the way it’d been stuck to me by the media. So I did. And I put a little twist on it, too, that hadn’t even crossed my mind until that minute.

“You been over to Nucooee Point?” I asked him.

“Nucooee Point? No, why?”

“Might be where she’s at. Her and her somebody.”

“What the hell’re you getting at?”

“She landed that boat of hers at the Point yesterday morning. I happened to see her, and that’s sure enough where she went. Nothing down there but the old lodge and a lot of privacy. No reason for her to go there all by herself unless she was meeting somebody, now is there, Chief?”

“It’s noon, John,” I said. “Whoever you’re waiting for isn’t coming.”

“He’s coming, all right.”

“Then why hasn’t he been here by now?”

No answer.

“Suppose he doesn’t come. What then?”

No answer.

“You can’t walk away from here, you know that. And the two of us can’t stay here indefinitely. You know that, too.”

“Okay, I know it.”

“Let me go, and give yourself up, John.”

“No.”

“It’s the only way you have a chance.”

“It’s the only way I don’t have a chance.”

“I’ll testify for you. I’ll tell them what you did for me last night—”

“That won’t stop a jury from convicting me of murder.”

“You won’t be tried if Mateo Munoz is guilty. Please listen—”

“I’m through listening, Audrey. I don’t want to hear any more. Either you shut up or I’ll put tape over your mouth. I mean it. You want your mouth taped shut?”

I didn’t; I shook my head.

“All right, then. Be quiet.”

He was pacing again, as he’d done most of the morning. Earlier it had been for exercise and to work off nervous energy; he’d slept some, too, and he seemed stronger. Now the pacing was the result of tension and frustration. As I watched him I thought again of how warriorlike he was at times, even dressed in slacks and shirt and an old corduroy jacket that was too small across the shoulders and chest. The Ruger automatic inside his belt added a renegade touch. John Faith: warrior, renegade, misfit. A man apart, a man shunned.

Nearly five hours of exhausted sleep had renewed my strength as well. The headache and throat soreness were mostly gone; only a stiffness in my legs and lower back bothered me, discomfort that would’ve been worse if John Faith hadn’t let me unbind my ankles and walk for a short time. He’d also given me milk, and bread and cheese to eat. Until these past few minutes, there had been little conversation between us. The night had invited as much intimacy as a man and a woman with too many fundamental differences and too few similarities could share. The pale morning light that seeped into the lodge caused us to pull away from each other. In a sense it was like a one-night stand between strangers: closeness and urgency in the dark, and in the morning, distance and embarrassment at having opened yourself up, even a little, to someone you didn’t know.

“John,” I said, “I’d like to walk again.”

“No.”

“My toes are starting to get numb.”

“Tape’s not that tight. Ankles or wrists.”

He’d bound my hands more than an hour ago, in front of me as he’d promised. I lifted my arms; with my fingers splayed away from one another and the tape joining the wrists, my hands looked like an obscene caricature of the Christian symbol of prayer. I lowered my arms again, clasped my fingers between my drawn-up knees.

Something creaked and scraped in another part of the lodge, the dining room or beyond, at the side. John Faith heard it, too; he stood still with his head cocked, listening. The sounds weren’t repeated. Rats, probably. They were everywhere in the old building, in the walls and under the floors; now and then you could hear them scurrying, gnawing. He’d been wise to put the food up next to him while he slept. The candlelight alone wouldn’t have been enough to keep hungry rats away.

He said, “Going to take another quick look outside.”

“He’s not coming, John.”

“Couple of minutes is all I’ll be gone. Don’t try taking that tape off your ankles.”

“I won’t.”

He moved off through the archway, into the dining room. Enough daylight penetrated so he could make his way without using a flashlight. Only one candle still burned, the one on the chair near where I sat. Through its guttering flame I watched John Faith meld with the shadows beyond the archway. I leaned forward then, reached down to my ankles, but not to try picking at the tape. It would be foolish to disobey him at this point. All I did was rub the insteps in an effort to improve circulation—

A chain of noises jerked my head up. Thumps, scrapes, a sharp thud, and then a muffled, harsh voice that was not John Faith’s — all from the far end of the dining room or in the room beyond. I sat up straight, staring in that direction. Silence again. Then footsteps. And then John Faith reappeared in a slow, stiff walk, his hands out away from his body at shoulder level. He wasn’t alone; somebody moved close behind him, half hidden by his bulk and by shadows.

He was two or three paces into the lobby when I heard him grunt and saw him stagger forward, off balance — shoved hard in the back. The other man was still just a dark shape standing spread-legged, both arms extended in front, objects clutched in both hands, making them seem unnaturally elongated. In the next instant a flashlight beam stabbed out through the gloom, and in its back glow I saw the hard set of the man’s face.

“Dick!”

He didn’t answer or even glance my way. The light held steady on John Faith, who had caught his balance and was turning around, slowly, his hands still out away from his body.

“Go ahead, you son of a bitch,” Dick yelled at him, “make a try for that gun in your belt. Give me an excuse.”

The tone of his voice caused chills to run over me. Implacable, choked with rage. He’d meant what he said.

John Faith knew it too. He stood rigid.

“I ought to do it anyway. If you hurt her—”

“Dick, no! He didn’t do anything to me. It was Mateo Munoz... he’d have raped and maybe killed me if... Dick, John Faith saved my life!”

Silence, clotted and electric. None of us moved; I was not even breathing. The stop-time seemed to drag on and on—