Bill Pronzini - A Wasteland of Strangers

“A chance, sure. That’s all it is.”

“You’re convinced Faith is guilty?”

“Until I see something definite to unconvince me.”

“Good. Then maybe we can get most of this bad business finished with tonight. When are you transferring Faith from the hospital?”

“I’ll have to talk to the doctor in charge before I know for sure. But the last estimate was a five o’clock release time.”

“Perfect, if it holds,” Seeley said. “When you bring him over, I want Leo in the car with you.”

“Why?”

“A show of solidarity.”

“For the media’s benefit.”

“For the benefit of every citizen of Pomo County.”

“Whatever you say, Mayor. I don’t want a lot of attention anyway for doing my job. Let Leo have the spotlight.”

Thayer wasn’t mollified. He’d been sulking behind one of his fifty-cent panatelas; he took it out of his mouth and aimed it in my direction. “Damnit,” he said, “it isn’t glory I care about. It’s doing things by the book. Protocol, jurisdiction—”

“You’ve made your point,” Seeley told him. “Dick won’t step on your toes again. Will you, Dick?”

I shrugged. “No. It won’t happen again.”

“Now the two of you shake hands.”

We shook hands like the good little flunkies we were.

Seeley said, “So it’ll be the two of you who bring Faith over. That’s settled. I’ll make sure the media stays here with their cameras and microphones, everyone in one place. Once the prisoner’s been booked and locked up, you’ll both come out and join Joe Proctor and me and we’ll answer questions. As many as we can for as long as it takes. Agreed?”

“If that’s the way you want it,” Thayer said.

“That’s the way it’s best. For everyone.”

Except me, I thought. But I didn’t say that, either.

They went away pretty soon and left me alone with my throbbing face and nose. One of the codeine capsules would probably make me fuzzy-headed, so I ate half a dozen aspirin instead. After a while I went out front for coffee and to ask Lou to order me a sandwich from Nelson’s Diner; I hadn’t eaten all day and the aspirin were like acid in my empty belly. Through the glass entrance doors I could see a white van angled to the curb in front, a man and a woman from it heading into the station, and two more men unloading camera equipment from the rear.

The vultures were already starting to circle.

It was almost six when I finally rolled into dark, rainy Pomo. I’d left Fallon late. Very little sleep last night, yet prying myself out of the motel bed had taken a tremendous effort of will. Delaying the inevitable. I’d driven at a constant fifty all the way; the last things I could afford now were an accident or the attention of the highway patrol. I’d avoided both. The interminable four-hundred-mile trip across Nevada, through the Sierras, across half a dozen California counties had been uneventful.

And now, here I was. Home. George Petrie, failed embezzler, slinking home in the dark. I was depressed and dog-tired, but some of yesterday’s utter despair had left me. Maybe, after all, things aren’t quite as hopeless as they seemed, sitting out there in the middle of nowhere. Maybe I can still salvage something out of the rest of my life, even if circumstances force me to spend my last twenty or thirty years in this backwater town. There have to be ways and means. I might not have the guts to pull off a really bold scheme, but I’m intelligent, shrewd enough; I ought to be able to come up with some way of lightening my load, some way to keep from dying by inches.

But first I’ve got to replace the $209,840 in the bank vault tomorrow morning. That’s paramount. Then I have to cover the $7,000 shortage, even if it means going begging to Charley Horne. Then I can relax, retrench, make new plans. Maybe even convince Storm to give me another tumble in her bed. No more begging with her, though. No, by God. I’m not the same George Petrie who sat with her in the bank on Thursday, the one she accused of currying a pity fuck. You don’t go through what I just had without learning a few things, changing, becoming more of a man. She’ll see it in me once I’m back on my feet. I’ll damn well make her see it.

Another thing I have to do, before very long, is dump Ramona. If I have to live with her, sleep with her, listen to her goddamn screeching and squawking for the duration, I might as well throw in the towel; I’d never get out of the trap. California’s a no-fault state, so I don’t need grounds to file for divorce. Just go ahead and do it. She’d demand support, but in turn I’d demand half of what her Indian Head Bay land brought when it finally sold. Even if I came out on the short end financially, I’d manage to recoup somehow; and in every other way I’d come out on the long end. I’d be able to breathe again.

She was home; the lights were on in the house. As soon as I pulled the Buick into the driveway and saw her waiting in the kitchen doorway, I felt another letdown. Her coming out to meet me, making a pass at kissing my cheek as if she were glad I was back, made it even worse. I pushed her away. “Don’t, Ramona. I’m exhausted and I need a drink.”

“The real-estate deal—?”

“Another dud. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I’m sorry but my God what’s happened around here while you were gone I can hardly believe it.” All in one breath. “You must have heard about it in Santa Rosa?”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“Oh, well, then you’re in for—”

“Not now,” I said, “for Christ’s sake, not now.”

I brushed past her, went through the kitchen and into the living room to the wet bar. Wonder of wonders, the screeching parrot didn’t fly in after me. The first scotch went down quick and hot, like swallowing fire. I coughed and poured another and sank into my chair to drink it more slowly. The glass was half empty when I heard Ramona moving around in the kitchen, then bumping through the door into the living room.

“George.”

The way she said my name made me look up. And all the skin on my back, my neck, my scalp seemed to curl upward. The glass fell out of my hand, splashing scotch over my lap; I barely noticed as I lurched to my feet.

“I opened the trunk of your car,” she said in a voice I’d never heard her use before. “I thought I’d be nice and bring in your bag.”

She was standing there with one of the new suitcases in her left hand. In her right were two of the banded packets of $100 bills.

When my pager went off I was waiting with Thayer and Verne Erickson at the hospital, the sheriff standing off by himself and being pissed at me again because I’d asked Verne to ride with us on the transfer. Thayer and I were like gasoline and fire; Verne’s presence would keep us from setting each other off. What we’d been waiting for the past fifteen minutes was for Faith to finish his phone call. He was inside the resident physician’s office, visible to us through a glass partition, facing away and holding the receiver tight to his ear.

I left Verne to keep watch on him and called the station from the head nurse’s desk. Della Feldman had relieved Lou Files. She said, “What’s keeping you, Chief?”

“Faith. He demanded his one call as soon as Verne and I walked in. Changed his mind all of a sudden, Christ knows why. He’s still not talking to us.”

“Lawyer?”

“What else. One of the doctors gave him the name of a criminal attorney in Santa Rosa. He didn’t want anybody from Pomo County.”

“Can you hurry him up?”

“Why?”

“Big crowd outside already and getting bigger by the minute.”