Bill Pronzini - A Wasteland of Strangers

Another thing they’re afraid of is more negative publicity. Faith’s big show in front of the media and half the town, forcing Novak to admit guilt the way he did, made him a temporary two-bit hero and swung public sentiment over to his side. Prosecute him and there’d be another media circus throughout the trial, and if he was convicted, for a long time afterward, and that would have a negative effect on business throughout the county. Better to let the entire affair die a natural death, Seeley says; Faith goes away, the media has nothing to feed on, and pretty soon people start to forget it ever happened. He’s got a point, I guess. But I still hate to see Faith get away with all he pulled here, all the felonies he committed. A man like that, a hard case, a damn stranger comes in and tears up Pomo County and then walks away scot-free. It just don’t seem right.

That’s one thing that frosts my nuts. The other is Novak. Proctor’s going to prosecute him, all right, but it looks like he’ll let Novak plead to Murder Two or maybe even voluntary manslaughter. Same bullshit about healing wounds and keeping Pomo out of the media spotlight, negative publicity harming family tourism, plus the county’s just too poor to afford a high-profile or even a low-profile Murder One trial. Plus — and this is the one that really gets me — there’s Novak’s “spotless past record as a good, honest policeman,” which Proctor claims is an argument on behalf of leniency.

Jesus Christ! Good, honest policeman, my ass. He kills a woman, tries to frame somebody else for the crime, starts a chain reaction that leaves everything in a shambles... a cop can’t dirty his badge any worse than that, can he? I never liked Novak personally, and now I know why. The one thing I hate more than anything else is a cop who craps on his badge, and I think I saw something in Novak all along that told me he was that kind. I know what people say about me: I’m lazy, I’m a political flunky, I’m not the brightest or the hardest-working sheriff the county’s ever had. Well, maybe there’s some truth in all of that. But by God, there’s one other thing I am and that’s honest, an honest man who respects the law and does his level best to uphold it. I never took so much as a free cup of coffee in all the time I been in office. I never dirtied my badge in any way, and I never will.

If it was up to me, I’d stick Novak and every other dirty cop in a cell together and throw away the frigging key.

Well, faith’s gone. Left Porno yesterday afternoon in that rattletrap Porsche of his, as soon as they released him from jail. Thrown out of town is more like it; rumor has it one of the conditions of his release was that he leave Porno County straightaway and never set foot here again. He got off too easy, if you ask me. And I’ll bet any man twenty dollars that Novak gets off almost as easy when his time comes. The muckety-mucks take care of their own around here, while the rest of us get the book thrown at us if we step out of line just once.

I don’t mind saying it surprised me when I first heard about Novak’s confession. He was the last one I figured could’ve killed that bitch Storm Carey. Just goes to show you, I guess. You think you know people and what they’re capable of doing or not doing, and turns out you don’t. Sometimes you can be so far off base with a person, like Novak for one — and like George Petrie, for another — you begin to wonder if maybe you’re not as far off base with others. Not that man Faith, though. No sir, not him. I don’t care what he did or didn’t do in Pomo, or what anybody says about him, he’s a bad one through and through. Look at all the damage he left behind. Like a hurricane or tornado that went slashing through. Like we all got hit by a devil wind.

Folks keep saying that with him gone, it’s over and now we can get back to normal. I wish I could believe that, but I don’t. All the publicity — and there was plenty of it for some people — will bring in curiosity seekers for a while, sure, but it’ll keep away the family trade, the weekenders and vacationers the county economy depends on. Maybe most of the negative stuff will be forgotten by the time fishing season starts in April and it won’t have any real effect on next summer’s tourism, but I don’t believe that, either. As sure as I’m sitting here, there’ll be fewer fishermen and fewer overnight and short-term guests at Lakeside Resort next season. This part of Lake Pomo is never coming back to what it once was, and that’s the plain hard truth. You look at it that way, you also see that what happened with Faith and Storm Carey and Novak and the rest wasn’t much more than the beating of a dead horse.

Last night I took a closer look at my finances and prospects, and they’re worse than I thought. And as if that wasn’t enough to throw a man into a fit of depression, that thick-skulled Maria Lorenzo up and quit on me this morning. Came in and said her and her husband decided she couldn’t work for me anymore, no other reason, and then she walked out again with her nose in the air like she’d been smelling turds. Goddamn Indians, they’re all shiftless and worthless. Doesn’t really matter much, her quitting, I suppose; sooner or later I’d’ve had to let her go, because I’ll need even the little I was paying her for my own expenses. But now I’ll have to start cleaning the cabins myself, unless I can find another Indian who’ll work for less than minimum wage on a short-term basis, and the other downside is that I won’t have that big fat ass of Maria’s to watch anymore.

One more season. I figure that’s as long as I can hang on, that’s all the time I’ve got left on Lake Pomo. This time next year, if there’s not some radical change — and I don’t see how there can be — I’ll have to put the resort up for sale and move to San Carlos and depend on Ella to support me and hope like hell she doesn’t decide to marry some jerk who’ll throw me out on my tail. Just the thought of it puts me in a funk.

Like they say nowadays, life sucks. Some people, and it don’t matter how decent and hardworking they are, are just born to end up with the short end of the stick.

Before he left, John Faith came to see me at the Pomo County Domestic Abuse Center, where I’m staying now. He said how sorry he was about what’d happened to me and I said how sorry I was about what’d happened to him. He said he was glad the district attorney had decided not to press charges against me and I said I was glad the D.A. had decided to drop all the charges against him. It sounds funny and not very sincere when I put it like that, but it wasn’t that way at all. We both meant every word we said. We wished each other well, and hugged each other, and then he was gone and I knew I’d never see him again, and it made me sad. But that’s the way it has to be. I knew it, and so did John.

I wish I’d met him a long time ago. There might’ve been something between us, something good. I’m sorry I didn’t and there wasn’t and it can’t ever be. Sorry about Earle, too — that I ever met him, and married him, and put up with his abuse, and killed him. But I can’t keep on being sorry about everything, and I won’t. I have to put the past behind me and start over fresh. That’s what my counselor says. She says my life didn’t end the night Earle’s did. She says if I want it to be, my life is just beginning.

She’s right. It won’t be easy, but I’ve made up my mind and I’ll stick to it. When I leave here I won’t be going back to the Northlake Cafe and I won’t be living in Pomo any longer. I’ll be returning to school in Santa Rosa, reentering the training program. I’m finally going to do what I always wanted to do, and this time I won’t let anything or anybody stop me.