Bill Pronzini: Scattershot

I kept telling myself that when I got used to it I would feel more at home here; that given enough time, I could mark it with my individual stamp. But I didn’t believe it. I wished I was back on Taylor Street, in my crumbling old digs, and the hell with what clients and prospective clients thought, the hell with image and being upwardly mobile. I was fifty-three, I had been a private cop for better than two decades, I had made a decent living. What did I want to start changing my life for?

Rhetorical question. Here I was, in my bright, shiny new offices. And here I was, mooning around like a lovesick teenager, all but begging a woman fifteen years my junior to become my wife. I had been a bachelor for fifty-three years, too, and what did I want to change that part of my life for?

Damn, I thought. Damn.

I sat down at my desk and looked out through the Venetian blinds I had just opened. It was a decent day, sunny, a little haze, and I could see some of the activity at the piers along the Embarcadero. The faint moan of a ship’s horn, probably the one on the Sausalito ferry, penetrated the office silence. I sat like that for a time, looking out, thinking too much. Then I got up and put some water on the hot plate for coffee.

In my old office I had kept the hot plate on top of my single file cabinet; here I had a separate little table for it, with jars of instant coffee and dairy creamer and sugar and a package of plastic spoons and another package of styrofoam cups all laid out next to it. Maybe I ought to bring in a tray of doughnuts and cake every morning, I thought; give my clients a real treat. Or, hell, bring in another hot plate and a pasta machine and some marinara sauce, whip up some spaghetti, give them a real Italian meal to go with their real Italian private eye-

The telephone rang.

I had already checked and shut off my answering machine-no weekend messages. So I went over and hauled up the receiver on the pimp-yellow phone and said, “Detective agency,” in my pale blue voice.

A prim, rather stuffy male voice asked me who was speaking. I told him, and he said, “You’re a detective?” and I thought: No, I’m a horse’s ass. But I said, “Yes, that’s right. May I help you?”

“My name is George Hickox. I represent Mr. Clyde Mollenhauer.”

The inflection he put on the second name said that I was supposed to recognize it. But I had never heard of anyone named Clyde Mollenhauer. Or, for that matter, anyone named George Hickox.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Mollenhauer has need of a private security guard. Do you do that sort of work?”

“I have in the past, yes.”

“Would you be available this coming Saturday?”

“For how many days?”

“Just Saturday.”

“Let me check my calendar,” I said. My calendar was as sterile as the office, but you never want to sound too eager. I sat holding the phone for fifteen seconds, — then I said, “Saturday looks free, yes. What sort of security service are we talking about, Mr. Hickox?”

“I’d prefer to discuss that in person, if you don’t mind. I could stop by for an interview later this afternoon.”

Interview. My, my. “That would be fine. What time would be convenient for you?”

“Three o’clock.”

“I’ll expect you then.”

“Yes,” he said and hung up without adding a good-bye.

The telephone rang again twenty minutes later, while I was drinking coffee and preparing invoices and strongly worded letters for a couple of dead-beat clients. You get a few like that-people who hire you and then decide that the work you did was unsatisfactory, or who just don’t like to part with their money. The amounts owed me on these two cases were less than two hundred dollars each, but the debts had been outstanding for months. Either they paid up immediately or I would have to take them to small-claims court; that was what I told each of them in my strongly worded letters.

This call was from an attorney named Adam Brister, whom I did not know. He said he had got my name from another lawyer, one I did know and had done some work for in the past, and could I come by his office in an hour to discuss a small investigative matter. I said I could, took down his address, and thanked him for calling me. I didn’t bother to ask him what sort of investigative matter he had in mind; a lot of my business comes from attorneys-small stuff, mostly, bread-and-butter cases-and when one of them contracted me I pretty much knew what to expect.

The job Adam Brister had for me turned out to be typical enough. His office was on Clement Street, out near the park, and he was young, brisk businesslike, and greedy-eyed. He sat me down in his client’s chair and laid a glossy color photograph of a woman in front of me. While I was looking at the photo he got straight to the point “The woman is Lauren Speers,” he said. “Did you know the name?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Well, she’s a local socialite-worth severe hundred thousand dollars, all inherited money She has quite a few important friends-politicians, actors, capitalists-and she travels con stantly. The jet-set type. Very hard to locate unless she wants to be located. I’m sure you know what I mean.”

I nodded. The woman in the photograph had striking red hair and green eyes and was beautiful enough if you liked them forty and dissipated. Booze or drugs, or maybe just her jet-set life-style, had taken a pretty stiff toll; in another few years she would be fat and blowsy, and her beauty would be nothing but a memory.

“She is also a reckless person,” Brister said, “especially when she’s been drinking. She drives a Porsche and she’s had several accidents; the only reason she’s kept her license is that she has those influential friends.”

I nodded again and gave him back the photograph.

“A few weeks ago,” he said, “she sideswiped a car belonging to a client of mine, Vernon Inge. Hit-and-run. Mr. Inge got her license number and reported the incident to the police, but of course they haven’t done much. Speers has dropped out of sight; no one knows, or owns up to knowing, where she is.”

I knew what was coming, now. “Your client is bringing a damage suit against her, is that right?”

“Yes. He suffered a severe whiplash as a result of the accident, and he has been unable to work since. The papers have all been filed and a court date arranged; it’s a simple matter of finding Speers and serving her with a subpoena. That is where you come in.”

Uh-huh. And so much for the glamorous role of the private detective in modern society. No rich client, no smoky-hot liaison with a beautiful woman, no fat fee. Just a skinny standard fee to track down a woman who apparently moved around more than the governor, hand her some papers, listen to abusive language-they always throw abusive language at you-and then exeunt and on to the next skinny standard fee. Well, that was all right. Better a job like this than no job at all. The state of my finances being what they were, I was in no position to be picky.

Brister leaned forward and studied me with his greedy eyes. One long look at those eyes told me that Vernon Inge’s damage suit was a whopper; if Brister had anything to say about it, Lauren Speers was going to pay through the nose for her latest peccadillo.

He said, “Do we have an arrangement?”

“We do. Have you got a file on Speers?”

“Yes. It’s fairly extensive. Names and addresses of relatives and friends, everything you should need.”

“Suppose I find out she’s in Switzerland or South America. Do I go after her to serve the papers?”

“I’d have to discuss that with my client,” Brister said. “Let’s not worry about that bridge until we come to it.”

We settled on my skinny standard fee. After which I asked him a few more questions, signed a contract form he’d prepared, collected his file on Lauren Speers and a retainer check, and let him show me out. His hand was moist when he shook mine, — greed does that to some people. I scrubbed away the feel of him on my pantleg as I walked to my car.