Bill Pronzini: Hoodwink

Kerry Wade.

She had a small snifter of brandy in her left hand and a bottle of Lowenbrau in her right. So when she stopped in front of me, I said with spontaneous and devastating cleverness, “Two-fisted drinker, are you, Miss Wade?”

Which probably made me seem like a half-wit. Made me feel like one, anyway, when she extended the bottle, saying, “The bartender told me you’d asked for a beer earlier. Room Service finally decided to deliver some, so I thought I’d play waitress.”

I said, “Oh. Um, thanks.” And thought: God, you’re sharp tonight, just full of urbane remarks and sparkling repartee. No wonder you’re such a hot number with the ladies-you klutz, you.

Kerry seemed faintly amused; maybe klutzes appealed to her sense of humor. “It’s not Miss Wade, by the way. It’s Mrs. Dunston.”

“Oh,“I said again.

“But I don’t use the Dunston anymore. Not since my divorce two years ago.”

I started to say “Oh” a third time, caught myself, and said, “So you’re a divorced lady,” which was even dumber.

“Mm-hmm. How about you?”

“No.”

“No what? No, you’re not divorced?”

“No. I mean, I’m not married.”

“Never been?”

“Never been.”

“A bachelor private eye,” she said. “Do you carry a gun in your shoulder holster and have a beautiful secretary and keep a bottle in your desk drawer?”

“No to all three.”

“How come?”

“I don’t like guns much, secretaries are too expensive, especially beautiful ones, and I drink only beer.”

“That’s better,” she said.

“Better?”

“You were all flustered there for a minute. I was afraid you were one of these men who don’t know how to talk to a woman. Either that, or you were gay. You’re not, are you?”

“Me? God, no.”

“Good.”

“I wasn’t flustered, either,” I lied.

Her smile broadened; I was not fooling her at all.

“Are you also a writer, Miss Wade? Or should I call you Mrs. Duns ton?”

“Neither one. Try Kerry. No, I’m not a writer. I had aspirations once, and maybe a little inherited talent, but my parents did everything they could to discourage me. It’s probably a good thing they did.”

“Why is that?”

“Being a writer isn’t all people think it is.”

“It’s been a good business for them, hasn’t it?”

“For my dad it has. At least most of the time.”

“But not for your mother?”

“No. She hasn’t written a word in twenty-five years.”

“I didn’t know that. How come?”

“She isn’t able to write any more,” Kerry said. Some of the lightness had gone from her voice. “She wants to, but she just can’t. It’s hell for her. But then, if she was writing that would probably be hell for her, too. It was when she was doing her pulp stories.”

“I’m not sure I follow that.”

“It’s the nature of the business. Professional writing isn’t glamorous or exciting; it’s a lot of hard work, for not all that much money and no real security, and on top of that it’s the loneliest profession in the world. ‘Always having to live inside your own head,’ is the way my father puts it. Plus it’s one of the most stressful professions. That’s why the percentage of alcoholics and suicides among writers is double or triple that of just about every other business.”

“I didn’t know that, either,” I said.

“Most laypersons don’t.”

“Laypersons?”

“Well, nonwriters. Are you a chauvinist, by any chance?”

“Not me.”

“Fictional private eyes usually are,” she said, and a sort of bawdy gleam came into her eyes. “In fact, most of them seem to be obsessed with male-dominant sex. The gun they all carry is a phallic symbol, you know; every time they shoot somebody with it, it’s like having an orgasm.”

“Uh,“I said.

She laughed. It was a nice laugh, a little bawdy to match the gleam, and it did things to what was left of my shriveled libido. No wonder she made me feel flustered; I had not slept with a woman in months, and I was not used to outspoken, attractive, horny-eyed ladies coming on to me in the first place. And Kerry Wade was coming on to me, no doubt about that.

Wasn’t she?

I thought it might be a good idea to change the subject; otherwise I was liable to tuck my foot into my cheek in place of my tongue. “You didn’t answer the question I asked a little while ago,” I said. “About what you do. For a living, I mean.”

Her eyes laughed at me this time. I would have given anything to know what was going on behind them, what she was thinking about me. “I’m an advertising copywriter for Bates and Carpenter.”

“That’s a San Francisco firm.”

“One of the largest.”

“Then you live in the Bay Area?”

“Here in the city. On Twin Peaks.”

That surprised me a little. The convention brochure said that Ivan and Cybil Wade lived in North Hollywood, and so I had automatically assumed Kerry was also from Southern California. There were notions in my head already, but the fact that she lived in San Francisco gave me a few more. If she really was coming on to me …

“Well,“I said in my sophisticated way, “how about that?”

“Mmm. Where do you live?”

“Pacific Heights.”

She raised an eyebrow. “That’s a nice neighborhood.”

“Yep. But it’s an old building, and I’ve had my flat and the same benevolent landlord for more than twenty years. Otherwise I couldn’t afford it.”

“Do you really own twenty thousand pulp magazines?”

“Is that what Russ Dancer told you?”

“It is. Not true?”

“Not true. More like sixty-five hundred.”

Mention of Dancer made me aware that he was no longer singing his little lament. I glanced over at the chair he’d been sitting in, but it was empty now, — the party crowd seemed to have thinned out somewhat, and I didn’t see him anywhere else in the room either. Gone to the John, maybe. Or to his own room to sleep it off. No tengo Dancer, in any case, and that was probably just as well.

“Looking for somebody?” Kerry asked.

“I was just wondering what had happened to Dancer.”

“Don’t worry about him. He’ll be drunk the whole weekend, now that he’s seen Cybil again, but he won’t bother anybody. He seems to stop just short of being obnoxious.”

“Why would seeing your mother send him on a four-day binge?”

“You mean you couldn’t tell?”

“Tell what?”

“He’s in love with her. He has been for thirty-five years.”

“So that’s it.”

“He had it so bad, Cybil says, that he even tried once to talk her into divorcing my father and marrying him. That was back around 1950, just before he left New York and moved out here.”

“Your father knew about this?”

“Sure. He and Cybil never had any secrets from each other.”

“Well, that explains why he doesn’t like Dancer,” I said.

“You noticed that much, at least. Dad hates him, I think; he didn’t even want to come here when he found out Dancer would be on the program. But Cybil talked him into it. It’s all water under the bridge as far as she’s concerned.”

“Then she’d hardly be afraid of Dancer, would she?”

“Afraid of him? Lord, no. She’s not afraid of anybody. She’s as tough as Max Ruffe used to be ‘in her stories.”

Yeah, she is, I thought. And she’s packing a rod just like Ruffe did, too. How come? I wanted to ask Kerry, but this did not seem to be the time or place to spring that kind of question. Besides which, as I kept telling myself, it was none of my business. Not unless Cybil intended to take potshots at somebody. And I doubted that.