Bill Pronzini: The Snatch

There was nowhere for me to go. Home-the sanctuary? No, because home was the symbol of loneliness now, and the fragile lingering aura of Erika would be there and I did not want to be anywhere that reminded me of her, I did not want her car or her words whispering echolike in my mind and the remembered feel of her softness beneath my hands and beneath my body.

I looked at the cigarettes and I did not want one at all, and I wondered fleetingly if I had bought them as a subconscious defiance of Erika. I dropped the package into my overcoat pocket and started walking again.

I walked for blocks and crossed streets blindly and walked, and finally my legs began to ache and my belly began to ache and I knew that I could not walk much longer. I needed something tangible to hang on to, something to do, someone to talk to, perhaps, something, anything, to take my mind off Erika. I started along an unfamiliar block, cutting back to the main street off which I had somehow strayed, and in the middle of it I passed a storefront with a wide display window illuminated by a single large-wattage night light. Black letters printed on the glass read Books.

I stopped. Inside the window, hanging from twine strung between pegs the width of the display, overlooking the pocketbooks and encyclopedias and other dusty second-hand items like tired and aged sentries on sagging battlements, was a series of pulp magazines-something tangible, something immediate, a second and fittingly ironic defiance of Erika because of her strong contempt for them.

I went up to the window and peered in at the magazines. You did not find many stores that had pulps any more, and I could see immediately why this one was an exception. There were some strips of paper clipped to the upper corners of the front covers, and on them were prices; the cheapest of the ones displayed was ten dollars and that was too much for anything except a vintage Black Mask or a Volume One, Number 1.

There were a couple of Weird Tales up there from the early forties, and an Argosy for 1936 and two copies of The Shadow from the late 1940’s. I was not particularly interested in any of those, but there was a rare, fairly good edition of Detective Fiction Weekly for March 14, 1931, that caught and held my eye.

The distinctive dark blue-and-yellow cover depicted a detective who looked a little like Jimmy Stewart, throwing down on a heavy with a vial of something in his hand. Midway below the title, on the left-hand side, was a caption for the issue’s feature story, The Candy Kid , a Lester Leith novelette by Erie Stanley Gardner.

The Lester Leith stories, about one of Gardner’s earliest and most flamboyant detectives, were hard to come by these days in their original magazine appearance. They had been some of the best work of a master craftsman who had learned his trade in the pulps; Gardner had had a reputation in the old days

Gardner had had Gardner

Gardner.

Gardener.

Oh Jesus, gardener-the gardener!

The impact of the connection was strong and sharp in my mind, and suddenly I had something else to grasp, something potentially important, something pushing Erika and the hurt and the depressing loneliness away.

Burlingame Landscaping and Gardening Service.

Very clearly, then, I could see the green panel truck behind which I had parked that first afternoon on Tamarack Drive-the words stenciled across its rear doors. And I could see the young T-shirted guy kneeling on the strip of canvas, weeding the lawn, when I first entered the grounds-the gardener, one other person who could have known about the kidnapping of Gary Martinetti the day it happened, who could even be the hypothetical silent partner acquainted with the Martinettis well enough to set up things for Lockridge-the gardener, the damned gardener.

I turned away from the window and hurried up the street, thinking that I had to get in touch with Donleavy, wondering if he was still up in San Francisco at the Hall of Justice-but before I reached Broadway, I slowed down and some of the urgency left me. It was nothing, for God’s sake, but a shot in the dark, a fat straw, a possibility that was no better than any or all of the other possibilities. For all I knew, Donleavy or one of the other investigators from the District Attorney’s Office had already questioned the gardener and eliminated him as a suspect; Donleavy would not necessarily have mentioned it in my presence. Even if they had not questioned him, I had no evidence against the gardener, nothing to link him with the kidnapping or the hijacking, nothing at all which would induce

Donleavy to drop his investigation of the sixty or seventy people who had been at Martinetti’s party two nights before the boy’s abduction-people who were just as suspect — and rush out to the gardener’s place to interrogate him.

But it was still a lead, I could not deny that, and because it was-because I still needed that something tangible to hold on to, that weapon to ward off the loneliness — I could follow it up myself. Martinetti was paying me to investigate, and Donleavy had given me his blessings, if I needed any rationalizations-why not? If I learned anything of importance, then I could get in touch with Donleavy and let him take it over.

I began hurrying again, onto Broadway, along it to the cafe where I had eaten. In the phone booth at the rear, I opened the Peninsula directory; under the B section I found:

Burl Lndscp amp; Grdng Srv

87 Valldemar Dr (Bg) ………… 344-1134

I shut the book and went out to the Valiant and rummaged in the glove compartment until I found a series of maps I knew Erika kept in there, bound with a rubber band. I located the one for the San Francisco Peninsula and looked up Valldemar Drive.

It was on the western edge of Burlingame, near Cuernavaca Park. That was a residential area, and it seemed logical to assume that whoever the young guy was, he ran his gardening and landscaping service from his residence.

The steering wheel had the feel of Erika’s fingers on it as I drove away into the night.

* * * *

Valldemar Drive turned out to be two blocks of split-level and ranch-style development homes, with a lot of trees and flowers and well-thought-out landscaping. Number 87 was of the former type, constructed of redwood with a fieldstone facade, and there was a large horse chestnut tree growing in a carpetlike front lawn to set it off somewhat from its neighbors.

I parked just off the curving front drive and got out and went up onto the sidewalk. At the foot of the drive there was a black metal pole with a carriage-type gas lamp on top of it; pale electric light shone through the cut-glass sides. An iridescent plastic sign in a wrought-iron frame was fastened to the center of the pole; The Shanleys -and below that, Peggy and Glen -was imprinted there.

The drive was bordered on the right with neat rows of yellow and white narcissus and lavender iris and pale pink gladiolas, and on the left by a low rough-hewn split-rail fence. At the back, parked in front of a darkened garage, was the green panel truck; there was no other vehicle in sight. I went along to where there was an opening in the fence, and a path made of variegated concrete blocks cut diagonally through the lawn, under the chestnut, and blended into a concrete porch covered with an arbor of honeysuckle. The fragrance of the vines’ pale white flowers was rich and cloying in the cool night air.

I passed under the arbor and stepped up to the door. There was another gas lamp set on the wall beside it, this one dark, and below it I could see an ivory bell button. I pushed the button and stood there holding my hat in my left hand, trying to decide how I was going to handle things-and then the soft pad of footsteps sounded inside and a light came on in the lamp. The door opened and a woman looked out.