Bill Pronzini: The Snatch

Fifteen years. The last four on the General Works Detail attached to the investigation of homicides. And then one afternoon you answer a squeal to a nice house in the Sunset District, and you walk into a living room that is literally painted with blood-the ceiling, the floors, the walls, the furniture-and sitting there in the middle is a guy with empty eyes cradling a double-edged woodsman’s axe, crying, and all around him are what’s left of his wife and their two preschool children. You stand there and you look at that, and then you go outside and you puke until there’s nothing left, and then you either erect mental defenses to the carnage and step back inside and do the things you have to do as a cop, or you admit that you’ve had it, you can’t take any more, and you get so drunk later that night that you cannot stand without assistance. I was no longer able to erect those mental defenses.

Six months later the State Board of Licenses, after a series of examinations and the posting of a bond, granted me a private investigator’s license and I resigned from the force the same day I received the news.

Eberhardt, who is now a Lieutenant of Detectives and who has grown even more dour and cynical over the years, thought I was crazy to have given up fifteen years’ seniority toward a pension to open a private agency; he still thinks that, because the agency has been anything but a major success, and he still thinks I’m crazy to keep on reading and collecting pulp magazines. We’re good friends in spite of that.

I got down one of the copies of Black Mask that I had recently acquired, and hadn’t finished reading as yet, and took it over to the sofa. I lit a cigarette, and waited, and when I knew my lungs were going to be all right I opened the magazine and tried to read.

But I could not keep my mind on it. I kept thinking about the Martinetti kidnapping, and the way Karyn Martinetti had looked at me with her eyes full of pain and terror, and the job I had agreed to do. I wished there was some way I could get out of it, now, but I knew that there wasn’t; I had committed myself, and unless something radical happened to alter the present status of things, I had to follow through.

I put the magazine down and looked at my watch. Eight o’clock. I wondered if Erika was home, and if she was, what kind of mood she was in. I did not feel much like being alone tonight, but I did not want to have to put up with an argument either.

I kept my telephone in the bedroom, and I walked in there and called her and she answered on the third ring. “Hi, old bear,” she said. She sounded pretty chipper. “I suppose you’re horny. You never call me otherwise.”

I grinned some at that. “I’m more lonely than anything else,” I said. “Can I come over and hold your hand?”

“That would be something different, at least.”

“Have you got any brandy?”

“Half a bottle.”

“Make me a drink,” I said. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

* * * *

Erika was Erika Coates, and she lived in one of those tasteless stucco-facaded flats on the Marina, near the Presidio. She was a legal secretary with a very proper probate law firm in the financial district; she was thirty-seven years old and twice divorced; she was opinionated and outspoken and somewhat censorious and better in bed than any woman I have ever known.

I met her during the course of a minor investigation I had been conducting for an insurance company two years ago, and asked her out eleven times-four of those in person-before she consented to have so much as an after-work cocktail in Paoli’s or the Iron Duke. I had since that time asked her on three separate occasions to marry me, a question I had long past decided I would never be asking any woman, and she had turned me down with gentle regrets each time; she did not want to have to worry about going through a third divorce, she said, but I did not think that was the real reason. The real reason was that she did not like the kind of job I had; it was too unstable for her, I suppose, and the one thing she needed now was stability.

I believe she was in love with me just the same.

I know I was in love with her.

I parked my car in her driveway, as I always did, and went up and rang her bell twice long and twice short in the code we had worked out so that she wouldn’t have to come downstairs to see who it was before working the door buzzer. After a couple of seconds the release sounded and I entered and climbed the stairs, and she was waiting for me with her door open and a nice dutiful-wife smile that her eyes said was a fat put-on.

I kissed her, and she was warm and soft in my arms, nuzzling. I stood her away after a time, wondering if the way I felt was mirrored on my face for her to see. Her own face was heart-shaped and puckish, and I thought: Jesus, but she must have been lovely when she was a very young girl. She was still lovely, with this raven-black hair sweeping down like a silken midnight waterfall, glinting metallic-blue highlights in the proper lighting, and wide dancing eyes like fine gray pearls, and a soft quizzical mouth and little gnomelike ears with huge gold gypsy hoops hanging from them. If you looked for them, you could see the tiny age wrinkles that she covered so carefully with skin-toned make-up, the faint cross-hatching effect on the slender column of her throat-but I never looked. She had kept her figure by dieting and exercise, and her breasts were firm and small and her hips lean and her legs ripplingly muscled and sun-lamp brown; tonight she had the package wrapped in a pair of quilted culottes that did nothing for it at all.

She saw me looking at the outfit, and said, “So what did you expect? Something sheer and slinky?”

“Why not?” I said, and patted her, and took her arm and prompted her into the flat.

She had the gas logs burning in the small false fireplace at one end of the room, and it was warm and comfortable in there. The apartment itself was neat and feminine, furnished in Danish Modern, with a lot of frilly throw pillows and some cute white-and-black fluff rugs and a big panda bear sitting in one corner like a naughty child. The walls were filled with wood and glass figurines on dainty shelves, and impressionistic and experimental prints such as Matisse’s “Red Studio” and Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase,” and a couple of things by Picasso. Over the door leading to the kitchen was a funny little scroll plaque that said: Evil Is a Very Bad Thing.

She had the loveseat arranged in front of the fire, with the bottle of brandy and a silver ice bucket and a couple of glasses on a table beside it. We went over there and sat down, and I mixed a couple of drinks. We sat in silence, our thighs touching. I sipped at my drink, staring at the red-orange glow of the gas fire.

After a time Erika said softly, “What’s the matter, old bear?”

“Hmm?”

“You’re very contemplative tonight.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I guess I am.”

“What is it?”

“A job, a not very nice job.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Professional ethics forbid?”

“In this instance, yes.”

“Phooey,” she said, and there was that faint note of sarcasm and censure in her voice that I did not like to hear, because I knew where it would lead if we allowed it to get out of hand.

I let the remark pass. I got out a cigarette and lit it, and a spell of coughing came on so suddenly that it almost doubled me over on the seat. It seemed loud and consumptive in the quiet apartment. I sat there with the fresh handkerchief over my mouth, listening to the wheezing sounds coming out of my open mouth, not looking at Erika.

And she said very quietly, “When are you going to give up those damned cigarettes, old bear? You smoke three packs every day, or is it four? Your lungs must look like a coal miner’s.”