Bill Pronzini: Breakdown

An old tavern, the Hideaway, in business continually since just after Repeal and operating under its present name for more than forty years. It was owned now by the widow of Sam Delaney, the man who had christened it Hideaway. She was in poor health, and there was some concern among the regulars that when she died her relatives would sell the property and the new owners would shut it down. If that happened, it would be a serious tragedy in their lives. There were other bars in the neighborhood, but not in the immediate vicinity and none like the Hideaway. Without it, some of these people would be lost. More than one of them, I thought, would not survive its closing for very long.

There was not much to the place, as far as the decor went. Just an oblong, high-ceilinged room, ill-lighted and musty with the smells of alcohol and tobacco, of salt-damp and age and the flavors of all the people who had made it their second home for over half a century. Long bar on the left as you came in; half a dozen well-used tables and chairs and one long cushioned bench along the wall on the right; four low-backed booths built into the far right-hand corner, two on the back wall and two on the side wall. Ancient linoleum on the floor, worn through in several places so that you could see the dark oiled boards underneath. Walls adorned with faded black-and-white photographs of a vanished San Francisco: the original Cliff House, Ocean Beach in the thirties, this neighborhood when it was all salt grass and sand dunes, before Dolger and the other developers bought up the land and covered it with “affordable” housing.

The first time I’d come here, just after the new year began, the Hideaway had struck me as a drab, cheerless bar ruled by ghosts and despair. But after three weeks, I had a different impression. This may have been a haven for the elderly and the disaffected, but they didn’t come here to mourn or exchange bitternesses or sit around morosely waiting to shake hands with the Grim Reaper. Most of them were vital people; they brought their hobbies, opinions, insights, and verbal pleasures in with them, and shared them freely. There was sadness here, and a sense of tragedy, but there was laughter and joy too-and a kind of warmth and camaraderie that I found enviable.

Each of the two booths along the back wall had a green-shaded droplight over it. In one of them now, a retired civil servant named Harry Briggs was playing chess with fat, fortyish, painfully shy Douglas Mikan, the youngest of the regulars, who had inherited just enough money from an overprotective mother so that he didn’t have to work. They played often and well and were very serious about their chess; they almost never spoke to each other while a match was in progress. In the other back booth, Peter Vandermeer sat reading a pamphlet with great concentration. He was nearly eighty, thin and sinewy, once a cable-car motorman and now an amateur historian who probably knew more obscure facts about California history in general and San Francisco history in particular than most college professors. A couple of nights ago he had spent twenty minutes telling me more than I ever wanted to know about the Panama-Pacific Exposition of 1915.

The only person at the bar, down at the far end, was Ed McBee, a longshoreman whose wife had died not long ago. Over at the tables, there was Charlie Neale, who had a crippled right leg as the result of some sort of industrial accident. And Kate and Bob Johnson, who belonged to different political parties and had evidently spent most of their married life arguing politics. And Annie Stanhope, constantly knitting from a huge bag of yarn while she drank vast amounts of dry sherry that never seemed to have any effect on her. And Frank Parigli, who had some kind of night watchman’s job and who spent his mornings combing Ocean Beach for driftwood and shells; his hobby was making collages, which he sold to gift shops for the tourist trade. And Lyda Isherwood, big and brassy, with a loud voice and a louder laugh; she claimed to have once run a whorehouse in Nevada (nobody seemed to believe her), and told bawdy stories in a surprising variety of accents and dialects. There were others too, some whose names I had learned and some I knew nothing about. But their faces were all familiar now, and even though I was here under a false name and false pretenses, and in another week or so my life would no longer intersect with theirs, I felt an odd sort of kinship with them. If I lived Out There at the Beach instead of in Pacific Heights, if I didn’t have Kerry — and, to a lesser degree, Eberhardt-this was the kind of place and these were the kind of people I might find myself gravitating to.

Kerry. I threw another dart, too hard and a little wildly. Thinking: I don’t have her now, do I? And what if this thing with her mother gets worse, drags on and on?

Outside, somewhere close by, there was the sudden squeal of tires on pavement, the crescendo-and-fade of a car passing at high speed. Nice driving on a foggy night, I thought. And promptly forgot about it.

But not for long.

Just about a minute had passed when the tavern’s door whacked open. I felt the night’s gusty breath all the way over where I was standing by the dartboard-and I watched Nick Pendarves blow in.

Pendarves was a tallish, gangly man in his mid-fifties, a couple of years younger than me. He wore his usual gray work shirt and gray work pants and gray-and-black plaid jacket, but you didn’t think of him in terms of gray; you thought of him in terms of rusty. He had rust-colored hair, the kind of voice that sounded as if it were corroded, and a slow, jerky way of moving, as if all his joints needed oiling- the Tin Man of Oz left out too long in bad weather. But there was something different about him tonight; I saw it even at a distance and it put me on instant alert. His movements were quicker and more agitated than usual, and he paid no attention to the other regulars as he came down the bar. He leaned up against it between two of the stools, clutching at the beveled edge as if for support.

I moved over to where he was. When I got close enough I could see that his craggy face was pale, that the fire of bitter anger blazed in his eyes. He paid no attention to me, either, as I claimed one of the stools near him.

“Bourbon,” he said to Max. “Double shot.”

Max cocked his head, as much of an expression of surprise as he was ever likely to betray. Like me, Pendarves was a beer-drinker; in three weeks I had never seen him order anything else.

“Well? What the hell you waiting for?”

I watched Max get busy, Pendarves light an unfiltered Pall Mall with unsteady hands. Then I asked, “What’s up, Nick? You look kind of shook.”

“Son of a bitch tried to run me down,” he said without looking my way.

“Who did?”

“Tried to kill me, by God.”

“When? Just now?”

“Come out of nowhere while I was crossing the street. Couldn’t of missed me by more than a couple feet. I hadn’t jumped when I did … Christ!”

Max put the double shot down in front of him. Pendarves threw it off as if it were water, rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth. His eyes looked as hot as the tip of his cigarette.

“Kids?” Max said.

“Kids my ass. One guy, no goddamn headlights. He done it on purpose. Swerved right at me.”

I said, “Who’d do a thing like that?”

“Thomas Lujack, that’s who.”

“… Guy you’re testifying against?”

“Him. Yeah.”

“You sure it was him?”

“Sure enough.”

“So you got a good look at him this time too?”

“Too dark. But it was Lujack-who the hell else? Tried to run me down like he done his partner. Well, he won’t get away with it.”

Max said, “Call the cops, Nick.”