Bill Pronzini: Breakdown

She wasn’t trying to talk herself into believing it; she already believed it. And because she did, I did too.

I said, “I wish there was some way I could get involved in the process. But I guess there isn’t.”

“Not until she realizes you’re not to blame for your feelings about Ivan. Then she’ll stop hating you.”

“I hope so. I not only like her, I admire and respect her- you know that. I always have.”

Kerry smiled and squeezed my hand. “You couldn’t like me if you didn’t like Cybil,” she said. “I’m my mother’s daughter.”

“I wouldn’t want you to be anything else.”

We sat for a while without saying anything. It was good companionable silence, the kind we used to share all the time. The awkwardness, the tension between us was finally gone.

At length she stirred and I looked over at her, and her eyes were moist. I asked, “What’s the matter? Are you crying?”

“A little.”

“Why?”

“Women cry sometimes,” she said, as if that explained it. “It doesn’t have to mean anything bad, you know.”

“… If you say so.”

“God, you sound so dubious.” Now she was laughing as well as crying. “You really don’t understand women, do you?”

“Not a lick,” I said.

She got up, still laughing and crying at the same time, and said, “I love you, you big goof.” Then she said, “I’ll be right back,” and went off to the bathroom.

I sat there wondering why I was such an ignoramus when it came to women. Sex shouldn’t make that much difference; people were people, right? All of us Homo sapiens under the skin. I understood men, sometimes too well, so why didn’t I understand women? The fact that I didn’t and never had made me feel inadequate and somehow ridiculous, as if I were the butt of some secret cosmic joke.

Kerry came back pretty soon. She was no longer either crying or laughing; she’d fixed her face and the expression on it now was serious and businesslike. She sat down, drank some of her wine. “All right,” she said, “now it’s your turn. What happened to get you written up in today’s paper? The Lujack case?”

“The Lujack case.”

“Talk,” she said.

I talked. She already knew some of the facts; I generally confided in her about what I was working on, to keep things open between us and because now and then she came up with an insight or a piece of information that proved useful. I filled in the details, then went through the events of the past few days. I did not want to tell her about the incident with Rafael Vega, but it was bound to come out in the media eventually; so I settled for whitewashing it a little, making it seem less deadly than it had been. I didn’t say anything at all about being shot at last night. She didn’t need to know how deadly that had been either.

She sat through the whole recital without interrupting. Her face was grave when I finished, but whatever she was feeling was hidden away inside. And when she spoke she had nothing to say about Vega or the shooting of Coleman Lujack. Experience had taught her just how dangerous my profession could be sometimes, and that there was no point in carrying on about it. I was still around, still in one piece; that was what mattered.

Quietly she said, “It’s not over for you yet, is it?” She knew me so well-so much better than I could ever know her.

“It won’t be over until whoever killed Coleman is identified and locked up. It has to come full circle; there has to be a closing.”

“But why do you have to close it? Why not the police?”

“It’s not that I have to be the one,” I said. “It’s that I have to keep trying until somebody does it. You understand the distinction?”

“I think so.”

“I thought you would. Eberhardt doesn’t.”

“That’s because he’s uncomplicated.”

“I wish I were too, sometimes.”

“But you’re not.” She smiled-a little wistfully, I thought. Then she asked, “Who shot Coleman, if it wasn’t Paco Vega or Teresa Melendez? Thomas’s widow?”

“Probably not. She just isn’t the type.”

“Any woman is the type, if she wants revenge badly enough.”

“I suppose so. More likely it’s somebody mixed up in the smuggling racket. Pendarves would be a good candidate too … if he’s alive.”

“But you don’t think he is?”

“Everything I know about Coleman and Vega says they plotted Pendarves’s murder along with Thomas’s.”

“Maybe they did, and something happened to prevent it.”

“You mean there was an attempt on Pendarves’s life and he got away? Sure, it’s possible. It would give him another reason for hiding out, and an even stronger motive for shooting Coleman. But if that’s it, where has he been holed up since Tuesday night? He has few friends, none close enough to risk prison on an accessory charge.”

“No woman in his life?”

I shook my head. “I thought for a while he might’ve been having an affair with one of the women regulars at the Hideaway, but that idea didn’t pan out.”

“Why not?”

“According to Lyda Isherwood, who claims to have once been a madam in Nevada, he’s been paying for his sex ever since his divorce five years ago. Plus there’s the fact that he’s a hard-core sexist and a psychological abuser. Women don’t seem to want to have much to do with him.”

“Then why did you think he was having an affair?”

“The shape his house was in. I had a glimpse of the kitchen; it was spotless. Pendarves is or was a slob, and much too cheap to hire a housekeeper. Somebody had to do the cleaning up for him.”

“Why does it have to be a woman?” Kerry said.

“What?”

“The person who cleaned his house for him. Why does it have to be a woman? Why couldn’t it be a man?”

“… I don’t know, I just assumed …”

“Men clean houses too. And cook and wash clothes and change diapers … all sorts of things like that.”

“Okay, okay. But in this situation … hell, Pendarves isn’t gay, I’m positive of that….”

“Who said anything about gay? It doesn’t have to be a sexual relationship. You said he’s a psychological abuser. Why couldn’t he have a male friend, somebody weak and easily manipulated, that he could have bullied into doing his housecleaning for him? And bullied into hiding him from the police?”

I stared at her without speaking. Then I got off the couch and took a couple of turns around the room, working on what she’d said. Somebody weak and easily manipulated. Well, why not? Another Hideaway regular; the tavern was the most likely place for Pendarves to have formed such a relationship. But why hadn’t anybody there mentioned it?

They don’t know, I thought. Pendarves is close-mouthed, keeps to himself. The friend could be that way too. Either that, or …

Weak and easily manipulated-and withdrawn, uncommunicative. A man who had expressed a deeper concern for Pendarves’s well-being than any of the other regulars the night of the abortive hit-and-run … a man fastidious in dress and habits, who would undoubtedly keep a fastidious house and could be talked into keeping his friend’s house the same way … a man who, now that I thought about it, hadn’t been present at the Hideaway during my last few visits, even though he usually came in every night to play chess.

Douglas Mikan.

The sad-eyed, painfully shy mama’s boy-Douglas Mikan.

* * * *

I told Kerry she was wonderful, briefly explained about Douglas Mikan, and went after the telephone directory. He was listed. Or at least there was a D. Mikan at 2316 Great Highway, which would be just a few blocks from the tavern.