Bill Pronzini: Breakdown

Unless the crazy happens to be sitting ten feet away, and the loaded gun is pointed at you.

My body seemed to constrict, draw in on itself-so sharply that I could feel the pressure in my head like a sudden migraine. I took half a dozen slow stiff paces, angling away from him toward the tables. I could see the rest of the room then: empty booths, empty floor. It didn’t look as though he’d shot anybody yet.

Before I got to where the others were clustered I stopped; I wanted a little distance between me and anybody else. “Hey, Nick,” I said, and licked my lips, and put on a bewildered little smile. “What’s the idea of the gun?”

“We’re having a party,” he said. He wasn’t smiling; he didn’t sound happy about it. He sounded mad as hell.

“Sure, Nick. A party. What you need a gun at a party for?”

“Stupid question. What’s a gun good for, huh?”

“You tell me.”

“Shoot somebody with,” he said. His eyes, underslung by sacs of loose gray flesh, were bright and hot. “That’s what a gun’s good for. Shoot people with, right?”

Douglas Mikan made low moaning sounds. He was still cradling himself, eyes squeezed tightly shut.

“Shut up, Doug,” Pendarves said.

The moaning stopped.

I said, “How long’s the party been going on?”

The question seemed to interest him. His gaze flicked past me to the others, settled on Ed McBee. “Hey, Ed. How long’s the party been going on?”

“Hour and a half,” McBee said in a dull, bruised voice. His face, and the faces of the others, showed the terror and strain of those ninety minutes. But there was something else reflected in each face, too-betrayal and utter despair. They had trusted Pendarves, believed in him, and he had turned on them in the most terrible of ways. No matter what else happened here tonight, an integral part of their lives-their sanctuary and their carefully nurtured illusions-lay in ruins around them.

“What’s it going to be, Nick?” I said. “An all-night party? That what you have in mind?”

“All night? Uh-uh. Not that long.”

“How long, then?”

“Until I get tired of it.”

“Then what?”

“You’ll find out. Everybody will.”

“Sure. But while it lasts, what do you say we keep it small, just those of us here now? What do you say we lock the door, don’t let anybody else in?”

“No,” he said.

“Too many people spoil a party-”

“No, goddamn it, I said no!” The right side of his face went through another series of spasms. His arm jerked a little too, and I was afraid he might fire the gun involuntarily; he had it aimed in my direction. Rusty Tin Man of Oz gone haywire: unpredictable, deadly. “Sit down, Art the fart. What the hell you standing up for? Sit down like everybody else.”

I didn’t argue with him. I pulled a chair away from one of the tables, positioned it so that nothing separated us but a dozen feet of empty floor. When I sat down I put both feet flat on the linoleum and both hands on my knees, bowed my back forward, and held that position.

Pendarves watched me with his hot eyes. Then he said to Mikan, “Doug, I need a smoke. Get me a smoke.”

Douglas just sat there rocking.

Pendarves elbowed him, hard enough to make him grunt and pop his eyes open. “Oh, God,” he said.

“Shut up. Get me a smoke. You know where they are.”

“Nick, please, I’m sick-”

“You fat slob, do what I told you!”

Whimpering a little, Mikan fumbled a package of Pall Malls out of Pendarves’s shirt pocket, shook a cigarette loose, and managed to insert it into a corner of Pendarves’s mouth.

“You want me to smoke it dry, fatso?”

Douglas fished a Bic from the pocket, lit the cigarette. It took him half a minute; he dropped the lighter twice, flicked the wheel half a dozen times before he was able to spark the flint. Then he had to hold the Bic in both hands to keep the flame steady.

“Stupid bastard, you almost singed my eyebrow. What’s the matter with you, Doug? Huh?”

“I’m sick, I’m sick-”

“And I’m sick of you, whining all the time. Be a man, for Christ’s sake. Art the fart’s a man, aren’t you, Art the fart?”

I didn’t say anything.

“I asked you a question. You a man or what?”

“Yeah,” I said, “I’m a man.”

“Hear that, chubby? He’s a man. You be one too.”

Mikan mumbled something that I couldn’t hear.

“Right,” Pendarves said. “Now go get me a beer. I’m thirsty. Make it a Bud … no, what the hell, something imported. A Beck’s. Make it a Beck’s.”

Douglas pushed himself off the bar. One of his feet struck a stool and nearly upset it; he fell heavily to one knee, moaning again. Pendarves said, “Clumsy bugger. Get up, get my beer,” and Mikan got up and stumbled away to the far end of the bar where the hatch was.

Pendarves quit looking at him; his eyes were on me again. “Hey, Art the fart. You want a beer too?”

“Sure,” I said. “I could use one.”

“Beck’s or Bud?”

“Beck’s.”

“Anybody else want a snort? On me?”

Silence. Then old man Vandermeer said, “Let us go, Nick. We’ve never done anything to you, we’re your friends. Please let us go-”

“Shut up, old man. You and your fucking history. Shut up, you hear me?”

Vandermeer shut up. He seemed to shrink and shrivel where he sat, like a slug doused with salt.

Douglas was behind the bar now. Sweat shone on his round face, stained the front of his shirt. The beer cooler was almost directly behind where Pendarves was sitting; Mikan got it open, bent out of sight, came up again with two bottles. Pendarves still wasn’t looking at him. He could have leaned forward with no effort at all and cracked Pendarves over the head with one of the bottles. But even if the idea occurred to him, he didn’t do it. Poor sad broken Douglas Mikan did not have enough courage to act to save his own life.

There was an acrid taste in my mouth-the taste of hate. I made myself sit poker-faced, so what I was feeling wouldn’t show; Pendarves’s gaze remained fixed on me, left eye half-closed in a squint. The cigarette was still pasted wetly in that corner of his mouth, the smoke from it curling upward into a kind of obscene halo.

Mikan had the two bottles of beer open. He took a clean pilsner glass off the backbar, poured beer into it, set glass and bottle down carefully to Pendarves’s left. Then he picked up a second glass, started away toward the hatch.

Pendarves was still staring at me. Abruptly his expression changed and he sat up straight; jerked the weed out of his mouth with his free hand and threw it on the floor. The blaze in his eyes was hotter now.

“Doug,” he said. “Doug!”

Mikan was at the open hatch. He stopped, turned.

“Put that other beer down. Don’t bring it out here.”

I said, “Come on, Nick, I’m thirsty too-”

“Shut up! Doug, you hear what I said?”

Douglas mumbled something. Then, louder, “I heard.” He rid himself of bottle and glass, came through and back around to where Pendarves was sitting.

“Get up here. Move that fat ass of yours.”

Mikan had difficulty getting his bulk onto the bar; he had to use one of the stools as a stepladder. His chubby hips quivered, jostled the bottle there. Pendarves snatched it out of the way without removing his flat stare from me.

“What’s the idea, Nick?” I said. “How come I don’t get my beer?”

“You know what I ought to give you? Huh? A bullet, that’s what. How’d you like a bullet in the head, you dirty bastard?”

The sweat on me turned cold, clammy. I sat forward a little more, watching his finger on the automatic’s trigger. It hadn’t whitened yet; if it started to whiten I would have to try jumping him … if he didn’t just jerk off a shot … if he gave me enough time….