Bill Pronzini: Breakdown

“Why would you want to shoot me, Nick?”

“Art Canino my ass. You’re that damn detective.”

“What detective?”

“The one I read about, the one at the factory last night. Chrissake, I should have known. Fucking Lujacks hired a private eye to come around spying on me. Should of blown you away last night too.”

Little rustlings and throat noises from the others. They were figuring it out too, now, just as Pendarves had.

His face was twitching again. The gun remained steady, his finger still not quite tight on the trigger. I came close to launching myself out of the chair anyway. The only thing that stopped me was the fear that if I rattled him into firing once, he might keep right on firing before I could get to him, spray bullets all over the room. The automatic looked to be a military model, the kind with a double-action trigger.

“Nick,” I said, “I’m not your enemy. I hated Coleman Lujack as much as you did. I’m glad he’s dead. He deserved to die.”

“Bullshit. You were working for him.”

“No. Not for him, for his brother’s lawyer.”

“Bullshit.”

“Nick, listen. I know he killed his brother, him and Vega, and framed you for it. I know all about that. You had a right to shoot him. He had it coming.”

“Dirty bastard,” Pendarves said, and I thought that now he was talking about Coleman Lujack. “Dirty lying bastard.”

“How did he lie to you?”

It was ten seconds before he said, “I shouldn’t of done it. But I was pissed. I’d had enough. Damn brother of his tried to run me down like he run down Hanauer, run me down like a dog. You can only take so much, by God. Then you got to start pushing back.”

The facial spasming had stopped again. And the muzzle of the automatic had dipped a little. I’d gotten through to him, all right, deflected some of his anger away from me and back to Coleman Lujack. Keep him talking, I thought. Get him off his guard.

“Sure you do,” I said. “How’d you push Coleman?”

“Leave me alone, that’s all I asked. His brother leaves me alone, I keep quiet about the wetbacks. I never asked for no money. That was his idea. Five thousand bucks. I didn’t even have to say I’d been wrong about who was driving the car. Five thousand just so I wouldn’t say nothing about the wetbacks.”

“You take the money, Nick?”

“What kind of man you think I am? Huh? I told him shove his money up his ass.”

“So instead he made up his mind to get rid of you and his brother both.”

“Killed his own brother, what kind of son of a bitch kills his own brother? Him and that spick Vega. Then the dirty bastards tried to kill me.”

“How’d he get you away from your house that night?”

“Called me up, said we had to talk. Real urgent. Didn’t want to come to my place, didn’t want me to come to his, wouldn’t be good for either of us if we was seen together. Why didn’t we meet up at Stow Lake. I said what the hell you trying to pull. Nothing, he said, just want to save you some grief. Dirty lying bastard. I didn’t think he’d try and kill me. His brother, but not him. Place like Stow Lake, ten o’clock at night … ah, Christ, I should of known.”

“Who showed up there? Vega?”

“Knew something was wrong when I seen that spick. Car full of kids hadn’t of gone by, I hadn’t of seen he had a gun and run like hell, I’d be dead too.” Pendarves’s cheek started to tic again; he reached up and scratched it with his free hand, digging his nails hard enough into the skin to draw blood. “Couldn’t find me in the fog. But I didn’t know where he was neither. Might of still been hanging around, waiting for me to go back for my car. Only one thing I could think to do.”

“Find a phone and call Douglas and have him come pick you up,” I said.

“Good old Doug.” He prodded Mikan with his elbow. “You’re my buddy, hey, fatso?”

Mikan kept his eyes shut; he was rocking again.

“I told him drive us by my house,” Pendarves said. “Cops all over the place … Christ! Right there in my garage they killed him. Knew I couldn’t go to the cops. My word against Coleman’s, they’d never believe me. Nothing I could do but hide out at Doug’s. Wait until they quit looking for me and then take off, get out of the state. Doug scraped some cash together for me, didn’t you, chubby? Good old Doug. Good old Doug and his lousy goddamn postcards.”

“But then you got to thinking,” I said. “Why let Coleman and Vega get away with what they’d done to you. Why not fix them like they tried to fix you.”

“Yeah. Fix ‘em good.”

“Doug buy the gun for you?”

“This baby? Had it since I was in Korea, locked up in a box in my basement. Sent fatso over to see if the cops found it but they didn’t. He didn’t want to bring it, did you, Doug? But I convinced him. He does what I tell him. Fetch, Doug, and he fetches like a fat old dog.”

“You fixed Coleman, Nick,” I said. “And the cops have Vega so he’s fixed too. It’s finished now. Why come in here with that gun, why hurt your friends?”

“Friends? Like you, huh?”

“Not me. All these other people-”

“I got no friends, I don’t need no friends.”

“What about Doug? You needed him, didn’t you?”

“Not no more. Look at him. He’s just a fat old dog. They’re all old dogs, no good to nobody. Best thing with mangy old dogs is put ‘em out of their misery.” Bitter anger thickened his voice again. He shifted his gaze to the far wall. “How about it, huh? Put you old dogs out of your misery.”

Lyda Isherwood made a thin keening noise. A look of desperation crossed Ed McBee’s seamed face; he put both hands on the table in front of him, getting ready to rise. Pendarves swung the automatic his way, his finger pad just starting to flatten on the trigger. I lifted my heels off the floor, tensing.

And the front door opened and Kate and Bob Johnson walked in.

They came in jauntily, loud as always, laughing about something. Pendarves rotated his hips on the bar top, brought the gun arcing back past me to them. Kate Johnson saw it first and her laughter broke into an astonished gurgling cry. Her husband yelled, “Hey!” and Douglas shrieked, “No, Nick, no!” I came up out of the chair, fast and low-a couple of seconds too late.

Pendarves fired twice at the Johnsons.

Panic, chaos: screams, shouts overriding the echoes of the shots; people tumbling out of chairs and off the wall bench, scrambling for cover. Pendarves saw me coming, swung the automatic again, fired wildly … and I was on him, left hand coming up under the gun, driving it ceilingward as he squeezed off a fourth shot, right hand clawing a hold on his shirtfront and dragging him forward, down off the bar. He slammed into one of the stools; it collapsed under him and we both went to the floor.

I let go of his shirt, used both hands to go after the gun. I couldn’t get hold of it at first because his arm was pinned under him and he kept squirming and kicking to free it, hurling words and spittle into my face. Finally I managed to close my left hand around the barrel and trigger guard, twisted it against his hip so he wouldn’t squeeze off again. With my other hand I found a grip on his wrist, bent and wrung it hard enough to crack the bone. He yelled, his fingers relaxed, and I had the piece.

I slammed the butt of it against his jaw. That made him quit squirming. I hit him twice more in the face, both times with my right fist. Caught a handful of his hair and slammed his head against the floor once, twice, three times, hard enough to crack the bastard’s skull-

No! That’s enough, he’s out, he’s out!

— and let go of him abruptly and shoved back off his body and knelt there panting, clutching the automatic against my chest.