Bill Pronzini: Schemers

When I answered the first call, a woman’s voice asked for me by name. I owned up, and she said, “Margot Lee, Mr. Rivera’s assistant at Great Western Insurance. Mr. Rivera would like to see you on a business matter, if you’re available.”

I was silent for so long she said, “Hello? Are you there?”

“I’m here,” I said. “What sort of business matter?”

“A claim investigation, of course. Mr. Rivera would prefer to discuss the details in person.”

“With me personally?”

“That’s what he said, yes.”

“When and where?”

“One o’clock today, here in his office, if that’s convenient.”

I almost said no, I wasn’t interested. But I couldn’t quite get the words out. An olive branch, maybe? Probably not; Barney Rivera wasn’t given to offering olive branches to anybody. Must be a genuine business proposition. Why, all of a sudden, after five years?

“ Would one o’clock be convenient?” Ms. Lee said.

“It would,” I said before I could change my mind. “I’ll be there.”

Barney Rivera, Great Western’s chief claims adjuster. Barney the Needle. We’d been friends once, poker buddies, and he’d thrown a fair amount of business my way in the days when I was running a one-man agency. That had all ended five years ago. Rivera had a malicious streak in him; he could be a gossip-mongering, backstabbing son of a bitch when he felt like it. He’d felt like it with me at a difficult time, when Kerry and I were going together and things were a little rocky and she’d thought maybe it wasn’t me she wanted to be with but a guy named Blessing, the head of one of her ad agency’s accounts. Rivera had seen them together at a restaurant and through sly, nasty innuendo implied to me that they were having a hot and heavy affair. They weren’t-she never slept with Blessing-but Rivera’s jabs had given me a bad time for a while. I’d never forgiven him. And when I turned down a couple of job offers afterward, he’d quit offering and I hadn’t heard from him again until today. And not directly, at that. Just like the little bastard to have his assistant make initial contact.

Five years. A long time. And now, out of the blue what sounded like it could be a legitimate job offer. The “why” I couldn’t figure at all.

I was mulling it over, and brooding a little about that rough patch in Kerry’s and my relationship, when Jake Runyon came in. Good man, Jake-a former Seattle cop and former investigator for Caldwell amp; Associates, one of the larger private agencies up there. Big, slab-faced, hammer-jawed. Smart, tough, loyal, and dead-bang honest. He’d moved to San Francisco after the cancer death of his second wife, to be close to the estranged son from his first marriage, the only family he had left. They were still estranged; an attempt at reconciliation hadn’t worked out.

For the first year he’d been with us as field operative, Runyon had been a reticent loner still grieving deeply for his deceased wife. Lately, though, there’d been a subtle change in him. Less dour, more open and upbeat. He’d even shaved off his mustache, as if he were making an effort to alter his physical appearance. Reason: a woman named Bryn Darby. He wouldn’t say much about her or the nature of their relationship, and Tamara and I had yet to meet her, but it was plain that she was having a positive influence on him.

He had a light caseload this week, a fact that didn’t set well with him. The restless type, Jake, uncomfortable unless he was on the move somewhere. So he’d come in hoping we had some work for him. I had to tell him no, though maybe the appointment with Barney the Needle would produce something for him to handle. We bulled a little, he went out to his desk in the anteroom, and I went back to the report I was writing.

And a short while later, oddball case number two showed up in person.

I heard them come in, a man and a woman, and the low buzz of conversation as Runyon spoke with them. Then he came into my office, shutting the door behind him. “Couple named Henderson, Tracy and Cliff,” he said. “From Los Alegres. I think you should talk to them.”

“What’s their problem?”

“They’re being stalked, but they don’t know who or why.”

“Stalked? They been to the police?”

He nodded. “No help there so far.”

“If the police can’t help them…”

“I know. But they sound pretty desperate.”

“Well, we can listen to their story. You want to sit in?”

“Yes.”

The Hendersons were in their late thirties, married thirteen years, with two young daughters. He was balding, rangy, tense, the owner of a construction company in Los Alegres, a small town some forty miles north of the city; she was blond, a little on the plump side and wearing clothes designed to diminish the fact, and a teacher of English and American history at the local high school. The look in her eyes was one I’d seen too many times before-a stunnedanimal mix of hurt, fear, bewilderment, desperation. His eyes reflected more frustrated anger than anything else. Ordinary people suddenly and inexplicably threatened by extraordinary circumstance.

Once they were settled in the client chairs, and Runyon had taken up a position against the wall beside my desk, Tracy Henderson said, “I know we should have made an appointment, but after what happened last night… Well, we decided we should see someone as soon as possible.”

“One of Los Alegres cops gave us your name,” Cliff Henderson said.

“Lieutenant Adam St. John. He said your agency has a very good reputation.”

I didn’t know St. John. But when you’ve been in the business as long as I have, and have had enough-too much-publicity on some cases, word gets around and police, lawyers, other professionals remember your name.

I said, “I understand you’re being stalked.”

“My brother Damon and me,” Henderson said. “That much we’re sure of.”

“By an unknown party?”

“Unknown, and for no damn reason anybody can figure out.”

“Stalked in what way?”

“Different ways, frightening ways,” Mrs. Henderson said. “The night before last it got really ugly.”

“Damon’s in the hospital,” Henderson said, “with a cracked head and a busted collarbone.”

“What happened?”

“Attacked in his garage, middle of the night. Caught the bastard in there and got belted with a tire iron. He’s lucky to be alive.”

Runyon asked, “When did this trouble start?”

“Two and a half weeks ago. First thing he did, whoever he is, was vandalize our cemetery plot. My father’s grave.” A fierce anger darkened Henderson’s face at the memory. “Got in there in the middle of the night and dug up the urn with Dad’s ashes, poured acid all over it. Acid, for Christ’s sake. Destroyed the headstone the same way.”

“And he left a crude red-lettered sign,” Mrs. Henderson said. “‘This is just the beginning.’”

“Cops thought at first it was random vandalism. But no other grave was vandalized that night or any night since.”

I asked what else had happened.

“He trashed one of my job sites,” Henderson said. “Paint, acid all over the place. Dumped more acid on my truck, parked right in our driveway. Damon’s car, too. Then that garage break-in… Christ knows what he would’ve done in there if Damon hadn’t heard him and run out.”

“Did he get a look at the man?”

“No. Too dark, happened too fast. Bastard hit him from behind, straddled him, broke his collarbone with another swing. Damon thought he was a dead man. But the guy said something like ‘Not yet, it’s not time yet’ and got off him and beat it.”

“Is that all that was said?”

“That’s all.”