Bill Pronzini - Savages

“Well… not happy. And not exactly sad. Preoccupied, as if she had other things weighing on her mind.”

“And you never saw her again?”

“No. I tried to call her the next day to thank her again-her phone number was on the check-but her machine picked up. I left a message, but she didn’t return the call. So naturally I didn’t bother her again.”

Naturally. She’d gotten all the golden eggs out of the goose that she was going to and had the intellect to know when to back off. Or maybe I was just being cynical. Give her the benefit of the doubt.

Kerry and I collected Emily and went on out to Post Street. “I saw a really cool painting in there,” the kid said. “It looks like a photograph of a stained-glass window, the kind with light shining through it, but it’s not; it was done with oils. It’d look great on our living room wall.”

“Would it?” Kerry said. “How much is it?”

“Only twenty-five hundred dollars.”

Only twenty-five hundred. Only. If my two ladies had their way, we’d be in hock up to our eyebrows and I’d be confronted with modern culture every time I walked into the condo. My idea of eye candy in the home? Pulp magazines and their lurid four-color covers, any day.

JAKE RUNYON

He had no good reason to make a two-hundred-mile round-trip drive to the Trinity Alps. No business doing it with a concussion that had already cost him a night in the hospital. If he’d sat down and thought it over carefully, he might have talked himself out of it. But he didn’t. He didn’t feel like going back to the motel in Gray’s Landing, hanging around there sweltering all day; he needed to be on the move. And why drive around aimlessly, going nowhere, when you had a specific place to check out?

Alone at the migrant camp, he got out his California map and pinpointed Lost Bar. It was a flyspeck on Highway 3, southeast of Weaverville, in the mountains some sixty miles east of Redding. Then, without thinking any more about it, he started driving.

Due north on Highway 5, then northwest from Redding on 299 and into the Trinity Alps. Scenic route. Twisty road, thick forest land, views of snow-crested peaks and a big lake from Buckhorn Summit, the winding trail of the Trinity River. Gold Rush country. The fever had struck up here, too, at about the same time as it had down at Sutter’s Mill: hard-rock miners, gold dredgers. Hillsides and backwaters were probably still honeycombed with hundred-and-fifty-year-old diggings. It was cooler at the higher elevations, a relief from the sticky heat of the valley; the air felt good in his lungs, streaming in against his face. The dull headache all but disappeared. More or less back to normal.

At a wide spot called Douglas City, a few miles below Weaverville, Highway 3 branched off to the southeast-a rougher county road that jiggled its way into the lower reaches of the Shasta-Trinity National Forest. Lost Bar lay in a small valley below Hayfork Summit, along the bank of Hayford Creek. Hayfork, Hayford-go figure the difference. Another wide spot. Maybe a dozen buildings, two-thirds of them old frame houses and newer mobile homes flanked by meadows and trees. Grocery store, Lost Bar Saloon, Brody’s Garage, and a pair of hollowed-out, collapsing ruins-one of redwood with BLACKSMITH burned into an ancient chain-hung sign, the other a smaller brick-and-mortar structure that bore the barely discernible words ASSAY OFFICE above its gaping entrance.

Runyon turned onto the apron in front of Brody’s Garage, stopped short of the single gas pump. The place was open; inside the big main door, a man in greasy overalls was working on something that looked like a tractor. The mechanic straightened and swung around, wiping his hands on a rag even greasier than his overalls, as Runyon approached. Late forties, early fifties, thin and bald except for a fringe of stringy brown hair above the ears. Eyes that jumped and darted this way and that, as if he were afflicted with some sort of optical anomaly.

“Didn’t expect to find you open on a Sunday,” Runyon said.

“We’re always open. Got to be, up here.”

“Are you Mr. Brody?”

“Sam Brody, that’s right. What’ll it be? Gas, oil?”

“Information.”

“About what?”

“My son. Jerry. He was up this way last Friday, had some trouble with his car, and got it fixed here. Called his mother about it, said he’d be home yesterday. But he didn’t show up.”

The jumpy eyes paused and held for three or four beats. “Is that right?”

“He’s a flaky kid. Disappears every now and then, doing Christ knows what twenty-two-year-old kids do these days. But his mother worries. She sent me out to hunt for him.”

“Last Friday?” Brody said. “What kind of car he drive?”

“ ’Fifty-seven Chevy Impala. Dark blue. Hot stuff.”

“Nope.”

“Nope?”

“I’d remember a car like that. Never saw it, last Friday or any other time.”

“Were you here all day Friday?”

“All day.”

“That’s funny,” Runyon said. “Jerry told his mother he was having the car fixed at the garage in Lost Bar. There another garage around here?”

“Nope. Next closest is in Hayfork. Maybe he meant Hayfork.”

“He usually says what he means.”

“Can’t help you then.”

Runyon said, “I wonder if he saw Gus.”

The eyes stopped darting again. Brody’s face flattened out and went blank, like a shutter snapping into place across a murky window. “Gus who?”

“Local guy Jerry came here to see.”

“Don’t know him.”

“You sure? German, owns property nearby?”

“Sorry,” Brody said. “I got to finish my work.” He started away, paused long enough to glance back and say, “Kids, like you said. Your boy’ll turn up okay,” and then let the garage swallow him again.

Runyon U-turned the Ford across the highway to park in front of the Lost Bar General Store. The interior was gloomy, faintly dank, dominated by the smells of deli meats and the creosote they used on the buckled wooden floor. Close-packed shelves, one checkout stand with a fat woman in her forties behind it, one customer buying a loaf of bread and a six-pack of Coors. Runyon wandered to the cold cases in back, picked out a bottle of Lipton iced tea, brought it back up front. The other customer was gone by then. He paid for the tea before he asked his questions. Different approach this time, a reverse of the one he’d taken with Brody.

“I’m looking for a German fellow named Gus,” he said, “owns property in the area. Can you tell me how to get to his place?”

“How come?”

“How come what?”

“How come you want Gus Mayerhof?”

“Private business matter.”

“On a Sunday?”

“Good as any other day.”

“Not if you’re not expected.”

“I’m not, but I think he’ll want to see me. In fact, I’m sure he will.”

“He’s got a dog, Gus has. Mean bugger of a pit bull, tear your throat out if he gives it the right command. Keeps it because he don’t like strangers coming around unannounced.”

“Let me have his phone number and I’ll call him first.”

“He don’t have a phone.”

“Just directions, then. I’ll take my chances with the pit bull.”

The fat woman eyed his bandage. “What happened to your head?”

“A little accident. Nothing serious.”

“Be real serious if you tangle with that dog.”

He said nothing, watching her, waiting.

“You want a lot for a bottle of iced tea,” she said.

He found a five-dollar bill and laid it on the counter. She looked it for maybe five seconds, looked up at him again with expectant, greedy eyes.

He said, “Five’s all it’s worth,” and started to pick up the bill.