Bill Pronzini: Mourners

“I understand why you didn’t include me. Just as well you didn’t. But why not tell me about it afterward?”

“For what reason? It would only have upset you.”

“No, it wouldn’t have.”

“Yes, it would. You’re upset now.”

“I’m not upset. I’m just saying-”

“Have it your way.”

“I’m just saying that I think I have a right to know what’s going on with people I care about-”

“Do you tell me everything?”

“What? Of course I do, if it’s important.”

“Of course you do. If it’s important.”

“Why do you say it like that?”

“Like what?”

“Implying that I don’t.”

“What’s the matter?” she said. “Guilty conscience?”

Uh-oh, I thought. “Why would I have a guilty conscience?”

“Yes, why would you?”

“I don’t.”

“All right, then. Can we go to sleep now?”

“Kerry…”

She reached up and switched off the lamp and rolled onto her side. In the dark silence she muttered something into her pillow. It sounded like, “Secrets.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Go to sleep.”

I didn’t go to sleep. Neither did she. I lay there in the dark, listening to her thrash around on her side of the bed. Guilty conscience. Secrets. One big secret, more than half a century old and three thousand miles removed.

New York City at the end of World War II. A group of pulp writers, one of the best of them Kerry’s mother, who called themselves the Fictioneers and kept the home fires burning with words and booze and pranks. Russ Dancer, hack writer, alcoholic, lecher, and worse, carrying a huge torch for Cybil. And a drunken party to celebrate D-day. One night out of thousands of nights, the wrong set of circumstances-a secret shame buried for fifty-plus years that should have stayed buried and died with the two people who had lived it. Except that Dancer hadn’t let it die with him, when he’d finally given up the ghost three months ago. So bitter and corrupt at the end of his life that he’d found it necessary to spew his own brand of venom from the grave.

Kerry must suspect what was behind Dancer’s legacy to Cybil, or at least that there was something her mother was withholding from her and that I’d found out about and was also withholding. A small relief, but odd that she hadn’t come right out and asked me about it; she’d never been one to avoid an issue, particularly one as large as this one. Sooner or later, she would ask me. And then what was I going to do? Her mother might be able to flat-out lie to her, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t tell her the truth, either; I’d given Cybil my solemn promise, and I still agreed with her that Kerry was better off not knowing.

Rock and a hard place, for all three of us.

Damn Dancer’s miserable soul.

JAKE RUNYON

He’d been in place, parked in the shadow of a eucalpytus just down the block from the Troxell home, for twenty-five minutes when the subject appeared in the driveway. Right on schedule; the Ford’s dashboard clock and Runyon’s Timex both read 6:45. He felt a faint stirring, a kind of awakening. When he wasn’t working, just waiting, he had the ability to shut himself down-no wasted motion, no intrusive thoughts. Like a machine on idle, waiting to be put to its purpose. He’d learned that little trick during the long months of Colleen’s illness, the only way he’d been able to get through the bitter hopelessness of her deathwatch. And he’d continued doing it since, spending a substantial part of his off-time in that twilight mode. It helped keep him sane and allowed him to function; it made his empty life more tolerable.

He watched Troxell walk around to the driver’s side of one of the silver BMWs parked over there. Easy man to spot, even from a distance and even without the agency file photo his wife had supplied: tall, lean, long-jawed, wavy black hair streaked with gray at the temples. Still wearing a business suit and tie. He had one of those erect, pulled-back postures, eyes fixed straight ahead, stride long and stiff, completely focused. Not so much different, outwardly, than Runyon himself.

The BMW turned east out of the driveway. Runyon gave him most of a block before U-turning and establishing pursuit. Almost immediately he began to feel energized. On the move like this, with a set purpose, always had that effect on him. Even when he wasn’t working, in the evenings and on weekends, he spent much of his time wrapped inside this steel and glass cocoon, taking long drives out of the city, familiarizing himself with each of the cities and towns and unincorporated areas within a hundred-mile radius that constituted his new base of operations. Now that Colleen was gone, and Joshua remained a lost cause, he had no pleasures and only minor interests; work was his single motivation, and a source of almost fierce pride. He was good at it, he craved it; if he could have found a way to exist without sleep, he’d stay on the job 24/7.

Troxell led him straight out Monterey Boulevard to Highway 280 east. Cautious driver during the day, Bill had said; same held true tonight. He didn’t exceed the speed limit, observed all the traffic laws. In no hurry, wherever he was going. At the junction with the 101 freeway, he took the exit that led him onto 101 north-heading toward the downtown exits and the Bay Bridge approach. But he wasn’t traveling that far. He quit the freeway at the Vermont Street exit.

Potrero Hill? That was it. He took Twentieth Street to Wisconsin, turned there, and climbed the steep incline. Older homes lined it, clinging close together on the hillsides, everything from Stick Victorians to brown-shingled cottages. Prime real estate for the most part, with views of the southeastern rim of the bay. Runyon hung farther back, because there wasn’t much traffic and it was still daylight, but the precaution was unnecessary. The BMW’s speed didn’t vary and it made safe stops at each of the posted intersections.

Halfway up the hill, an even steeper cross street, Madera, dropped away to the left. Troxell swung over that way, U-turned at the intersection rather than entering the street itself. Runyon rolled on past, slowly. In his rearview mirror he saw the BMW slide in to the curb a short ways down. By the time he found a space on the opposite side of the street, uphill of Madera, the BMW’s trunk lid was open, and the subject was out and moving around back there. He adjusted his side-view mirror so that he had a clear view as Troxell withdrew a stack of newspapers and a lumpy plastic sack from the trunk. His afternoon purchases, evidently.

The house one removed from where he’d parked was one of the Stick Victorians, painted in shades of blue, built close to the sidewalk on a lot wide enough to accommodate an adjoining one-car garage That was Troxell’s destination. But he didn’t climb the steps to its front door; instead he vanished onto a narrow path that ran in between the house and the garage.

Runyon shut off the Ford’s engine, sat waiting and watching. Five minutes, ten; Troxell didn’t reappear. He let a little more time pass. Daylight began to bleed out of the sky and the wind, strong up here, grew even sharper; the trees in the area bent and shook in darkening silhouette. Lights were on in most of the homes, but not in the blue Victorian. It remained dark, its lines obscuring as the dusk deepened toward night.

When the last of the daylight was gone, Runyon left the car and crossed the street to the Victorian. There was enough space between it and its near-side neighbor for him to see that the property ran steeply downhill, and that the rear windows were as dark as the ones in front. But there was light somewhere behind and below, a pale glow that spread out from an invisible source. Night-light? Separate building?