Bill Pronzini: Nightcrawlers

They talked on the phone once a week, exchanged e-mails, said all the right things about how much they missed each other and loved each other, made tentative plans to get together here or back east. But they still hadn’t done it. Something got in the way every time. And the phone calls were getting shorter because they didn’t seem to have as much to say to each other, couldn’t relate long distance to all the changes that made up their new, separate lives.

She’d known it would be this way. Three-thousand-mile relationships might work for a while, but without personal contact, days and nights together to pump some fresh blood into the relationship, it’s bound to start withering. Sooner or later it would wither past the point of saving. Just dry up and croak, like a plant without water.

It was already happening to her. She felt it, fought it, couldn’t stop it. All the lonely nights in the Outer Richmond flat they’d shared… she’d got so she hated going there after work. Stayed later and later at the office, started taking on after-hours field jobs like this deadbeat dad case tonight. Better that than staring at the walls or the boob tube and throwing pizza and junk food down her neck, which she’d done for about a week after Horace left. After that she’d gone the other way, started to lose her appetite. That was the main reason she’d dropped twelve pounds, not any real desire to shed the flab; she just wasn’t interested in food anymore. Or much of anything else except work.

Now that’s a lie, she thought as she pulled out to pass a slow-moving truck. She was still interested in sex, oh Lord yes. On her mind more and more lately. Tonight, thanks to Vonda. Three and a half months is a long time to go without it when you’re used to getting it regularly. So damn horny sometimes she felt like she was ready to explode. Vonda might’ve gotten in over her head with a white, Jewish dude, but at least Vonda was getting laid.

Maybe Vonda would loan out Ben Sherman for a night. Or maybe he had a friend who wanted to change his luck. She’d never slept with a white guy herself-or a Jewish guy, for that matter. Might change her luck.

Stupid thoughts.

Come on, Tamara. You want to do the nasty so bad, you know you can find somebody to do it with without even trying. Half a fox now that the love handles were slimmed down. Sleek and sassy. Must be a few hundred guys in the city that wouldn’t mind getting into her pants for a night or two, no strings. Pick a night, pick a club, pick a dick.

More stupid thoughts.

She sighed. She was off the bridge now, moving toward the interchange and 880 south, but she could still hear that damn shushing hum.

Horace. Horace, Horace, Horace…

The house George DeBrissac’s cousin owned in San Leandro was on Willard Street, 1122 Willard. She’d looked it up on the Netscape MapQuest site before leaving the office: Willard was in the wide trough between the 880 and 580 freeways, closest to 880 off San Pablo Avenue. Simple directions, should be pretty easy to find.

It was. Blue-collar residential neighborhood, not much different from dozens of others in the East Bay-that was apparent even on a dark night in an area without many streetlights. Old houses, mostly frame, a few stucco, on pretty good-sized lots. Probably an ethnic mix of whites, blacks, maybe a few Latinos and Asians.

Finding 1122 was a little harder. No numbers on the street signs, no reflector curbside numbers for the headlights to pick up, the houses set far enough back from the street so it wasn’t easy to read the numbers on them. Tamara drove slow, with the driver’s window down, until she passed a house with the porch light on: 906. Which way did the numbers run, up or down? Down-the next block was 800. She made a U-turn, came back to the 1100 block, finally pinpointed the right one.

Boxy frame house, hedges hiding most of the front porch, low-maintenance yard behind a Cyclone fence interwoven with some kind of scraggly vine. Dark, no light showing anywhere. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t anybody inside. The front windows looked like they had heavy coverings, and there might be lights at the back that she couldn’t see from here.

She kept on going, circled the block, eased back up Willard in the same direction as before. Fifty yards or so across from 1122, a gnarly curbside tree laid out a big puddle of shadow. She parked in the puddle, darkened the car. Unobstructed diagonal view of 1122 from there, if she needed to maintain a surveillance.

Now that she was here, out on a field job, she began to feel a little stoked. Working on the computer was satisfying, she was an expert hacker, but it got boring sometimes. Fieldwork wasn’t, not yet anyway. She’d worked with Bill long enough to know that night jobs could be occasionally dangerous, and dull and more boring than office work when long stakeouts were involved, but she wasn’t worried about any of that. Probably lose its fascination for her before long, but right now it was all still new and pretty cool.

She remembered what the boss man had taught her. Stay alert in unfamiliar territory, use your senses. Right. Street was deserted, nobody on the sidewalks or in any of the nearby yards. She got out, locked the door. Lights in some of the houses, salsa music playing somewhere, distant traffic sounds. Cross the street, not too fast and not too slow. Don’t go into a strange yard until you make sure there aren’t any dogs or BEWARE OF DOG signs. 1122 was a canine-free zone as far as she could tell. Don’t try to get past locked gates unless it’s absolutely necessary. Gate in the Cyclone fence wasn’t locked. She opened it, walked up the path and up the steps to the door.

Nothing to hear from inside. There was a doorbell; she pushed it and it made a noise that sounded more like a long fart than a bell. She waited a minute or so, then released the fart again. Still silent inside.

Alongside the house on the left was a gravel driveway. She quit the porch, went over there. Make sure you’re alone and unobserved before you go prowling around strange property. Yeah, she thought, and that goes double for a black woman even in a mixed neighborhood after dark. Alone and unobserved as far as she could tell; the house next door on that side was as dark as this one. She moved along the driveway to a garage that was just about big enough for one car. A rear yard opened up alongside the garage, but there wasn’t anything in it except a half-dead tree and some ground cover that was more weeds than lawn. The garage didn’t have any windows that she could see. The lift-up door was probably locked, and even if it wasn’t, she’d be asking for trouble to even try looking inside. Never take unnecessary risks. Right. No point in it anyway. If the deadbeat was hiding out here, he was somewhere else right now.

Tamara strolled back down the driveway, not too fast and not too slow. Two options now. One was to go ring a couple of doorbells, find out if any of the neighbors had seen DeBrissac. Only problem with that was, if he was living here, wasn’t any way of knowing what his relationship was with the neighbors. He might’ve given them some song-and-dance, asked them to cover for him or report to him if anybody came poking around. That happened, he’d fly again and be twice as hard to find. So…

She crossed the street, crawled back into Horace’s Toyota. Surveillance time. Prospect of that killed off the last of her little high; this was the part that could get boring. But she wouldn’t stay all that long, an hour, maybe two. If nobody showed at 1122, she could always come back again tomorrow night.

She wiggled her butt into a comfortable position on the seat and settled down to wait.

Russ Dancer, dying. Cirrhosis and emphysema. Refused to quit drinking or smoking, refused hospitalization or treatment beyond painkillers and an oxygen bottle that he carried around with him. He’d finally collapsed five days ago in the hallway of his rooming house. Bitched and moaned about going to the hospital, wanted to die in his room, but he was too sick and too weak and the croakers wouldn’t let him stay there alone. All of this courtesy of Buck Trail. And all of it typical Russ Dancer.