Bill Pronzini: Scenarios

Embarrassed, I said, "I haven't gotten anything for any of you yet…"

"Never mind that. Open your present, Wolf."

I hefted it first. Not very heavy. I stripped off the paper, took the lid off the gift box-and inside was another, smaller box sealed with half a pound of Scotch tape. Ted's doing; I could tell from his expression. So I used my pocket knife to slice through the tape, opened the second box, rifled through a wad of tissue paper, and found two plastic-bagged issues of Black Mask, and not just any two issues: rare, fine-condition copies of the September 1929 and February 1930 numbers, each containing an installment of the original six-part serial version of Hammett's The Maltese Falcon.

When I looked up, they were all grinning at me. I said, "How'd you know these were the only two Falcon issues I didn't have?" Funny, but my voice sounded a little choked up.

"I told them," Kerry said. "I checked your pulp collection to make sure."

"And I found the copies through one of my friends in the antiquarian book trade," Neal said.

"They must've cost a small fortune."

McCone waved that away. "What they cost doesn't matter. You not only helped close the Patterson case, and to get the disc back tonight, but you've been a good friend for a long time. It's the Season of Sharing with friends, too."

I just sat there.

Kerry said, "Aren't you going to say something?

Only one thing came to mind. It didn't seem to be enough, but Kerry told me later that it was all that was needed. "Happy holidays, everybody."

Sometimes it happens like this. No warning, no way to guard against it. And through no fault of your own. You're just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Eleven p.m., drizzly, low ceiling and poor visibility. On my way back from four long days on a case in Fresno and eager to get home to San Francisco. Highway 152, the quickest route from 99 west through hills and valleys to 101. Roadside service station and convenience store, a lighted sign that said "Open Until Midnight." Older model car parked in the shadows alongside the restrooms, newish Buick drawn in at the gas pumps. People visible inside the store, indistinct images behind damp-streaked and sign-plastered glass.

I didn't need gas, but I did need some hot coffee to keep me awake. And something to fill the hollow under my breastbone: I hadn't taken the time to eat anything before leaving Fresno. So I swung off into the lot, parked next to the older car. Yawned and stretched and walked past the Buick to the store. Walked right into it.

Even before I saw the little guy with the gun, I knew something was wrong. It was in the air, a heaviness, a crackling quality, like the atmosphere before a big storm. The hair crawled on the back of my scalp. But I was two paces inside by then and it was too late to back out.

He was standing next to a rack of potato chips, holding the weapon in close to his body with both hands. The other two men stood ten feet away at the counter, one in front and one behind. The gun, a long-barreled target pistol, was centered on the man in front; it stayed that way even though the little guy's head was half turned in my direction. I stopped and stayed still, with my arms down tight against my sides.

Time freeze. The four of us staring, nobody moving. Light rain on the roof, some kind of machine making thin wheezing noises-no other sound.

The one with the gun coughed suddenly, a dry, consumptive hacking that broke the silence but added to the tension. He was thin and runty, mid-thirties, going bald on top, his face drawn to a drum tautness. Close-set brown eyes burned with outrage and hatred. The clerk behind the counter, twenty-something, long hair tied in a ponytail, kept licking his lips and swallowing hard; his eyes flicked here and there, settled, flicked, settled like a pair of nervous flies. Scared, but in control of himself. The handsome, fortyish man in front was a different story. He couldn't take his eyes off the pistol, as if it had a hypnotic effect on him. Sweat slicked his bloodless face, rolled down off his chin in little drops. His fear was a tangible thing, sick and rank and consuming; you could see it moving under the sweat, under the skin, the way maggots move inside a slab of bad meat.

"Harry," he said in a voice that crawled and cringed. "Harry, for God's sake…"

"Shut up. Don't call me Harry."

"Listen… it wasn't me, it was Noreen…"

"Shut up shut up shut up." High-pitched, with a brittle, cracking edge. "You," he said to me. "Come over here where I can see you better."

I went closer to the counter, doing it slow. This wasn't what I'd first taken it to be. Not a hold-up-something personal between the little guy and the handsome one, something that had come to a lethal crisis point in here only a short time ago. Wrong place, wrong time for the young clerk, too. I said, "What's this all about?"

"I'm going to kill this son of a bitch," the little guy said, "that's what it's all about."

"Why do you want to do that?"

"My wife and my savings, every cent I had in the world… he took them both away from me and now he's going to pay for it."

"Harry, please, you've got to-"

"Didn't I tell you to shut up? Didn't I tell you not to call me Harry?"

Handsome shook his head, a meaningless flopping like a broken bulb on a white stalk.

"Where is she, Barlow?" the little guy demanded.

"Noreen?"

"My bitch wife Noreen. Where is she?"

"I don't know…"

"She's not at your place. The house was dark when you left. Noreen wouldn't sit in a dark house alone. She doesn't like the dark."

"You… saw me at the house?"

"That's right. I saw you and I followed you twenty miles to this place. Did you think I just materialized out of thin air?"

"Spying on me? Looking through windows? Jesus…"

"I got there just as you were leaving," the little guy said. "Perfect timing. You didn't think I'd find out your name or where you lived, did you? You thought you were safe, didn't you? Stupid old Harry Chalfont, the cuckold, the sucker-no threat at all."

Another head flop. This one made beads of sweat fly off.

"But I did find out," the little guy said. "Took me two months, but I found you and now I'm going to kill you."

"Stop saying that! You won't, you can't…"

"Go ahead, beg. Beg me not to do it."

Barlow moaned and leaned back hard against the counter. Mortal terror unmans some people; he was as crippled by it as anybody I'd ever seen. Before long he would beg, down on his knees.

"Where's Noreen?"

"I swear I don't know, Harry… Mr. Chalfont. She… walked out on me… a few days ago. Took all the money with her."

"You mean there's still some of the ten thousand left? I figured it'd all be gone by now. But it doesn't matter. I don't care about the money anymore. All I care about is paying you back. You and then Noreen. Both of you getting just what you deserve."

Chalfont ached to pay them back, all right, yearned to see them dead. But wishing something and making it happen are two different things. He had the pistol cocked and ready and he'd worked himself into an overheated emotional state, but he wasn't really a killer. You can look into a man's eyes in a situation like this, as I had too many times, and tell whether or not he's capable of cold-blooded murder. There's a fire, a kind of deathlight, unmistakable and immutable, in the eyes of those who can, and it wasn't there in Harry Chalfont's eyes.

Not that its absence made him any less dangerous. He was wired to the max, and outraged and filled with hate, and his finger was close to white on the pistol's trigger. Reflex could jerk off a round, even two, at any time. And if that happened, the slugs could go anywhere-into Barlow, into the young clerk, into me.