Bill Pronzini - Deadfall

I swallowed the first two words that came to me and held my tongue and my temper for a good ten seconds. When I felt I could speak in a rational and reasonable tone I said, “In the first place, Dunston, you don’t have a wife; you have an ex-wife. And in the second place, she isn’t here.”

“I called her apartment,” he said. “She isn’t there. She isn’t working late at her office, either.”

“She’s gone out to dinner with a friend.”

“What friend?”

“A lady friend.”

“What is the friend’s name?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“Is she coming there afterward?”

She wasn’t, but I said, “Well? What if she is?”

“ ‘Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned?’ ” he said. “ ‘Can one go upon hot coals, and his feet not be burned? So he that goeth in to his neighbor’s wife; whosoever toucheth her shall not be innocent.’ Proverbs, six: twenty-seven through twenty-nine.”

“Now listen, Dunston-”

“It is you who should listen,” he said. “Not to me but to the word of God. Kerry Anne is my wife. She is my wife. ‘Bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.’ Genesis, two: twenty-three and twenty-four.”

“Quote the Bible all you want,” I said, “it doesn’t make any difference. Kerry isn’t your wife, she doesn’t want to be your wife, she’ll never be your wife again. That’s the way it is, so you might as well face-”

He hung up on me.

I strangled the receiver for a time and then slammed it down. But my aim wasn’t very good: it hit the base unit glancingly and knocked the thing off the nightstand, and when it fell it landed on my right instep. I hopped around on the other foot, cussing, and tripped on a corner of the bedspread and sprawled sideways across the bottom of the bed and cracked my funny bone on the frame. When I recoiled from that I slid off onto the floor and banged down on both knees. I heaved myself up raging, feeling like a fool, and the phone was lying there in two parts and a beeping noise was coming out of it. I wanted to kick it to shut it up, but I had enough sense to know that if I did I would probably break a toe or my whole damn foot. I sat on the bed-let the thing beep, the hell with it-and alternately rubbed my elbow and my instep, the two places that hurt the most, while I thought dark thoughts.

Dunston, I thought, this is not going to go on much longer. It is going to be resolved, Dunston, one way or another, even if I have to put in a long-distance call to God myself.

After a while the dark thoughts went away, leaving the feeling of foolishness behind. I sighed, got up, made the phone whole again, and limped into the living room. And crawled back into “Idiot’s Coffin Keepsake,” which was right where I belonged.

Saturday morning, early, I drove down to Mission Creek again.

It was another sunny day, cool and cloudless, and some of the boat people were out and about, doing various things to their crafts. Richie Dessault wasn’t among them and neither was Melanie; and I didn’t get an answer when I boarded their houseboat and banged on the door astern. I walked around on both sides of the superstructure, trying not to act like a suspicious character as I looked at each of the four windows- at them, not through them, because all four were either shuttered or draped. If anybody was inside, he or she wasn’t making a sound.

I stepped off onto the board float, and a voice said nearby, “Looking for somebody?” It was a guy on the boat adjacent to the east, an ancient but freshly painted sloop with the name Wanderer painted on the bow. He was about seventy and wore a sailor’s hat, a sweatshirt, and a pair of faded denims-one of those crusty types who have spent so many years on or around the sea they look as if they’ve been preserved in salt-cake. He also looked wary, which told me my non-suspicious-character act needed some work.

I said, “Richie Dessault or Melanie Purcell, either one. Have you seen them?”

“Her this morning. Not him.”

“How long ago did you see her?”

“Twenty minutes, maybe.”

“Leaving here?”

“Yep. On her way to Blanche’s.”

Blanche’s was a waterfront cafe down near the Fourth Street drawbridge. I said, “How do you know she was going there?”

“She was on foot. No place to walk to down that way except Blanche’s.”

“Was she alone?”

“Yep.”

“You wouldn’t have any idea where Dessault is, would you?”

“Nope. You a policeman?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Look like one. Wouldn’t mind it if you busted Dessault. Her too, for that matter.”

“Sounds as though you don’t like them much.”

“Don’t like ’em at all.” He made a disgusted noise. “Drugs-all the time, drugs. What’s the matter with kids nowadays, you tell me that? Smoke that crap, suck it up their nose, shoot it in their veins. Don’t make any sense to me.”

“Me neither,” I said.

“So you gonna bust ’em?”

“No. I’m not a policeman.”

“What are you, then?”

“Just a guy who’s having some trouble with God, among other things.”

“Huh?” he said. Then he said, “Oh, one of those, ” and turned away and moved quickly astern, to escape any attempt I might make at pamphlet distribution, proselytizing, and/or money-begging.

I sighed and walked to the nearest ramp and climbed up to the embankment. I was not having a good day so far, probably because I had not had a good night. Alicia Purcell. Dunston’s phone call. Sleeping alone and not sleeping very well. Dreams again: Leonard Purcell crawling through his own blood, me down on my knees holding something alive and wiggling in my hands, something I knew was his soul. And now it was Saturday, the first day of the weekend, a day to enjoy life a little-except that Kerry had some shopping she wanted to do, and there wasn’t anything pleasurable or relaxing I felt like doing alone. All I felt like doing was working. This Purcell business-Leonard and Kenneth both-kept tumbling around inside my head, frustrating me because there were so damned many angles to it. I was convinced that Tom Washburn was right, there was a definite link between the two deaths; but what link? I couldn’t make the angles fit the right pattern without more information, without a clearer idea of the common denominators, and until I did make them fit I was not going to have much peace.

Blue Saturday. Blah Saturday. But maybe not, you never know; maybe the day would turn out to be a good one after all. You just have to plug away and hope for the best.

It was not far down to Blanche’s-I could see it clearly from where I stood, a weathered, rust-red building with a long pier behind it jutting out perpendicularly into the creek-but I didn’t feel much like walking. I got into the car and drove down there and parked among a scattering of other cars. The place didn’t seem crowded, judging from the number of cars, and it wasn’t. There was one customer at an inside table, another picking up his breakfast from a woman behind an order counter; neither of them was Melanie Purcell. I went out through a side door, onto the pier. Seven or eight people were sitting out there, at wooden tables set among a jungley profusion of potted plants and trees, and dozens of green gallon wine jugs that served as vases for a variety of flowers.

Melanie was there, sitting alone at a table next to the pier’s picket-fence railing. She wore shorts and a baggy T-shirt; her legs were so thin they were like white stalks. She was drinking coffee and fiddling with a mostly uneaten blueberry muffin, and she didn’t look happy. She looked even less happy when I came up to her and said, “Hello, Melanie. Nice day, isn’t it?”