Bill Pronzini: Bones

“Nothing specific. Just that he felt he'd be better off dead. It was only a few lines long.”

“He'd been despondent, then?”

“For several weeks. He'd been drinking heavily.”

“Any clues as to why?”

“According to Yankowski, my father wouldn't discuss it with anyone. Yankowski thinks it was some sort of writer's block; my father wrote almost nothing during the last six weeks of his life. But I find that theory difficult to believe, considering how much fiction he produced. And how much writing meant to him-others have told me that.” Kiskadon's pipe had gone out; he paused to relight it. “In any case, his motive had to have been personal.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, I don't see how it could have been financial. He had contracts for two new Johnny Axe novels, and there was a film deal in the works. There was also talk of doing a Johnny Axe radio show.”

“Uh-huh. Well, if anyone knows the reason, it's his widow. Maybe I can pry it out of her. Where does she live?”

“In Berkeley. With her niece, a woman named Marilyn Dubek.” He gave me the address from memory and I wrote it down in my notebook.

“Is her name still Crane?”

“Yes. Amanda Crane. She never remarried.”

“Was your father her first husband?”

“Yes.”

“How long were they married?”

“Two years. The split with my mother wasn't over her, if that's what you're thinking. They didn't even know each other at the time of the separation.”

“What did cause the split with your mother?”

“She had extravagant ways; that was the main reason. She was a social animal-parties, nightclubs, that sort of thing-and my father liked his privacy. They just weren't very well matched, I guess.”

“How long were they married?”

“Four years.”

“Your father's first marriage?”

“No. His second.”

“Who was his first wife?”

“A woman named Ellen Corneal. He married her while they were both in college. It didn't last very long.”

“Why not?”

“I'm not sure. Incompatibility again, I think.”

“Do you know what happened to her?”

“No.”

“Back to Yankowski. Where did you talk to him?”

“At his home. He lives in St. Francis Wood.”

“How willing was he to see you?”

“Willing enough,” Kiskadon said. “I called and explained who I was, and he invited me over. He was a little standoffish in person, but he answered all my questions.”

“Can you give me the names of any of your father's friends in 1949?”

“He apparently didn't have any close friends.”

“What about other writers?”

“Well, he wasn't a joiner but he did know some of the other writers in the Bay Area. I managed to track down a couple who knew him casually, but they weren't any help. They only saw him at an occasional literary function.”

“You might as well give me their names anyway.”

He did and I wrote them down. One was familiar; the other wasn't. Neither had written for the pulps, unless the unfamiliar guy had cranked out stories under a pseudonym. I asked Kiskadon about that, and he said no, the man had written confession stories and fact articles for more than thirty years and was now retired and living on Social Security.

Be a writer, I thought, make big money and secure your future.

I spent the next five minutes settling with Kiskadon on my fee and the size of my retainer, and filling out the standard contract form I'd brought with me. He signed the form, and was working on a check when I heard the sound of a key in the front door lock. A moment later a woman came inside.

She stopped when she saw me and said, “Oh,” but not as if she were startled. She was a few years younger than Kiskadon, brown-haired, on the slender side except for flaring hips encased in a pair of too-tight jeans. Why women with big bottoms persist in wearing tight pants is a riddle of human nature the Sphinx couldn't answer, so I didn't even bother to try. Otherwise she was pretty enough in a Bonnie Bedelia sort of way.

Kiskadon said, “Lynn, hi. This is the detective I told you about.” He gave her my name, which impressed her about as much as if he'd given her a carpet tack. “He's going to take on the job.”

She gave me a doubtful look. Then she said, “Good. That's fine, dear,” in that tone of voice wives use when they're humoring their spouses.

“He'll get to the truth if anyone can,” Kiskadon said.

She didn't answer that; instead she looked up at me again. “How much are you charging?”

Practical lady. I told her, and she thought about it, biting her lip, and seemed to decide that I wasn't being too greedy. She nodded and said to him, “I'll get the groceries out of the car. We'll have lunch pretty soon.”

“Good, I'm starved.”

She asked me, “Will you be joining us?”

“Thanks, but I'd better get to work.”

“You're perfectly welcome to stay…”

“No. Thanks, anyway.”

“Well,” she said, and shrugged, and turned and went out with her rear end wiggling and waggling. You could almost hear the stretched threads creaking in the seams of her jeans.

Kiskadon gave me his check and his hand and an eager smile; he looked better than he had when I'd arrived-color in his cheeks, a kind of zest in his movements, as if my agreeing to investigate for him had worked like a rejuvenating medicine. I thought: That's me, the Good Samaritan. But I had taken the job as much for me as for him: so much for virtue and the milk of human kindness.

When I got outside, Mrs. Kiskadon was hefting an armload of Safeway sacks out of the trunk of a newish green Ford Escort parked in the driveway. She seemed to want to say something to me as I passed by, but whatever she saw when she glanced toward the porch changed her mind for her. All I got was a sober nod, which I returned in kind. I looked back at the porch myself as I opened the gate; she was on her way there carrying the grocery sacks, and Kiskadon was standing out in plain sight, leaning on his cane and looking past her at me, still smiling.

He waved as I went through the gate, but I didn't wave back. I'm not sure why.

St. Francis Wood was only a ten-minute drive, so I went there to see Yank-'Em-Out Yankowski first. Unlike Golden Gate Heights, the Wood is one of the city's ritzy neighborhoods, spread out along the lower, westward slope of Mt. Davidson and full of old money and the old codgers who'd accumulated it. Some of the houses in there had fine views of the ocean a couple of miles distant, but Yankowski's wasn't one of them. It was a Spanish-style job built down off San Juanito Way, bordered on one side by a high cypress hedge and on the other by a woody lot overgrown with eucalyptus trees; half-hidden by flowering bushes, more cypress, and a tangle of other vegetation. Either Yankowski was a bucolic at heart, which I doubted, or he liked plenty of privacy.

I parked at the curb in front and went down a set of curving stone stairs and onto a tile-floored porch. The front door looked like the one that barred the entrance to the castle in every B-grade horror film ever made: aged black wood, ironbound, with nail studs and an ornate latch. There wasn't any bell; I lifted a huge black-iron knocker and let it make a bang like a gun going off.

Immediately a dog began barking inside. It was a big dog, and it sounded mad as hell at having been disturbed. But it didn't bark for long; when the noise stopped I heard it moving, heard the click and scrape of its nails on stone or tile, and then it slammed into the door snarling and growling and burbling like Lewis Carroll's jabberwock. It probably had eyes of flame, too, and its drooling jaws would no doubt have enjoyed making a snicker-snack of my throat. If I'd been a burglar I would have run like hell. As it was I backed off a couple of paces. I am not crazy about dogs, especially vicious dogs like whatever monstrosity Yankowski kept in there.