Bill Pronzini: Bones

On Monday, before I drove up to San Rafael to see him, I stopped by the office to find out if there had been any weekend calls. And damned if Eberhardt wasn't already there, even though it was only ten past nine-making coffee and cussing the hot plate because it was taking too long to get hot.

“Surprise,” I said as I shut the door. “The prodigal has returned.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“You haven't been around the past few days.”

“Yeah, well, I took a long weekend. So what?”

“So nothing. But a lot of things have been happening.”

“So I read in the papers. You can't keep your ass out of homicide cases, can you? One of these days somebody's going to shoot it off for you.”

“Or part of it. Then I can be as half-assed as you.”

“Is that supposed to be funny?”

“No, I guess not.”

“I don't feel very comical today,” he said.

“Neither do I.”

“Then don't try to be funny.” He smacked the hot plate with the heel of his hand. “Frigging thing takes forever to get hot,” he said.

“Any calls on the machine? Or didn't you check it?”

“I checked it. No calls.”

“Figures.” Leaving my coat on, I went over and cocked a hip against my desk. “Where'd you go for the weekend?” I asked him.

“Up to the Delta.”

“Fishing?”

“Yeah.”

“Wanda go with you?”

Pause. Then he said, “No.”

“I kind of figured she didn't.”

“Yeah? Why?”

“She called me up Saturday night.”

“What for?”

“To tell me she hated my guts. Kerry's too.”

“Drunk?”

“Sounded that way. Eb, listen…”

“Shut up,” he said. He put his back to me and went to his desk and sat down. Out came one of his pipes and his tobacco pouch; he began loading up, getting flakes of the smelly black shag he used all over his blotter.

Neither of us said anything for a while; we just sat there, Eberhardt thumbing tobacco into his pipe as if he were crushing ants, me listening to the coffee water start to boil on the hot plate.

He said finally, “What else she say on the phone?”

“She told me to go fuck myself.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Anything else?”

“No. I hung up on her.”

“Nothing about us, then. Her and me.”

“No. What about the two of you?”

“We broke it off,” he said.

“Broke it off? You mean your engagement?”

“The whole thing. It's finished between us. Kaput.”

That threw me a little; it was the kind of surprise that usually comes only on birthdays and Christmas. I said, “When did this happen?”

“Tuesday night. Big goddamn battle. I haven't seen her since and I won't either.”

“What was the battle about?”

“What do you think?” he said. “She kept bad-mouthing you and Kerry. Drinking vodka like it was water and ranting like a crazy woman. Kept saying she was gonna get back at the two of you. Do something drastic, she said. Talk to one of her ex-husbands, get him to throw a scare into Kerry some night-shit like that.”

“She'd better not go through with it.”

“She won't. It was just crazy talk.”

I said diplomatically, “Well, I guess she had a right to be upset.”

“Upset, sure, but not out for blood. Not crazy. No damn right to act that way at all.”

He defended us, I thought, Kerry and me. That's what the big blowup was all about.

“Made me look at her different,” he said, “made me think maybe she wasn't the woman I figured she was. Made me compare her to Kerry, you want to know the truth.” He looked away from me abruptly, out into the airshaft behind his desk. “Ahh,” he said, “the hell with it. She's a bitch, that's all. I always did have a knack for picking bitches.”

“Eb…”

“Look at Dana. First-class bitch.”

Dana was his ex-wife and not nearly as bad as he tried to paint her. Maybe Wanda wasn't either-but I wouldn't have wanted to bet on it.

“Eb, why didn't you tell me this on Wednesday or Thursday?”

“Didn't feel like talking about it,” he said. “I needed to get away for a few days, get her out of my system.”

“And? She out of it now?”

“Not completely. But she will be. All I got to do is keep thinking about what she called me.”

“What did she call you?”

“Never mind.” He lit his pipe and puffed up enough smoke to make the office look and smell like a grass fire.

“Come on, Eb, what did she call you?”

“I said never mind. I don't want to talk about her anymore, all right?”

I let it drop. But a while later, as I was getting ready to leave for San Rafael, Eberhardt said out of the gray of his pipe smoke, “Tits aren't everything, for Christ's sake.”

“What?”

“Tits. They're not everything.”

“Uh, no, they're not.”

“Man is attracted by more than that in a woman. Man looks for somebody he can be comfortable with, somebody he can talk to. You know what I mean?”

“Sure I do.”

“She said I was a piss-poor excuse for a man because all I cared about were her tits. Said I was a baby-a tit wallower. How the hell do you like that?”

“The nerve of the woman,” I said, straightfaced.

I managed to make it out of the door and over to the stairs before I burst out laughing.

Kerry laughed, too, when I told her about it that night. In fact, she thought “tit wallower” was the funniest expression she'd heard in months. She kept repeating it and then sailing off into whoops and snorts.

When she calmed down I said, “So now you're vindicated, lady.”

“Vindicated?”

“The Great Spaghetti Assault. It was a damned stupid thing to do, but it got all the right results.”

“Mmm,” she said. Her eyes were bright with reminiscence; she really did hate Wanda a lot. “And I'd do it again, too, if I got drunk enough.”

“I'll bet you would.”

“For Eberhardt's sake.”

“Right.”

“God, what a relief she's out of his life. The idea of having to attend their wedding gave me nightmares. She probably would have worn white, too.”

“Probably.”

“And Eberhardt would have been in a tuxedo. He'd have looked like a big bird, I'll bet. A black-winged, white-breasted tit wallower,” she said and off she went into more whoops and snorts.

I sighed and picked up her empty wineglass and went into the kitchen to refill it. We were in her apartment tonight, because the weather was still good and the view from her living room window is slightly spectacular on clear nights. When I came back she had herself under control again. “I'll be good,” she said when I handed her the wine.

“Uh-huh.”

“No, I will. I'll be serious. You're in a serious mood tonight, aren't you?”

“More or less.”

“Michael Kiskadon?”

“Yeah. He's been on my mind all day.”

“Have you heard anything more about his wife?”

“Some. I talked to Jack Logan at the Hall; she's still in custody, still holding up all right.”

“Is the D.A. going to prosecute her?”

“Probably not. She didn't murder her husband; all she did was try to cover up her part in the accident. Any competent lawyer could get her off without half trying.”

“Lawyers,” Kerry said, and made a face.

“Yeah.”

“Yankowski-what about him? He's not going to get off, is he?”

“That's the way it looks,” I said. “DeKalb went to see him today, after we talked, and he didn't get any further than I did. The law can't touch him for what he did in 1949. And there's just no proof that he killed Bertolucci. Unless DeKalb can find out who did the repair work and paint job on his Cadillac, there's nothing at all to tie him and Bertolucci together.”