Bill Pronzini - Bindlestiff

“I thought you might want to stop over. Shoot the breeze a little.”

Uh-oh, I thought. The partnership thing.

“It’s kind of lonely around here,” he said. “I could use some company. What do you say?”

I wanted to say no; I wanted to say, “Look, Eb, I haven’t had time to think about you and me working together, I haven’t made up my mind yet.” But I couldn’t do it. All I said was, “Sure, okay. Early afternoon? Kerry’s on her way over this morning…”

“Any time you want. I’ll be here.”

He rang off, and I replaced the handset and sat down on the edge of the bed and sipped my coffee. It’s a great life if you don’t weaken, I thought. Then I sighed and played back the message tape on the answering machine, so I could write down the telephone number Hannah Peterson had left yesterday. Of the two Bradford sisters, she seemed the easiest to deal with first.

But when I dialed the number, there was no answer. I let it ring a dozen times, just to be sure, before I pushed the button down.

I looked up Arleen Bradford’s number in my book, steeled myself, and called her to get that conversation over with. Only she wasn’t home either. After three rings there was a click, and her recorded voice said, “This is Miss Arleen Bradford speaking. I am not available at present. Please leave your name and number, and I will return your call.”

So I left my name and number, feeling somewhat relieved. Feeling somewhat cynical too. You talk to my machine, I talk to yours. Everything was so damned impersonal these days; machines were taking over. “Hello. This is John Doe’s computer calling to hire your computer to investigate Jane Smith’s computer. Click. Whirr. Clang.”

I took my coffee back into the kitchen. There were some eggs and a package of bacon in the fridge; I cooked up some of each, and sat down to eat them. And then the downstairs door buzzer went off.

I thought it was Kerry; she had a key, but sometimes she rang the bell anyway from force of habit. I went out and punched the button that released the foyer door lock, without bothering to ask through the intercom who it was. Then I opened the door and waited for her to come up the stairs.

But it wasn’t Kerry who appeared in the hallway moments later. It was Jeanne Emerson.

I blinked at her, standing there in my undershirt with my belly hanging over the waistband of my pants. I sucked it in as she approached, for all the good that did; I still felt fat and old and sloppy. She was dressed in a pair of slacks and a tank top that did nice things for her breasts, and she had a big portfolio case in one hand. Her black hair glistened as if she had rubbed it with some kind of oil. The fragrance that came from her as she approached was spicy and exotic, full of Oriental mystery-or so my nose and my hot little brain imagined.

“I was hoping you’d be home,” she said, smiling in a grave sort of way. “Do you mind my stopping by?”

“Uh, no,” I said. “Not at all.”

“I wasn’t sure if I should, after what happened to you in Oroville. I probably should have called first, but…”

“No, it’s all right.”

“May I come in?”

“Sure. Sure thing.”

I stepped aside and she brushed past me; that spicy perfume or whatever it was tickled my nose again and put funny thoughts into my head. When I turned to shut the door I saw her wince. She was staring at the back of my skull where they’d shaved off some of the hair and stuck the bandage on.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” I said.

“I hope not. Do you have much pain?”

“Not really.”

“That’s good.” She studied me speculatively for a moment. Then she smiled again, a different kind of smile this time. “Do you know what a sin-eater is?” she asked.

“Huh?”

“A sin-eater. A person who takes on the sins of others, absorbs them for purposes of absolution. It’s an old Cornish superstition.”

“Is that what you think I am? A sin-eater?”

“In a way,” she said. “But it’s not the sins of the individual you keep taking on; it’s the sins of the world. In microcosm, of course.”

She’s kidding me, I thought. Or is she? In any case, she was making me feel self-conscious. Here I was, standing around in my underwear thinking dirty thoughts, and she was nominating me for sainthood again.

“Well, uh,” I said, and stopped because I couldn’t think of anything to say. Then I was aware again of the portfolio she was carrying. “What have you got in there?” I asked her, not very brightly.

“Oh, yes-some photos I did for a piece on secondhand bookstores a couple of years ago. They’ll give you an idea of the sort of thing I want to do with your pulps.” She was looking at the shelves of them as she spoke. “That is an impressive collection,” she said.

“Well, I’ve been at it a long time.”

She opened the portfolio and took out a handful of eight-by-ten glossies and put them on the coffee table. “These are black-and-white,” she said. “I was going to do a black-and-white study, but all those bright colors are wonderful. Color would be much better.”

She went to the nearest of the shelves and I waddled over there after her; if I’d had a tail it probably would have been wagging. I watched her take down one of the pulps that I’d arranged so their covers faced into the room, slip it out of its protective plastic bag, and study it.

“This is fantastic,” she said. “I didn’t know they had covers like this.”

What she was holding was an early issue of Dime Mystery with cover art that depicted three half-naked young girls tied up in a room full of red firelight, an old hag with a gnarled cane and an evil leer, and a drooling Neanderthal type, whose name was probably Igor, dragging another attractive young victim into the lair. The issue’s featured stories were “Murder Dyed Their Lips” by Norvell W. Page and “Slaves of the Holocaust” by Paul Ernst.

“It’s typical of the shudder pulps back in the thirties,” I told her.

“Shudder pulps?”

“Also known as weird menace pulps. Sex-and-sadism stuff, though pretty mild by today’s standards.”

“Are women always treated so shabbily in these magazines?”

“The torture stuff? Pretty much, I’m afraid.”

She put the copy back on the shelf. “Then that’s something I’ll want to touch on in the article. Contrast the attitudes of the thirties with those of today.”

I said, “About that article, Ms. Emerson…”

“Jeanne. Now don’t tell me you’re going to say no.”

“Well…”

She stepped closer to me and put her hand on my arm and looked up into my face. It was an imploring look, but there was intimacy in it, too. That and the nearness of her and that damned musky perfume were enough to start me drooling like old Igor on the pulp cover.

And so of course the door opened and Kerry walked in.

She’d used her key; and she’d done it quietly enough so that neither Jeanne Emerson nor I had heard it in the latch. She started to sing out a hello, stopped dead when she saw us. Jeanne let go of my arm and backed up a step. I just stood there like a dolt.

The three of us looked at one another. The expression on Kerry’s face said: What’s she doing here? The expression on Jeanne Emerson’s face said the same thing. Christ only knew what the expression on my face said.

Nobody spoke for what seemed like a long time. Then I said, “Uh,” and “Uh” again, and finally found some words to go with the grunts: “Kerry, this is Jeanne Emerson. She’s a photojournalist, she wants to do a piece on me…”

“I’m sure she does,” Kerry said.

“She just dropped by to show me some photos…”

“Mm. How do you do, Ms. Emerson?”