Bill Pronzini: Blowback

At the end of an hour I still had not had a bite. I told myself that was just as well, and reeled in and broke the gear down again and cranked up the engine to head back. The excursion had been a bust; I hoped that was not how it had worked out for Harry.

Both he and Mrs. Jerrold were gone from the beach when I came in. I did not see anybody at all. Once I had the skiff tied up I went over to Harry's cabin, started up the porch, and then changed direction when I heard the sound of running water. It was coming from around back, where there was a cement laundry tray and a butcher's block on a wooden platform that Harry provided for fish-cleaning purposes.

The man working there was Karl Talesco. He was using a saw-bladed knife to bone the last of three bigmouth bass, each of them about two pounds, but he was doing it in a savage and methodical way, as if the fish were a hated enemy. Blood and scales spotted the block and his hands and the front of his white T-shirt. His lips were pulled in against his teeth and the cords in his neck bulged with tension each time he hacked down with the knife.

He did not notice me until I came within a couple of feet of him. Then he jerked slightly, snapped his head around, and scowled at me. Beads of sweat clung to his Prussian mustache; his eyes had a hard glazed look, like those on the bass heads that stared up from inside the sink.

“Christ,” he said. “You walk quiet for a big man.”

I said nothing. I was staring at the fresh yellowish bruise along his left jaw and the wide burnlike scrape on the opposite cheek.

“Don't bother asking,” Talesco said. He put the knife down, carefully, and shook himself a little, the way weight lifters do to relax themselves. “It's none of your business.”

“Sure. Harry around?”

“He went somewhere with the kid, Cody.”

“Where, do you know?”

“No.”

He looked away from me and started cleaning up after himself. Man in a hurry now-the last thing he seemed to want was my kind of company. He wrapped the bass fillets in one sheet of newspaper, the heads and tails and bones in another. When the sink was empty, he held his hands under the tap for all of five seconds before shutting off the water and reaching for the tray rack. Only there were no towels there; the rack was empty.

“Shit,” he said. He dried his hands on his Levis.

I said, “How about a poker game tonight?”

“Sorry. I've got other plans.”

“They include your friend Knox?”

That got me a fast sharp look. “No,” he said.

“Maybe you could ask him if he'd like to play-”

“Ask him yourself,” Talesco said, and caught up the newspaper bundles and stalked past me without a parting word or gesture.

I stood looking after him as he went up onto the path beyond the shed. He had obviously been in a fight, and I would have given odds that Knox had been the other one involved. Had the cause of it been Angela Jerrold? Women and money were about the only things that would make two close friends start banging each other around. Jealousy, then? Both wanting her, but only one getting next to her? Then which one? Or was it just one after her, maybe scoring and maybe only trying to, and the other had decided to knock some sense into him? But again, which was which?

Well, any way you looked at it, it spelled more trouble. This thing just seemed to keep on building, degree by degree. Both the Jerrolds had to be gotten away from here as quickly as possible, even if it meant jeopardizing Harry's position on the five-thousand-dollar loan-there just wasn't any other way. The longer we waited, the worse it was likely to get.

The sky was a glistening blue now, the rising sun laying veins of raw gold across the lake, the odor of dust beginning to permeate the air. My mouth and throat felt abruptly dry. I had not been bothered by the coughing since yesterday, but it started up again, thin and raspy, as I came back along the side of the cabin. I spat out a glob of shiny gray phlegm, scuffed it into the earth with my shoe. The taste of it lingered bitterly even after the coughing subsided.

To get rid of the taste, I went to the Coca-Cola cooler and swung the lid up-but there was no beer left, nothing except half a dozen cans of soda pop. I picked up one of them and looked at the label. It said the contents were an “imitation citrus flavored dietary artificially sweetened carbonated beverage.” I decided I wasn't that desperate and put the can back and sucked on a piece of ice instead.

Then I remembered that there were several stacked cases of Schlitz inside the shed; I got one of those and carried it out and began loading up the cooler while I waited for Harry to return. I was just putting away the last of the cans when Ray Jerrold came walking into view along the edge of the lake.

He was wearing a pair of white seersucker walking shorts and a flowered silk sport shirt. He had his head tilted down and I could not see any of his face under his fisherman's hat. His stride was quick and jerky; one hand made little fluttery gestures in front of him, as if punctuating a conversation only he could hear.

It seemed like a good idea to get a close-up look at him, an idea of his mental state today, so I stepped away from the cooler and moved toward him at an angle, hurrying a little. He did not seem to notice me until I called out, making my voice friendly and relaxed, “Mr. Jerrold-you got a second?”

He stopped then and swung his head around. When I reached him I saw that his eyes had thinned to narrow slits, like embrasures on the tight oval of his face-either in reaction to the sight of me or to the harsh glare of the sun, I could not tell which. Otherwise he looked no better and no worse than he had yesterday, although I could not see enough of his eyes behind those slits to judge how much of the wildness might be there.

He said “What do you want?” in a voice that was hoarse and flat. The odor of gin was sour on his breath, but not stale. He had been at it again today, early as it was.

“Well, I was just wondering if you're planning to go off somewhere this morning.”

“What I'm planning to do is my own business.”

“Sure,” I said carefully. “Only there was some kind of accident across the lake last night, and I understand the police will be sending someone around to talk to all of us here.”

That got me a long, silent stare. Then: “What kind of accident?”

“I'm not sure. But a man was killed.”

“I don't know anything about it.”

“I guess none of us do,” I said. “I just thought you might want to know about-”

“I've got things to do,” he said, “the hell with the police.”

“They'll still want to talk to you, though.”

“Then they can talk to me later,” Jerrold said, and pivoted away from me and went to where the Cadillac was parked and got into it. He hit the accelerator hard enough backing up to slew the Caddy around in a wide half-circle, billowing clouds of dust, nearly slamming it into the side of Bascomb's Ford. He got it braked just in time, shifted into a forward gear. The Caddy bucked, skidded slightly, came back on a point, and sailed up onto the road in a haze of reddish powder and back-spun pebbles. By the time it vanished into the screening trees, the chrome of its rear bumper glinting sharp reflections of sunlight, he had the speed up to forty and climbing.

I stood for a moment, watching dust particles settle like flakes of gold in the glare. Then I shook my head and went over to Harry's porch and sat on the steps, worrying Jerrold around in my mind, not liking the impression I had just gotten of him.

It was another ten minutes before Harry showed up, and he at least did not appear as grim as he had earlier. He gave me a thin smile and leaned against the railing and took off his fatigue cap; his hands were grimy with dirt and flecks of rust.