Bill Pronzini - Undercurrent

"How come they went through with the robbery with Dancer still alive?"

"Paige had told Sarkelian a little about Dancer, how he'd turned out millions of words in his career and how he didn't think Dancer would remember the book after twenty years. And they figured, since the book was that old, we wouldn't be able to dig up another copy in time to prevent the robbery. Like I said, Paige was the brains behind this whole thing, and Sarkelian and the other two nothing but strong-arms. All they could think about was the money. Like moths to a flame."

"How much was in the valise? How much would they have gotten away with if it had worked out the way they planned?"

"A little better than seventy thousand."

"Not much for all the trouble they went to," I said. "And for murder besides."

"Not much at all."

"Why did Sarkelian kill Winestock?"

"Winestock was scared, ready to crack from the pressure we put on him last night at his house; he'd been nervous as hell from the time he talked to Sarkelian in the afternoon, when you saw them together, and the liquor he'd drunk hadn't helped any. He wanted out, all the way out; he was planning to skip town, like a damned fool, and he tried to threaten some money out of Sarkelian. Sarkelian wrapped his gun in bathroom towels to muffle the noise and shot him. It was the only thing he could do, Sarkelian said. If he'd let Winestock try to make a run for it, we'd have picked him up in a matter of hours-and in his condition we'd have gotten the truth out of him sure as hell.

"After he shot Winestock, he drove the body out to Spanish Bay, with Androvitch following in their car, and left the Studebaker where it was found this morning. Spanish Bay is only about two miles from Sarkelian's motel, but even so they were damned lucky not to have been spotted in Winestock's car and stopped; if they had, it would have been finished right there."

"Except for whoever killed Paige," I said.

"Except for that."

"It's got to be the woman, Ned. Or someone connected with the woman."

"That's how it adds up," Quartermain agreed. "The same simple equation we had in the beginning."

"I take it Sarkelian doesn't know who she is."

"No. He knew Paige was bedding some local female, but he never saw the two of them together and Paige wasn't talking, characteristically. He doesn't know her name, or what she looks like. He also thinks she's the one who killed Paige."

I drank more coffee, and then asked, "Did you talk to Robin Lomax? She was waiting for you when I came in at three o'clock."

His bloodshot eyes turned grave. "Yeah, I talked to her."

"What did she have to say?"

"Some confidential information that I shouldn't discuss at all." He sighed. "But I think you've got a right to know, as long as it doesn't go any further than this office."

"You know it won't."

"All right. She'd been wrestling with her conscience and her pride all day, and she finally made up her mind to tell the real story of her relationship with Paige. Her husband doesn't know she came here today; he wouldn't like it if he did-but he's not going to know about it."

"Then that story he told us this morning was a lie?"

"Half lie and half truth. Robin had a fight with Jason six years ago and she had too much to drink brooding about it and she let Paige get her alone. Only he didn't try to attack her, and she didn't fight him off."

"Oh," I said, "I see."

"There's more to it than that," Quartermain said. His voice contained the kind of sadness a sensitive and moral man feels when he's given knowledge of the dark transgressions of people he's always liked and respected. "Jason Lomax is sterile; he's been sterile all his life."

I winced a little, involuntarily, and I thought: So Tommy Lomax is Walter Paige's son. But I did not say it. There was no point in saying it.

Quartermain sighed again. "That's why they immediately became nervous and frightened when you went to see them yesterday and mentioned Paige and told them you were a private investigator. They've both subconsciously accepted that phony fictional image of a private detective as a potential blackmailer; they thought you'd found out their secret, perhaps from Paige, and had come to shake them down. Then you confused hell out of them by telling them Paige was dead and bringing me into it, and your association with me; and that also gave them a brand-new apprehension: the threat of a scandal as a result of a police investigation. That's why they left in such a hurry last night; they wanted the opportunity to concoct a lie to cover up-expecting me to show up immediately after you left, you see. Lomax convinced Robin this was their only choice, and manufactured the attempted-rape business. I guess I don't blame him, in a way; he was only trying to protect his wife's reputation, and his own. He may be something of a fool, but he's also enough of a man to have married Robin when she told him she was pregnant, and to give the boy his name."

I agreed with that-thinking: Maybe I was a little hard on him after all; he's got his faults, but haven't we all? And my cop's mind added: But if he's that fiercely loyal to her, and if he hated Paige enough, and if they weren't playing tennis together Saturday afternoon as they claim, wouldn't he perhaps commit murder to maintain both his reputation and his wife's?

Quartermain said, "From the tone of the questions I asked this morning, Robin was afraid we suspected her or her husband of killing Paige-perhaps even of murdering Brad Winestock, for some unknown reason. And if we uncovered the truth about her relationship with Paige, Jason's lie would look far more incriminating than it was. She decided to tell the truth, no matter how painful it would be, to save later embarrassment and misconceptions."

"That was the right thing to do," I said, "assuming that the confession wasn't a last-ditch effort to cover up. She's got a better motive than ever to have killed Paige, Ned."

"But not to have slept with him again, remember that."

"Unless she'd been carrying the torch all these years, in spite of the boy, and gave herself to him as a result, and then something happened to kindle a murderous hatred."

"Okay," he admitted reluctantly, "that's possible. I don't like it, but it is possible. Robin still says that she and Jason were together at the time of Paige's death, but that could easily enough be a lie."

"I'm not saying she's guilty, Ned; I'm only offering potentialities. It could also be that Paige did seduce Bianca Tarrant-six years ago or just recently-despite what her husband told us this morning; and that she was the one in his bed and who killed him for some reason. Or it could be, if Mrs. Tarrant is the woman, that her husband killed Paige in a jealous rage-the same way Jason Lomax could have done it if his wife were the woman. And it could even be that the woman is Beverly Winestock; that she was Paige's mistress previously and they resumed their affair after his return-or, more likely, that she went to him specifically to talk him out of whatever he was planning with her brother, maybe knowing about that Seaside burglary Paige talked Winestock into, and used her body for bargaining power. If so, and knowing the kind of son of a bitch Paige was, he could have used her and then laughed at her and tried to throw her out-and in blind rage, she stabbed him,"

"All sound, logical possibilities," Quartermain said. "But if one is fact, how do we find it out? And there's another potential that I don't even want to think about: that the woman, the murderer or murderers, is or are totally divorced from anything that's happened in the past couple of days; one person, or two, who haven't entered into it at all thus far."

"Yeah," I said, "but somehow I don't think so. Paige's woman is Bianca Tarrant or Robin Lomax or Beverly Winestock; I've got a feeling about that, a hunch that-"