Bill Pronzini - Bleeders

I laid a red queen on a black king, glanced up at Jay Cohalan through the door to his private cubicle. He was pacing again, side wall to side window across the front of his desk, his hands in constant restless motion at his sides. The cubicle was carpeted; his footfalls made no sound. There was no discernible sound anywhere except for the faint snap and slap when I turned over a card and put it down. An office building at night is one of the quietest places there is. Eerily so, if you spend enough time listening to the silence.

Trey. Nine of diamonds. Deuce. Jack of spades. I was marrying the jack to a red queen when Cohalan quit pacing and came over to stand in the doorway. He watched me for a time, his hands still doing scoop-shovel maneuvers. Big man in his late thirties, handsome except for a weak chin, his dusty brown hair and tan suit disheveled. A sheen of sweat coated his cheeks and upper lip, even though it was not warm in there.

“How can you just sit there playing cards?” he said.

There were several answers to that. Years of stakeouts and dull routine had taught me a certain grudging patience. We’d only been waiting about an hour. The money, seventy-five thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills, didn’t belong to me. I was neither worried nor upset, nor afraid that something might go wrong. But I passed on all of that and settled instead for a neutral response.

“Solitaire’s good for waiting,” I said. “Keeps your mind off the clock.”

“It’s after seven. Why the hell doesn’t he call?”

“You know the answer to that.”

“Yeah. He wants me to sweat.”

“And you’re obliging him.”

“For Christ’s sake, I can’t help it. I’m scared, man.”

“I know it.”

“Sadistic bastard.”

He didn’t mean me, so I said, “Blackmail’s that kind of game. Torture the victim, bend his will to yours.”

“Game. My God.” Cohalan came out into the anteroom and began to pace around there, in front of his secretary’s desk where I was sitting. “It’s driving me crazy, trying to figure out who he is, how he found out about my past.”

“Any luck?”

“No. He didn’t give me a hint, any of the times I talked to him. But he knows everything, every damn detail.”

“You’ll have the answers before long.”

Cohalan stopped abruptly, leaned toward me. “Listen, this has to be the end of it. You’ve got to stay with him tonight, make sure he’s arrested. I can’t take any more.”

“I’ll do my job, don’t worry.”

“Seventy-five thousand dollars,” he said. “I almost had a heart attack when he told me that was how much he wanted this time. The last payment... balloon payment, he called it. What a crock. He’ll come back for more some day. I know it, Carolyn knows it, you know it.” Pacing again. “Poor Carolyn. She’s so high-strung, emotional... it’s been even harder on her.”

I turned a card. Spade nine. I laid it on a ten of diamonds and squared the edges.

Cohalan said, “She wanted me to go the police in the beginning, did I tell you that? Practically begged me.”

“You told me.”

“I should have, I guess. Now I’ve got to pay a middleman for what I could’ve had done for nothing. No offense.”

“None taken.”

“I just couldn’t bring myself to do it, walk into the Hall of Justice and confess my sins to a cop. It was hard enough letting Carolyn talk me into hiring a private detective.”

Black four. No help.

“That trouble when I was a kid... it’s a criminal offense; I could still be prosecuted for it. And it’s liable to cost me my job if it comes out. I went through hell telling Carolyn when the blackmail started, couldn’t force myself to go into the more sordid details. Not with you, either. The police... no, never. I know that bastard will probably spill the whole story when he’s in custody, try to drag me down with him, but I keep hoping it won’t happen. A miracle’s all I’ve got left to cling to, like a drowning man clinging to a stick. You know what I mean?”

“I know what you mean,” I said.

“I shouldn’t’ve paid him when he crawled out of the woodwork eight months ago. I know that now. But back then it seemed like the only way to keep my life from being ruined. Carolyn thought so, too. If I hadn’t started paying him, half of her inheritance wouldn’t already be gone.”

Ace of clubs. I put that card down, added the deuce off the pile. I wasn’t winning, just holding my own — about all you can expect in most games of solitaire. And what most of us learn to settle for in living our lives.

Cohalan paced in silence for a time, stopped to stare out through the window at the fog-misted lights of the city, then started up again — pacing and talking both. “I hated taking money from her. Hated it, no matter how much she kept insisting it belongs to both of us. And I hate myself for doing it, almost as much as I hate him. All my fault, start to finish. But goddamn it, blackmail’s the worst crime there is, short of murder.”

“Not the worst,” I said, “but bad enough.”

“This has to be the end of it. That seventy-five thousand in there... it’s the last of her money, our money. All our savings sitting right there in that briefcase. If that son of a bitch gets away with it, we’ll be wiped out. You can’t let that happen.”

I didn’t say anything. We’d been through all this before, too many times.

He said, “I’ve got to take a leak — my bladder feels like it’s ready to pop. John’s just down the hall, I won’t be two minutes. If the phone rings...”

“I’ll handle it, don’t worry.”

“Two minutes,” he said and went out at a half run.

He was gone three. I was dealing myself a new hand when he came back. “Not yet,” I said.

“Shit.”

He stood over me, breathing heavily through his nose. Abruptly he said, “This job of mine, you’d think it pays pretty well, wouldn’t you? My own office, secretary, executive title, expense account... looks good and sounds good, but it’s a frigging dead end. Junior account executive stuck in corporate middle management — that’s all I am or ever will be. There’re already rumors the company’s going to downsize. If that happens, I’ll be one of the first to go.”

“No other prospects?”

“Not any that’ll pay what I’m making now. Sixty thousand gross. And Carolyn makes twenty-five teaching those music courses of hers. Eighty-five thousand for two people, no kids, that seems like plenty, but it’s not... not these days and sure as hell not in San Francisco. Dot-com paradise, that’s what the city’s become, cost of living’s through the roof. Add taxes, mortgage payments, all the rest of it, you have to scrimp like hell to put anything away. And then some stupid mistake you made when you were a kid comes back to haunt you, starts draining what little you’ve got to keep you solvent... you understand, right? But I didn’t see where I had a choice at first. I was afraid of going to prison, afraid of losing this dead-end job before they throw me out. Caught between a rock and a hard place. I still feel that way, but now I don’t care, I just want that scumbag to get what’s coming to him...”

Repetitious babbling. His mouth had a wet look, and his gaze kept jumping from me to other points in the anteroom. His irises were as bright as blue-veined marbles.

I said, “Why don’t you sit down?”

“I can’t sit. My nerves are shot.”

“You’re making me nervous.”