Билл Пронзини - In an Evil Time

Construction had begun three months ago. He hadn’t been to the site in nearly a month because of Angela and Rakubian; he checked the most recent progress report from PAD Construction. Some of the foundation slabs had been poured, but the report didn’t say which ones; the rest were scheduled for this week and next. He’d have to go up there, see for himself—

Knock on the door. He swiveled his head as it opened and Gabe Mannix poked his bushy head inside. “Busy, Bernard? Or can I come in?”

Bernard this morning. Other mornings it was Paul. Gag born twenty-plus years ago, when they’d worked together in the city, that Mannix refused to let die of worn-out old age. The two early-twentieth-century California architects who had most influenced Hollis’s own style, one a white Paris-trained bohemian, the other a black, mostly self-taught traditionalist, were Bernard Maybeck and Paul Williams.

“Come ahead. You’re practically in already.” He clicked off the Chesterton file, shut down, and swung his chair around as Mannix flopped into the cubicle’s one other chair.

“So the asshole showed up here last night.”

“Yeah.”

“Your place, too, Gloria says.”

“McLear Park before that. Angela was there with Kenny. He threatened her outright this time.”

“In front of witnesses?”

“Not unless you count Fritz.”

“What’d he say exactly?”

“That he’d kill them both if she doesn’t go back to him.”

“Miserable fuck! So that’s why she’s ready to run and hide.”

“That’s why.”

“You’re not going to let her go?”

“I can’t stop her, Gabe.”

“If you don’t, you might never see her or Kenny again. Even if Rakubian doesn’t find her, she’ll go to ground so deep she won’t dare surface.”

“It’s her decision.”

“Is it? You know what I’d do if I were in your place. Buy a gun and use it.”

He kept a poker face. He’d heard this before; Mannix hadn’t made any secret of how he felt. Of all the people who knew about the situation, Gabe was the one he’d come closest to confiding in. But he hadn’t been able to do it. Not before last night and not now, either.

“Don’t you think I’ve considered it?”

“Seriously considered it?”

“Damn seriously.

“And?”

He shook his head, made a helpless gesture.

“Yeah, I know,” Mannix said. “Suppose I do it for you?”

“... You’re kidding.”

“You think so? You know how I feel about you and Cassie and Angela. I wouldn’t have any qualms about it, moral or otherwise. Same as shooting a rabid dog.”

Hollis studied him for a time, trying to decide if he really did mean it. Gabe Mannix was not an easy man to read. They’d known each other twenty-two years, worked side by side at Simmons Glenn Associates for eight before going into partnership on their own, but there was still an ambiguous closed-off part of the man he couldn’t quite figure out. Big, shaggy, easygoing, with an endless repository of anecdotes and bawdy stories... but he could also be moody, cynical, and unpredictable in his personal life. A brilliant if conventionally minded architect, with a degree from the Pratt Institute in New York, yet he preferred to handle the more mundane jobs that came their way — office buildings, shopping malls, apartment complexes — and to let Hollis have the more challenging individual designs like the Chesterton home. Twice married, twice divorced, now a confirmed bachelor and “connoisseur of one-night stands,” yet he seemed to envy Hollis’s stable relationship with Cassie. And the way he looked at Angela the past few years — wistfully, tenderly, with a sad little light in his eyes — indicated that he wished he was twenty years younger and she was somebody else’s attractive daughter.

“I’d do it,” he said. “No lie and no bull.”

“It’s not your fight, Gabe.”

“The hell it’s not.”

“I wouldn’t ask you. Not a thing like that.”

“Meaning you don’t condone the idea?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Guys like Rakubian don’t deserve to live,” Mannix said. “Do the world a favor, take him right out of the gene pool.”

“You sound like a vigilante.”

“Maybe I am. Maybe you’d better start thinking like one yourself.”

If you only knew, buddy .

“Can we drop this now? It’s not doing either of us any good.”

“Drop it if that’s what you want, but one of us better pick it up again. Before it’s too late.”

“Gabe, look—”

Mannix shoved onto his feet. “Off to the salt mines. Emerson’s bitching again about the changes in that mall design.”

“Some work to do myself. I’ll be out pretty soon.”

“Take your time. You’ve got more important things to worry about than pencils and slide rules.”

When he was alone Hollis pulled up the Chesterton file again and rechecked the progress report and the site plan. All right. If the hillside work hadn’t progressed far enough or they’d poured the wine cellar slab ahead of schedule? Cross that bridge if and when.

The rest of the plan now. Nothing specific he could use in the dossier on Rakubian, but there was enough in the nonspecifics. Massive ego. Never admits to being wrong, to any fault or deficiency. Fearless — believes he’s smarter than anyone else, indestructible. Pull all of that together and you had a literal-minded man vulnerable to the right kind of approach.

Fitting. The son of a bitch’s own massive ego was going to help bury him.

He still hadn’t heard from Eric when Cassie called from Animal Care at ten-thirty. She’d had her talk with Angela. Mixed results. Angela was willing to stay through the weekend whether or not the Boston arrangements were confirmed, but she refused to go to Cedar Rapids under any circumstances. A woman in the local support group had relatives in Utah who might be talked into taking her and Kenny in temporarily; she’d try to go there if Boston fell through. “Utah is a lot closer than Massachusetts or Iowa,” Cassie said, “even if it means living with strangers.” Hollis couldn’t disagree, though he wished there were some way to keep her from going anywhere at all, even for a short time.

It was almost noon when Eric finally called. By then Hollis was fidgety and not working well. He took the call in his cubicle, and started things off wrong, in spite of himself, by saying too sharply, “What took you so long to get back to me?”

“Hey, don’t bite my head off.”

“Didn’t Larry give you my message right away?”

“He gave it to me. Urgent but not serious. Angie told you about Boston, right?”

Angie. Eric was the only one in the family who called her that. “Yes. You haven’t talked to her today?”

“I tried the house just now. No answer.”

“She’s at a support group meeting. About this Boston business. I know you’re trying to help, but—”

“It didn’t work out,” Eric said.

“No?”

“I thought I had the apartment all set for her, but Jeff went stupid on me and told his folks the reason. They don’t want a woman who’s being stalked staying in their apartment, they don’t want any trouble, the usual crap.”

Relieved, Hollis said, “It’s just as well.”

“Uh-huh. And I suppose you want me to stay out of it from now on?”

“I wish you would.”

“I’d set something else up if I could.”

“Eric—” He bit that off. “She may have another place to go,” he said, and explained about Utah.

“Sounds okay for the time being,” Eric admitted. “So you and Mom aren’t trying to talk her out of leaving?”

“We’re not standing in her way, no.”