Bill Pronzini - Boobytrap

It was four-thirty by the time I finished, and I thought that if I was going to have any chance of catching Kerry at her hotel — two-hour time difference, getting on toward dinnertime in Houston — I’d better call right away. The phone had been turned on as promised and provided a static-free connection to the Houston Center Marriott. That was the good news; the bad news was that Kerry wasn’t in. I left a safe-arrival message and the phone number with the hotel operator.

I locked up and set off on foot for Judson’s Resort. It was a fine evening for a stroll — some of the needed exercise Nils Ostergaard had alluded to. The day was still warm and the thin air was so rich in the scents of pine resin and lake water that it went to your head, gave you a kind of natural buzz.

There were two men inside the store half of the main resort building when I walked in. One, a shaggy, barrel-chested guy about my age, stood behind the counter; the other, dour and angular, wearing a fisherman’s slouch hat, was bent over in front of a cooler marked Live Bait. Through a doorway on the right, a noisy bunch — men and women both — were grouped along the cafe’s bar counter, most of them clutching long-necked bottles of Miller and Bud.

The shaggy guy said cheerfully, “Help you?” as I came up to the counter.

“You can if you’re Mack Judson.”

“In the flesh.” He grinned and patted the paunch that hid his belt buckle. The hair on his hands and arms and curling up through the neck of his polo shirt was as thick and black and coarse as bear fur. “If you’re looking for accommodations, I’m afraid you’re out of luck. We’re full up.”

“I’ve got a place to stay,” I said, “thanks to Tom Zaleski and Pat Dixon.” I introduced myself and explained how I happened to be there.

“Any friend of Pat’s,” he said, and grated my finger bones in a bearlike paw. “Welcome to God’s country, my friend.”

“Thanks. Glad to be here.”

The angular customer had sidled over next to me. He nudged my arm and asked, “What line’re you in?” The question came with a distillery aroma. Sour-mash bourbon.

“Does it matter?”

“I like to know what a man does for a living.”

“What do I look like I do?”

“Cop,” he said immediately.

“Close enough. I’m a private investigator.”

“The hell you say. What brings a private eye up here?”

“Same thing that brought you.”

“The fishing, huh?”

“That’s right.”

“A private eye that fishes. How about that.”

“Lake or stream?” Judson asked me.

“Stream. Pat Dixon says you can point me to a couple of good spots.”

“That I can.”

“Good spots for the likes of us,” the angular guy said. He was about forty, thin-lipped, hollow-eyed. Long, flattened ears and a pointy jaw gave his head a squeezed look. “He reserves the best places for himself and his cronies, don’t you, Mack?”

Judson’s expression remained affable, but dislike leaked through at the edges. “Well, I’ll tell you, Mr. Dyce,” he said. “My wife and me been running this resort twenty-two years and nobody who took my advice ever went home without his limit.”

“Limit, sure. Little brookies and rainbows. Easy catches.”

“Easy? Easy’s when you go to a trout farm. Come up here, you work for every fish you take. Harder you work, the more you get for your effort — like anything else in this life.”

“Meaning I oughta go hiking around the backcountry on my own. I don’t know these mountains, I could get my ass lost or break a leg or something.”

Judson shrugged. “Accidents can happen anywhere, if you’re not careful. Point is, even if I told you where you might catch a five-pound cutthroat, you’d have to work like the devil to get there. Risk your ass, if you want to put it that way. And you might not catch that five-pounder anyway.”

“Suppose I paid you to guide me?”

“I’m not a guide. I’m a resort owner.”

“Close-mouthed one, you want my opinion,” Dyce said. He turned his attention my way again. “So what kind of private eye are you?”

“I don’t understand the question.”

“What kind of jobs you specialize in? Divorce work?”

“No.”

“Get the dirt on some poor bastard for his bitch of a wife?”

“I said no.”

“Bodyguarding, that kind of thing?”

“Not that, either. Most of my business is skip-tracing and insurance-related.”

“Minding other people’s business. Isn’t that what a private eye really does?”

“Professionally, maybe. Personally I mind my own business.”

“You telling me to mind mine?”

“I’m not telling you anything, Dyce.”

“Wise guys,” Dyce said. “Man can’t get away from wise guys no matter where he goes.”

I didn’t say anything. Neither did Judson.

Dyce looked from one to the other of us, curled his lip the way his type does when feeling superior, and stalked out. The screen door smacked shut behind him, loud as a pistol shot.

“What’s his problem?” I asked Judson.

“Pretty obvious, isn’t it? Mr. Fred Dyce is an asshole.”

“Other than that.”

“I couldn’t tell you. Chip on his shoulder a yard wide, who knows why. Maybe because he drinks too much, maybe from breathing all that smog in L.A. That’s where he’s from.”

“Spoiling for a fight, I’d say.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of — that somebody’ll provoke him without even meaning to. He’s been here two days, already seems like two weeks. But I can’t kick him out for what might happen, much as I’d like to. He’s the kind that’d sue.”

“His first time here?”

“And his last,” Judson said. “He calls up next year, we’re full the entire season. Well, hell, why let one schmuck spoil it for the rest of us? Everybody else staying here gets along fine. Come on, I’ll introduce you to Rita — that’s my missus — and the folks in the cafe. Buy you a beer, too, if you drink beer.”

“I drink it.”

“Good. It’s a tradition we got here: first beer’s on Mack and Rita.”

I didn’t feel much like socializing — I was in a mood for my own company tonight, after the long drive — but Judson had been offended enough by Dyce without my adding a refusal of his hospitality. I followed him into the cafe.

Rita Judson, a sinewy brunette with a sharp eye and an unflappable manner, was behind the bar. I found out a little later that she and Mack handled all of the resort duties except for cooking, waitressing, dishwashing, and maid service; they had a hired couple who took care of those chores. Rita shook my hand with a grip as firm as any man’s, welcomed me to Deep Mountain Lake, and served me an ice-cold bottle of Bud. Mack introduced me to the seven other people at the bar, four summer residents and three short-stay fishermen. They were all just names and faces at first, except for two other first-timers like Dyce and me. One was on the lean side of forty, the backslapping salesman type, friendly but in a sly, pushy way. Cantrell, Hal Cantrell. The other was Mr. Average: medium height, medium weight, medium features, medium coloring, of an age anywhere between forty and fifty. The kind of individual who fades into the background in any social situation and disappears completely when a score of people are present. He didn’t have much to say — the complete opposite of Cantrell. The only thing about him that made any impression on me were his eyes, gray eyes so pale they were almost colorless, like smoke just before it fades away. His first name was unusual enough to stick in my memory: Jacob. But I heard his last name only once and couldn’t remember it afterward.

Naturally there were questions for me, a spate of them when Judson announced my profession, but then things settled down into a companionable discussion of fishing matters — the old debate over whether it’s best to fish upstream or downstream, the relative merits of both dry flies and live bait in the streams that fed Deep Mountain Lake, that kind of thing. Once the others realized I had enough knowledge to lift me out of the rank amateur class, I was accepted without reservation.