Bill Pronzini - Snowbound

Some bitching country, he thought. The exact center of nowhere. How anyone could live in a place like this the year round was beyond him. Nothing but snow and ice and bitter wind and maybe an influx of stupid fishermen and hunters in season-no action, nothing to do, a goddamn prison with trees and rocks and snow for bars.

He turned and went into the woodshed-looks like an outhouse, he thought, some bitching place-which was situated at the rear of the property. The cabin, a double-tiered A-frame fashioned of bark-stripped redwood siding, sat on a projection of granite at the long slope’s upper edge. Flanked by trees to the north and east, through which its private and currently snowpacked access lane wound upward from Mule Deer Lake Road, it was completely isolated; the nearest dwelling was a fifth of a mile away. The cabin belonged to a man named Brendikian, a long-retired bunco gambler who had amassed a small fortune during and after the Second World War with trimmed and shaded cards and suction-bevel missout dice; then he had gone into score financing and safe housing for the independents working outside the Circle. This was just one of several secluded safe houses he had bought and on which he paid taxes through dummy California and Nevada corporations-totally untraceable should one of them be knocked over. Loxner had once done a job of some sort for Brendikian and had had no difficulty arranging for the cabin’s use at three bills a week.

Kubion found a curve-bladed snow shovel in the woodshed, came back, and cleared the area in front of the doors. Then he threw the shovel to one side and pulled the two halves open. Even though the car had been sheltered overnight, there was a thin film of ice on the windows; the garage felt like the interior of a frozen-food locker. He scraped away the ice, got the car started and out of the garage, and went down to Mule Deer Lake Road.

The village plow had been along there earlier in the morning, clearing it and pushing the snow into windrows at the shoulders; the pavement was slick with ice in parts, and Kubion drove slowly into the village. On Sierra Street, he parked in front of Tribucci Bros. Sport Shop, wedging his car against the long snow mound at the curbing. Music drifted down to him as he stepped out. The hicks always went in for Christmas in a big way-carols and trees and decorations and stockings on the mantel and sleigh rides, all the horse-shit. And this was a hick village if ever there was one. Populated by a bunch of half-witted Eskimos in wooden igloos. Christ!

He went into the shop, and a four-eyed balding guy was behind the counter, wearing a shirt with the name Vince stitched over the left-hand pocket. This Vince smiled at Kubion-friendly, vacuous, sure enough a damned Eskimo. Kubion smiled back at him, playing the game, and bought three packages of cigarettes. Vince wished him a Merry Christmas as he turned to leave, and Kubion said, “Sure, Merry Christmas,” thinking it was anything but, after the bust in Sacramento.

Outside again, he walked toward the overloud singing. Tomato sauce and Veal Milanese, you’d think everything was beautiful and they were having a big celebration. Still — what the hell. You had to eat, and there was no point in creating a hassle with Brodie; let him make his Veal Milanese, let him make anything he wanted as long as he didn’t try to make him.

Smiling faintly, Kubion entered the Mercantile. The store was fairly crowded, noisy, and smelled of wool and dampness and pitch pine burning in the potbellied stove. Kubion had seen most of the people there at one time or another during the previous week, though he did not know or care to know any of their names. But Pat Garvey was the dumpy blond woman being waited on by Maude Fredericks, and the three men grouped around the potbelly rapping about a forthcoming blizzard were Joe Garvey-big, work-roughened, with fierce black eyes and a sprinkling of pockmarks on his flushed cheeks; stooped and fox-faced Sid Markham, who operated a fix-it shop from his Mule Deer Lake home; and Walt Halliday. Matt Hughes stood inside the Post Office enclosure, sorting the mail which had just come in from Soda Grove.

Kubion went to stand near the front counter, close to the trio by the stove. They stopped talking about the weather and were silent for a moment; then Halliday said, “Either of you been over to see McNeil this morning?”

“Yeah, a little while ago,” Garvey said. “The way he’s yelling, everybody in the county knows the cafe was broken into last night.”

“Funny damned thing: nothing stolen, nothing damaged.”

“Don’t make much sense, I’ll grant.”

“Lew Coopersmith find out anything yet, you know?”

“Talked to him just before I came in here,” Markham said. “He hadn’t learned a thing then.”

“He been to see that Zachary Cain?” Garvey asked. “McNeil seems to think Cain might have done it.”

“Didn’t say if he had or not. But you ask me, Cain didn’t have nothing to do with it. Sure, he keeps full to himself, but that don’t make him a criminal. And keeping his own counsel is more than you can say for that fart McNeil, always running off at the mouth the way he does.”

“I don’t know,” Halliday said. “It doesn’t seem natural for a man to live all alone like that, never saying a word to anybody. You-”

He broke off as the door opened and a bearded, faintly bearish man came inside. He moved up to the counter, bloodshot eyes fixed directly in front of him, and stood next to Kubion; the three men at the stove watched him, silent again. This must be Cain, Kubion thought-they act like the poor bastard had leprosy. What a bunch of silly turds. If I were in his shoes, I wouldn’t stop with breaking into their cafe; I’d burn the whole village to the ground, do them all a favor.

Pat Garvey finished with her purchases, detoured around Cain, and tugged at her husband’s sleeve. “Sure, all right,” Garvey said, nodded to Halliday and Markham, and followed his wife out of the store. Maude Fredericks came down to where Kubion was standing, asked him if she could be of service; he told her he wanted two cans of tomato sauce, and she smiled as if he’d ordered a side of beef and fifty pounds of canned goods and went over to the grocery section.

The door opened again, and Verne Mullins came in briskly. He raised a hand to the three men around the stove, went directly to the Post Office enclosure, and said loudly, “Morning, Matt.” He was fat and had a huge red-veined nose and the bright, darting eyes of a bird; a bluff, somewhat testy exterior masked a soft Irish heart. Like Lew Coopersmith, he did not look his age: sixty-nine, come February.

Hughes turned, smiling. “Morning, Verne.”

“Any mail for me?”

“Couple of things. Wait-here you go.”

Mullins took the envelopes and shuffled through them; then he held one up-thin and brown, with the words “Southern Pacific Retirement Bureau” in the upper left-hand corner-and said, “About time they decided to send my check along. Man works forty-five years for the same company, never late and never sick a day of it, and then when he retires, he’s got to fight for the damned money he paid into the retirement fund all along.”

Hughes winked at him. “That’s big business for you.”

“Now ain’t that the truth?” Mullins said. “Bank open this morning, Matt? Figure I better cash this right off, so it doesn’t bounce on me.”

“Bank’s always open for you, Verne.”

Hughes came out of the enclosure and over to the counter. Mullins tore open the envelope, took the check out, endorsed it, and handed it across. “Put it mostly in twenties if you can,” he said. “Got to send a few off to my grandkids for the holidays.”

“Sure thing.”

Hughes took the check into his office, closed the door. Maude Fredericks said to Kubion, “Will there be anything else, sir?”