Bill Pronzini - Snowbound

The headaches were another source of his uptight feeling. The dull pain in his temples and forehead hadn’t developed into one so far, but he knew it could happen easily enough, he knew he could lose control again. He could feel the impulsive need to destroy lying just below the surface of his emotions, like something ineffectually chained in a dark cave, waiting for the opportunity to break free and come screaming into the light.

And there was the need to get out of this frigging wilderness, to get back to civilization, where they could set up another score; the attendant frustration of knowing they couldn’t chance it the way things were. According to the morning radio reports, the Sacramento cops had finally found the rented garage and the dummy armored car; there would be no lessening of the heat for some time yet.

Kubion drove down onto Sierra Street and noticed that there was more activity in the village than usual-that two people were walking up the middle of the road toward the pass. Then he became aware of the huge mound of snow and rock and splintered trees which blocked the valley entrance in a long downward fan. What the hell? he thought.

He kept on past the Mercantile-he had come in for a few minor supplies, to get out of the cabin again for a while-and pulled the car into the Shell station and parked it on the apron. He went up the rest of the way on foot, stopping next to the man and woman he had seen trudging along the road: a couple of senior citizens in plaid mackinaws and woolen hats. “What happened here?” he asked them. “Avalanche, is that what it is?”

Lew Coopersmith looked at him, frowned slightly, and then seemed to place him. “That’s what it is,” he said at length.

“When did it happen?”

“Just at dawn. Woke up the whole village.”

“Yeah, I can imagine.”

“If you and your friend planned on leaving before Christmas, I’m afraid you won’t be able to do it. According to estimates, we’ll be snowbound at least a week and maybe more.”

“You mean nobody can get in or out of the valley?”

“Not unless they use snowmobiles around and through ten or fifteen miles of heavy timber. The pass is blocked solid.”

Some country, all right, Kubion thought: the frozen bunghole of creation. Well, what difference did it make? If anything, it was a favorable occurrence; for the next week or so they would be cut off completely from all the fuzz on the outside.

But he said, playing it cautious, “My friend’s wife is going to scream like a wounded eagle. She was expecting us for the holidays, back in San Francisco. We were leaving Saturday.”

Ellen Coopersmith said, “Oh, that’s too bad.”

“Yeah.”

“Phone lines are open,” Coopersmith told him, “so it isn’t like we were completely isolated. Your friend will be able to call his wife and tell her the circumstances.”

“He’ll want to do that, okay. Thanks.”

Coopersmith nodded. “Sorry about the inconvenience, but it’s just one of those things that happens. Nothing you can do.”

“I guess not,” Kubion said. He turned away and walked back to his car and sat unmoving behind the wheel, staring up at the slide. An idea began to nudge his mind. Snowbound, he thought. Nobody can get in or out of the valley. No contact with the outside except by telephone. Made-to-order kind of situation, by God. And he remembered the check Matt Hughes had cashed for the old man in the Mercantile the previous afternoon: unofficial bank and how much was there in that office safe? Ten thousand? Maybe not even that much, and then again maybe more-maybe a lot more. How many people in Hidden Valley? Seventy-five or so, wasn’t it? Hicks; but hicks sometimes had plenty of money, you were always hearing about some old fart who kept his life’s savings in a fruit jar because he didn’t trust banks. Might even be as much as thirty or forty thousand in the valley…

Abruptly, Kubion shook himself. Christ! He was thinking like a punk again, there was no score for them here, how could there be? They were trapped along with the rest of the damned people, and there was the safe house to think of. The hicks knew him and Brodie by sight, if not Loxner, and realistically there just didn’t figure to be nearly enough in it in the first place. Even if there was a hundred grand in cash and jewelry in Hidden Valley, it wouldn’t be worth it. Still, it was a wild concept: rip off an entire valley. Wouldn’t that be the cat’s nuts! But three men couldn’t execute a caper like that-or could they? Well there was probably a way to do it and get away with it, all right; the snowbound business took care of any outside interference, it would be like working in a big sealed room… Oh shit, it was crazy and stupid to even consider it. They needed a job like Greenfront should have been: safe, clean, big take, no loose ends, no people who knew what they really looked like and could identify them afterward.

But a whole valley, a whole goddamn valley.

Could it be done, with just three men?

Kubion lit a cigarette and sat drumming his fingers on the hard plastic of the steering wheel. Come on, come on, he thought, it’s a pipe dream. And then: Okay, so it’s a pipe dream, so actually doing it is all the way out. The thing is, can it be done on paper? Is it workable at all?

He sucked at his cigarette. Well, why not find out? He was uptight, wasn’t he? The waiting-at least another ten days of it for sure now-and the worrying about those bastard headaches and that dream about the spiders: all of it pressing in on him, flooding his mind. What he needed was to focus his thoughts on something else, something that would keep him from blowing off, and there was nothing better for that than the working out of a challenging score-even an imaginary one.

Kubion started the car and drove back along Sierra Street and parked across from the Mercantile; got out and slogged through the liquidy snow to enter the store. Except for the white-haired old lady who had waited on him the day before, the place appeared empty. Recorded Christmas music still blared away from the wall loudspeakers: some clown singing about a winter wonderland. Yeah.

Maude Fredericks said when he reached the counter, “Isn’t it terrible about the slide? Such a thing to happen just before Christmas.”

“Sure,” Kubion said. “Terrible. Tell me, you have a detail map of this area?”

Her brow wrinkled quizzically. “Well, we have a specially printed tourist brochure that includes a comprehensive Hidden Valley map. We also have a county topographical map.”

“Fine, I’ll take both,” Kubion said, thinking: And wouldn’t you crap your drawers, lady, if you had any idea what I want them for….

Cain spent most of that day snowshoe walking among the lodgepole pine on the upper east slope, where the stillness was almost breathless and the air was thick with the cold, fresh, sweet scent of the mountain forest in winter.

He knew these woods well, the series of hiking paths which crosshatched them, because he had spent a considerable amount of time exploring the area during the summer and fall months. When he was having a particularly bad day and the weather permitted, he had found that taking long walks served as an effective tranquilizer. Alone deep in the forest, you were mostly able to shut off your thoughts and to allow only your senses to govern; and, too, you made yourself physically tired, a weariness that acted like a supplemental narcotic to the liquor.

But on this day, as on the previous two, the forest did nothing to erase the continuing feeling of loneliness which had come over him on Monday night-which lingered like a sudden bright and maddening stain on the fabric of his mind; if anything, the absolute solitude of the surroundings increased it. He felt confused, restless, irritable. And to make it worse, now the damned people in this valley were starting to bother him.