Sue Grafton - V is for Vengeance

While Marvin and I explored the subtleties of language, I was wondering if a brick was going to come flying through the glass. Perhaps a Molotov cocktail refuting Marvin’s point about my misunderstanding Len’s comment, which Marvin swore was made in jest. I assured him of the seriousness of Len’s intent and moved on to my definition of common sense, which was to cease and desist behavior that might result in bodily harm. He derided my being so easily intimidated whereas I felt the promise of death was sufficient to dash any residual bravery on my part. It was when I caught the tiny squeak of my gate that I excused myself, saying, “Would you excuse me?”

“No problem.”

I left him sitting in my living room while I grabbed Henry’s key and headed out the door and across the patio to his place. The timer in his living room caused the lights to wink off and two seconds later, his bedroom light winked on. This was intended to persuade folks that he was in residence and on his way to bed. I let myself into the darkened kitchen and crossed the room in three long strides. I opened the door to the hall. “Pinky?”

His picnic tray was pushed to one side and I noticed he’d eaten everything. He hadn’t yet made up his homely pallet on the floor. Instead, he’d pulled the telephone from the kitchen into the hall, stretching the spiral cord to its full extension. This permitted him to close the hall door and thus keep himself judiciously confined to the inner recesses of Henry’s house. The bathroom door was shut. I knocked, not wanting to surprise him if he was settled on the toilet with his trousers down around his ankles.

I leaned my head against the door. “Pinky, are you in there?”

I opened the door to an empty bathroom. I turned and took two steps, reaching for the knob on the door between the hall and the darkened living room. This allowed me a clear view through the front windows where a taxi cab was pulling away, a brightly lighted yellow blur against the dark outside, as it moved out of my view. The passenger silhouetted in the rear seat looked very much like Pinky to me.

I backed the Mustang out of the driveway, shifted from reverse into drive, and peeled out with a screech of tires that sounded like I’d just run over a cat. Marvin stood on the street and watched me with disbelief. I’d hustled him out of my studio with only the briefest of excuses. Poor, sweet man. He’d come, hat in hand, humbling himself in order to persuade me to go back on the job, but I was anxious about Pinky’s disappearance and I couldn’t afford to stop and renegotiate. By my calculation, Pinky had a five-minute head start on me, and I’d have been willing to bet he was heading for home. Dodie couldn’t have called him because she didn’t know where he was. If the two had been in contact, he’d have had to call her. Given the total population of the Earth at that time, there were other possibilities. He might have contacted any one of the millions of other human beings who were stretched around the globe, but since he’d been so insistent on touching base with her, my supposition made sense. Why he’d called a cab and dashed off without telling me, I hoped to find out when I caught up with him. Whatever his motivation, he must have believed I wouldn’t buy into it and therefore he hadn’t wanted to risk informing me.

My apartment near the beach was approximately twelve blocks from Pinky’s duplex on Paseo, a mile and a half at most. The speed limit on most residential streets was thirty-five miles an hour. I didn’t want to think about stop signs and red lights and other automotive impediments that would slow my progress. I kept a heavy foot on the gas pedal, checking cross streets for approaching vehicles before I sailed through each intersection. I didn’t run any red lights but I came close. I was acutely tuned to the risk of black-and-whites in the area, being not that far away from the police department.

I headed north on Chapel, which at that hour didn’t have much traffic, so I was making good time. I didn’t see the problem until I was right up on it, preparing to turn left on Paseo. A barrier had been erected. A row of orange cones was neatly set out in front of six sections of portable fence, replete with a sign that said ROAD CLOSED TO THROUGH TRAFFIC. I debated an act of civil disobedience. Instead, I continued up Chapel, thinking to turn left at the next cross street, which was also blocked. This felt like a cruel hoax, but was more likely part of a public-works rehabilitation project relegated to off-hours instead of a plot cooked up specifically to inconvenience me. At the next block up, the street was open but marked one-way, the arrow urging me most emphatically to the right when I wanted to turn left. I said to hell with it and turned left anyway, driving the wrong way down a one-way street. At the back of my mind, I was aware that I wasn’t exactly stone-cold sober. Less than an hour before, I’d had a glass of wine-six ounces by my guess, but possibly eight-with my sandwich. At my height and body weight, I was flirting with the legal limit for blood alcohol content. I was probably under the.08 threshold, but if a cop stopped me for a moving violation, I might well be required to go through a whole song-and-dance routine. Even if I wasn’t compelled to submit breath or body fluids, a traffic ticket would take more time than I could spare.

I accelerated as far as Dave Levine Street, turned left, drove two blocks, and then turned left again on Paseo. There was a sleek new yellow Cadillac parked near the corner, with a bumper sticker that read I OWN THIS GLORIOUS CAR THANKS TO GLORIOUS WOMANHOOD. On the driver’s-side door, there was a golden figure of a woman with her arms upraised, surrounded by a shower of shooting stars. I found a convenient parking space along an unoccupied length of red-painted curb. I did a masterly job of parallel parking, obscuring the fire hydrant. I shut down the engine, and as I got out of the car, I hesitated. I went through a quick debate about taking my H &K. Pinky’s departure had generated a sense of urgency, but perhaps only in my fevered imagination. There was no reason to think a gun battle would ensue, so I left mine in the Mustang under the driver’s seat. I opened the trunk and shrugged into the windbreaker I keep on hand and then left my unwieldy shoulder bag locked inside. I tucked my keys into my jeans pocket and crossed the street to the duplex.

I could see lights on upstairs in the McWherters’ apartment on the right. The Fords’ living room also showed lights on the ground floor to the left. The drapes were partially drawn, but I spotted Pinky sitting in an easy chair. Dodie sat on the couch to his right, largely blocked by the window hangings. The lights of the television flickered dully across their faces. If seeing Dodie was so important, I couldn’t understand why he looked so sulky. With his high cheekbones and swarthy complexion, his face appeared to be carved out of wood. I rang the bell and moments later he opened the door.

“Why’d you run off without telling me?”

“I was in a hurry,” he said.

“Well, clearly. Mind if I come in?”

“Might as well.” He stepped away from the door.

The foyer was about the size of a bath towel with the living room opening directly to the right. There was a fire in the fireplace, but the logs were fake and the flames appeared from an evenly spaced row of holes in the gas pipe under the grate. The logs were fabricated from a product that mimicked both the outer bark and the raw look of freshly hewn oak, but there was none of the pop and crackle of a live fire and no homely smell of wood smoke. Hard to believe a fire like that had much to offer in the way of warmth. Not that either Pinky or Dodie cared. His attention was fixed on the fellow with a gun pressed against the back of Dodie’s head. It looked like the guy had dragged in a chair from the dining room, and he sat behind the sofa, using the back of it to steady his hand.