Bill Pronzini - With an Extreme Burning

Not with the chance, however remote, that one of them might be the tormentor.

He stood for a little time with the beer cradled in one arm, listening to the party sounds. The heat wave was over now; the temperature hadn't gotten out of the seventies all day. Might even be cold once it got dark, if the wind picked up. He'd brought a sweater just in case.

Walnut Street intruded on his consciousness. Quiet residential street, one of the nicer ones, in the oldest section of town. Mixed architectural styles, everything from turn-of-the-century Victorians to modern three- and four-unit apartment houses. Shade trees lining this block and others, down the way three boys chucking a football back and forth, two dogs chasing each other, an old man dozing on a porch swing at the house next to Jerry's. The outside world had changed radically in the past thirty-odd years, Los Alegres had changed, but Walnut Street was still more or less the same. Take away the apartment houses, substitute Ford Galaxies and Chevy Impalas for the contemporary Detroit and Japanese products, and it would look and feel exactly as it had in 1960, when he was a kid riding over here on his Schwinn after school to play crazy eights with Eddie Slayton, shoot hoops in Eddie's backyard. Eddie was dead now … dead more than twenty years. Killed in Vietnam, blown up by a goddamn land mine. Another one gone. But the street, the town, the old way of life, were all still alive.

Weren't they?

I don't know anymore, he thought.

The feeling of aloneness was strong in him again.

The light wind gusted, brought a sharp whiff of the burning charcoal. It stirred him out of his frozen stance, prodded him along the front drive and onto the path between the house and the detached garage. The house was small, really a bungalow, built sometime in the forties, but the front yard was good-sized, dominated by a flowering magnolia tree, and the backyard was huge: lawn, patio area, vegetable patch, walnut and kumquat trees. Jerry had a lease option on it; he still wasn't sure if he wanted to stay there or move into something smaller like a condo apartment, but the betting was that he'd stay. Cecca had arranged the deal for him when he first came to Los Alegres. That was how he'd met the members of their little circle, through Cecca; how he'd become a part of it.…

Jerry?

Fun-loving, do-anything-for-you Jerry Whittington?

Newest member of the group, didn't talk much about his background or his divorce … what did anybody know about him, really? Katy had always found him attractive—“deliciously good-looking,” she'd said once. Katy and Jerry? That much was conceivable, but the rest of it, the phone calls, the earrings, the burned things to Cecca and Amy … cold-blooded murder? Even madmen had motives for what they did, no matter how warped. It was inconceivable that Jerry could so viciously hurt people who had befriended him, been good to him.

The party voices grew louder. Dix's stomach muscles clenched, his step faltered slightly, and then he was around behind the house to where he could see the others. They were all on or near the patio, standing or sitting on outdoor furniture, Jerry wearing a chef's apron and poking at the briquettes blazing inside a brace of Webers. Dix's gaze sought and found Cecca; she was talking to Owen, or rather listening to something he was telling her. Everybody else was there, too: Tom and Beth, George and Laura, Sid and Helen. And Margaret Allen, Jerry's redheaded secretary/aassistant, who made no bones about the fact that she wouldn't mind sharing his bed as well as his office on a permanent basis.

Jerry saw him first and called, “Hey, Dix!” That started it; they all flocked around him, fussing, as if he were a long-lost relative or a celebrity. He endured it. Even managed to keep the pasted smile in place. He caught Cecca's eye; she seemed tense, too. She touched his arm and mouthed the words “I'm glad you came.” He hadn't been sure he would when they talked last night; hadn't been sure he would until five minutes before he left the house today.

The fussing didn't last long. It would have turned awkward—almost did—and nobody wanted that. Sid Garstein gave him an out by offering to take the beer he'd brought and put it in the fridge. Dix said no, he'd do it, and kept smiling all the way into the house.

There was enough food in the kitchen to stock a homeless shelter. Thick T-bone steaks filling two big platters under Saran Wrap coverings. French bread, four different kinds of salad, corn on the cob and fresh fruit, and one of Beth's trufle dishes in the refrigerator. Plenty of beer, wine, hard liquor. Conspicuous consumption, he thought, while people starve on the streets. Residual liberal guilt. But what were you supposed to do? Stop enjoying yourself because others were hurting, give away what you had, what you'd worked hard for, and adopt the poverty lifestyle out of sympathy? He gave money to charity every Christmas; he did community work; he supported education and literacy programs, which were the only real hope for permanent social change. Wasn't that enough? Hell, maybe he should join the Peace Corps. He'd read about young retirees, men and women in their fifties, who were doing just that. Sold or leased their property holdings, put their personal belongings in storage, and went off to Africa or South America for two years or more. Giving something back, giving part of themselves. Could he do something like that? Was he that selfless?

No, he couldn't. No, he wasn't.

I got mine and fuck the world, wasn't that what it amounted to?

Mr. Mediocrity.

He was thirsty; he opened a beer, swallowed four or five ounces before he came up for air. And when he lowered the can he saw that Tom Birnam had come in and was standing there grinning at him. “Better go easy on that stuff, boy. Dinner's an hour off yet.”

“I'm not going to get drunk, Tom. This is only the second beer I've had all day.”

“Sure, I just meant—”

“I know what you meant,” Dix said. “I haven't been drowning my sorrows. I'm not a boozer, you ought to know that.”

“I do know it. No offense meant, Dix.”

Tom's grin was still fixed, like his own pasted smile a few minutes ago. Not natural, as if it were concealing something. Simple concern for an old friend's mental health, probably. Or—

Tom?

Paunchy, conservative, workaholic Tom Birnam?

He'd known Tom for more than thirty years, since … what, sixth grade? Not a mean bone in his body, everybody said, which wasn't quite true. He could be a ruthless businessman, and on occasion he exhibited a true I-got-mine-and-fuck-the-world mentality. He had a quick temper, too, but if it had ever exploded into violence, Dix wasn't aware of the circumstances. There was simply nothing in Tom's makeup to suggest a hidden psychosis, nothing in their relationship or in Tom's business or personal relationship with Cecca to foster a sick hatred. Besides, he was a faithful family man—the lust in his heart, he was fond of saying, was all for Beth. The idea of Katy taking him as her lover was ludicrous.

“—the party, what do you say?”

“What? Sorry, Tom, I was woolgathering.”

“I said, let's go outside and join the party. It's stuffy in here.”

“Yes,” Dix said. His fingers, tight around the beer can, made indentations in the soft aluminum. “It is at that. A little stuffy in here.”

Cecca saw Dix walk out of the house and glance her way. Come over here and rescue me, she thought, but he didn't. He stood for a moment, at loose ends, and then drifted to where Jerry and George were talking by the Webers. He didn't want to be partying any more than she did. Not after that damn package yesterday and what they both agreed it implied about the tormentor's identity. And especially not after the phone call that afternoon.