Bill Pronzini - The Stalker

Fran stood as he approached, smoothing her skirt and touching her hair with that almost self-conscious movement women seem to affect. “Hi, honey,” she said, kissing him.

He held her for a moment, his hand moving in a familiar way along the gentle curve of her hip. “A little cool for the patio, isn’t it?”

“Well, it got to be stuffy inside.”

“Been waiting long?”

“Since noon.”

“Any mail?”

“A couple of things,” she said. “I put them on the hall table.” She slipped her arm about his waist. “Have you eaten lunch yet? It’s past one.

“Juano brought me a sandwich,” Drexel said. “Listen, Fran, you’re going to have to work half a day tomorrow, noon till five. Elena’s brother is getting married in Watsonville.”

“Okay.” She sighed wistfully. “It must be a lovely feeling to know you’re about to become a bride or a groom in twenty-four hours.”

“You’re not going to start in again, are you?”

“No, honey. I was just thinking about Elena’s brother.”

“Sure,” Drexel said. “Come on, let’s go inside and do it on the kitchen table.”

She blushed crimson, poking his arm. He grinned. This kid was something else, that was a fact. She couldn’t get enough of it, Christ she wore him out sometimes, but when you came right out and talked about it in the light of day, without the sun having set and the shades having been drawn and the lamp having been put out, she acted as if she’d never before seen or heard of a hard-on. Maybe it was that blushing schoolgirl innocence that had made him keep her around as long as he had; it was like making it with a virgin every time.

They entered the house through the glass-enclosed archway off the patio, stepping into the parlor. It was dark in there, shadowed and with very little color. The furniture was old and heavy and ponderous and expensive. An imposing scrolled desk sat on one side of the room, and on the rear wall, in close proximity to one another, were a religious mural and an oblong painting of a nude girl on blue velvet; a few people had been shocked by the impact of that juxtaposition, Drexel thought amusedly.

He went to the hall table and retrieved his mail. There was a telephone bill, and an advertisement for some real estate development called Whispering Echoes in Southern Oregon, and a two-week-old copy of the Philadelphia Inquirer . He put the phone bill in a slot marked PAYABLE in the wooden back of the desk, and the advertisement in the fieldstone fireplace; he took the newspaper to a brocade couch and began to peel off the mailing wrapper.

Fran said, “Why do you take newspapers from all over the country? Have you got relatives or something in Illinois and North Dakota and Pennsylvania?”

If only you knew, sweets. But he said, “No, it’s just a hobby. Some people collect stamps or coins or old rubbers. I collect newspapers.”

She blushed again. “Want some coffee?”

“Fine.”

She disappeared into the kitchen. Drexel lighted one of the thin black cheroots he affected, and spread the paper open. He began to scan it with practiced expertise, chuckling a little at Fran’s reaction to the idea of anyone collecting old rubbers. But the smile left his face abruptly when his eyes fell on the headline in the upper left-hand corner of Page Four: EUGENE BEAUCHAMP DIES IN PRIVATE PLANE CRASH. Holy Jesus, he thought. He put out the cheroot and read the accompanying story carefully; then he refolded the paper and laid it on the cushion beside him.

He stood and began to pace the muted Navajo rug, his mind working coldly, methodically, weighing and considering.

Fran came in a moment later. “Honey, there isn’t any cream. Do you want—?”

“Shut up,” Drexel said without looking at her. “Shut the hell up.”

“But I—”

“I told you to shut up. Get out of here. I’ll call you later.”

“Larry, what is it? What’s the matter?”

“Damn you, do what I say!”

A mixture of hurt and confusion made liquid form at the corners of her amber-colored eyes. She stood rigidly for almost ten seconds, and then she said, “All right, then!” and ran toward the hallway that led to the front entrance. The sound of the thick, arched wooden door slamming behind her caused faint reverberations to drift through the dark house.

Drexel continued to pace, still weighing, still considering. Finally, having made a decision, he went to the scrolled desk and unlocked the bottom drawer on the right side with a key from his pocket case. Inside, there was an old ersatz-leather scrapbook and a smaller, clothbound address book. He took the address book out and opened it and studied the facing page.

After a moment, he turned and went to where the telephone sat on an oddly shaped driftwood stand near the arched patio entrance.

2

United Airlines Flight 69, non-stop from Philadelphia, arrived at San Francisco International Airport at 1:26 P.M., four minutes ahead of schedule. One of the first passengers to disembark—when the mobile exit ramp had been locked into place at the fore and aft doors—was a small, rather nondescript man who walked with a noticeable limp. He had ridden the blue-carpet coach, and had slept through a technicolor movie with Gregory Peck and the passage of the two-limit cocktail cart and the distribution of chicken cordon bleu by two blonde stewardesses with portrait smiles; but as soon as the wheels of the DC-8 had touched the approach runway, he had been instantly alert, piercing sand-colored eyes peering intently through the window on his left, fingers drumming impatiently on a thin leather American Tourister briefcase which had never left his lap.

He passed through the railed observation area at Gate 30, and moved with surprising speed for a limping man along the north wing of the terminal. Outside the glassed outer wall, fog eddied in gray waves, like mounds of steel wool, across the pattern of concrete runways—but he took little notice of it.

In the main lobby, a blue and white sign above a set of escalators read: BAGGAGE CLAIM. He rode down to the lower level and waited by the huge revolving baggage carousel which was designated by his flight number. Some of the other passengers began to arrive, and a fat woman wearing an incongruous plumed hat came over to stand beside him. She had sat across the aisle on the plane.

“This takes forever,” she said in a strident voice. “You’d think the airlines would be more efficient. Things haven’t changed a bit since my first flight to San Francisco in 1947. Not a bit, mind you.”

The limping man glanced at her briefly, and then looked away. The first pieces of luggage began to flow out of the conveyor chute in the center of the sloping chrome carousel.

“Look at that,” the fat woman said, pursing her lips and pointing one huge arm at the chute. “They come out of there so fast, they get all banged up when they hit the sides. My best overnight bag has a crease on one end because of that. Why can’t they find another way to get the luggage out of the plane, some way that doesn’t damage everything you own.”

The limping man unwound two fingers from the handle of the briefcase and began to tap them irritably against the leather. He said nothing.

“If there’s another crease in any of my bags, I’m going to demand the terminal replace it with a new one,” the fat woman said. “They’re responsible, after all.”

A dun-colored pasteboard suitcase with a cracked plastic handle came out of the chute. It slid down to the rubberized bumper ringing the bottom sides of the carousel. When it had revolved to where he was standing, the limping man lifted it out quickly. The woman said, “You’d better examine the end of it. It probably has a crease in it, just like my—”