Bill Pronzini: The Stalker

“Shut up, you fat ugly useless bitch,” the limping man whispered softly, fervently. He turned and began to walk rapidly toward the south end of the level.

The fat woman made a surprised hennish sound deep in the folds of her throat. Spots of crimson fired her cheeks. She raised one trembling arm and pointed it after him, still making the sounds; fat jiggled on her upper arm like an inverted gelatin mold. The other passengers watched her. They had not heard the limping man’s words.

A moment later, he stopped at an enclosed booth representing one of the car rental agencies. A man in an ostentatious Madras jacket smiled unctuously at him from behind the counter. “Yes, sir?”

“I want a compact Chevrolet or Ford, light-colored, quiet engine.”

“Certainly, sir.”

“I’ll need it for a week. Ten days at the most.”

“May I see some identification, please? Driver’s license and any major credit card.”

The limping man set the pasteboard suitcase on the floor at his feet and took his wallet from the inside pocket of his faded brown suit jacket; he did not set the briefcase down. The unctuous man studied the driver’s license and an oil company credit card in the proffered wallet, nodded, and then consulted a list by his left elbow. “Would a Ford Mustang be acceptable, sir?”

“That’s all right.”

The unctuous man lifted a telephone, spoke briefly into it, and then rotated a pad of contract forms. The limping man filled out the single-page contract, signed it, and was given the last two pages in a card folder upon which the clerk had written the license number of the Ford Mustang and the stall where it could be located in the outside parking area.

The limping man picked up the pasteboard suitcase, went quickly to the far end of the level, and stepped through a door into the gelid afternoon.

Ice drops stung his skin and the wind whipped mercilessly at his sparse brown hair; but he seemed oblivious to the cold as he walked among the rental cars to his designated stall. A bearded boy in a white uniform with the agency’s name in bright blue across the back waited there for him. The boy looked at the card folder, inclined his head, and held the door open. The limping man ignored a tip-waiting hand and slid beneath the wheel of the Mustang. The keys were in the ignition.

He proceeded through the parking area fronting the airport and entered the northbound ramp leading onto the James Lick Freeway. The speedometer needle climbed to seventy and seemed to lock there; the limping man drove with both hands competently on the steering wheel, his eyes leaving the broken white line before him only to check the side-and rear-view mirrors prior to changing lanes.

Fifteen minutes later, he bore right at the Skyway and Central Freeway junctions, following the Skyway to the Seventh Street exit. He had been in San Francisco only once previously—two months ago-but he had memorized this route, and several others, with precise care. He had been over each more than once.

At Sixth Street, he crossed Market to enter Taylor; at the corner of Taylor and Geary, he turned into a parking garage. He left the Mustang with an attendant and carried the two cases along Geary to a small, unpretentious hotel called the Graceling.

Fingers again working in metronome cadence on the surface of the briefcase, he spoke to the polite, if somewhat bored, hotel clerk and signed the register. An aging bellhop with a faintly sour smell about him responded to the clerk’s summons, picked up the limping man’s suitcase, and led him over to a self-service elevator at the near end of the lobby. On the fourth floor, the bellhop unlocked the door to Number 412, placed the key on the lacquered dresser inside, laid the suitcase on an aluminum luggage rack near the window, and then returned to the doorway. He stood waiting. The limping man’s eyes, unblinking, met the bellhop’s liquidy blue ones; after a moment, the bellhop coughed nervously, averting his gaze, and retreated into the hallway.

When he had closed and locked the door, the limping man sat on the wide double bed and opened the briefcase with a tiny key from the breast pocket of his suit. From inside, he extracted a thick ten by-thirteen manila envelope and put it on his lap; he did not touch the heavy Ruger .44 Magnum Blackhawk revolver which lay in a chamois cloth at the bottom of the case.

Opening the manila envelope, he removed two sets of three folders each, both sets being fastened with thick, sturdy rubber bands. The folders were of the type used by college students for term paper assignments, and were of different colors. Those in one set were blue, gray, and red; those in the second were yellow, green, and orange. He glanced cursorily at the first set—blue and gray and red—and then returned it to the manila envelope. He slid the rubber band from the second set and placed its three folders side by side on the floral bedspread.

Each contained several sheets of ruled notepaper filled with lines of writing in an almost illegible backhand, and a Mobil Oil Travel and Street Map. The writing consisted of daily journal-like reports, over a two-week span, which the limping man had made on his first trip to California two months previous; they were detailed with names, numbers, dates, places, habits, and observations.

He sat staring at the names inked in large block letters on the front of each folder. Which one next? he asked himself silently. Well, it didn’t really make a great deal of difference, it would all be over within the week anyway—for him, and for each of them.

At length he selected the yellow folder, lay back on the bed, and began to study its contents, even though he had long since committed to memory each fact represented there.

It wasn’t the money at all.

But Steve will believe it is, Andrea Kilduff thought. Oh yes, that’s exactly what he’ll believe.

She drove the little tan Volkswagen carefully, allowing five carlengths between herself and the station wagon ahead. She was just coming into San Rafael now, some twenty miles north of San Francisco, and the Saturday afternoon traffic on U.S. Highway 101 was badly congested. Andrea wished she hadn’t put off leaving the city so long—what had she expected to happen, sitting there in that virtually empty café on Parnassus for more than two hours: her conscience or guardian angel or something to come and sit on the stool beside her like in those silly television commercials and talk her out of it? Well, it wouldn’t be long before she reached Duckblind Slough, and she was thankful that Steve hadn’t decided on Antioch or Stockton, both of which had also been under consideration that summer six years ago; driving in heavy freeway traffic always unnerved her, especially when any appreciable distance was involved.

Tiny, almost doll-like, she possessed that type of finely boned, aesthetic face which is coveted by fashion photographers and portrait painters. She felt, without vanity, that her mouth was just a little too small, her luminous black eyes under feathery natural lashes just a little too large; but each, in fact, contributed subtly yet prominently to a fragile, almost Dresden beauty. Her legs were perfectly proportioned in relation to her size, and her breasts were well defined, if rather small—she had always thought men disliked small breasts, but Steve had told her once, in bed, that the big-boob myth was just that, a myth, propagated by some Madison Avenue ad agency with a brassiere account, anything more than a mouthful was just wasted anyway. On this day, she wore a pair of tailored tweed slacks, a cardigan sweater, and a pale green silk scarf over her short ebon hair.

Watching the car ahead of her cautiously, she thought: He won’t recognize the real reason I’ve gone. If it enters his mind at all hell reject it, because he doesn’t know, hasn’t any idea, what has happened to him these past few years. And the terrible thing is, no matter what I do, he almost surely never will.