Hoodwink

THREE

The Continental was an old Victorian hotel not far from Union Square, in the heart of the city. It had been built around 1890, at no small expense, which meant that it had a pillared and frescoed and English tile-floored lobby, and ornamental Queen Anne fireplaces in every room. Although it was too small to compete with the St. Francis, the Fairmont, and the other fancy hotels, it catered to the same type of well-to-do clientele. More or less, anyway. In recent years the management had been forced to relax its standards somewhat, as a result of increased operating costs, and to allow people and events in its hallowed halls which might not otherwise have measured up. If you had suggested twenty years ago that a pulp magazine convention be held there, they would have thrown you out on your ear.

I got there a few minutes before eight, all spruced up and chewing a Clorets mint to conceal the pepperoni pizza I had had for supper, and took one of the mirror-walled elevators up to the fif teenth floor. Suite M was at the southern end; there was a table to one side of the entrance with a banner hanging from it that read: Western Pulp Con-Private Reception. A balding, fortyish guy in a turtleneck sweater and sports jacket was sitting behind the table, making notations on a mimeographed list. When I told him my name, he smiled broadly, letting me see an uneven set of dentures, and pumped my hand as if the two words were a hot tip on an Italian horse.

“Pleasure,” he said. “Pleasure. I’m Lloyd Underwood, convention chairman. From Hayward.”

“How are you, Mr. Underwood?”

“Call me Lloyd. Glad you could come. I’ve heard about you-before Russ Dancer mentioned you’d be coming, I mean. Spotted your name in the papers a few times. Like to see your collection one of these days. Got any good duplicates for trade?”

“Well…”

“Let me know if you need any pre — I930 Black Masks. I’m selling off part of my collection. I’ve got two from ‘27 and one from ‘24 with a Hammett story, — all three near mint, white pages, no cover defects. I’ll give you a complete list later.”

“Uh, sure …”

“We’ll have plenty of time to talk,” Underwood said. “Come early tomorrow if you can. Registration starts at noon, but I’ll be setting up at ten-thirty and the huckster room will be open then.

You might as well have your name tag now, though.”

“Name tag?”

“Have to wear one so you can attend all the events. This must be your first con.” He wrote my name on a gummed label and handed it to me. “There you go. Bar’s to your left as you go in. But if you like beer, there isn’t any. I asked room service to send some up, but they haven’t got here yet.”

I nodded without saying anything, because antic types like him tend to make me inarticulate, and entered the suite through the half-open doors. It was one big room about the size of a cocktail lounge, divided into three sections by two pairs of circular pillars. Rococo chandeliers hung from the ceiling, and there were two Queen Anne fireplaces, one at each side wall; the whole of the end wall facing the entrance was windows, some of them open to let in the mellow summery air San Francisco gets in late May. Heavy Victorian furniture was placed at strategic locations so you could sit and admire the view. And it was some view, too, particularly on a night like this: Twin Peaks to the west, the glistening black of the Bay, and the mosaic of city lights in between.

There were about twenty people standing or sitting together in small groups, making party noises and bending party elbows. None of them paid much attention to me as I wandered through, although I did get a somewhat lengthy glance from a tall, good-looking woman with coppery hair. But that was probably because I almost bumped into her and knocked her down, which is what happens to clumsy people who try to walk, peel the paper backing off a name tag, and look for a familiar face all at the same time.

I found Dancer holding up one of the pillars, talking to a scrawny guy about sixty with turkey wattles and the kind of suntan you don’t get on a three-week vacation. Dancer was saying something about Norbert Davis being the only pulp writer who could be funny and hard-boiled at once, but the scrawny guy did not seem to be listening. He wore a worried and preoccupied expression, and he kept patting the half-dozen hairs combed grid-fashion over the top of his skull-as if what he worried about was that they would fall off or disappear.

When Dancer saw me he said, “Hey, there he is, the shamus,” and reached out to smack me on the shoulder. The scrawny guy swiveled his head like a startled bird and peered at me. Then he patted the six hairs again. The ice in the glass clamped in his other hand made nervous tinkling sounds.

“This is the pulp-collecting dick I told you about, Frank,” Dancer said to the scrawny guy. Then to me: “Meet Frank Colodny. Meanest damn editor the pulps ever saw. Twice as mean as Leo Margulies in his heyday, and not half as decent underneath. Right, Frank baby?”

Colodny had nothing to say to that. I gave him my hand and told him it was an honor to meet him. He had been something of a scourge in his time, all right-a tough-minded, hell-raising boy wonder who had taken over a floundering Midnight Detective in 1942, when he was twenty-three years old and a 4-F asthmatic, and kept it- and more than a dozen other detective, Western, love, and air-war pulps-alive during the war and for nearly a decade afterward. You wouldn’t guess it to look at him, but he had also had a reputation as a high-living, hard-drinking roue. Well, maybe this was what happened to high-living, hard-drinking roues: they turned into scrawny guys with turkey wattles and suntans and six hairs on their scalps. Low-living, light-drinking, near-celibate types like me might like to think so, anyway.

Colodny did not think it was an honor to meet me; he grunted something, let go of my hand the way you let go of things you don’t like the feel of, and knocked back half of his drink. He still looked worried, and he still looked preoccupied.

Dancer said to me, “You know what he did when Action House collapsed in ‘50? Goddamnedest thing you ever heard. I still can’t get over it. Tell him, Frank.”

“You talk too much,” Colodny said, and pushed past me and headed for the bar.

“Friendly sort, isn’t he?” I said.

Dancer’s mood seemed to shift from good humor to sudden anger, the way a drunk’s will. And he was drunk, all right, or close to it; his eyes told you that. “He’s a lousy son of a bitch.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Screwed me out of a thousand bucks in the late forties, that’s why. Screwed a lot of other writers, too.”

“How did he do that?”

“He had ways.” Dancer’s hands clenched and he glared over at where Colodny was at the bar. “Lousy son of a bitch.”

“Take it easy,” I said. “The time to start trouble was thirty years ago, when it happened.” If it happened, I thought. “What did Colodny do when the pulps collapsed in 1950? You started to tell me but you didn’t finish it?”

Mercurially, Dancer’s mood shifted back to the previous good humor; the sardonic smile quirked his mouth. “Bought himself a town.”

“How was that again?”

“Bought himself a town. Moved out to Arizona and bought a run-down old ghost town up in the hills somewhere. Can you beat that? Isn’t that the goddamnedest thing you ever heard?”

“What did he do with this ghost town?”

“Didn’t do anything with it. Said he always wanted to own a town, and now he does. Named it after himself too, by God. Colodnyville. Isn’t that the goddamnedest thing you ever heard?”

“He’s been living in a ghost town all these years?”

“Off and on, he says. Most people have a cabin in the woods; Colodny’s got a frigging ghost town in the hills. Isn’t that the-”

“Yeah,” I said. I was still fiddling with the name tag; the paper didn’t want to come off the gummed backing. The hell with it, I thought. I did not like name tags in the first place, and besides, Dancer wasn’t wearing one. I put the thing into the handkerchief pocket of my jacket, where I would be sure to forget about it.

Dancer said, “Aren’t you drinking?”

“No. Lloyd Underwoood told me there’s no beer.”

“Beer? Booze is free tonight, you now.”

“I only drink beer.”

“No kidding, huh? How come?”

A big elderly guy in a Western shirt and a string tie saved me from having to explain my drinking habits. He wandered through the crowd and between Dancer and me, presumably on his way to the bathroom; but Dancer reached out and caught hold of his forearm and stopped him.

“Jimbo,” he said, “rein up a second. Want you to meet the shamus I was telling you about.”

“Well,” the big guy said, and a smile creased his leathery features. He was about seventy, but he stood tall and straight, with his shoulders back and his head high; you got the impression that he was a proud man. And an active one, too, who hadn’t been slowed down much by age. He gave me his hand, saying, “I’m Jim Bohannon. Glad to know you.”

“Same here.”

“Jimbo was heir to Heinle Faust back in the forties,” Dancer said. “The new Max Brand-king of the oaters.”

“Horse manure,” Bohannon said.

“Sure you were. Wrote a lead novel just about every month for Leo Margulies at Thrilling or Rog Terrill at Popular. How many pulp pieces you do altogether, Jimbo?”

“Oh, maybe a thousand.”

“Prolific as hell. Still does a novel once in a while. Must have ground out a hundred books by now, huh, Jimbo?”

Bohannon frowned at him-but tolerantly, the way a father might at a noisy, abrasive, but still likable son. Then he looked at me again, and the easygoing grin came back. “Hell,” he said, “you’re not much interested in the Bohannon statistics. I understand your pulp collection is mostly mystery and detective; you’ve probably never read a word of mine.”

“I’m interested, all right,” I said, and meant it. “And I have read some of your work.”

“Oh?”

“Sure. The series you used to do for Adventure, about the Alaskan peace officer in the twenties. And the series about the railroad detectives, Kincaid and Buckmaster, in Short Stories. Pure detective fiction, and some terrific writing.”

Bohannon’s grin widened. “I don’t know if that’s grease or not,” he said, “but I like it anyhow.”

“It’s not grease.”

“Well, thanks. It’s nice to have your work remembered.”

“Maybe you think so, Jimbo,” Dancer said, “but not me. Who the hell really cares if you’ve published twenty million words and I’ve published maybe ten? Who cares about all the lousy stories and books we’ve written? They’re all just so much garbage rotting away in basements and secondhand stores.”

Bohannon sighed. It was obvious he’d heard that particular line, or a variation of it, before and that he’d learned the only way to deal with it was to ignore it. So it seemed like a good idea for me to help him out by changing the subject.

“About the manuscript and letter you and the others received, Mr. Bohannon,” I said. “Do you think it’s a serious extortion plot of some kind?”

“Oh, I doubt it. Somebody’s idea of a joke, probably.”

“Did the novelette ring any bells?”

“None, I’m afraid.”

“Was the style at all familiar?”

“Nope,” Bohannon said. He grinned. “I don’t know much about Victorian melodramas, — horse operas are what I like.”

“Another twenty years,” Dancer said, “there won’t be any more horse operas for anybody to like. Not even any of the adult porno crap that’s all over the place right now. Nothing. Nada.” “Maybe not, Russ. But I’ll tell you one thing there’ll still be plenty of twenty years from now.”

“What’s that?”

“Horses’ asses,“Bohannon said.

It was a pretty good exit line, and Bohannon knew it; he nodded to me, showed me his grin one more time, and moved off. Dancer stared after him, but there was no anger in his expression; maybe it was only Frank Colodny who made him feel belligerent when he was tight. Then he shrugged, lifted his glass, saw it was empty, and scowled at it.

“I need another drink,” he said, as if he were surprised at himself for overlooking the fact until just now.

“It’s early yet, Russ.”

“Damn right it is,” he said, misinterpreting my meaning. “Come on, we’ll get a couple of belts, and I’ll introduce you to the rest of the Pulpeteers.”

He turned toward the bar, walking steadily enough, and I followed and watched him tell the young guy who was tending it to pour a double Wild Turkey on the rocks. There was still no beer, it turned out. Dancer started to make a fuss about that, but I told him it didn’t matter. I wasn’t thirsty anyway. And prodded him aside.

But I did the prodding a little too forcefully, because he turned straight into a heavy mahogany coffee table and stumbled against its leg. Some of the liquor spilled out of his glass onto the table. The two women sitting behind it on the plush Victorian settee hopped up to keep from getting splashed; then the older of the two reached down just in time to prevent her purse, which was perched on one corner of the table, from toppling off.

Dancer recovered his balance, smiled in a wolfish way, and said, “Sorry, ladies. A slight accident.”

“There’s always a slight accident when you’re around, Russ,” the older woman said.

“Now, Sweeteyes, don’t be nasty.”

The woman said something to that in an undertone, but I was looking at the younger one and I didn’t hear it. She was the tall, good-looking redhead I had almost run down earlier, and she was even nicer to look at up close. Not pretty in any classic sense, but still striking: animated face etched with humor lines; generous mouth, sleek jawline, dark eyes that had no makeup to accentuate them and didn’t need any; slim long-fingered hands; stylish shoulder-length hairdo; willowy figure in a dark green suit. She might have been thirty-five or forty, not that it mattered.

She gazed back at me without conceit, offense, or false modesty-just a frank steady look that said she liked to be appreciated. Not eye-raped, but appreciated. “Let me guess,” she said. Sexy voice too, like Lauren Bacall. “You’re the private eye.”

“That’s me. And you’re-?”

“Kerry Wade,” Dancer said. “And this is Cybil Wade. Two-thirds of the Wade family. Old Ivan’s around somewhere.” He leered at the older woman. “Old Ivan’s always been around somewhere, hasn’t he, Sweeteyes?”

“Don’t call me that, Russ,” Cybil Wade said.

“Why not? Fits you.”

He was right about that. Her eyes were huge, tawny-colored, guileless-sweet. Combined with dimples, the same coppery hair and willowy figure as her daughter, and a radiant smile, they gave her a kind of ingenuousness that even six decades or so of living had failed to erase. Kerry Wade was attractive, yes, but Cybil Wade was beautiful. Had been beautiful when she was young and was still beautiful right now-a sixty-year-old knockout in a white satin dress.

I touched hands with her and with her daughter, and we all said how pleased we were to meet each other. It seemed to me that Kerry’s hand lingered in mine, but maybe that was just wishful thinking. And the one thing about Cybil that did not fit the sweet, wholesome image she presented was her voice: it was even sexier than Kerry’s.

“Hard to believe this little doll wrote the Max Ruffe private eye stuff, isn’t it?” Dancer said. “Never could get over it. Wrote just like a man- all hard-edged blood, guts, and sex.”

“Not only like a man,” I said. “Better than just about all of them.”

Kerry’s gaze was still on me, and it seemed to have some speculative interest in it. “Have you read a lot of Cybil’s pulp stories?”

“Enough to put her in the same league with Chandler and Hammett. I can even quote a line from one.”

“Really?“ Cybil asked.

“Really. I read it five or six years ago and I’ve never forgotten it. ‘He had a face like a graveyard at night-cold, empty, a little frightening-and when he opened his mouth, you could see stumps of teeth sticking up here and there like headstones.’ “

She rolled her eyes. “My God,” she said, “are you sure I wrote that?” But she sounded pleased just the same.

“Positive. I forget the title of the story, but the author was Samuel Leatherman.”

Dancer said, “You always were good with the brooding metaphor, Sweeteyes. Wrote just like a man, all right. One thing, though, that you never wrote as well as a hack like me.”

“What would that be, Russ?”

“A kick in the balls,” Dancer said. “Only a man can do justice to a kick in the balls.”

He seemed to expect some kind of reaction to that but not the one he got. Kerry and I just looked at him the way you do at somebody who makes a boorish remark at a party; but an expression of ironic amusement crossed Cybil’s face, and she reached out and patted Dancer’s arm like somebody patting a dog on the head.

“I’m not so sure about that, Russ,” she said. “Would you like me to kick you in the balls so we can find out?”

Dancer didn’t much like that; he glared at her for a long moment. I took a step toward him in case he got nasty. But then his facial muscles relaxed, and he shook his head and began to laugh.

“Any time, Sweeteyes,” he said. “It might even be fun.” And he laughed so hard that he banged into the coffee table again and spilled a little more of his drink. He also dislodged Cybil’s purse this time, sent it off onto the floor before she could grab it. It popped open when it hit, and some things spilled out.

She bent down to it, saying, “Damn you, Russ.” I started to help her, but she shook her head and did the scooping up herself.

“Sorry about that,” Dancer said. “Another slight accident.”

Cybil straightened up, ignoring him, and tucked the purse under her arm. “I’m going to the powder room,” she said to Kerry, nodded to me, and headed toward the entrance doors.

Kerry gave me a faint smile that might have meant anything or nothing at all; then she moved to the bar. I watched the way she walked-smooth and flowing, almost catlike-but only part of my mind noted and registered it. The other part was working on something else: one of the things that had fallen out of Cybil Wade’s purse, that I had glimpsed before she could shove it back inside.

What was a nice, sweet-faced lady like her doing at a party with a.38 snub-nosed revolver?