Hoodwink

FIVE

She had a small snifter of brandy in her left hand and a bottle of Lowenbrau in her right. So when she stopped in front of me, I said with spontaneous and devastating cleverness, “Two-fisted drinker, are you, Miss Wade?”

Which probably made me seem like a half-wit. Made me feel like one, anyway, when she extended the bottle, saying, “The bartender told me you’d asked for a beer earlier. Room Service finally decided to deliver some, so I thought I’d play waitress.”

I said, “Oh. Um, thanks.” And thought: God, you’re sharp tonight, just full of urbane remarks and sparkling repartee. No wonder you’re such a hot number with the ladies-you klutz, you.

Kerry seemed faintly amused; maybe klutzes appealed to her sense of humor. “It’s not Miss Wade, by the way. It’s Mrs. Dunston.”

“Oh,“I said again.

“But I don’t use the Dunston anymore. Not since my divorce two years ago.”

I started to say “Oh” a third time, caught myself, and said, “So you’re a divorced lady,” which was even dumber.

“Mm-hmm. How about you?”

“No.”

“No what? No, you’re not divorced?”

“No. I mean, I’m not married.”

“Never been?”

“Never been.”

“A bachelor private eye,” she said. “Do you carry a gun in your shoulder holster and have a beautiful secretary and keep a bottle in your desk drawer?”

“No to all three.”

“How come?”

“I don’t like guns much, secretaries are too expensive, especially beautiful ones, and I drink only beer.”

“That’s better,” she said.

“Better?”

“You were all flustered there for a minute. I was afraid you were one of these men who don’t know how to talk to a woman. Either that, or you were gay. You’re not, are you?”

“Me? God, no.”

“Good.”

“I wasn’t flustered, either,” I lied.

Her smile broadened; I was not fooling her at all.

“Are you also a writer, Miss Wade? Or should I call you Mrs. Duns ton?”

“Neither one. Try Kerry. No, I’m not a writer. I had aspirations once, and maybe a little inherited talent, but my parents did everything they could to discourage me. It’s probably a good thing they did.”

“Why is that?”

“Being a writer isn’t all people think it is.”

“It’s been a good business for them, hasn’t it?”

“For my dad it has. At least most of the time.”

“But not for your mother?”

“No. She hasn’t written a word in twenty-five years.”

“I didn’t know that. How come?”

“She isn’t able to write any more,” Kerry said. Some of the lightness had gone from her voice. “She wants to, but she just can’t. It’s hell for her. But then, if she was writing that would probably be hell for her, too. It was when she was doing her pulp stories.”

“I’m not sure I follow that.”

“It’s the nature of the business. Professional writing isn’t glamorous or exciting; it’s a lot of hard work, for not all that much money and no real security, and on top of that it’s the loneliest profession in the world. ‘Always having to live inside your own head,’ is the way my father puts it. Plus it’s one of the most stressful professions. That’s why the percentage of alcoholics and suicides among writers is double or triple that of just about every other business.”

“I didn’t know that, either,” I said.

“Most laypersons don’t.”

“Laypersons?”

“Well, nonwriters. Are you a chauvinist, by any chance?”

“Not me.”

“Fictional private eyes usually are,” she said, and a sort of bawdy gleam came into her eyes. “In fact, most of them seem to be obsessed with male-dominant sex. The gun they all carry is a phallic symbol, you know; every time they shoot somebody with it, it’s like having an orgasm.”

“Uh,“I said.

She laughed. It was a nice laugh, a little bawdy to match the gleam, and it did things to what was left of my shriveled libido. No wonder she made me feel flustered; I had not slept with a woman in months, and I was not used to outspoken, attractive, horny-eyed ladies coming on to me in the first place. And Kerry Wade was coming on to me, no doubt about that.

Wasn’t she?

I thought it might be a good idea to change the subject; otherwise I was liable to tuck my foot into my cheek in place of my tongue. “You didn’t answer the question I asked a little while ago,” I said. “About what you do. For a living, I mean.”

Her eyes laughed at me this time. I would have given anything to know what was going on behind them, what she was thinking about me. “I’m an advertising copywriter for Bates and Carpenter.”

“That’s a San Francisco firm.”

“One of the largest.”

“Then you live in the Bay Area?”

“Here in the city. On Twin Peaks.”

That surprised me a little. The convention brochure said that Ivan and Cybil Wade lived in North Hollywood, and so I had automatically assumed Kerry was also from Southern California. There were notions in my head already, but the fact that she lived in San Francisco gave me a few more. If she really was coming on to me …

“Well,“I said in my sophisticated way, “how about that?”

“Mmm. Where do you live?”

“Pacific Heights.”

She raised an eyebrow. “That’s a nice neighborhood.”

“Yep. But it’s an old building, and I’ve had my flat and the same benevolent landlord for more than twenty years. Otherwise I couldn’t afford it.”

“Do you really own twenty thousand pulp magazines?”

“Is that what Russ Dancer told you?”

“It is. Not true?”

“Not true. More like sixty-five hundred.”

Mention of Dancer made me aware that he was no longer singing his little lament. I glanced over at the chair he’d been sitting in, but it was empty now, — the party crowd seemed to have thinned out somewhat, and I didn’t see him anywhere else in the room either. Gone to the John, maybe. Or to his own room to sleep it off. No tengo Dancer, in any case, and that was probably just as well.

“Looking for somebody?” Kerry asked.

“I was just wondering what had happened to Dancer.”

“Don’t worry about him. He’ll be drunk the whole weekend, now that he’s seen Cybil again, but he won’t bother anybody. He seems to stop just short of being obnoxious.”

“Why would seeing your mother send him on a four-day binge?”

“You mean you couldn’t tell?”

“Tell what?”

“He’s in love with her. He has been for thirty-five years.”

“So that’s it.”

“He had it so bad, Cybil says, that he even tried once to talk her into divorcing my father and marrying him. That was back around 1950, just before he left New York and moved out here.”

“Your father knew about this?”

“Sure. He and Cybil never had any secrets from each other.”

“Well, that explains why he doesn’t like Dancer,” I said.

“You noticed that much, at least. Dad hates him, I think; he didn’t even want to come here when he found out Dancer would be on the program. But Cybil talked him into it. It’s all water under the bridge as far as she’s concerned.”

“Then she’d hardly be afraid of Dancer, would she?”

“Afraid of him? Lord, no. She’s not afraid of anybody. She’s as tough as Max Ruffe used to be ‘in her stories.”

Yeah, she is, I thought. And she’s packing a rod just like Ruffe did, too. How come? I wanted to ask Kerry, but this did not seem to be the time or place to spring that kind of question. Besides which, as I kept telling myself, it was none of my business. Not unless Cybil intended to take potshots at somebody. And I doubted that.

Kerry finished what was left of her brandy, and I asked her if she’d like another. She said, “I don’t think so. Two drinks are my limit on an empty stomach.”

“No dinner tonight?”

“Nope. I had to work late.”

“You must be pretty hungry, then.”

“Getting that way. Want to buy me a sandwich?”

“Sure.”

“Is that a serious offer?”

“Italians are always serious when it comes to food,” I said, which was the first semiwitty line I had managed in her presence so far. “There’s a coffee shop down in the lobby. Or we could go over to Rosebud’s on Geary.”

“Rosebud’s sounds good,” she said. “We’ll have to stop by my folks’ room first, though; I left my coat there. Just let me get the key.”

I watched her move away to where Cybil and Ivan were talking to another couple, and I thought: So maybe she really is coming on to me-how about that? I felt pretty chipper. My somewhat bruised male ego had taken a much-needed stroking in the past few minutes-and never mind what it was she saw or thought she saw in me. Never mind the erotic fantasies, either that were starting to simmer in the back of m) dirty old brain. It was just nice to find an attractive woman who found me attractive in turn, even if it never led to anything more than a late-night supper at Rosebud’s English pub. She made me feel awkward and comfortable at the same time, which is a stimulating way to feel, and I liked her frankness and her sense of humor and the way her coppery hair seemed to ripple with reflections of light. In fact I liked everything about her so far.

She came back after a couple of minutes, and I finished the last of my beer and we went out. On the way to the elevators I asked her, “What would you say if I told you I became a private detective because I wanted to be like the private eyes I read about in the pulps?”

“You mean tough and hard-boiled?”

“No. Just a private eye-doing a job, helping people in trouble.”

“In other words, being a hero.”

“Well… in a way, yes.”

“Then I’d say you made a good choice. I’m partial to heroes myself, all kinds, even if it’s not fashionable any more. The world would be a much better place if there were more heroes and fewer antiheroes. Not to mention fewer politicians.”

I liked that too.

We took a down elevator and got off on the tenth floor. The Wades’ room was 1017, just down the left-hand hallway-a suite, judging from the jux position of numbered doors on that side. Kerry got out the key her mother had given her, scraped it into the latch, unlocked the door, and pushed it open. She reached inside for the light switch, but when she flipped it nothing happened.

“Damn,” she said. “Now the chandelier doesn’t work.”

“Maybe there’s a short.”

“Well, I’d better put on a lamp for the folks. My coat’s on the sofa.”

She moved inside, feeling her way in the darkness. I took a step through the doorway after her and stepped to one side, so I wouldn’t block the light from the hall. On the left I could make out a pale grayish oblong-part of the window over which the drapes had been half drawn. Enough reflected light from outside filtered in through there to outline the bulky shapes of furniture, to turn Kerry into a fading silhouette like a shadow image moving behind a screen-

But we weren’t alone in the room.I sensed it abruptly; there was no sound, no movement, just the sudden feeling of occupied space and another presence nearby. The realiza tion sent a cold slithering along my spine, bunched the muscles in my arms and across my shoulders and back. I held my breath, listening. Silence except for the slide of Kerry’s shoes on the thick carpet. I took another step forward, acting on reflex to get to where she was before she put on the lamp; there wasn’t anything else I could do. Trying to locate whoever it was in the dark was no good, and neither was calling out a warning to Kerry.

Something made a low thumping sound. Then she said “Damn” again in an exasperated tone. “Now where’s that bloody lamp-”

A stirring off to my left.

And the silhouette of a man loomed up between me and the window, head down and rushing toward me or the open door behind me.

I turned to meet him, trying to set myself, but he was there, an indistinct male shape, before I could get my feet planted; I smelled the sharp sour odor of whiskey just before he hit me with an outthrust shoulder. The force of the blow spun me half around and threw me into something, a table, and I went over it ass-sideways and down in a backward sprawl. My chin cracked against something else and for an explosive instant there were pinwheels of light behind my eyes, a ringing in my ears. Then the light and the ringing faded, and I could hear Kerry shouting my name in a stunned way, the thud of a body hitting the wall beside the door and then skidding through into the hall. I was already rolling over onto my knees; when I rightghted myself I had my head up and my eyes open and half focused through a haze of pain. But by then the doorway was empty and so was the corridor beyond.

The table I had fallen over was on my left; I used it as a fulcrum to shove up onto my feet. Kerry was close by, reaching toward me in the darkness, saying “My God, are you all right?” But I went away from her, struggling with my balance, still fighting off the effects of the blow to my chin, and said, “Stay here, wait inside,” just before I lurched out through the door.

The hallway was empty in both directions, but he hadn’t gone back the short way to the elevators. I could hear the faint echoes of somebody running down where a cross-hall intersected with this one, over in the east wing. I lumbered off that way, making snuffling and snorting sounds like an old Dull until I got my breathing under control. When I got to where I could see eastward along the cross-hall, there was nothing to see: he had disappeared. But I could still hear faint running echoes, hollow-sounding now. And underneath a green exit sign, the door to a set of fire stairs was just closing on its pneumatic tube.

I knew it was no good, I’d never catch him, even before I got down there and hauled the door open. The running steps were louder in the stairwell, magnified by its narrow depth, but still fading. He was two or three floors below me already. And he could duck out on any floor he cared to, or go all the way down to the lobby or the basement parking garage, before I could get anywhere near him. There just wasn’t any point in putting my paunchy fifty-three-year-old body through any more wind sprints, particularly down several flights of stairs.

I slapped the door open again, went back into the hall, and leaned against the wall to mop sweat off my face with my handkerchief. Sweat, — at least, was the only wetness that came off the cloth; no blood from where I had cracked my throbbing chin.

Damn sneak thief, I thought. Sneak thieves were a problem in hotels these days. Hundreds of rooms were broken into each year in San Francisco alone, and small fortunes in cash, jewelry, clothing, and other hockable personal possessions were stolen. And security at the Continental, I had heard from one of my cop friends, was not all it could have been. Sure-a sneak thief.

Except that sneak thieves are a sober lot, at least while they’re working. They need a steady hand to pick door locks and suitcase and jewelry case locks, a clear head to stay alert for returning guests or hotel employees. So how come this one had a breath like the inside of a whiskey keg? And how come he took the time to gimmick the chandelier so the lights wouldn’t come on? Sneak thieves like to get into a room and out of it again with their booty in short order; they don’t linger to take precautions that could backfire on them.

If not a sneak thief, then who? Rapist? Not likely. Somebody after something that belonged to the Wades, that was among their belongings? Possible. And also possible that it was somebody waiting to do harm to either one or both of them, or because he wanted something from either or both of them.

I thought about the blackmail letters and the allegations of plagiarism. I thought about the gun Cybil carried in her purse. I thought about the undercurrent of tensions among the Pulpeteers- especially the tension between Ivan Wade and Russ Dancer. I thought about Kerry saying Dancer had been in love with Cybil for more than thirty years. And I thought about Dancer disappearing from the party, about all the whiskey he had poured into himself tonight, about how the moods of a drunk shift and sometimes become irrational, even violent. Dancer? I thought-Christ-Dancer?