Scenarios - A Collection of Nameless Detective Stories Read online

  SCENARIOS

  Bill Pronzini

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  © 2012 Bill Pronzini

  Copy-edited by: Erin Bailey, David Niall Wilson, David Dodd

  Cover Design By: David Dodd

  Background image courtesy of:

  http://virusnac.deviantart.com/

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  OTHER CROSSROAD PRESS PRODUCTS BY BILL PRONZINI

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  Case File

  Graveyard Plots

  Night Freight

  Oddments

  Sleuths

  NON-FICTION:

  Gun in Cheek: An Affectionate Guide to the Worst in Mystery Fiction

  AUDIOBOOKS:

  Case File

  Graveyard Plots

  Gun in Cheek: An Affectionate Guide to the Worst in Mystery Fiction

  Night Freight

  Oddments

  Sleuths

  Son of Gun in Cheek

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  Contents

  Preface

  It's a Lousy World

  The Pulp Connection

  Dead Man's Slough

  The Ghosts of Ragged-Ass Gulch

  Cat's-Paw

  Skeleton Rattle Your Mouldy Leg

  Incident in a Neighborhood Tavern

  Stakeout

  La Bellezza delle Bellezze

  Souls Burning

  Bomb Scare

  The Big Bite

  Season of Sharing (with Marcia Muller)

  Wrong Place, Wrong Time

  Preface

  In terms of life on the printed page, the "Nameless Detective" celebrates his thirty-fifth birthday in 2003. During his three and a half decades, he has appeared in twenty-eight novels and more than forty shorter works, and has undergone professional and personal highs and lows too numerous to mention here. Those various changes, for the most part chronicled in his novel-length adventures, are the reason for the seeming lack of connective tissue among some of the stories which appear in the following pages. New readers are invited—I might even say encouraged—to seek out such novels as Hoodwink, Shackles, Illusions, Crazybone, and Bleeders in order to fill in the gaps.

  The fourteen selections here span the entire thirty-five years of "Nameless's" existence. The opening story, "It's a Lousy World," is his first recorded case, having been published originally in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine in 1968. The final entry, "Wrong Place, Wrong Time," is his most recent outing in the short form.

  A few of the dozen tales sandwiched between invite comment. "The Ghosts of Ragged-Ass Gulch" was written late in 1981, one of four longish novelettes commissioned by a Japanese publisher for a "Nameless" volume published only in that country. Its publication here is the first English language appearance in its original form. (I confess to having expanded and substantially revised the story into the novel Nightshades. One of the other novelettes was likewise cannibalized, into Quicksilver; the remaining two, "Who's Calling?" and "Booktaker," appear in the first collection of "Nameless" shorts, Casefile.)

  "La Bellezza delle Bellezze" and "The Big Bite" are also cannibalized stories, the former incorporated into Epitaphs, the latter expanded into the opening three chapters of Bleeders. As is the case with "The Ghosts of Ragged-Ass Gulch," these two stories are self-contained and substantially different in form and content from their novelized versions. For that reason it seems fair and reasonable to offer them here in the form in which they were initially written.

  "Season of Sharing" was written on commission for Crippen & Landru, for publication as their 2001 Christmas gift pamphlet. It is the third collaboration between my wife Marcia Muller's San Francisco-based sleuth, Sharon McCone, and "Nameless" on a common case; the previous two were a novel, Double, and a short story, "Cache and Carry."

  As the body of work about "Nameless" attests, he has been a major player in my life and career. In many ways he is my alter ego; he is also a friend, and has sometimes even been (I hope he won't take offense) a much-needed cash cow. He's far from perfect, God knows, but he is hardworking, caring, honest, and pretty good at his job. I like to believe he's also a relatively nice guy, the sort others would enjoy having a beer with or inviting over for dinner. If he comes across that way to you, then I've been pretty good at my job, too.

  Bill Pronzini

  Petaluma, California

  It's a Lousy World

  Colly Babcock was shot to death on the night of September 9, in an alley between Twenty-ninth and Valley streets in the Glen Park District of San Francisco. Two police officers, cruising, spotted him coming out the rear door of Budget Liquors there, carrying a metal box. Colly ran when he saw them. The officers gave chase, calling out for him to halt, but he just kept running; one of the cops fired a warning shot, and when Colly didn't heed it the officer pulled up and fired again. He was aiming low, trying for the legs, but in the half-light of the alley it was a blind shot. The bullet hit Colly in the small of the back and killed him instantly.

  I read about it the following morning over coffee and undercooked eggs in a cafeteria on Taylor Street, a block and a half from my office. The story was on an inside page, concise and dispassionate; they teach that kind of objective writing in the journalism classes. Just the cold facts. A man dies, but he's nothing more than a statistic, a name in black type, a faceless nonentity to be considered and then forgotten along with your breakfast coffee.

  Unless you knew him.

  Unless he was your friend.

  Very carefully I folded the newspaper and put it into my coat pocket. Then I stood from the table, went out to the street. The wind was up, blowing in off the Bay; rubble swirled and eddied in the Tenderloin gutters. The air smelled of salt and dark rain and human pollution.

  I walked into the face of the wind, toward my office.

  "How's the job, Colly?"

  "Oh, fine, just fine."

  "No problems?"

  "No, none at all."

  "Stick with it, Colly."

  "Sure. I'm a new man."

  "Straight all the way?"

  "Straight all the way."

  Inside the lobby of my building, I found an out-of-order sign taped to the closed elevator doors. Yeah, that figured. I went around to the stairs, up to the second floor and along the hallway to my office.

  The door was unlocked, standing open a few inches. I tensed when I saw it like that, and reached out with the tips of my fingers and pushed it all the way open. But there was no trouble.

  The woman sitting in the chair in front of my desk had never been trouble for anyone.

  Colly Babcock's widow.

  I moved inside, shut the door and crossed toward her.

  "Hello, Lucille."

  Her hands were clasped tightly in the lap of a plain black dress. She said, "The man down the hall, the CPA - he let me in. He said you wouldn't mind."

  "I don't mind."
/>   "You heard, I guess? About Colly?"

  "Yes," I said. "What can I say, Lucille?"

  "You were his friend. You helped him."

  "Maybe I didn't help him enough."

  "He didn't do it," Lucille said. "He didn't steal that money. He didn't do all those robberies like they're saying."

  "Lucille. . ."

  "Colly and I were married thirty-one years," she said. "Don't you think I would have known?"

  I did not say anything.

  "I always knew," she said.

  I sat down, looking at her. She was a big woman, handsome —a strong woman. There was strength in the line of her mouth, and in her eyes, round and gray, tinged with red now from the crying. She had stuck by Colly through two prison terms and twenty-odd years of running, and hiding, and looking over her shoulder. Yes, I thought, she would always have known.

  But I said, "The papers said Colly was coming out the back door of the liquor store carrying a metal box. The police found a hundred and six dollars in the box, and the door jimmied open."

  "I know what the papers said, and I know what the police are saying. But they're wrong. Wrong."

  "He was there, Lucille."

  "I know that," she said. "Colly liked to walk in the evenings. A long walk and then a drink when he came home; it helped him to relax. That was how he came to be there."

  I shifted position on my chair, not speaking.

  Lucille said, "Colly was always nervous when he was doing burglaries. That was one of the ways I could tell. He'd get irritable, and he couldn't sleep."

  "He wasn't like that lately?"

  "You saw him a few weeks ago," she said. "Did he look that way to you?"

  "No," I said, "he didn't."

  "We were happy," Lucille said. "No more running. And no more waiting. We were truly happy."

  My mouth felt dry. "What about his job?"

  "They gave Colly a raise last week. A fifteen-dollar raise. We went to dinner to celebrate, down on the Wharf."

  "You were getting along all right on what he made?" I said. "Nothing came up?"

  "Nothing. We even had a little bank account started." She bit her lower lip. "We were going to Hawaii next year, or the year after. Colly always wanted to go to Hawaii."

  I looked at my hands. They seemed big and awkward resting on the desk top; I took them away and put them in my lap. "These Glen Park robberies started a month and a half ago," I said. "The police estimate the total amount taken at close to five thousand dollars. You could get to Hawaii pretty well on that kind of money."

  "Colly didn't do those robberies," she said.

  What could I say? God knew, and Lucille knew, that Colly had never been a saint; but this time she was convinced he'd been innocent. Nothing, it seemed, was going to change that in her eyes.

  I got a cigarette from my pocket and made a thing of lighting it. The smoke added more dryness to my mouth. Without looking at her, I said, "What do you want me to do, Lucille?"

  "I want you to prove Colly didn't do what they're saying he did."

  "I'd like nothing better, you know that. But how can I do it? The evidence —"

  "Damn the evidence!" Her wide mouth trembled with the sudden emotion. "Colly was innocent, I tell you! I won't have him buried with this last mark against his name. I won't have it."

  "Lucille, listen to me. . ."

  "I won't listen," she said. "Colly was your friend. You stood up for him with the parole board. You helped him find his job. You talked to him, gave him guidance. He was a different man, a new man, and you helped make him that way. Will you sit here and tell me you believe he threw it all away for five thousand dollars?"

  I didn't say anything; I still could not meet her eyes. I stared down at the burning cigarette in my fingers, watching the smoke rise, curling, a gray spiral in the cold air of the office.

  "Or don't you care whether he was innocent or not?" she said.

  "I care, Lucille."

  "Then help me. Find out the truth."

  "All right," I said. Her anger and grief, and her absolute certainty that Colly had been innocent, had finally got through to me; I could not have turned her down now if there had been ten times the evidence there was. "All right, Lucille, I'll see what I can do."

  It was drizzling when I got to the Hall of Justice. Some of the chill had gone out of the air, but the wind was stronger now. The clouds overhead looked black and swollen, ready to burst.

  I parked my car on Bryant Street, went past the sycamores on the narrow front lawn, up the concrete steps and inside. The plainclothes detective division, General Works, was on the fourth floor; I took the elevator. Eberhardt had been promoted to lieutenant not too long ago and had his own private office now, but I caught myself glancing over toward his old desk. Force of habit; it had been a while since I'd visited him at the Hall.

  He was in and willing to see me. When I entered his office he was shuffling through some reports and scowling. He was my age, pushing fifty, and he seemed to have been fashioned of an odd contrast of sharp angles and smooth, blunt planes: square forehead, sharp nose and chin, thick and blocky upper body, long legs and angular hands. Today he was wearing a brown suit that hadn't been pressed in a month; his tie was crooked; there was a collar button missing from his shirt. And he had a fat, purplish bruise over his left eye.

  "All right," he said, "make it quick."

  "What happened to your eye?"

  "I bumped into a doorknob."

  "Sure you did."

  "Yeah," he said. "You come here to pass the time of day, or was there something?"

  "I'd like a favor, Eb."

  "Sure. And I'd like three weeks' vacation."

  "I want to look at an Officer's Felony Report."

  "Are you nuts? Get the hell out of here."

  The words didn't mean anything. He was always gruff and grumbly while he was working; and we'd been friends for more years than either of us cared to remember, ever since we went through the Police Academy together after World War II and then joined the force here in the city.

  I said, "There was a shooting last night. Two squad-car cops killed a man running away from the scene of a burglary in Glen Park."

  "So?"

  "The victim was a friend of mine."

  He gave me a look. "Since when do you have burglars for friends?"

  "His name was Colly Babcock," I said. "He did two stretches in San Quentin, both for burglary; I helped send him up the first time. I also helped get him out on parole the second time and into a decent job."

  "Uh-huh. I remember the name. I also heard about the shooting last night. Too bad this pal of yours turned bad again, but then a lot of them do — as if you didn't know."

  I was silent.

  "I get it," Eberhardt said. "You don't think so. That's why you're here."

  "Colly's wife doesn't think so. I guess maybe I don't either."

  "I can't let you look at any reports. And even if I could, it's not my department. Robbery'll be handling it. Internal Affairs, too."

  "You could pull some strings."

  "I could," he said, "but I won't. I'm up ‘to my ass in work. I just don't have the time."

  I got to my feet. "Well, thanks anyway, Eb." I went to the door, put my hand on the knob, but before I turned it he made a noise behind me. I turned.

  "If things go all right," he said, scowling at me, "I'll be off duty in a couple of hours. If I happen to get down by Robbery on the way out, maybe I'll stop in. Maybe."

  "I'd appreciate it if you would."

  "Give me a call later on. At home."

  "Thanks, Eb."

  "Yeah," he said. "So what are you standing there for? Get the hell out of here and let me work."

  I found Tommy Belknap in a bar called Luigi's, out in the Mission District.

  He was drinking whiskey at the long bar, leaning his head on his arms and staring at the wall. Two men in work clothes were drinking beer and eating sandwiches from lunch pails at the other end
, and in the middle an old lady in a black shawl sipped red wine from a glass held with arthritic fingers. I sat on a stool next to Tommy and said hello.

  He turned his head slowly, his eyes moving upward. His face was an anemic white, and his bald head shone with beaded perspiration. He had trouble focusing his eyes; he swiped at them with the back of one veined hand. He was pretty drunk. And I was pretty sure I knew why.

  "Hey," he said when he recognized me, "have a drink, will you?"

  "Not just now."

  He got his glass to his lips with shaky fingers, managed to drink without spilling any of the whiskey. "Colly's dead," he said.

  "Yeah. I know."

  "They killed him last night," Tommy said. "They shot him in the back."

  "Take it easy, Tommy."

  "He was my friend."

  "He was my friend, too."

  "Colly was a nice guy. Lousy goddamn cops had no right to shoot him like that."

  "He was robbing a liquor store," I said.

  "Hell he was!" Tommy said. He swiveled on the stool and pushed a finger at my chest. "Colly was straight, you hear that? Just like me. Ever since we both got out of Q."

  "You sure about that, Tommy?"

  "Damn right I am."

  "Then who did do those burglaries in Glen Park?"

  "How should I know?"

  "Come on, you get around. You know people, you hear things. There must be something on the earie."

  "Nothing," he said. "Don't know."

  "Kids?" I said. "Street punks?"

  "Don't know."

  "But it wasn't Colly? You'd know if it was Colly?"

  "Colly was straight," Tommy said. "And now he's dead."

  He put his head down on his arms again. The bartender came over; he was a fat man with a reddish handlebar mustache.

  "You can't sleep in here, Tommy," he said. "You ain't even supposed to be in here while you're on parole."

  "Colly's dead," Tommy said, and there were tears in his eyes.