Blowback (The Nameless Detective) (5 page)

When the screen door banged shut behind her, his head snapped around to me like a doll's on an elastic pivot, and he raised the hand with the glass in it and pointed it in my direction, and the hand shook enough to rattle the ice cubes audibly. “I don't know who you are, mister,” he said, “but I'm telling you this: Stay away from my wife. You and all the rest of them in this place, sniffing around her ass like a pack of dogs in heat. I won't stand for it much longer, you hear?”

“I hear,” I said. If I had said anything else, it would only have provoked him; he was in no condition to listen to what anyone had to say except himself.

I went along the path to where it looped into the trees again and snaked down toward the lake, and he watched me all the way, just as he had watched his wife, without moving any part of his body other than his head. Once I got into the trees I stopped looking back; but when I was far enough into them so that he could no longer see me, I stepped off the path and doubled back slowly and quietly until I had a screened view of the cabin.

Jerrold was still standing there at the foot of the porch steps, still staring off toward the empty path. Watching him stand like that, completely motionless, made me uneasy. Another full minute went by, and then, as if there had been no abnormal time lapse, he raised the tumbler and kept it raised until it was empty. Then he went up the steps and slammed his way inside the cabin.

I waited five more minutes, listening, but there was nothing to hear. Whatever was going on in there, if anything
was
going on, it was a quiet confrontation.

But I did not like the way this thing was shaping up. It was like watching something bubble and froth in a pot—sooner or later, unless you turned the heat down or off, it was going to boil over, and if that happened, somebody was liable to get hurt. Badly.

Four

I went down to the lake, to a shallow inlet and a small rocky strip in the open center of the horseshoe which Harry's guests could use as a bathing beach if they felt like it. It was deserted, as were the area over by the dock and the jumble of cobbles and outcroppings that marked the shoreline in the other direction. It was nearly five-thirty now, but the day had not cooled off any yet; in the hazy sky to the west the sun looked like the bottom of a brass pot. There was not a whisper of a breeze, and the surface of the lake was perfectly flat and smooth and seemed to have no depth, as if it were a piece of curiously blue-stained flatland stretched out between the foothills.

My clean shirt was already damp with sweat, the back of my neck ran with it, and despite the fact that I had rolled on some deodorant before leaving San Francisco, I could smell myself a little. I dropped down on one knee and ducked a hand in the lake. Icy cold, even on a blistering summer day like this one, because it was fed by underground runoff from snow melting at the higher elevations. Well, I had never minded cold water, and a swim might be nice; I had even remembered to bring a suit with me.

So I returned to my cabin and changed into my trunks and then came right back down again. I passed Six both ways, in the open, but there was no sign of either of the Jerrolds and nothing but silence from inside.

I had my swim, and the water cooled me off all right. But after five minutes and no more than a hundred yards of breaststroking, I started to have trouble with my breathing. I told myself it was just the coldness of the lake—and knew as I did so that that was only a part of it. A small part of it.

It's not malignant, I thought. The lesion is not malignant.

Behold, a pale horse
, I thought,
and his name that sat on him was Death
…

I swam in and dried off with a towel I had brought from the cabin. Then I sat there on a flat rock in the sun, feeding on the heat like Winslow, the old man in Chandler's
Black Mask
story “The Curtain,” and after a while the chill evaporated from between my shoulder blades. When it got to be too hot—nothing but extremes for me today, it seemed—I decided I would go over to Harry's cabin and help myself to another beer.

While I was getting ready to do that the buzzing of an outboard became audible on the dry air, coming in from the north side of the lake. I looked over in that direction, and a minute or so later I could see the skiff and the two good-sized guys in it, Knox and Talesco. From the angle at which they were traveling, it looked as though they were headed for the pier. I rolled up my towel, put my shirt on, walked over to the pier, and went out along it to where the other skiffs were tied near the end. Then I plunked myself down in front of the outermost boat and tugged at the painter to bring the stern around and pretended an examination of the Johnson outboard while I watched the two of them approach.

When they got close enough for the guy at the tiller to cut off the engine and let them drift in, I stood up and gave them a friendly wave. The one on the bow seat lifted a hand slightly in what might have been a salute, but the other one didn't make any sort of acknowledgment; neither of them looked particularly cheerful, or particularly curious about who I might be.

“Hey,” I called, “need a hand?”

“No thanks,” the guy on the bow seat said, and stood up on pretty good sea legs as the skiff drifted in. He caught hold of one of the pilings and held them off and steady; then he climbed out onto the pier, tied the painter through an iron side ring while the other guy tilted the outboard up out of the water and gathered up their gear—two complete bass outfits and a waterproof tote bag, the kind you use on fishing trips to ice down beer and keep sandwiches fresh. The one who had been at the tiller handed the gear up. They worked together silently and with a good deal of precision and economy, the way two people will who have known each other for some time.

Both of them were big macho types all right, in their early forties and in fine condition, with flat stomachs and good pectoral development indicative of regular weight-lifting programs. Bow Seat had thick curly black hair and one of those fierce Prussian-general mustaches that was so black it shone with bluish highlights in the sun. Humor lines etched the corners of his mouth like hieroglyphics on a chunk of weathered stone. What I could see of Tiller's hair under his jungle helmet was thin and dark brown, and he had long bushy sideburns; his eyes were green, flecked with bits of yellow, and they were not telling you much about what went on behind them. This one looked as if he had not found anything humorous in a long time.

I said to Bow Seat, “You have much luck?”

“Some,” he answered.

“Any particular spot?”

“Nope. Lake's full of bass.”

“I'm anxious to get a line out myself.”

“You just come in today?”

“Yeah. Couple of hours ago.”

I introduced myself, and Bow Seat said he was Karl Talesco and Tiller was Sam Knox, and I shook hands with him. Knox came up out of the skiff and I gave him my hand too. He looked at it for three seconds, and I thought he was not going to take it; then he did, but for all of a heartbeat before he let loose. The green eyes did not look at me, or at Talesco. He said nothing at all.

I sensed an undercurrent of something between the two of them, and I wondered if it could have anything to do with Angela Jerrold. I said, “You're the only other guests I've met so far. Except for Mrs. Jerrold, that is.” I gave them a cocksman's leer that I hoped did not look as phony as it felt. “She's some piece.”

Nothing changed in Talesco's face; but Knox's eyes turned on me, unblinking, still not telling me anything. I had the same odd feeling you get when you're being stared at by a cat. “She's also married,” he said, and his voice sounded rusty, as if he had not used it much recently.

“Well, I know that—”

“If you got any ideas, you better forget them.”

I put the leer away. “No ideas. Just commenting.”

“Sure,” Talesco said. “Thing is, Mrs. Jerrold's old man is a flake. Jealous, very jealous. Sam was just giving you a little friendly warning—weren't you, Sam?”

Knox stopped looking at me again. “Nobody wants trouble in a nice quiet place like Eden Lake.”

“Hell,” I said, “I came up here to fish. That's all.”

“You'll get plenty of that,” Talesco said. He smiled without much humor. “Play poker, by any chance?”

“As often as I can.”

“Well, maybe we can work up a game one of these nights.”

“Any time. I'm in Cabin Three.”

“Okay,” he said, and he gave me that little half-salute again. Then he and Knox bent and hoisted up their stuff and went away along the pier.

I watched their backs all the way up into the trees and tried to analyze the meeting we had just had. But I could not get a handle on anything they had said, or on how they had acted, or on how they had reacted when I gave them the line about Angela Jerrold. It had been an odd conversation, and yet I was unable to define the oddness. The only thing I seemed to have found out in talking to them was that I cared for the situation even less now that I had met everyone involved.

When I came down to Harry's cabin at six-thirty, he was dipping thin bass fillets in a mixture of beaten eggs and lemon juice and then rolling them through a platter of cornflake crumbs. I asked him if there was anything I could do, and he put me to work washing a chilled head of lettuce and breaking it up for a salad. While I did that, and while he began to melt and lightly season butter in a skillet, I told him about my encounters with the balance of his guests and the way I felt about matters—particularly Ray Jerrold.

He said worriedly, “You think it's that bad, then?”

“I'm afraid so, Harry.”

“So what do you suggest?”

“Find a way to get rid of the Jerrolds, and fast.”

“Yeah, but how? I told you about the money I owe him. He could just about push me under if he demanded immediate payment of that loan; I just can't afford to antagonize him.”

“Couldn't you soft-talk him, make him realize the only way he can be sure of his wife is by taking her away from all this temptation?”

“I tried that,” Harry said. He laid the breaded fillets into the butter in the skillet “He said the wolves were everywhere, one pack was no different than another, and he wasn't going to let any of them drive him away from a place he wanted to be.”

“And right now he wants to be here.”

“His words exactly.”

“All right, what about talking to her?”

“You mean trying to get her to take
him
home?”

“It's worth a shot.”

“What angle would I use?”

“You're concerned about his health, you think he ought to see a doctor. Either that, or you give it to her straight—tell her he's so jealous you're afraid he might do something irrational, and you've got your other guests to think about.”

“I don't know,” he said. “I've never been able to talk to her much; suppose I handle it wrong and she lets it get back to Jerrold? He wouldn't like it if he found out I went behind his back. Besides, if she is banging Cody or one of the others, why the hell should she leave on my request? She knows about the loan; she could laugh in my face and there wouldn't be a damned thing I could say or do.”

“I think you're going to have to risk it, Harry.”

“I wish to Christ there was another way.”

“Only one I can see is getting rid of everybody else.”

“I'd be cutting my own throat that way too.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“What if I can't get her to see it my way? Then what?”

“Why don't we cross that bridge if we come to it.”

He stared down into the skillet, brooding. “I don't want him hurting somebody in my camp, but I don't want to lose the camp either. This place is my whole life, buddy.”

I said nothing; there was nothing to say. I sympathized with him, and yet I felt none of the sense of involvement in his problem that I might have had a week ago. It was a sticky situation, and it could become tragic, but Harry would survive it all right; even if he lost the camp he would survive it. This place was not his whole life. That had been a figure of speech, meaningless at the gut level, because no
place
was anyone's whole life. Life was the continuing ability to function—physical and mental health. No more, no less.

At length he said heavily, “Okay. Okay, you're right I'll talk to her.”

Neither of us seemed to want any more conversation after that, and we finished making supper in silence. The buttery aroma of the frying bass filled the cabin, made me ravenous; I had not eaten anything at all today. So when we finally sat down I put away four of the fillets and two helpings of salad and five slices of French bread and two cans of beer. More than I should have eaten, or even wanted to eat. The past week, since Friday, I seemed either to want nothing at all or to stuff myself compulsively when I did feel hungry. Whatever that meant psychologically, I did not care enough to pursue an answer.

After we had cleaned up the dishes—Harry had barely touched his own food—we went out on the front porch. He fired up one of the thin brown cigars he liked, and I looked away and breathed through my mouth so that I couldn't smell any of the smoke. The sun had slipped down almost to the tops of the pines on the western ridges, and the sky around it was whitish and streaked in three or four shades of red, like a piece of linen stained with wine and lipstick and blood. The glassine surface of the lake looked as though it were on fire. It was a little cooler now, although there was still no breeze; unless the temperature dropped another five to ten degrees, sleeping was going to be uncomfortable tonight.