Authors: Bill Pronzini
Fran replaced the receiver very carefully. Her eyes were like polished amber pebbles glistening in a thin rain. She felt warm moisture begin to flow high along her cheekbones, and she put up her hands with the palms turned outwards to wipe it away—the gesture of a pigtailed little girl scolded for mud-pie batter on a pink organdy dress.
But she wasn’t a little girl any more, oh no, not now, especially not now; what she was, was a consummated woman, carrying the illegitimate child of her lover in her womb, and the sooner she faced that, the better it was going to be for her, and for Larry, and for her unborn daughter or son. It was certainly time for her to assume the responsibility of her situation, to take some initiative in seeing it through this primary crisis, instead of merely lying back all dewy-eyed and trembling and innocently passive. She took her hands down and drew in several deep breaths, and her mouth firmed into a tight, resolute line. Yes. Yes, it was certainly time.
She thought: You’re the father of my baby, Larry, and you have to know that, for better or for worse, and you have to know it now, tonight. It’s the wrong time, perhaps—you’re tired and you’re in a poor humor and I’m more afraid now than ever of what you’ll say when I tell you—but I can’t wait, I just can’t wait, not until tomorrow, not this night through. I have to tell you, I’m going to tell you. I am.
She went into the bedroom and put on her plastic, belted raincoat and a matching, softly wide-brimmed rain hat. Then she left the apartment and went down the wood-and-fieldstone outer stairs to the parking area in the rear courtyard, running a little through the gentle rain to where her car was parked. She fumbled with her keys and got the door unlocked and slipped inside. She had a glimpse of the dashboard clock in the pale light from the ceiling dome just before she closed the door after her.
The time was 11:02.
Andrea Kilduff held the telephone receiver pressed tightly with both her small hands, listening to the distant, empty circuit noises humming through the earpiece. No answer.
On the fifteenth ring, she put the receiver back on its hook and shivered tremulously inside her heavy wool jacket. She hugged herself, and the wind moaned across the wet, puddled blacktop outside the glass walls of the public booth, fanning clumps of darkly painted autumn leaves toward the bright fluorescent lights of the Shell station at the opposite end of the rectangle. And there was the mournfully constant hissing of cars passing along the rain-slick expanse of Highway 101, near the first of the three Petaluma exits less than a thousand yards away.
Why didn’t he answer? she asked herself silently. It’s after eleven now; he should be home. He really should be home. Where would he be at this hour on a Wednesday night? He never goes to bars or anything like that, and seldom to the movies, and he certainly wouldn’t go walking in Golden Gate Park this late. Maybe he’s... out with someone. Well, no, I don’t think so. No, he wouldn’t be, but he isn’t home and he should be home.
Andrea retrieved her dime and dialed the apartment number again, carefully. She let it ring another fifteen times. Again, no answer.
Damn! Why hadn’t she made up her mind to call him sooner? She’d been thinking about it all day, hadn’t she?—she hadn’t slept much at all last night thinking about it. And she’d known darned well that she was going to do it, because she simply had to talk to Steve; this way wasn’t any good at all. She had to talk to him and get it all said and done with, say all the words she’d been afraid to say to him before: words like “divorce” and “property settlement” and “good-bye.” She didn’t want to say them, ever, they were like lashing epithets, but this way—her way—had been a fool’s errand from the very beginning, a defense against those words but an ineffective one, only prolonging the inevitable. At long last, she was woman enough to admit that she had been wrong. And so she had driven here from Duckblind Slough, through the wind and the rain to the nearest telephone because the Miramonte Marina and Boat Launch was closed for the night; but it had been for nothing, Steve wasn’t home...
A sudden thought struck her.
Suppose the reason he wasn’t home was because he had moved out? Suppose he had packed up his things and gone—but where? To a hotel? To a new apartment? What if he had left San Francisco altogether? What if he had just run away? Oh God, how would she find him if that were the case?
Wait a minute now. Well, for crying out loud, if he
had
moved out, if he
had
gone away, the telephone would be disconnected, wouldn’t it? Of course it would. That recorded voice would have come on and said, “I’m sorry, the number you have dialed is not in service at this time.” Of course, don’t be silly, Andrea, he’s just... out somewhere for the evening, that’s all, oh, but if he moved this morning or this afternoon, the telephone wouldn’t necessarily have to be disconnected yet, maybe they couldn’t get a man up to do that until tomorrow, maybe he really is gone...
Steve, she thought. Oh Steve!
She took her dime from the return slot again and slid it into the circular opening above and dialed the number of Mrs. Yarborough, the building manager. She had to know, she had to know right now. She held the receiver in both hands, as she had before, waiting, and through the wet glassed walls of the booth, across the puddled blacktop, she could see the wide-faced clock mounted on the wall above the door to the Shell station office.
The hands and the numerals, their luminosity eerily blurred by the rain-mist, designated the time as 11:10.
The rain fell heavily, in a diagonally silver cascade, on the James Lick Freeway just below Candlestick Park. The onrushing yellow headlamp eyes of the northbound traffic, the desperately flashing blood-red taillights on the southbound automobiles strung out ahead, commingled to form a kaleidoscopically distorted montage—surrealism in motion, a wild hallucinogenic excursion into the depths of a nightmare.
This is the Twilight Zone, Steve Kilduff thought inanely, detachedly; enter Rod Serling on a fade-over with his soporific voice explaining the intricacies of the plot...
Off on his left, the black moving water of the Bay stretched cold and lonely on a flat plane toward the jeweled but half-obscured lights of the East Bay. The wind blew and whistled in a kind of ghostly charivari at the slightly open wing window, the windshield wipers worked in hypnotic metronome cadence on the rain-drenched glass, and the treble voice of a disc jockey on the too-loud radio sent discordant vibrations of sound echoing through the car—all serving to heighten the sense of unreality which pervaded Kilduff’s mind.
He sat stiffly erect, with his hands clenching the wheel tightly and the muscles cording in his forearms. He had left Twin Peaks just before eleven, driving mechanically. He had been thinking only of Drexel; and what it was Drexel had found out, or had done, in Granite City; and what Drexel would say when he told him about Commac and Flagg—the two polite, soft-spoken cops who knew; and what Drexel would decide their next move to be; yes, and how he, Kilduff, would end up going along with it whatever it was.
Green and iridescent-white exit signs appeared, and then vanished, in the hazy aureoles of light from his head lamps.
GRAND AVENUE-SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO
SAN BRUNO AVENUE—SAN BRUNO
SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
MILLBRAE AVENUE—MILLBRAE
BROADWAY—BURLINGAME
19TH AVENUE—SAN MATEO
HOLLY STREET—SAN CARLOS
WHIPPLE AVENUE—REDWOOD CITY
When would this phantasmagoria that was an all-too-real reality end? he asked himself as he sent the car hurtling along the rain-swept highway. How long would it be before the law of averages caught up with him? He was living on borrowed time, walking on eggshells, balancing one mile-high tightrope, there was no way he could possibly come out of it unscathed; there was no way, simply no way, he could ever return to the former status quo security.
The radio disc jockey announced the time just as EMBARCADERO ROAD—PALO ALTO loomed into view ahead.
It was 11:23 and thirty seconds.
11:28.
Larry Drexel poured himself another glass of
aquardiente,
his third since he had arrived home, and resumed his restless pacing of the parlor’s Navajo rug. The pallid light from a lantern-style wall lamp made his face look grotesquely demoniac, like a sculpted burlesque of an entity from Dante’s
Inferno
.
Goddamn it! he thought, drinking from the glass, moving with long, fluid strides the width of the darkly somber room, turning at the fieldstone fireplace, retracing his steps, turning again. Where the hell was Kilduff? Sure, he’d told him eleven-thirty, but you’d think the bastard would—
Euphonious chimes echoed through the darkened house.
Reflexively, Drexel’s hand went to the .38-caliber Smith and Wesson revolver in the side pocket of his suit coat. He touched the grip, and the feel of the cold, rough metal seemed to relax him. He took a slow breath, thinking: Easy, now, it’s Kilduff and it’s about time. But he went slowly, silently, along the front hallway and drew back the tiny round cover which guarded the peephole in the arched wooden door —no use in taking chances even if it was Kilduff, especially now...
But it wasn’t Kilduff.
It was Fran Varner.
He pulled open the door, his nostrils flaring with sudden anger and splotches of crimson flecking his smooth cheeks. “What the hell are you doing here? I thought I told you I didn’t want to see you tonight.”
She took off her plastic rain hat and shook her brown hair. Her eyes probed his imperiously. “I have to tell you something, Larry,” she said softly. “And it simply can’t wait.”
“The hell it can’t! Go home, Fran...”
“No,” she said. She held the rain hat clutched tightly in both hands, twisting it between her long, slim fingers. “No, I won’t go home until I’ve talked to you.”
Drexel thought: You silly, clinging bitch. “Listen,” he said, “I can’t talk to you now. Don’t you understand that?”
“Why not, Larry?”
“I’m expecting someone.”
“Who?”
“It’s none of your business.”
“Another girl?”
“Oh, Jesus!”
“Is it, Larry?”
“No, it’s not another girl. It’s business!”
“At eleven-thirty at night?”
He wanted to hit her. He wanted to lash out with his balled fist and knock her flat on her soft round little ass, teach her not to come around here bugging him like this when he was caught up in something so damned big, what the hell was the matter with these chicks? But he didn’t hit her. He didn’t hit her because Kilduff was going to arrive here any minute now and he had to get rid of her before then and he couldn’t get rid of her if she was lying on her ass on the fieldstone walk.
He said in a cold, deliberate voice, “Fran, I’m telling you, if you know what’s good for you, go home. Get out of here and go home right now. I mean it, Fran.”
There was hurt and pain deep in her amber eyes now, as if she had just fully accepted a great, sad truth—not that he gave a crap what it was; all he cared about at that moment was getting rid of her. He thought she would obey his command, expected it with that hurt and pain in her eyes, but she caught him off guard. She said, “I’m coming inside, Larry,” and before he could react she was past him and walking down the hallway into the parlor.
Rage welled up inside Drexel until the blood pounding in his ears sounded like a distorted drum-roll. He slammed the door savagely and went in after her. She had turned and was standing in front of the scrolled desk, her plastic raincoat dripping crystalline beads of water onto the rug. She waited until he had taken two steps into the parlor from the hallway, his eyes blazing, and then she said in a loud, clear voice, without preamble, “I’m pregnant, Larry. I’m going to have your baby.”
It stopped him. It stopped him cold. His mouth opened, and then closed, and he stood there staring at her.
You bitch! he thought finally. I ought to kill you, you stupid little bitch!
11:28.
The street was half a block long, and ended abruptly in a white city barricade that stretched most of its width. To the left, facing in, was a densely grown area—a miniature wilderness—containing oak and eucalyptus and high grass and wild blackberry. To the right was a neatly trimmed green box hedge, jutting some ten feet thickly skyward, which fenced the property of some unseen and grandiose dwelling. Beyond the barricade was a short expanse of deciduous turf that formed a gradual down-slope leading to a narrow, meandering creek below.
The limping man parked the rented Mustang nose-up to the white barricade, shut off the lights and the engine, removed the key from the ignition, and stepped quickly out into the thinly falling drizzle. He went around to the rear and opened the trunk. He put on a pair of black pigskin gloves and worked swiftly there for something less than two minutes, darting occasional looks over his shoulder at the cross street, seeing nothing. Finally, he lifted from the trunk the double-strength shopping bag. He closed the deck lid and, carrying the shopping bag in the bend of his left arm, moved rapidly around the near end of the barricade.
He began to climb slowly, cautiously, down the slippery bank, with his free hand holding onto bushes that grew there, digging the heels of his canvas shoes into the spongy ground. After a time, he stood on the sharp stones at the edge of the creek bed. In its center, a narrow, shallow stream of rain water rushed past; the creek had been dry when he had last seen it, six weeks earlier.