Read Online Nightcrawlers: A Nameless Detective Novel (Nameless Detective Mystery) by Bill Pronzini - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Bill Pronzini
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head.
Still.
The way the guy had thrown looks around after he shut theSUV’s hatch, sort of furtive, like he was worried somebody might see him. She hadn’t imagined that. Or the way he’d half run for the house, humped over, as if he were trying to shield the bundle with his body.
Just didn’t seem natural, none of it.
Well, okay, then. What’re you gonna do about it?
She sat chewing her lower lip. Call the cops? Oh, yeah, right. Go over to the house, ring the bell, ask the man if everything was cool? He’d say it was even if it wasn’t. And it’d piss him off either way, maybe get her in the kind of trouble she wasn’t equipped to handle.
Forget about it then. None of her business. Her business was George DeBrissac and 1122 across the street. Plus her full-up bladder. If she didn’t get to a bathroom pretty quick . . .
She reached for the ignition key, then pulled her hand back and lifted it instead to click off the dome light. Then she was out of the car, creaking a little from all the sitting, drawing her thighs together against the pressure in her bladder. Always walk in a strange neighborhood as if you belong there, don’t do anything to call attention to yourself. Right. Up onto the sidewalk, amble slow past the house. Glance at it, don’t stare at it. Lights still on in the front room, shades still drawn tight. Just enough shine from the one nearest the door so that she could make out brass numbers on the brick wall between them. 1109. Pretty sure that was it.
On her way past the driveway, she risked a longer look at the SUV. Big, black—Chevy Suburban? The front license plate was shadowed. 1MO Something 6 Something Something.
Tamara kept on going, forcing herself not to hurry. At the far corner she paused for a few seconds, then turned and came back at the same measured pace. Nothing had changed atthe house. She squinted harder when she reached the driveway, still couldn’t quite make out the license number. Caution told her to give it up, go straight to the Toyota; curiosity sent her a quick half-dozen steps up the drive, bent low, until she could read the plate clearly.
1MQD689.
She retreated to the sidewalk, her heart hammering. Got away with it. Nobody came out of the house, nobody chased her, nothing happened. A minute later she had the Toyota’s engine rumbling and she was on her way.
Took her five minutes to find a service station on San Pablo Avenue. Good thing it didn’t take six or more; as it was, she just made the rest room in time.
7
K erry said, “Remember D-Day? Amazing grace?”
“That’s what he said. Mean anything to you?”
“No.”
D-Day. June 6, 1944, the day the Allied forces invaded Europe, the beginning of the end of World War II. “Cybil and Dancer were both living in New York in the summer of ‘forty-four, weren’t they? And the Pulpeteers were active then.”
“So?”
“Just thinking it could have something to do with the group.” The Pulpeteers had been a loose-knit writers’ club of a dozen or so Manhattan-based professionals, Cybil and Ivan and Dancer among them, and a moderately wild bunch according to what Kerry had told me once—club-hopping, all-night parties, crazy practical jokes. “One of their pranks or escapades, maybe.”
“That he’d want her to remember after fifty years? I don’t think so.”
“I guess not.”
“Amazing grace,” Kerry said. “Well, he couldn’t have meant the hymn, that’s for sure. Not Russ Dancer.”
“I asked him about that and he said no.”
“This package,” she said. It was on the table between our chairs, where I’d put it when I arrived home a few minutes ago. She’d already fingered it twice; I watched her make it three times. “Paper, a lot of it. It feels like a manuscript.”
“You said that before.”
“Why would he give her a manuscript?”
“Oh, hell,” I said, “all we’re doing is asking each other rhetorical questions. Cybil will give us the answers if she wants us
Still.
The way the guy had thrown looks around after he shut theSUV’s hatch, sort of furtive, like he was worried somebody might see him. She hadn’t imagined that. Or the way he’d half run for the house, humped over, as if he were trying to shield the bundle with his body.
Just didn’t seem natural, none of it.
Well, okay, then. What’re you gonna do about it?
She sat chewing her lower lip. Call the cops? Oh, yeah, right. Go over to the house, ring the bell, ask the man if everything was cool? He’d say it was even if it wasn’t. And it’d piss him off either way, maybe get her in the kind of trouble she wasn’t equipped to handle.
Forget about it then. None of her business. Her business was George DeBrissac and 1122 across the street. Plus her full-up bladder. If she didn’t get to a bathroom pretty quick . . .
She reached for the ignition key, then pulled her hand back and lifted it instead to click off the dome light. Then she was out of the car, creaking a little from all the sitting, drawing her thighs together against the pressure in her bladder. Always walk in a strange neighborhood as if you belong there, don’t do anything to call attention to yourself. Right. Up onto the sidewalk, amble slow past the house. Glance at it, don’t stare at it. Lights still on in the front room, shades still drawn tight. Just enough shine from the one nearest the door so that she could make out brass numbers on the brick wall between them. 1109. Pretty sure that was it.
On her way past the driveway, she risked a longer look at the SUV. Big, black—Chevy Suburban? The front license plate was shadowed. 1MO Something 6 Something Something.
Tamara kept on going, forcing herself not to hurry. At the far corner she paused for a few seconds, then turned and came back at the same measured pace. Nothing had changed atthe house. She squinted harder when she reached the driveway, still couldn’t quite make out the license number. Caution told her to give it up, go straight to the Toyota; curiosity sent her a quick half-dozen steps up the drive, bent low, until she could read the plate clearly.
1MQD689.
She retreated to the sidewalk, her heart hammering. Got away with it. Nobody came out of the house, nobody chased her, nothing happened. A minute later she had the Toyota’s engine rumbling and she was on her way.
Took her five minutes to find a service station on San Pablo Avenue. Good thing it didn’t take six or more; as it was, she just made the rest room in time.
7
K erry said, “Remember D-Day? Amazing grace?”
“That’s what he said. Mean anything to you?”
“No.”
D-Day. June 6, 1944, the day the Allied forces invaded Europe, the beginning of the end of World War II. “Cybil and Dancer were both living in New York in the summer of ‘forty-four, weren’t they? And the Pulpeteers were active then.”
“So?”
“Just thinking it could have something to do with the group.” The Pulpeteers had been a loose-knit writers’ club of a dozen or so Manhattan-based professionals, Cybil and Ivan and Dancer among them, and a moderately wild bunch according to what Kerry had told me once—club-hopping, all-night parties, crazy practical jokes. “One of their pranks or escapades, maybe.”
“That he’d want her to remember after fifty years? I don’t think so.”
“I guess not.”
“Amazing grace,” Kerry said. “Well, he couldn’t have meant the hymn, that’s for sure. Not Russ Dancer.”
“I asked him about that and he said no.”
“This package,” she said. It was on the table between our chairs, where I’d put it when I arrived home a few minutes ago. She’d already fingered it twice; I watched her make it three times. “Paper, a lot of it. It feels like a manuscript.”
“You said that before.”
“Why would he give her a manuscript?”
“Oh, hell,” I said, “all we’re doing is asking each other rhetorical questions. Cybil will give us the answers if she wants us
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