第8章 In the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time

By Bill Pronzini

Sometimes it happens like this. No warning, no way to guard against it. And through no fault of your own. You're just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Eleven p.m., drizzly, low ceiling and poor visibility. On my way back from four long days on a case in Fresno and eager to get home to San Francisco. Highway 152, the quickest route from 99 west through hills and valleys to 101. Roadside service station and convenience store, a lighted sign that said" Open Until Midnight."

Older model car parked in the shadows alongside the restrooms,newish Buick drawn in at the gas pumps. People visible inside the store, indistinct images behind damp-streaked and sign-plastered glass.

I didn't need gas, but I did need some hot coffee to keep me awake. And something to fill the hollow under my breastbone: I hadn't taken the time to eat anything before leaving Fresno. So I swung off into the lot, parked next to the older car. Yawned and stretched and walked past the Buick to the store. Walked right into it.

Even before I saw the little guy with the gun, I knew something was wrong. It was in the air, a heaviness, a crackling quality, like the atmosphere before a big storm. The hair crawled on the back of my scalp. But I was two paces inside by then and it was too late to back out.

He was standing next to a rack of potato chips, holding the weapon in close to his body with both hands. The other two men stood ten feet away at the counter, one in front and one behind.

The gun, along-barreled target pistol, was centered on the man in front; it stayed that way even though the little guy's head was half turned in my direction. I stopped and stayed still, with my arms down tight against my sides.

Time freeze. The four of us staring, nobody moving. Light rain on the roof, some kind of machine making thin wheezing noises-no other sound.

The one with the gun coughed suddenly, a dry, consumptive hacking that broke the silence but added to the tension. He was thin and runty, mid-thirties, going bald on top, his face drawn to a drum tautness. Close-set brown eyes burned with outrage and hatred. The clerk behind the counter, twenty-something, long hair tied in a ponytail, kept licking his lips and swallowing hard; his eyes flicked here and there, settled, flicked, settled like a pair of nervous flies. Scared, but in control of himself. The handsome, fortyish man in front was a different story. He couldn't take his eyes off the pistol, as if it had a hypnotic effect on him. Sweat slicked his bloodless face, rolled down off his chin in little drops. His fear was a tangible thing, sick and rank and consuming; you could see it moving under the sweat, under the skin, the way maggots move inside a slab of bad meat.

"Harry," he said in a voice that crawled and cringed."Harry,for God's sake..."

"Shut up. Don't call me Harry."

"Listen...it wasn't me, it was Noreen..."

"Shut up shut up shut up."High-pitched, with a brittle,cracking edge." You," he said to me." Come over here where I can see you better."

I went closer to the counter, doing it slow. This wasn't what I'd first taken it to be. Not a hold-up-something personal between the little guy and the handsome one, something that had come to a lethal crisis point in here only a short time ago. Wrong place,wrong time for the young clerk, too.

I said," What's this all about?"

"I'm going to kill this son of a bitch," the little guy said," that's what it's all about."

"Why do you want to do that?"

"My wife and my savings, every cent I had in the world...he took them both away from me and now he's going to pay for it."

"Harry, please, you've got to-"

"Didn't I tell you to shut up? Didn't I tell you not to call me Harry?"

Handsome shook his head, a meaningless flopping like a broken bulb on a white stalk.

"Where is she, Barlow?" the little guy demanded.

"Noreen?"

"My bitch wife Noreen. Where is she?"

"I don't know..."

"She's not at your place. The house was dark when you left.

Noreen wouldn't sit in a dark house alone. She doesn't like the dark."

"You...saw me at the house?"

"That's right. I saw you and I followed you twenty miles to this place. Did you think I just materialized out of thin air?""Spying on me? Looking through windows? Jesus..."

"I got there just as you were leaving," the little guy said.

"Perfect timing. You didn't think I'd find out your name or where you lived, did you? You thought you were safe, didn't you? Stupid old Harry Chalfont, the cuckold, the sucker-no threat at all."

Another head flop. This one made beads of sweat fly off.

"But I did find out," the little guy said." Took me two months, but I found you and now I'm going to kill you."

"Stop saying that! You won't, you can't..."

"Go ahead, beg. Beg me not to do it."

Barlow moaned and leaned back hard against the counter.

Mortal terror unmans some people; he was as crippled by it as anybody I'd ever seen. Before long he would beg, down on his knees.

"Where's Noreen?"

"I swear I don't know, Harry...Mr. Chalfont. She...walked out on me...a few days ago. Took all the money with her."

"You mean there's still some of the ten thousand left? I figured it'd all be gone by now. But it doesn't matter. I don't care about the money anymore. All I care about is paying you back. You and then Noreen. Both of you getting just what you deserve."

Chalfont ached to pay them back, all right, yearned to see them dead. But wishing something and making it happen are two different things. He had the pistol cocked and ready and he'd worked himself into an overheated emotional state, but he wasn't really a killer. You can look into a man's eyes in a situation like this, as I had too many times, and tell whether or not he's capable of cold-blooded murder. There's a fire, a kind of death light,unmistakable and immutable, in the eyes of those who can, and it wasn't there in Harry Chalfont's eyes.

Not that its absence made him any less dangerous. He was wired to the max, and outraged and filled with hate, and his finger was close to white on the pistol's trigger. Reflex could jerk off a round, even two, at any time. And if that happened, the slugs could go anywhere-into Barlow, into the young clerk, into me.

"She was all I ever had," he said. "My job, my savings,my life...none of it meant anything until I met her. Little, ugly,lonely... that's all I was. But she loved me once, at least a little.

Enough to marry me. And then you came along and destroyed it all."

"I didn't, I tell you, it was all her idea..."

"Shut up. It was you, Barlow, you turned her head, you corrupted her. Goddamn traveling salesman, goddamn cliche. You must've had other women. Why couldn't you leave her alone?"

Working himself up even more. Nerving himself to pull that trigger. I thought about jumping him, but that wasn't much of an option. Too much distance between us, too much risk of the pistol going off anyway. One other option. And I'd damn well better make it work.

I said quietly, evenly," Give me the gun, Mr. Chalfont."

The words didn't register until I repeated them. Then he blinked, shifted his gaze to me without moving his head." What did you say?"

"Give me the gun. Put an end to this before it's too late."

"No. Shut up."

"You don't want to kill anybody. You know it and I know it."

"He's going to pay. They're both going to pay."

"Fine, make them pay. Press theft charges against them. Send them to prison."

"That's not enough punishment for what they did."

"If you don't think so, then you've never seen the inside of a prison."

"What do you know about it? Who are you?"

A half-truth was more forceful than the whole truth. I said," I'm a law officer."

Barlow and the clerk both jerked looks at me. The kid's had hope in it, but not Handsome's; his fear remained unchecked,undiluted.

"You're lying," Chalfont said.

"Why would I lie?"

He coughed again, hawked deep in his throat." It doesn't make any difference. You can't stop me."

"That's right, I can't stop you from shooting Barlow. But I can stop you from shooting your wife. I'm off duty but I'm still armed."Calculated lie." If you kill him, then I'll have to kill you.

The instant your gun goes off, out comes mine and you're also a dead man. You don't want that."

"I don't care."

"You care, all right. I can see it your face. You don't want to die tonight, Mr. Chalfont."

That was right: He didn't. The death light wasn't there for himself, either.

"I have to make them pay," he said.

"You've already made Barlow pay. Just look at him-he's paying right now. Why put him out of his misery?"

For a little time Chalfont stood rigid, the pistol drawn in tight under his breastbone. Then his tongue poked out between his lips and stayed there, the way a cat's will. It made him look cross-eyed,and for the first time, uncertain.

"You don't want to die," I said again." Admit it. You don't want to die."

"I don't want to die," he said.

"And you don't want the clerk or me to die, right? That could happen if shooting starts. Innocent blood on your hands."

"No," he said." No, I don't want that."

I'd already taken two slow, careful steps toward him; I tried another, longer one. The pistol's muzzle stayed centered on Barlow's chest. I watched Chalfont's index finger. It seemed to have relaxed on the trigger. His two-handed grip on the weapon appeared looser, too.

"Let me have the gun, Mr. Chalfont."

He didn't say anything, didn't move.

Another step, slow, slow, with my hand extended.

"Give me the gun. You don't want to die tonight, nobody has to die tonight. Let me have the gun."

One more step. And all at once the outrage, the hate, the lust for revenge went out of his eyes, like a slate wiped suddenly clean,and he brought the pistol away from his chest one-handed and held it out without looking at me. I took it gently, dropped it into my coat pocket.

Situation diffused. Just like that.

The clerk let out an explosive breath, said," Oh, man!" almost reverently. Barlow slumped against the counter, whimpered, and then called Chalfont a couple of obscene names. But he was too wrapped up in himself and his relief to work up much anger at the little guy. He wouldn't look at me either.

I took Chalfont's arm, steered him around behind the counter and sat him down on a stool back there. He wore a glazed look now, and his tongue was back out between his lips. Docile,disoriented. Broken.

"Call the law," I said to the clerk."Local or county, whichever'll get here the quickest."

"County," he said. He picked up the phone.

"Tell them to bring a paramedic unit with them."

"Yes sir." Then he said," Hey! Hey, that other guy's leaving."

I swung around. Barlow had slipped over to the door; it was just closing behind him. I snapped at the kid to watch Chalfont and ran outside after Barlow.

He was getting into the Buick parked at the gas pumps. He slammed the door, but I got there fast enough to yank it open before he could lock it. " You're not going anywhere, Barlow."

"You can't keep me here-"

"The hell I can't."

I ducked my head and leaned inside. He tried to fight me. I jammed him back against the seat with my forearm, reached over with the other hand and pulled the keys out of the ignition. No more struggle then. I released him, backed clear.

"Get out of the car."

He came out in loose, shaky segments. Leaned against the open door, looking at me with fear-soaked eyes.

"Why the hurry to leave? Why so afraid of me?"

"I'm not afraid of you..."

"Sure you are. As much as you were of Chalfont and his gun.

Maybe more. It was in your face when I said I was a cop; it's there now. And you're still sweating like a pig. Why?"

That floppy headshake again. He still wasn't making eye contact.

"Why'd you come here tonight? This particular place?"

"I needed gas..."

"Chalfont said he followed you for twenty miles. There must be an open service station closer to your house than this one. Late at night, rainy- why drive this far?"

Headshake.

"Has to be you didn't realize you were almost out of gas until you got on the road," I said." Too distracted, maybe. Other things on your mind. Like something that happened tonight at your house, something you were afraid Chalfont might have seen if he'd been spying through windows."

I opened the Buick's back door. Seat and floor were both empty. Around to the rear, then, where I slid one of his keys into the trunk lock.

"No!" Barlow came stumbling back there, pawed at me, tried to push me away. I shouldered him aside instead, got the key turned and the trunk lid up.

The body stuffed inside was wrapped in a plastic sheet.

One pale arm lay exposed, the fingers bent and hooked. I pulled some of the sheet away, just enough for a brief look at the dead woman's face. Mottled, the tongue protruding and blackened.

Strangled.

"Noreen Chalfont," I said." Where were you taking her, Barlow? Some remote spot in the mountains for burial?"

He made a keening, hurt-animal sound." Oh God, I didn't mean to kill her...we had an argument about the money and I lost my head, I didn't know what I was doing...I didn't mean to kill her..."

His legs quit supporting him; he sat down hard on the pavement with legs splayed out and head down. He didn't move after that, except for the heaving of his chest. His face was wetter than ever, a mingling now of sweat and drizzle and tears.

I looked over at the misted store window. That poor bastard in there, I thought. He wanted to make his wife pay for what she did, but he'll go to pieces when he finds out Barlow did the job for him.

I closed the trunk lid and stood there in the cold, waiting for the law.

Sometimes it happens like this, too.

You're in the wrong place at the wrong time, and still things work out all right. For some of the people involved, anyway.