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Bones(13)

By:Bill Pronzini


My business card lay all by itself on a redwood table next to him; he tapped it with a crooked forefinger, not quite hard enough to knock the long gray ash off his cigar. “I'm honored,” he said. “It isn't every day a famous private eye comes calling on me.”

There was no irony or sarcasm in his voice. I didn't let any come into mine, either, when I said, “It isn't every day that I get to pay a call on a distinguished member of the legal profession.”

“An honor for both of us, then. But we've met before, haven't we? I seem to recall that you worked for me once a few years ago.”

“Just once. After that I worked for your opponents.”

He thought that was funny; he had a fine sense of humor, Yank-'Em-Out did. He also had his own teeth, the bastard, and a fine head of dark brown hair with only a little gray at the temples—Grecian Formula, I thought; has to be—and a strong, lean body and not many more wrinkles than I've got. He had to be at least seventy, but he looked ten years younger than that. He looked prosperous and content and healthy as hell.

But he lived in a house with bars on its windows and a vicious dog prowling its rooms, and sat in a garden with a plastic bubble over it, and told guests to be sure to lock the gate after they entered. Whether he admitted it to himself or not, he lived in fear—and that is a damned poor way for any man to live.

He swallowed some of his drink, put the glass down on top of my card—deliberately, I thought—and pointed his cigar at me. “Annie says you're here about Harmon Crane.”

“That's right.”

“Michael Kiskadon hired you, I assume.”

“Yes.”

“I'm not surprised. Well, sit down. I don't mind talking to you, although I don't see what you or Michael hope to accomplish this long after the fact.”

I stayed where I was; I liked the idea of looking down at him. “He wants to know why his father committed suicide,” I said.

“Of course he does. So do I.”

“I understand your theory is that Crane shot himself because he was no longer able to write.”

“Yes. But obviously I have no proof.”

“Did he ever communicate to you that he had writer's block?”

“Not in so many words,” Yankowski said. “But he hadn't written anything in weeks and it was plain to anyone who knew him that he was despondent about it.”

“Did he ever mention suicide?”

“Not to me. Nor to anyone else I know of.”

“So you were surprised when you found him dead that night.”

“Surprised? Yes and no. I told you, he was despondent and we were all worried about him.”

“This despondence … it came on all of a sudden, didn't it?”

“No, it was a gradual thing. Did someone tell you otherwise?”

“Kiskadon seems to think his father was all right up until a few weeks before his death.”

“Nonsense,” Yankowski said. “Who told him that?”

“He didn't say.”

“Well, it wasn't that way at all. I told you, Harmon's mental deterioration was gradual. He'd been having trouble working for more than three months.”

“Had he been drinking heavily for that long?”

“More or less. Harmon was always fond of liquor, and he always turned to it when there was a crisis in his life. The writer's favorite crutch. Or it was in those days, before drugs became fashionable.”

“You seem pretty positive about all this, Counselor.” He shrugged, and I said, “Do you also have a clear memory of the night of Crane's suicide?”

The question didn't faze him. “As clear as anyone's memory can be of a thirty-five-year-old incident,” he said. “Do I strike you as senile?”

“On the contrary.”

He favored me with a lopsided grin. “Aren't you going to sit down?”

“I'd rather stand. Aren't you going to offer me a drink or one of your cigars?”

“Certainly not.”

We watched each other like a couple of old pit bulls. I knew what he was thinking and he knew what I was thinking and yet here we were, putting on polite conventions for each other, pretending to be civilized while we sniffed around and nipped at each other's heels. It was a game he'd play for a while, but not indefinitely. If you cornered him, or if you just bothered him a little too much, he would go straight for your throat.

I said, “About the night of the suicide. Crane called and asked you to come to his house, is that right?”

“It is.”

“And he was very upset, barely coherent.”

“That's right.”

“Drunk?”

“Very.”

“What did he say, exactly?”

“Words to the effect that he needed to talk.”