Free Case File - a Collection of Nameless Detective Stories by Bill Pronzini Page A

everything is fine."
    "Then you shouldn't mind telling me why you need so much cash."
    "I don't have to tell you anything," he said angrily. "Why don't you just give me my money and leave me alone?"
    "My instructions from your father," I said, stretching the truth a little, "were to find out why you need it first."
    "I don't believe you. I know my father better than that." He took a step toward me. "Give me my money."
    "Look, son —"
    He took another step and punched me quick and hard just under the left eye. With his other hand, he plucked at the briefcase and pulled it out of my fingers as I staggered backward. My calves hit the low, hammered-copper top of a coffee table, and I lost my balance and went over it and down. The back of my head cracked into the linoleum flooring; pain erupted behind my eyes, blurred my vision. I rolled over and pushed up onto my hands and knees, shaking my head, hearing the front door slam.
    I got unsteadily to my feet, put a hand up to where he'd hit me; the fingers came away bloody. By the time I got to the front door and threw it open, the silver roadster was just shooting out of the drive with its tires making banshee noises on the pavement. It skidded to the right and was gone behind the high front wall.
    I stood there for some time, holding onto the door, until I could no longer hear the MG's engine. Then I went back inside and hunted up the bathroom and inspected my cheek in the mirror. There was a gash in it a half-inch long, trickling blood. I found some antiseptic and a gauze bandage in the medicine cabinet and fixed the cut up so that the bleeding stopped. The place where my head had struck the floor was sore to the touch, and I had a hell of a headache, but there was nothing I could do about that. There weren't any aspirins in the cabinet or anywhere else on the premises.
    The villa had five rooms—two bedrooms, the front room, the bathroom and a kitchen. From an old roll top desk in the front room, I dredged up a monthly statement from a Palma Nova café called Senor Pepe's; it was for a substantial sum, and I gathered from the itemization that Dale spent a good deal of his time there. I made a mental note of the address.
    One of the bedrooms contained nothing at all. In the other one, on the nightstand beside the big double bed, was a small color photograph in a cardboard frame. It was of a girl about twenty, very blond, with bronzed skin and bright blue eyes; I thought she was probably Scandinavian. Across the lower left-hand corner, written in a neat feminine hand, were the words: For my Dale from his Brita. I slipped the photo out of its frame and put it into the pocket of my slacks.
    Back in the front room, I stood looking around one last time without seeing anything I had overlooked. My head throbbed dully. Well, all right. I didn't have much to go on, but I had started with less before. I picked up my bag, moved out into the thick heat that was Majorca in the early afternoon and went to find out what kind of trouble Dale Frost was in.
    Senor Pepe's had a rust-colored tile roof, whitewashed stucco walls and a lot of vine-draped arches inside and out. I threaded my way through a cluster of bamboo tables on the promenade in front, all of which were occupied by noisy tourists drinking gin-and-tonics and cuba libres, and went inside.
    Behind an L-shaped bar, a short, sandy-haired guy in his late twenties was filling a cooler with bottles of San Miguel beer. He had a clipped, sandy goatee and an air of sober industriousness. I stepped up to the bar and put my bag down and sat on one of the stools. When the sandy guy looked up at me, I said, "I'll take one of those cold, if you've got it."
    "I do," he said. He was British, or maybe Scottish; I couldn't tell which. He pulled another of the bottles from beneath the ice and popped the cap and poured a glass for me. I drank a third of it, took a breath and drank another third. It had been a long walk from the villa, and my