Free Blowback (The Nameless Detective) by Bill Pronzini Page A

his hands were grimy with dirt and flecks of rust.
    “You been back long, buddy?” he asked.
    “A while.”
    “Yeah, well, I'd have been here when you came in except for that bastard Cody. One of the pipes in his cabin sprung a leak and he had a little water on the floor when he woke up. I had to fix it right away to shut him up and get him off my back.”
    I said, “How did it go with Mrs. Jerrold?”
    “Well,” he said, “she went for it.”
    “What did she say?”
    “I laid it on the line, as nicely as I could, and she agreed right away that he's getting out of hand. She wasn't admitting any guilt on her part, but I guess it doesn't matter now whether she's been cheating on him or not. The main thing is, she's going to talk to him and get him to take her home either tonight or first thing in the morning.”
    “How sure was she of convincing him?”
    “Pretty sure.”
    “I hope it's going to be that easy,” I said.
    “You think he might not listen to her?”
    “Might not, or didn't,” I said. “He took out of here a few minutes ago, and he wasn't in a good mood, or in a good condition either. He'd been into the gin already this morning.”
    “Christ.”
    “If he refuses to leave,” I said, “we'll have to find another way, even if it means ordering him out or putting him out bodily.”
    Harry winced but did not say anything. I could tell he was brooding about the five-thousand-dollar loan.
    “Got to be done, if it comes to that. The tension around here is getting out of hand.” I told him about Talesco and the fight he'd obviously been in.
    “Maybe it didn't have anything to do with Mrs. Jerrold,” he said, but he sounded grim again.
    “Maybe. But I don't like the odds.”
    He scraped a hand across his face. “Fight explains one thing, anyway—what I found this morning.”
    “Found?”
    “Over on the edge of the parking area. It's been bothering me ever since, but this is the first chance I've had to mention it.”
    He reached into the back pocket of his khakis, came out with a crumpled piece of cloth and handed it over to me. When I shook it open I saw that it was a plain man's handkerchief, once white but heavily stained now with those familiar red-brown streaks that can only be dried blood.
    “One of them must have used it after the fight and then lost it,” he said.
    I nodded and said “Yeah” and gave it back to him. He stood staring at it, gnawing moodily on his lower lip; I had the feeling he was thinking the same thing I was in that moment
    This has got to be all the blood spilled here at the camp, I was thinking. We've got to make sure this is all …
    The deputy Cloudman sent out was a young guy with an old-fashioned crew cut and a brisk, serious manner. He arrived a few minutes before nine, and Harry took him around to the cabins, starting with Cody in Number Two. I had no reason to sit in on the questioning, and the deputy made it clear that he felt the same way, so I left them at Cody's cabin and went to my own and got into my swim trunks. Then I lolled around in the lake and on the beach, waiting.
    At ten-fifteen Sam Knox came down alone and drove off in the Rambler wagon. I did not see anybody else until Harry and the deputy returned shortly before eleven. I went over to them, but the young guy had nothing to say to me; he told Harry to ask Jerrold and Walt Bascomb to get in touch with the Sheriff's Department in Sonora when they returned—Bascomb had apparently gone off somewhere on foot, since the Ford was still parked in the circle—and then he nodded briskly and went away in his cruiser.
    I said to Harry, “How'd it go with the others?”
    “Not too bad. Cody made a few snotty remarks, but the rest of them took it all right. I guess there's not going to be any problem there, at least.”
    “Nobody had any information, I take it?”
    “No,” Harry said. “Hell, we all expected that last night.”
    “Sure, but you never know.”
    He sighed. “How about a sandwich?