As if reading my thoughts, he said as he started the car, "God, I wish things would open up for us before long, before anything else happens. I wish we could get a break, just one little break."
And we got one.
Just like that, just as if all you had to do was ask for it in the right kind of thoughts and words.
Donovan called on the transceiver while we were driving back to City Hall. He had just had a report from the county sheriff's unit which Quartermain had earlier asked be posted on Beach Road: they were on their way into Cypress Bay, and they were bringing with them-badly hungover but otherwise alive and well-the driver of an old wood-sided station wagon that had turned up at nine-ten.
The driver's-and the break's-name was Russell Dancer.
Seventeen
Dancer was badly hungover, all right-his hands trembled vaguely and his eyes were crosshatched with blood-red veins and the skin of his face was loose and alternately splotched red and gray-but the intake of too much alcohol was only part of the reason for his sick condition. He had seen what was left of his beach shack, his home, his possessions, perhaps the last of his dreams; and the sight seemed to have unleashed a toxic, destructive combination of bitterness and frustration and self-pity inside him, joining with the hangover symptoms to give him a zombielike appearance as he came slowly, stiffly, through the door of Quartermain's office. He may have been guilty of or responsible for or involved in some of the things that had happened in Cypress Bay this past weekend, or six years ago, but I felt immediate compassion for him just the same; he was still a lonely man, and even though it was nothing I could have put into the right kind of words, I could understand something of the depth of his loss and of his feeling.
He looked at me first, and his mouth twisted into a ghost of his wry smile. "I thought you were getting out and going back to San Francisco," he said. His voice was hollow and burned out, the words thickened by the dry rolling movement of his tongue. "But here you are, looking like you've been up all night in the bargain."
"I have been up all night," I said. "Some things happened to change my mind about leaving and about becoming involved."
"So you're no different than the standard fictional private dick, after all. Or maybe you are. I can't decide which."
Quartermain said, "Sit down, Dancer. You look like you'd better have some coffee."
"Unless you've got a little hair of the dog."
"Just coffee. Black?"
"God, yes."
Quartermain motioned to the two county patrol cops who had escorted Dancer from Beach Road, and the Cypress Bay uniformed officer who had come in with them through the police entrance at the building's rear. They turned and went out into the anteroom, where the office secretary was back on duty and banging away on his typewriter, and Quartermain and I followed. He shut the door, dismissed the uniform, told the secretary to get a pot of hot black coffee, and then looked at the two county cops.
"Dancer tell you where he's been all night?" he asked.
"Yes, sir, on the way in," one of them said. "He claims to have been shacked up with an old girl friend and a bottle, and that his car was parked in her garage all night."
"Where?"
"Jamesburg."
"Would he tell you the girl friend's name?"
"Yes, sir. It's Verna Nunnally."
The other cop said, "A widow-or so he claimed."
"What about an address?" Quartermain asked.
"That too: Los Pinos Drive. We radioed over to Jamesburg for a check, and as soon as it's made they'll contact you direct."
"Good, thanks. Did Dancer have anything else to say?"
"He seemed pretty shaken up by what happened to his place," the first cop said. "I don't blame him much; it's a hell of a thing to have to come home to."
"He wanted to know how it happened," the second cop said. "We didn't tell him anything; we didn't know how you wanted it handled."
Quartermain nodded. "That's it?"
"Yes, sir, that's about it."
He thanked them again and told them they could go. The secretary came in with the coffee as they were leaving, and I took the pot from him and we went into the inner office again. Dancer was sitting in one of the armchairs, holding his head in both hands. He brought the hands down as Quartermain went around the desk and I went up to it and poured him some coffee.
"Angel of mercy," he said dully, and took the cup I handed him. He held it between both palms and stared into it for a time, and then raised it shakily to his lips and drank a little. I sat down and looked at him; Quartermain had a hip cocked against the rear edge of the desk, leaning forward.
He said, "We've been trying to find you ever since ten o'clock last night. I understand you were in Jamesburg."
"Yeah. Celebrating the completion of my latest western epic with a piece of tail and some bonded bourbon. Dancer fiddling while his Rome burns. What a lousy fucking thing."
"What time did you leave your place last night?"
"Eight or a little before, I think. I finished the last page around seven and had a shower and changed my clothes; then I took the manuscript and went up to the Mount Royal Bar." The bitter, ghostly smile again. "That's something, at least-the manuscript. I was going to mail it today, so I took it with me. I've still got that much anyway. A whole hell of a lot, all right"
I said, "You didn't have any personal property insurance?"
"Oh sure, I've got personal property insurance; I'm not stupid enough to live in a place like that without it But there are some things you can't replace with insurance money."
"Yeah," I said, and I thought I knew what some of those things were.
Quartermain asked, "How long were you at the Mount Royal last night?"
"Long enough to have a couple of drinks and decide I was horny and to call Verna over in Jamesburg. That's Verna Nunnally, a friend of my ex-wife's. I take a perverse pleasure in banging friends of my ex-wife's. She was home and I drove over there with a bottle and spent the night and drove back this morning." He got the coffee cup to his mouth and drank again. "Listen, what happened? It wasn't any accident, was it? I knew that much when the two county boys said they had instructions to bring me here."
"No, it wasn't an accident."
"Somebody set it on purpose."
"That's right."
"Who?"
"A fortyish bald guy who so far doesn't have a name. We went down to have a talk with you around nine-thirty last night, and we got there in time to see him running away along the beach-but not in time to do anything about saving your place. The guy got away and we haven't found him yet."
The left side of Dancer's mouth began to tic. He looked at me. "Is this the guy you mentioned to me yesterday-Paige's friend?"
I nodded, and Quartermain said, "You claimed yesterday not to know him, that you'd never seen him before. Does that still hold?"
"Yeah, it holds. I don't know anybody who looks like that, and I don't know why the son of a bitch would want to set fire to my goddamn house."
"We can answer that one. He wanted to destroy any and all copies of The Dead and the Dying that you might have had."
Dancer stared at him grimly. "So that's it."
"That's it."
"How do you know?"
I said, "Paige's copy of the book was stolen from my cottage at the Beachwood, probably just before that guy went to your place. And when he went there, he took a can of gasoline with him. He didn't want to take the time to search through all of your belongings, and maybe miss something in the bargain; the simplest, surest way was for him to fire the house."
"If you'd been there," Quartermain put in, "he might have seen to it that you went up along with it."