John D. MacDonald Page 5

  “They seem to know what they’re doing down there,” Paul said.

  There did seem to be a sort of orderliness about it, in the sweep of the boats back and forth, up and down. The wind began to come up and it was unexpectedly chilly. My robe began to feel thin.

  “I’m going to go put clothes on,” I said.

  “Good idea. They aren’t going to find her in a hurry. They keep getting hung up. It must be a rock bottom.”

  “Do they go… right to the bottom?”

  “I understand they do. Then, if they don’t find her, after a few days decomposition creates enough gas to bring the body to the surface. They used to fire off cannon to bring the body up. I’ll be damned if I know why.”

  It made me shudder so hard my teeth chattered and I got up hurriedly. Noel and Randy had the next room. I heard his voice, harsh and high-pitched with strain, saying over and over, “Omigod, omigod, omigod.” Then I would hear her voice, softer and lower, quieting him. There was a boy with a problem. A juicy one. Nor did I envy Noel.

  My suit was still sodden. I peeled it down and stepped out of it, took one of the big thick luxurious towels, and rubbed until Judy glowed. It made me feel so good that I heard myself humming a little thing in time to the toweling. Like a damn pussycat, I thought Everything gone thoroughly to pot and all of a sudden you feel just dandy. Pot made me think of pot, so I sucked in my midriff as far as it would go and turned in profile to the mirror. It made me stick out upstairs and protrude in the cellar, but tummy was nonexistent. Hell, I could hum, couldn’t I, if I had my health? Twenty-nine, and I took off on my first road trip at fifteen. One more year of it and it would be half my life. At fifteen I’d looked eighteen. At twenty-four I’d looked eighteen. I got a good many good years out of that eighteen. A stupid lovesick fifteen, lying about her age, traipsing off to sing with a real tired band just so she could be near Mose, who could tear such sweet notes out of that battered horn.

  Whooo! All the years of fried food and riding the bus all night, and the well-cockroached hotels, and the booking agents with one fat hand on your knee. Golly! Those prom stands, and the big-wheel collitch lads, and Mose finally marrying me, and stepping up from tea to horse, keeping it quiet, cutting his throat in Scranton after Mitch dropped him, leaving me the legacy of one battered horn and three songs he couldn’t get published. That weird winter in Chicago on a sustaining show, and that crumby room shared with that Janet character. Came back and found her in jail for fishing out the window, for God’s sake. A borrowed rod and scraps for bait, and hauling the yowling alley cats up to the window, three flights up, selling them for two bits apiece to the medical school. Baby, baby, you were ’way, ’way down before you started up, before Dandy Adams, bless his black soul, saw the capacity for comedy and started you on those first good routines. A long way down there, and, knocked off the top, you can’t fall that far, can you? But I’m just so tired. I want to curl up with a nice bear. I patted old friend—old flat tummy. I got into a pleated Irish tweed skirt and the floppy frayed old cardigan that goes everywhere with me for luck. I thought of how cold it was and so I headed for the other wing, for the kitchens. I found José and used some of the kitchen Spanish I picked up during that season in Mexico City. It seemed to please him. He knew the señora was dead. The fact had been examined and accepted. I didn’t think any one of the three of them would do any major weeping. I told him the men would be cold. I suggested he make a lot of coffee and take it down there. He said he would.

  I went out the back way. Paul came across the gravel toward me. Window light touched his face as he walked through it. Good sober face. I felt as if somehow I had been hung out in space for a long time away from a lot of good things. He was the trunk of a tree. I wanted to swing so I could reach him and untie myself and climb down to where there was a place to plant your feet.

  I stepped out of the shadows, startling him. I put my hands on his arm. “Look, Paul, I’ve been running in midair. It’s a good trick. It’s a clown trick. You make your feet go like crazy and… you make faces and…”

  Then something broke behind my eyes, and damned if I was going to cry, so I shut my teeth hard against it because there was no reason to cry, and out came this thin terrible sound from between my clenched teeth, a sound that came up through my throat like files. He took hold of me. I felt his uncertainty as I kept making those inexcusable misery noises, just going sort of “nnnnn nnnnn nnnnn” through my teeth, thinking, My God, Judy, you sing because a towel feels good and now you stand out here going crazy. He turned me and led me toward the cars. I walked along bent over, because crying without making noise, without making much noise, sort of doubled me up. I stumbled but his arm was around me. He got me into a new-smelling car and got the doors shut and rolled the windows up and put his hand on the back of my head, pushing my face against his jacket, and said, “Now let it go.”

  With those words, he kicked the bottom out of the dam. A hell of a lot of water came roaring down the valley. A mess I was. I clutched and slobbered and ground my face into his coat and moaned and yelped and blubbered, not knowing where it was all coming from or why. There was a good big chest and a good big pair of gentle arms, and a comforting murmur whenever the sound track gave him an opening. It all blubbered away and for a long time I was just nothing. Just yesterday’s leftover spaghetti. A sodden mass that, at increasingly rare and unexpected intervals, would give off an explosive snort. As awareness slowly returned, so did pride. I pushed myself up and away, and hunched over to the far side of the seat. There was a cleansing tissue in the cardigan pocket. I blew a nose that I imagined now looked like a radish. I dropped the tissue out the car window, rolled it down farther, and asked in a very marquise voice if I might have a cigarette. He provided same. I spoiled the first inhale with the terminal snort and nearly choked.

  I resented him. Who was he to intrude on my privacy? What did he think he was doing, anyhow? Who wants his pity?

  “I seem to have got a bit out of hand,” I said.

  “You did a thorough job.”

  I whirled toward him. “I’ll have you darn well know, friend, that I’m not crying because I’ve been licked.”

  “How long since you’ve cried like that, Judy?”

  “Oh, gosh. I can’t remember. Five years, six years. I don’t know… why I did.”

  “If I had to guess, I’d say it was just hydraulic pressure.”

  I had to laugh. In laughing I saw how ridiculous I was to resent him. Poor guy. A female had fallen wetly into his arms and he’d done the best he could. And I thought of the black lake and stopped laughing.

  It’s a good thing to cry like that. And even as I was enjoying the floating, drifting feeling of release, my mind was nibbling at the situation, trying to turn it and twist it into something usable, something that could become a routine. Perhaps a thing where I’d do three or four women, the way they cry… a duchess, a lady wrestler, an actress from the old silent movies, with different background music for each one.

  How fake can you get? Can’t you even cry honestly? I wondered what was left of me. Just a strange device for turning everything into the grotesque. Like a machine that eats up tin, paper, and beans and spews out an unending column of cans of soup. O.K., chalk it up to sudden death, sirens in the night, black water, and feeling alone. Not the tears. What happened next. Happened his hand rested on my left shoulder. He was behind the wheel. Happened his hand felt good. Happened I tilted my head to the left, laying my cheek on the back of his hand. Happened I turned my head a little so my lips touched the back of his hand. Should have been then an awkwardness. Too many elbows in the way, and noses in the way, and no place for your knees. But it was as if we had practiced. His arms opened up and I switched around so that my back was toward him, and then I lay back into his arms, my feet up on the seat toward the car door, and there were good places for all our arms as his lips came down on mine.

  To me there has always been something contrived about love. It
goes like a pendulum. I start enjoying myself and then the pendulum swings the other way and I get a look at myself and I want to giggle. Because there is something ridiculous about it, darn it. People pasting their mouths together. People sighing and panting as if they’d been running upstairs. Hearts going poomp-poomp. But this time the pendulum swung over and caught on a little hook and stayed over there and there wasn’t anything ridiculous at all.

  A very rocky Judy Jonah untangled herself and sat up very straight and stared right ahead at absolutely nothing. I had pins and needles from my ankles to my ears. “My goodness,” I said. I sounded as prim as a maiden aunt. He touched my back and I went up on wires and landed a foot farther away from him.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “If you don’t know, brother…”

  “I know. I mean I think I know. Once when I was a little kid my grandfather was up on a stepladder. I kept running up and giving it a little shake and running away, screaming with delight. He got tired of it and flailed away at me with his coat. He forgot he had a small wrench in the coat pocket.”

  I turned around, my back to the door like Captain Hammer standing off nine Chinese bandits. I said, “I’m going to talk fast and get it all in and don’t interrupt, please. In spite of several grave mistakes, I am a very moral-type moral lady. That little kiss tore my wings off and I am highly vulnerable. You touch me and I shall shatter like they do to the wineglass with the violins. But being an entertainer, small print, doesn’t mean I play games. You are a married guy and thusly you are poison and so this is something I’d write in my diary if I kept one, but for the record it rocked me, if that pleases you, and now I leave on these rubber legs, full of chastity and regret.” I opened the door and got out.

  He said, “Something can be done about the obstacle, Judy.”

  “Don’t talk about it. Don’t think about it. Give me a ring next Decoration Day at my apple stand.”

  I got out of there. I looked back. I saw the red end of his cigarette. I went down onto the pier, onto the one that had nobody else on it. I sat cross-legged in the dew. I heard one of the men say, “Got a hell of a nice bass right there off these rocks three years ago. Went a little over four pounds. Got him on a frog.”

  And the other man in the boat said, “Can’t use frogs, myself. They hold onto the line with their hands. Makes me feel sick, sort of. I use bugs.”

  “Hold it. Hung up something.”

  I held my breath. Then I heard him say, “Solid bottom. Rocks again. Swing it the other way, Virg.” And after a moment, “O.K. It come free.”

  I had a hell of a mood. I wanted sad flamenco guitars and Spanish types singing through their noses while I swayed and snapped my fingers and let the big pearly tears roll down my damask cheeks. I sat there a long time and then went up to the house and went to the kitchen and begged a monstrous sandwich off Rosalita, she of the face like a family vault. Emotion gives me hunger.

  It was nearly dawn when they got her. I went down to the dock. They did a fumbling job of getting her up out of the boat and they dropped her. I expected Wilma to sit up and give them hell for being so clumsy. But she was dead. Not a messy death. Not like on that South Carolina road when Gabby, in the sedan ahead of us, turned out into the path of the lumber truck. They were a mess. All of them. Mitch went into shock, I guess. I can remember him trotting up and down the shoulder of the road, picking up the sheets of the arrangements that were blowing all over, making a neat pile of them, looking at each one to see if he’d found any part of “Lady, Be Good,” because he’d paid Eddie Sauter to do that one for us in between those good Goodmans.

  No, this one was a lot cleaner. Noel was there too. I wondered what she was thinking, looking at the body. That body was a trap that had caught Randy and Gilman Hayes without question, and probably Steve Winsan and perhaps Wallace Dorn. And Paul? That thought hit me and it did bad things to the digestion of my sandwich. If Paul belonged on the list too, it gave Wilma a perfect batting average on her house guests. No, I thought. Not Paul. The sandwich subsided. And I wondered why that sort of fidelity had suddenly meant so much to me. It was Mavis’ lookout, not mine. I had no claim. A kiss in a car? In Wilma’s set a kiss in a car was as consequential as combing your hair. But, damnit, I was not of that set. I was there only because it was bread and butter.

  And then I remembered it was exactly the same thing for everybody else. Including Paul.

  It was genuine, if feeble, daylight when they herded us into the so-called lounge and the one named Fish made a little speech. As I listened to him say that Wilma had been “stobbed” in the back of the head I wanted to say, “Oh, come now! Dragnet does better than this. Your routine is corny. Get some new writers. Get a bigger budget.”

  And then it hit me that it was true. It wasn’t an act. It was murder. The taking of a life. I went cold all the way through. It wasn’t any game. The taking of a human life. I looked around at the others. My God, we were pretty people. I could eliminate myself. And Paul. But that was all. Six people left, and six good reasons. And six opportunities. It had been a dark, dark night.

  Noel walked out of the room. She seemed so darn calm. If you had to pick a guilty-looking one, you’d pick Randy. He was a jittering shambles. Mavis was still blubbering. I couldn’t figure out where she got all the water. Paul looked grave and sobered. Our eyes met. It made warm things run up and down the Jonah spinal column. Wallace Dorn stood there with the disapproving expression of a master of hounds who has just seen a farmer shoot the fox. Steve was talking his way into a PR pitch. That suddenly rang some bells. Judy Jonah guest at murder party. TV comic in nude revel. Wild party ends in murder. Cosmetic Queen Slain. Wow! The networks have a code. I would be cooked like a White Tower hamburg in spite of having been a very good girl. It would be a more effective bounce job than Wilma, living, could have managed. Gilman Hayes sat on the floor reading a picture book.

  Apparently we had to wait for the big shots to arrive. The big trooper sidled over to me, subtle as a hippo. By daylight he was younger than I had thought.

  “I’ve sure liked you on the TV, Miss Jonah.”

  “Thanks, friend. You’re one of the last survivors of a dwindling race.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  He was big and dumb and honest and sweet. I had pained him. “I’m planning to retire,” I said, wondering why I said that.

  “You are? Well… I suppose it’s a case of quitting while you’re ahead.”

  “I might get married, even,” I said. The conversation was rapidly working its way into a hole.

  “That would be nice.” Boy, we were sparkling.

  “It’ll be tough to do. I’ve done that bride routine so often.”

  “Hey, I remember that! You did it in that movie. Where you got all fouled up with that long thing in back.”

  “My train.”

  “And then you got the hay fever from the bouquet”

  “And tried to keep from sneezing, like this.”

  He watched me with pure delight and laughed and slapped my shoulder and nearly knocked me down. Then everybody was staring at us. The trooper turned bright red and began looking stern. We’d been whistling in church.

  It was, all in all, a highly unreal Sunday morning. Vividly unreal. We seemed to be standing around like a cast waiting for the director. When you stay up all night it does strange things to the following morning. But I didn’t sag. I was aware of Paul in the room. I felt keyed up. Mavis had finally stopped.

  What happened next was purely and simply nightmare. What happened next I do not really believe I will ever pry out of the back of my head. It’s still there, in color. Just last week I woke up out of a juicy nightmare about it and Paul held me safe and close, and a long way off a coyote howled. I needed a lot of comforting.

  Chapter Four

  (STEVE WINSAN—BEFORE)

  I KNEW I was going to have to go up there to Wilma’s place and do plenty of scrambling. She made that clear when she pho
ned me. She’s cute, like a crutch. “Randy has been telling me I’m dreadfully poor, darling. He keeps going over lists of things and making little check marks. He gave you three little marks. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. I guess you’ll have to ask him.”

  You never let a client see you squirm, especially if the client is Wilma Ferris. “We’ll still have our beautiful friendship, kid.”

  “And poor Gil will be so depressed if he can’t read about himself in the papers any more.”

  “I guess I can make it all right, Wilma.”

  “I thought you would,” she said a bit obliquely, and hung up after telling me to be there by cocktail time. It meant canceling out some things in town, but nothing too special. She phoned me on Wednesday. I managed to keep telling myself everything was fine until late Thursday afternoon, and then I hit bottom. Dotty came in and stood by my desk and asked me if there was anything else and I growled at her to go on home.

  After she left, banging the reception-room door behind her, I took a yellow pad and a soft pencil and tried to figure out just where the hell I was. I figured it out in the most pessimistic way possible. I assumed I’d lose all three of them. I had already figured on losing Judy Jonah. Willy, her agent, had given me the confidential word on the trouble he was having trying to place her show. It was, of course, too expensive to operate to take any gamble on sustaining, even if a decent half-hour spot could be opened up for it. And the way the rating had skidded, he had a big problem interesting any new sponsor. We agreed that it was highly unlikely that Ferris would go along with her another season.

  A thing like that you can stand. But three at once makes a hell of a hole. I had to keep paying on the tax deficiency they’d nailed me for, and keep sending Jennifer her five-hundred-a-month alimony so she could sit on her scrawny tail out there in Taos, and keep paying the rent on the office and the apartment, and keep paying Dotty, and keep up the personal front. I’d built the list up to twenty-one hundred a week. And with a six-hundred drop it just wouldn’t add up. I couldn’t make it come out. And new clients don’t jump up out of the brush in the summer.