by Ed Gorman
And then I finally sat down and started reading about the life and times of one David George MacDonald.
During that long malaise of prison life, I became a serious reader, and some of the serious reading I did included Andre Malraux, whose Man’s Fate contained a brief interview with a seventy-five-year-old priest. What have you learned, in your fifty years of hearing confessions? Malraux wanted to know. And the old priest replied, “That there’s no such thing as an adult.”
I knew what he was talking about as I read through the file on David George MacDonald.
Here you had the rich, handsome, forty-year-old son of a wealthy investment banker. We were talking Yale. We were talking a five-year tenure at Mellon Bank. We were talking a six-year span at one of his father’s investment companies. And yet…David had been inexplicably drawn to the dark side of American business. Contractors who skimped on promises and whose housing developments became rat traps after only a few years. Refinancing deals for home owners that were little better than the juice loans you could get from the mob. Used car wholesaling where turning back the odometer was mandatory. Expensive furs that were certainly stolen. And on and on.
You could see in Dr. Wyman’s notes that MacDonald tried to pass himself off as a simple, honest businessman, but I knew his real background…and in the notes it became obvious that Dr. Wyman had at least begun to suspect his real background.
Here were his women, and they were myriad; here were marriages, three in all, trouble with the law for beating all three of them; and here were the hookers he could never quite lose his taste for, the midnight cruise and the hasty hot reality of sex in a car seat with a woman who would please you any way you asked; and in passing once—just once—was a mention of my wife and how mad she’d made him because she’d tricked him into getting her pregnant.
At this point I set the material down, put my head against the back of the chair, closed my eyes.
I’d known she was pregnant, the autopsy had revealed that, but all along I’d assumed it was our child.
But now I knew better.
Their child.
One he hadn’t even wanted.
It had died trapped inside her dead womb.
Really fucking peachy.
I spent the next fifteen minutes doing my self-pity aerobics— you probably do them yourself, at least sometimes. Has anybody ever been this betrayed before in all human history? Has such a bad hand ever been dealt to such an all-around wonderful human being as moi before? Has anybody ever deserved to feel such unashamed sorrow for his poor pitiful self before?
Fortunately, I got pretty sick of it all after a while and went down the hall to pee.
Sara hadn’t been an ideal wife, but I hadn’t been an ideal husband either. How about that cute little Nancy I’d spent one spring bopping in places as various as my office closet, the maintenance room in the basement, and the backseat of her ancient Buick war-wagon? Or the college-senior waitress I’d met at Pizza Hut? Or the Chanel sales-woman I’d had several nooners with at a motel out on Forester Road?
No such thing as an adult.
It wasn’t virtue I was trying to defend here—it was justice. Sara and I hadn’t been all that morally superior to David MacDonald—but we hadn’t murdered anybody.
David had murdered Sara.
And had gotten away with it, the police investigation dropped.
But faithless husband that I was, I wanted the killer of my faithless wife brought to trial.
My last best hope was that I’d find something useful in Dr. Wyman’s notes. Nothing else had worked.
I had some more caf.
I even opened the window so the 43-degree wind would drive out any lurking sleepiness.
I started reading again.
Just before five and the first sharp cry of birds, I saw what I’d been looking for ever since I’d been released from prison. David George MacDonald had himself two very notable psychological anxieties…
I saw the way I was going to nail his gold-plated ass to the wall.
Next day on my lunch hour, Delia drove me over to the library, where I checked out six books, three of which applied to one subject, three to another.
“You’re going to be busy tonight,” she said.
“Yeah. I will be.”
“You closin’ in on MacDonald?”
“I hope so.”
“I hope so, too.”
The afternoon went slowly. A customer named Burgess came in, a customer I ordinarily enjoyed talking to, but today everything he said irritated me. I knew why. I didn’t want to be here. I wanted to be home with my library books.
Burgess bought a blue blazer and a pair of gray slacks. He needed some additional clothes now that he’d given up smoking and put on fifteen pounds.
It felt as if I’d spent a couple of hours with him, but when he left I checked my watch. I saw that I still had three and a half hours to go.
I spent the rest of the afternoon considering some of the words I’d found in Dr. Wyman’s notes on David MacDonald: Anxiety disorder Anxiolytic medicine Anticipatory anxiety Systematic Desensitization. I had a long night ahead of me, one I looked forward to.
Around ten that night, I called Delia and asked her if she could help me out.
“Sure. What do I do?”
I told her.
“That should be easy,” she said.
“I’d really appreciate it, Delia.”
“Say,” she said, just as I was about to hang up. “Guess who I ran into.”
“Who?”
“My cousin Betsy. You know, the one with the big—”
“She still having trouble with her biker?”
“No. In fact, she said that they’re probably gonna get married. I mean, he’s agreed to start using deodorant and everything.”
“No wonder they’re getting married.”
“But I told her about you anyway—you know, just in case it don’t turn out too good—and she said that if she ever dumps him, she’d really like to meet you.”
“Well, I’ll be wearing her name on my lips.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing. Just being a smart-ass. Look, Delia, I really appreciate all the help you’ve been giving me.”
“No sweat, Bob. I just wish it’d worked out between you and Betsy.”
“Maybe when we’re reincarnated.”
“You saw that Oprah show too, huh?”
I smiled. “Not that one. But I’ve seen a lot of others.” She was crazy, Delia was, but relentlessly sweet. “Good night, Delia.”
“ ‘Night.”
Three weeks went by before Delia was able to find any pattern in David MacDonald’s work life.
He always parked his splashy new Lincoln in a lot directly behind the office building he’d inherited from his father.
But as for when he arrived at work and when he left—he was usually erratic, no particular schedule being apparent to Delia.
Except for Thursday nights. Thursday nights, for some reason neither of us could figure out, he usually worked till around nine. A janitorial crew started cleaning the place up around three a.m.
Four different lunch hours, Delia drove me over to the office building so I could see what I needed to do. I’d been in here before, back when I used to go up to see Sara when she was working for MacDonald, but I’d never really studied the place.
It was a nice building built back at the turn of the century, defined by its curtain walls and its internal metal structure, then very fashionable. At least that’s what the library book on local architecture had to say about it. And more: the soaring three-bay exterior is divided into three major sections: a two-story triple-arch base, an eight-story shaft of two tiers of projecting bay windows, and a crowning section marked by paired windows. Easy to imagine shiny black limousines pulling up here in the old days, and robber barons appearing in capes and squeaky black shoes.
The interior had been refurbished: pink marble and heavily rococo interior des
ign. Your footsteps echoed on the marble floor, all the way over to and up the single elevator that ran up the very center of the building.
On my third visit to the place, an hour after work, I rode up to the ninth floor and went through a dry run of what I needed to do. I was in equal parts scared and excited. The run-through took twenty minutes. I managed to get through without anyone seeing me—that I was aware of, anyway.
Back in the car, Delia said, “You’re a mess.”
“Thank you.”
She laughed. “You know what I mean.”
“It’s messy work.”
“And scary work.”
“A little bit, I guess.”
“You guess? You couldn’t get me to do that in a million years.”
“I just hope it works.”
“Yeah,” Delia said, putting the car in gear and pulling away from the curb, “so do I.”
The following week, driving me back to MacDonald’s, Delia said, “You scared?”
“A little.”
“I’d be a lot scared.”
“Well, I think that’s more accurate.”
“That you’re a lot scared?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Maybe it won’t go the way you want it to. Maybe he won’t—”
“I know.”
“You could get killed, you know.”
“I know.”
“You’re a lot braver than I’d be.”
“I’m not brave at all, Delia. I wish I were.”
Her headlights swept the parking lot in back of the building, high-lighting bumpers and fenders and license plates with cute personal statements such as: I’M CUTE. I doubted that anybody who had to brag about being cute actually was.
There was a cold mist and all the streetlights were haloed as I stepped from the car. We were getting winter in nickel-and-dime increments.
“I’ll be saying prayers,” Delia said.
“I’ll need them.”
“You’ll be fine,” she said in a way that suggested I probably wouldn’t be fine at all.
“See ya,” I said. I took my gym bag and left.
Some of the books I’d brought home from the library dealt not only with the structure of buildings but with the elevators they used. Starting in 1853, elevators of various kinds were introduced to the world. There had been steam elevators and hydraulic elevators and finally electric elevators. And it was on the electric elevator that I’d concentrated.
The dark front doors of the office building opened after I spent two hasty minutes working on them with a pick. The burglar alarm system had not been set yet. The janitorial service did that when they left in the middle of the night.
Once inside, I walked straight to the two elevators and rode all the way to the ninth floor. On the way up, I changed into the blue coveralls I’d stuffed inside the bag. I checked my watch. In the next fifteen minutes or so, if he was true to his usual schedule, David MacDonald would board this same elevator car on the floor beneath me.
I went to work. The first thing I did was hang an OUT OF ORDER sign on the second elevator and then rush back to the first car.
I punched the button to take the car to the eighth floor. On the way up, I opened the EMERGENCY phone box and ripped the two-inch receiver cord from its moorings. There’d be no calls from this elevator.
I left the car on the eighth floor. I found the metal door with the FIRE sign above it and took the stairs down to the seventh floor, where I took a crowbar from my bag.
Everything was ready. MacDonald would board the car on the eighth floor. I’d give him a few seconds to start descending, then open the seventh-floor elevator doors with a crowbar. The electric interlock would freeze the car right where it was—between floors —and I’d then run up to the ninth floor, where I’d again part the doors. Only this time I would step out onto the top of the elevator, which would be only a few inches below the ninth-floor elevator entrance.
I paced the seventh-floor hallway. The old building was filled with the ghosts of ancient plumbing and creaking floors. Every time one of them made a sound, I turned to the elevator. After several false alarms, I forced myself to calm down.
When he was finally there, one floor above me and putting his weight into the elevator car, I was daydreaming and didn’t respond immediately. Then I had to hurry.
I pressed my ear to the elevator doors and listened for the eighth-floor doors to rumble closed. They did.
Then I waited to hear the whine of the machinery as the elevator began its descent. The car started to slowly descend.
I grabbed the crowbar and set to work.
In seconds I had the doors open. I heard the car stop. MacDonald shouted, “What the hell’s going on here!”
I ran to the fire door and took the steps two at a time. After six years and two months, after a prison term and numerous failed plans to prove that MacDonald had killed Sara, I finally had my best last chance to force MacDonald to tell me exactly what had happened.
All those fancy terms I’d found about him in his shrink file—anticipatory anxiety and anxiety disorder—meant one thing: MacDonald’s lifelong claustrophobia had most recently manifested itself as a terror of the elevator in his office building. Over and over again he’d told his shrink about his nightmares—of being trapped in the elevator and suffocating.
He took medication, he did all the mental exercises his shrink suggested (this was where the term “systematic desensitization” came in), and he even considered moving his offices to a one-story building.
But none of that mattered now.
He was trapped on a very small elevator car, and before he left it, he was going to confess to killing my wife. And I was going to record it all on the hand-sized cassette player I’d brought along.
By the time I reached the ninth floor, MacDonald was screaming and pounding on the interior doors.
I got the ninth-floor doors open and stepped out onto the top of the car, where I knelt down and wrenched the T-handle straight up. This opened the emergency hatch. I looked down into the car at MacDonald.
He was aware of me immediately. He recognized me immediately, too. “You sonofabitch, what d’you think you’re doing?”
“The last time I broke into your office, MacDonald, you had me sent to prison. But I’ve learned a few thing since then.” I stuck my recorder through the hatch and waggled it at him. “This time you’re going to do all the work. And this time you’re going to go to prison.” I tapped the recorder. “You’re going to tell me how you murdered my wife because after you were done with her you were afraid she’d turn you over to the district attorney for some of the scams she’d seen when she was your secretary.”
“You think I’m going to listen to some dumb-ass ex-con?”
“You will or you’ll never get off this elevator alive. You’ll have a heart attack.” I smiled. “You should’ve gotten on an exercise regimen a long time ago, MacDonald.”
He was one of those men—you see them especially among male opera stars—who manage to carry an extra hundred pounds and still look handsome. There was a kind of baronial splendor to MacDonald, the long dark hair just now starting to show dramatic streaks of gray; the flowing dark suits meant to hide his girth and that somehow suggested a Victorian cape; and the masklike face, the cruel good looks of angry dark eyes and a petulant, crafty mouth. Sara had been pretty sensible. Or I’d thought so, anyway, until she got involved with MacDonald and his power games.
“You tore the fucking phone out, didn’t you?”
“Guilty as charged.”
“This time, asshole, you’re going to go to the slammer and never get out.”
I smiled. “I’d try to calm down, MacDonald. You’re going to be in there for a long time.”
“Maybe not,” he said, and before I quite realized what he was doing, a blued .45 appeared in his hand and he started firing bullets into the ceiling of the car.
I dove from the top to the ninth floor. I let him fire, count
ing the shots as he did so. They echoed off the half-century silence.
He had one bullet left.
“It’s not going to do you any good, MacDonald, that last shot,” I said. “It’s not going to get you out of that elevator.”
The waiting started. According to the books on phobias I’d read, what I could expect next were several outward manifestations of panic— shouting, then screaming; pounding fists and then kicking as well; hurling himself to the floor and maybe even pounding his head against the wall. And pleading; earnest, savage pleading.
It sounded great.
Over the next forty-five minutes, at least according to the books, MacDonald had developed stomach cramps, lost his ability to stand up straight, probably wet his pants, had a difficult time swallowing, was terrified that he was about to smother to death, and could not focus his mind on any logical plan of escape.
That was when he began pounding the walls.
That was when he began shrieking.
That was when he began slamming at the doors with his fullback girth and his wounded-animal rage.
During this time, I snuck back to the top of the car, got my cassette player rolling again and shouted, “As soon as you tell me you killed Sara, MacDonald, I’ll get you out of that car.”
He couldn’t help himself. He was too far gone. He’d planned to hold on to his last bullet until he really got a good chance to hit me— but he couldn’t control his anger.
He fired his last shot up through the open hatch.
It ricocheted off the ceiling of the building, knocking loose some ancient dust, and then disappeared. I closed the hatch again.
I had some more waiting to do.
This time, roughly twenty minutes later, he started sobbing. That was the only word for it. Wild, hysterical crying, and slamming his fists into the walls of the elevator car. The car shifted and shimmied beneath me; I looked up the shaft at the cable. In the oily darkness, I felt the cable tremble from the terrible beating the car was taking. I opened the hatch. “You killed her, MacDonald, admit it and I’ll let you out of here.” He spit upward, his oyster getting me on the forehead. Without a whole hell of a lot of dignity, I withdrew my head from the emergency hatch. Another fifteen minutes.
