Soft Touch

by John D. MacDonald

  The murder in Tampa was also given considerable coverage, but nowhere in either news report was there any hint of any connection between the two happenings. The blue and white Ford had been recovered in Ybor City, the Latin section of Tampa, and it was established that it had been stolen from a parking lot in downtown Tampa at about one o’clock, two hours before the shooting. The black chauffeur-driven sedan in which the swarthy stranger had escaped the killers had been located by Tampa police and proved to be a rental sedan. According to the rental agency records, the man who had rented it was a local resident named Daniel Harland, a commercial fisherman. When Harland was picked up and questioned by the police he told of being stopped on the street by a well-dressed man who asked Harland if he had a driver’s license and had it with him. Harland said he did. When Harland agreed to help the man, they walked to within half a block of the rental agency. The stranger sent Harland in with a one-hundred-dollar deposit and instructions to rent a black sedan in the medium to high price range. When Harland turned the car over to the stranger, the man gave him the fifty dollars he had promised him for his trouble.

  When the car was recovered one window had been shattered by a bullet, and there was a considerable quantity of blood on the floor in the back, leading the police to believe that the man who escaped the killers had been seriously wounded. All area doctors had been warned to be on the alert for anyone requiring treatment of a bullet wound.

  The police had found smudged and indistinct fingerprints on both vehicles, and it was not yet known if they could be used for identification purposes.

  The Ambassador from —–—– in Washington had made a low-key and cautious statement to the effect that no official papers were missing, that the crime was apparently without political motivation, and it was probable that there had been some personal reason for the murder of Señor Alvaro Zaragosa.

  When I took the paper and some coffee up to Vince, he was in the bathroom. When he came out I hurried to help him. He was chalky under his tan, lips tightly compressed, eyes squeezed by pain. I helped him to the bed. He stretched out and slowly his color improved.

  “Why didn’t you holler?”

  “Got to get the machine running sometime. Stood up too damn long shaving. Came close to passing out.” He propped himself up on the pillows and I handed him his coffee.

  “Are we in the headlines?” he asked, noticing the newspaper.

  “You’re mentioned by name.”

  He seemed to stop breathing. The coffee cup shook and then steadied.

  “Tampa?” he asked in a strained voice.

  “No. The other.”

  “Don’t do that to me again, you son of a bitch. I know damn well it’s likely I’d be mentioned on that other deal. Let me see it.”

  He read both articles, tossed the paper aside. “We look better and better, lieutenant.”

  “That’s something I want to talk about. I woke up thinking about it. You thought you recognized one of those two sharpies.”

  “I’m not at all sure.”

  “But he could have recognized you. Maybe that’s why they pulled the damn fool stunt of moving in on Zaragosa in such a public place. Maybe they were going to follow him and take the money away in a more sensible place, but they recognized you with Zaragosa and knew they had to move in fast.”

  “So?”

  “Vince, is there any remote chance they could know where you are now?”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Not a chance in the world. Feel better?”

  “A lot better. Now the next point. Until we can split up, Vince, until you’re well enough to take off, we’re stuck with this situation. But when we split up, it doesn’t end.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re smarter than that, Vince. Suppose I goof badly and I get hauled in and asked to explain where I got a million bucks in cash. Do you think they’re going to let me say I found it under a lettuce leaf? That I won it on the horses? Or I’ve been saving it up for a long time? They’ll want to know where I went when I went away. Why I brought you back. Where you went from here, how much you had, where we got it and how. So they keep after me until I drag you into the whole thing. That means that you have a real interest in making sure I stay smart. And it works both ways. I want to be certain you’re going to be smart.”

  He looked amused. “Jerry, I know just how I’m going to leave the country. I know where I’m going. I’ve got a complete new identity I’m going to step into. All I care is that you keep out of trouble for eight days after I’ve left here. After then, boy, you can get a sound truck and go up and down the streets telling the whole story. I won’t give a damn.”

  “How do you expect to get the money out of the country?”

  “I’ve got a foolproof way. That’s all you have to know.”

  “Hell, suppose I want to get mine out too!”

  He frowned. “Let me see. You don’t fly a plane. So I’ll give you a variation. Go to the San Diego area or the Brownsville area where we’ve got a contiguous water frontage setup with Mexico. Rent yourself a boat for fishing. Go down the Mexican coast, go ashore in a deserted place, stash your money where you can find it, go back and turn in your boat. Cross the border legally, go get your money and be on your way. Or, if you want a nice sensible way, go to New York. Buy bank acceptances for cash, fifteen and twenty thousand at a chunk. Hit all the banks you can manage, and then go to Boston and do the same, and Philadelphia and do the same. Sixty or seventy banks. Sixty or seventy pieces of paper. Fly to Switzerland. Customs won’t give you trouble over those. Say you’re on a buying trip. Open a number account in a Swiss bank. Make an investment agreement with them. When you get established some place, write them how much you want a month. Live like a king forever. Or, let me see, smuggle the cash over, if you like a gambling chance. You’re a handy type. Buy a big fat American car and hide the cash in it. There are plenty of good places. Ship the car to Europe on your ticket. Or, if you want a real snap, buy diamonds. You’ll take a big loss when you unload them abroad because all the smuggling traffic is the other way and nobody will be looking for them. Let me keep thinking, and I’ll come up with some more. You could—”

  “Okay, Vince. Okay. That’s enough.”

  “Yesterday while I was in my most weakened condition, Jerry, your wife was trying to pump me about your plans. What you’re going to do. She thought I might have talked to you. She’s pretty upset, you know.”

  “I haven’t any special plans.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “After you take off, I’m going to meet her terms for a divorce. I’ll wait until it’s final and then leave the country.”

  “I don’t care what you do after I leave, boy, but I’m not going to want to travel for at least a week, maybe more. And I don’t want her wondering why you think you don’t have to work. So why don’t you go back with her old man? You can quit again. But it will calm her down.”

  Though the idea was amazingly distasteful, I knew at once that he was right. Get back into the old pattern. Then you don’t attract attention. Then people don’t start wondering about you. It probably wouldn’t be so bad, because I would know it was only a temporary thing.

  “I’ll … start Monday,” I said.

  “Good boy.”

  I could hear the roar of Lorraine’s shower and realized I had been hearing it for some time. I talked with Vince for a little while and then went back to our bedroom. Lorraine, in orange blouse and black slacks, was leaning toward her dressing table mirror, painting a mouth on.

  “Good morning,” I said.

  “Hi. How’s the patient?”

  “I got him some coffee, but he could use some food.”

  “Food coming up. Scrambled eggs do you think, Jerry?”

  “Should do him. And me too, if there’s enough eggs. Have fun last night?”

  She shrugged. “The usual crowd.”

  “Lorraine, honey, I’ve been thinking things over and I
’ve decided to go get back in the same tired old harness tomorrow.”

  “Back with Daddy?” she cried with great pleasure. I nodded. “I think you’re being very intelligent, Jerry. Honestly, you’ve had me so worried. I have to know how things stand. You know that. I just hate insecurity.”

  She got up and I thought she wanted to be kissed, but she evaded me, held her cheek again mine and said, “Don’t muss my mouth.”

  I’d given in to her and so she was willing to be friendly. An uneasy truce but it was the best we could ever achieve. In all the past quarrels we had gone too far, said all the things that shouldn’t have been said, tried in desperation to inflict the mortal hurt. And so made an end to our ability to hurt deeply. Now the quarrels were an empty routine, a simulated passion. It was as though we played small parts in a hit play that had gone on for years. All the cues had become automatic. We felt an almost total indifference toward each other, but we had to keep up the pretense of concern, of involvement. I remembered what Liz had said about marrying a man, and I wished that I had married a woman. But I was married to a naughty and untidy and somewhat vicious child. Mommy and Daddy were close at hand, and there was Irene for the drudgery, and the club for a playpen and the Porsche for a toy, and she could drift through all her glazed little days with glass in hand.

  “Jerry, why don’t you just walk down the street and tell Daddy. He’s really been very upset. And you were very rude to him.”

  “After all he’s done for me?”

  She looked at me oddly. “Yes, of course.”

  “I was on a street corner rattling a tin cup when the Maltons came along and—”

  “Leave us please not start that again. It won’t hurt you to go down and tell him. They’re back from church by now. And when you get back, I’ll have breakfast ready.”

  So I walked from 118 Tyler Drive to 112 Tyler Drive and thumbed the button that started a veritable concerto of chimes. Before the last notes had died away Edith Malton came looming up out of the dimness of the hall, smelling of lavender and looking somewhat like an apprehensive and edible sea creature which swims toward the entrance of its cranny in the coral hoping to outbluff something which anticipates eating it.

  She wound up her electrical whinny and told me that her Edward was in the kitchen having more coffee.

  E. J. sat in his shirt sleeves, small and neat and pink and white, looking as if an indulgent mother had bathed him and combed him and knotted his tie half a dozen times until it was exactly right.

  “Well, good morning, good morning, good morning,” he said, rattling dishware. “Sit down. Have some coffee. Have some coffee. Edith, give Jerry some coffee.”

  I did it fast, hoping it would be less painful. It wasn’t. “E. J., if you’ll take me back, I can start to work again tomorrow.”

  They both beamed at me as if I’d remembered all my lines in the Christmas play. E. J. said there was no hard feelings. He said his way of doing things was the right way, and he knew that sooner or later I’d see that. He thought I had sense enough to see that. They were glad for Lorraine’s sake. She’d been very upset about the whole thing. The poor kid was right in the middle. First duty to her husband, of course, but it was a nasty affair when there were quarrels in the family. We could forget all about this little difficulty. He’d charge it against my vacation. Ha ha ha. Now we’d work together and make Park Terrace the best development in this end of the state. Might be a good idea to sell the houses on Tyler Drive and move into new ones on Park Terrace.

  I walked back. They had clung to me a long time. Vince and Lorraine had finished breakfast. She had saved mine. As I was eating she came and sat opposite me in the breakfast booth and said, “Dave and Nancy Brownell are having one of those steak things again this afternoon. They asked us last Wednesday. I said I didn’t know if you’d be back, but I said I’d come. They said if you got back in time, to come along.”

  The Brownells were on Van Dorn Road, the next street over, and so close that when we went there, we could go out the back of our house and walk through Carl Gowan’s property. She said she could bring back a plate from the party to feed Vince.

  We went over a little after two. The party was boiling along. About forty adults and seventy-five children. Washtubs full of ice and beer, or ice and soft drinks. Though there were many of Lorraine’s friends there, the group was reasonably conventional. I spotted George Farr and Cal Warder. I went over to where Tony from the club was tending an outdoor bar and got myself a deep dish martini. And then I had some more. Maybe it was the release from the tension of Tampa and the trip. I had enough so I was rude to Cal Warder, who had tried honestly to help me, and slightly less rude to George Farr who had wanted to employ me. I was in jim dandy shape. I ate one third of a big steak, and I went back to the house and watched Lorrie and her two best friends, Mandy Pierson and Tinker Velbiss, giggling and simpering while they clustered around Vince’s bed and fed him chunks of steak, taking turns. His slow jaws ground the meat and he looked arrogant and lazy and content. I went back to the party and drank beer and switched back to gin, and passed out in a deck chair and woke up after dark, long after all the children had gone home. Small groups were raising dismal voices in close harmony, and some clown had filled my pockets with potato chips.

  Tinker found me in the darkness and cuddled with me on the deck chair. We had carried on a stylized flirtation for a long time. She said her Charlie had passed out and my Lorrie had gone on to the club with a group.

  The bar was closed and we decided we needed a drink, so we walked two blocks to her house where Charlie had been stowed up in bed. She sent the sitter on home. We made some drinks. We sat in the dark living room and drank our drinks, and then, without plan or design, we were on the couch, drunk but dextrous, Jerry Jamison and the best redheaded girl friend his wife had ever had. It was turbulent, meaningless and competent. Then we shared a cigarette. And she had a fit of monstrous yawns. And we adjusted garments in the darkness. And she walked me to the door and we said good night in guilty whispers, and she stopped yawning long enough to kiss me, quite indifferently.

  When I got home Vince was propped up, reading. He asked me to get him some cold beer and some crackers and cheese if we had any. I brought them and he told me to go swab off the lipstick. Tinker had plastered me liberally.

  And I went blundering off to bed. As I was going to sleep I wondered what Vince would buy with his end of the money. And what I would buy. I wondered what I wanted. Not a succession of Tinkers, with their good but rather heavy legs and their automatic promiscuity.

  Maybe what I wanted was what I had thought I was getting when I had married Lorrie.

  But it was a little late for that.

  7

  When I arrived at the office on Monday morning Liz was the only one there. She paused in the act of taking the plastic cover off her typewriter and looked at me with tense expectation.

  I went over to her and nodded. She knew what I meant. Her face went marble white and then she blushed. She laughed nervously and said, “When do I pack?”

  “Not yet. I’m coming back to work here. For a while. Not long. We’ll talk later.”

  “Back here? But why?”

  “It’s a long story. Trust me.”

  She caught my hand and held it against her cheek and looked up at me. “That I will, Buster. This is the game that goes with the name.”

  E. J. came bustling in. “Good morning, good morning, good morning. A lovely day. A perfect morning in May. Come on right in, Jerry, and let’s get organized.”

  I got out to Park Terrace by ten-thirty. It took two hours to repair some of the damage Junior had done. At twelve-thirty I sat on a pile of lumber and talked to Red Olin. Red had finished his lunch and was working on one of his big black cigars.

  “I sort of had hopes you’d give me a call, Jerry. Like you said.”

  “I couldn’t get the backing, Red. Couldn’t swing it.”

  “I made a little list of guys to
bring along. Four good boys. By Jesus, I’d like to get off this job. A man likes to keep a little self-respect. I be damned if I get any kind of charge building an ugly house.”

  I thought of the cash. “Under your hat, Red, this is just temporary, my coming back. I might still be able to work it.”

  “I sure hope you can.”

  And right then it did seem feasible. Borrow as much as I could. Feed in some of the cash very very carefully. The books would have to look right at all times. But, hell, I would be doing what I liked to do, and it was unlikely that I would go broke.

  As I was trying to make myself believe that it could happen, we saw Junior drive up in his lust-red T-bird and get out, looking important. From a distance of about sixty feet, in full earshot of all the men about to get back on the job, he yelled, “Jamison, come here!”

  Red grunted. I stared at the kid. He came twenty feet closer and yelled, “Come here a minute, Jerry!”

  I took out a cigarette and lit it, snapped the lid on the lighter. I said to Red, “If you can get the next five roofed, then rain won’t be any problem.”

  “The roofers have been slow, Jerry.”

  Junior came marching up, his weak face working in anger, his voice thin with outrage. “What the hell’s the matter with you? You heard me!”

  I looked at him with mild surprise. “Why, hello, Eddie.”

  “When I call you, I expect you to—” But that was as far as he got. He’d come too close to me. I swung my right foot up against his chest and straightened my leg. He clutched at my foot but his fingers slipped off as he went backward, running hard. He ran into a low sand pile and went down hard and rolled all the way over it, ending up on his hands and knees on the far side, facing me. He scrambled up with a white and terrible look on his face and went stalking to his little T-bird. It rumbled flatulently and took off with him.

  Red tapped the ash off his cigar and said, “Don’t know how smart that was.”

  “Neither do I. But it was fun.”

  “Kind of nice to watch. He’s been about to drive us nuts out here, marching around, giving orders in that squeaky voice.”