John D MacDonald - The Executioners (aka Cape Fear)

by The Executioners (Aka Cape Fear)(Lit)

  You bring old Marilyn along to help you?... What's the matter? I say something wrong?"

  "Let's go get that glue," Sam said. On the way up to the shed he told Jake about the dog.

  Jake spat accurately at an empty oil drum.

  "Take a special mean kind of son of a bitch to poison a dog."

  "I know."

  "There was a fella here before your time, when my daddy was alive. Most folks say fish got no feelings.

  Cold blood and all. But he used to clean his fish here, and he'd take them alive out of the bait well and scale 'em and fillet 'em still wiggling. Seemed to get a kick out of it. We run him off the place finally. Lost a bait customer. Some people got a mean streak all right. It's surely hell on those kids. That wasn't much of a dog for fight, but she sure liked friends. Here's the glue.

  Let me get that top for you. Use this here rubber mallet and don't try to get it in too fast. Little taps, and keep it even. Don Langly's setter bitch had another litter couple of weeks ago. She jumped the fence again. Don thinks it was a chow dog got to her this time, but those pups are sure cute. He's trying to find homes for them for when they're weaned."

  "Thanks, Jake. But maybe later on."

  "Sometimes it's good to get another one right away.

  I'd say a little more glue. Slop it on good. You can wipe off what squeezes out."

  After the family had watched him tap the whittled wedge into place, Sam apportioned the work. They all began to work, using the sanding blocks. The sun was hot and it was tiring work. After a half hour Sam took off his shirt and hung it on a sawhorse. The slight breeze off the lake cooled the perspiration on his lean back. Bucky was unexpectedly solemn and diligent.

  When Gil Burman came by and stopped, Sam used it as an excuse to call a break. Jamie and Bucky raced off with a dollar to buy two beers and three Cokes from Jake.

  "You got this crew organized," Gil said. Gil was a forty-year-old vice-president of the New Essex Bank and Trust Company. He had moved out to Harper a year ago. He was a big man, prematurely gray. His wife was a vivacious and rattle-brained redhead. Sam and Carol liked and enjoyed Gil and Betty.

  "He's a whip snapper," Carol said.

  "I lost my helpers on account of the pram race this afternoon. They're getting organized."

  "Does the Jungle Queen need work?"

  "Does she ever not need it? Dry rot in the dashboard this time. Damn old clunker. Why we keep her, I'll never know. Carol, did Betty get in touch with you yet about next Friday?"

  "No, not yet."

  "A big old Burman soiree, kids. Cindered steaks in the back yard. An extensive clobbering on Martinis.

  Drunken conversation and family battles afterward.

  We have to do it for a lot of sordid types, and so we need some of our Mends around to improve the situation."

  Carol glanced at Sam and then said to Gil, "We'd love to come. But there may be a hitch. I might have to be out of town. I could let Betty know later in the week?"

  "Right up until kickoff. It's a big party."

  The boys came back with the Cokes and beer. Sam went off to one side to talk business with Gil. The bank acted as trustee on many of the estates represented by Donity, Stetch and Bowden. As they talked, Sam looked idly at his family. Carol was getting them back to work. Nancy wore very short red shorts, old and faded, and a yellow linen halter. Her legs were long and brown and shin, beautifully shaped. She worked the sanding block with both hands, turning lithely at the waist. The smooth young muscles bunched and lengthened under the sheen and texture of her back.

  After Gil left he worked again, steadily, and by one o'clock Carol announced it was time for a lunch break.

  They would run home and eat and come back. It was then that Nancy announced, quite demurely, that she had told Tommy Kent what they'd be doing and he had said he might stop around and help, so, if it was all right, she would stay and keep working and they could bring her back a sandwich, please.

  Sam drove Carol and the boys home. Mike Turner was sitting on the front porch, waiting for Jamie.

  Carol made hefty sandwiches and a giant pitcher of iced tea. As she was wrapping Nancy's sandwich, Carol said, "You itching to get back to work?"

  "I'd like to get that hull painted before dark."

  "I'm going to make Bucky take a nap. He's completely pooped. Hell yelp at the idea, but he'll cork off in about ten seconds. You go on ahead and I'll bring the boys down in an hour or so."

  He took the MG and drove back to the boat yard. He walked around the shed, carrying the sandwich and a small thermos of iced tea. Nancy was sitting on her haunches, sanding the under curve of the hull, a difficult place to get at. She smiled up at him.

  "No dream boat yet?"

  "Not yet, Daddy. Nobody says that any more."

  "What's a good expression?"

  "Well... he resonates me."

  "Good Lord!"

  "Please just set that stuff down, Daddy. I want to finish this one place first."

  He went over and put the sandwich and thermos on the sawhorse. As he was unbuttoning his shirt, he had his back to Nancy. He stopped, motionless, his finger tips touching the third button. Max Cady sat on a low pile of timbers twenty feet away. He had a can of beer and a cigar. He wore a yellow knit sports shirt and a pair of sharply creased slacks in a shade of cheap electric blue. He was smiling at Sam.

  Sam walked over to him. It seemed to take a long time to walk twenty feet. Cady's smile didn't change.

  "What are you doing here?" Sam kept his voice low.

  "Well, I'm having a beer, Lieutenant, and I'm smoking this here cigar."

  "I don't want you hanging around here."

  Cady looked quietly amused.

  "So the man sells me a beer and I'm thinking about maybe renting a boat. I haven't fished since I was a kid. Fishing any good in the lake?"

  "What do you want?"

  "That's your boat, hey?" He gestured with the cigar, winked with obscene significance and said, "Nice lines, Lieutenant."

  Sam looked back and saw Nancy sitting on her heels, the short red shorts pulled to strained tightness around the young hips.

  "God damn it, Cady, I " "A man has a nice family and a boat like that and a job where he can take off when he feels like it, it must be nice. Go out into the lake and mess around. When you're locked up you think of things like that. You know. Like dreaming."

  "What are you after? What do you want?"

  The small deep-set brown eyes changed, but the smile still exposed the cheap white teeth.

  "We started pretty near even back there in forty-three, Lieutenant. You had a fancy education and a commission and little gold bars, but we both had a wife and a kid. Did you know that?"

  "I remember hearing you were married."

  "I got married when I was twenty. The boy was four when you got me sent up. I saw him when he was a couple weeks old. Mary dumped me after I got life.

  She never even visited. They make it easy to do when you're in for life. I signed the law papers. And I never got another letter. But my brother wrote me how she got married again. Married a plumber there in Charleston, West Virginia. Had a whole litter of kids.

  My brother sent me clippings when the kid got killed.

  My kid. That was in fifty-one. He was twelve, and he fell off his motor scooter under a delivery truck."

  "I'm sorry about that."

  "Are you, Lieutenant? You must be a nice guy. You must be a real nice guy. I looked Mary up when I got back to Charleston. She damn near dropped dead when she recognized me. The kids were in school and the plumber was out plumbing. That was last September. You know, she'd got fat, but she's still a pretty woman. All the Pratt women are pretty. Hill people, from around Eskdale. I had to bust open the screen door to get to talk to her. Then she ran and got one of those fireplace things and tried to hit me over the head with it. I took it away from her and bent it double and threw it in the fireplace. Then she came out quiet and got in the car. She al
ways had a mean temper."

  "Why are you telling me this?"

  "I want you to get the picture, like I told you last week. I drove her over to Huntington that's only about fifty miles and that night I got in a booth with her while she called up the plumber. By then she was doing just what I told her, and I had her say she was taking a little vacation from him and the kids. I hung up while he was still yelling. I made her write me a love note and date it, asking me to take her away for a while. I made her write it full of dirty words. I stayed with her about three days in a hotel in Huntington. By then I got tired of her sniveling all the time and blubbering about her kids and her plumber. All the fight was gone, but she was marked up from that first day when she was still trying to get away. Are you getting the picture, Lieutenant?"

  "I think so."

  "When I had enough of her, I told her that if she ever tried to yell cop, I'd mail a photostat of the note to the plumber. And I'd come around and see if I could throw a couple of the plumber's kids under some delivery trucks. She was impressed. I had to put damn near a whole fifth of liquor into her before she passed out. Then I drove her over the Big Sandy into Kentucky, and when I found one of those rough little roadhouses near Grayson, I lifted her out and put her in an old heap parked there. About a mile back up the road I threw her shoes and her dress in a field. I give her a good chance to work her way home."

  "This is supposed to scare me."

  "No, Lieutenant. This is just part of the picture. I had a lot of time to think. You know. I'd remember how it was when we got married. I'd gone back to Charleston on leave. I was twenty and it was 1939 and I had two years in. I wasn't fixing to get married, but she'd come into town with her folks on Saturday night. She was just turned seventeen and I could tell looking at them they were hill folk. My people came from around Brounland before they moved down into Charleston. I followed them around town, never taking my eyes off Betty. After lockup at night I'd remember how it was on that Saturday night, and how the wedding was, and how she came down to Louisiana when we had the maneuvers before I got shipped.

  She wanted to be near me. She was religious. Came from a big clan of Bible shouters. But it didn't stop her taking a big interest in climbing into the hay."

  "I don't want to listen to all this."

  "But you'll listen, Lieutenant. You want the word. I got this word for you. After I found out from my brother about her marrying again, I planned the whole thing, just exactly the way I did it. I changed it just a little. I was going to keep her a week instead of only three days, but she lost her fight too fast."

  "So?"

  "You're supposed to be a big smart lawyer, Lieutenant. I thought about her and naturally I thought about you."

  "And you made plans for me?"

  "Now you're getting warm. But I couldn't make plans for you because I didn't know how you were set.

  I wasn't even sure I could locate you. I hoped to hell you hadn't been killed or died of sickness."

  "Are you threatening me?"

  "I'm not threatening you, Lieutenant. Like I said, we started pretty near even. Now you're a wife and three kids ahead of me."

  "And you want us to be even again."

  "I didn't say that."

  They stared at each other, and Cady was still smiling. He looked entirely at ease. Sam Bowden could find no way to control the situation.

  "Did you poison our dog?" he demanded, and immediately regretted asking the question.

  "Dog?" Cady's eyes went round with mock surprise.

  "Poison your dog? Why, Lieutenant? You slander me."

  "Oh, come off it!"

  "Come off what? No, I wouldn't poison your dog any more than you'd put a plainclothes cop on my tail. You wouldn't do a thing like that."

  "You did it, you filthy bastard!"

  "I've got to be careful. I can't take any punches at you, Lieutenant. I'd get sent up for assault. Want a cigar? They're good ones."

  Sam turned helplessly away. Nancy had stopped working. She was standing looking intently toward them, her eyes narrowed, and she was biting her underlip.

  "There's a real stacked kid, Lieutenant. Almost as juicy as your wife."

  Sam turned back blindly and swung. Cady dropped his beer can and caught the punch deftly in the palm of his right hand.

  "You get one sucker punch in a lifetime, Lieutenant.

  You've had yours."

  "Get out of here!"

  Cady had stood up. He put the cigar in the corner of his mouth and spoke around it.

  "Sure. Maybe after a while you'll get the whole picture, Lieutenant." He walked toward the shed, moving lightly and easily. He grinned back at Sam, then waved his cigar at Nancy and said, "See you around, beautiful."

  Nancy came over to Sam.

  "Is that him? Is it?

  Daddy! You're shaking!"

  Sam, ignoring her, followed Cady around the shed.

  Cady got behind the wheel of an old gray Chevy. He beamed at Sam and Nancy and drove out.

  "He is the one, isn't he? He's horrible! The way he looked at me made me feel all crawly, like worms do."

  "That's Cady," he said. His voice was unexpectedly husky.

  "Why did he come here!"

  "To put a little more pressure on. God knows how he found out we'd be here. I'm glad your mother and the boys weren't here."

  They walked back to the boat. He glanced down at her as she walked beside him. Her face was solemn, thoughtful. This was not a problem that would affect only him and Carol. The children were within the orbit.

  Nancy looked up at him.

  "What are you going to do about it?"

  "I don't know."

  "What is he going to do?"

  "I don't know that either."

  "Daddy, do you remember a long time ago when I was little and the nightmares I had after we went to the circus?"

  "I remember. What was the name of that ape?

  Gargantua."

  "That's right. The place where they had him had glass walls and you held me by the hand and he turned and he looked right at me. Not at any of the other people. Right at me. And I felt like something inside me curled up and died. It was something savage that didn't have any right to be in the same world I was in.

  Do you know what I mean?"

  "Of course."

  "That man is a little bit like that. I mean I got a little bit of the same impression. Miss Boyce would say I was being unrealistic."

  "And who is Miss Boyce? I've heard that name."

  "Oh, she's our English teacher. She's been telling us that good fiction is good because it has character development in it that shows that nobody is completely good and nobody is completely evil. And in bad fiction the heroes are a hundred per cent heroic and the villains are a hundred per cent bad. But I think that man is all bad."

  Never before, he thought, have we been able to talk on an equivalent, adult level without a mutual shyness.

  "I suppose I could understand him, if I wanted to. He was in a dirty, brutal business, and he was a combat-fatigue case, and he went right from that into life imprisonment at hard labor. And that is a brutalizing environment. I suppose he couldn't think of it as a reward for services rendered. So there had to be somebody to blame. And he couldn't blame himself. I became the symbol. He doesn't see me. He doesn't see Sam Bowden, lawyer, home owner, family type. He sees the lieutenant, the young JAG. full of puritanical righteousness who ruined his life. And I wish I could be one of your hundred per cent heroes about it.

  I wish I didn't have a mind full of reservations and rationalizations."

  "In our psychology class Mr. Proctor told us that all mental illness is a condition where the individual can't make a rational interpretation of reality. I had to memorize that. So if Mr. Cady can't be rational..."

  "I believe he's mentally sick."

  "Then shouldn't he be treated?"

  "The law in this state is designed to protect people from being wrongly committed. A close relative
can sign commitment papers which will put a person away for a period of observation, usually sixty days. Or, if a person commits an act of violence or, in public, acts in an irrational manner, he can be committed on the basis of the testimony of the law officers who witness the violence or irrationality. There's no other way."