John D MacDonald - The Executioners (aka Cape Fear)

by The Executioners (Aka Cape Fear)(Lit)

  "I'm going to be the most devout coward you ever heard of, honey. I'll take a room at the New Essex House and I won't go out after dark, and I won't open the door unless I know damn well for sure who has knocked."

  "And then suppose nothing happens? When do we come back? When do we know it's over?"

  "I don't think he's going to be very patient when he gets out. I think he'll make a move and I think he'll make it at me, and I'm going to make certain it will be unsuccessful, and if he does, then we'll have the evidence that will send him back for a long time."

  "Oh, yes. For a year, or three years, and then we can have such a fine time planning just what we'll do when they let him out again. It will be just like this month has been. Full of nervous smiles and bad jokes."

  "It will work out."

  "Please forgive me for asking you if it would be possible for you to stop saying that to me. It makes me feel as if you're patting me on the head. We hope it will work out. We very truly much hope so. But there aren't any written guarantees, are there, darling?"

  "No. We can only do everything we can. And along that line, you will be charmed to learn that tomorrow I am becoming a dashing and dangerous figure, with the help of Captain Button."

  "What do you mean?"

  "He is arranging the permit for me. He wasn't as reluctant as I expected him to be. At lunchtime I go pick up a very ugly and efficient device manufactured by Smith and Wesson. And when the harness is properly fitted, it will hang right here. It will nestle in a thing called a spring-clip holster. Nobody can snatch it away, but when I reach for it properly it will, Button claims, jump right into my hand. Then all I'll need will be a case of gin, a great big willing blonde and a shabbly little private office."

  She looked at him in a level way.

  "So many gay little jokes. And such a wide, glassy, self-conscious smile."

  "What the hell do you want me to do? Clench my teeth and look steely-eyed? Of course I'm self-conscious about it! It isn't exactly my line, you know. I'm scared of Cady. I'm scared the way a kid having a nightmare is scared. The thought of him makes my hands sweat and makes my belly feel hollow. I'm so scared I'm going to wear that gun and tomorrow night I'm going to take so many cartridges up on the hill that by the time I'm through I'm going to be able to draw and fire and hit what I aim at. I'm going to feel like a little boy playing cops and robbers. I'm going to feel self-conscious. And so I'll make my forlorn little quips out of pure nervousness. But it's going to be a lot more comfortable to be a target that can shoot back."

  He stopped his pacing and looked at her and saw the quiet tears rolling down her cheeks. He sat beside her and took her in his arms and kissed the salty eyes.

  "I shouldn't bellow at you," he mumured.

  "I... shouldn't have said what I did. I just got tired... of the frantic gaiety we coat everything with. It's gotten to be a nervous habit, but I guess it's the way we are." She smiled wanly at him.

  "And I couldn't stand a ponderous, humorless husband. I. I'm glad you're getting the gun. I'll feel better, really."

  "Me, my gun, and my asinine chatter."

  "I take all three. And gladly."

  "Now, then. Back to scheduling. We leave early Friday morning. We find a place for you and Bucky.

  We stay there Friday night. Saturday we see the birthday girl. I stay with you Saturday night at the place we find, and Sunday I drive back into town and " "Why don't we take both cars, dear? When we go to camp we can leave the MG at the place where I'm going to stay, and then on Sunday you can drive it back to the city when you check into the hotel."

  "Good deal."

  "I'm going to hate being away from you."

  "You are not alone."

  He wore the short-barreled revolver home on Tuesday night. The harness chafed him, and he realized it would be a long time before he could become accustomed to it. He had worn it when he went back to the office, feeling vastly foolish, and suspecting that everyone who glanced at him on the street saw the suspicious bulge under his left arm.

  He stood inspection while Carol circled him. Finally she said, "I know it's there so I can see the sort of lump it makes, but actually, darling, I guess you're the type. You're thin and you like your jackets cut loosely anyway."

  "So this dish saunters in and I can see right away nobody ever has to tell her the time of day. She makes a production out of sitting down and crossing her gorgeous legs, and then she dives down into a pocketbook as big as a phone booth for midgets and comes up with wad of green stuff that would gag a hippo.

  Then she leans over and starts counting out hundred dollar bills on the corner of my desk. I was so busy counting with her I didn't even take time to look down the front of her dress."

  Carol struck a faintly bawdy pose and said, out of the corner of her mouth, "What did the floozy want, baby?"

  "Ah, after all the production, it was routine. She wanted me to kill a guy."

  "You gonna do it?"

  "Tomorrow. After lunch. The joker needs killing.

  You see, tootsie, I got this mission. I go around killing the bad guys. The guys that got connections so the law can't touch them, see. I'm cleaning out the filth, see. I eliminate 'em, like those knight guys used to get rid of the dragons they had hanging around with blazing halitosis. I get paid for it and the big blondes are always grateful. Real grateful."

  "And that leer, my friend, is almost too convincing."

  "Trudge up the hill after a while and watch me show off after I get used to this thing. Dutton says don't aim it. Point it as naturally as you point your finger.

  Where's the Buck? I don't want him galloping into the line of fire."

  "Liz Turner took a whole swarm of kids to the County Fair."

  "A brave and noble lady:" He went up to the range with three boxes of shells, and a piece of sheeting and some twine. He tied the sheeting around a tree thick enough to simulate a man's torso. He penciled a crude heart on the left side of the chest. At first he was discouragingly slow, awkward and inaccurate. The weapon had a flat, gutty bark, much more authoritative than the snapping of the twenty-two. He fired a couple of dozen rounds for accuracy, and then went back to the routine of drawing and firing, improving doggedly.

  Carol came up the hill and said, "You sound like a South American revolution, darling."

  "This is trickier than I thought."

  "Should you be so close?"

  "It's a measured twenty feet, honey. This thing isn't designed for potting at long range. I don't know as I'm ready to show off, but I'll try." He loosened the riddled sheet and turned it around to the fresh side and refastened it.

  "What's that?"

  "It's a heart."

  "It's too small and it should be more in the middle."

  "Stop bossng the job. Okay. I'm in position. And I'm half turned away from it. Hands at my sides. Casual and relaxed. When you happen to feel like it, yell 'go."" "Go!"

  He caught the grip cleanly, found the trigger as he wheeled, and emptied the cylinder. He put five black holes in the target, the first one in the abdominal area, one at the waist, and three fairly well centered in the chest.

  "Wow!" she said, genuinely awed.

  "Did one miss?"

  "No. You keep the hammer on an empty chamber.

  You fire the first one double action."

  She looked slightly pale and her throat worked as she swallowed.

  "Maybe my imagination is a little too vivid, darling. But it seems... so horribly functional."

  "It's completely functional. It's designed to be used on people. It's designed for maximum speed and maximum killing power for its size. There's nothing pretty about it, or romantic about it."

  He broke the gun and ejected the cases and reloaded.

  "Want to try it?"

  "I don't think so. I think I'd rather not."

  "Does the demonstration make you feel any better?"

  She nodded.

  "It does, Sam. It really does. But it's funny to
think of you... I mean...."

  "I know just what you mean. Lovable, mild old Sam. Dutton knows it too. And he very carefully made his point, in a roundabout way. He told me the armed forces had a lot of trouble in World War Two and in Korea with boys who would not fire their weapons.

  They are not certain of the basic cause. Something to do with civilization, Christian upbringing, respect for the life and dignity of the individual. He said that they get them on the cops. They'll get a rugged kid with good reflexes who does just fine on the target range.

  And then he'll get in a tight spot. he'll do exactly as he's been taught, right up to the point of aiming, and with his finger on the trigger. And he will stop right there, and if it is the wrong situation, they'll have a dead cop. I don't know about myself. I can really kill hell out of that tree, lips drawn back in a killer's sneer.

  But if it was flesh and blood? I don't know. I don't really know. If I'd had any combat I would know. I think I could. I've got to make this so automatic with me that pulling the trigger is a part of the total action, and not a separate piece at the end. Then if I can start, I can go through it all the way. I hope."

  She tilted her head and studied him.

  "There isnt much pretense about you, Sam. I mean you take such long, cold looks at yourself."

  "If you mean I don't consider myself a dashing figure, you're right. I am a sedentary, forty-year-old office worker, with a mortgage, a family and an insurance program. I am suited to this new aroma of violence and menace in the same way that George Gobel would feel at home as a Golden Gloves contestant in the heavyweight classification. It is a triteness to say that life makes curious and unexpected demands on you. I'm trying to face this one, but, my Indian maiden, there's something about it that makes me feel like a white mouse in a snake pit."

  She came up to him and held his wrists.

  "And I tell you, you are not a white mouse. You are as brave as any man. You have warmth and strength. You know how to love and be loved. This is a great and rare art.

  You are my man, and I wouldn't want you changed in any way."

  He kissed her and then stood holding her in his arms. He looked down over her shoulder, and the dark gleam of the sun in his right hand looked incongruous.

  He was holding his wrist canted so that the weapon would not touch her pale-blue blouse. And beyond the gun he could see the white target and the penciled heart and five black holes.

  CHAPTER EIGHT.

  ON FRIDAY they left early and drove southeast toward the pleasant little vacation villages in the lake area. Bucky seemed willing to accept the idea that Carol wanted a vacation from doing all the housework and he could come along too. It was, they told him, the next best thing to going away to camp.

  They drove slowly and took side roads and arrived at the town of Suffern, ninety miles from Harper, at lunchtime. They had a good lunch in the quiet dining room of a lakeside inn called The West Wind. It was an old-fashioned frame building, with the tall and awkward dignity of the Victorian period. A busy little cricket of a man showed them two third-floor rooms on the lakeside with connecting bath. The weekly rate was reasonable and the rooms, with maple furniture and rag rugs, were clean and cheery. The rate included breakfasts and dinners, the use of the tiny beach, the hotel rowboats when available, the English croquet court, and the two tennis courts.

  Yes, there were other children in the hotel, and they had never made it a policy to exclude children, but no pets, please. Even the oblique mention of Marilyn visibly saddened Bucky. It was not at all necessary, Sam decided, to use a different name. It would be theatrical, ludicrous and unnecessary. Carol said she would write directly to the office and, as an additional precaution, use envelopes not marked with the return address of The West Wind.

  After Carol and Bucky had unpacked and changed, they went for a walk through the village, and then came back and waited until the croquet court was free.

  Carol was grimly accurate, and took high glee in whacking Sam's ball off into the hinterlands whenever she could get near enough to hit it. Sam teamed up with Bucky, but she still won readily.

  That night, after they were in the big double bed, Carol said, "I'm going to be terribly extravagant and buy a tennis racket. I'm terribly flabby. I need to tighten up."

  "Flabby? Flabby? Where? Here? Or possibly here?"

  "Stop it, you darn fool."

  "Do you think you'll be happy here?"

  "Not happy, darling. But as contented as I could be anywhere away from you." Suddenly she giggled.

  "What is it?"

  "Bucky. His lordly disgust when those two little girls made their overtures."

  "I noticed he joined the fun and games nevertheless."

  "But in a superior and patronizing way. He's such a male little male."

  "And tomorrow the birthday girl."

  "Fifteen. Gosh, that's a terrible year."

  "Heresy."

  "No, it isn't. I was desperately unhappy at fifteen.

  Every mirror broke my heart. I was a mess. And so I wasn't going to be able to marry him."

  "Who was he?"

  "Don't snicker at me now. Clark Gable. I had it all arranged. He was going to come to Texas to make a movie, and it was going to be a movie about oil wells.

  And I was going to go out to where they were making the movie and one day he would turn and he would look right at me, and smile in that funny quizzical way, with one eyebrow up and one down, and he'd stop the cameras and come over and look at me. Then he would signal to somebody, who would come running to him and he would say, pointing at me as I stood proud and haughty in my beauty, "She is my next leading lady.

  Fix up the contracts." But, oh dear, I was such a mess."

  "I had an intense and disturbing affair with Sylvia Sidney. She'd curl up in my arms like a silky little kitten and tell me it really didn't matter at all to her that I was nearly twenty pounds overweight. Now who's snickering?"

  "I'm sorry, honey."

  "Then, of course, there was my Joan Bennett phase.

  And Ida Lupino for a time. And Jean Harlow. Jean used to drive out from Paris and wait for me in her Pierce-Arrow convertible behind the hangar. After I landed my riddled aircraft, gun barrels still smoking, and three more Huns to my credit, I would saunter, lean and casual and deadly, back to the big car. My incredible luck was due to her black-mesh stocking I tied to my upper arm before every combat operation.

  She used to bring out a hamper of iced champagne and that night they would see us in all the gay places of Paris, the undulent platinum blonde and the tall veteran pilot with that look of far places in his eyes and great and humble bravery."

  "Really?"

  "She left me for a British major. On my very next assignment, I forgot the stocking. A German ace pounced on me out of the clouds. As I went down in flames, I saluted him and he waggled his wings out of courtesy to a dying hero."

  "Heavens to Betsy!"

  "That's a very insulting snicker. It's a sort of sniggling sound."

  "Gosh, I wish it could be like this. I mean so safe. And all of us together. I don't want Sunday to come and I don't want to stand out there making my mouth smile while you drive away."

  "Don't think about it."

  "I can't stop."

  "Perhaps you could be distracted."

  "M mmm. Perhaps."

  As had been prearranged by letter, they picked Jamie up at his camp before lunch. He was brown and thin and scrubbed to a startling state of cleanliness.

  Then they drove three miles along the lake shore road to Minnatalla to get Nancy. Nancy looked overwhelmingly healthy, and she had stars in her eyes.

  They drove thirty miles due east to the small city of Aldermont for a festive meal in the dining room of the Hotel Aldermont. The hostess gave them an alcove off the dining room where they had more privacy.

  Nancy was bubbling over. The camp was wonderful this year. Mr. Teller was pretty creepy, but he kept out of the way. She was assistant chair
man of the social committee, and Tommy Kent was chairman of the Gannatalla social committee, so they had meetings often to make arrangements. Tommy was doing wonderful. Mr. Menard had made Tommy a sort of personal assistant. One redheaded girl got poison ivy so badly she had to be sent home. Another girl fell off a horse and sprained her shoulder, but she wasn't going home. There was a new fast boat for the water skiing, and the camps took turns with it. Tommy was the regular driver.