You Live Once

by John D. MacDonald

  He moved with the bulky quickness of a bear, and all the strength. He lifted me out of the chair with one hand on my throat, swung me around and banged me back against the wall. My head hit hard, dazing me. Through the momentary fog I saw his face wearing a gentle smile, heard his soft voice. “You just found her in your closet. Just like that. Dead.”

  “Yes,” I croaked.

  He let go of me, turned with a snort of disgust and sat down again. “Sit down, Sewell.”

  “It’s the truth. She had a belt of mine around her neck. A red fabric belt. It’s in the top drawer of my bureau. And I suppose you want the tarp I carried her in. That’s in a hole in a rotten birch, about a hundred and fifty feet back in the woods, a hole about seven feet off the ground. I moved the body. I know that was wrong. But I was scared. I didn’t think clearly.”

  Kruslov rattled his fingers on the scarred table top. “Sewell, I’ll tell you how it happened. You invited her in. She came in. She was a teaser. She got you all hot and upset and she wouldn’t give. You were drunk. You killed her and put her in the closet and went peacefully to sleep.”

  “How about her car?”

  “You drove it out and left it.”

  “And walked fifteen miles back? Anyway, if I did that, why not take the body along with the car?”

  “You were drunk. You didn’t know what you were doing.” He leaned toward me, smiling softly. “Come on, Clint. We’re all men of the world. We know the score. We know how a thing like that can happen. Hell, we know it wasn’t premeditated. I’ll personally see that you get every break in the world. Honest.”

  “I didn’t kill her. Somebody else killed her and wished the body on me.”

  He got up and hammered the other side of my face with the back of his hand. It was the sore side. I got my balance and looked up at him. “If you keep your damn hands off me you’ll get further.”

  And he knocked me off the chair.

  The civilian interrupted. He was an oily joker with white hair and confidential eyes. “Joe, let me have a minute alone with this boy.”

  “Okay, Bernie,” Kruslov said. They trooped out and left me with Bernie. He gave me a cigarette and lighted it. I fingered the inside of my cheek.

  “Son, Captain Kruslov is a good officer, but he’s used to handling the lower element. I can see right away that he’s not used to dealing with a man like you. But that won’t change his methods. He’s tireless. He won’t give up. He’ll give you hell on earth until you come clean with him. Just between the two of us, I think you’d be doing the smart thing to open up. I really do. And he meant it when he said he’d see that you get every break.”

  “You think I ought to?”

  He patted my shoulder. “I’m positive of it. It’s pretty sickening the way he cuffs people around. He hasn’t injured anybody permanently—yet.”

  “You can go to hell. I found the body in my closet and that’s the entire truth.”

  Bernie was not like Captain Kruslov; Bernie used the palm of his hand instead of the back. I nailed him right between the eyes, hurting hell out of my hand. He rocked back on the table, legs kicking, and fell off on the other side, taking a chair down with him. Kruslov, Hilver and the stenographer came tearing back in. Bernie wanted me held while he got even. Kruslov told him to sit down and shut up.

  We started again. I stuck doggedly to the truth. They kept trying to mix me up. They began to work it in shifts. It is funny what happens to you when people keep driving questions at you, pounding them in, jeering at your answers. You eventually arrive at a semi-hypnotic state. Their heads all looked as big as bushel baskets. Their voices seemed to start inside my head. I no longer knew or cared who asked what. My voice deteriorated to a husky rasp. Somebody started snapping the end of my nose with his finger, every time I answered a question. I don’t know when it got dark and the room lights went on. My nose hurt like fire each time it was snapped, but I got too weary to duck. I don’t know when the belt and the tarp and the glossy pictures of the body were brought in. I only know that it went on and on and on.

  I sat in the bottom of a well with searchlights shining down on me, big heads looking down in there at me. I answered up out of the bottom of my well, my voice hollow. I squatted down there and knew the well was getting deeper and deeper. Their questions were further away. The lights were dimmer.

  Suddenly everything stopped. I sat with my chin on my chest. The room was too silent.

  “Midnight, Joe,” somebody said.

  “Yeah,” Kruslov said. He yawned mightily. I had trouble establishing which midnight. Wednesday midnight? I remembered that they’d buried Mary Olan this afternoon. It seemed that I had missed the funeral.

  “What do you think?”

  “Let him cool. We’ll try again. Or maybe we won’t. There’s enough. Principi says there’s enough to go ahead on. I’m sick of his damn face. Take him out of here.”

  They hauled me onto my feet. I felt drunk. Kruslov was by the door. As they started to walk me by him I yanked my right arm free and swung at him. It was a pretty feeble effort. He moved easily away. He looked at me and shook his head and smiled and said, “I’ll be damned! Protect me, boys.” They walked me out. They had a nice way of getting me down the hall. I couldn’t walk at the right speed. They would either prod me in the back, or grab the back of my collar and yank me back. I made it to the dark safety of the grim little cell. It had been there the full hundred years, and it smelled like a flooded cellar.

  There was a bare bulb in the narrow corridor. The bar shadows striped the cell and me. I lay sore in the dimness and tried to reconstruct my pride, my oneness, the lost uniqueness of me. In my special innocence I had thought police brutality a thing of myth, of newsstand legend. Oh, they might pound young punks around, beat some humility into street-corner arrogance, slap respect into the weasel-faced, ducktail-haircutted, pimpled little thieves—and it would do them good—but not me. Not Sewell.

  Pride in manhood is perhaps a precarious thing. But it is so seldom tested; you so seldom have to lay it on the line. I was a lost child and the big boys had beaten me up in a corner of the school yard. It takes something out of you.

  But it puts something back.

  I had been somewhat of a wise guy. They couldn’t do this to me. I looked back at the last few years—too much pride in my own rightness, in the skills, in the job, in being tall, free, respected and unmarked. Now I was no longer unique. They could reach me. They knew where I lived. It wasn’t a big game any more; it wasn’t a joke. I realized fully for the first time that a girl was dead, and knew what her death meant. You can’t be bright about death. Bright and wise and untouched.

  If the heavy hands of Kruslov had done nothing else, they had done one thing. They had awakened me to my own responsibility—the responsibility I had not yet squarely faced. I had to find out who had done it. Her death was my affair.

  In a few hours I had done a lot of growing up, most of it overdue. I lay on the thin hard mattress and tried to heal myself by thinking of Toni. But she was far away, and I had not known her. There were other things which had to be done first. Olan money pushed heavily against Kruslov. He had passed the pressure along to me. I was no longer amused.

  chapter 9

  I spent all day Thursday in the cell. Tasteless food arrived at intervals. There was nothing to read, nothing to hear. It was a quiet place.

  Kruslov came as the small high window was turning grey in the May dusk. He came into the cell, rested and amiable, a folded newspaper in his hand.

  “Well, boy, the D.A.’s office has approved the file for prosecution and we don’t hold you for questioning any more. Now we hold you on a first degree charge.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “They figure they have enough to go on. Now you can have a lawyer. You got enough dough to hire a good one, don’t you?”

  “I guess so.”

  “If I was in your shoes, Sewell, I’d want Jerry Hyers. He’s tough and he’s s
mart. If you want, I’ll give him a ring. He’s got a good batting average. Too damn good sometimes.”

  He puzzled me. He seemed relaxed, friendly.

  “I don’t know who I want.”

  “I’m giving you a good steer. Don’t look so suspicious. You’re not in the killing business. You just got mixed up with the wrong dolly. You’d have had a lot easier time of it last night if you’d talked up.”

  “Go to hell, Kruslov.”

  “Okay. Get hard. What’s the point? I do my job. It isn’t personal with me.”

  I looked at him and said, as steadily as I could, “I didn’t kill that girl.”

  He laughed. “Come off it, Sewell. Save that for the trial. That’s when you’ll need it. Shall I phone Jerry?”

  “All right. Phone him. I’ll talk to him.”

  “Gosh, thanks!” He tossed the paper on the bunk. “Here, read all about yourself.”

  I read it after he left. They used a page one picture of me, the picture taken the night I had come home from the police station after getting smacked by Yeagger. I stood looking into the camera with a sickly smile, a perfect picture of guilt.

  The write-up was discouraging. The newspaper had tried me and found me guilty. The authorities had certainly not been reticent about leaking their case to the press. They had even figured out how I had worked the car arrangement. According to the paper, we had ridden around until she felt better and then gone back to the club for my car. Driving two cars, we had headed out toward the Pryor farm, getting as far as Highland. Then I had signaled to her to stop. I had overpowered her somehow and brought her back to my apartment in my car. That was the car Mrs. Speers heard driving in at four. I had taken her into the apartment, killed her, taken my car back to the club and walked the two miles back to the apartment. It was fantastic, but it made a frightening kind of sense. Much was made of the belt, the tarp, the juice can, the thread. Nice juicy clues for the reading public.

  My first visitor Friday morning was Willy Pryor. He had done some aging since the conference at his home. He looked less like himself in a business suit. He was as brown and hard looking as before, but he did not move the same way. He moved like a much older man. His head trembled a little and his eyes looked sick. It was the damnedest conversation I have ever had with anybody.

  “Mr. Pryor, I want you to know that I didn’t kill your niece.”

  “Mary was a wild, reckless girl, Mr. Sewell.”

  “I didn’t kill her.”

  “After my sister became ill, Myrna and I tried to do our best for Mary. A good Christian home. We taught her right from wrong. But there was the wildness in her. It couldn’t be helped, I guess. She was promiscuous, Mr. Sewell. She was evil.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “She lived for lust and the gratification of the body. You must know that, Mr. Sewell. You went out with her. You certainly had carnal knowledge of her.”

  “No. I didn’t. In the vernacular, I never got beyond first base. I think you’re low-rating her.”

  He looked at me. There was an Old Testament sternness about him I had not seen before. “Do you deny possessing her, Mr. Sewell?”

  “I certainly do. And I didn’t kill her.”

  “She died eternally damned. It was the blood of her father, Mr. Sewell. He was evil. She sinned with many men. I did what I could. I have three young daughters to bring up. She was a bad example in my home, but I was responsible for her. I don’t grieve for her, Mr. Sewell. I feel sorry for her. Whoever killed her was acting as the instrument of God.”

  He was beginning to give me the creeps. “I didn’t kill her. I didn’t sleep with her. What are you trying to do? Get me to say I did?”

  “No, Mr. Sewell.” He stood up and looked down at me, thick white brows flaring, nostrils wide. “God have mercy on you.”

  “Now wait a minute.”

  “Be of good faith,” he said. “Do not despair.”

  They let him out and he went away.

  Jerome B. Hyers came bustling importantly in about ten minutes later. He was a short stocky man in his fifties with a great bulge of forehead and black hair long enough on one side so that he was able to paste it down across his bald pate. He had a mouth as big as a bucket, a ringing baritone voice and small sharp brown eyes. We did not get along at all. Every time I’d explain that I hadn’t killed her, Hyers would talk about the privileged conversations a client could have with his lawyer. Then he tried to tell me that the lack of premeditation would make a first degree charge difficult to sustain.

  We yelled at each other for a good fifteen minutes. He paced the small cell, with gestures. Suddenly he dropped all his mannerisms. He sat down and took out a big white handkerchief and wiped his mouth and looked at me calmly.

  “Didn’t do it, eh?”

  “No! I’ve been …”

  “All right. All right. Let me think. Beautiful circumstantial case. Beautiful! Quarrel at the club. Your belt. Disposal of body.”

  “I admit getting rid of the body.”

  He smiled a little sadly. “Young man, I might say that I do not look with great anticipation on basing my case on the assumption that somebody entered your apartment while you were sleeping and put the body in your closet.”

  “That’s what happened!”

  “Kindly stop repeating yourself. I accept that. Let me see. May. I’ll have until early December to prepare.”

  “December! Can you get me out of here?”

  “There is no bail for a first degree charge. You remain here until then.” He looked around the cell and sniffed. He said, “Of course we can see that they make you a good deal more comfortable than this.”

  “Kruslov and his people knocked me around a lot. Can you make anything out of that?”

  “I doubt it. If you had signed a confession we could start thinking about physical duress. But you signed nothing, so we’ll just have to forget that. My fee, young man, will be five thousand dollars, plus expenses if I should decide to employ an investigator.”

  “That’s a lot of money.”

  “I’m a lot of lawyer, young man.”

  I grinned at him. “Okay.”

  “I will do some thinking and review the facts we have and come back and bring a tape recorder and we’ll go into this in detail, young man.”

  “What happened to … Miss MacRae, my secretary? I’m anxious to keep her out of this.”

  “That investigator, France, reported where he had found you. Kruslov had her brought in. She was here when they brought you in. Kruslov was willing to be convinced that she had no part at all in the murder. He knows her father, and I guess his brother knows her. He talked to France about it. So the papers didn’t get it yet. But I think they will when it comes to trial. The prosecution will want to show that you acted like a guilty man. That includes hiding, and whoever hid you.”

  “The company will fire her.”

  He looked at me sadly. “They’re not likely to give you a medal, Mr. Sewell.”

  At about six o’clock they took me to the same room, that shabby defeated room with its smell of violence, where they had roughed me up. Toni was waiting there for me. They closed the door and left us alone. I suspected the influence of Jerry Hyers in that nice arrangement.

  We kissed and both talked at once and kissed again. She put gentle fingertips against my swollen face and cried about that, and about us and about the whole miserable mess.

  “It can’t be true, Clint. It’s hideous. It can’t really be true.”

  “Part of it was true.”

  She flushed. “Yes. Oh, yes. You know, they came to the plant and got me. Captain Kruslov said awful things to me. About helping you. Mr. France was there too. He was terribly angry at you. You chipped one of his teeth. I talked to Mr. France afterward. I asked him if his assignment was over and he said he thought it was. I asked him if he’d work for you. I didn’t think he would he was so angry, but he said he would, and I’m going to pay him.”

 
; “I don’t want you trying to pay his fees.”

  “I want to. When I run out of money, you can pay him. But I want somebody trying to help you, Clint. Captain Kruslov is so certain it was you that it scares me.”

  “You know it wasn’t.”

  “Yes. I know, darling.”

  “Don’t ever doubt it. Don’t ever wonder about me.”

  “I couldn’t. Don’t talk like that.” She looked directly at me. “And don’t you doubt me. Nothing will ever change. I’ll wait for you. I’ll work to get you free.”

  They warned us that we could have but two more minutes together. She said she would be at the office the next morning, Saturday morning, to clean up odds and ends and the phone in my office would be on one of the night circuits if I could get a chance to phone her. She said she would come and see me on Saturday afternoon and bring a change of clothing and toilet articles for me. She had something else to tell me, too, she said, but there wasn’t time to explain it. She had to leave then and they took me back to a cell that was colder, barer, more frightening, after the chance I had had to hold my tall warm girl in my arms and hear her voice and look into her eyes. Somebody has to believe in you, all the way. Somebody has to give a damn about you. You have to be important to somebody. Or life is just a routine of going through the motions.

  They released me at ten-fifteen on Saturday morning. Hyers stood impatiently while I put the laces back in my shoes, put my belt through the loops, tied my tie around the collar of the dirty shirt. I ripped open the manila envelope, recovered wallet, keys, lighter, change, cigarettes.

  “What’s up?” I asked Hyers.

  “Let’s have some coffee down the street.”

  I was glad it was a small dingy place. With a four day beard and dirty shirt, I looked like a bum. We took a booth near the back of the place.

  Jerry Hyers ordered doughnuts and coffee and said to me, “They would have let you stay there all week end. Too damn much trouble to go through the red tape and get you out.”