The Good Old Stuff

by John D. MacDonald

  In 1950 MacDonald had his first novel published, not in hardcover but as a Fawcett Gold Medal paperback original, and throughout that decade and most of the sixties he continued to write paperbacks so prolifically and well that he forced critics and intelligent readers to take notice of a new book-publishing medium that they might otherwise have dismissed as junk. With the debut of his series character Travis McGee in 1964, MacDonald’s royalties and readership soared even higher, and in due course the author and his hero migrated to hardcover publication and to the best-seller lists.

  What’s the secret of his success? The values he admires most in others’ fiction and embodies in his own have been best summarized by MacDonald himself. “First, there has to be a strong sense of story. I want to be intrigued by wondering what is going to happen next. I want the people that I read about to be in difficulties—emotional, moral, spiritual, whatever, and I want to live with them while they’re finding their way out of these difficulties. Second, I want the writer to make me suspend my disbelief.… I want to be in some other place and scene of the writer’s devising. Next, I want him to have a bit of magic in his prose style, a bit of unobtrusive poetry. I want to have words and phrases really sing. And I like an attitude of wryness, realism, the sense of inevitability. I think that writing—good writing—should be like listening to music, where you identify the themes, you see what the composer is doing with those themes, and then, just when you think you have him properly identified, and his methods identified, then he will put in a little quirk, a little twist, that will be so unexpected that you read it with a sense of glee, a sense of joy, because of its aptness, even though it may be a very dire and bloody part of the book. So I want story, wit, music, wryness, color, and a sense of reality in what I read, and I try to get it in what I write.”

  In these thirteen early tales MacDonald gets what he wants, and so will his millions of fans. This is the good old stuff indeed. Read, and be carried away.

  1One of these, a bizarre revenge story entitled “The Corpse Rides at Dawn” (Ten-Story Western, April 1948), was reprinted a few years ago in Damon Knight’s anthology Westerns of the 40s: Classics from the Great Pulps (Bobbs-Merrill, 1977).

  2A selection of MacDonald’s old and new science-fiction stories is available in his collection Other Times, Other Worlds (Gold Medal, 1978).

  3The ultimate word in MacDonaldology, giving full publication data on every scrap of his that has appeared in print anywhere, is Walter and Jean Shine’s A Bibliography of the Published Works of John D. MacDonald (Gainesville: Patrons of the University of Florida Libraries, 1980).

  AUTHOR’S FOREWORD

  These stories have been selected from hundreds written and published during the five-year period from 1947 to 1952.

  This was the process of selection: Martin H. Greenberg of the University of Wisconsin and Francis M. Nevins, Jr., both of them aficionados of the pulp mystery story, wrote me that it would be a useful project to make a collection of the best of the old pulp stories of mine. I was not transfixed with delight. Mildly flattered, yes. But apprehensive about the overall quality of such a collection.

  With the invaluable aid of Jean and Walter Shine, they acquired copies of those stories they had not read, and between the four of them, they whittled the list down to thirty. The tear sheets of these stories were obtained from the archives at the University Libraries, the University of Florida in Gainesville, and Sam Gowan, the Assistant Director of Special Resources, sent them along. I had them all turned back into typed manuscript form before looking at them.

  I brought the hefty stack of thirty stories up here to the Adirondacks and went through them with care. To my astonishment, I found only three which I felt did not merit republication. The twenty-seven remaining totaled a quarter million words, so I divided them into two lots of approximately equal length. This is the first.

  I have made minor changes in all these stories, mostly in the area of changing references which could confuse the reader. Thirty years ago everyone understood the phrase “unless he threw the gun as far as Camera could.” But the Primo is largely forgotten, and I changed him to Superman.

  I have updated some of the stories, but only where the plot line was not entangled with and dependent upon the particular era. Those that depend for their effect on the times, the period pieces (“Death Writes the Answer,” “They Let Me Live”), were not updated.

  Those stories which could happen at any time, such as “A Time for Dying,” have been updated. I changed a live radio show to a live television show. And in others I changed pay scales, taxi fares, long-distance phoning procedures, beer prices, and so forth to keep from watering down the attention of the reader. This may offend the purists, but my original intention in writing these stories was to entertain. If I did not entertain first the editor and then the readers, I did not get paid. And if I did not get paid, I would have to go find honest work. So the intention is still to entertain, to bemuse, and even to indicate how little changed is our time from that time when these were written.

  I was horribly tempted to make other changes, to edit patches of florid prose, substitute the right words for the almost right words, but that would have been cheating, because it would have made me look as if I were a better writer at that time than I was. I was learning the trade.

  The fifth and sixth stories in this collection intrigued me because they dealt with the same hero, one Park Falkner, who in some aspects seems like a precursor of Travis McGee. And in other aspects he foreshadows the plots of a lot of bad television series which came along later.

  I remember with a particular fondness those editors who gave honest and valuable advice during the early years: Babette Rosmond at Street & Smith; Mike Tilden, Harry Widmer, and Alden Norton at Popular Publications; Bob Lowndes at Columbia Publications.

  I remember Mike Tilden saying, “John, for God’s sake stop telling us about people. Stop saying, for example, ‘She was a very clumsy woman.’ Show her falling downstairs and ending up with her head in the fishbowl. Don’t ever say, ‘He was an evil man.’ Show him doing an evil thing.”

  I remember Babette Rosmond saying to me, after I had sent her a couple of dozen stories which used my Ordnance and OSS background in the China-Burma-India Theater, “John, now is the time to take off your pith helmet and come home.”

  These stories, with the hundreds of others, were written and rewritten at 1109 State Street, Utica, New York; at 8 Jacarandas, Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico; at rented houses on Gardenia Street, Clearwater Beach, Florida, and Bruce Avenue three blocks away during the next season; at a rented house on Casey Key, Florida; at Piseco, New York, where I have been editing this collection; and finally at 1430 Point Crisp Road, Sarasota, where we lived for eighteen good years.

  I wrote stories in such dogged quantity that often, when I had more than one in a magazine, the second had to be published under a house name: Peter Reed, John Wade Farrell, Scott O’Hara. In this collection, “A Time for Dying” was published under the name of Peter Reed and “Check Out at Dawn” as by Scott O’Hara.

  In 1946 I tried to keep at least thirty stories in the mail at all times. When I finished a story, I would make a list of the magazines which might be interested and then send it out again and again until either it was sold or the list was exhausted. There were lots of magazines then. There was an open market for short fiction. There were lots of readers. Bless them!

  Assembling this collection was like walking into a room and finding there a lot of old and good friends you had thought dead. The stories are better than I expected them to be, and so in taking the occupational risk of having them published, I hope you will enjoy them as much as they were enjoyed the first time around.

  John D. MacDonald

  Piseco, New York

  June 20, 1982

  Murder for Money

  Long ago he had given up trying to estimate what he would find in any house merely by looking at the outside of it. The interior of each house had a s
pecial flavor. It was not so much the result of the degree of tidiness, or lack of it, but rather the result of the emotional climate that had permeated the house. Anger, bitterness, despair—all left their subtle stains on even the most immaculate fabrics.

  Darrigan parked the rented car by the curb and, for a long moment, looked at the house, at the iron fence, at the cypress shade. He sensed dignity, restraint, quietness. Yet he knew that the interior could destroy these impressions. He was in the habit of telling himself that his record of successful investigations was the result of the application of unemotional logic—yet his logic was often the result of sensing, somehow, the final answer and then retracing the careful steps to arrive once more at that same answer.

  After a time, as the September sun of west-coast Florida began to turn the rented sedan into an oven, Darrigan pushed open the door, patted his pocket to be sure his notebook was in place, and walked toward the front door of the white house. There were two cars in the driveway, both of them with local licenses, both of them Cadillacs. It was perceptibly cooler under the trees that lined the walk.

  Beyond the screen door the hallway was dim. A heavy woman came in answer to his second ring, staring at him with frank curiosity.

  “I’d like to speak to Mrs. Davisson, please. Here’s my card.”

  The woman opened the screen just enough for the card to be passed through, saying, with Midwest nasality, “Well, she’s resting right now.… Oh, you’re from the insurance?”

  “Yes, I flew down from Hartford.”

  “Please come in and wait and I’ll see if she’s awake, Mr. Darrigan. I’m just a neighbor. I’m Mrs. Hoke. The poor dear has been so terribly upset.”

  “Yes, of course,” Darrigan murmured, stepping into the hall. Mrs. Hoke walked heavily away. Darrigan could hear the mumble of other voices, a faint, slightly incongruous laugh. From the hall he could see into a living room, two steps lower than the hall itself. It was furnished in cool colors, with Florida furniture of cane and pale fabrics.

  Mrs. Hoke came back and said reassuringly, “She was awake, Mr. Darrigan. She said you should wait in the study and she’ll be out in a few minutes. The door is right back here. This is such a dreadful thing, not knowing what has happened to him. It’s hard on her, the poor dear thing.”

  The study was not done in Florida fashion. Darrigan guessed that the furniture had been shipped down from the North. A walnut desk, a bit ornate, leather couch and chairs, two walls of books.

  Mrs. Hoke stood in the doorway. “Now don’t you upset her, you hear?” she said with elephantine coyness.

  “I’ll try not to.”

  Mrs. Hoke went away. This was Davisson’s room, obviously. His books. A great number of technical works on the textile industry. Popularized texts for the layman in other fields. Astronomy, philosophy, physics. Quite a few biographies. Very little fiction. A man, then, with a serious turn of mind, dedicated to self-improvement, perhaps a bit humorless. And certainly very tidy.

  Darrigan turned quickly as he heard the step in the hallway. She was a tall young woman, light on her feet. Her sunback dress was emerald green. Late twenties, he judged, or possibly very early thirties. Brown hair, sun-bleached on top. Quite a bit of tan. A fresh face, wide across the cheekbones, heavy-lipped, slightly Bergman in impact. The mouth faintly touched with strain.

  “Mr. Darrigan?” He liked the voice. Low, controlled, poised.

  “How do you do, Mrs. Davisson. Sorry to bother you like this.”

  “That’s all right. I wasn’t able to sleep. Won’t you sit down, please?”

  “If you don’t mind, I’ll sit at the desk, Mrs. Davisson. I’ll have to make some notes.”

  She sat on the leather couch. He offered her a cigarette. “No, thank you, I’ve been smoking so much I have a sore throat. Mr. Darrigan, isn’t this a bit … previous for the insurance company to send someone down here? I mean, as far as we know, he isn’t—”

  “We wouldn’t do this in the case of a normal policyholder, Mrs. Davisson, but your husband carries policies with us totaling over nine hundred thousand dollars.”

  “Really! I knew Temple had quite a bit, but I didn’t know it was that much!”

  He showed her his best smile and said, “It makes it awkward for me, Mrs. Davisson, for them to send me out like some sort of bird of prey. You have presented no claim to the company, and you are perfectly within your rights to tell me to be on my merry way.”

  She answered his smile. “I wouldn’t want to do that, Mr. Darrigan. But I don’t quite understand why you’re here.”

  “You could call me a sort of investigator. My actual title is Chief Adjuster for Guardsman Life and Casualty. I sincerely hope that we’ll find a reasonable explanation for your husband’s disappearance. He disappeared Thursday, didn’t he?”

  “He didn’t come home Thursday night. I reported it to the police early Friday morning. And this is—”

  “Tuesday.”

  He opened his notebook, took his time looking over the pages. It was a device, to give him a chance to gauge the degree of tension. She sat quite still, her hands resting in her lap, unmoving.

  He leaned back. “It may sound presumptuous, Mrs. Davisson, but I intend to see if I can find out what happened to your husband. I’ve had reasonable success in such cases in the past. I’ll cooperate with the local police officials, of course. I hope you won’t mind answering questions that may duplicate what the police have already asked you.”

  “I won’t mind. The important thing is … to find out. This not knowing is …” Her voice caught a bit. She looked down at her hands.

  “According to our records, Mrs. Davisson, his first wife, Anna Thorn Davisson, was principal beneficiary under his policies until her death in 1978. The death of the beneficiary was reported, but it was not necessary to change the policies at that time as the two children of his first marriage were secondary beneficiaries, sharing equally in the proceeds in case of death. In 1979, probably at the time of his marriage to you, we received instructions to make you the primary beneficiary under all policies, with the secondary beneficiaries, Temple C. Davisson, Junior, and Alicia Jean Davisson, unchanged. I have your name here as Dinah Pell Davisson. That is correct?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Could you tell me about your husband? What sort of man is he?”

  She gave him a small smile. “What should I say? He is a very kind man. Perhaps slightly autocratic, but kind. He owned a small knitting mill in Utica, New York. He sold it, I believe, in 1972. It was incorporated and he owned the controlling stock interest, and there was some sort of merger with a larger firm, where he received payment in the stock in the larger firm in return for his interest. He sold out because his wife had to live in a warmer climate. She had a serious kidney condition. They came down here to Clearwater and bought this house. Temple was too active to retire. He studied real estate conditions here for a full year and then began to invest money in all sorts of property. He has done very well.”

  “How did you meet him, Mrs. Davisson?”

  “My husband was a sergeant in the Air Force. He was stationed at Drew Field. I followed him here. When he was sent overseas I had no special place to go, and we agreed I should wait for him here. The Davissons advertised for a companion for Mrs. Davisson. I applied and held the job from early 1974 until she died in 1978.”

  “And your husband?”

  “He was killed in a crash landing. When I received the wire, the Davissons were very kind and understanding. At that time my position in the household was more like a daughter receiving an allowance. My own parents died long ago. I have a married sister in Melbourne, Australia. We’ve never been close.”

  “What did you do between the time Mrs. Davisson died and you married Temple Davisson?”

  “I left here, of course. Mrs. Davisson had money of her own. She left me five thousand dollars and left the rest to Temple, Junior, and Alicia. Mr. Davisson found me a job in a real estate office in Cle
arwater. I rented a small apartment. One night Mr. Davisson came to see me at the apartment. He was quite shy. It took him a long time to get to the reason he had come. He told me that he tried to keep the house going, but the people he had hired were undependable. He also said that he was lonely. He asked me to marry him. I told him that I had affection for him, as for a father. He told me that he did not love me that way either, that Anna had been the only woman in his life. Well, Jack had been the only man in my life, and life was pretty empty. The Davissons had filled a place in my life. I missed this house. But he is sixty-one, and that makes almost exactly thirty years difference in ages. It seemed a bit grotesque. He told me to think it over and give him my answer when I ws ready. It occurred to me that his children would resent me, and it also occurred to me that I cared very little what people thought. Four days later I told him I would marry him.”

  Darrigan realized that he was treading on most dangerous ground. “Has it been a good marriage?”

  “Is that a question you’re supposed to ask?”

  “It sounds impertinent. I know that. But in a disappearance of this sort I must consider suicide. Unhappiness can come from ill health, money difficulties, or emotional difficulties. I should try to rule them out.”

  “I’ll take one of those cigarettes now, Mr. Darrigan,” she said. “I can use it.”

  He lit it for her, went back to the desk chair. She frowned, exhaled a cloud of smoke.

  “It has not been a completely happy marriage, Mr. Darrigan.”

  “Can you explain that?”

  “I’d rather not.” He pursed his lips, let the silence grow. At last she said, “I suppose I can consider an insurance man to be as ethical as a doctor or a lawyer?”

  “Of course.”

  “For several months it was a marriage in name only. I was content to have it go on being that way. But he is a vigorous man, and after a while I became aware that his attitude had changed and he had begun to … want me.” She flushed.