John D MacDonald - You Live Once

by You Live Once(Lit)

  "Clint, I've never had a chance to tell you how damn well much it means to me to come out here and find a guy like you to help carry the ball. I mean that."

  "Well, thanks, Dodd."

  "You know what you can get sometimes in this outfit.

  A politico. An oily switch artist. Hell, I know where you stand."

  He took his hand off my shoulder, made a fist out of it and punched me lightly in the arm.

  "We're both going places in this outfit, boy."

  I told him I hoped so and watched his broad back as he went off toward the festivities. It was obvious that he had just enough quasi-feminine perception to sense that Nancy had somehow acquired an ally; how much else she might have in me he couldn't tell. He wanted to pour a little water on the flame. Deciding that wouldn't do, he had built a back fire. I cannot say that it was ineffective mellow words from the boss are always welcome. And he was almost a nice guy.

  Between eleven and twelve the party was in overdrive.

  Every time I saw Mary she was with Dodd. A junior miss who took considerable pride in the gaudy details of n D. MacDonald the recent escapade that had gotten her tossed out of Sweet Briar on her pretty tail, had taken me over and kept braising my morale by frequent references to how much "older men" appealed to her.

  She steered me, not too unwillingly, out into the darkness. But when I came to kiss her she sagged softly against me, a boneless, gasping, wide-mouthed horror. I have no idea where and how such a response happened to become fashionable among the younger set. Maybe they think it sets a mood of sweet surrender. You reach for a firm-boned young morsel and she falls into suet. I pushed her away and eased her back into the bright lights.

  After the first cut-in I moved back out into the shrubbery alone. The clouds had thinned and a moon cruised blandly through the ragged edges. Music thudded out across the somber fairways. I fingered an empty cigarette package and remembered the half carton in the glove compartment. I walked across the grass toward the parking lot.

  I was close enough to the car to touch it when I heard Mary Olan's voice coming from inside the car. Her tone was lazy, taunting.

  "My dear, you aren't on the basis where all you have to do is whistle. So I won't take your key.

  Any time I go back there-if I ever do go back there you damn well be there waiting for me, not I for you.

  This isn't Back Street, sweets."

  Dodd's heavy voice said, "This double-dating is childish."

  "Is it? I know what you want. You want me waiting there for you any time you happen to take a notion. You don't want me to go out at all. I happen to like this arrangement. Clint is sweet. Wasn't he sweet with your plotzed Nancy?"

  "Are you falling for him? Damn it, if I find out you've let him get to you, I'll get him shipped so far away from here he'll..."

  "Jealous, darling?" she drawled.

  "Why don't you just take the key and then..."

  "You want one cake to eat, one to look at and one in the cupboard. No thanks. I might decide never to pay you another visit there."

  "Mary, listen to me..."

  "You listen to me. You're boring me. That wasn't in the agreement. I'll continue to go out with Clint. You'll continue to come along too, with Nancy. It's a cozy arrangement.... And I'm getting sick of sitting here like a college girl on a date."

  "But tonight Clint took her home and we could..."

  "We could but we won't, dear. Not tonight. Face it like a brave little man."

  I had stood there and listened. And learned a great deal.

  It was a situation that smelled faintly of mental illness.

  "But Mary..."

  "And, darling, I didn't like that phrase 'get to me."

  People don't 'get to me." I get to people. Now if you'd take that slightly clumsy hand off my breast..."

  I moved back fast as the door latch clicked. She got out of the car quickly. She'd have seen me if she'd turned my way, but she headed off, heels punching the gravel, toward the front door of the club. I was back in better cover when Dodd got out and lighted a cigarette. I watched him take three long draws, then snap it away toward the wet grass. He followed her slowly. When I got my cigarettes the interior of the car was heavy with the perfume she used, a musky, offbeat scent.

  When I drove them home I dropped Dodd off first.

  Mary Olan didn't move over next to the door after he got out. She stayed pleasantly and encouragingly close to me, the side of her leg touching mine. I took her out to the Pryor place where I had picked her up. Though a lot of the old line families have stayed down in the shady quiet streets of town, a few, such as Willy Pryor, have built out in the country. It has a stone wall, a bronze sign, a quarter mile of curving drive before you get to it. Probably the outmoded term for it would be a machine for living. You know the type-all dramatics. Dramatic window walls, dramatic bare walls, dramatic vistas. Two floodlighted pieces of statuary-one all sheet aluminum and the other a grey stone woman with spider limbs and great holes right through her where breasts should have been. The architects do fine, they can really set up a place. The only trouble is that no one has been similarly occupied redesigning people. Such machines cannot sit in sterile functional perfection. We people have to move in bringing of course, our unmodified belch, our unreconstructed dandruff, our enlarged pores and our sweaty love.

  I parked and Mary made no move toward the door handle, so I gathered her in and kissed her. She hesitated for a stilted second and then baked the enamel on my teeth. She was no pulpy junior miss. She brought to the task at hand a nice interplay of musculature, a crowding enthusiasm, and the durability and implacability of a Marciano. She stopped all clocks except the one in the blood, so that on terminus, I was dimly startled to find myself merely sitting in my own automobile.

  "You're an agreeable monster, Sewell," she said softly.

  "Likewise."

  "You should get a bonus for overtime."

  "A truly obscure remark," I said, pretending young innocence.

  "Would, Sewell, that I were a touch more charitable and I would make of myself a suitable bonus, because I suspect you are a nice guy who deserves a better deal than you are getting."

  "Tonight is my night to be told I'm a nice guy. How do I go about arousing your charitable instincts, lady?"

  She permitted a second flanking operation. During same I investigated traditionally, hopefully, a breast warm and classic. She re banked her fires and extricated lips and breast, putting a cold foot of distance betwixt us.

  "No sale, Sewell."

  "Anything my best friends have neglected to tell me?"

  "Nope. You are a fine crew-cut, long-limbed specimen of young American manhood, my dear."

  "Then why?"

  "Don't ask it with a pout. I guess it is because you are what you are. For a man to intrigue me he must have a wide streak of son-of-a-bitch."

  "I can work on that."

  "Hardly."

  "Could you force yourself?"

  She reached a quick hand and knuckled the top of my head.

  "That would be pure charity, sweets, and you have too much pride for that, don't you?"

  "And the next line is let us be good friends."

  "Seriously, I'd like that, Clint. I need a good friend."

  I sighed with resignation.

  "Okay, what do you want to do with your good friend on the morrow."

  "Wouldst go to church with me, sir?"

  It was quite the last thing I expected.

  "Yes. Of course."

  "Pick me up here at twenty of eleven then."

  I walked her to her door. She smiled up at me.

  "You are sweet."

  "Then pat me on the head, damn it."

  "Temper, temper! Kiss goodnight."

  As that kiss ended I took revenge with my long right arm. She yelped and took a cut at me and missed. As I drove home I knew that if she had a full-length mirror and looked back down over her shoulder within the next ten minutes, she coul
d admire a nice distinct hand print.

  Looking back I can count over twenty dates with her, including the time at the motel and the last one on the night of Saturday, May fifteenth. But not including that last ride we took together, up into the hills. Date from which she would not return.

  chapter 4.

  Nancy and I sat on the pine log. She smoked her cigarette and scratched at a punkie bite on her ankle.

  Ever since the night she had gotten drunk and told me her woes, we had talked frankly with each other, though she had retained an aura of shyness. I had not told her what I had learned that night. There was no point in it. Suspicions could hurt, but the actuality would be worse.

  "I hope... I hope she never comes back," Nancy said.

  I didn't say anything for too long and the words hung there between us until Nancy laughed mirthlessly.

  "I don't mean I hope anything bad has happened to her. Even to her. I just hope she's found some other fly to pull the wings off."

  "She's impulsive," I said.

  "Nice polite word. She's a harpy. She feeds on people.

  She has a nice built-in excuse-her insane mother. That's handy for her. No marriage, so she does as she pleases.

  Including going to bed with my husband."

  "You aren't positive of that, though."

  "Oh, I am, Clint. Entirely certain. I kidded myself for a long time. But you can't live with a man and not know.

  All the little false touches. That blandness, with all the guilt underneath. I know, Clint. I've known for a long time. It started back in February, a month after we arrived. She didn't waste any time, did she?"

  "Don't try to laugh about it."

  "Aren't I supposed to be gay about it? Isn't that sophisticated or something? Last night after we got home we had a real scrap. He wouldn't admit it, of course. I asked him about the things that are missing. His good robe, some sport shirts, an extra pair of slippers-little things like that. And a book of poems. Poems! My God, can you imagine reading poems to a... a thing like that? I asked him if it would ease his conscience any if I took a lover. You know, continental style. Sauce for the goose. At that he stormed out and didn't come back until five this morning. Anyway, I wanted to talk to you, Clint.

  I haven't told him or anybody else, but I'm going to leave him."

  "Do you mean that?"

  "I have some pride. I don't have to put up with this. I can earn my own living. It hurts... hurts badly, Clint, when someone tells you in that way that you aren't enough for them. Enough woman."

  "You want to be awfully sure, Nancy."

  "I am sure. I've told you so much of my personal life.

  Aren't you sick of it? Don't you want to know everything?

  The whole story? I have two small brown moles right here on my left hip. Tomatoes give me a rash. When I get emotionally upset, I get diarrhea. Nervous colon they call it. I lost my virginity when I was sixteen and had a job waiting on table at a summer..."

  "Nancy!" Her voice had gone shrill and her face was tense.

  The tension went out of her. She put her head down on her bare knees and said in a small voice, "I'm sorry, Clint."

  I touched the silky-fine blonde hair.

  "You've had it rough. I don't blame you. But promise one thing. Think about it for a week."

  She sighed.

  "If you think I ought to."

  "I do."

  She sighed again.

  "Clint?"

  "Yes, honey."

  do you want me?" Her voice was shy, "Glint.

  far off.

  I knew why she asked. I knew how careful I had to be.

  "Yes, of course. Any man would say yes. You're a special thing, Nancy."

  "I'm not. But I'll... be special for you. When, Clint?

  And where?"

  "I want you, but I don't think it would be smart. I think you still love the guy. He's hurt you badly. You want reassurance. You want to be wanted. And you want to hurt him back. I'm your friend, Nancy. I don't want to be caught in the middle of that sort of thing. Suppose he sees what a fool he's been, and you get back together. You'd always regret it. You've never done anything like that, have you?"

  "No. I... I don't know what I want to do."

  "Think for a week. Then we'll talk again. Okay?"

  She lifted her head and looked at me. Her cheeks were wet.

  "Well you could anyway kiss me," she said almost fiercely.

  No boats were near and they couldn't see us from the patio of the Raymond camp. I stood up, took her hand, pulled her up and kissed her. It lasted a long time. There was none of the quick flame of Mary. Nancy's lips were soft and warm and very sweet. But there was heat there, a slow burning-enough heat so I wondered how Dodd could be such an utter fool. We stepped apart and smiled at each other.

  "I guess you're darn good for me," she said.

  "Like a sort of substitute conscience. I wish it was you I was in love with. It would be so much easier. And better."

  "You're special, Nancy."

  "Somebody has to think so. I guess we better get back now."

  We climbed the steps. I was certain Mrs. Raymond checked me over quickly for signs of lipstick. Nancy had dabbed it off with a Kleenex. I said goodby as soon as I could and left.

  I did not like driving by the entrance to the road where I had left Mary's body. Soon the night would come with small animals rustling through the shrubbery, with dew weighting the white skirt, misting the bare shoulders.

  There would be insect song and a riding moon. I wished I could have left her in a warm dry place. It couldn't matter to her, I knew, but it mattered to me. It didn't seem right.

  I ate in town and it was dark when I turned into my drive. Mrs. Speers ran a window up and called to me. I braked the car, motor running.

  "Has Mary Olan turned up yet, Mr. Sewell?" she asked.

  "Not yet, Mrs. Speers."

  "They must be getting very worried by now."

  "I guess so."

  "You won't forget my trash tomorrow, will you?"

  "I'll remember it, Mrs. Speers."

  "I guess you'll be going to bed right now, won't you?"

  "How do you mean?"

  She laughed.

  "Well, you know I heard you drive in at four, this morning."

  "I was in by two, Mrs. Speers."

  She laughed again.

  "You young folks, you lose track of time."

  "I know it wasn't that late."

  "Goodnight, Mr. Sewell." She closed the window.

  Inside my apartment, I locked the door, turned on the lights, closed the blinds. It was good to be alone and in a locked place. I felt as though I would now be able to think clearly and consecutively. All day I had been playing a part. It had left no room for reflection. I felt as though my face ached from smiling. I had walked among the beach people, shaking hands with a hand that had carried the dead. It gave me an appreciation of that degree of iron control a murderer must have.

  During the day I had learned two new facts: Dodd Raymond had been out of his house until five, and a car had driven into my driveway at four. I had no doubt but that the car at four had brought Mary to the place of her death. Probably Mrs. Speers, sleeping through my first arrival, hearing the arrival at four, turned over and went to sleep again and did not hear the car leave.

  I had to think of Dodd as the suspect. I knew that he and Mary Olan had been having an affair. And I knew that Mary was cruel, taunting, ruthless-withholding herself on whim. I could imagine Dodd, infuriated beyond reason, striking her in anger, killing her. Maybe she had showed him the key I had given her, hinting at a reason for it which did not exist. Yes, he could have killed in sudden jealous anger. And, having killed in that way, knowing that I was a very sound sleeper, knowing the key was available, he would be capable of planting the body in my apartment. It would not be done out of malice toward me-though there would be some of that. It would be done as the most logical way of diverting suspicion.


  Thus, had Mary died of a blow, or died with the mark of the strangler's hands on her throat, I would have had no doubt that it was Dodd. But the cause of death had been my red belt around her throat; the print of the weave had been in her flesh. And so she had been brought to my apartment to be killed there. And I could not see Dodd, ambitious and intelligent, premeditating something that could so easily have gone wrong. Had I constituted a serious threat to his career, it might be plausible. On the other hand ambition was a disease that could distort facts.