Cape Fear

by John D. MacDonald

  In the early morning, excitement had closed Jamie’s stomach into a knot. He could not eat. Lists were checked. Mike Turner came down the road to bid Jamie a forlorn farewell. The wagon was loaded, the house locked, and they took off. Bucky was infected by the excitement of the others, but on the way back home he would be sunk in sour gloom until, inevitably, he would fall asleep on the back seat.

  They arrived at eleven, going to Minnatalla first despite Jamie’s protestations so shrill and bitter that he had to be squashed firmly. The busy morning schedule was in frantic swing. Nancy’s friends of other summers waved and called to her. After Sam and Jamie had off-loaded Nancy’s gear into her cabin, he drove to the administration cottage and had a talk with the camp supervisor, a new man, younger than the man he had replaced. It was not a very satisfactory talk. The man’s name was Teller. Sam soon recognized the type. Teller was very much like that sort of officious social worker who considers the rules and forms more important than the human beings he deals with. He was gently patronizing, and it was clear that he thought he was dealing with an over-protective parent.

  “Nancy has a very good record here at Minnatalla, Mr. Bowden. We’re delighted she’s back with us, and I am certain she will have a happy and profitable summer.”

  “I’m sure she will, Mr. Teller, but that isn’t the point,” Sam said patiently. “I’m concerned with her physical safety.”

  “All our campers are carefully supervised, Mr. Bowden. They’re busy every moment of the day. Lights-out is strictly enforced, and we have a very competent night watchman who makes a tour of the entire camp area four times a night. We permit all wearers of the Minnatalla merit button to go into Shadyside on Saturday afternoons. One of the staff supervises the junior campers, but the senior girls can—”

  Sam interrupted, sensing how he must deal with Teller. “She has been coming here for some time. This is her fourth year. I imagine that I am almost as familiar with all these details as you are. Nancy is not to go into Shadyside at any time.”

  Teller looked pained. “But surely that is unfair to the child, Mr. Bowden. When she sees others being given permission—”

  “Nancy is perfectly willing to forgo those trips. She is … mature enough to recognize the fact she may be harmed.”

  Teller flushed. “I do not know how wise it is to frighten a child, Mr. Bowden.”

  “I haven’t made a special study of it myself. Are we in agreement? No trips to Shadyside for Nancy?”

  “Yes, Mr. Bowden. I’m sure that if she has any errands, she can find someone who will be willing to make purchases for her.”

  “I’m sure she can find a couple of dozen who will be willing. She’s not an unpopular child.”

  “I’m sure of that.”

  The situation at Gannatalla was more reassuring. After Jamie was unloaded and fed into the schedule, Sam looked up Mr. Menard. He recognized Sam from the previous year. “Hello, Mr. Bowden. Glad to have Jamie back.”

  “I wanted to talk to you about—”

  “A possible kidnaping deal? Tommy Kent gave me the word. I’ve advised everybody on the staff. I told them how to handle it. We won’t treat Jamie differently than we treat anybody else. But, without being obvious about it, we’re going to keep a special eye on him, and be on the lookout for anybody hanging around. We don’t want you people worrying about him. There’s no need to. And I’m going to talk to him about how he can cooperate.”

  “I certainly appreciate this. Over there at the female department, Mr. Teller made me feel as if he thought I was making the whole thing up.”

  “Bert is new and he’s taking himself a little seriously right now. He was a playground supervisor. Actually, he’s a lot better with kids than you’d expect. The kids will whip him into shape in a week, and as soon as I get a chance, I’ll have a little talk with him.”

  “I’ll appreciate that very much. This sort of thing … isn’t very good for the nerves.”

  “Anybody who goes after a man’s kids hits him where he lives. God knows there’s enough things to worry about that can happen to them accidentally. My pet nightmare is one of them drowning. I keep the staffers counting heads every minute of the swim periods.”

  “Tommy Kent seems to be a good kid.”

  “I’ll let you know in a month. We get so many that start out just fine. Work like horses until the novelty wears off. Then they’re more trouble than they’re worth. If Kent can sustain it, he’s a gem.” Menard winked at Sam. “And do I detect more than a casual concern about the Bowden girl?”

  “I think so.”

  “Stay to lunch with us today?”

  “Thanks, but we have to head back, Mr. Menard. We’ll be back on the twentieth anyway, and probably on the thirteenth too.”

  On the way home, after Bucky was asleep, Carol said, “I know it has to happen, but I hate to cut the family down, really. It does make life a lot easier. But it makes it emptier too. I dread the time when they’ll all be gone. I think about it during the day sometimes, and the house seems twice as empty.”

  “You can delay that day, friend wife.”

  “How?”

  “With a little diligence and cooperation, I think I could fix it so that … Hmmmm … you’re thirty-seven. Assume it would go away to school at eighteen. Nineteen plus thirty-seven. Yes, dear, you could be fifty-six before the house empties out completely. That is, provided we get to work on the project immediately.”

  “Lascivious wretch! Beast!”

  “Just finding out?”

  She sat closer to him. A dozen miles went by. She said thoughtfully, “We all get so playfully cynical about another b-a-b-y. Jokes about the diaper service and the PTA. You know, if this … this Cady thing wasn’t happening to us, I’d like to have another.”

  “Do you mean that?”

  “I think so. Even with waddling around all stuck out in front and all the sterilizing and night feedings and later on watching it so it won’t fall and all that. Yes, I think so. Because they’re all so different. You think about what the next one would be like. Our three are—I don’t know how to say it—they’re all people.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “And making people is a special thing. It’s a special and a frightening responsibility.”

  “You said Bucky was the last.”

  “I know. And I said it for three years. And then I stopped saying it.”

  “You’re no bride, darling, even though you quite frequently manage to look like one.”

  “The others were easy.”

  “You didn’t say so at the time.”

  “Pooh! They were easy for us Indians.”

  “Twenty minutes later you’re back beading moccasins.”

  “Nancy would be stricken with horror. And our friends would leer at each other and talk about carelessness.”

  “But you still would go through with it?”

  “Not now. Not while … we don’t know.”

  “We will know, I think. Before long.”

  “And when this is over, we’ll talk about it again, dear?”

  “We’ll talk about it again.”

  “You should have something to say. It ties you down too. It changes your life.”

  “When it comes to the point where I can’t remember all their names, I’ll bring you to a quivering halt.”

  They were home by four. Bucky rose up in stuporous condition and drunk-walked to the house. The sky was dark and low and the clouds that hurried by seemed just above the tops of the elms. The wind was gusty and humid. It rattled the windows of the house. The house had a feeling of emptiness. When, at six, the heavy rains came, Sam backed the wagon out into the drive so the rain would wash the dust of the trip from it.

  July had come too quickly. And nineteen days could not be made to last.

  Seven

  SIEVERS PHONED SAM on Monday morning, July eighth, and came up to his office at ten-thirty.

  “Something has come up,” he said. “Th
ey haven’t given me much notice, as usual. I’m being transferred. California. I head up one of the Apex agencies out there. It’s a promotion.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks. It won’t be possible for me to arrange the deal we were talking about. I mean, if you decided to go ahead with it.”

  “I was going to. Can’t you arrange it before you go?”

  “Too far ahead. But I did a little fixing for you. Want to write this down? Joe Tanelli, 1821 Market. It’s a candy-and-cigar store, and a small-time horse room in the back. He’ll expect you on Wednesday the seventeenth. Don’t give him your name. Mention my name. He’ll know the score. He’ll want five hundred down. That’s all right. Give it to him. And he’ll want the other five after it’s been taken care of. He’ll round up better talent than last time.”

  To Sam the situation was curiously unreal. He had not thought such a conversation possible in his office. And there was nothing particularly conspiratorial about Sievers’ attitude. He could have been talking about the best place to buy fresh eggs.

  “I appreciate this.”

  Sievers took on the look of a man thinking back across the years. “It used to be easier long ago, in other places. You take Chicago or Kansas City or Atlanta or Birmingham in thirty-three or thirty-four. The rates were cheap. Ten bucks for a broken leg. And a tops of two hundred if you wanted somebody killed and they weren’t important. There’s only a handful of killers for hire now in the whole country and they’re on retainer for the syndicate. Even if you could contact them, the price would be up in the clouds. A hopped-up kid can be bought for less, but the job would be bungled. The pros do a clean job. Come in by plane with a good cover story. Two or three of them. Rent a legitimate car. Stay in a good hotel. Pick the time and the place and do it fast and clean and then get out. An amateur always gets caught and always sucks in the guy who hired him.”

  Sam’s polite laugh sounded forced and hollow. “I haven’t been thinking along those lines, Sievers.”

  Sievers came back out of his memories and looked at Sam. “I don’t want to make you any more nervous than you are, Mr. Bowden, but I might as well tell you this. Just out of curiosity I had Apex in Wheeling run a check on him. When there’s no specific client, it’s done as a courtesy between branch offices. The Cadys are old stock. Hill people. There were four brothers, two older than Maxwell and one younger. Max Cady had no record prior to the Army sentence, but he wasn’t any angel. None of the Cady boys were. Max got in the Army after he cut a man badly with a broken bottle. It was a fuss over a woman. The court gave him the choice of enlisting or going to prison, so he enlisted. The old man was in and out of prison his whole life. He was a moonshiner with a violent temper. He died of a stroke three years ago. He married the boys’ mother when she was fifteen and he was nearly thirty. She’s living with the youngest brother and she’s been feebleminded her whole life. The oldest brother was shot to death eight years ago in a running gun battle with federal agents. The next oldest was killed in a prison riot in Georgia. He was serving a life sentence for felony murder. My pride was hurt when I did so bad tailing him. Now I don’t feel so bad. He’s one of the wild ones. They don’t think the way people do. He was headed for jail whether he got caught on that rape charge or not. People like that have no comprehension of right and wrong. Their only thought is whether or not they’ll be caught. Anything you can get away with is worth doing.”

  “Isn’t there a word for that?”

  “Psychopathic personality. They make us learn the terms. But that’s a classification where they put people they don’t know what else to call. People they can’t treat. People who don’t respond to any appeal you can make to them. Except maybe the one we’re trying to make.” He stood up. “I’ve got a lot of stuff to clean up before I take off in the morning. Joe will fix it up for you.”

  It was a long time after Sievers left before Sam could get his concentration back on his work. He respected Sievers for giving him all the unpalatable facts, but they served to make Cady even more ominous than he had been thus far. It was like when you were a child and a frightening shadow seemed to grow larger and blacker and more threatening as you watched it. He told himself Cady was human and vulnerable. He told himself it was shameful to be frightened of a man. And he decided there was no point at all in telling Carol what Sievers had learned. He would tell her of the new arrangement, but she needed no new reasons to be afraid of Cady.

  On Friday, the twelfth of July, after the dinner dishes were done, Sam looked up from his book when he heard Carol make an odd sound. She was sitting on the couch, reading the paper. She lowered the paper and stared at him with an odd expression.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “What was the name of the man you have to see next Wednesday night?”

  “Tanelli. Joe Tanelli.”

  “Come and look at this.”

  He sat beside her and read the obituary of a Joseph Tanelli, age 56, address 118 Rose Street, who had died the previous night in Memorial Hospital of a heart attack. Mr. Tanelli had been a retail merchant in New Essex for the past eighteen years. There was a very long list of his survivors.

  “It’s probably not the same one, dear.”

  “But what if it is?”

  He spoke confidently. “Even if it is, I can make a contact with somebody else at the address Sievers gave me.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Practically positive.”

  “I don’t think you ought to wait until Wednesday, dear. I think you ought to go in tomorrow night.”

  “Don’t we have to go to the Kimballs’ party?”

  “I can go alone and you can meet me there.”

  “I’ll drive in tomorrow afternoon.”

  “In the afternoon? It seems like something you ought to do at night, somehow.”

  “I can find out what the score is in the afternoon at least. If it’s the same man.”

  But underneath his assurance he knew it was the same man. A malicious fate was dealing Cady every joker in the deck.

  It was brutally hot on Market Street at four in the afternoon. Sam found a meter in the eighteen-hundred block and carefully locked the car. It was a neighborhood where you automatically locked the car. Number 1821 had no sign showing ownership or management. The door was two steps below sidewalk level. The small show window, almost opaque with dust, displayed a few weary soft-drink posters and cigar ads. In peeling gilt across the window was painted Cigars Magazines Candy. That side of the street was in shade. A half dozen stone steps went up to the entrance of the neighboring building. A grossly fat woman with red hair sat on the top step. Her suety body bulged the soiled pink dress she wore. She took small sips from a can of beer.

  He went down and tried the door, but it was locked.

  “It’s locked on account of Joe, honey,” a loud brassy voice informed him. He looked up into the round face of the fat woman. She was younger than he had guessed from his quick glance at her. “That’s right. Joe up and died. Somebody did him out of a dime and his heart give out on him from shock.” She giggled.

  He went back up onto the sidewalk and looked at her. “Have you any idea when they’ll open up again?”

  “Hell, they’re open. It’s just the front door locked sort of like a courtesy to Joe. You know. I don’t know who’s running it or who’ll take over permanent, but they won’t miss out on a day’s action, especially a Saturday.”

  He realized she was happily tight. “How do I get in?”

  “Now, if you want to get in, Doc, you go down there to the first alley and go back through the alley and take a left and count three doors and knock on the third one. But those horses will nibble you to death every time. Now just suppose you had twen’y bucks to kick away. It so happens there’s a cute little blondie right in this building that’s dying from being bored. You see, she’s a singer with a band and the band folded and she’s got to make a stake so she can get out to the Coast where she’s got a tryou
t lined up. She’s an honest-to-God college girl and—”

  “No, thanks. Not today.”

  She scowled at him. “Horse players,” she said. “Lousy horse players.”

  He thanked her and followed her instructions. It was a door of heavy construction, with no window in it. It opened six inches and a round white face of uncooked dough with raisin eyes looked out at him and said, “Yah?”

  “I … I want to talk to whoever is in charge.” He could hear a rumble of voices beyond the door.

  “What about?”

  “I … Sievers sent me.”

  “Hold on.” The door closed. A full minute passed. It opened again. “Nobody ever heard of no Sievers.”

  “Joe Tanelli knew him.”

  “That’s great.” The raisin eyes seemed to be looking through him and beyond him.

  “Suppose … I wanted to get a bet down.”

  “Go to a track.”

  “Wait a minute …” But the door had closed firmly. He waited a few minutes and then knocked again.

  “Now look, friend,” the white face said.

  “Listen to me. Joe was going to do something for me. Now he can’t. But I still want it done and I still want to pay for it, and I want to know who to see.”

  “Me. So what was it?”

  “I can’t stand here in the alley and tell you.”

  “Look, Mack. I take orders. I don’t make private deals. Joe made private deals. He had his way and I got my way. So go tell your committee you couldn’t even get into the place.”

  The door started to shut and then opened again. “And don’t hang around, Mack, and don’t knock on the door any more or somebody comes out and reasons with you.” The door banged shut.

  Sam did not leave the Market Street area until almost ten at night. It was always so effortlessly accomplished in the movies. Sinister types were always available to the hero. He hit the roughest-looking bars he could find. He’d never been adept at striking up a conversation with a stranger. He tried to select suitable-looking types and start a conversation and steer it around to the point where he could state his problem in a hypothetical way. Now just suppose, for the sake of argument, this friend of mine wanted to pay to get the man who is messing around with his wife beaten up.