The Last One Left

by John D. MacDonald

  Assume a maximum shrewdness and deadliness, and you had to suppose that they would further guarantee their own safety by effectively silencing the little Cuban maid, no matter how stupid Crissy assumed her to be. In fact they might think stupidity more dangerous to them than guile. It would be natural to tidy up now the most immediate danger was over.

  So get her out of there, Kelly, just in case. And before el Capitán returns to his pussycat.

  He showered, shaved, put on a fresh sports shirt and slacks, left the manuscript at the bakery, and drove down to the Ingraham Highway, heading for the Harkinson place.

  In the development house of his parents, a cement block house with a red tile roof on a small lot beside a weedy canal, Oliver Akard lay upon his bed in his underwear shorts, the last of the daylight coming through the window beside the bed making oily highlights on the gleam of perspiration on his long muscular legs. His hands were laced behind his head. When there were two hesitant knocks at the closed bedroom door he did not answer. The door opened slowly and his mother peered in, then came into the room, closing the door behind her.

  “Sonny? Did I wake you up? I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay, Mom.”

  She came and sat on the foot of his bed, facing him. He moved his legs to make room for her. He felt a remote fondness for her, tinged with nostalgia, as if he were looking at a picture of her long after she had died. But he also felt a restless irritation at what he knew was coming. She verified it with a long long sigh.

  “What’s happening to you, dear? What’s made you change so?”

  “Why should something be happening?”

  “We’re so worried, Sonny. Your father is terribly upset. You’ve always been such a good boy. We’ve always been so proud of you, dear.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake!”

  “There’s no need to take the name of the Lord in vain, son.”

  “If he’d get off my back he wouldn’t have any reason to get upset, right? He kept riding me, didn’t he? I’ve got cuts coming, and if I want to use them, that’s my business.”

  “Betty told me you haven’t been to classes all this week.”

  “So I haven’t been to classes. So?”

  “What makes you so cruel and hard? What makes you be so ugly to your own parents, Oliver? It just isn’t like you.”

  “Betty had to come running to you, didn’t she?”

  “Sonny, she’s worried about you, the same as we are. You hurt her dreadfully. I guess you know that. She’s a fine girl.”

  “The very best. Yes indeed.”

  “We’ve always been able to talk things out. And I think I know just a little bit more about the world than you give me credit for knowing.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re an attractive young man, Oliver. And you’ve always been easily led. The world is full of idle, vicious women who take their pleasure in corrupting young men like you.”

  “What in the world are you talking about?”

  “Maybe you’d like to tell me what I’m talking about. I think you know what I’m talking about.”

  “I haven’t got the faintest idea.”

  “You don’t seem to be keeping your sailboat at Dinner Key these days, Sonny. It hasn’t been there for weeks. And your sailboat friends haven’t seen you for weeks either.”

  “Betty isn’t all nose! She’s half mouth!”

  “If you’re not doing something you’re ashamed of, why are you upset?”

  “What I do with my time is my business. I earned the money for my car, and I earned the money for the Dutchman. It’s none of Betty’s damn business what I do.”

  “Or my damn business either?”

  “You said it. I didn’t.”

  “Where is your boat, Oliver?”

  “It’s moored at a friend’s place.”

  “A new friend?”

  “Okay, okay, okay! What else did she have to tell you?”

  “The last time any of your old friends saw you out on the Bay was some time ago, apparently. Betty didn’t find out until she started asking. You had a blonde-headed woman in your boat. A girl from school named Cricket saw you. Cricket told Betty the woman was nearly naked, a very cheap-looking type, and as old as I am.”

  “She happens to be twenty-eight.”

  “I can imagine. I can just imagine.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? Sarcasm or something?”

  “Oh, Sonny, it’s so easy for a clever woman like that to amuse herself with a boy like you.”

  “You don’t even know her, so you don’t know what you’re talking about. How could you know what she’s like?”

  “I know this. To change you as much as you’ve changed in these past weeks, she has to be an evil creature. A slut!”

  He sat up. “You watch it!”

  She reached and turned on the lamp on his homework desk. “Don’t yell at your mother,” she said calmly.

  “Don’t call her names and I won’t!”

  She stared at him until he averted his gaze and lay back once more. “You’ve gotten seriously involved with her, haven’t you?”

  “Well—she’s a pretty tremendous person.”

  “Is she married?”

  “Her husband died. They didn’t have any kids. He died a long time ago.”

  “Sonny, look at me. I am going to ask you something. If the answer is yes, I promise I won’t tell your father. It will be between you and me. Have you had—sex with this woman?”

  “We’re in love.”

  “I knew what the answer had to be. What else could a person like that possibly want of you? Oh, Sonny, she’s got you twisted around her little finger. You don’t know up from down, right from wrong. Behind your back she snickers at you, believe me. She’s callous and vicious. She’s just using you. You just happened to be handy. How many other strong young boys have there been?”

  “You’re out of your mind. You don’t know how it is. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You were going to dedicate your life to the service of God.”

  “Let’s say it isn’t going to work out that way. Okay?”

  “You’ve got hate in you now. I can feel it. You never had it before. Sonny, will you get down on your knees with me right now and pray to God for the strength to break the hold of the flesh that she has over you?”

  “Knock it off, will you?”

  “This is a good Christian home.”

  “That could be the trouble with it.”

  “What is that supposed to mean, Oliver?”

  “I’m grown up. To you I’m still twelve years old or something. You and Betty. My God! Thanks but no thanks. I don’t even belong here any more. So don’t count on me staying here. And the more you keep twisting things and bugging me, the sooner I go. Okay?”

  “Why warn me, son? What didn’t you just leave without a word? That would be more like the new Oliver Akard, wouldn’t it? You’re cruel and cold and—h-hateful.”

  “I knew that was coming next. The weeps. Oh how could you! Oh dear. Oh what am I going to do.”

  She tilted her head and stared at him, her cheeks wet with tears. “Where have you gone!” she asked wonderingly. “What has happened to my son?”

  He felt a sudden fullness of his throat, a smarting of his eyes, and he had the impulse to reach to her and be taken into her arms. But he made himself laugh to hide any look of potential tears. “Where’d he go? Your little boy grew up, lady. Too bad. But they all do. So get used to it. Take up something else, huh? Bridge lessons maybe?”

  In a sad and wondering way, as she stood up slowly, she said, “I don’t know you. I don’t even know you.” She moved slowly toward the closed door. She stopped a few feet from it, head lowered. She turned quickly, startling him. Standing slightly crouched, her face contorted, her fists clenched, she said, “You got into that chunk chocolate that time! Two whole pounds of it! Aaah, you gobbled it, you did. You crammed it down
. Chocolate smeared all over your face and your clothes. Aaah, how sick you were! Vomiting, vomiting. I held you while you were emptying yourself. Do you know something? You disgusted me. I worried about it. I wondered if maybe I didn’t have enough mother love. You DIS GUS TED MEEEE!”

  She ran out and banged the door shut.

  “Mom?” he said, but too quietly to be heard. He was propped up on his elbow. He lowered himself back to the pillow. She had slammed the door so hard it had jingled the row of little trophy cups on the high shelf over the doorway.

  It was night. The light on the desk reached far enough to show indistinctly a slow movement of the three scale-model aircraft suspended from nylon filaments, hanging from the ceiling over his tall chest of drawers. Spitfire. Hurricane. B-29. Atop the chest of drawers in a narrow chromed frame was the picture of Betty. He could not see it, but he knew exactly how it looked. I looked right into the lens, darling, and pretended I was looking right at you. Happy birthday, darling. Happy, happy birthday.

  This was his room, he thought. He won those trophies. He made those models. He slept in this bed. That was his girl. It was a strange kind of sadness.

  There was no way they could understand. Not any of them. How could they be made to see how special and how terrible it was, last night when Crissy had clung to him, weeping hopelessly, like a little kid afraid of the dark. She did not have anyone else. Their time was growing short. She kept saying there was nothing they could do. Nothing. But the idea of Staniker having her again was unendurable. She had made those funny little hints. And she had said, “Don’t you see? This was all we were meant to have. But it’s so much more than most people in their whole lives, my dearest. There’s one clean way to finish it. If we have the strength.”

  And then later, all too casual, turning away when he tried to look into her eyes, she had said, “There’s some horrid, big, brown rats living in the tops of my palm trees, dear. They’re getting terribly bold. Do you have a gun you could bring over? You could shoot them for me, maybe?”

  It wasn’t much of a gun. He had checked to make sure it was still in the back of his closet. His father had given it to him one Christmas, when he was fifteen. It was a single-shot 22 rifle chambered for longs. Montgomery Ward. It threw high to the right. The half box of shells was in the back of the bottom bureau drawer.

  The best way, he thought, would be to take the bolt out and wear those khakis which were roomier in the leg, and put it down his pant leg, muzzle down. In a little while. It was their bowling night. If they went, he could carry it out to the car without any pantleg nonsense. They might not go. Just to show him how upset they were. See what you’ve done to us? You’re spoiling everything for us, Sonny. After we’ve devoted our lives to you, boy.

  He yawned and stretched. When he was away from her it was like being half alive. Everything was in monotone, like an old movie. Thoughts moved slowly, and his bones felt old.

  Once again he let himself float back into sensual reverie, the images of the flesh, halted when his mother had knocked at his door. He knew that he could never have guessed how difficult it could be. Sometimes he would feel powerful as a giant, and, gathered into his great hands and sinewed arms, she would feel so sweet and little and whimperingly fragile, he would take her with a measured care, such a cautious awe and tenderness it seemed to make his heart melt and flow. And other times, in the tumbly striving gloom, she would seem to grow to an overwhelming weight, a huge warm bulging of thighs big as trees, belly like a meadow, furnace-door mouth, breasts like dunes, and the strong pulling of her arms would dwindle him to a little stick-figure of a man, drowned in the softness, held in purring, chuckling hunger, ticked close, and at last made to go into the scary puppety leapings that was not like pleasure but like all the world pulled down to a whine of bright lights, a shrillness of a single vivid and indescribable color, a grating and drawing and diminishing that was like the sense of falling which comes at the end of dreams.

  When Sam Boylston walked into Staniker’s hospital room on Sunday afternoon at one thirty, the Captain was sitting in the arm chair in a cotton robe. Theyma Chappie was fixing a bowl of tropical blooms on the deep windowsill, pinching off the dead blossoms and dry leaves. She gave Sam a swift sidelong glance.

  “I shall be down at the floor-nurse station, Captain,” she said. “Ring if you need me, please.”

  As she was leaving, Sam went to Staniker, started to put his right hand out, changed to his left hand. As Staniker took it, Sam said, “I appreciate your giving me some time, Captain.”

  “Sit down, Mr. Boylston. Sit down. I know how you must feel. Miss Leila was a fine little lady. It was a terrible thing to happen. You just never know. One minute everything is fine and the next minute—You just never know.”

  Sam sat on the straight chair by the bed, readjusting his mental image of Staniker to fit the reality. The man was both bigger and better looking than he had expected. And there was a certain flavor of earnestness about him, of staunchness, one might easily find attractive. Yet there was something about him which reminded Sam of someone he did not like. It took him but a few seconds to pin it down. Big Tom Dorra, who along with old Judge Billy Alwerd had invested half the cash in Bix’s venture. Staniker did not have the hugeness of Big Tom, but the impact seemed strangely the same. There was the same flavor of a lazy gentleness which underscored rather than diluted an almost tangible maleness. The Captain and Tom Dorra both projected effortlessly that same promise of brute masculinity which had given some extraordinarily wooden actors long long careers in motion pictures. And just like Big Tom, in spite of the weather wrinkles and the smile wrinkles, the eyes themselves, pale, with coarse lashes, had the empty, bored distant malevolence of the bull elephant, the ruthless look and pattern of the stud.

  He noticed an odd thing about the hair at Staniker’s temples. It was gray at the roots, gray for the first half inch, the dividing line between new color and old almost mathematically precise.

  “Was my sister having a good time on the cruise, Captain?”

  “That was a fine comfortable vessel, Mr. Boylston, and Mr. and Mrs. Kayd had me take them to interesting places. It would be a nice experience for anyone who didn’t know the Islands.”

  “Did she seem to be having a good time?”

  Staniker scowled in heavy thought. “I guess you’d want to know just how it was. She’d get moony about her boyfriend back in Texas. But that wasn’t all the time. There’s another thing, and I’ve run pleasure boats enough years to see it happen over and over. You put people on a boat and what it does, Mr. Boylston, it makes any little differences a lot bigger, especially if it’s family. Stella was a meek little thing, and that Mrs. Kayd, her step-mother, seemed bound on making that cruise pure hell for that little girl. Nasty nice. You know?”

  “I know.”

  “And Mr. Kayd kept criticizing his own boy every chance he got. Not a bad kid, that Roger, but his old man didn’t give him much of a chance. I guess Mister Bix kept getting the uglies on account of his wife was forever whining and complaining at him. When things got rough, Miss Leila would sidestep pretty good. She and my wife and me, we had to stay out of the line of fire. They’d keep trying to get outsiders to take sides in family trouble. I don’t mind telling you, Mr. Boylston, off the record, that Carolyn Kayd was real trouble. I think she liked things all messed up. Hell of a good-looking piece of woman, and she started giving me the eye after we’d been cruising a week or so. Just to needle Mister Bix. Even if my Mary Jane hadn’t been along, I’ve been around too long to walk into any kind of a setup like that. Maybe I’m making it sound worse than it was. Your sister had some good times. She hung one bull dolphin that like to give her fits. He spent more time in the air than he did in the water, but she got him up to the gaff, and when I yanked him aboard and he started going through all those colors as he died, she said she was sorry she hadn’t lost him. Nice little girl. A nice happy little girl. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, as the go
od book says, but it doesn’t seem to be worked out too fair sometimes.”

  “I guess my friend Bix Kayd conducted business as usual.”

  “That man was on the horn ever’ single morning. I bet he put enough on that credit card in phone calls to damn near buy another boat the same size.”

  “And conferences too, I imagine. Meeting people here and there.”

  Staniker stared down at his big left fist and then looked at Sam with a troubled earnestness. “He met with some men, sure. And only he and me knew about it. That was most of the reason why he bought that Formula 233 boat in Miami. He told me what kind of performance he wanted in a small boat we could take in tow, and I picked it out for him. What he’d do, we’d leave the big boat in a good anchorage and the two of us would take off in that Muñequita, with billfish gear, and meet up with people like he’d arranged it. But I wouldn’t feel right about talking about that, Mr. Boylston. The way Mister Bix set it up in the beginning, he was paying me a big wage partly for keeping my mouth shut. He had reason to know I could. Now God knows it doesn’t matter to him any more what I say to anybody one way or the other. But perhaps it could matter to some of the men he had dealings with. I’ve signed a contract to tell the whole exclusive story to a man who’s going to write it up, but I’m going to leave out all of the business stuff, because I expect to stay in the business of hiring out as captain, and if you get a reputation for too much mouth, jobs get scarce.”

  “I appreciate your point, Captain. You know, it’s a funny thing. If my sister hadn’t been aboard, I’d be upset about something that doesn’t seem important at all to me now.”

  “What’s that, sir?”

  Watching Staniker closely, Sam shrugged, smiled wryly, and said, “I had a deal going with Bix. A couple of hundred thousand dollars of mine went down with that boat.”