The Last One Left

by John D. MacDonald

  Staniker stared, eyes wide. “Cash money?” he said in a hushed tone.

  “Cash money. And a lot more that Bix put in the kitty.”

  Staniker shook his head. “Now why would a sane man take a chance and tote that much money all over the Bahamas on a fifty-three foot boat?”

  “Sometimes, when something is for sale, cash is the only way you can buy it. Cash doesn’t leave tracks, Staniker.”

  “I never had any idea!” Staniker said.

  “I wouldn’t have mentioned it. But when you told me you felt—a moral responsibility not to discuss his business dealings, I knew there wouldn’t be any harm in it.”

  “I’d never mention it to a soul, Mr. Boylston, I swear.”

  Sam sighed. “Funny thing. I had a hunch about that cruise. I should have followed it. I felt a little edgy about having my kid sister go along. Careful as Bix was about everything, there was a chance somebody might figure out he had it aboard. Nobody knew except me and Bix. If somebody went after that money, I thought, it would be a damned poor place for Leila to be. Oh. Correction. Two other men knew it would be aboard, even though Leila and nobody else in Bix’s family knew. The other two are business associates. Known them for years. They stood to make too much out of the deal to try anything tricky anyway.”

  Staniker poked very gently at his burned thigh, biting his lip. “Mr. Boylston?”

  “What?”

  “I was wondering. Is it going to come out there was all that money aboard? I mean through the estate or insurance or anything?”

  “For personal reasons, Staniker, I hope not. But there’s always that chance, isn’t there? One of our associates might try to set it up as a casualty loss. But I don’t understand, Captain. Why should any publicity about it be upsetting to you?”

  Staniker stared blankly at him. “Upsetting? Oh, no. Listen, maybe you don’t like it, me making a few bucks by signing that contract. Maybe you think it isn’t right to make money out of a terrible accident like that. But it’s going to be hard for me to get work. I got to worry about how I’m going to keep eating. My contract has book royalties in it and movie rights. Now I swear to you I won’t tell a soul about that money. You can trust me all the way in a thing like that. But what I was thinking, the reason I asked, if it did happen to come out, it might mean a lot more money for me out of that contract. You can hate me if you want to, but nobody is going to look after me except me.”

  “I understand.” Sam stood up. “Thanks for giving me the time. You coming along all right?”

  “Better than they thought I would, I guess. They’re letting me leave Wednesday. That’s what? June first? Yes. I got a little advance on an insurance settlement. I might maybe try a hotel a couple days to get used to getting around, then fly on back to Miami. But I guess it will be a long time before I really get over this thing, or maybe never. It’s a nightmare for sure, Mr. Boylston.”

  On his way to the stairway he saw Theyma Chappie coming along the corridor toward him. He beckoned her into a small alcove.

  “Do you now see what I was trying to tell you?” she asked in a low tone.

  “Yes. I see it.”

  “Some terrible thing hides behind his eyes. When he put his hand on me, after I jumped away, I felt so cold for a long, long time. That was when I knew he could do what you say he did. Then I was sure.”

  “He’s good, Theyma. Believe me, he’s damned good. It’s a great front, all that bumbling slowness and sincerity and troubled manner. There aren’t many ways. Trick him, or trap him, or break him. I don’t know how it can be done. But I have to do it.”

  “What will doing it do to you, Sam?”

  “Balance the ledger.”

  “God’s business, no?”

  “With man’s help sometimes. Your place? Five thirty?”

  “Good.”

  “Just get the recorder out of the room, and that’s the last of it. I’m grateful to you for taking the chance.”

  “Perhaps it would have been better not to. I think. For you. I am not sure. But—it is done. And you go tomorrow. Sam, go all the way home. Go all the way to your Texas and your Lydia Jean.”

  “This evening I’ll play you something I put together out of all those tapes.”

  “Perhaps I do not wish to hear it, eh?”

  “I want you to.”

  She made a face. “Why should such things you want matter to me in any way? You bully me, Mr. Boylston. It is a disgrace. Excuse me. I must go tuck your monster into bed for a nap.” She pulled her shoulders high, canted her head, gave him an odd look. “I watch him asleep. When his lids quiver and his hands twitch and his mouth changes shapes I know he dreams. And I wonder.”

  Sunday afternoon after Leila awakened from another of her long naps, she fought back the insidious lethargy and drowsiness and told the Sergeant, sweetly and politely, that she felt she would be more comfortable aboard the Muñequita. Had he not said it was moored under the house? Then it would not get too hot. There were screens which could be zipped in place, a bow hatch propped open for ventilation, a marine head, bedding in a locker under the port bunk. She said he would then have his own bed back. She would be able to do more for herself. The suggestion seemed to displease him, and he went out without a word. She felt herself sliding back into sleep, fought it for a little while and then let go. Never had she slept so heavily and continuously. She wondered if the blow on the head had anything to do with it.

  She had seen herself in the mirror he brought her when she asked for it. It had frightened her. Her cheekbones looked sharp enough to poke through her sallow-tan skin. Her eyes were sunk back into her head. Her matted hair was clumsily brushed over the shaved area of the wound. Her lips were swollen, pulpy, pale, cracked and split.

  She knew everybody would be looking for her. She could not sustain a sense of urgency longer than a few minutes before sinking back into that lethargy that was so like having had too many drinks. He brought her bowls of spiced, rich, heavy food, big mugs of hot tea. She would feed herself until her arm tired, and then he would take the spoon and feed her, coaxing her to take more, making little clicking sounds with his mouth, the way some people speak to horses.

  Once she had awakened—yesterday? the day before?—to find she had been turned face down, the improvised night-gown pulled high, while hands that were at once strong and gentle rubbed a pungent ointment into her back, working from high on her shoulders all the way to the backs of her calves and back again. In that disjointed world of half-sleep, Daddy was once again putting on that stuff that stopped the terrible itching-burning of the poison oak. Sam didn’t get it as bad as I did, she thought.

  Then she heard the stranger-voice, crooning to itself, “… enough skin come off to build a whole new gal, I do swear … no bad places left … coming pink and new like a baby … pore little burned ass ain’t board-flat no more, plumping up again.…”

  Just as her body began to tighten in alarm, he had given her a little pat on the shoulder, grunted to his feet, spread the clean white shirt down over her, pulled the sheet back in place. Her thought of protest faded into the velvet dark of sleep.

  Remembering, as she wondered why the Sergeant had left without a word, she reached a hand under the back of the shirt and felt of herself, felt on her back and buttocks, under a slight oiliness of medication, an ugly random pattern of welts and lumps and ridges instead of the familiar smoothness. There was no pain, yet here and there a special tenderness.

  After a long time she heard him clumping up the outside steps. It took a moment to remember the name of the song he was singing without words. Lili Marlene. “Dum dum dah dum dah—dum ti dum ti dah.”

  He told her the boat was ready. He wrapped her in a blanket and picked her up. From the top of the stairs she had expected to be able to see water beyond the shoreline of the island, but the trees were too high. The light hurt her eyes. The world seemed far too huge and bright. The steps looked unsafe. She clung to him. She saw the small boat ba
sin, like a pond in a swamp, the water black and still, and saw the channel where it entered the thick mangrove growth and curved out of sight.

  Over his few dum-dah-dum bars of the song, repeated over and over, she heard the tiny song of mosquitoes around her ears, face and throat. In the shadows of the mooring place under the house he stepped lightly aboard the Muñequita from his sheltered dock. The overhead was far too low for him to carry her into the forward cabin space. He set her down and steadied her as she backed down the step and clambered weakly into the bunk he had made up. He came in, closing the screening behind him, sat on his heels and sprayed the mosquitoes which had come in with them. The hatch was propped open overhead, the screening in place.

  He flicked on a weak bulb over her bunk, turned it off again. “The batteries are charged up pretty good, Missy, so if you’re wan-tin to use the light it shouldn’t take it down much, and the gas is full near to the top so as I can run the engines in neutral and recharge, comes to that. And you can run this little fan too I’d say, when the air gets too still.”

  He pressed a switch. The little rubber-bladed fan began to whir. She felt the wind against her face, glanced up at it, and a picture formed quickly in her mind and disappeared, leaving an aftertaste of fear and despair she could not identify. She had too brief a glimpse of the dark, bloated, horrid face of the woman to identify her. Eyes bulged from the sockets. Thickened tongue protruded from the mouth. And a long strand of her hair had been caught in a small fan, wound around shaft and blade. The fan did not move. It hummed and stank.

  “You all right, Miss Leila?”

  “… Yes. Yes, I’m all right.”

  After he left her alone she made herself get out of the bunk and look for the things she had hoped to use. The search did not take long. The little pistol and the shotgun were gone. The spear guns were gone. Both bronze keys were gone from the ignition switches and from the compartment under the instrument panel where the little Japanese transistorized ship-to-shore radio was locked away. She stretched out on the bunk and wept for a little while. Then she collected from the compartment under the other bunk a few things she could use. Towels, insect repellent, a terry beach coat which belonged to Roger, one of Stel’s swim suits, the yellow one with white trim.

  There’s one way, she thought, when I’m strong enough. Put this suit on and slip over the side and swim out his crazy channel to the open water. Even if it’s five miles to shore, I can make it. So I better work it into the conversation sometime that I can’t swim.

  But there was another thing to try first. And planning it, she fell asleep.

  On Monday, far stronger than she had hoped to be, she was able to walk halfway up the steps, clinging to the Sergeant before she tired and had to be carried the rest of the way. With his primitive sewing kit, she had fashioned herself underwear pants from a piece of sheeting, a short skirt from a beach towel, a bandeau top from a smaller towel. After she had rested and eaten well, she said, in polite accusation, “You should have taken me to a doctor right away, you know.”

  “Missy, you don’t know about head wounds. You don’t know a thing.” He touched the sickening dent in his forehead. “After I was sound as a dollar, they kept me in that place three whole years!”

  “But this isn’t the same!”

  “Well—there’s another thing I expect you better know about. If it wasn’t for the Lieutenant, all them pretty little people in those little houses over there on the mainland shore, they would have got me stuck back into that place long ago. I get mixed up a little sometimes. One of them fat little sons of bitches—excuse me—he stood right up in court and he asked the judge that time how they had any garntee I wasn’t going to sneak over there some dark night and kill them all in their beds, like I was some kind of maniac. I don’t bother them. Why’d they want to bother me like they do? Missy—from the minute I found you, I had that on my mind. You understand? What if I took you to a doctor and you were dead when we got there? What if you died and never come to? All those people over there would jump right onto a thing like that and say Sergeant Corpo, he hurt that pore girl and he should ought to be locked up. Missy, the onliest thing I could do was nurse you good as I could and hope.”

  “But what if I had died?”

  “I had a spot picked out, and I got lumber to make a good box, and a Bible to say words over you. I would have took that good boat out on a dark night on an outgoing tide and let it go on out the pass into the ocean. It would have been the best I could do, Missy.” He gave a single loud clap of his hands. “But what good is this kind of talk? Here you are setting up, smart as paint, and everything is fine as can be.”

  She smiled at him. “I’m very very grateful to you, Sergeant. It’s nice things worked out this way. Now I’d like you to take me to Broward Beach in the boat so I can get in touch with my people.”

  He leaned forward and stared at her. “What’s the matter with you, girl? You haven’t heard what I’ve been saying to you?”

  “Certainly I have!”

  “Any damn fool could take one look at you and he’d know you were a mighty sick little gal. Your head is healing good but it sure God looks recent like. And the fever’s melted all the meat off your bones and you’re weak as a kitten. Why, if I took you in there the shape you’re in, they’d all know I kept you here and doctored you myself and it would be pretty near as bad as taking you in dead.”

  She stared at him in dismay. He had that careful and earnest logic of the deranged. He had the raw sinewy look of enormous strength. His homemade haircut was grotesque. His eyes, of the palest gray she had ever seen, had an eerie luminosity about them, as though lighted from behind. She had seen animal eyes like that.

  With a catch in her voice she asked hopelessly, “When can I leave? Please.”

  “When it’s time! When nobody could ever know you’d ever had a sick day in your life, Miss Leila. Why, you’re going to get so you’re fat and sassy and laughing the whole day long. Your hair will all be grown back to cover that scar. You’ll be healthy like never before. Don’t you fret about things to do around here. There’s a thousand things, Missy. I can show you the kinds of wild orchids and air plants, and how the fiddler crabs make signals to each other, and how comical them baby pelicans are. Misty mornings, early, I can take you out on the flats, and sometimes I can have you scrunch down in the skiff and we can go to some beaches I go to where real good stuff washes up and there’s nobody there at all. We’ll have us a fine time, and you’ve got Sergeant Corpo’s word on that. Then, say along toward fall, you can just say goodby and set off in that fine boat. If you don’t know how to run it, I can teach you easy. And you can bet that boy Jonathan and your brother Sam will be glad to see you looking so fine and happy. They see you now, it could scare them some.”

  “How do you know about them!”

  “I swear, you asked me that three times now and ever’ time I tell you it was from listening to you talking to that whole mess of people when you were sickest.”

  “But they’ll be so worried about me, Sergeant!”

  He shook his head sadly. “You know if you fret about it, you’re not going to have you a good time on my island at all. You’ll spoil it for sure for the both of us. Now don’t you worry about the ladystuff you’ll need. A gal has her needs and she has to have pretties and all, and when I get set to go on into town, you can give me a list of anything you can think of.”

  He got up quickly and went over to his great jumble of boxes and containers and came back with a green metal box and put it on the floor beside her feet. “This here is an ammunition box and they’re good things because the damp can’t get into what you put in them.” He opened it and looked expectantly up at her and she saw that it was full almost to the top with money.

  “Where did you get all that!”

  “I cash the army check and I don’t never need that much for what I have to buy, so I just bring the rest of it on back and put it in this box. Been doing it for years and yea
rs. I got a box that filled up a long time back and I had to start a new one. It’s over there someplace. I surely would like to know how much there is all told. Maybe you could he’p me count it out. I used to try but it took so long I’d get all mixed up somewhere in what number thousand it was I got to. So I gave up on it.”

  He closed the box and put it back with his other boxes. He sat down again and said in a tone of wonder, “I know I got to keep you here like I said, Missy, but I never thought in my whole life I’d be glad to have anybody close by again. Folks make me edgy. But you, somehow, it doesn’t bother me one little bit. I swear, when I didn’t know if you was living or dying, you were still the prettiest little thing I ever saw anyplace, and I can see now that all you’re going to do as you get better is get prettier. It’ll be a nice thing, having you here with me for a long long time, Missy.”

  He seemed to be implying something, and it gave her a little crawling feeling of growing apprehension. She looked wide-eyed at him and moistened her lips and said, “I—I don’t want to be—your girl, Sergeant!”

  He was motionless and then he jumped up so wildly he knocked his chair over. He glared at her and said, “Who said any such thing as that? You think I’m some kind of animal? You think I ought to be locked up? That it? Why I wouldn’t lay a hand on you.…” He gave a grunt of astonishment and stared down at his right hand as if he had never seen it before. He turned it this way and that.

  “Never happen again anyways,” he said in a strange voice. “Happen again and I cut you off, finger by finger.”

  “What happened?”

  “When I first toted you up here. I had to look close at you to see every hurt place. This fool hand—it reached itself out and felt your little bare titty.” He looked at her in shame and distress. “It was only that one time, I swear, and nothing can’t ever happen again like that, Miss Leila, on my word of honor— All I want— All I want …”

  He stopped and his eyes changed, looking through her rather than at her. He turned slowly and in a wooden manner quite unlike his normal movement walked to a place to one side of the door where he grasped two uprights fashioned of peeled poles. She could guess from the tension of his body how strongly he held them. They were a few feet apart, and the areas where he held them were darkened with the past times of standing there. He leaned forward, put his head against a heavy cross beam. He rolled his head slowly from side to side and made an almost inaudible moan. He leaned his head back and then thudded it so heavily against the beam she felt her stomach turn over.