The Last One Left

by John D. MacDonald

  “Sergeant!” she cried. “No!”

  When he did it again, she made her way to him, clung to one arm, tried to pull his grip loose and turn him. His arm was like marble.

  He turned slowly at last and looked at her. He said empty syllables that fitted his mouth loosely and did not combine into words. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. She got him over to the bed and he sat down. He frowned up at her. “Get a little bit mixed up now and again.”

  She felt no fear of him and knew there would never be any fear. The luminous look of those strange eyes was the limpid clarity of a kind of innocence. A child looked out at her. The rigid ethic of boyhood controlled the big tough body. It was as though he had built a tree house, a place to play pretend, and had filled it with toys, and she was another toy, the newest of all.

  There would be chances to get away from him just as soon as she was strong enough.

  “It’ll be just like you say, Sergeant. We’ll have a fine time. We’ll have fun.”

  The slow smile lasted a long time. “Surely will,” said the Sergeant.

  Sixteen

  RAOUL KELLY KNEW he was on some special lists. He had caused too much trouble for too many people to expect to go unnoticed. There had been one very clumsy attempt and one very skilled attempt which went wrong only because by some freak of luck the set-gun so mounted in his bureau drawer as to fire into the chest of anyone opening the drawer had misfired. After the second attempt he was able to get a pistol permit without too much difficulty.

  He was licensed to carry it for self-protection. It was a Colt Cobra, a 38 Special with a one-inch barrel, and it fitted lightly and without bulge into the side pocket of his trousers. But usually it was locked up in the glove compartment. Guns made him feel foolish and theatrical, as if he were called upon to imitate a quite different sort of man. All through weapons training before the Bay of Pigs he had the idiot impulse to pull the trigger and yell BANG, YOU’RE DEAD. And after the fiasco as he was being led away, he thought it would be far more logical if all those very still, manlike lumps would get up, shrug, grin, wash off the fake blood and go buy each other beers.

  He knew that it was with the very best of intentions a small group of compatriots had demanded he acquire the pistol permit from the Dade County authorities. At the same time they arranged an informal roster, and kept a watchful eye on his car and his rented room. After much thought, Raoul had taken his own quiet steps to insure his safety. He had typed out thirty pages of those guesses, hunches and gossip which were very probably quite true, but were so unprovable he could not risk publication. He left out two names. They were both, he was quite sure, clever and highly trained revolutionaries masquerading as anti-Castroites. He showed his notes to both those men and said that should anything happen to him, three close friends had copies and all guaranteed they would get the material published. And he had added that from time to time, as he discovered more probabilities of the same order, he would supplement the notes. There was, he thought, one very comforting thing about the Enemy. They were unfailingly practical. Given a choice of two evils, no emotions entered into their decision to pick the lesser one.

  When, leaving the Harkinson place, with ’Cisca beside him, turning from the narrow road onto the highway he had seen the new-looking gray Plymouth sedan still parked in the same spot, he remembered the weapon in his glove compartment. He had not thought of it for weeks.

  From time to time during that Monday evening, as he pleaded vainly with the stubborn and unyielding Francisca, he kept remembering the gray car. And at last it provided inspiration.

  “Now then, Señorita,” he said, her dark eyes looking at him over the rim of the cup as she sipped her coffee, “I must outline the situation.”

  “Oh, of course. Completely. And then perhaps it will be possible, Señor, to talk of other things?”

  “Perhaps. You will not quit your job.”

  “The job will end itself when she can no longer pay me. Until then it is easy work. She does not interfere in my life. I am content.”

  “You refuse to marry me.”

  “Or anyone.”

  “Or come with me to California on any basis.”

  “To go so far! No.”

  “Then, truly, I must not go, because I cannot leave you.”

  “You will find friends there. I will find them here. I am not so important to anyone, Raoul.”

  “To me you are.”

  “But I do not wish it to be that way.”

  “It is that way, regardless of what you wish, querida.”

  “Perhaps it should be ended then.”

  “I would stay near you in any case, ’Cisca. And one day, perhaps this year, perhaps next, they will manage to kill me.”

  Watching her closely he saw the vapid look which signaled her change from shop-girl Spanish to crude and clumsy English. “Sotch a crazy theeng! Oh boy.”

  “They’ve tried twice.”

  “Ho! To rob sotch a reech man, you bet.”

  He reached across the booth table, captured both slender wrists in his workman’s hands. She tugged, looking angry, but he held her firmly.

  “The same people who killed your brother, querida.”

  “Let me go!”

  “The people’s republic in the land of peace and brotherhood, baby. Because I’m still fighting. Because I sting them with the words I write.”

  “Please. Let go!”

  “You won’t read what I write. You want to make believe nothing ever happened. You can’t remember Havana, eh? You were never there. There isn’t any war. You never scrubbed the soldiers’ barracks on your hands and knees out at Rancho Luna. That was some other girl. And when they kill me, you’ll forget that too, like everything else.”

  She made such a sudden violent effort she nearly wrested her hands free, but he did not let her go. She lowered her head, chin on her chest, so that all he could see of her was the lustrous darkness of her hair. A waitress moved near, curious and concerned. He gave her a nod and a smile to reassure her. She moved away, but glanced back, her expression showing a certain dubiousness.

  Her arms were completely limp. He released his hold slowly. She remained there unmoving, and he could see the slow lift and fall of her breath under the pale green blouse.

  Oh, you are a clever one, Kelly, he thought. Without any trouble at all you push her back into her empty and silent cave. The operation was brilliant, but the patient died on the table.

  Slowly she raised her head and looked at him. Tears were streaming down her face. But her eyes had a look of awareness of him and of herself he had not seen before. They were the eyes of Señorita Francisca Torcedo y Sarmantar, only daughter of Don Estebán, only sister of Enrique.

  To his vast astonishment she spoke in English, husky, halting, thickened by grief. “Doan be deads. Then nobody. Nobody left. Nothings. Not loving me, please. Sotch a rotten girl! Not to marry, please. But you for safe, I go with. Any places. All my life, I go with. Care for you, anytimes you say. Jesus help me. I swear for it.”

  She lowered her head again, sighed very deeply. His own eyes were wet as he realized how desperately he had needed this affirmation of her love, kept so carefully hidden. It had been more than his pride which had been affronted by her apparent happy willingness to think of their relationship as a casual affair, something suitable for a housemaid who would be expected to have a boyfran who would take her to movies, to the beach, and to bed. And he suddenly understood why, once she had been forced into revelation, it had to come out in English. There were too many blocks for it to be said in Spanish. She had used it like a code, a way to say things she could not say, like the secret languages children invent.

  When he took her out to the car she moved like one recovering from illness. She was remote, emotionally exhausted, shy.

  He decided that if English was the way to reach her, he would stay with English. The “rotten girl” part puzzled him. It indicated that there was guilt involved in her long
withdrawal, as well as shock and grief and sickness. But what could cause her to feel so unworthy? He suspected that it would be very unwise to try to find out. Maybe some day. Certainly she would not feel guilt at having tried to kill one of those “liberators” who had so clumsily shot the adored papa, or guilt at having been made pregnant under circumstances she had no way of controlling.

  As he drove down the dark highway with the girl sitting passively beside him, he suddenly thought of one possible situation which could make her feel that she was rotten. She had spent months as a prisoner. What if one of them, one of the village boys, had taken pity on the little upperclass pollita? Some young and gentle lad, who had treated her with a natural kindness, smuggled better food to her, saved her from the more brutalizing kinds of labor. He knew the capacity for warmth and gentleness the young village men of his country often had. A young boy, perhaps as young as she. In her anguish and despair, she might well have responded to him, willingly. But she could not realize that both she and the young militiaman were both victims of the merciless random patterns of history. She would know only that she had given herself to the Enemy, that out of a weakness and helplessness she would misinterpret as callousness and lust, she had lain with the murderer of father and brother. Then, after her rescue, having not the ability to physically kill herself, perhaps because of the mandate of the church, she had killed the guilty Francisca and had become someone else.

  At first he thought the diagnosis fanciful, but there was too much weight of detail to support it, and indeed he could not think of any other factor which could have so distorted a person of her strength, spirit and intelligence. A lesser woman could have devised useful rationalizations for indulging herself with the Enemy. To the daughter of Don Estebán, the sister of Enrique, it would be a matter of personal honor, and an insupportable memory. Such a woman could live only with the memory of never having been taken except by force.

  He sensed the ultimate irony, that what she thought of as rottenness was in truth a measure of her great worth.

  “You’ll give Mrs. Harkinson notice?”

  “Tomorrow I say it. I work what she say. One week. Two.”

  “You don’t owe her anything.”

  “I do what is right.”

  “I will send a letter to California tonight to tell them I accept. When you tell me when you can leave, I will tell the paper. If you can leave soon, we will drive.”

  “If you say it.” Her voice was listless.

  He parked outside the gate, walked her to her stairs. She turned, leaned against him, sighed heavily and touched her soft mouth to the side of his chin. “We are in love,” he whispered.

  “If you say it.”

  As he turned around and drove out he thought of the pale car. It was still there. He had seen it for an instant when he had turned off the highway. His lights had touched it as he turned. It was fifty yards south of the road to the Harkinson place, on the same side, and backed into the semi-concealment of a small grove of trees. There had been no need to mention it to Francisca. It would only worry her. He had not needed to prove to her that he was possibly in danger. He was no longer as proud of his device of the posthumous publication. If they had learned of this attachment, and had identified her, they would need only to pick her up and take her into the city and hide her, and Raoul Kelly would do anything they asked of him.

  He turned south rather than north and as soon as he was around a long curve and out of light and sound, he found a place to pull off the highway. He took the revolver from the glove compartment, left the dark and silent car and crossed the highway and soon came upon a fence. He waited as they had taught him until his eyes adjusted to the night. The loaded weapon in the side pocket of his unbuttoned jacket nudged him from time to time as he walked north, paralleling the highway. Something went scuttling away from under his feet, thrashing off into the grass, giving him a horrid start.

  Warrior type, he thought. Cover and concealment. Deadly weapon. A man should have the looks to go with the game. John Wayne would move like a tiger. He’d never turn his ankle and walk into a tree trunk. I am marked by the long-ago movies, Abbot and Costello. I am Lou Costello, whose every venture ends in a prat-fall.

  He reached the grove and he could see the pallor of the car. He moved closer and saw the gleam of the rear-view mirror on the driver’s side. He saw a dark bulk of someone slumped behind the wheel. Just as he was close enough to the rear of the car to touch it, the door opened and a man stepped out. Raoul’s palm was sweaty on the serrated wood of the grip. When he got over the fright of thinking the man was coming after him, he was pleased to see that the stranger was not as huge as imagination had created him. The man stretched, grunted audibly, lifted his knees high in a slow, in-place march.

  BANG, YOU’RE DEAD! Raoul thought. He took two steps forward and said, “Don’t turn around. I’ve got a gun. Take it slow and easy.”

  After a silence of at least five seconds, the man said, “What do you want?” The accent was not strong, but it was of some other region. It reminded Raoul of one of the CIA people at the training area, a young man from Oklahoma.

  “Why have you been parked here all this time?”

  “What’s that to you?”

  Impasse. Raoul had a picture of himself taking another step, hammering the gun down smartly against the back of the neat sandy skull, revealed by the courtesy light which had turned on when the car door had been opened. Then you squat by the victim, get his wallet, look at his papers … But he could imagine too vividly the sound of steel against meat and bone.

  “Are you an officer of the law?” the fellow asked.

  “I’ll ask the questions around here, buddy.” And what do I ask next?

  With no warning the car door slammed, and for an instant Raoul stood in total darkness, his night vision stolen by the courtesy light. Then something hammered a monstrous blow into the pit of his stomach. He was turned and his hand was rapped against the side of the car. The gun fell from his numbed hand. He was hit in the throat, and on the cheek and on the chin. The last blow felt very soft, as though it had come through a pillow. He faded, light as a balloon, onto his knees. Hands fumbled at him. He crawled slowly away, stopped and threw up.

  In a little while he edged sideways, got hold of the slender trunk of a tree, climbed it hand over hand until he was up on his feet. He turned and leaned his back against the tree. A flashlight shone in his face. He put his arm up to shield his eyes. When the brightness went away he could see the man sitting sideways on the front seat of the car, feet on the ground, revolver resting between his thighs in the glow of the courtesy light. He was pushing the cards back into the pocket of Raoul’s wallet.

  “How do you feel, Mr. Kelly?”

  “I’ve had better evenings.”

  “Come on over here and set for a spell.”

  Raoul got in on the passenger side. His wallet was handed to him. He leaned forward and worked it back into his hip pocket. He said, “Where’s the other one?”

  “What other one?”

  “There’s just you?”

  “Just me.”

  “Then I better be glad there aren’t two of you.”

  “It’s the adrenalin. A man with a gun on him better move fast or not at all. Here you go. It’s empty now. Put it in that side pocket. Put these shells in the pocket on the other side. Newspaperman. Last thing I expected. But I guess it’s reasonable to expect that a reporter, if he’s bright enough, if he did some digging, would take an interest in Crissy Harkinson these days.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’ll return the favor,” the man said. He took out a billfold, unsnapped a card case, handed it over. Raoul looked at the cards. His mind seemed to move slowly and reluctantly. His face hurt. A lawyer from Texas. Samuel Boylston. It made no sense. Boylston. Something about the name. Then he remembered it was the name of the boat guest. A Miss Boylston.

  “The girl on the Muñeca was related to you?”

  B
oylston was looking at him with what seemed to be a new interest. He answered in rapid, fluent border Mexican. “She was my sister. It gives me a very special interest in the entire affair. You might be of some help to me.”

  The verb forms were simplified, and he used the familiar form of address, as though talking to a servant. It irritated Raoul, the accuracy of the guess as well as the manner.

  “Mr. Boylston, I suspect that my Cuban Spanish might create problems for you. And my English is a little better than your Mexican Spanish. I do not believe I can be of any help to you. A young lady from Cuba works for Mrs. Harkinson. I visit her often. That’s all.”

  “I see. Did you drive in with her not long ago in a green Ford and then come out and turn south?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it seems a little strange that you should come sneaking up on me with that gun, just because I happened to be parked here.”

  “Strange? All Cuban exiles are conspiratorial and paranoid, Mr. Boylston. Haven’t you heard?”

  “Have you met Crissy Harkinson?”

  “No. I’ve seen her, but not near by.”

  “How long has your girl worked for her?”

  “Not long. She’ll be quitting soon.”

  “Why?”

  “Mr. Boylston, you ask a lot of questions. She’s going to California with me. I have a new job out there.”

  “Who is the kid in the rusty blue car?”

  “Perhaps a friend of Mrs. Harkinson. Or maybe he’s doing some work for her. I wouldn’t know. I don’t talk about Mrs. Harkinson with my friend. She wouldn’t know much anyway. She hasn’t got very much English.”