The Last One Left

by John D. MacDonald

  “I don’t even care what happens to me any more. I just can’t let him—come back and do things to you. I don’t care. I’ll kill him. I swear I’ll kill him!”

  “How? With the funny little gun your daddy bought you to plink tin cans with? And wouldn’t that be a dandy solution? They’d find out the motive soon enough, and maybe for kicks they’d send me up for twenty years at the same time they electrocute you. I told you I’m selfish, boy. If it was a choice between servicing dear Captain Staniker, or working in the prison laundry daytimes and belonging to some dirty old bull dyke the rest of the time, what would my choice be?”

  “My God, this is killing me, Crissy! Please!”

  “So let’s stop talking about it and end it right now before it kills us both. You’ve got toilet articles here, and that gun and the ammunition, and a jacket and a tie and swim trunks and your sailboat, so let’s make a clean sweep and get it all over with now.”

  She headed swiftly down the hallway to her bedroom, aware of him close behind her. He stopped in the bedroom, looking sick and dazed and miserable. She went into the dressing room and got the 22 rifle and brought it out, started to hand it to him, then walked with it to her desk, took some tissue from a box and wiped the end of the barrel near the muzzle carefully.

  “Excuse me for messing up your little rifle somewhat,” she said.

  He stared at the pink stains on the tissue with puzzlement and then growing comprehension. “Crissy! Were you going to …”

  She made a wry face. “Stop the world and get off? I thought so. It was a real comedy scene. The dumb broad sitting at her dressing table looking at the three reflections of herself in the mirror, tears running down her face, sucking on the barrel of the gun. I could just reach the trigger with the tip of my middle finger, light as a butterfly’s kiss. Very corny and dramatic. Couldn’t do it. So I keep on living, kid. Staniker’s bitch. Very well trained. I’ll collect the rest of your stuff.”

  She turned away and heard the gun thud to the floor, heard his great breathy bellow of anguish, and then his big arms went around her and turned her and pulled her snug and close. “Oh darling,” he said, weeping. “Oh, Crissy. Oh God, darling.”

  She stood without response for what she considered a long enough time, then softened and returned the embrace, and reached back through memory to find something which would convincingly flood her dry eyes. She used the mutation mink wrap again. Savannah. She’d had it on layaway for seven months before she took the final fifty dollars to the store, had them wrap her cloth coat, and wore the wrap back to the apartment. Ten days later that crazy little Polack had gotten into the apartment somehow, when Crissy was out. That nutty Polish whore who had the idea Crissy was after her man. So she’d gotten in, bringing a pair of Sears Roebuck clippers for homemade haircuts, and had chopped all that beautiful silver-blue fur off, right down to the stubble, with the ugly hide showing through. She remembered how she felt when she walked in and saw that lovely soft fur all over her bed and the floor, and the tears came convincingly.

  “Darling, darling, darling,” she said in a tearful voice. “I was trying to be so strong. But we do have to say goodby. Once more, then, my dear. The last time for us. This is our goodby.”

  Later, in the drowse and lethargy of passion freshly spent, she lay sweetly sprawled upon him, her head on the firm tanned chest, her ear centered over his heart. With slow fingertips she traced the contours of his lips, and she listened to the deep slow sound of his healthy young heart.

  “How can I let you go?” she whispered.

  “There has to be …”

  “Hush, my dear. Could we be—very cruel and very sly? Is it worth taking an awful risk, and doing a terrible thing—to stay together?”

  She felt his heart accelerate, striking more solidly against the wall of his chest. “What kind of a risk?”

  “I would have to see him. Maybe let him come here, or go to him. I would have to—pretend to be glad he came back. I might even have to—let him have me. Could you endure that? Could you still love me after that?”

  “You know I could.”

  “I think it would make me ill, after you. Physically, desperately ill. Darling, I’d try not to let it happen.”

  “What are you thinking we could do?”

  “I know that it must bother him to have lost that boat and those people and his wife. Oh, not the way it would bother most people. He’ll just be worrying about how it might keep him from getting a good job again. He wouldn’t feel any guilt, not really. He’d pretend to, but he wouldn’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t you see, dear? It would look kind of—logical if he killed himself.” Suddenly his heart was much faster.

  “If—it looked as if he killed himself.”

  “Yes. Are we—strong enough?”

  “He doesn’t deserve to be alive.”

  She hitched upward, held him, put her face in the side of his throat, let out a long shivering breath. “We might be able to—find the right chance real soon. Or we might have to wait, Olly. We’ll have to plan the best way to do it. The safest way, and be very clever and not leave any clues, and not let anyone see us at all. I’m scared, darling, thinking about it.”

  He hugged her close. “We’d be crazy not to be scared.”

  “It’s the only way I’ll be free. It’s the only way I can be yours.”

  “I know.”

  “We’ll have to—do it together. Help each other do it. Then we’ll really belong to each other forever and ever. It’s something we have to share. Do you understand?”

  “I—yes. Yes.”

  “If it goes wrong—they might take us away and kill us, Oliver.”

  “I’d rather be dead than lose you.”

  “You really mean that, don’t you, darling?”

  He rolled to his side, so that he could hold her there against him. “Don’t cry, Crissy. Don’t cry. We’ll do it. Nobody will ever know. You’ll see. It’s all we can do. It’s the only chance we’ve got.”

  “I have to say the word, dear. It’s—murder. You know that, don’t you? Murder.”

  “Don’t be scared. Please don’t be scared.”

  “Not when I’m with you. I love you, Olly. So much. So much.”

  In a little while, in the strong circle of his brown arms she moved slightly, changed her position, sighed, slowly lifted her right leg and hooked it around him, her thigh heavy on his waist.

  “I’m terrible,” she whispered. “So soon, dear. So soon. Thinking of what—we’re going to do to him seems to get me excited. That’s terrible, isn’t it?”

  “No,” he said in a hoarse whisper.

  “Too soon for you?” she whispered, as she reached for him. She touched the hollow of his throat with her tongue tip. “You too,” she breathed. “You too, lovely lovely boy. No, dear. Just lie still. Lie very still. Leave it all this time to your Crissy, to your woman. She’ll make it so delicious for you.”

  As she began, she wished she could get that damned mink wrap out of her mind. It was so silly to get mad about it again after all these years. That screwball Polski. The boss girl had warned the Polski about other things she pulled. And that time the Polski disappeared. Crissy had heard, over a year later, that the boss girl had turned the Polski over to the Snowman for one of his lessons in manners and she had then been sent west for the export trade. But it sure God didn’t grow any fur back on those mink skins.

  Eighteen

  ON FRIDAY AFTERNOON, Staniker walked slowly down the steps from the Bahama Airways plane to the cement apron, holding onto the railing. His weakness made him feel slightly chilled in the sun heat of the Miami Airport, and made him aware of the small frictions of the clothing against his body. He felt the pull of the tender, healing skin on his right knee as he took each step, but there was little pain. McGregory had been pleased with how quickly he had healed.

  The insurance company had advanced the money for the inexpensive clothing
and toilet articles Nurse Chappie had purchased for him. He carried a small flight bag, blue and white. He had cleared U.S. Customs at Windsor Field on departure.

  As he walked with the tourist passengers into the terminal he watched for reporters and photographers, but there were none. It was understandable. He had made it clear even before leaving the hospital that he had signed up with Banner Enterprises. And the story was old now. The Muñeca had been on the bottom in the endless silence and blackness for twenty-one days. And though he knew it was the last place she would be, he looked for Crissy.

  “Captain? Captain Staniker?” A little man trotted up, beaming. He held his hand out. “Wezler. Hal Wezler. Banner Enterprises. All ready to go to work, Captain?” He had swift dark eyes, a ferret face, black hair, tie, suit and shoes, snow white shirt, gold accessories, a smile that came and went as swiftly as a facial tic. “Let’s find a saloon and get acquainted and I’ll tell you how we’re going to work it.”

  They sat at a small table in a cocktail lounge. Wezler turned over the pale blue check for twelve hundred and fifty dollars. He talked so rapidly Staniker had trouble following him. Apparently time was very important. Wezler had taken a small suite. They would hole up there. Wezler used a tape recorder. He said he wanted a million words on tape. He’d fly back out to the coast and turn all that tape into a book. Everybody was very turned on about it, he said. Marty, whoever that was, was setting up the tie-ins. They were shooting for hard cover, magazine serialization, soft cover, book club and a movie deal. It was going to make everybody very rich. Marty was even thinking of setting up some kind of serial television project. But they had to get winging right now. These things cool off. So how about heading for the hotel right now? Great broads around the pool. Take a break once in a while. Ease off, have some laughs, then back to the old Ampex.

  “Not right away,” Staniker said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I have personal things to do, Wezler. And I need rest. I have to get my strength back.”

  “Marty isn’t going to like this a bit, Staniker.”

  “Too bad.”

  “If it turns him off he might cut the whole deal down to practically nothing. You’re signed on percentage. You’d lose a pot.”

  “So I’d lose a pot.”

  Wezler studied him. “So I’ll see if I can con him a little on the phone. Only you got to tell me when, so I have something solid to go on.”

  “A week.”

  “Come on, baby!”

  “A week.”

  “The man says a week. Where’ll I find you, Captain?”

  “I’ll phone your hotel.”

  Wezler wrote the name of the hotel on the back of a business card and handed it over. “Where are you headed now? You want a lift? I got a rental out there someplace.”

  Staniker accepted the ride to Parker’s Marina. Before Wezler drove off he pumped Staniker’s hand and said, “If you can make it five days, four days, you got a new friend, believe me.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” Staniker said.

  Parker wasn’t around. The new couple who worked there were curious about him, but when he sidestepped their questions they turned sullen and indifferent. They gave him the packet of mail which had been saved for him, and the man unlocked the storage shed so Staniker could sort through the things which had been moved out of the cottage. The heat was thick in the shed. Sweat stung his eyes as he sorted some personal clothing and belongings into two suitcases. He carried them outside, refastened the padlock, and went to where the woman was dipping up live shrimp from the bait tank for two leathery old senior citizens. He told her to tell Parker he’d get the rest of the stuff later. When she gave no sign she heard he repeated it. She turned and said, “You think I’m deef or something?”

  He carried the suitcases around to the back of the main building. His old yellow Olds sat in the sunshine. One tire looked soft. The spare key was in a little magnetic box on top of a frame member under the left rear corner of the car. It had rusted shut. He banged it against the bumper and forced it open. He unlocked the car, stuck the suitcases in, left all four doors open for a few minutes to air out the bake-oven heat. He rolled all the windows down. Never have to own another one without air conditioning, he thought.

  He got in, pulled the doors shut, put the key in the ignition. Before he started it, he reached under the seat and slid his fingers along until he felt the thin packet of bills, folded once, he had scotch-taped to the underside of the seat. He pulled it loose, put it into his pants pocket along with the Banner check, Wezler’s card, and the money left from the insurance advance.

  The car did not start. The battery began to fade. And he felt a sudden and quite unexpected wave of terror. If the car wouldn’t start, everything would go wrong. He made himself relax. That was ridiculous. If the car didn’t start, you walked over to the gas station over there and told Charlie your troubles.

  When he tried again it caught. He revved the motor for a while before putting it in gear. He drove out and down the street and across into the Shell station. A boy was working on a car on the lift. Charlie came out of the station, a broad, bald man in gray coveralls, steel glasses, a smear of grease on his forehead.

  “Figured you’d be back soon,” Charlie said, shaking hands.

  “I got the card okay in the hospital. Thanks.”

  “Hell of a time finding one that wasn’t some kind of funny joke. Nothing funny about six people getting blowed up. That tire’s way down, Garry.”

  “Noticed it. Battery is low too.”

  “I’ll check things out. You don’t look so great. Whyn’t you go in and set.”

  Staniker went inside the station and sat in a plastic and aluminum chair. A fan turned back and forth, pushing stale air that smelled of gasoline and the perfumed deodorizing block in the nearby men’s room. In a little while Charlie came in and handed him an opened icy bottle of Coke. “Cells are okay. Battery level was down and I filled her up. Checked the tires all around. Your gas was full up. Oil is down maybe a half a quart.”

  “Thanks, Charlie.”

  Charlie leaned on the desk. “I was thinking, if you’d been below too when she went, they never would have found out what happened. Mystery of the sea like they say.”

  “Or if nobody had come along for another couple of days, it would have been the same deal.”

  Charlie sighed. “You just never know. That Mary Jane was a real working woman. None of those people knew what hit ’em, I guess.”

  “They never had a chance.”

  “Those new folks Parky hired ain’t no improvement around here. They’re so sour I don’t go over for a beer even. I’d rather drive down to Smitty’s.”

  “Well, I better be getting along. Thanks for everything, Charlie.”

  “Where you going to go? Maybe move in with that stuff you got lined up down the bay shore? That one you used to work for?”

  “You mean Mrs. Harkinson? I tell you, Charlie, I wish I could. But we broke up just a little bit before this last captain job came along. Broke it up big. No chance of mending that one. She was getting on my nerves anyway. I didn’t know you knew anything about her, Charlie.”

  “Maybe I talked out of turn. The one told me was Fran, down at the sundries. A long time ago. Back in February maybe it was. Fran and Mary Jane, those two would tell each other their troubles I guess. Fran’s got her share for sure. As I remember Fran was bad-mouthing you for carrying on with that woman. I nodded, solemn as a preacher. Fran should know the fits I give my old lady back when I still had my hair.”

  “Next time you see Fran you tell her I haven’t got a chance of moving in on that blonde. I guess she’ll say it serves me right. You know, Charlie, I wish now I’d—given Mary Jane a few more breaks than I did. I’m going to miss her. I miss her already.”

  Charlie looked at him. “No trouble for you to find a woman. No trouble at all. But it won’t be easy to find a worker like her.”

  As he drove a
way, Staniker thought that a lot of Crissy’s precautions didn’t make sense. But because everything else seemed to have worked out, perhaps it was best to go along with the whole thing. Nobody was going to check on anything at this late date. It was over and done, and the only thing left was a good way to go pick up the money. A good, safe, quick, quiet way.

  And now he had to play more tricks. She wouldn’t tell him who had told her about this one. She had practiced it with him, in rush-hour traffic until they were both good at it. Any limited access highway with exit ramps and three lanes in each direction would do. Even when he knew how she was going to work it and she knew how he was going to work it, they had no trouble losing each other.

  You hung in the fast lane, furthest from the exit ramps, and you found a hole in the traffic, and you adjusted your speed in relation to the hole so that when you were coming up on an exit ramp, you could speed up at just the right time, angle across the other two lanes and duck down the ramp. You then took the cloverleaf and got back onto the pike but heading the opposite way, and did it again. That put you back in your original direction, and anybody who had tried to trail you would be swept helplessly past the exit, locked in the river of fast traffic. He killed time, driving north. On Interstate 95 north of the airport, traffic thickened and he obediently played the game. “You see,” she had said, “we won’t know we’re really in the clear. They might be playing cat and mouse. And what does it cost to play it safe? Nothing. So do it? Don’t give me arguments. Do it!”

  He drove west on the bypass, and after he had turned south again toward Coral Gables, just for luck, he played the game again, the second time cutting it almost too fine, making horns blare in anger and brakes shriek as he angled across.

  The row of a dozen identical cottages was in a defeated area near Coral Gables. Heavy, unkempt tropical growth hemmed the cottages in, cutting off any chance of breeze. The pink paint on the hard pine siding was faded and flaking away, exposing gray wood. The woman lived in a larger cottage on the corner, on a bigger lot. She was four and a half feet tall. Her back was badly humped. Her voice had a metallic resonance, like announcements over a bad loudspeaker. Her face was stone gray, her hair the impossible yellow of industrial sulfur. She wore a green smock, blue canvas shoes, and she smelled like a boarding kennel.