The Last One Left

by John D. MacDonald

“Ah!” she said, eyes sparkling. “I am service you, hah?”

  “I think your native tongue might be more accurate, Señorita, even though the English version has a certain unique charm.”

  “So. How may I be of service?”

  “I shall leave now, but I shall only appear to leave. In truth I shall drive away, conceal my car in a small wooded place not far from the entrance to the road which leads here. We shall have left the gate ajar. I will steal back on foot, slip inside, close it the rest of the way and fasten the padlock. I will then creep quietly up to these quarters which by then will be dark, and here I shall hide all night, all day tomorrow, and all of tomorrow night until the deadly agents start seeking me elsewhere.”

  The sparkle of fun faded to dubiousness. “You are serious?”

  “Of course. I shall take great care not to risk showing myself to your employer, Señorita. She too is an agent of Schmaltz. A very clever one. And I shall have much needed rest and recuperation. We shall be very sly. We shall speak in whispers. And you shall take comfort in knowing you have served The Cause.”

  “She would be very angry if …” She paused and shrugged. “But she never comes up here. Anyway, the job is nearly at an end.” Her frown disappeared, and her eyes shone with mischief again. “You ask a great sacrifice of me, Señor. I shall force myself to endure it and help you outwit the forces of evil.” She moved closer. “I shall even share my toothbrush!”

  “No one could ask more.”

  As he went quietly up her outside stairway after hiding the car, walking back and chaining and locking the gates, he felt the small weight of the revolver against the side of his right thigh as he climbed each step. He opened the screen door and locked it behind him with hook and eye. When she did not answer his whisper, he knew she was in the bedroom. He wedged the revolver down, out of sight, between the cushions of the couch.

  As he entered the dark bedroom she said, softly, “Could you be Señor Jaime, sir, who outwits everyone?”

  “You have made a correct identification.”

  She giggled. He undressed in darkness. He slid into her bed, took her into his arms, feeling the vital warmth of her under the sheerness of fabric. He was prepared for all her cheery, greedy acceptances, her happy little love games and chortlings. But she was strangely rigid in his arms, fists against his chest. Her body was trembling and he heard a little catch of her breath in her throat.

  “What is wrong, querida?”

  “I—I don’t know. I feel very shy. Very strange. Why should I be frightened of you?”

  “Just rest in my arms. Let me hold you.”

  He held her quietly until her body relaxed. But then, at his slightest caress, she would give a little start, a little gasp. Tenderly, gently, carefully he brought her along until all at once she wrapped her slender arms around him with a desperate strength and with her breath fast and hot against his throat, she said, in a voice an octave lower than he had ever heard her speak, and in that special accent of the best blood of the tropic city of his birth, “You are my life. You are my heart. You are my love. You are my soul.”

  With stinging eyes he knew that he, Raoul Kelly, had at last wooed and won the lovely daughter of Don Estebán, to have, to hold, to cherish for as long as he might live.

  Twenty-one

  IT WAS ALMOST nine o’clock when Crissy looked again at her watch. She was standing at the bureau in Staniker’s ten-by-twelve bedroom. A mirror was fastened to the wall above the bureau. Enough of the silvering was gone from the back of it to make a fragmented image of the room behind her as she fixed more drinks. She moved slightly so she could see Staniker’s face. The buff-colored windowshade was pulled down to the sill. Though the window was wide behind it, there was no air to move the shade. The rusty electric fan, for all its whining and whirring, did not seem to stir the air.

  Staniker lay on the double bed, in pale blue boxer shorts, his mass and weight deepening the hollow in it. He was propped on two pillows. There was an oily gleam of sweat on his face and body. His big face was slack, his speech slow and thick.

  She poured him another bloody mary from the big, widemouth Thermos, holding the ice back with the fingers of her free hand after two cubes had clumped into the glass. She took it to him, feeling between the cool glass and her fingertips the crackly crust of colorless nail polish she had applied to the pads of fingers and thumbs. He took the glass from her, and in lifting it to his lips, spilled some on his broad chest, wiped at it with his other hand.

  She went back to the bureau and fixed herself a weak bourbon and soda. She wore navy blue slacks. She had rolled them up to just below her knees. The dark kerchief was in the pocket of the slacks. The waistband of the slacks was damp with sweat. She had taken off the forest green silk shirt with long sleeves and tossed it onto a chair. The roots of her hair were damp. A drop of sweat ran down between her breasts to soak into the brassiere band under her breasts, and another trickled from her armpit down to the side of the slacks. She wondered how long he was going to hold out.

  “Absolooly dead,” he said in a tone of heavy complaint. “Grayse broad’na worl’ could walk ina here bare ass, n’I couldn do a thing forrer, blieve me. Worryn bout it alla time, baby. Alla time.”

  She came with her drink to sit on the side of the bed. “Crissy’ll fix, honey. You drink up and get just a little more stoned and Crissy’ll take care.”

  “Sure, sure, sure. Suppose to make it worse.”

  “Drinking? It works both ways, friend. It’ll stop a motor that’s running and start up one that’s dead.”

  “Whadaya know about it anyway?”

  She looked mildly at him. “All there is to know. Drink up, buddy boy. When I met the Senator I was a first class hooker. That’s how I met him. I got talent you need. Drink up.”

  When he lowered the glass there was an inch left in it. He stared owlishly at her. “Figures. B’God, it figures.”

  “Did I make the marys too spicy, Captain?”

  “Just right, baby. Got a real stick in ’em. Hittin me pree good.”

  Damn well told there’s a stick in them, lover, she thought. Four of the big bombs, the blue and yellow ones. Fer brought them when I was having trouble sleeping. Never take more than one, he said. After the first one, I wasn’t likely to. It scared me. It reached up and yanked me under, like a barracuda hitting a floating gull. That left two, and I flushed them down, just in case.

  “Gedda work, kid,” he mumbled. “Get busy.”

  She lifted the glass out of his slack hand and went back to the bureau. She had made a small sample first, taken a cautious sip. If there was a taste to the drug, the tomato juice, salt, pepper, lime juice, tabasco, worcestershire and vodka overwhelmed it.

  “Better have a fresh one handy,” she said. “This is a celebration, Garry. Right?”

  “Funny about at guy knowing about the money …” His voice trailed off. She ran back to the bed. His eyes were closed. She shook him.

  “Hey! Garry. What guy?”

  “Uh. Brother.” His eyes wavered, trying to focus.

  “What brother, dammit?”

  “Boy—Boys—Boylston. Nice fella.” His eyes closed and his jaw sagged. She shook him. She plucked a fold of belly flesh and twisted it. She thumbed his eyelid back. She straightened and took a long breath and let it out.

  She took both glasses into the bathroom and rinsed them out. She took them back to the bedroom and packed the glasses, Thermos, the bottle of soda and bottle of bourbon back into the dark overnight bag she had brought. She took it into the dark living room and put it down by the front door. She remembered how she had worried about him not seeing her car out there. But when he had asked about it, and she had said with a practiced casualness, “I can’t get the damned thing into reverse gear, so I had to leave it down the street,” he had accepted it without question.

  She found the living room light switch beside the door, clicked the lights on and off once, quickly. She looked out the window
and saw Olly emerge from the shrubbery and come quickly to the front door. It stuck. She yanked it open and he brushed past her. “Is he …”

  “Out cold. Yes. You don’t have to whisper, honey.”

  “What took so long?”

  “He’s a big man. He kept hanging on and hanging on. Come on.”

  Following her down the short hallway he whispered, “Why have you got your shirt off?”

  “Because it’s hot as the hinges of hell, friend.”

  Oliver came to an abrupt stop just inside the bedroom doorway and stared at the big man asleep on the bed. He licked his lips. His adam’s apple slid up and down his throat as he swallowed.

  She went to the bed and undid the snaps at the waist band of the underwear shorts.

  “Why are you doing that?”

  “Will you stop whispering? Please! I’m doing it because it would look damned funny if I didn’t. Will you please help me instead of standing there like a statue!”

  He helped her work the shorts off the sleeping man and pull them down and off his limp feet.

  “Take the head,” she said. “Come on. We’ve got to get him over to the edge of the bed first. Once more. Fine. No, you idiot! Not by the wrists. We don’t want to drag him. Sit him up and get your arms under his arms and lace your fingers across his chest. There!”

  She turned around and backed and lifted his legs and locked a big ankle into each of her armpits, and held tightly to her left wrist with her right hand. “Now!” she said. She heard the boy’s gasp of effort as the big body came free of the bed and hung between them in the air. The weight of him pulled her back a half step and as she bent forward to compensate for the stress, she felt the sweat bursting and trickling all over her face and body. “Come on,” she said in a voice grating with effort, and walked under the burden, taking small steps. The bathroom was directly across the short hallway from the bedroom, and the tub was opposite the door, against the wall, under a window.

  It was narrow and deep, standing on claw feet clutching white balls. The porcelain was chipped down to the metal at many places along the curve of the rim. Rust lines ran from the two faucets down to the drain. The faucets were on the ends of pieces of galvanized pipe which came up through the floor boards and through the yellow and white linoleum, high enough for the elongated nozzles, which retained a few flakes of the original chrome, to extend over the rim of the tub. A white rubber stopper was tied by a piece of string to the cold water pipe. She had left the light on, and the buff shade pulled down. She walked to the faucet end, turning slowly, bent under the weight, as he walked his end of the sleeper to the sloped end of the tub.

  He pulled her backward and she said through clenched teeth, “What are you doing?”

  “Got to get—around the end—of the tub.”

  There was a great tug as he let go, as he let Staniker slide down the slope of the head end of the tub. It yanked her back and the backs of her thighs hit the rim and as she released his feet, she toppled backward, twisted, braced herself by getting her right hand against the opposite rim. She was poised there, unable to push herself back to her feet. Oliver stepped quickly around, caught her left wrist, pulled her back to her feet, saying, “I should have said I was letting go.…”

  “Stop flapping! Let’s get it done!”

  He lay in the tub, canted toward his left, head leaning against the far rim. His right leg was hooked over the outside rim. She took hold of the heel and lifted it and dropped it in. It thudded, bonging the tub metal. He slid down a few more inches, feet resting against the faucet end, knees bent and spread, big brown hands laying slack against the contrasting whiteness of his inner thighs.

  They were both breathing noisily from the exertion. She wiped her forehead with her forearm. Looking down at Staniker she said, “Now it’s up to you, Olly. Take over, dear.” There was no answer. She turned her head sharply. Oliver was standing looking fixedly at Staniker. He was breathing through his mouth, and his under lip sagged away from his teeth.

  “Oliver!”

  He started, looked at her with a puzzled expression. “He looks so—so—”

  “Harmless? Dumb? Helpless? Take my word. He isn’t. Go ahead. Get started. Put the stopper in. Turn the water on.”

  Moving slowly and clumsily, he did as she told him. The faucets coughed rusty water, then cleared into two solid streams drumming against the metal tub.

  She touched the boy’s arm. “I’ll wait in the living room. As soon as there’s enough water, turn it off and do it and we can go.”

  She went in and sat on the couch in the dark room. She had hoped to be able to send the boy to do it. But he had begun to come apart. When he came out, she would go in and make certain he had done it completely. But it had to be the boy, because if something went wrong, it would have to be her word against the boy’s. Nobody would be able to prove she’d even been there. And if he killed, it would give him a guilt that would break him completely if they were picked up. She sat wishing the boy had had just a little more iron, so she could have sent him, so she didn’t have to wait around, holding his hand. Besides, he’d sworn to do it. Fair is fair. She heard the faint thunder stop as he turned the water off. Time passed. He did not come out.

  She stood up and walked swiftly to the bathroom. He was sitting on the toilet lid, his face in his hands. On the floor she saw the new single edge Gem blade and the waxy paper in which it had been wrapped, and the cardboard strip which had protected the sharp edge. She looked at Staniker. His chest rose and fell. The water was tinged slightly with rust, and that was all.

  She knocked the boy’s hands away from his face, stooped and looked into his face. “You promised!” she said in a harsh whisper.

  He looked at her—a big child on the verge of tears. “I tried. I tried and tried. I—I just can’t. Oh God, Crissy, I can’t.”

  She bent and picked the blade up, picked up the wrappings and, as he stood up, she put the wrappings into his trouser pocket.

  The boy said, “What are you …”

  “Shut up. Just stay out of my way, you damn baby.”

  She bent over the tub and picked his right hand up and, holding the blade by the reinforced edge, pressed his thumb against the oily side of the blade, and then pressed his fingertips against the reverse side, the tips of the index and middle fingers. Then she grasped his thick palm in her left hand and held his hand under the water, the underside of the wrist downward. Holding it, she reached under it with her right hand, put the blade edge against the underside of the wrist, and then, pushing down with her left hand, pulling upward with her right, she pulled the blade deeply through, through the resistances of flesh, gristle, tendon. Darkness pumped into the water, threading, lightening to pink at its furthest curling. Quickly, grunting with the effort, she cut through the other wrist as deeply and finally, dropped the blade between his thighs. It ticked audibly as it touched the bottom of the tub.

  She spun away from the tub, unsteady, her ears humming, feeling chilled by the pre-fainting feeling blood gave her. Oliver stood there, gray and gagging. She ran at him, shoving at him with her wet hands to get him into the hall, to get him moving, cursing him in all the obscene words she knew. When she slapped him, he came out of it, and went off to get the car.

  In the bedroom, with a despairing haste, she put the silk shirt on over her wet body, tied her hair into the kerchief, snatched up the small suitcase she had brought. She heard herself making a small whining sound with each breath. She made herself stop. She paused for a moment in the bathroom doorway, held her breath and heard Staniker’s deep, slow breathing.

  She went through the dark living room and opened the front door. As she did so she heard Oliver’s car stop on the other side of the brush just short of the mouth of the driveway. The idling engine ran raggedly. She took a deep breath and made herself think of how she had arrived and how she was leaving, to be certain she had left nothing behind. Nothing, not even a fingerprint. With the coated fingertips she pulle
d the door shut and tried it. It was unlocked. She had not released the catch on the bolt inside, and it seemed pointless now to make it appear that the cottage had been locked. They would have enough to think about, the people who investigated it, and this would be just another significant clumsiness.

  She hurried out, peered up and down the empty street, and scuttled into the dark car. He stalled it, and the starter motor ground for endless seconds before it caught again. After they had reached a street where there was more traffic, she saw one of the oncoming cars blinking its headlights off and on.

  “Lights! Lights! God damn it, wake up!” she said.

  He turned his headlights on. A few minutes later he missed a turn, and when he went around a block to get back on their route, he went through a stop sign. She made him pull over and get out and go around the car as she slid behind the wheel.

  The night was misty. She drove within the speed limits, obeying all traffic signals.

  “It isn’t like I thought,” Oliver said in a husky voice.

  “What did you expect? Jokes? Violins? We agreed we had to do it. You said you’d do anything for me.”

  “I’m sorry. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. Crissy—it was wrong.”

  “So preach me a sermon.”

  “If—we made a phone call, maybe they could get there in time.”

  “In time for what? He’s gone, baby. Long gone. I saw a girl once with a hemorrhage they couldn’t stop. One of those big rosy Irish types. She got knocked up and a girlfriend tried to do the job with a piece of tubing and a piece of wire. She dwindled way down, all gray and shrunk up, and she looked fifty years old when she died.”

  “You’re different,” Oliver said wonderingly. “You’re not the same at all.”

  She looked ahead through the mist, slowing for the last turn. “I’m Crissy,” she said. “Your dear Crissy. Look what your dear Crissy did, all for the sake of love. I’m the same. The world is the same world. You make it or you don’t make it, honey. Nobody picks you up and brushes you off and gives you another run at it. You do what you have to do before somebody does it to you.”