The Last One Left

by John D. MacDonald

  Kindler sat in the cage, and she sat up in front beside Scheff. Scheff drove very sedately. She directed him to a large shopping plaza. “It will just be a minute,” she said. “She works daytimes and sews at night. Don’t go away.” She left her white purse on the car seat. She went toward the shops and turned into a long arcade. When she was out of sight she quickened her pace. She went through the arcade and came out behind the buildings. Trucks were parked back there. Garbage cans were lined up behind a supermarket. She looked around. A man rolling a loaded dolly out of a big truck seemed oblivious of her. She plucked the top from a garbage can, dropped the package onto a viscid mass of brown lettuce and rotten fruit, picked up a stick from a shattered crate and pushed the bundle into the garbage and replaced the lid. Flies swarmed like small chars in an updraft, a blue-bellied buzzing audible in the sunlight. She re-entered the arcade.

  When they were back on the highway, Scheff said, “That maid of yours a Cuban? Pretty little thing.”

  “Francisca is very good natured. But she’s no mental giant. She tries to do what she’s told, but sometimes she doesn’t understand and other times she forgets. I’m losing her, darn it. You get them to where you can trust them to do things the way you want them done, and they take off. There ought to be a way to make them sign up for three years, like the army.”

  At two o’clock on Monday afternoon, Sam Boylston sat in his poolside cabana with Raoul Kelly and Francisca. Her manner was constrained, puzzled, apprehensive.

  “Promising for Wednesday,” she said. “I keep telling.”

  “Miss Torcedo,” Sam said softly.

  “Si?”

  “Raoul and I must talk. If all your belongings are out there in his car, maybe you have a swim suit. It’s a very nice pool. I think a swim would be relaxing.”

  She looked questioningly at Raoul. “Why don’t you, chica?” he said.

  Raoul went out with her to unlock the car. They came back and she changed in Sam’s bathroom. She seemed happier. After she had gone out, with swim cap and towel, Sam said, “She’s a lovely one, friend. Congratulations.”

  “You know, you’re very good with her, Sam. She has a good reaction to you. With a stranger she usually goes into her shell. On the way here I told her we can trust you. What was it when we came in? You were okay and then strange for a minute.”

  Sam said, “Something that will keep happening to me, I guess. I don’t know how long. When she walked over and sat down—Leila had that same slimness, and she moved the way your girl does, handled her body the same way. And I knew I’d never see Leila again, see her cross a room like that.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, cursed softly. He leaned back. “Take it from the top. God damn it! That sappy kid kills Staniker, then himself. They take her in. What are they trying to get her for? A morals charge?”

  Raoul Kelly went through it all, pausing only to organize the material into as orderly a presentation as possible. And again he was aware of how totally and intently Sam Boylston could listen.

  “So now I need advice, Lawyer,” Raoul said.

  “From a lawyer who’s been up all night two nights in a row waiting for the little white car that wasn’t even there? I wondered about your car there, parked and locked, and I figured you’d tucked it out of sight and moved in with the girl. What’s the problem? I’ll try to think.”

  “I want to get Francisca out of range of this whole mess. I was going to leave Thursday the ninth. Only a very few people know about me and Francisca. But that’s a few too many. I have to know how much trouble I can get into if I leave in the morning. The stuff in my room I was going to take to the paper, I can mail in. I could leave her here and go close out the bank account, pack what I need, get a friend to crate up the rest of my stuff, the files and research and so on and hold it all until I send a shipping address. I have to report out there on the nineteenth. A Monday. Those two cops were good guys. When they find out I’m gone, they’re going to be very, very unhappy. What can they do to me, to us? I don’t want to mess up the new job. I don’t want her extradited and brought back here by some damned matron. But I can’t let her get caught up in the kind of fantastic publicity mess there’s going to be. How should I handle it?”

  Sam Boylston stood up and roamed the room, stopping to look at Francisca swimming quite prettily and gracefully. He turned and clapped his hands once. “Here it is, client. You are going to go pick up your money and your gear, mail your stuff, with a note of explanation that you are leaving a few days earlier than planned. Come back here and sign a statement that I am representing you and the girl. Then we’ll use my tape recorder and you can question her in Spanish. I’ll put the necessary identifications at the beginning. Take her through everything she knows they might use against the Harkinson woman. Set the background first. How long she worked for her and so on. We want to establish the relationship with Staniker, and the relationship with the boy. How late the boy was at the house, how often, the times she’d hear him drive out. And get in everything she remembers about that last day of March when Kayd visited Crissy Harkinson. Finally, go over the weekend, the locked gates, going to see if the boat was there, looking in at her, bringing her the cocoa.”

  “How can you represent us if you aren’t …”

  “You are going to leave when we have a good tape, Kelly. And you are going to drive right on through to Texas, and down to Harlingen. I’m going to give you the address of my house there, and by the time you get there, my wife will be expecting you and she’ll know what to do. I advise marriage as soon as my partner can get the usual restrictions bypassed. And if anybody gets ugly, I’ll see that there is a doctor and a judge who see eye to eye on the inadvisability of her being returned here. You sit tight. I can represent you. You’ll be in the state where I’m licensed. I can get a local man to work with me here if it comes to that. If it hasn’t blown over by the eighteenth, you leave your wife with my wife and fly out to California and report in, and we’ll get her out there to you as soon as it makes sense to do so.”

  Raoul Kelly stared at him in a long silence and shook his head and said in Cuban Spanish, “You are a one! Truly.”

  “El fantástico, seguro, hombre.”

  “I should make big protests, Sam. Can’t impose. All that. But for her sake, if it would help her in any way, I’d go beg bread in the streets.”

  Raoul went out to the pool and spoke with Francisca and then hurried away.

  Sam phoned Lydia Jean at her mother’s home in Corpus. “Sam? Where are you? Why are you still over there?”

  “It’s a long story, honey. But right now I want you to do me a favor.”

  “Such as?”

  “Two friends of mine are leaving here this evening and driving right on through. What I want you to do, honey, is go back home and open the house up and …”

  “Now just a minute!”

  “It isn’t a trick. You’re the only one I’d trust to handle the situation. The girl is an emotional disaster area. She and her guy are in a strange kind of a jam. He can explain it to you better than I can. And it is important to get them married as fast as we can arrange it, as you can arrange it. I think you can put more leverage on my partner than I can in a situation like this.”

  “Married?”

  “If it could be done with a few trimmings, I think it would help. And at the house. I know this is a hell of a thing to ask …”

  “Who are these people?”

  “His name is Raoul Kelly and he looks like somebody’s gardener, but don’t be deceived. Francisca Torceda is her name, very beautiful, and racked up so bad maybe she makes it, maybe she doesn’t. You could have a lot to do about that, and it could be worth it.”

  “These are important people, Sam? Is that why you want me to …”

  “They are very important people. I am going to have my neck way out for them here, and somebody might chop it pretty good.”

  “Very important. Yes, dear. I understand you perfectly.”

 
; “She’s a housemaid and he’s a newspaper reporter, and they’ll have every personal thing they own in that car with them, and if I can get them out of this jam, my fee is going to be five dollars, and I probably won’t see either of them again ever. But they are very important.”

  “Is that the truth?”

  “I swear it.”

  “I wasn’t going to do it.”

  “I know. Why should you? Sam Boylston always looks out for Sam Boylston, and uses you or anybody else.”

  “Or,” she said slowly, “Sam Boylston makes a big, fat gesture. He imitates an honest to God human being for a little while, and I might fall for it. Oh, Sam! What are you trying to do to me?”

  “Set you up, kid. I hired this couple from an acting studio. See if you can trip them up, then you can hate me forever.”

  “I’ve never hated you!”

  “Resent me forever, then. Do I keep my word?”

  “So scrupulously it’s almost irritating.”

  “Word of honor, then. I won’t come near the house until they’re gone and you’ve had a chance to go back to Corpus. I happen to need some help from somebody—with more than their share of sympathy and understanding, at least toward everybody but me.”

  “Now why do you have to …”

  “Will you do it? Please, Lyd … Lyd?”

  “Oh, I’m still here. I’ll drive down early tomorrow.”

  “Thanks, dear.”

  “Are you going to get into some kind of trouble there?”

  “I don’t know. And I can’t seem to give too much of a damn. Maybe—maybe no matter how careful you are, no matter how well you play the percentages, They bitch you anyway, one way or another. They get at you through the side door. The rain comes down, baby, and we’ve all got sixteen buckets and seventeen holes in the roof.”

  “Have you had some drinks?”

  “Not yet today, but it’s a creative suggestion.”

  “You sound so strange. When will those people get to Harlingen?”

  “I’d guess it’s around seventeen hundred miles. I’m going to tell him to take a break midway. Make it late Wednesday.”

  “Will he be able to tell me why you’re acting so strange, Sam?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Kelly’s girl swam for a long time. She was showering when Kelly returned.

  Lobwohl swiveled his chair and put his heels on the corner of his desk, ankles crossed. “Let’s let her stew another ten or fifteen minutes before we give her another session. Agree?”

  Scheff nodded. He reached and picked up the ID sheet which had been transmitted over the wire from Atlanta and looked at it again. Cristen Harkinson, ten years younger. Smudged pictures, indistinct in outline, flawed by wire-relay technique. But in both the full face and profile the look of surly defiance was quite obvious. Also known as Crissy Harker, Chris Harkins, Christy Harvey. Five arrests. Soliciting, public prostitution, conspiracy to defraud. Two convictions, with each time, a hundred dollar fine and a suspended sentence.

  “Between the lines,” Kindler said, “you read pretty good protection. Not a free-lance situation. What it was, there’s always pressure on the operation. League of decency, PTA and so forth. So they run like a roster on the hookers, an arrest once in a while. It takes the civilian pressure off the department, and it’s a good way to keep the broads in line. A high-price call circuit, they get uppity, and give each of them a record of convictions, it locks them into the circuit and keeps them from getting ideas, or leaving the business.”

  “But she left,” Lobwohl said. “From the only rumor I could pick up, she was one of a pack they brought down to stock a party at Key West around eight years ago, and that’s where she met Fontaine and he took her over.”

  “So what was she then?” Kindler said. “Twenty-seven maybe? Twenty-eight. You could guess special enough to be a good earner, but easier to pry her loose than if she was twenty. I’d say what Fontaine did was maybe ask a favor of a friend in a political way in Georgia, and maybe he had to sweeten it with cash to make them let go, and maybe he didn’t. Anyway, as the name was the same here as there, we didn’t have to work through a print classification for the ID on her.”

  Lobwohl, frowning, tugging at his nose, said, “All these nice prints on record, and Harv can’t pick up a partial down there of any one of them, but we have that palm print on the rim of the tub, nice and fresh and clear, and Harv says the size could indicate a woman, but you know and I know what will happen if Lab asks her to please press her little patties against the Stockis block and then against the pretty white paper. She has to be tough and smart. The longer we can keep this absolutely voluntary, the better chance we have of catching her in contradiction. I’d sure God like to prove she was there, egging the kid on.”

  “How about this?” Scheff said. “Let me be dumb guy. It won’t be too hard to act like she gives me some ideas. I let on you’ve got a good reason to believe she was at number ten, and you’re going to try to trick her, and maybe she should yell for a lawyer. Then we see how she jumps. If she yells for the lawyer, we could take a chance on booking her and taking the palm print for Harv.”

  “Give it a try,” Lobwohl said.

  When Scheff sent the matron out to wait in the hall, Crissy Harkinson jumped up and threw her cigarette on the floor, stepped on it and said, “I am getting damned sick of being stuck here all day long, Sergeant.”

  “Scheff. Barney Scheff. Just be a little patient, Mrs. Harkinson.”

  “Patient!”

  He winked at her, held his fingers to his lips, then pointed at the ventilation grill. All the interrogation rooms were wired, and he guessed she would realize that also. But she looked astonished and indignant. He went up to her and put his mouth close to her ear and in an almost soundless whisper said, “I want to do you a little favor, Crissy. Maybe sometime I can drop around your place and explain why I’m doing it. Okay?”

  She gave an abrupt little nod.

  “What I think you better do, you better shut your mouth until you get a lawyer in here.”

  “Why?” she whispered.

  “I don’t know what they got, but they got something that makes them think you could have been in that number ten cottage. It makes the whole thing look different, and Lobwohl is tricky. He could fake you out and maybe put you in real trouble.”

  He turned away from her and said loudly, “These things take a little time. We appreciate your cooperation, Mrs. Harkinson.”

  “I just want to get it over and get out of here, Barney. I wish they were all as nice as you.”

  “I say live and let live,” Scheff said, and winked at her again. She was staring at him and though she was smiling he was aware of cold speculation, of that kind of suspicion which will never accept a cop at face value. “I’ll go see if I can hurry it up some.”

  A few minutes later they came back in, Lobwohl, Scheff, Kindler, the clerk with the tape recorder, and the clerk with the stenotype. They seated themselves around the oblong table as before, and Lobwohl smiled disarmingly at her, and read the identifications and date and time into the record before saying, “Once again, Mrs. Harkinson, I wish to establish for the record that you are here voluntarily, that there are no charges against you, that you are here out of a willingness to help us in our investigation of the death of Garry Staniker. You have been apprised of your right to have your attorney present if you so choose. Am I correct in saying that this is your understanding?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “And do you wish to have an attorney present at this time?”

  “No sir.”

  “Then I would like to get back to your recollection of what Staniker told you over the phone.”

  “Some of it was over the phone, and some of it was in person.”

  “I don’t quite understand.”

  “When a person does a dumb stupid thing, you kind of hate to admit it to anybody, right? I told you I was frightened of Garry and what he might do. But I decided I
could maybe—run a bluff. I guess that when you don’t tell the police the whole story, it just gets you in trouble. So I guess I better tell you now to clear the air. Friday night I went to that grubby cottage. I had a horrible time even finding it. I thought that the more I refused to see him, the more he’d keep bothering me. I didn’t want him coming to my home, so I thought that if I went to him and told him right out that I didn’t ever want to see him again, it might put an end to it. I guess I was thinking that he was like a mean dog. If you don’t look or act scared, they’ll leave you alone—you hope.”

  “Did it work?”

  “God, no! It was a vile experience. It was suffocatingly hot in that crummy little cottage. He was half tight. If his burns hadn’t still been hurting him, I know I wouldn’t have been able to fight him off. He said ugly things to me. He showed me a check he had gotten from Banner something or other, to tell his story of the accident in the Bahamas. He told me how important he was going to be. He said they were going to make a movie and he was going to play the lead. I begged him to stop bothering me. He said he’d think about it. He said no woman had ever walked out on him and no woman ever would. He said he always did the walking out. On the way home I decided I’d better go away for a while, just pack a bag and get in my car and go. I thought I’d go Saturday afternoon, but I had to get the car fixed and it wasn’t done in time, so I had my maid lock the gates and I told her that if he came around, she should tell him I’d gone away. As a matter of fact, when you two men came to talk to me, I had no idea Garry was dead, and I was going out to do some errands, and then I was going to leave today in the late afternoon, or at least by tomorrow morning.”

  “Were you at that cottage long?”

  “I got there at midnight. I think I was home by three in the morning. It was sort of spur of the moment. I’ve had better ideas, believe me. But I really think going away for a while would have solved the problem. He would have had to get busy on that contract he signed.”