The Good Old Stuff

by John D. MacDonald

  “Sometimes a man kills,” Falkner said, “for the very simple reason that the act of killing gives him pleasure.”

  “It would be nice to meet him,” Hewett said. “Nice.” He looked hard, first at Guy, then Prine Smith, then Stacey Brian.

  “Off it!” Prine said harshly. “We were over that. You know we aren’t capable of anything like that.”

  Hewett continued to stare and there was a trace of madness in his eyes. Slowly it faded. He walked over to the bar. Mick filled his glass.

  “Hell,” said Stacey, “Lisa may be wandering around right now. Amnesia. You can’t tell about things like that.”

  “Sure,” Hewett said. “Sure. It could be that.” He didn’t speak as though he believed it.

  On the way to dinner Georgie Wane took Park aside. “The money,” she said, “is nice. I like it. You’ve got a nice place here. But how about this, uncle? One of these boys maybe clobbered a girl. It leads one to think. Maybe it’s a habit yet.”

  “Not a habit. Not quite that. Call it a tendency.”

  “I thought maybe you could tell by looking at hands. I’ve been looking. No dice, uncle. I would say Hewett didn’t. Beyond that I cannot go. Shouldn’t a murderer look like a murderer?”

  “I knew one once who could have been your twin, Georgie.”

  “I can see how she got in the killing mood,” Georgie said.

  At three in the morning Falkner awoke at the sound of the first tap on his door. He came completely awake in a fraction of a second. He pulled his robe on as he went to the door. It was Taffy.

  She looked small, young, wan in the lamplight. “You can’t sleep either, eh?” she said.

  “What’s got you down, Taff?” he asked. “Come on in.”

  They walked out onto the terrace. The wind was directly out of the west. It had sea fragrance.

  She said, “You hear about something like this. I mean it’s a problem like filling in a nine-letter blank beginning with G meaning a South African herb. Then you meet the people and it’s something else again. Gee, they’re nice kids. I don’t want it to be one of them.”

  He put his arm around her. “Old Taff, the world mother. She loves everybody. Maybe I’m wrong this time. The agency checked it out pretty carefully, though. Lisa Mann was one of those rare people who make no enemies. No one profited by her death. She was exceptionally striking. Emotions can get wound up pretty tightly.”

  “If one of them did it,” she said softly, “I wonder if he is sleeping right now. I don’t see how he could be, knowing that all this is supposed to make him give himself away. I’ve been watching them so carefully. It’s not Hewett, of course. Darana seems like a big sleepy animal. But he did come alive when he did that part out of his last play for us. Stacey Brian is an awful nice little guy. Prine Smith is a little quarrelsome, but you sense a certain amount of integrity in him. I can’t see him murdering anybody. Park, you must be wrong. You must!”

  “The tension is building, Taff. You can feel it.”

  She moved out of his arm. “And you love it, don’t you? It’s bread and wine to you. Park, there’s a faint streak of evil in you.”

  “Man is a predatory animal,” he said happily.

  She sighed. “Too late to change you now. I should have adopted you when you were a baby.”

  “Foster mother at the age of seven?”

  “I matured early.”

  He lay rigid in the darkness, remembering, remembering. It was Lisa’s fault. No one could get around that. He had told her he loved her. He had told her this affair with Hewett had to stop at once. But she laughed, even when he told her she would be very sorry if she continued to torture him this way. He cried, and she laughed again and again. Sin must be punished, whenever it is found. There is no wrong in that, and this great clown, Falkner, can do nothing because there will never be any clue. He knew from the way Hewett acted that Lisa had never told him about the scene.

  When Falkner came down, Taffy, Georgie, Guy, and Stacey Brian were breakfasting on the patio, shielded from the brisk morning wind. He heard them laughing before he saw them. They made room for him. He had touched his bell a few minutes before coming down. Mrs. Mick brought him his breakfast tray.

  Georgie said, “I was telling them about home in Scranton when I had a crush on a guy who drove a hearse. We didn’t have any place to be alone, so we used to go and neck in the room where they stored the coffins. Well this one time Joey heard the boss coming back unexpected, so what does he do but pop me in a box and shut the lid and then make like he’s taking an inventory. My God, I was petrified. It’s dusty. I sneeze. The boss says, ‘Whassat?’ He opens the lid and says, ‘Girl, you ain’t dead!’ Joey, the dope, says, ‘Her aunt died. She was looking for a box.’ Next time I see Joey, he’s driving a bread truck. Terrible kind of breakfast talk, isn’t it? But on this house party maybe it isn’t so far out of line after all.”

  “You say you and this Joey had a place where you could be alone,” Guy Darana said. “That isn’t a question. I’m just thinking out loud.”

  “Stop making like a detective,” Stacey Brian said.

  “He’s working on our little problem,” Taffy said. “Can’t you see the look of the hunter?”

  “What kind of a detective you want?” Stacey Brian said. “A Jimmy Stewart type? Like this? Wal, I guess all you … uh … nice people need a … uh … little detectin’ done around here. Or how about an Edward G. Robinson? Like so. Listen to me, sugar. You got to lay it right on the line, see? You’re not talking to no small-town copper, see? This is the big time, sugar. See?”

  They laughed and applauded. The imitations had been uncannily accurate. Hewett came onto the patio, and the look of of him quenched the high spirits. His eyes appeared to have receded back into his head. His mouth was a thin, bitter line.

  “Good morning, all,” he said. “Fun and games?”

  “You look rocky, honey,” Georgie said.

  He smiled coldly. “Bad dreams. Copywriter’s dreams. I could see Lisa with her eyes bulging and hands around her throat, but I couldn’t tell whose hands.”

  “Ugh!” Georgie said.

  “By the way, Bill,” Park said, “I’m assuming that you would like to find out whether or not one of your friends killed her. I’m assuming you’ll help by answering questions. Did you and Lisa have a place where you used to go to be alone?”

  “It’s not any of your business,” Hewett snapped.

  “Blunt and to the point.”

  “We did have. A farmhouse so broken down you couldn’t go into it. Just the foundation where the barn had been. But you could drive in there and not be seen from the road. She used to pack lunches, and we’d picnic there.”

  “Did you ever go separately?”

  “Sure. We’d meet there. She had a car. You know that already. It was in the newspapers. They found the car five days later in a big parking lot on West Forty-first Street. Nobody could say who’d driven it in there. Maybe she did. I used to take a bus out to Alden Village and walk to the farm.”

  “Did you tell the police that?” Park asked.

  “Why should I? She never went there except when we went together, or when we were going to meet there.”

  “Her body might be there, Hewett. She could have been decoyed there.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “A faked message from you. It wouldn’t be hard. Any of your apartment mates could get their hands on your handwriting.”

  Bill Hewett looked down at his plate. Suddenly he looked no longer young, as though he had donned the mask he would wear in middle age. “I went back once. Alone. It was like visiting some damnable cemetery. The wind whined. She could be there, all right.”

  “I’ll wire the New York police. Tell me the name of the farm or how to direct them to it.”

  “About a mile and a half north of the village on the left of a curve. Route Eight. They call it the Harmon place.”

  He sent the wire after breakfast. At eleve
n thirty they were all out by the pool. Park was nursing a purpling bruise high on his cheek where Mick Rogers had tagged him heavily during the usual morning workout. Mick hummed as he made drinks. He seemed well pleased with himself.

  “Gotta remember to keep that left hand higher, boss,” he said, grinning.

  Taffy swam effortless lengths of the pool, her brown arms lifting slowly from the pale-green water. Stacey Brian, in deference to his redheaded lack of skin pigmentation, was the only one in the shade. Stocky Prine Smith was whispering to June Luce. He was propped up on his elbows. She lay on her back with plastic linked cups on her eyes to protect them from the sun glare. From time to time she giggled in a throaty way. Stacey glared over at them. Georgie Wane was trying to teach big Guy Darana how to make a racing turn against the end of the pool.

  From the amplifier came muted music, old jazz piano by Errol Garner and Mary Lou Williams and Art Tatum. The last record, one by Garner, had played twice. Park thought of sending Mick up to reverse the stack, but suddenly an idea came to him. He went up himself, walking slowly, planning it in detail. It was based on the sensitive mike he had hooked into the set. Once, when it had been left turned on quite inadvertently, during a party, one couple who had sneaked away from the crowd came back to find that every word, every sound, had blared out above the noise of the music. He had had the mike installed to simplify some of the problems of running the household.

  He reversed the stack of records, waited for the music to start, clicked on the mike at the point of a loud remembered chord in the music, hoping that it wouldn’t be heard. He picked the table mike up gingerly and carried it away from the set. He set it on the bedside table, picked up the phone, and dialed the number of the hotel. Before anyone could answer, he pushed the receiver down with his ringers.

  “Give me Mr. Norris’s room, please. Four-twelve, I think it is.… Hello, Lieutenant Norris? This is Falkner. I guess your trip hasn’t been a waste after all.… Yes, I think I know who our man is.… Right. He’ll crack under the strain, and we’ll have something definite to go on.… Yes, I’ll call you just as soon as—”

  The door burst open and Mick came running in, panting from the run up the stairs. “Hey, the mike’s on! Every word is coming over the—”

  Park reached out quickly and clicked the mike off.

  He grinned. “Thanks, Mick.” He hung up the phone.

  Mick’s eyes widened with comprehension. “So! A fake, is it?”

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  “No. I started running when I heard you dial.”

  Park repeated the conversation. “What do you think?” he asked.

  Mick scrubbed his heavy jaw with his knuckles. “It ought to make the guy pretty uneasy. I can’t figure which one it could be. Maybe it isn’t any one of the three.”

  “I’m placing my bet that it is one of them.”

  They went back down. The atmosphere had changed. Hewett was the color of watery milk under his two-day tan. He stood with his fists clenched, staring at his friends, one by one. June had sat up, moved a bit away from Prine Smith. Taffy stood near the diving tower, toweling herself. Georgie sat alone on the edge of the pool, her feet in the water. Guy Darana stood behind her, his eyes slitted against the sunlight, looking half asleep. Stacey Brian looked at Hewett and said, “Easy, boy. Easy.”

  “I’m terribly sorry that happened,” Park said. “It shouldn’t have happened. Like a fool I forgot the mike was on. I’m afraid I’ve forewarned the man who killed Lisa Mann.”

  Hewett walked over to Park. “Who is it?” he said. “Tell me who it is.”

  “Not quite yet, Bill,” Park said soothingly.

  “Tell me, damn you!”

  “I don’t think I’m wrong, but there’s always that chance. I’m not ready to tell you. You’re in no emotional condition to handle yourself properly if I should tell you.”

  Hewett threw his fist full at Falkner’s face with an almost girlish ineptitude. Park caught the fist in the palm of his hand and squeezed down on it. Hewett’s mouth changed with the impact of the sudden pain.

  “Don’t try that again,” Park said.

  Hewett yanked his hand free, turned without a word, and walked across to the house.

  Everyone started to make bright, shallow conversation to cover the awkwardness. Taffy came over to Park and lowered her voice so that only he could hear her. “Dirty pool, friend,” she said. “Very dirty pool.”

  “I don’t understand, Taff.”

  “The music suddenly got louder and then faded back again. The mike stands near the set. You should have carried it over to the phone before turning it on.”

  “You know, you’d be a very difficult type to be married to.”

  “I don’t think I can quite class that as a proposal. You and your mythical lieutenants!”

  He grinned with a flash of white teeth against the deep brown of his face. “That’s where I got you, Taff. There is a Lieutenant Norris, and he is registered at the hotel, and he is from New York. But he’s on an extradition case. If I can’t give him something to get his teeth into by tomorrow night, he has to start back with his man.”

  He fell silent, and the talk around him was meaningless. It had to be a clever trap. There was nothing Falkner could know. Nothing. But the man was clever. It took cleverness to locate a body sixteen hundred miles away, a body that had been searched for by experts. They might not find it. Probably they would. He hadn’t risked going back to see if the dirt had settled. The laboratories would go to work on the body. He had carried the body a short distance. Could some microscopic bit of evidence have been left?

  Dusk broke up the badminton doubles. The last set had been Guy Darana and June Luce against Georgie and Stacey Brian. Everyone had played in their swimsuits. Brian’s wiry quickness had made up for Darana’s advantage in height. Georgie was nursing a swollen underlip which, in some strange fashion, she had managed to club with her own racket.

  All four were winded. Mick had wheeled the rolling bar out onto the edge of the court, plugging in the ice compartment at the outlet near the tennis court floodlights.

  “Sometimes,” Stacey said, “it’s good to become bushed. When the infantry reluctantly let me go, I swore I’d never get physically tired again for the rest of my life. Here I am, running around in the sun and beating on a cork with feathers sticking out of it.”

  “Infantry!” Darana said with heavy disgust. “Why didn’t you pick yourself a branch?”

  “Don’t tell me what you were, Guy,” Georgie said. “Let me guess. A fly boy. A hot pilot. A tired hat and nine rows of ribbons.”

  “Not a hot pilot,” Guy said. “I pushed tired old transports and tankers around Asia. I was too big to fit into a fighter with any comfort. But old Prine here had the real deal. Warm food, good bed. All the luxuries. Of course they sank a couple ships under him, but the Navy was it.”

  “How about Bill?” June asked. “What was he?”

  “G-Two. Hell, I wish he’d come down out of his room and stop sulking.”

  Taffy giggled. “You know what our jolly host did for his country.”

  “Whatever it was, I bet it was a job smarter than the one Stace picked,” Guy said.

  Before she could reply, Hewett came walking out of the gray darkness. “Sorry I blew my top,” he murmured.

  “Quite all right,” Park said.

  “You see,” Hewett continued, “if I lose my head I won’t get my cracks at whoever killed Lisa. I’ve got to stay calm. I have it all figured out. As soon as you know for sure, you’ll tell that lieutenant. But maybe I can find out for sure before you do, Falkner. And if I do, he might not stand trial, whoever he is. I’m beginning to get an idea.”

  Stacey Brian stood up and shivered. “That wind’s getting cooler. Or have I got a chill just because there’s a murderer in the house? Goodbye, you people. I’m off for a shower.”

  The group slowly split up until only Prine Smith and Park Falkner were left. Mick
wheeled the bar inside. Prine Smith’s face was in shadow.

  He said, “I can almost see your point. A dilettante in crime. Give you a purpose in life, maybe.” His tone was speculative. “But human beings aren’t puppets, Falkner. They take over the strings. They make up their own lines. I’ve done some checking. You’ve had considerable violence here on your Grouper Island. Do you sleep well at night?”

  “Like a baby.”

  “I’ve been in the newspaper game longer than you’d think to look at me. I can smell violence in the air. Something is going to bust open here.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “What precautions are you taking?”

  “I think that would be pretty valuable information to someone.”

  “Don’t be a fool! You can’t possibly suspect me.”

  Falkner was surprised at the trace of anger in his own voice. “Don’t try to judge me or my methods, Smith. Don’t set yourself up as an arbiter of my moral codes or lack of same. A girl died. There’s the justification.”

  In the darkness he could sense Prine Smith’s grin as he stood up. “Glad to know you sometimes doubt yourself, Falkner. Maybe I like you better.”

  He went off to the house. Falkner stayed a few minutes more.

  Sometimes there is safety in inaction, he thought. And sometimes it is wise to move quickly. He locked the door, opened the toilet-article kit, took out the small bottle of white powder. It was cool against his palm. They said that later the lips smelled of almonds. He wondered.

  Bill Hewett looked full into the eyes of his friend. The others were by the beach fire. Hewett knew that he had drunk too much. Falkner’s room wavered dizzily. He struggled for soberness. He said thickly, “You said you could tell me who killed Lisa.”

  “I can.”

  “What’s that you’ve got, a recorder? What have you been doing here? It seems to be a funny place to meet, the host’s room.”

  “Yes, this is a recorder. I got here first. I made a tape on his machine.”