John D MacDonald - You Live Once

by You Live Once(Lit)

  I began to get into such a panic that I even considered going back and retrieving the tarp and the body, taking it home, replacing the red belt and making my belated phone call. After the second time around, I discarded that idea. I'd put myself in this situation. The only thing I could do was carry on. And pray. Pray I hadn't slipped.

  The second cup was too hot to drink. I put it down.

  There was a lingering soreness in my head. It was unlike any headache I had ever had. A new thought shocked me.

  Maybe the headache indicated something. Maybe it indicated that I was the one who had done it. Maybe she had come back to the apartment. From what I knew of her, such an impulse wouldn't be entirely alien to her. And I had...

  No, damn it. The mind is a strange thing, but not that strange. At least mine wasn't. If the police had found her in my closet, they could have determined a few things quickly. If she had been attacked, if she had any skin under her sharp fingernails. I remembered reading that they could type fragments of skin, like blood.

  I was getting too restless to stay there. And it occurred to me that I didn't want to spend too much time in transit between the apartment and Smith Lake. I asked for some water, dumped some in the coffee, finished the coffee and left.

  The Olan place at Smith Lake was built back in the days when, if you wanted a place at a lake you built a house.

  None of this camp nonsense. It was stone, two stories and an attic, but the ceilings on both floors were so high the house looked three stories high. Three or maybe even four generations of kids living up the summers had beaten its original grandeur into a condition of scarred comfort. The other places on the lake were surrounded by woods and brush. The Olan land was cleared and seeded. It sat on a wide expanse of green that sloped down toward the lake shore and the boat houses. Up near the road was the horse barn and garages. I had been there twice before, and met all the clan. During the summer there is a staff of four. An ancient iron Swedish lady called Mrs. Johannsen does the cooking. Her round shy maiden lady of a daughter, called Ruth, does the cleaning and helps in the kitchen. They both come out from the Pryor house in town, as does John Fidd, a knobbly, sour man who brings up three or four saddle horses from the Pryor farm and reluctantly takes care of the grounds, obviously considering yard work beneath him. The remaining stafi member, Nels Yeagger, is a massive, amiable young brute who is hired locally has been for the past three summers-to take care of the boats and do odd jobs.

  With this complete staff, the Olans and the Pryors come and go as they please. With the bedrooms in the big house, and the bunk rooms on the second floor of each boat house, quite a crowd can be accommodated. People ask their own friends and stick together, so that it is entirely possible to spend a day there without even meeting some of the other guests. The two times I had been there it had reminded me more than anything else of an old small private club, so long established that there are special customs and even a special language.

  Nobody makes any effort to entertain you. Unless you're willing to stir around, you can be lonesome.

  I counted eight other cars up by the horse barn when I parked. I took my swimming trunks out of the glove compartment and went down to the house. Mary's younger brother was in the living room. He's a thin pale boy with heavy black hair that starts about an inch above his eyebrows. He's a remote, terribly dignified boy, and handles himself with a certain style. He was wearing a black turtleneck sweater and white shorts, and he was sitting staring at a big chessboard on which a game was apparently in progress. As I looked at him he moved a piece and made a notation in a notebook.

  When I walked in he looked up and said, "Hello.... uh... Clint."

  "What are you doing?"

  He looked amused.

  "Do you want me to tell you?"

  "Go ahead. Just for kicks."

  "I'm making a prepared variation involving the second move of the king's bishop in the Nimzoindian Defense. I hope to use it in a tournament next month in New York, right after school lets out."

  "You figure these things out ahead?"

  He gave me a lofty, patient look.

  "All tournaments are won these days with prepared variations of one kind or another."

  "Are you pretty good, John?"

  "After this tournament, if I do as well as I hope, I'll be the fifth ranking player in the country." He grinned suddenly.

  "You don't give a damn about this, so why ask?" For that instant he looked so much like Mary that it nearly broke my heart.

  "Is Mary around?"

  "Didn't you hear? Aunt Myrna is spinning. Little Mary didn't come home at all last night. She and Uncle Willy are down in town heckling the police."

  "I heard about that. The police came to see me this morning because I was out with her last night. I figured she'd be here by now."

  "She'll turn up. She always has. But Aunt Myrna always worries. Mary's no child, she's twenty-six. I'm no child either, but try and convince Aunt Myrna." Before I was out of the room he was back in his special two dimensional world, engrossed in the cruel slant of the bishops, the hungry eccentric leap of the knights.

  I walked on down to the beach, to the stretch of sand between the two boat houses. There were a lot of people there, most of them familiar to me. I waved to a few, went to the men's bunk room and changed. Then I started circulating on the beach, sitting on my heels to talk to various groups. They were casually interested in the fact that Mary was missing. It was a mild game to try to guess what had happened to her-what she had taken it into her head to do.

  I saw that the three girl children of Willy and Myrna Pryor were there. They were, of course, Mary's first cousins. They are aged fifteen, sixteen and seventeen.

  They are brown and husky and pretty, with crisp brown hair. Due to Willy's absence in town, they were considerably more relaxed with their three male guests than I had seen them on other occasions. Their swim suits were of the ultra-conservative cut (Willy's idea, probably), but one of them was using the small of her boyfriend's back as a pillow. Another girl provided a pillow for her escort in the form of a round brown thigh. The third pair had their heads together, whispering.

  The girls are called Jigger, Dusty and Skeeter-but I do not know which is which. They make me feel very very old.

  I had seen some of the other guests at the club last night and they knew I had been out with Mary, so I had to tell my story several times, always careful not to deviate from the one I had given the two officers who woke me up. I kept thinking of the silent body I had left in the woods.

  I took a short swim and came back to the beach.

  Somebody gave me a can of cold beer. I was talking to a dainty blonde who seemed to be making a sun-dazed pass at me when I saw Dodd walking toward the beach, obviously looking for someone. He saw me and headed for me, smiling and waving at friends as he passed them.

  He is my boss. He's as tall as I am, but thirty pounds heavier. The extra weight is not concentrated in any one place-it is all over him in an even layer, blurring his outline. His brown-blond hair is wavy, worn just a shade too long. Except for his mouth, his features are good, and his color is high. His mouth is a bit small, so that in anger his expression becomes a bit pinched and womanish. He has friendly, hearty mannerisms. He is almost a nice guy.

  That was what made it so rough when he reported-to find out he was almost a nice guy.

  His predecessor, my previous boss, had been the best there is.

  chapter 3.

  I have been with Consolidated Pneumatic Products, Incorporated, for five years. It is one of the big ones. You hear more about G.E. and General Motors because they have consumer lines and keep the name in front of the public. C.P.P. sells strictly to industry. You find the two page ads in the technical journals. There are sixteen plants, of which the Warren Tube and Cylinder Division is one of the smaller ones.

  I started out in Fall River, was moved next to Buffalo, and then out to Warren a year ago. C.P.P. believes in keeping all manageria
l talent on the jump. Three years in any one place is about as long as you can expect. It is smart policy. It makes your executive talent in all echelons interchangeable and broadens your men. It facilitates standard management methods and procedures.

  And when a boy graduates from the gypsies to top management he will know quite a few of the plants intimately, and know personally a great many men in the field.

  So many of the big corporations have adopted this plan that it has developed a whole new class of people in this country, people without roots. Or, perhaps, people with a different kind of roots. There are thousands upon thousands of us-the married couples filling up places like Park Forest, Illinois, like the two Levittowns, like Parkmerced in San Francisco, and Drexelbrook in Philadelphia. And, of course, like Warren's smaller version, Brookways. It is the new management caste, and what it will eventually turn into, nobody knows. Joe Engineer and his wife move out of Parkmerced and into Park Forest two thousand miles away. The first day they are there they can start playing do-you-know with their neighbors. Get the latest word. Wilsie quit and went with Reynolds Metals. Dupont sent Kingley back to the business school.

  The Bowens have three kids now. They live in the big developments, work on community committees, set up sitter banks and draw on each other's time; live with a minimum of privacy and a maximum of borrowing of gadgets, party glasses and utensils.

  As a bachelor, I have not yet gotten into the community living aspects of this gypsy existence. Doubtless it will happen to me one day. A married man seems to have better promotion chances with top management.

  I reported to the Warren plant, to Harvey Wills, the plant manager, on a rainy April day thirteen months ago, as the new assistant production manager. I was flushed with brand new promotion and raise, though apprehensive about the personnel, even though Tory Wylan, my personal spy and friend in the home offices in New York had told me it was a good group.

  It turned out to be fine. Ray Walt was a sweetheart. He gave me my head and we worked well together. Ray was transferred in January, and Dodd Raymond came in.

  Before Ray left he told me he'd tried to get me promoted to his job, but the home office and Harvey Wills both thought I was a little too green for it. He told me, though he didn't have to, to keep my guard high with Dodd Raymond. He said Raymond was smart and ambitious, and had the reputation of always having a fall guy handy when something went sour. I thanked him.

  Harvey Wills called me up to his office the day Dodd arrived, both to meet him and to give him the guided tour.

  Dodd shook hands the right way, said the right things, dressed the right way, and let me call him Mr. Raymond just one time. I wondered if Ray had been wrong.

  But a week after Dodd reported I had a personal letter from Tory Wylan. He confirmed what Ray had told me.

  He filled in the details of some raw situations Dodd had been mixed up in. He'd trampled some good men and he'd come out on top. Tory wrote that Dodd had some of the top management fooled. The proof was in the fact that Dodd had been able to get a transfer to his own home town-a thing that was strictly against C.P.P. policy.

  So, had I not been forewarned, maybe I would have thought Dodd a nice guy. He knew the business and stayed out of my hair. I protected myself by starting a work journal, dictating into it all orders he gave me.

  After he and his wife got settled he had me to their place for drinks and dinner, with his wife and his mother.

  That was the beginning. That's how I started to get mixed up in the lives of Dodd and Nancy Raymond. Were it not for Dodd, and his being a home town boy with a considerable social pedigree, I would never have gotten to meet Mary Olan, much less endure the motel fiasco and later find her body in my closet. Dodd threw me and Mary Olan together, because he needed a cat's paw.

  He had spotted me on the beach and he came on over.

  In grey suit and necktie he looked far too dressed up for Smith Lake.

  "Hello, Marilyn, Clint. Certainly is a beautiful day up here. Getting hot as hell in town. Clint, can I talk to you a minute?"

  It had more of a heavy-boss flavor than I liked, but I excused myself and walked over near the boat house with him.

  "What's up?"

  "There's nothing new about Mary. I dropped Nancy off at Mother's camp. Clint, I'm really worried about her. This isn't like her. She invited most of these people here."

  "They seem to be doing fine."

  "Did she act all right when she dropped you off?"

  "She was fine and dandy, Dodd. Just like I told the police you sicked on me."

  "Don't be like that, boy! Hell, they asked me. I had to tell them."

  "You're pretty jittery."

  "Mary is one of my best friends. You know that."

  Sure. One of his best friends. And he thought he was pulling the wool over Nancy's eyes in fixing it up so Mary would date me and the four of us could make a nice jolly foursome. But I knew, as he didn't know, that he wasn't fooling Nancy a damn bit. Mary, in her own special way, had been making a fool. out of Dodd Raymond. Maybe she actually wanted him. Or maybe she had been merely getting even for his unthinkable disloyalty in marrying a stranger without asking her permission first. I hadn't been able to figure out which it was. I only knew that he wanted Mary Olan and that I had been a handy device to keep her within range. Mary had been seven years younger than Dodd. But they had known each other well before he had moved away from Warren. How well I could only guess.

  "How is Nancy taking it?" I asked maliciously.

  "She's upset too, naturally. But let's leave my wife out of it for the time being, shall we? You don't seem to give a damn about Mary, Clint."

  "She'll turn up," I said.

  "When you get dressed why don't you drive over to the camp? Mother will be pleased to see you. We can have a few drinks and talk this thing over."

  I said I would. It would be pleasant to see Nancy, at least. When the sun had dried me I said goodby to Marilyn, who pouted at me for leaving. There was no need to say goodby to anyone else.

  I drove down the lake shore road to the sign which said, in copper and stained wood, RAYMOND. Each year Dodd's mother moved up to the small, comfortable camp at the lake with her nurse as soon as the weather was warm enough, leaving, this summer, the big house in town for Dodd and Nancy rather than closing it up. I imagined that it was a relief to Nancy to have the house to herself. Mrs. Raymond was an imposing, stone-faced, white-haired woman in her sixties, confined by arthritis to a wheelchair. She had positive opinions, and achieved emphasis through repetition. In her scale of values the fact that I worked for Dodd put me on almost the same social footing as the brawny Irish nurse who lifted her in and out of her wheelchair.

  I parked the car in the drive and went around to the front where I knew they'd be. The shoreline is steep at that place. There is a patio on the lake side, and steep wooden steps that go down to the shallow beach. Dodd had changed to bright yellow shorts, and he had a can of beer in his hand. Mrs. Raymond sat in her wheelchair in the shade of a big beach umbrella. Nancy was stretched out on a padded chaise longue with wheelbarrow handles and wooden wheels. Her smile was what I had come to see.

  "Well, young man," Mrs. Raymond said, "I suppose they're all running around in mad circles up at the Pryors' now that it's too late."

  The final two words gave me a jolt.

  "Too late, Mrs. Raymond?"

  "Of course it's too late. White slavers."

  "Please, Mother," Dodd said.

  "Can I get you a beer, dint?" I nodded.

  "White slavers," Mrs. Raymond said firmly.

  "You don't hear much about them. They keep it out of the papers.

  You wait and see. Even if they didn't get her this time, they'll get her next time. You wait and see."

  Dodd came back out of the kitchen and handed me a cold beer.

  "Mother has them crouched behind every bush."

  "You can make it sound ridiculous all you want. You can jeer at me. But did they ever f
ind the Cornwall girl?

  Did they? Did they ever find the slightest trace of her?

  No, and they never will. After what they do to them they're ashamed to come home," she said darkly, "Maybe she just decided to go on a trip or something," Nancy said.

  "Ha!" said Mrs. Raymond. Nancy's opinions always got a similar response. I suspected that Mrs. Raymond resented Nancy not only because she had married an only son, but because after some six years of marriage Nancy had yet to come up with a grandchild for her.

  Nancy was wearing a figured grey sun suit thing, with a sort of skirt effect. She stretched and said, "Gosh, the sun is making me sleepy. Anybody want to walk on the beach?" Her glance swept across me meaningfully and I rose to the hook.