Judge Me Not

by John D. MacDonald

  He struck his thigh again and then grinned into the darkness. Not such a stupid little girl, maybe. She’d certainly left him wound up like a four-dollar watch. But better than the other way. Better than hearing her harsh intake of breath at the first stab of the incredible, unexpected pain. Better than listening to the brave smothering of child tears. Better than the feeling of unthinking brutality and shame that would be his. He composed himself for sleep, knowing that it would come reluctantly, if at all.

  Chapter Nine

  When he went downstairs dressed, at ten, Powell had gone to the office, Marcia was marketing. It was Saturday and Jake was home. In blue jeans and fuzzy yellow sweat shirt, she bustled around the kitchen, getting his breakfast.

  She talked too gaily, her voice pitched too high. He noticed that she was pale and there were blue shadows under her eyes.

  She served the bacon and eggs and toast and coffee, then sat at the table across from him, head tilted, cheek resting on her clasped hands, elbows on the table.

  “I suppose every person makes a mistake once in a while, Teed.”

  “Standard practice.”

  “Thank you for saving me from making my mistake.”

  “You’re welcome. You cured now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve got over me, I hope.”

  “Oh, goodness, no! I lay awake and I realized that all I was doing was cheating us. Our first time won’t be like that, Teed. Not sneaking and hiding and whispering in the dark. No, it will be in a big hotel. Maybe in Havana. With a little patio off the room. And we’ll have all the time there is. Just think! All the time there is.”

  “When is this alarming sequence going to take place?”

  She frowned seriously. “Now I figure it this way, Teed. I haven’t told Daddy, but I’ve been changing some of those silly precollege courses to practical things. Home Economics. A course about babies.”

  “Do they tell you where they come from?”

  “Now, don’t be childish, Teed. This is my senior year. I’ll be out in June. I think I can break it gently to Daddy, about no more school, I mean. My birthday comes on June twenty-sixth. School will be out then. This job you and Daddy are doing ought to be quiet by then. And if we get married on my birthday, you’ll only have one date to remember instead of two. Men are so backward about remembering dates. And they say Havana isn’t hot at all in the summer. Cooler than Florida, they say.”

  “You stayed awake and organized my future, did you?”

  “I don’t want a big wedding. A really big wedding. Do you?”

  “This is pretty sudden, you know.”

  “And sex is important, of course, but not all important. Having kindred interests is a big part of it. Our backgrounds, in general, are the same. Of course, I’ll take courses after I’m married, so I won’t be too stupid for you.”

  “Honey, just let me eat my eggs, will you?”

  She beamed at him. “That sounds so nice and married, Teed. ‘Honey, just let me eat my eggs, will you?’ Oh, Teed!”

  “Look!”

  “And you should realize that marrying a younger woman will help keep you young. You won’t get stuffy so fast. I’ll catch up, and then we’ll both get stuffy together. I want babies right away, so I’ll be a grandma before I’m forty.”

  She got up and said, “Now, darling, I’ll let you have your breakfast in peace so you can think it over. You don’t have to tell me today, or anything.”

  “Thank you for the grace period,” he said hollowly.

  After breakfast, and after Marcia came back, he repacked the bag that had been brought from his apartment.

  “You’re not leaving!” Jake cried.

  “I can take care of myself now, thanks. Just a little stiff. Not sore a bit any more. I’ll take a cab down to the Hall, stop in and tell Powell and drive my car back to the apartment. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate all you’ve done.”

  He left in a storm of objections and solicitous advice. He lowered himself gingerly into the back seat of the taxi and waved at the two girls standing on the porch, Jake a half-head taller than the blonde Marcia.

  Most of the Hall was on a five-day week, but there was enough traffic so that Teed sensed the intensity of the interest in him. Girls left their desks quickly to walk with overcasual step into the hall, just to be certain of seeing him. The Teed Morrow of a few days back would have felt a certain amount of wry amusement, would have enjoyed the sensation of playing a part in a drama that touched him lightly if at all. Now he could not capture the necessary emotional remoteness. It was even an effort to keep from hurrying his steps to get out of range of the avid curiosity as quickly as possible.

  As he went up the stairs a vast, billowing woman from the City Engineer’s office came down. She had always favored him with a mincing smile. She looked at him and through him, and sniffed audibly as they passed. City employees seem to develop a seventh sense. Catastrophe casts an invisible aura over its victims before it strikes. You must sense that aura and move carefully away to avoid sharing in a common disaster. Teed knew that this new attitude would also take in Powell Dennison. Co-operation would be much more difficult to obtain. Necessary records would remain stubbornly in the files. Even the switchboard would be slow and uncertain.

  The little people on the city payroll had waited and watched, not quite certain whether or not the move toward new efficiency and economy would bear fruit, would affect them and their jobs. Now, mysteriously, word had gone out that it would all come to nothing, and so there was no more reason for caution. Now was the time to back away and say, “I knew it was a farce from the beginning.”

  Even the sallow face of Miss Anderson showed the effects of the new attitude. The lines were etched a bit more deeply around her mouth, and she flung the typewriter carriage back with a clattering smash at the end of each line.

  It was an old story to Dennison and Teed. They had felt it in the German city when it appeared for a time that higher command would force a revision of policy on the matter of employing known ex-Nazis. And, in the end, when Dennison had won his point, the attitude had changed mysteriously even before the statement of policy had been received.

  Teed walked into Powell’s office. Powell leaned back in his chair. “Teed, you walk like you were carrying a pie plate between your knees. Should you be up and around?”

  “I kissed the girls good-by, Powell, I’m going back to a bachelor existence.”

  “Jake give you a bad time?” Powell said, with his slow warm smile.

  Teed flushed. “Not bad enough to drive me out of the house. How’d you get a daughter as stubborn as that?”

  “Her mother gave me just as much trouble.”

  “Powell, do you feel the change of attitude around here?”

  “It changed Thursday, Teed. The word went out, I guess. They’re wrong, you know. It’s going to be a hell of a shock to most of them.”

  “Makes you wonder what the hole card is, doesn’t it?”

  “Not when we’ve got aces showing, Teed. I finished that assessment survey. It shows enough so that when the Times publishes the results, nothing can stand in the way of the city hiring independent experts to come in here and revise the whole tax setup.”

  “I’m going to take it easy over the weekend, Powell, but that’s no reason I can’t work on something at the apartment. What can you give me?”

  “Sure you want to? O.K. Take this file. Don’t let it get out of your hands. It shows tax sales of unimproved property. A whole bunch of building lots just inside the south edge of town. And here’s a transcript of property sales in the same area. And a map. Seems that one L. L. Weiss has picked up a lot of land out that way.”

  “Windy? Raval’s boy?”

  “Right. And Sandscone, over at the Chamber of Commerce, advises me that he talked with Devlin, of the Board of Education, and Devlin said that the area in question is the logical place for the new high school. Devlin expects the bond issue t
o be approved.”

  “Oh, fine!” Teed said. “Weiss is dummy for Raval. Raval picks up the land, pressures Devlin to locate the high school there, pressures the Common Council to approve the bond issue, sells the land at a fat profit and then has one of his own companies put in the low bid on construction, knowing that he can get the cooperation of the inspectors and cut enough corners in construction so that the profit is fat.”

  “In a way,” Powell said slowly, “Raval is telling us, by going ahead with this thing, that he doesn’t think we can hurt him. He isn’t even doing us the courtesy of battening down his hatches until the storm is over. Take the folder, Teed, and see if you can write up the facts in such a way that Ritchie Seward can carry the ball with a series on it when we’re ready to fire.”

  Teed took the manila folder and stood up. “I’ll be on my way. Thanks, Powell.”

  Powell looked a little uncomfortable. “I suppose I ought to tell you this. I had a little session with the men who put up our war fund. They don’t like this recent development. They wanted to get back more control of the purse strings. I talked them out of it.”

  “This time.”

  “Right. Well… take it easy.”

  “Thanks for telling me, Powell. Is Carboy back on the job?”

  “Not yet. The funeral was Thursday. He left the hospital Thursday morning, and now he’s at his home. They expect him to be back in the office Monday.”

  “Funny it should hit him so hard, Powell. Hell, he must have realized that Felice wasn’t… I don’t know how to say it.”

  He found his car in the City Hall lot. He hunted for the keys and found them in the ash tray. When Barbara had fled from Boyd and Pilcher she must have known that she was making enemies who could do her harm. He had been too dazed to realize at the time what he was asking her to do. The wind was raw. He closed the windows and turned on the heater.

  Mrs. Kidder was at the desk. She seemed more shy than usual as she handed him his mail. He tried to revive the jokes between them, but there was no response in her. He realized that her attitude toward him had been changed by recent events, and he was annoyed that it should bother him so much.

  “Mrs. Kidder?”

  “Yes, Mr. Morrow.”

  “Did you ever hear that about believing half what you see and nothing of what you read?”

  “Yes, I’ve heard that, Mr. Morrow.”

  “You give me the impression that you’re critical of me.”

  She met his glance for longer than ever before and then looked away. “When people pay their rent and don’t annoy the other tenants, Mr. Morrow, it’s not my place to be critical.”

  He shrugged and turned away, anger thick in his throat. As he walked across the central park toward his apartment, he leafed through the mail. Bills and ads. Except the last one. A personal letter. Feminine handwriting. Gray stationery with a white border.

  He stopped outside his door to read it.

  Dear Teed,

  It is hard to write this sort of a letter without it sounding like something to be spoken in a throbbing voice with violins in the background. Actually it is a letter of thanks. I feel as though I have been ill for a long time, and now I am beginning to convalesce. I thought that what I had done to myself had been entirely my own business, but now I have begun to paraphrase Mr. Donne and think about no woman being an island unto herself. You were the shock I needed, Teed, and when Mr. Rogale tells me that there is nothing I need to stay here for, I shall be off to distant places to see if I can put myself back together, bit by bit. I know that it is certainly far too late for me to become, in any respect, a junior leaguer, but at least I can become honest with myself. Give my very best to Albert and the pigeons.

  Your Barbara

  There was, of course, no return address. He unlocked the door and went in. He sat down and picked up the phone book, found Armando Rogale’s home number. He put his hand on the phone, then shrugged and tossed the book on the shelf of the phone table. Seeing her again would not help her, or him. To stir other persons, cause them to examine their own motivations, open them to self-doubt, is a responsibility that should not be lightly assumed. In stripping Barbara of her tough defenses, he had realized how fragile were his own. He was quite certain that she would not want to see him. Once the catalyst has caused the chemical reaction, its function is over. The reaction, once started, is self-sustaining. He knew that Barbara would not dramatize herself or her decision. As a woman and a human being she had set out to punish herself for some real or imagined lack. The punishment was over. The organism had survived. It was altered, irrevocably, but it had survived.

  He was still sitting at the alcove phone table, his back to the door, when he heard it swing open, felt the coolness on the back of his neck.

  He turned quickly, chair legs sliding on the hardwood floor of the alcove. Mark Carboy leaned his back against the door, slamming it shut. He was hatless, and his hands were deep in the slash pockets of his dark overcoat. His eyes were puffed, reddened, and completely wild. Carboy was a big-bellied man with a long hard-boned face. The flesh appeared to have slid from his face, gathered in loose folds that overlapped his collar. It was a face which, in photographs, seemed full of a steel-eyed resolution, and in life looked oddly broken, as though something deep within the man had snapped long ago.

  “Mr. Mayor, I… I’m glad to see you,” Teed said inanely.

  “Get on your feet, Morrow,” the man whispered.

  Teed stood up slowly. The revolver was grotesquely huge. It was the biggest revolver Teed had ever seen. The absurdly large eye of the muzzle wavered in a slow circle, a small circle with Teed’s belt buckle as the center point,

  “What do you want?”

  “I’m going to kill you,” Carboy said. Sweat stood out on his forehead. He reached his left hand over and strained to pull back the massive hammer. The cylinder revolved with an oiled click.

  “What for? Dammit, what for?” Teed cried, knowing that he sounded abused and petulant, almost childish.

  The muzzle lifted until it pointed at the center of his chest. Teed knew that, through shock and surprise, he had lost his opportunity. At that range, the revolver would blow the entire center of his chest out through his backbone.

  Carboy stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth, looking like a man trying to thread a needle. Teed heard a hard roaring in his ears and his vision misted until the only thing that stood out with painful clarity was the eye of the muzzle, the blade sight above it.

  The second went by. “Do it, then!” Teed said. “What the hell are you waiting for?”

  The trembling started in Carboy’s knees, spread upwards until his whole body shook like that of a person in a chill. His teeth began to chatter. Teed saw the arm lower slowly until the muzzle pointed at the floor. Carboy stood with his eyes shut, his lips bluish.

  Teed turned mechanically, woodenly, and marched to a chair and sat down. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes and concentrated on taking deep breaths.

  Carboy walked in and sat on the couch. He laid the gun beside him on a cushion. They stared at each other and Teed felt the odd camaraderie of two men who have closely avoided a disaster.

  “Close,” Teed breathed. “God, was that close.”

  “I thought I could do it. I was so sure I could do it.”

  “Drink, Mayor?”

  “Please.”

  Teed walked to the small kitchen on knees that threatened to bend the wrong way. He broke cubes out of the tray, splashed generous measures of bourbon onto the cubes, added water to each, carried the glasses back in. Carboy’s glass chittered against his teeth as he drank deeply. Teed picked up the gun, swung the cylinder out, pulled the trigger. The hammer snapped down with a rat-trap noise. He shoved the cylinder back in and handed the gun to Carboy. Carboy took it gingerly and shoved it into his pocket.

  “Hate guns,” he said. “Always have.”

  “Where did you get a cannon like that?”

&
nbsp; “My father brought it back from Silver City in the eighties. Forty-four Colt, I think it is. God, Morrow, I feel as though I’d been bled white.”

  “You,” Teed said, “are not alone. What was the idea, anyway?”

  “Because you killed my wife, Morrow. Revenge, I guess.”

  “But I didn’t kill her!”

  Carboy stared at him without particular interest. “I know that.”

  “Would you mind going over that slowly, Mayor?”

  “I don’t understand it very well myself. If I could cling to the belief that you killed her, Morrow, stick with that belief right up to the point of killing you, then the act of killing you would fix that belief in my mind. Maybe the idea was that once you were dead you couldn’t deny it strongly enough to shake my belief.”

  “Isn’t that pretty metaphysical, Mayor.”

  “The other choice, Morrow, is less pretty. If you didn’t do it, then it was done by the orders of the people who put me where I am. And that isn’t an easy thing to fit your mind around. Men take your courage and your honesty and your self-respect, and then, almost as an afterthought, they kill your wife because she still has those qualities, in part, that you have lost somewhere along the line.”

  “And that’s what was going through your mind when you were on the verge of blowing me in half?”

  “That was the argument for doing it, Morrow. The argument against it is that I can’t kill. Even to regain self-respect.”

  “Did she mean that much to you?”

  Carboy chuckled. It was an unpleasant sound. “Felice? She enjoyed being the first lady of the city. She wasn’t going to give that up, you know. I was the pimp. Ugly word, isn’t it? She bought our prestige in her own way and between us we split the gains. And they like that. They knew that Felice made me easier to control. Any man who is thoroughly sick of himself is easy to push around. Felice made it profitable, too. I backed Raval’s ventures up with public oratory, and each public bump and grind I did fattened the kitty.”