On the Run

by John D. MacDonald

  “I understand it better.” She gave him a strange and twisted look. “Jud would have gotten along just fine with Thelma.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He loved to say all the pretty romantic words. He loved making poetic statements and little caresses. He could make me feel almost beautiful. But … he would have been satisfied if things could have always stopped right there, with just the pretty words and tender kisses. He didn’t have much heart for the rest of it.” She flushed and got up quickly and went to the window, lifted a flap and looked out. He finished his drink, and went over and stood near her. She looked at her watch.

  “Did you know it’s after midnight?” she said.

  “You’ve had a busy day.”

  “What day can you leave?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  She frowned at him. “Don’t you have things to do?”

  “They’re all done.”

  “And we can fly back tomorrow?”

  “We’ll go in my car. I don’t like to be without a car. Travel any other way and it’s too easy to find out where you came from and where you went. We’ll drive right on through. You can spell me. Thirty-six hours should do it. On Monday morning old Tom can look at his grandson. I don’t know what good it will do anybody. We can pick up a couple of things on the way. Thermos for coffee. Some kind of a rig so the person not driving can stretch out in the wagon and get some decent sleep.”

  “Well … all right, Sid.”

  “I don’t know. The way you can just leave. No roots at all.”

  “No friends? No woman? Is that what you mean?”

  “I’ve got some acquaintances. I won’t be missed. No woman at the moment. No. A pickup sometimes when I get too restless. But I have to get damned restless for that kind of thing. A woman to have for a little while. Sometimes. Not often. Not many.”

  “It isn’t any of my …”

  “I know that. But you keep asking and wondering, don’t you? You want to know all there is to know. What good is it doing you?”

  “Please, Sid.”

  “Find a warm and comfortable woman and a safe place to be with her, one that can willingly accept a man with no past and no future, one that doesn’t have any need for the kind of emotional security that makes most of them try to nail you down forever and ever. One that just accepts, without being either too humble or too grateful or too indifferent. How many of those are there?”

  “Don’t be angry with me. Please.”

  “Nurse, you found yourself a running animal, but you want to insist it has no right to be different in any way. Running isn’t supposed to change it at all. You want it to be just like anybody else, underneath. You want me to say, Aw, shucks, I’m just a decent fella had a little bad luck.”

  “But I don’t want you to dramatize yourself either.”

  He stared at her at close range. She stood facing him, the light against her cheek and her dark hair. She squared her shoulders, mildly defiant.

  “You’re just a messenger, aren’t you?” he asked gently.

  “I guess so. If you say so.”

  “How many judgments should messengers have? What do you represent, Nurse Lettinger? Perfection?”

  “I never said I …”

  “Your kind of running is cleaner than my kind of running?”

  “Now really,” she said and tried to laugh. He caught her as she started to turn away, wrapped her in long hard arms, kissed her mouth as she gasped, held her through a struggling briefer than before. She went limp and dead, the defence which had worked before.

  He turned her against the wall by the window, kept doggedly at her, stroking the long firm body under the thin green dress, searching for her response, demanding her response, wearing a cold inward grin as he felt the tremorous ripeness growing to meet him, then fading as she forced it back.

  This was the humiliation for her, to be forced into a loveless response, to feel the hidden animal awakening, to be turned against herself by all the circumstances of her long hunger, a strange place, drinks, all the emotion and tension of the past hours. Her breath began to whistle with each inhalation, and she began to fight him again, but he knew she had come to that decision a little late. She fought him languidly, like a battle conducted in a dream, her arms soft and listless, her head heavy. He kissed her throat and caressed the good hips and found her lips again. Her mouth broke and searched, and she made a groaning articulation, and arched herself steeply against the wall to press into him. He knew it was won then, unmistakably. There would be other protestings, but he could take it the rest of the way. He could strip her where she stood and carry her to the bed. She knew it too. This was a considerable woman, who could be deeply aroused, and all her responses would be strong.

  He released her and backed away and lit two cigarettes. She leaned against the wall, breathing hard, dark hair tousled, mouth smeared, lips swollen. He held a cigarette out to her. She slapped it out of his hand in a small shower of sparks. She walked unsteadily to one of the chairs and sat hunched and humbled, her face against her knees. She rocked her head from side to side.

  Finally she looked at him and said quietly, “You son of a bitch.”

  “We shouldn’t get so carried away.”

  “What does it prove? Why did you have to prove it? My God, you didn’t want to leave me very much, did you? You can believe what you want, but nobody ever did that to me before, not like that. Not so cold about it. As if I was watching myself in a sort of horror and not believing it. Do you have to hate everybody?”

  “I thought we ought to get something established, Nurse. You’re not dealing with a very nice type. You seem to want to think so.”

  Her face was cold and still. “Why did you quit?”

  “Why not?”

  “Do you know what you would have gotten?”

  “I have the general idea.”

  She touched her chest with her fist. “About ten percent of me. Just the animal. You probably could have gotten a real big reaction out of the animal, but when that was over, I would have vomited. God damn, it, Sidney, I’m worth a lot more than that. I’m worth more than being used like a towel. I’ve got value. I’m worth cherishing. I’ve got value you could never understand. If you could ever get the whole package, not just that squirmy ten percent, you’d know what I mean.”

  “It would probably be a lot. Sure. But how about the price tag, Nurse? All the vows, all the pretty words, all the tendernesses it would take to sell you. I just haven’t got the time. Or the inclination.”

  “I know. You’re too busy running. You probably take after your father, Sidney. I can understand a little better why Tom didn’t want his only child going off with a man like that. Maybe George will turn out to be the better bargain.”

  “You’re very angry, dear. Because I didn’t give you a shred of rationalization. I didn’t leave you with an excuse.”

  “Why haven’t you asked about George?”

  “Because I don’t give a damn about George.”

  “Or about anybody except yourself.”

  “How can you say that, Nurse, when I’m going all the way up there to see that fine brave intelligent old man? If you don’t talk me out of it.”

  She started to say something in anger and then caught herself. “I keep forgetting I’m just a messenger. Sorry.” She got up and picked her purse up.

  “Shall I walk you back?”

  “Don’t bother. Thank you for a miserable evening, Sid.”

  As he took the chain off the door, he said, “You can fly back. I’ll show up. Not as soon as Monday, but I’ll show.”

  She looked at him and looked away. “I’ll come with you. I haven’t much to pack. We can leave any time you say.” He held the door open for her. They said goodnight. She hesitated and looked back at him. “I wonder what you proved about yourself,” she said. She went off down the walk. He heard the crisp sound of her heels. All around them the people slept, the cars waited, the stars moved. He shut the
door against the rising roar of an incoming jet.

  After he was in bed he lay awake for a little while, wondering why he had hurt and humiliated her. She seemed pleasant. And vulnerable.

  You keep a door shut for a long time. You are used to having it shut. And then somebody comes along and pries it open a little way. A draft blows in, and it is cold. So you slam the door. You slam it so solidly people get the idea you don’t want it opened again. It can be that easy.

  four

  George Shanley drove home through the silent suburban streets of pre-dawn San Diego. The air-conditioned Imperial seemed to float in an efficient and ghostly silence. He had a slight headache from the drinks. He had the eight hundred dollars he had taken out of the game in the upstairs room at the Chula Club. He was a heavy balding man who looked ten years older than his forty years. His belly rested comfortably against spread thighs. He wore a black silk suit, handmade shoes, a thirty dollar tie.

  He had large pieces of some small ventures, and small pieces of some large ventures, but he had no edge at all in the Chula. He was fronting that one for Sad Frank Lesca. A man without a felony on the books had an easier time with the licenses. Frank had smart people operating it. He wished Frank would let him in for a few points. He wished Liz and his four kids would stay up at Tahoe forever, but spend less money while they were up there, as they had been ever since school let out. If Liz would lose some weight, the heat wouldn’t bother her so much.

  He wished he hadn’t taken such a whipping in the tax settlement last April. He wished Cappy Miller would hurry up and get tired of that girl named Mitz and pass her along. He wished he hadn’t let Boardman bluff him out of two pots.

  But all the wishing couldn’t keep his mind off that strange special delivery letter, and all the implications of it. Nicely typed. Nice paper. Dear Grandson. A grandfather he’d never seen. The old guy had to be twice as old as God. Shaky old signature. “… most anxious to see you on personal and financial matters before I die. I shall, of course, reimburse you for the expenses of such a long trip.”

  It had the smell of money. And if there was any, it came at the right time. People pressuring from all sides. Never wanted to give you any time.

  As he turned into the curving mouth of the driveway he flipped the dash switch and the overhead door rolled up and the garage light went on. He put the car away, and walked on into the empty house, yawning, loosening his tie, turning on the lights. Funny how quiet the house could get. It even smelled empty.

  He stood in the big living room and looked out at the night. There was a little band of grey over in the east. He was tired, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep. The letter from that old man opened a very strange can of peas.

  He wandered into his study and turned the light on and called Claude Boardman’s unlisted number. Claude answered irritably.

  “It’s me,” George said. “Something bothering me.”

  “You didn’t have your mind on the game.”

  “Can I come over?”

  “Sure you can come over, pal. You can come over tomorrow. You can come over any time after two in the afternoon.”

  “But I …”

  “Sleep tight,” Claude snarled and hung up.

  He sat with the phone in his hand for a half minute. He pushed the cradle and when he got a dial tone, he dialed another number. He counted the rings. On the ninth ring she picked it up and said, “Whuzzawaw?”

  “Come on over, Syl.”

  “Hah? Oh. George?”

  “Who else could it be, Sylvia sweetie?”

  “Don’t get nasty. My God, I was sleeping so hard. What time is … George, it’s five in the morning!”

  “Call a cab.”

  “Georgia, baby, please maybe it would be better if …”

  “It would be better if you turn off that motor mouth and hustle it over here Sylvia sweetie, or you could end up on hard times and bad hours. What was that? What did you say?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all, darling. Should the cab wait?”

  “Don’t get smartass. Don’t push the luck. Use the side door.” He hung up and prepared slowly for bed. He started to leave a light on and decided there was enough grey morning light seeping into the room. After he had been in bed about ten minutes, she came in. She was a rangy twenty year old Slovak from the Imperial Valley, with a hard body sun-tempered on the beaches, a mane of coarse-textured pale hair. She wore big black sunglasses night and day. She wore black stretch-pants, a red blouse, her hair tied into a scarf, and she carried a little aluminum overnight case. She glanced at him, moved over through the grey light, put the case on Liz’s dressing table and snapped it open.

  “Did you latch the door when you came in?” he asked.

  “Yes, I latched the door.”

  “It will hurt your mouth if you smile?”

  She gave him a broad glassy grin and said, “I smile because I am so happy every minute of the day.” She undressed swiftly and padded into the bathroom. George Shanley waited for her. He wished he hadn’t sent for her. He wished it was possible to tell her that the only thing he wanted was a closeness for sleeping, to have somebody there. Sleep came easier when the warmth was there, and it was deeper and more healing. But you couldn’t tell anybody things like that. You had to have the reasons they expected you to have.

  He talked with Claude Boardman at three o’clock the following afternoon. They talked in George’s shabby little office in the Walton Building. Boardman stretched out on the red leather couch. He was a narrow grey man with a small confidential voice. He had been very very big, operating on a top policy level on a national basis. And then the cancer had come and they had started cutting him. They had gone after it three times, and Boardman was waiting for it to show up again, waiting with a sour patience. He was past liquor, women, travel and any participation in plans and operations. He was down to the poker and the waiting, but he knew everybody and remembered everything, and could give advice on delicate matters.

  “This is a personal problem,” George said. “Do you know about the time, over two years ago, I got asked about my kid brother? He got in a mess in Florida and they were looking for him?”

  “You got roughed up a little bit, Georgie?”

  “Why should they send silly bastards like that? I told those two everything I knew, which wasn’t much, and they thought there should be more, so they bounced me off the walls. They sprained my back and I couldn’t tie my shoes for three weeks.”

  “Indignation, George?” Boardman murmured.

  “I should think I’d have a little protection from stuff like that.”

  “Georgie, you take away maybe forty declared and twenty more under the table in a year, and you drive a big car and have a swimming pool, and you snap your fingers and some broad comes running, but it shouldn’t give you very big ideas. In a three billion dollar take, you are a very small time thing, and you have been shot with luck to get even as big as you are.”

  “Are you sore at me about something?”

  “Georgie, you get emotional because you are not very bright. I am putting things in perspective for you. Frank Lesca is worth three of you, and he is also expendable. If it was a supermarket, Lesca would be a clerk in the vegetables and you’d be a bag boy. So don’t give me tears about being roughed a little. It’s a business risk. Why was your brother so popular all of a sudden?”

  “After they sprained me, then they clued me a little. Sid got somebody in Florida sore at him. Not in the business. A personal thing. Sid was in the automobile business, and it was some kind of static about Sid’s wife with somebody named Wain.”

  “I remember it now. He disfigured Jerry Wain. Wain had a try at him and missed, and the man skipped. That was your brother? I didn’t connect it up. Wain wanted him on a completely personal basis, and there was five thousand offered for information.”

  “How big is Wain?”

  Boardman turned a grey face and stared at George Shanley. “He couldn’t set yo
ur brother up without clearing it. And it was a personal matter, and he got it cleared. Shouldn’t that answer your question?”

  “But just how big is he?” George asked stubbornly.

  “Lesca has this one little corner down here. Wain has Florida, Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina. And he has the islands. And once upon a time he had Cuba. Also he is on the big board, representing the southeast. Now what’s your problem?”

  George wiped his sweaty lip with the back of his hand. “Here’s all I knew about the kid when they bounced me around, Claude. I took off from home, that was in Youngstown, when I was fifteen. Sid was nine, I think. Our old lady was dead. We had a step-mother. The old man worked in a steel mill. I went back there when I was twenty-two. I checked around. I found out the old man had been dead five years, and no trace of Hilda or the kid. I didn’t look too hard. What was the kid to me? We never got along. Right after Korea, or maybe it was still going on, I’m in the Chicago airport and I hear Sergeant Sidney Shanley called, for him to go to the United Airlines desk. I was killing time. It was him, in uniform. We weren’t glad to see each other. We talked three minutes, maybe. He told me how the old man got killed. He told me Hilda ran out on him. I told him I was married and I owned a restaurant in San Diego. Like strangers. He didn’t say where he was going or what he was going to do. That was it. He’d grown bigger than I thought he would, and he looked hard as a stone. That’s all I knew. Then yesterday morning I got this special delivery letter.”

  He handed it to Boardman. Boardman read it carefully. “Did they ask you about any other relatives?”

  “Yes. I said there weren’t any. Honest to God, I didn’t think there were. Now this old man pops up. My mother’s father. In some place named Bolton. I never saw him, but I think Sid was with him for a little while when Sid was real little. About the time my mother died, and the old man was in the tank for something, D and D probably, that old grandpa came and got him and was going to keep him, but my old man went and got him and brought him back. I was maybe ten years old. I’d forgotten all that. I figured the old grandpa for dead. I couldn’t even remember that Brower was my mother’s maiden name until I saw it on this letter. I don’t even know how he found out my address.”