Praise for John D. MacDonald
“My favorite novelist of all time.”
—DEAN KOONTZ
“For my money, John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee is one of the great characters in contemporary American fiction—not crime fiction; fiction, period—and millions of readers surely agree.”
—The Washington Post
“MacDonald isn’t simply popular; he’s also good.”
—ROGER EBERT
“MacDonald’s books are narcotic and, once hooked, a reader can’t kick the habit until the supply runs out.”
—Chicago Tribune Book World
“Travis McGee is one of the most enduring and unusual heroes in detective fiction.”
—Baltimore Sun
“John D. MacDonald remains one of my idols.”
—DONALD WESTLAKE
“A dominant influence on writers crafting the continuing series character.”
—SUE GRAFTON
“The Dickens of mid-century America—popular, prolific and … conscience-ridden about his environment … a thoroughly American author.”
—The Boston Globe
“It will be for his crisply written, smoothly plotted mysteries that MacDonald will be remembered.”
—USA Today
“MacDonald had the marvelous ability to create attention-getting characters who doubled as social critics. In MacDonald novels, it is the rule rather than the exception to find, in the midst of violence and mayhem, a sentence, a paragraph, or several pages of rumination on love, morality, religion, architecture, politics, business, the general state of the world or of Florida.”
—Sarasota Herald-Tribune
BY JOHN D. MACDONALD
The Brass Cupcake
Murder for the Bride
Judge Me Not
Wine for the Dreamers
Ballroom of the Skies
The Damned
Dead Low Tide
The Neon Jungle
Cancel All Our Vows
All These Condemned
Area of Suspicion
Contrary Pleasure
A Bullet for Cinderella
Cry Hard, Cry Fast
You Live Once
April Evil
Border Town Girl
Murder in the Wind
Death Trap
The Price of Murder
The Empty Trap
A Man of Affairs
The Deceivers
Clemmie
Cape Fear (The Executioners)
Soft Touch
Deadly Welcome
Please Write for Details
The Crossroads
The Beach Girls
Slam the Big Door
The End of the Night
The Only Girl in the Game
Where Is Janice Gantry?
One Monday We Killed Them All
A Key to the Suite
A Flash of Green
The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything
On the Run
The Drowner
The House Guest
End of the Tiger and Other Stories
The Last One Left
S*E*V*E*N
Condominium
Other Times, Other Worlds
Nothing Can Go Wrong
The Good Old Stuff
One More Sunday
More Good Old Stuff
Barrier Island
A Friendship: The Letters of Dan Rowan and John D. MacDonald, 1967–1974
The Travis McGee Series
The Deep Blue Good-by
Nightmare in Pink
A Purple Place for Dying
The Quick Red Fox
A Deadly Shade of Gold
Bright Orange for the Shroud
Darker Than Amber
One Fearful Yellow Eye
Pale Gray for Guilt
The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper
Dress Her in Indigo
The Long Lavender Look
A Tan and Sandy Silence
The Scarlet Ruse
The Turquoise Lament
The Dreadful Lemon Sky
The Empty Copper Sea
The Green Ripper
Free Fall in Crimson
Cinnamon Skin
The Lonely Silver Rain
The Official Travis McGee Quizbook
The End of the Night is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
2013 Random House eBook Edition
Copyright © 1960 by John D. MacDonald
Introduction copyright © 2013 by Dean Koontz
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House Trade Paperbacks, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
RANDOM HOUSE TRADE PAPERBACKS and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Published by arrangement with Simon and Schuster, Inc.
A substantial portion of this book has appeared in Cosmopolitan Magazine. Copyright © 1960 by The Hearst Corporation.
eISBN: 978-0-307-82721-0
www.atrandom.com
Cover design: Joe Montgomery
v3.1
The Singular John D. MacDonald
Dean Koontz
When I was in college, I had a friend, Harry Recard, who was smart, funny, and a demon card player. Harry was a successful history major, while I passed more time playing pinochle than I spent in class. For the three and a half years that I required to graduate, I heard Harry rave about this writer named John D. MacDonald, “John D” to his most ardent readers. Of the two of us, Harry was the better card player and just generally the cooler one. Consequently, I was protective of my position, as an English major, to be the better judge of literature, don’t you know. I remained reluctant to give John D a look.
Having read mostly science fiction, I found many of my professors’ assigned authors markedly less exciting than Robert Heinlein and Theodore Sturgeon, but I was determined to read the right thing. For every Flannery O’Connor whose work I could race through with delight, there were three like Virginia Woolf, who made me want to throw their books off a high cliff and leap after them. Nevertheless, I continued to shun Harry’s beloved John D.
Five or six years after college, I was a full-time writer with numerous credits in science fiction, struggling to move into suspense and mainstream work. I was making progress but not fast enough to suit me. By now I knew that John D was widely admired, and I finally sat down with one of his books. In the next thirty days, I read thirty-four of them. The singular voice and style of the man overwhelmed me, and the next novel I wrote was such an embarrassingly slavish imitation of a MacDonald tale that I had to throw away the manuscript.
I apologized to Harry for doubting him. He was so pleased to hear me proclaiming the joys of John D that he only said “I told you so” on, oh, twenty or thirty occasions.
Over the years, I have read every novel by John D at least three times, some of them twice that often. His ability to evoke a time and place—mostly Florida but also the industrial Midwest, Las Vegas, and elsewhere—was wonderful, and he could get inside an occupation to give you the details and the feel of it like few other writers I’ve ever read. His pacing was superb, the flow of his prose irresistible, and his suspense watch-spring tight.
Of all his manifest strengths as a writer, however, I am most in awe of his ability to create characters who are as real as anyone I’ve met in life. John D sometimes paused in the headlong rush of his story to spin out pages of background on a character. At first when thi
s happened, I grumbled about getting on with the story. But I soon discovered that he could make the character so fascinating that when the story began to race forward again, I wanted it to slow down so I could learn more about this person who so intrigued and/or delighted me. There have been many good suspense novelists in recent decades, but in my experience, none has produced characters with as much humanity and truth as those in MacDonald’s work.
Like most who have found this author, I am an admirer of his Travis McGee series, which features a first-person narrator as good as any in the history of suspense fiction and better than most. But I love the standalone novels even more. Cry Hard, Cry Fast. Where Is Janice Gantry? The Last One Left. A Key to the Suite. The Drowner. The Damned. A Bullet for Cinderella. The Only Girl in the Game. The Crossroads. All These Condemned. Those are not my only favorites, just a few of them, and many deal with interesting businesses and occupations. Mr. MacDonald’s work gives the reader deep and abiding pleasure for many reasons, not the least of which is that it portrays the contemporary life of his day with as much grace and fidelity as any writer of the period, and thus it also provides compelling social history.
In 1985, when my publisher, Putnam, wanted to send advance proof copies of Strangers to Mr. MacDonald among others, I literally grew shaky at the thought of him reading it. I suggested that they shouldn’t send it to him, that, as famous and prolific as he was, the proof would be an imposition on him; in truth, I feared that he would find the novel unsatisfying. Putnam sent it to him anyway, and he gave us an enthusiastic endorsement. In addition, he wrote to me separately, in an avuncular tone, kindly advising me how to avoid some of the pitfalls of the publishing business, and he wrote to my publisher asking her to please carefully consider the packaging of the book and not condemn it to the horror genre. She more or less condemned it to the genre anyway, but I took his advice to heart.
In my experience, John D. MacDonald, the man, was as kind and thoughtful as his fiction would lead you to believe that he must be. That a writer’s work accurately reflects his soul is a rarer thing than you might imagine, but in his case, the reflection is clear and true. For that reason, it has been a special honor, in fact a grace, to be asked to write this introduction.
Reader, prepare to be enchanted by the books of John D. MacDonald. And Harry, I am not as much of an idiot as I was in years gone by—though I know you won’t let me get away with claiming not to be to any degree an idiot anymore.
To Roger and Geoffrey, who left their marks on the manuscript
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
About the Author
An execution is a very serious thing, and around here we do our level best to have it go smooth and quick, and we try to do it with some dignity too.
—Warden Durkin G. Shires
Dear Ed,
Well, we had the big day here, and we sent the four of them off to their reward with what Satchel-Butt Shires, our lovable Warden called “splendid efficiency.” Honest to God, if you’d still been here, you would have split a gut watching Shires sweat blood around here as burning day got closer and closer.
I admit it was a pretty big deal all right, four in one day when the most we ever had before was three, and this time one of them was a she. Did you know she was the third female ever executed in this state? I didn’t. It just goes to show how fast women can talk, Eddie boy. Do I need to tell you?
Anyhow, Big-Butt Shires knows he’s going to have a full house, and he like to drove everybody crazy with this idea he got about rehearsals. He borrowed a stop watch someplace, and half the time it wasn’t right because he didn’t know how to work it, and then he’d chew us out. Remember how red his face gets? How could you forget? He chewed on you most of anybody.
I can’t count how the hell many times he run us through it. Eight of us, and a damn stuffed dummy. He had old Creepy Staples over on the switch as usual. Bongo and me were on the electrodes, straps and hood. Christy and Brewer were on the cart. He couldn’t get the Doc to mess around with that kind of nonsense, so he had old Mitch make like the Doc. Marano and Sid were escorts, and he’d say “Go” and they’d walk the dummy in, grinning like fools, with Shires yelling “Take it serious, men!” and they’d sit in on the throne and Bongo and me would make a full latchup like it was for real, and step back to our places. Staples would fake the switch with Shires giving us a slow count, then old Mitch would step in and hold a beatup stethoscope on the dummy and pronounce it dead, and then Christy and Brewer would come wheeling the cart in as we did the unlatching. We’d do it four straight times and then Shires would give us a pep talk and we’d do it again.
Honest to Pete, Eddie boy, you’d think Shires was going to get married.
I’ll tell you, we did get us a full house. They were packed behind that glass shoulder to shoulder. I don’t have to tell you the types. We had the cops and politicians you see every time on account of they get some kind of boot out of it. One way it’s better than auto races on account of when you come here you know somebody is going to get it. Then there were the official witnesses appointed for this one, most of them hating the hell out of every minute, and then there was the reporters. You could tell about the few who’d seen this kind of thing before. They weren’t making any smart cracks and trying to play tough. They just looked sick. Shires, by the way, managed to pass the buck upstairs about who could get in, so he didn’t have a thing to do with it, and that made him real happy. They were shook down thorough for cameras and little tape recorders and little transmitters, and I hear they got a pretty good haul off those boys.
Shires was scared sick they wouldn’t get the woman here on time, but it was timed right, and they brought her in through that little back death-house gate where the stiffs go out. I guess all those guys behind the glass were thinking about all the sexy pictures that got printed of the Koslov woman, and if they were, they had a hell of a disappointment. She put on maybe twenty pounds, and she had her hair in braids, and she’d got religion. She walked in steady, her hands together in front of her, her lips moving every minute, following right along with the Father who was with her, looking down toward the floor. She had on a white dress like a confirmation dress, I swear, but real plain. She didn’t even flick an eye at the throne until she come to the step up onto the little platform, and then she stepped up and turned and sat down, not missing a word. She crossed herself before we strapped her arms, and she kept right on with the praying. She was shaved good under those braids, and the plates went on neat and tight. The only thing was just before the hood went on, it was like she saw all those guys behind the glass there watching her for the first time. She said a few words, not loud, but loud enough for Bongo and me to hear them, and I can tell you, Eddie boy, I can’t put them in no letter going through the U. S. Mails. She picked up the praying when the hood went on, and we stepped back, and all I have to say to you is that it was a good one. You know how bad even the good ones are. The first time was enough, and when they were running her out on the cart, I looked over and saw our audience had shrunk some, which is always to be expected, and there were a few bottles out, and some of them didn’t look like they’d last much longer.
We got Golden next, the scrawny guy that talked so funny and made you so sore that time. He had nothing left at all, that boy. They’d taken his glasses. He had that empty foolish look, and Marano and Sid were carrying all but about two pounds of him. He was trying to make his legs go in that flappy stilt walk
they get, and he had ruined his pants before they even got him to the door to bring him in. When that bird spotted the throne, he went stiff as a board and set his heels and tried to thrash around. And he started to make a hell of a noise like I never heard before. For a guy with so many words, he didn’t have one left in English. He just went, “Gaw, gaw, gaw, gaw,” with the strings in his neck standing out, and he couldn’t take his eyes off the throne. Marano and Sid slid him right along, lifted him and spun him and plunked him down and held him a second until we could make the first latch. He was thrashing, but there wasn’t much strength in him. He was still going “Gaw, gaw” under the hood when Staples threw it to him. And that was a good one too, and that one cleaned out a few more behind the glass so those boys left had some nice standing room.
We got the big one next. All brute. He didn’t take it bad. He had a silly grin on his face and he kept trying to move in any direction except toward the throne, but he handled easy. It could have been a lot tougher, but Shires got scared of what a guy so powerful might do, so he fixed it with the Doc to sneak a shot to that boy that would have stunned a horse. So he hardly knew where he was, and that’s why he acted like a punchy fighter.
I had a hunch that everything was going too good, and I was sure right. It looked all right at first. But after Doc checked, he stepped back and gave the sign to Staples for another bang. He got rattled and didn’t give us our chance to check the plates, so it was the Doc’s fault. There was clearance at the leg and you know what that will do. You want to know how powerful that boy was? He busted the right arm-straps like wet string, and nobody thought anybody would ever bust those! I found out later he busted his right arm in three places, thrashing it. Of course it didn’t work the second time, but Doc gave us our chance to reset the electrode firm, but then we didn’t know what the hell to do about that arm. We all looked at Shires. He was like paste, and he gave us the go-ahead. Let it thrash. Staples made sure on that third run. You know, that one even made me feel a little funny.
There was a delay while we had to jury-rig something for the right arm. It was fifteen minutes before we could get heavy canvas straps from the shop, and I guess the waiting was hell on that Stassen boy. He was good as the girl, I’d say. Bongo says better. He came in dead-white and his mouth a little bit open, moving so fast they had to trot to stay with him. He hopped up onto the platform and hesitated such a little time you could hardly notice it, and sat down and put his arms right where they belonged. He saw them through the glass then, and I can tell you we had damn few customers left, and he turned red in the face and closed his eyes tight. And when Bongo slid the hood on, he said, “Thanks.” Isn’t that a hell of a thing? Bongo, he jumps a little and says, “You’re welcome.” We step back then, and that one went good too.
The End of the Night Page 1