Cape Fear

by John D. MacDonald

  She came up to him and held his wrists. “And I tell you, you are not a white mouse. You are as brave as any man. You have warmth and strength. You know how to love and be loved. This is a great and rare art. You are my man, and I wouldn’t want you changed in any way.”

  He kissed her and then stood holding her in his arms. He looked down over her shoulder, and the dark gleam of the sun in his right hand looked incongruous. He was holding his wrist canted so that the weapon would not touch her pale-blue blouse. And beyond the gun he could see the white target and the penciled heart and five black holes.

  Eight

  ON FRIDAY THEY LEFT EARLY and drove south-east toward the pleasant little vacation villages in the lake area. Bucky seemed willing to accept the idea that Carol wanted a vacation from doing all the housework and he could come along too. It was, they told him, the next best thing to going away to camp.

  They drove slowly and took side roads and arrived at the town of Suffern, ninety miles from Harper, at lunchtime. They had a good lunch in the quiet dining room of a lakeside inn called The West Wind. It was an old-fashioned frame building, with the tall and awkward dignity of the Victorian period. A busy little cricket of a man showed them two third-floor rooms on the lakeside with connecting bath. The weekly rate was reasonable and the rooms, with maple furniture and rag rugs, were clean and cheery. The rate included breakfasts and dinners, the use of the tiny beach, the hotel rowboats when available, the English croquet court, and the two tennis courts.

  Yes, there were other children in the hotel, and they had never made it a policy to exclude children, but no pets, please. Even the oblique mention of Marilyn visibly saddened Bucky. It was not at all necessary, Sam decided, to use a different name. It would be theatrical, ludicrous and unnecessary. Carol said she would write directly to the office and, as an additional precaution, use envelopes not marked with the return address of The West Wind.

  After Carol and Bucky had unpacked and changed, they went for a walk through the village, and then came back and waited until the croquet court was free. Carol was grimly accurate, and took high glee in whacking Sam’s ball off into the hinterlands whenever she could get near enough to hit it. Sam teamed up with Bucky, but she still won readily.

  That night, after they were in the big double bed, Carol said, “I’m going to be terribly extravagant and buy a tennis racket. I’m terribly flabby. I need to tighten up.”

  “Flabby? Flabby? Where? Here? Or possibly here?”

  “Stop it, you darn fool.”

  “Do you think you’ll be happy here?”

  “Not happy, darling. But as contented as I could be anywhere away from you.” Suddenly she giggled.

  “What is it?”

  “Bucky. His lordly disgust when those two little girls made their overtures.”

  “I noticed he joined the fun and games nevertheless.”

  “But in a superior and patronizing way. He’s such a male little male.”

  “And tomorrow the birthday girl.”

  “Fifteen. Gosh, that’s a terrible year.”

  “Heresy.”

  “No, it isn’t. I was desperately unhappy at fifteen. Every mirror broke my heart. I was a mess. And so I wasn’t going to be able to marry him.”

  “Who was he?”

  “Don’t snicker at me now. Clark Gable. I had it all arranged. He was going to come to Texas to make a movie, and it was going to be a movie about oil wells. And I was going to go out to where they were making the movie and one day he would turn and he would look right at me, and smile in that funny quizzical way, with one eyebrow up and one down, and he’d stop the cameras and come over and look at me. Then he would signal to somebody, who would come running to him and he would say, pointing at me as I stood proud and haughty in my beauty, ‘She is my next leading lady. Fix up the contracts.’ But, oh dear, I was such a mess.”

  “I had an intense and disturbing affair with Sylvia Sidney. She’d curl up in my arms like a silky little kitten and tell me it really didn’t matter at all to her that I was nearly twenty pounds overweight. Now who’s snickering?”

  “I’m sorry, honey.”

  “Then, of course, there was my Joan Bennett phase. And Ida Lupino for a time. And Jean Harlow. Jean used to drive out from Paris and wait for me in her Pierce-Arrow convertible behind the hangar. After I landed my riddled aircraft, gun barrels still smoking, and three more Huns to my credit, I would saunter, lean and casual and deadly, back to the big car. My incredible luck was due to her black-mesh stocking I tied to my upper arm before every combat operation. She used to bring out a hamper of iced champagne and that night they would see us in all the gay places of Paris, the undulant platinum blonde and the tall veteran pilot with that look of far places in his eyes and great and humble bravery.”

  “Really?”

  “She left me for a British major. On my very next assignment, I forgot the stocking. A German ace pounced on me out of the clouds. As I went down in flames, I saluted him and he waggled his wings out of courtesy to a dying hero.”

  “Heavens to Betsy!”

  “That’s a very insulting snicker. It’s a sort of sniggling sound.”

  “Gosh, I wish it could be like this. I mean so safe. And all of us together. I don’t want Sunday to come and I don’t want to stand out there making my mouth smile while you drive away.”

  “Don’t think about it.”

  “I can’t stop.”

  “Perhaps you could be distracted.”

  “M—mmm. Perhaps.”

  As had been prearranged by letter, they picked Jamie up at his camp before lunch. He was brown and thin and scrubbed to a startling state of cleanliness. Then they drove three miles along the lake shore road to Minnatalla to get Nancy. Nancy looked overwhelmingly healthy, and she had stars in her eyes.

  They drove thirty miles due east to the small city of Aldermont for a festive meal in the dining room of the Hotel Aldermont. The hostess gave them an alcove off the dining room where they had more privacy.

  Nancy was bubbling over. The camp was wonderful this year. Mr. Teller was pretty creepy, but he kept out of the way. She was assistant chairman of the social committee, and Tommy Kent was chairman of the Gannatalla social committee, so they had meetings often to make arrangements. Tommy was doing wonderfully. Mr. Menard had made Tommy a sort of personal assistant. One redheaded girl got poison ivy so badly she had to be sent home. Another girl fell off a horse and sprained her shoulder, but she wasn’t going home. There was a new fast boat for the water skiing, and the camps took turns with it. Tommy was the regular driver.

  When Nancy had run down, Jamie gave a sketchy account of his adventures. There was a wise guy in his cabin, and so Jamie had put the gloves on with him and Mr. Menard stopped the fight after Jamie had knocked the other boy down twice and now they were friends. He’d passed his junior lifesaving. He had killed a snake with a stick. He was making his own bow for archery. Out of lemon wood. You had to scrape it with pieces of glass, and you made your own cord out of winding linen thread and then rubbing beeswax on it.

  After lunch Sam went out and got the presents out of the car. Nancy was delighted with everything. There were the traditional small consolation presents, one apiece for Jamie and Bucky. Consolation for it being somebody else’s birthday.

  Carol, by arrangement, took Bucky off and left Sam at the table with Nancy and Jamie so he could tell them about the new arrangement. They could know their mother and Bucky were at The West Wind in Suffern, but they were to keep it to themselves. Nancy asked if she could tell Tommy, and Sam told her she could. In the event of serious emergency they could phone their mother in Suffern, and phone him either at the office or the New Essex House.

  Jamie looked somberly at his father and said, “It’s just like running away, isn’t it?”

  “You hush!” Nancy said.

  “Never mind, Nance. Yes, son. In a sense it is. But I’m not hiding. I’m going to be careful, but I’m not going to hide. T
hey put women and children in the lifeboats first.”

  “Tommy and Mr. Menard keep telling me to stay with the other kids all the time,” Jamie said. “I wish that dirty prisoner would come to camp. We’d fix him, boy. We’ll all get stones and we’ll all throw at once. Those stones’ll plunk him right in the head. Then we’ll tie him up and take him in the kitchen and run him through the brand-new meat slicer that cost a hundred and twenty bucks, Mr. Menard said.”

  “Jamie!” Nancy said. “Don’t say such terrible things.”

  “Now she’s fifteen does she get to give me orders?” Jamie demanded.

  “When you come up with an idea guaranteed to spoil her lunch, she has a right to object.”

  “And I’ll set it to slice him real thin,” Jamie said darkly.

  “I too think that is enough of that line of speculation, young man. You kids have the picture now. Don’t either of you get careless. The man has a car. He’s out of jail. When he finds the house closed, he can easily find out in the village where you kids go in the summer. I know he knows Nancy by sight, and I’d guess he knows you by sight too. Ready to go? Your mother and Bucky will be out in the lobby.”

  “It’s funny to think about nobody being home,” Nancy said. She touched her father’s arm shyly as they stood up. “Will you please be real careful, Daddy.”

  “I will.”

  On Sunday night Sam had dinner in the grill room at the New Essex House by himself, and then went into the bar for a nightcap before going up to bed. He stood at the bar and nursed his drink and felt very alone in the world. At the end of the drive that went up to the side entrance of The West Wind, he had stopped and looked back and waved. Carol and Bucky, standing close together on the green grass of the lawn, waved back. He drove the little car too fast all the way back to New Essex.

  A booming voice in his ear startled him. “Out on the town, Sam?”

  He turned and looked into the wide, smiling face of Georgie Felton, and tried to register enough pleasure to avoid rudeness.

  Georgie Felton was a real-estate broker and a highly successful one. He was a large and solid fat man, of heavy-handed humor and an impenetrable hide. He treated women with an overwhelming air of courtly gallantry, which, by the time of the second meeting, became curiously spiced with rather coarse innuendo. With men he was the traditional jolly boy. He belonged to a staggering number of civic and service organizations. In the background was a round Angela Felton and four small round Feltons. He would be called Georgie until the day he died. Carol could not stand him. She could not understand how he could be successful. When they were house hunting he had taken her to see houses so remarkably unsuitable that she suspected he was making an obscure joke. But Georgie was very serious.

  “Hello, Georgie.”

  Georgie clapped him on the right shoulder and said, “Benny, get Mr. Bowden another of whatever he’s having.”

  “No, really.”

  “Come on. If you’re still on your feet, you can handle another one. What brings you into town tonight? Big date with a mysterious blonde?”

  “I’m staying here at the hotel.”

  Georgie’s eyebrows went up. “Oh, ho! Sam, old buddy, it happens to the best of us. You can’t get along with ’em and you can’t get along without ’em. One little wrong word and there you are. Doghoused.”

  Sam felt intense irritation. He certainly had no intention of telling Georgie his troubles. “It isn’t like that, Georgie. Two of the kids are at camp, and so we closed the house and Carol is taking a little vacation with our youngest.”

  Georgie nodded in a sage way. “You hear a lot about that, Sam. A marital vacation. Get out of each other’s hair for a while.” He gave Sam a lecherous wink and elbowed him so hard in the ribs he knocked him off balance. “But I’ve never been able to talk Angie into it. Teach me how to arrange it, Sammy boy.” And he threw his head back and laughed. He nudged Sam again. “You got something lined up yet, old buddy? Want to borrow Uncle Georgie’s little black book?”

  “No, thanks, Georgie.”

  Sam blocked the next nudge. “You got in the wrong business, Sammy boy. I’ll tell you, there’s something about walking through a nice new house that brings out the best in a pretty little woman. You’d be surprised at some of the ones I run into, laddy.”

  “For God’s sake, Georgie, stop ramming that elbow into me.”

  “What? Well, parm me all over the place. I guess it’s one of those habits. Now there’s some stuff right over there against the wall. That off-the-shoulder deal. You like that?”

  “It’s nice. And the man with her has shoulders on him.”

  “Let’s you and me go to a real live place. It’s dead in here.”

  “I’m sorry, Georgie. I’m going to go up and read awhile and go to bed.”

  “Aw, come on, pal. We could …” Georgie stopped abruptly. Sam looked down at him. Georgie was moistening his lips and looking down into the front of Sam’s suit coat. Sam looked down and saw the butt grip of the gun. He fixed his coat quickly to hide it.

  “What the hell are you carrying that thing for?” Georgie asked in a beefy whisper. His expression was shocked.

  “It’s like this, Georgie. There’s a man gunning for me. He might show up any time.”

  Georgie looked around nervously. “You’re kidding.”

  Sam looked at him solemnly. “We lawyers make enemies, Georgie.”

  “Is … the man in town?”

  “He might come through that door any minute.”

  Georgie edged back. “Well, I’ll be go to hell.”

  “Don’t talk about it to anyone, Georgie.”

  “No. No, I sure won’t.” He looked at his wristwatch. “I’ll be running along. Nice to run into you, Sam.” He was backing away as he spoke.

  Sam’s pleasure in the incident faded quickly. Georgie would talk. Georgie would tell everyone he ran into. He finished the unwanted drink and went up to bed.

  Nothing happened on Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday. Sam followed his cautious routine. He called Carol twice from the office. She had a determined cheerfulness plastered over her tension and her loneliness. But the camouflage was imperfect. On Wednesday morning there was a long, chatty letter from her. She described the other tenants in the hotel. She had found a tennis partner, a rangy, powerful girl whose husband was a Marine captain on overseas duty. Her game was rusty but it was beginning to come back. Bucky had shown such an interest she had found him a small racket and she was teaching him the basic strokes. He was learning quite quickly. Bucky was contemptuous of the poor television reception in the lounge. There was a good loan library in the big drugstore in the town. And she missed him. They both missed him and missed the house and missed the campers.

  On Thursday afternoon he decided that he had had enough of waiting and wondering. It was time the white mouse ventured out of the hole and found where the cat was.

  He arrived at Nicholson’s Bar on Market Street at six o’clock. The bar part was a narrow room with striated plywood walls painted dark green, with bar stools and the edge of the bar upholstered in green imitation leather. There were mirrors and chrome and tricky lighting on the back bar. It had a scuffed, worn look. The plastics and paint were not holding up well. The mirrors and the chrome were peeling. The television over the bar was on and there was an out-of-order sign on the jukebox. There were three men sitting at the far end of the bar, heads close together, talking in low, important voices. There were no other customers at the bar.

  Beyond the bar part was a wider room, a cocktail lounge. The daylight did not reach back to that room. Two amber spots were angled at a small, empty platform which held a midget white piano and a very battered set of drums. In the reflected glow he could see two couples at two tables in the lounge. A waitress leaned against the frame of the wide doorway between the bar and the lounge. She wore a dark-green uniform and a soiled white apron. She was a washed-out, sandy blonde and she was picking at a back molar with her thumbnail.
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  The bartender stood endlessly polishing a glass and watching the television screen. Sam took a stool on the curve of the bar near the door, then, feeling self-conscious, he moved to the end stool around the curve where, by sitting sideways, his back was to the wall and he could see the door.

  The bartender drifted over to him, looking at the screen until the last possible moment. He wiped the bar in front of Sam and said, “Yes, sir?”

  “Miller, I guess.”

  “Coming up.”

  He brought the beer and a glass, picked up Sam’s dollar, rang it up, put a half dollar and a nickel on the bar.

  “Pretty slow?”

  “Always is, this time of day. We do a late business.”

  “Has Max been in lately?”

  He saw the bartender look him over more carefully. “What Max do you mean? We got a lot of Maxes.”

  “The bald one with the tan.”

  The bartender pulled at his underlip. “Oh, that Max. I seen him one time lately. Let me think. Sure, it was last Saturday night. He was in, oh, maybe ten minutes. Two fast shots and gone. He had some trouble, you know. He slugged a cop and they put him in city jail for thirty days.”

  “How about Bessie McGowan? She been in?”

  “She’s always in. I wish to hell she’d pick another spot for a change. If you know her, you know how she gets. She ought to be coming in any time now.”

  One of the men at the other end of the bar called him and the bartender walked away. Ten minutes later, when Sam was thinking of signaling for another beer, a woman walked in. She could not have selected anything to wear which could have made her look more grotesque. She had on white pumps with four-inch heels, skintight black bullfighter pants, a wide white leather belt with a gilt buckle, a tight sweater-blouse in a red-and-white horizontal candy stripe. A woman with a perfect figure might have been able to carry it off with a certain amount of theatrical success. But this was a woman in her middle years, with a mop of hair so abused by dyes that it was the color and texture of sun-bleached hemp. She had a puffy chipmunk face, square red lips painted boldly on. Her waist was surprisingly narrow in contrast to the wobbling massiveness of hip, the vast and doughy contours of the barely credible breasts. It was alarmingly obvious that she wore nothing under pants and blouse except an uplift bra that staunchly focused and aimed the great breasts dead ahead like fire-control direction on a battleship. She walked in an almost visible cloud of musky perfume, and she dangled a white shoulder bag from a single finger, so that it nearly dragged on the floor. She was grotesque, ludicrous and incredible. Yet there was nothing pathetic about her. She was carrying on her own gallant war against time in her own way. She was in the great bawdy tradition of the mining camps and the frontiers.