The Last One Left

by John D. MacDonald

  When he went down the ladder, yawningly ready for bed, as he crossed the clearing, he was startled to see the big pale shape of a strange boat under the porch platform, and after a puzzled moment, it all came tumbling back into his head. He hurried up the steps and into the cabin, knelt on the floor beside the bed in darkness, leaned his ear near her lips, felt and heard the weak but steady exhalations. Her breath was sour, and, through the sharper odors of the medication, he could scent the smell of sickness, a smell like fresh bread. He put the backs of his fingers against her forehead. The heat still came from it, and maybe it was a little less, but he could not be certain.

  Suddenly he realized he could sleep on missy’s boat, in one of the two forward bunks. All day, and he hadn’t given that boat a real good look. It could have some good things on it, in a lot better shape than if it had gone down and they’d come washing onto the beach.

  Once he was aboard he remembered seeing the flashlight in the same stowage locker where he had found the first-aid kit. He found it by touch, a good chunky one with a big lens, a red flasher, and one of those square six-volt batteries.

  He found a lot of good things. Masks, fins, snorkels, spear guns, spinning rods, tackle box, nylon dock lines, fenders, charts, boat hook, bedding, several bottles of liquor, towels, bathing suits, hats, boat shoes, fire extinguisher, cans of engine oil. And, carefully wrapped against dampness, two guns. A twenty-two caliber target pistol and, broken down, a four ten gauge, single-barrel, automatic shotgun. Fool guns, he thought. Play toys. No punch at all to knock them down if they’re coming on you fast. He admired how neatly everything was stowed, and how the stowage compartments were fitted in.

  Come daylight, he would figure out the electrical system and how much fuel she had, and how the little toilet worked. He opened the foredeck hatch for ventilation and figured out how the screens worked. He decided he would not use the bedding, just sleep on top of the plastic bunk cover. Crouched double under the low overhead, he stripped down to his ragged underwear shorts, turned the flashlight off and stretched out.

  Immediately he began worrying about her. He went up and looked at her, came down and went back up again. Finally he tied a piece of cord around her ankle, ran it over to the trap door, let it hang through, and to the dangling end tied two empty tin cans, then dropped some small sinkers into them. When he tweaked the cord they made a splendid clatter. If she worsened, she might thrash around some, and if she woke up, it would give him warning so he could get to her before she got too scared waking up in a strange place.

  The Lieutenant would be proud to know how well his sergeant was handling things. Saving everybody trouble. Why, if he ran that sick little girl over to town, they’d start yelling at him and get him all mixed up. And then all the candy fools in their candy houses would be signing up papers again, making trouble for the Lieutenant. And the Lieutenant had said not to get mixed up in anything at all, because give them half a reason they’d move him off the island for good. The Lieutenant would understand he couldn’t have just looked into that fine boat and seen her and then shoved the boat away to float on off into the mist. It was a poor damned excuse for a soldier didn’t look out for the wounded.

  But, he thought, it might be the best thing of all to keep the Lieutenant out of it until it was all over, one way or another. If the little thing died, in spite of all the nursing care, he’d make up a nice box and bury her nice and say the words, and keep some fresh flowers over her for a time.

  If she come out of it, she would be poorly for a time until the strength came back to where she could go driving off in that boat, smiling, waving back, calling out Thank you, Sergeant, Goodby, Sergeant, Thanks for everything, until her girl-voice faded into the distance.

  Clothes! Now either way there’d have to be clothes. Not a thing on this boat except the naked little swim clothes. She’d have to have something to wear as she was getting well. And she’d want the other girl things too, comb and lipstick and such, and a purse to carry them in.

  Until he could get it worked out, maybe one of his two good white shirts would come long enough on her so it could be sewed into something to cover her decent. Some pretty white nylon line off this boat for a belt. For a little bit of pretty, she could have that pin he’d found on the beach, with the red stone.

  Later he could work out some way to get her the necessaries. Get some woman to buy things he could bring back. One of the girls in the bank where he cashed the government check every month? No, she might tell the Lieutenant. Then one of the women that hung around Shanigan’s Waterfront? Every once in a while, maybe not as often as every two months, those women would start coming into his mind no matter how hard he tried to keep them out, and then one night he would open the box and take out a twenty and a five and go over in the skiff and tie up at Shanigan’s and sit at the bar, and by the time the five was mostly drunk up, there’d be one of them handy to take him on back past the lady’s and men’s, into the storeroom, onto that busted old couch jammed up into the corner, making sure she had the twenty before she’d take off her skirt and pants, all beefy white meat there in the same light that always came in the little high dusty window, blinking red and white, red and white, over and over, fast as a heart beat, from Shanigan’s sign that hung over the docks. The light always the same, and the itchy need for it always the same, and no matter how different they looked out by the bar, in the little room it was always like exactly the same one, thick white belly and thighs, the dark smudge, big handfuls of the softness, and no poor damned way in the world to slow it or stop it or change it until too sudden it was over.

  No, not one of them night women. Not one of them who took the money and made fun. Dumb Corpo. Herman the Hermit. Where’s your medals, Sarg? Going back in the skiff he’d have to fight to stay awake, and the whisky would have turned sour on his stomach, and all the next day he’d tell himself he’d never go back there, not ever again, no sir. There wasn’t a one of them fit to pick out clothes for the Missy, even touch them.

  Just at the edge of sleep he was brought back by a frightful and familiar sound, and he knew one of the big owls had drifted silently into his clearing, carrying in its talons one of the small white terns from the sand spit at the inlet. The victim shrieked and squalled its panic, seeming to beg for mercy, and audible under the terror cries were the owl sounds, a deep hoo-ha-hoo-ho-ha, a rich continuing throaty chuckle of satisfaction. The tern sounds weakened to a whimper, ended with a final whistly squeal. In the silence the owl chortled a time longer before settling to the feast.

  Better explain to Missy about that before it happens some night when she’s on the mend.

  Eleven

  THE WIRE-SERVICE stringers in Nassau, as a result of interviewing the Barths and the Hilgers, the two couples aboard that Jacksonville Chris-Craft which had taken Captain Garry Staniker off South Joulter Cay and rushed him to Nassau, were able to phone in reasonably complete accounts of the disaster in time to hit the Saturday morning newspapers.

  CAPTAIN SOLE SURVIVOR IN YACHT EXPLOSION was the page-one head on the Miami Record. Raoul Kelly, eating a late lunch-counter breakfast noted that the paper had rerun a photograph an alert reporter had unearthed earlier in the week, taken at a Miami marina by a boat buff who had been far more interested in the lines of the custom cruiser than in the people aboard. It had been taken moments after the lines had been taken aboard. Staniker, at the wheel on the flying bridge, was half turned, backing the Muñeca out of the slip. Mr. Bixby Kayd, looking enormous in swim trunks and a terry beach coat, and wearing big dark glasses and a baseball cap, stood on the cockpit deck, leaning over the rail, fending off a piling with a big hand. Roger stood near the bow rail, making up a line. Carolyn Kayd—and few news reports failed to mention she had been first runner-up in the Miss Texas contest four years ago—lay supine on a beach towel spread on the trunk cabin roof, one knee hiked up, the briefness of her bikini and the camera angle giving more than ample reason for the approval registered by th
e contest judges. The little dark daughter, Stella, was up on the flying bridge standing by Staniker, looking back as he was. Just visible toward the stern, beyond Stella’s father, was the boat guest, Leila Boylston, a very trim and pretty young lady, making up one of the stern lines. Only Mary Jane Staniker was missing, and could be presumed to be below engaged in housekeeping duties. On an inside page Raoul found a simplified map of the central portion of the Bahamas, showing New Providence, the Berry Islands, and the Joulter Cays at the north end of Andros. The artist had marked a spot to the right of the Joulter Cays with a tiny symbol of a boat with little streaks erupting from it to indicate explosion.

  Raoul read the whole account carefully, ordered more coffee and read it through again. Staniker’s condition was fair. He had some bad burns. He was in Princess Margaret Hospital, and had been unable as yet to confirm what he had told the Jacksonville couples after being rescued.

  One small detail bothered him. It said that prior to their being employed a month ago by Bixby Kayd, Staniker and his wife had operated Parker’s Marina south of Tahiti Beach on Biscayne Bay. He had learned from Francisca that Captain Staniker, Crissy Harkinson’s frequent visitor, had been working somewhere not too far from Crissy’s home, but he had not known what it was. He had passed Parker’s Marina enough times to remember it as a dreary little beer-bait-boats place.

  With the newspaperman’s instinct for just how much coincidence was acceptable, he felt something a little curious about the interrelationships involved. Ferris Fontaine, Crissy Harkinson, Kayd, Staniker. Staniker had been sneaking away from the drab little marina to continue his red-hot affair with the lady who had sold the Odalisque out from under him. Kayd visits Crissy in March. Why would Kayd hire somebody who apparently couldn’t locate another job as hired captain? Why couldn’t Staniker find another job? The cruiser the Senator gave Crissy had been sold in early January.

  He shrugged and pushed it out of his mind. Obviously, if there was something fishy about the whole thing, any attempt to unravel it would involve ’Cisca because she was the only one who could swear to Kayd’s visit to the Harkinson woman. And what would that kind of fuss do to ’Cisca’s precarious adjustment? What would it do to her to be taken to a place full of men in uniform and asked questions?

  It is, after all, gringo trouble, and none of our business, he thought. The attitude filled him with a mocking amusement. The refugee attitude. Or, more accurately, the peon syndrome. Let the rich slay each other at will. Each one is one less.

  When the phone call came, a little after noon that Saturday, Crissy was on her back on a sun pad beside the sailboat tethered in the boat basin below her house. She had folded and tucked her bikini to the smallest possible dimensions, and she held her face upturned, the sun glowing oven-red through her eyelids, her face and body oiled, trickles of sweat diluting the oil. Francisca came pattering down the stone steps to say a newspaper was on the telephone.

  It was a call she had expected, and to give herself time to go over probable questions and answers, she told Francisca to tell the man to phone back in twenty minutes. When he called again she had showered and just gotten into a robe. She took it on the bedroom extension, stretching diagonally across the large low bed, prone, propped on her elbows.

  “Weldon, on the Record, Miz Harkinson. This Captain Garry Staniker, have I got it right that he worked for you?”

  “Yes, that’s right, Mr. Weldon.”

  “And the name of your boat was the Odalisque. Right? What was the size of it?”

  “Not very large. It was a thirty-four foot Hatteras. Why are you asking me this, please?”

  “Well, I guess you know he’s been found and …”

  “Yes. It must have been a terrible thing.”

  “The reason for the questions, there’s going to be some kind of investigation, find out if it was his fault. What we’re doing is trying to get the jump on it, trace him back a ways, see if people he worked for thought he was a good captain. How long did he work for you?”

  “I guess you could say two and a half years, approximately. Nearer three. A little less than a year ago I put the boat on the market. I wasn’t using it very much, and the expense of the insurance and maintenance and dockage and fuel and the captain’s salary was just too much. When I put it on the market last April I paid him through May. I gave him excellent recommendations, but I guess jobs like that aren’t easy to find. Anyway, I kept reducing my asking price until the boat was sold last January. I got about half what I expected.”

  “How did you happen to hire Staniker?”

  “Actually a friend found him for me. The Captain had been operating a boat for a company my friend had an interest in, and they had decided to sell the boat.”

  “Do you mind telling me who this friend was?”

  “If I don’t tell you, I suppose you could find out easily enough. It was State Senator Ferris Fontaine. I’m afraid if you print this people might misinterpret it. I had an arrangement with the Senator whereby he had the use of the Odalisque and her captain whenever he wanted, letting me know in advance, of course. And he contributed to the upkeep. That’s why, a few months after the Senator passed away, I decided the Odalisque was costing too much for the number of times I was using it.”

  “Were you satisfied with the job Staniker did?”

  “Oh yes. He kept her in very good condition, ready to go on a moment’s notice.”

  “Did he ever get into trouble with the boat?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, damage it in any way while running it.”

  “There was just one little insurance claim. He went aground with the Senator and a party aboard up near Stuart, coming out of the St. Lucie Canal and heading out through the pass into the Atlantic. But I understand that is very tricky water up there, and the sand bars keep shifting. He ran aground at slow speed right in the Channel and bent a shaft and a wheel.”

  “Did he drink while running your boat?”

  “Sometimes when we went deep sea fishing and it was very hot, he’d drink some cans of cold beer. Nothing more than that as far as I know.”

  “How about safety precautions?”

  “The Odalisque was powered by gasoline engines, and he was always very careful about gassing up, always opening the hatches and turning on the blowers and being very firm with anybody who forgot and took out a cigarette. And he had a bilge sniffer installed when I first got the boat, with a warning buzzer. We passed the Coast Guard inspections without any trouble.”

  “Then you were perfectly willing to give him a good recommendation when he was looking for another position?”

  “Yes indeed. I gave him a letter, to whom it may concern, when he went on half pay, saying he had worked for me for such and such a period of time, and I was selling my boat, and I would be happy to answer any questions any prospective employer cared to ask about him.”

  “Did many ask?”

  “I think there were six or seven. I praised Captain Staniker to the skies, but I guess the jobs just never materialized. When I had to put him on half pay, Mrs. Staniker found a job at a little marina to make ends meet.”

  “Did you keep track of how he was making out after your cruiser was sold, Mrs. Harkinson?”

  After a careful moment of hesitation, she said, “I would say that I was kept better informed than I cared to be, Mr. Weldon. When he couldn’t find anything and began to lose his confidence, he seemed to begin to feel that I had some sort of responsibility to find him something better than working in that little boat-rental place. So he would stop by and tell me his problems. I felt too sorry for him to tell him to stop bothering me.”

  “Did Mr. Kayd check with you before hiring him?”

  “No, he didn’t. But I believe that Mr. Kayd was a friend of the Senator, and I think they had some mutual business interests. I didn’t know Mr. Kayd personally, but there is certainly a good chance he could have gone cruising on the Odalisque with one of the groups Senator Font
aine would take out, and he certainly could have talked to Garry Staniker and liked him, and found out that Garry ran a charter ketch all over the Bahamas for five years. And he would realize that Senator Fontaine would not—well, I guess you know the facts of political life, Mr. Weldon.”

  “I see what you mean, sure. A boat is a good place to have a quiet little conference. Fontaine would have known Staniker was loyal and discreet when he recommended you take him on, and known he was competent. That should have been good enough for Kayd. Did Staniker tell you he’d landed a job?”

  “He called up to tell me. He was very pleased and excited. He said it was a marvelous cruiser and fine people. But in the next breath he was complaining about it being a temporary job, perhaps six weeks, a little more or a little less. He said his wife was worried about giving up their job of operating the marina to take a temporary job, and he said that even though it was very good pay, maybe she was right. I told him that he should do the most marvelous job he could, and there was the chance Mr. Kayd might keep them on permanently, and without any children to tie them down, there was no reason they couldn’t take the Muñeca back to Texas. And even if Mr. Kayd didn’t want a permanent couple aboard, certainly he might recommend them to some of his Texas friends with yachts. It seemed to cheer him up. Frankly, it was a relief to me to know he’d found something, and he wouldn’t be heckling me for a while.”