The Last One Left

by John D. MacDonald

Sam sighed audibly. “Before all this happened, I would have appointed myself to bring him to his senses. Sure. I would have told Kelly it was foolish to take Francisca out of the state. What the hell good is logical behavior? It’s a cold satisfaction, gentlemen. I can verify that. I have always been a very logical type. You have to let people be as irrational as they want to be, and maybe there are better reasons than you know. Maybe what Jonathan is doing isn’t a crazy one-man search party and nothing but that. Maybe out there on those flats he’s putting up a bridge, a way to cross from a life with Leila in it to a life without her. He knows she wouldn’t have even been aboard that boat if I hadn’t sent her off with the Kayds to try to bust up the romance. I wanted to bust it up so she’d marry into the kind of status I thought was important, so I wouldn’t have to explain to people that my sister was off do-gooding in the jungle someplace for a very small dollar. Jonathan offended me because he doesn’t give a damn about the things I thought were important. I was awake at dawn this morning. I was making up a conversation, explaining to Jonathan what I was going to do. I could develop certain contacts, and I could afford to pay the fee to have some specialists pick up the Harkinson woman very quietly and take her to the right place and turn her over to me. But Jonathan kept asking me why. I told him because I expect it of myself. Then he asked me if I expected it of myself, or expected it of the man I have been imitating all my life. Good question. He wanted to know if I thought Leila would approve. Another good question. But I can’t just let go of it! Not all the way!”

  He noticed that they were looking at him with strange expressions. He realized why, and shook his head and laughed at them. “The lawyer has flipped, huh? Ever notice how uneasy people get if you try to say some of the weird things that happen inside your head? I used to hold everything back. That’s part of the incantation, because if you let go, They come after you. I’m going to try to tell people what I think. It’s going to raise hell with my law practice. But it’s the only way I can think of to stop being completely alone in the world.”

  “You’ve been under a lot of strain,” Lobwohl said.

  “Starting before any of this started. Anxiety building up for years. The pursuit of perfection. But I imagine I’ll take one small hack at playing God. Some photographer is going to get a good shot of Crissy Harkinson. I’ll arrange to get some prints. I’ll turn them over to somebody who went into the deal with Bix Kayd and took a whipping. I’ll just tell them there’s a good chance she knows exactly where the money is. There’ll be no place in the world she can hide.”

  Twenty-five

  ALL DAY WEDNESDAY Corpo kept thinking of chores he had been meaning to do.

  An hour before sunset Leila Boylston marched up to him where he was nailing a crude brace to the side of the stairway.

  “This is about enough!” she said.

  He turned and smiled at her. “Getting hongry, Missy?”

  “Now don’t you start that. Sarg, you made a sacred promise on your word of honor. I’m all ready to go. I’ve been all ready since morning. And you’ve been dragging your feet all day. I’m really getting very angry with you.”

  “I’ve been thinking on it, Miss Leila. Make more sense to get a nice start in the morning, don’t you think?”

  She stamped her foot and began to cry. Ten minutes later she was still snuffling as the Sergeant slowly threaded his narrow channel at the wheel of the Muñequita, towing his skiff on a short line astern.

  “Kindly please stop them crying noises,” the Sergeant said. “I’m doing like you want, okay?”

  “I c-can’t help it, I’m so huh-happy.”

  “Happy to get shut of the ol’ Sergeant. Sure.”

  “I’ll come back to see you. I promised. I’ll bring Jonathan and Sam. They’ll want to thank you for everything.”

  “Hardly likely,” he grumbled. “Never will see you again, Missy. Never figured on liking anybody around. You did get me real edged up a lot of times, but mostly there was more good to it than bad.”

  “Thank you.”

  “No cause for thanks. You wrote down the count on that money?”

  “Right on your calendar. You shouldn’t keep all that cash around, really. And I’m going to pay back what you spent on me.”

  “It was a present. I keep telling you. I never held with trousers on girls, but you look right good in that there pair.”

  When he came to the mouth of his channel he slowed, then edged out very cautiously. A tug was taking a big dredge north along the Waterway. About a mile to the north-west, a red runabout was towing three water skiers.

  “Clear enough, I guess,” he said and moved out, following the natural channel across the flats, and then, as he reached deeper water, he turned south and looked back to see how the skiff rode as he increased speed.

  “What we’ll do,” he called over the louder noise of the two engines. “I’ll take you down close enough so you can see a place where you should tie up. You go in slow with it. Nothing fancy. You understand how?”

  “I steer toward the side of the dock and I pull these two things back to half way and kind of coast, and before I bump I pull them back all the way to reverse, and then push them to half way and turn off the keys.”

  “I’ll stay in the skiff close by and when I see you’ve made it, I’ll go on back home.”

  “And I won’t remember a thing about who took care of me, Sarg.”

  About a mile and a half south of his island, Corpo saw a fast launch coming from the direction of town. He eased well off to starboard so they would pass at a good distance. After he was by he looked back and saw the launch make a big fast white-water turn and start coming up very fast behind him.

  Corpo stood with his hands locked on the wheel. He heard the pursuing boat slap through his wake. It came up beside him, twenty feet away on the port side, siren growling as it slowed to his speed. He did not look over at them.

  “Sergeant!” the familiar voice shouted. “Sergeant Corpol! Kill those engines! Now!”

  He pulled the throttles back. The bow lifted and then settled. He put both drives in neutral, turned both keys. He moved back from the wheel and still not looking toward the Lieutenant, he sagged down into a sitting position on the deck. He closed his eyes and rocked slowly back and forth. When your eyes were closed, voices sounded funny. Like the people were talking into empty barrels.

  With vivid flashing eyes, body rigid with anger and indignation, Miss Boylston looked directly at Dave Dickerson, then at Gordon Dale, then at Chief Cooley. “I am not going to be given a sedative, gentlemen! I am not going to be knocked out. And the business of Sergeant Corpo is not going to be set aside so you can take care of it later.”

  “All I said was …”

  “I heard what you said, Mr. Dale. Should I call you Lieutenant the way Sarg does? You and I happen to be the only people in the world he gives one damn about, and I am not going to talk about anything to anybody until I have some kind of guarantee you’ll leave him alone.”

  “I don’t rightly see how we can do that,” said Chief Cooley.

  “Lock him up, eh? The wonderful answer to everything. I would like to speak to Mr. Dale in private.”

  Cooley sighed, nodded at Detective Sergeant Dickerson and they left the hospital room. “Mr. Dale, are you getting tired of being responsible for Sergeant Corpo? Is this just a wonderful opportunity to stick him back into a veterans hospital for the rest of his life?”

  “You’re very young, Miss Boylston. He held you there on that island over two weeks. He didn’t seek medical attention for you. He did not report finding the boat and finding you. He told me that in front of Chief Cooley. It’s out of my hands.”

  “If you want it out of your hands. That’s my point. When he found me he thought I was dying. I guess I should have been. I think if he tried to bring me in when he found me, I could have died on the way. He is simple, and he is confused, but he certainly is smart enough to know what would happen to him if he brought a girl�
��s body to the city dock. He is confused about what happened. When I regained consciousness he was going to bring me in. But I begged him not to. I pleaded with him.”

  “Why?”

  “I couldn’t remember what happened. I knew somebody wanted to kill me. I didn’t want them to find me. I wanted to stay right there on his island where I felt safe. He was very sweet and very gentle, and he did not do anything out of line at all. Why do you people want to punish him for doing what I asked him to do? How was he to know?”

  “Then your memory came back.”

  “Don’t look at me in that skeptical way. I remembered, and I asked him to bring me here to town. That’s what he was doing when you and that cop started showing off, blowing sirens and waving a gun.”

  “Dickerson picked up the name on the transom with the glasses. The Muñequita. What was any cop supposed to do?”

  “That’s beside the point. He’s no danger to himself or anyone else. He’s a gentle person. He was released in your custody. He admires you. What’s the matter with you? Does it spoil your image to have to look out for a disabled man who saved your life?”

  “Now just a minute!”

  “Don’t get stuffy with me. You remind me of my brother. He’s a lawyer too. You’re all defensive because you haven’t been doing your job, Mr. Dale.”

  “I’ve done everything possible to …”

  “To let him go his own way. So you’ve let him accumulate over twenty-three thousand dollars in cash in two ammunition boxes in that crazy shack of his.”

  “That much!”

  “If you cared, you’d know how much. We have something in common. He saved my life too. Why don’t you buy the island from the state? Would it cost more than he’s got?”

  “I don’t know. Probably not.”

  “If he can’t own property, if he’s legally incompetent, borrow the money from him and buy it and lease it to him for the rest of his life for a dollar. When he dies, dedicate it as a bird sanctuary or some damned thing. But right now, please, get those fools to let him out of the cage they’ve put him in and let him go back to his island. This is a lousy time for you to give up on him.”

  He looked at her. “The minute I heard about his shopping spree I should have gone out there. But I didn’t. Too busy. Too indifferent. Too much trouble. So I’m annoyed at myself, and I feel guilty, so the Sergeant is a handy target. Okay, girl. I’ll fight them off and pry him loose one more time.”

  “As many more times as you have to.”

  “But humor me a little. Let me keep telling myself it’s the last time.”

  The nurse gave Sam Boylston a shy and luminous smile and ducked out of the room, closing the door gently. He approached the bed, shocked at her emaciated look, yet with a great joy that it was indeed Leila. On the way up, traveling at high speed in the official sedan, he had convinced himself that it was a case of some stupid girl hunting for publicity. With her eyes closed Leila looked emptied of all her familiar vitality.

  As he neared the bed she opened her eyes and looked quite vaguely at him, then gave a yelp of joy, grinned widely, stretched her arms out to him and began to cry. He bent awkwardly over the bed to hold her in a close embrace.

  “Hey,” she said. “Hey, Sam. You’re not supposed to cry too. You play things cool.”

  “Very cool. Very remote. Sure, honey. I’ve taken up crying lately. I might have to use it on a jury sometime.”

  He pulled a chair close to her bed. She blew her nose. “You know something, Sambo? I’ve never been really sure you love me. I guess you do. I guess you sent me on that crummy cruise because you love me. Where’s Jonathan?”

  “Hunting for you. In a homemade boat out there on the Bank. Maybe they’ve made radio contact by now. He—He knew you weren’t dead. Everybody knew you were. Everybody but him. Fool performance. He wanted to do it. I gave him some money.”

  “You? Financing foolishness?”

  “I wanted somebody believing in it, even if I knew it wasn’t true.”

  “If I’d died, he’d have felt that I wasn’t in the world any more. He’d have felt the emptiness. I would if he died. You go into one room, and you can tell if the whole house is empty. You can always tell. Damn it, they made me take a sedative. They keep prodding at me and saying Hmmm and Hmph. It scalds them they can’t find something wrong, really wrong.”

  “Leila, have they told you how they want to handle this?”

  “Yes. Complete loss of memory. But—I do remember. God, I remember! Have they found that crazy man?”

  “Take it easy, Leila. A man named Lobwohl wants to talk to you. Friend of mine. I’ll call Lyd while he’s talking to you. Is there anything I can get you?”

  “Jonathan, and quickly please.”

  At nine o’clock on Thursday morning, the red and white float plane came snoring and chattering down to circle the catamaran. Jonathan realized how silent his world had been. Sounds of the sea birds, slap of waves, creak of mast, the long exhalations of the wind. He thought the plane might be in trouble. It straightened out and ran downwind, then turned and landed, heading directly for them. Stanley turned the cat directly into the eye of the gentle breeze. The sail flapped. The plane stopped a hundred feet away, and then with short, sharp bursts it came toward them. Two dozen feet away the engine coughed and died. A man in weather-bleached khakis climbed out and stood on the float.

  “Jonathan Dye?” the man called.

  “That’s right, who are you?”

  “Can you heave a line over?”

  Stanley caught some wind and moved closer. He threw the line, and the pilot caught it deftly, made it fast to a brace. Stanley dropped the sail and pulled the catamaran and float plane together.

  “What do you want?” Jonathan asked.

  “Want to give you a plane ride, boy.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Had a time finding you the way the glare comes off these flats. I would say that from here it is just under a hundred miles a few points off due west, there’s a little Boylston girl wondering what’s taking me so long.”

  Jonathan stared at the pilot. He was a crickety old man, charred by the sun, brows and hair bleached white, tiny bright blue eyes, teeth like spoiled corn.

  “Flew wet goods out of these islands, you know, until that goddam FDR blew the business all to hell. The little bit you can tote in one of those old buckets, all struts and fabric and spit, it had to be prime goods to pay off. Ask anybody. They’ll tell you Jake Lord has flew everything that can get off the runway. Get your gear together now, boy.”

  “She’s alive?” Jonathan asked. “Leila?”

  He saw the mouth moving, knew the man was making words, but he could no longer hear them. He felt as if each of these long and silent days had been pulling some part of him to an unbearable thinness and length and tension, like a silvery ribbon reaching from him to the most distant pieces of rock and scrub they had searched.

  “She’s dead!” he bayed, as the strand broke. Then Stanley Moree was close to him, grin big, eyes wet, chopping his fist into Jonathan’s upper arm, telling him he was one crazy mon, and he would bring his woman back one day, and they would sail and sing and laugh.

  When the float plane turned back into the wind and lifted, Jonathan looked down and saw Stanley waving from the deck of the cat.

  On Friday, in the early afternoon of the tenth day of June, John Lobwohl had lunch with Palmer Haas in a booth in one of the back alcoves of Fritzhoff’s.

  Haas, a small man in his middle thirties, had the aggressive tough-nut face of a workmanlike welterweight, one of the spoilers managers avoid when they are bringing a promising boy up through the ratings.

  “Now what the hell, Johnny! What the hell!” Palmer Haas said in his abrupt rasping voice.

  “Now don’t plant your feet. Okay? I know and you know that you’re not going to enter into any conspiracy against your client.”

  “You’ve got a better name?”

  “Let’s call
it a search for truth.”

  “Real idealism, Captain. Makes my eyes sting a little.”

  “Any client deserves the best you’ve got. This one, this Cristen Harkinson is as poisonous as they come.”

  “Johnny, would you say to a doctor don’t treat that fellow, he beats up on his wife and kids?”

  “All right. You have a professional obligation. Everybody is entitled to every protection under the law. And we’re both stuck with the antagonist theory. I am a cop. My job is to accumulate a solid file, one with a reasonable chance of conviction, and present it to the States Attorney. Then you and him fight. Except for my people testifying for the prosecution, I’m out of the picture from that point on.”

  “Except you throw them too many files with big holes in the middle, you get shifted into some other line of cop work, Johnny.”

  The waiter brought the two steinkrugs of dark draft beer. Lobwohl took several deep swallows and set the stein down. “That confrontation rocked her, Palmy. You saw that. The last thing she ever expected was somebody to show up off that Muñeca. The Boylston girl tired fast, but she gave us a picture of how Staniker acted and what he said, and how he sawed the Kayd girl’s throat open that was as convincing as anything either of us are ever going to hear.”

  “But it was essentially bush, my friend. And having that Sam Boylston, the brother, right there was bush too. He never took his eyes off my client. You want to see what murder looks like before it happens, it was right there in his eyes. But it was a damn fool tick. You know better.”

  “It shook her. But you put on your big act about trickery and so on and it gave her time to steady down.”

  “I get paid to put on my acts.”

  “Let me ask you this. In complete confidence. An opinion between friends. What if the Boylston girl had been found in time for us to grab Staniker alive? Now forget all this crap about jurisdiction. Pretend it happened in my back yard. I’ve put my cards face up for you. Kayd visited Crissy Harkinson. Staniker gets the captain job. The Boylston girl’s story verifies what her lawyer brother dug up about the money. Don’t you think, based on what we both know and can guess about Staniker, that he would sing it all loud and clear, and implicate Harkinson?”