The Drowner

by John D. MacDonald

  “What?”

  “A passport with his picture in it, but it was a different name. And some business papers and things to match up with the new name. And thirty-five thousand dollars in bearer bonds. And a skinny green bank book without a name, just with French printing on it, from a bank in Zurich, showing twelve thousand pounds in that bank.”

  “So my top guess was closer.”

  “But no money. And it was the next day I asked you if he was in bad trouble.”

  “I told you the truth, Angie. I said that if they indicted him for fraud, I did not see how they could make it stick. I thought it would be a mistake on their part. But no trial is ever a sure thing, and there would always be the off chance he might have to do a year in Atlanta. But as it turned out, it was all worked out very smoothly.”

  “That’s the kind of chance Mister Sam would never take. When they come to get him, he’d be long gone. I suppose if you told them all this stuff, they’d come down on him again, rougher than before.”

  “Not if there’s any chance of our settling our differences.”

  “Gus, I just don’t see how you’re going to do that. Because the truth of the matter is that if you hadn’t started getting so sneaky, and making that fool joke, I wouldn’t have figured out about the money and who had it. When I talked to her to make sure of it, she thought you’d told me. And I guess you did without knowing it. Mister Sam has a weakness for women, but I can’t say it’s pure evil. They lead him on and he can’t help himself sometimes.”

  “You talked to her?”

  “And I lied to her, but it was in a good cause. I went quiet to her place one night, and she let me in all silk and lace and perfume. I told her I knew she had the money and she said she did. I called her a wicked fornicator. Then I told her the lie. I told her that you were planning to turn Mister Sam in so you’d get a percentage on the tax, and to say nothing to Mister Sam because he’d do some wild, crazy thing that would get him in worse trouble. I said you’d promised me you’d wait a while, and I was figuring out a good way to stop you, but I thought I’d need her help, and I’d let her know.”

  He was looking at her. His face was a featureless blur in the starlight, except for the vague calligraphy of the dark frames of his glasses.

  “He sure wasn’t going to run off, not even alone,” she continued. “I protect that man with all my heart and soul, Gus. I’m not going to let another thing hurt him, all the rest of his life. Nothing. Nobody.” She realized that Gus, moving ever so slowly, had hitched forward and was reaching a questing toe down toward the cinder block.

  “So,” she said, “with her being alive today if it wasn’t for you getting sneaky, I can’t see Mister Sam ever feeling kindly toward you.”

  As he started to lunge toward escape, she swiveled on her seat and snapped her long legs out and caught him between them, locked toe and ankle. Her legs were diagonally around his chest, pinning one arm. His feet were on the ground and his struggles threatened to drag her off the lumber pile. She rolled face down and hooked her ringers onto the back of the pile. He was making breathy gasping sounds and scrabbling weakly at the tough twill with his office fingers. She slowly increased the pressure, feeling the thews and tendons of her long round golden legs turn as solid as marble.

  Abruptly he slumped. She held his weight for a few more moments, then let him drop. She eased herself down to stand straddling him, and put on the white cotton gloves. She bent and laid her hand against his throat and felt the fast, ragged cadence of his breathing. She lifted him and held him pinned against the lumber, then dug her right shoulder into the pit of his stomach and let him fall forward across her strong back. When she was properly braced and balanced, her right arm hugging his slack legs, she stood up with a single powerful effort. She walked with her knees locked, taking short steps. With each step a swinging hand casually patted the back of her thigh. When she reached the car she opened the door on the driver’s side with her left hand. With another quick and violent effort she lowered him and pushed him in onto the seat. As he toppled over onto his back, his elbow touched the horn ring, startling her briefly. She looked in all directions, her head tilted, listening. She bent and picked his heavy legs up and put them inside, his feet by the pedals. She leaned in and hooked her hand around the nape of his neck and pulled him into proper position behind the wheel. She guided him cautiously as he slumped forward. But the motion stopped before he reached the horn ring. He sat puddled in upon himself, chin on his chest, making a mild snoring sound.

  She could not get at him the way she had planned. She had to change position and kneel beside the car, half facing him as she pulled off her right glove. She reached across him with her left hand and grasped his right shoulder, held it to steady him. She dug her right hand, hard fingers extended, into the softness of his diaphragm on his left side, above the spongy mass of belly, just under the hard ridge of the lowest rib. The sport shirt was making it more difficult. She unbuttoned it and pulled it out of the way, then again socketed her fingers deeply into softness, reaching up under the edge of rib. The flaccidity repelled her. She strained but felt she could not reach far enough. She braced her shoulder and then felt something give, some soft tearing of inner tissues. Gus Gable groaned and stirred.

  “Easy now,” she whispered. “Not long now, not long at all.”

  The hard edge of rib was now against the pad at the base of her thumb, her hand deep into the huddled man. And she felt it move against her fingers, the warm beating muscle, big as two clenched fists, working in a rubbery way against the pads of her index and middle fingers.

  This was the depth and the essence of Gus. She waited and suddenly she had the Joan-feeling, the flames hot against her face and body. And the red mare feeling mixed with it. Her hand was beginning to cramp with the effort, but she endured it. He moved. With a great effort she forced her thumb away from her fingers then gave a deep, prodding, savage tweak. The heart leaped and fluttered and she pressed it into silence. It was as before. Gus gave a curiously prolonged tremor. Not quite a shudder. He made a remote gagging, rattling sound. And wave upon wave of a delicious burning feeling shook her and weakened her as she yanked her hand down and out of the deep socket which disappeared instantly. She sat back on her haunches for several seconds, her eyes closed, breathing through her mouth, then quite briskly buttoned his shirt and replaced the right glove. She closed the car door and got in on the other side. She pushed the body over against the door, hitched close to him and started the car. She could see no lights in either direction. She put the automatic shift in low and the car crept out of the drive. She turned it north, away from the school. She put it into drive and it moved at a reasonably fast walk. She aimed it down the middle of Tyler Street, put the lights on, stepped out and slammed the car door. She ran into the schoolyard shadows and stood behind a tree and watched it. After several dozen yards it began to angle toward the right. It bumped the curb and the impact turned the wheels. It angled across the road to the left. She ran a hundred feet and stopped and held her breath and listened. She heard it going through the heavy brush with a sound like somebody crackling thick paper. Then there was a thud and the crackling stopped. But the motor was still running. She could hear it.

  She was in bed when she heard the siren. It droned down to a growl that died away nearby. It did not start up again. There was no need for haste. She thought of the bruise. If they wondered about it, they would think the edge of the steering wheel had done it. And if, when she had clenched all the strength of her legs around him, she had cracked any ribs, it would make no difference whether they found them or not.

  When she was quite certain they were gone and had taken him away, she got up in the darkness. Her room was small and plain. She eased open the bottom drawer of her bureau and lifted out the shallow box of wooden beads. She put it on the floor in front of the window and set the lid aside. She rolled her pajama legs above her sturdy knees, then knelt upon the colored beads, slowly transferring h
er weight, then straightening, kneeling erect, her palms pressed together in the old gesture of prayer. The agony grew, and she accepted it because it would free her. Just as it began to reach the limit of her endurance, she felt a strange swarming and shifting of a darkness behind her eyes. Her lips had a numbed, tingling feeling. Her breathing slowed and deepened, and her eyelids fluttered. The pain faded away, and she knelt on a feathery softness. Thus was the pain to Joan too, the flames as nothing, the smile, the prayer and the answer.

  She did not have to say the words, or think the words. They moved across the blackness behind her eyes. “I am Thy virgin warrior, Thy pure sword of justice. Give me the proper humility to do Thy work. I have slain the whore and the money changer, doing Thy bidding. But I do not have the purity of Saint Joan. Another thing comes into my mind, and I do not know if it is a wickedness. Help me. I should not take such a hot sweet pleasure in doing Thy work. It is an arrogance. It should be done coldly and sadly, with prayers for their souls. But I forget the prayer. Test me. Use me. Teach me. Forgive me.”

  She slowly stretched her arms out at her sides, horizontal, palms upward. She tilted her head back. In a furrier blackness she willed a total rigidity. It began with her fingers, turning them hard and numb, and she felt it spread up her arms as her breathing became even slower. It locked her shoulders and spread down her back and down across her belly, drawing all the fibered muscles to an iron rigidity, slowly turning haunch, flank, thigh, calf to tireless stone. And as her throat and face began to harden, and she began to slide into the greatest blackness of all, she said hastily to herself, in a tiny inward voice, “One hour.”

  She came out of the blackness and felt the simultaneous softening of all her muscles. Her arms drifted down to her sides, and at the first warning of discomfort she stood up. She felt dazed and soft, rested and refreshed. She put the shallow box of beads away. She got into her bed and rolled the pajama legs down. The flesh of her knees was dimpled by the long cruel pressure, but she was without pain. She had learned it when she was fifteen, had read of Joan and wept and tried to hold her arm over a candle flame and could not, and wept again because she was unworthy. She had tried many times, and one night she had tried holding her arm high over the flame and slowly bringing it down, as slow as the minute hand of a clock. And that night she had found the secret of making the blackness come, of turning flame into a gentle kiss, turning the stink of searing flesh into a smell of flowers—the secret of Joan. But there were too many burns to hide, too many little hard white scars on the underside of her right arm. She experimented and found the beads would do as well, and she had used them for eight years. They were the proof that, among all the millions, she had been chosen.

  As she crossed the edge of sleep, the hidden heart began to pump against her hand, but this time her hand slid through to where she could grasp it completely, and as she did so, she burst out of sleep to discover herself suffused with the red mare feeling, her back powerfully arched, her breath fast and shallow, her skin tingling, her loins hollow, her nipples engorged and painfully sensitive. She turned onto her back and her body slowly quieted. She flexed her right knee, clenched her fist and struck herself on the top of the thigh as hard as she could, three times. And then she began to wonder who would next be pointed out to her. She wondered what she would do if it should be Mister Sam. She wondered if she would have the strength and the will to do it. He was a sinner, but soon he would be beyond the wickedness of the flesh, and then he would see the Truth and it would bring him to his knees, begging forgiveness. She would kneel beside him and tell him what must be said.

  Planning the words she would teach him, she sank once again into the deep, gentle and trusting sleep of the totally healthy creature in the first rich years of its physical maturity.

  Nine

  Paul Stanial heard the night-drone of the air-conditioner as he went silently and warily up the first flight of steps at the Hanson boat house. When he reached the level of the covered deck, he peered in. There was a single lamp lighted. The semi-opaque shade was blue. He thought he could make out a figure on the bed.

  “Paul?” an uncertain voice said, off to his right. He turned quickly. Barbara Larrimore got out of a deck chair and came tentatively toward him, and when he spoke her name, she hurried the rest of the way, lurching solidly and rather clumsily against him.

  He put his arms around her and said, wonderingly, “Your clothes are all damp.”

  She made a muffled sound that could have been sob or laugh. “They were worse,” she said in a low voice. “I’ve dried off some. Dear God, what an absolute nightmare evening.” She stepped back away from him. “I’m sorry. Weakened condition. But not drunk. I was, for a while.”

  “You sounded so strange over the phone.”

  “It’s near the bed and the last thing I wanted to do was wake him up. Paul, please take me away from here. I called three times …”

  He walked toward the stairs with her. “It was ringing when I came in. Have you got everything? Purse?”

  “I left it somewhere, and if they have another room key for me, I couldn’t care less. I’m so damned ashamed of myself.” They reached ground level and he took her arm to guide her along the path. “The thing is, Paul, these people aren’t monstrous degenerates. They’re just silly. Silly, vulgar show-offs. There’s something pathetic about them. They try so hard. And I had to get just as silly as the rest of them. I’ll tell you all, as penance.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “It will be good for me.”

  “Watch your step. Here’s the car.”

  After he had turned toward town, she said, “Was the college girl any help?”

  “No. But she wasn’t what I expected. I liked her. She made me feel a hundred and ten. She hasn’t exactly found out what the world is all about, but her basic instincts are good, and they’re slowly swinging her around like a compass that has to point the right way eventually. But she’s fighting it every inch of the way. She kept trying to shock me. And that would be a pretty good trick. Kids her age, I’ve seen them brought in so rotted away with drugs, so diseased, so sexually abused they’re in a semi-catatonic state. That’s one part of cop work I don’t miss.”

  “Well … I scored a big zero too. As a conspirator, Paul, I’m worse than useless.”

  She had not finished by the time they reached the motel office. She went in and he waited until she came out with a key. She came to the car window and said, “I can walk this far at least. Suppose you put the car back by your place and kill about ten minutes and then come and hear the rest of it.”

  She opened the door as soon as he knocked. She wore a yellow quilted robe. Her face was scrubbed and shiny, and she had made a white turban of one of the motel towels. It struck him that it gave the modeling of her face a cleaner look, and perhaps her normal hair styling was not as becoming as a more severe style would be.

  When they were seated she made a rueful face and said, “One in the morning. Maybe listening to confessions is beyond the call of duty. Bill me for overtime, Paul. Where was I? Oh. Kelsey dragged me through what seemed like several miles of black wet woods, and I just came blundering along like a zombie, soaked to the skin. Then he trundled me up those stairs and into that place of his and pushed me into a chair. He made two stiff drinks and put one in my hand. Believe me, I pretended to drink it. He sat on the bed and worked on his and kept up this eerie monologue. I don’t know how he got so terribly drunk so fast. But he seemed to really believe I was Lucille. And there was … a dangerousness about him. You know? I didn’t want to make the slightest objection or cross him in any way. He hit that Mr. Furrbritt a terrible blow in the face. I don’t know how badly he was hurt. Kelsey did a lot of rambling and mumbling, and there was a lot of it I couldn’t follow. But he was trying to talk Lu into coming back to him. Everything would be different. And every once in a while he’d give me a horrible leer and tell me how happy he was going to make me when he took me to bed. I was s
ober by then, you can believe me. And I knew that if I could get out the door, I could outrun him. But he was closer to the door than I was. Right in the middle of a sentence he just toppled over onto his side and began to snore. When I was absolutely certain he was asleep, I phoned you. And waited and phoned again. And waited and phoned again. Then when you said you’d be right out, bless you, I crept out onto that porch and waited in the dark for you.”

  “But absolutely no results on the other thing?”

  “Unless you count what George Furrbritt said about sacks of money and secret agreements and Sam Kimber having rough friends and so on.” She frowned and shook her head slowly. “Oh, I have a lot of useful excuses. I was so emotionally exhausted I was vulnerable. And like a fool I gulped down that monstrous martini. And the storm and the lights going out made everything kind of unreal. And he really was a very skillful and mature and self-confident and reasonably attractive man. You know, when a man is the least bit tentative or apologetic or uncertain, it leaves you good places to say no. But when they just carry you along … oh, hell, Paul, I can give myself all the benefit of every doubt until hell freezes over, but I’m still going to be left with the crawly realization that while I was drifting along with it like a dreamy idiot, thinking about it as if it was some sort of sardonic game we were playing, that sleek son of a gun came within about three hot breaths of tipping me over behind the potted trees, and I have the horrible feeling that the instant I was jolted back to reality would have been the instant it was a little bit too late. It makes you think.”

  “But the lights did come back on, so you’ll never know.”

  “Golly, I didn’t come down here to indulge in any agonizing reappraisal of myself. I’ve sometimes felt wretched, and I’ve made some very bitter mistakes, but never before have I felt like a cheap, amiable floozie.”