The Drowner

by John D. MacDonald

  “I can’t let you take a risk like that, Barbara.”

  “Why would it be such a risk? Lu and that Mr. Gable couldn’t have known she was going to kill them. I know she might try to kill me.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “But you’ll be here in case she tries, and you can stop her. Besides, what if you can’t ever prove anything against her? What other way is there?”

  “I’d rather set myself up as the next victim.”

  “How? Both Lucille and Mr. Gable were close to Sam Kimber. You’re not. Why should she care what you do?”

  “I still don’t like it.”

  “You promised you’d let me help, Paul.”

  “This isn’t what I had in mind.”

  “Can’t we at least talk to Mr. Kimber about it?”

  “I have to think about it, Barbara.”

  Suddenly they heard a faraway roaring sound. Looking to the east they saw the heavy curtain of rain coming toward them. They ran for cover into the thatched, three-walled structure beyond the end of the pool. The first fat drops began to fall before they reached it. The winds came, whipping the fringes of rain in toward them, sending them back into the far corner by some stacked tables and a pile of pool-side mats. Within minutes it was dark and cool and they were isolated from the world by the hard hiss of the rain against the thatch overhead.

  “If Mr. Kimber says yes, let me try,” she shouted.

  “If he says yes, and if you promise to do exactly as I say.”

  “I promise.”

  “I don’t want you to be hurt.”

  “I’ll be very careful, Paul. Really and truly careful.”

  Eleven

  Stanial and Barbara Larrimore had arrived at the office building at seven-thirty in the morning and found the private entrance unlocked as Kimber had promised it would be. Stanial parked his car a block away in case Angela Powell might notice it. Kimber had said she was in by eight many mornings.

  Sam Kimber greeted them, wearing a flannel robe and slippers. “Morning,” he said. “Can’t get over feeling like a damn fool. What do you expect her to do? Pull a knife?”

  “I expect her to follow the same pattern she did before. I think she made a date with Gus. I think she had an appointment with Lucille,” Paul said. “She may be more reckless or more careful, but I think the pattern will be the same. And Barbara will be waiting wherever she says, and I’ll be close enough to protect her.”

  Sam looked gaunt and red-eyed and listless. “You sound so damn sure of everything. You built this whole thing out of nothing.”

  “Not exactly nothing.”

  “As close as anybody can get to plain nothing and you know it. But I’m about as anxious to get her off your list as you are to prove she’d kill anybody. So we’ll do it. But I swear I’m going to feel plain ridiculous.”

  “Do you think I’m enjoying it?” Barbara asked tartly.

  Sam smiled at her. “Lu spoke right up to me too, honey.”

  “Where should I go to … get ready?” she asked.

  “Through that door. It’s the guest bedroom, Miss Barbara.”

  After Barbara was gone, Sam said, “Where’s the best place to put on our little act?”

  “The living room? Is there a place where I can watch?”

  “Closet should be handy. And I better get out some ice and a bottle. Drinking is wicked, too.”

  Barbara came out of the guest bedroom. She had rumpled her hair and put on a bright crooked smear of lipstick. She wore her robe over a frilly nightgown. She was barefoot. She looked sullen and bawdy. “Will I do?”

  Sam Kimber shook his head and marveled at her. “Girl, you look like we’ve been living here a week without sticking a head outdoors.”

  Barbara curled up in a corner of the leather couch in the living room. Sam Kimber paced the floor. Paul found the precise angle of the closet door where he could see the most without being seen.

  At twenty after eight Sam listened at the door and then turned to them. He took a swallow of his drink. “That’s her. Nobody else can run a typewriter that fast. Pick your drink up, Miss Barbara. I’ll play this by ear.”

  As soon as Paul was in position, Sam opened the door between the apartment and the ante-office and said heartily, “Morning, Angie. Come on in here a minute.” Paul saw the big girl come smiling through the door, and saw the smile disappear instantly.

  “Angie, this here is Barbara Larrimore and she’s Lucille’s kid sister and I wanted you two gals should know each other.”

  “How do you do,” Barbara said in a slurred and husky voice. Angela Powell nodded. She stood straight, obedient, waiting.

  “Barbie is going to be around a lot from now on, and she’s going to be here a long time, and you’re going to run into her frequent, Angie. So what I wanted to say to you, anything Miss Larrimore needs or wants, and I’m not around, she just mentions it to you, and it’s like the orders came straight from me.”

  “My glass is empty again, lover,” Barbara said.

  “You got the message, Angie?” Sam said.

  “Yes, Mister Sam,” she said in a low voice.

  “You want she should do anything for you right now, honey?” Sam asked.

  “When I think of something, lover, I’ll let her know. See you around, Angie.”

  “Is that all, Mister Sam?”

  “All for now. Maybe I’ll be in the office later on. Maybe not.”

  Angie made a military about face and walked out, her head high. The door hissed slowly shut and the lock hatch clicked.

  Stanial came out of the closet. The three of them glanced at each other with an obvious uneasiness.

  “Paul, she didn’t look at me once. She looked past me but not at me. Paul, are you … really sure? She looks so … sweet and decent.”

  “It sure turned all her lights right off,” Sam said sadly. “It hurt her real bad. You could see that. Like sticking a knife in her. You know, after you find out for yourself this whole thing is wrong, Paul, I’m going to tell Angie just how and why we did her this way. She’ll understand. She’s a quick bright girl.”

  Barbara quietly left the room. As soon as she was gone, Stanial said, “Be a little careful yourself, Sam.”

  “You serious?”

  “You’re a sinner. Maybe you just lost your immunity.”

  Sam sat down. “I have the feeling I’ve lost just about everything else in this world. Now what do we do? Just wait?”

  “If she’s as unbalanced as I think she is, we won’t have long to wait.”

  “She knows where Barbara is staying. I mentioned it the other day.”

  “I’ll stay close to her.”

  “She looks like a good girl. She looks soft at you, Paul.”

  “I like her.”

  “If she’s anything like Lu, you got you a hundred and ten per cent woman.”

  “All I’ve got is a client, Sam.”

  Barbara came out in her street clothes, carrying the overnight case. She made a face and said, “I feel as if I’d been on call.” She shook her head. “That girl has such a nice expression.”

  “But it’s like a strong magnet. Every compass needle in the area points right at her. It has to be more than coincidence.”

  “Knew an old boy in Miami one time looked like a bishop,” Sam said. “Cleanest white hair you ever saw. A right saintly expression. Didn’t drink, smoke or cuss. Always dressed nice. Real quiet. Made a nice living swindling retired folks, selling them imaginary cemetery plots in a ten-acre swamp he owned.”

  After some aimless, uneasy talk, Paul took Barbara back to the motel. He had moved to room six, adjacent to but not adjoining hers. He went to her room with her. They sat in silence for a little while, and she said, “With an absolutely spotless conscience, that girl still made me feel sleazy.”

  “You looked sleazy.”

  “Maybe that’s my undiscovered talent, up till now.”

  “I’m wondering just when and how you’ll hea
r from her.”

  “I don’t think I will. If she is what you think she is, then she’d be too smart to fall for this. You let her know you suspected her. She won’t risk anything for a long time.”

  “Unless she’s very sure of herself. Why shouldn’t she be? Everything has worked so far. They get a feeling of invincibility.”

  “They?”

  “The unbalanced ones. They hear voices. They follow orders. She’ll hear instructions about you. By now, or pretty soon, Sam will go into the office and say you’ve gone back to the motel. She’ll think about it. She’ll think of something. And then you’ll hear from her. And it will be something plausible.”

  “You seem so very sure, Paul.”

  “She didn’t waste any time over Gus Gable.”

  “So we just wait?”

  “With the patience of a cop or a thief.”

  “How long?”

  “Until midnight tomorrow if we have to.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then I think of some way to nudge her, to force her to make a move.”

  Twelve

  At ten-thirty Angie Powell walked slowly into Sam’s office, closed the door behind her, approached the desk, sat in the chair beside the desk and stared at Sam with a deadness and a despair.

  “Something wrong?” he asked.

  “About ever’thing is going wrong, Mister Sam.”

  “How do you mean?”

  She closed her eyes for a few moments, gave a heavy sigh and brushed the dark gold hair back from her temple with the back of her hand. “I just can’t work for you any more.”

  “Why not?”

  “You got another woman now, younger than the other one, before the other one is complete cold in her grave. And this time there’s just no excuse at all.”

  “What business is it of yours?”

  She looked at him sadly. “It’s like it gives me more than I can do, Mister Sam. It keeps piling up. A person thinks they’ve got everything straightened out, and then there’s more. You’ve been good to me. But I’ve got to just get away from you before I have to punish you too.”

  It took several seconds for the full significance of what she had said to make its mark upon him. He felt a coldness along his spine. He looked at her and saw no awareness of guilt. Just a weary resignation.

  “Angie, girl, did you … punish Lucille?”

  “Lucille and Gus. Both of them.”

  “But why?” he whispered.

  She looked mildly startled. “They were black with sin, weren’t they? She led you into evil ways. And Gus was a liar and a whoremonger. I used to think of you as just being weak, Mister Sam. Not wicked. Stealing from the government and being ready to run with the stolen money so as you wouldn’t have to give up that woman. And I was told I could save you by taking temptation out of your path, taking away the woman and the money.”

  “You were told.”

  “They were marked out to me,” she said with a strange pride.

  “Angie, Angie. My God, you don’t understand what you’ve done.”

  “This morning I looked on you and saw the face of evil again, and because you’ve been good to me, I’ve got to get away from you before you’re marked out in turn for punishment.”

  “But you’re going to have to be … put where you can’t hurt people.”

  She sighed again. “If that’s what they want to do to me.”

  “Do you want to come with me now and talk to Harv Walmo about Lucille and Gus?”

  “I don’t mind. I can’t seem to care much about anything this morning, Mister Sam. But I guess you should get that money back.”

  “Where is it?”

  “In that pond out to your shack. I put it in a canister and sunk it out there, and I can show you where. That Stanial man, he guessed I’ve been punishing people. I could tell by looking at him. If he could meet us out there, I could get that money for you and I could tell the both of you the whole thing, how it happened. I don’t much take to talking to Harv Walmo. Mister Sam, if I told you and Mr. Stanial, then could you tell it all to Harv?”

  “Yes. Angie, do you know what you’ve done? Did you know I was going to marry Lucille?”

  “Would that make sin smell any the sweeter? Why don’t you call that Mr. Stanial right now and have him meet us out there. I could hide it from everybody else, but I couldn’t hide it from him.”

  “Could I have Harv meet us out there, too?”

  “Enough later so I can have time to tell you all about it.”

  He noticed his hand was wet when he picked up the phone. They rang Stanial’s room. He answered on the sixth ring.

  “This is Sam.”

  “I heard it ringing from next door, Sam.”

  “It … it’s all over.”

  “You sound strange.”

  “I feel strange. She wants to tell us all about it. Out at my shack. She dropped the money in my pond out there. It’s about a forty-minute trip. You go out state road nine-twenty and it’s the third dirt road to the right past Garner Corners. It’s a private road, all marked. We’ll meet you out there.”

  “In an hour, tell him,” Angie said.

  “In an hour. Can you make it all right?”

  “I’ll leave Barbara here.”

  “The Sheriff is going to meet us out there too, Paul.”

  “Did she … just come in and tell you?”

  “Just like that. See you out there.”

  Sam hung up. He looked at Angie. She sat placidly, her hands in her lap. “They didn’t do anything to you, Angie, either one of them.”

  “It wasn’t a personal matter,” she explained. She yawned. “Since starting to tell about it, it seems I can’t stop yawning. Mister Sam, before you call Harv, you want to see where I put the rest of the money, the part I couldn’t pack into that canister?”

  “Where is it?”

  She gestured back over her shoulder. “I hid it in your place. I guess you’d never find it, I didn’t show you.”

  He stood up, thinking that he could not truly believe it until he held some of the money in his hands. Then maybe he could comprehend the bland horror of it.

  She stood up too and said, “Please don’t act different going by Mrs. Nimmits. She’ll know all about it soon enough. I guess we could go on down in your elevator. You could call Harv on the apartment phone.”

  He nodded. The thing to do was get it over with. She stopped at her desk and picked up her straw purse. He held the door for her, and as they went into the apartment he noticed, with a curious feeling of horror, that she had resumed her normal glowing smile for the benefit of Mrs. Nimmits.

  The door swung shut. “Well, where is it? You can stop smiling now.”

  “In the bathroom. Please don’t speak ugly to me, Mister Sam.”

  They went to the bathroom. He flicked on the white dazzle of fluorescence. “There’s no place to hide money in here,” he said.

  “Yes, there is. I packed it right in back of that panel up there.” She pointed to the wall above the wide tiled counter. He stood beside her.

  “Panel?” he said.

  She took a quick step back and, holding the straw envelope purse by one end, she slammed it against the side of his head. In the weighted end of the straw purse was one of the flat lead weights she had removed from one of the canvas pockets of her quick-release belt she used for skin-diving. She had gone down to her car at nine o’clock, opened the trunk, removed the weight and placed it in her purse. Sam Kimber took two tottering steps and went down onto his hands and knees. She struck him again, with less haste and more precision, and he folded down against the floor. She put the purse on the counter, stepped around him and turned on both faucets in the oversized, sunken tub. As the water roared into the tub she squatted beside Sam and worked her hand into the right pocket and took his keys out. She put the keys in her purse. She straightened up. Her mouth felt stiff with disapproval. Mister Sam had been very proud of this bathroom. She had heard him sn
ickering and smirking about the seven-foot tub and the shower stall big enough for three or four people. She knew it must have been the scene of orgies beyond her comprehension. Mister Sam, with his cheek resting on a colorful mat, looked as if he were sleeping. He looked younger. There was almost a look of innocence about him. She felt a sad regret, knowing it was too late for him, too late for any weakening of her resolution. Now the list was long and there was much to do.

  Soon the tub was more than half full. She turned the water off and stood in the steamy silence and felt the first slow inner pulsing of delight, those red mare flexures which blurred the severity of the Joan-feeling. She straddled him, grasped him by the armpits and slid him, head first, over the low squared-off rim of the big tub. She knelt on the mat and thrust him the rest of the way, turning him the long way of the tub, face down. She put her right hand firmly yet almost caressingly on the corded nape of his neck and pushed his head deep. She felt the bubbles tickle past her fingers. She thought this would be less than the others, but quite suddenly he began such a thrashing series of violent spasms, it took all her strength to hold him. And her hot blindness came then, taking her far away. She came back slowly, aware of the deepening of her breath, of the fading heat of her body, and realized Mister Sam had been motionless for quite a long time. She released him and stood up. Her legs were very weak and she felt slightly dizzy. She dried her hand and forearm on a thick towel. She looked down at him. He was slightly wavery because the water was still moving a little bit. As she watched it grew still.

  She picked up her purse and turned the lights off as she left the bathroom. She sat quietly in the living room with her eyes closed until she felt strong again, and then she stood up and began smiling and pushed the big door open and walked out into the ante-office. Holding the door she turned and said, “I’ll sure tell her, Mister Sam.” She went to Mrs. Nimmits, desk and said, “Mister Sam isn’t feeling so good and he’s going to see if he can get some sleep, and he doesn’t want anybody disturbing him for anything. He’s sent me out to the shack to get some papers he left out there, so you hold the fort, huh?”

  “Sure, Angie.”