Deadly Welcome

by John D. MacDonald

  John D. MacDonald

  Deadly Welcome

  chapter ONE

  HE HAD BEEN on special assignment in Montevideo, had been there only a month when, without warning, they had cabled him home. He got Pan Am to Miami and Eastern to Washington. On the April morning after his arrival, he took his written report on his half-completed job to his chief of section at State, and made his verbal report to the chief and two of his aides, carefully concealing his surprise and irritation at being pulled off, and his curiosity at who might be assigned to complete the job. And his greater curiosity at what might be in store for him.

  Shoemacher said to him, “Alex, I might say off the record that I do not approve of this sort of thing. I do not believe that any other agency should be entitled to reach down into my section and lift one of my better people. But, because I do not have the facts as to how important or necessary this action is, and because the orders came, quite bluntly, from upstairs, I am in no position to protest. The loan period is indefinite. When they return you, Alex, I will be curious to learn your opinion as to whether this was… necessary.”

  “Who wants me?”

  “The name and room number is on this slip. A Colonel Presser. Pentagon. He’ll see you at any time.”

  He taxied to the Pentagon and found Presser’s office at eleven-thirty. The girl looked blank and aloof until he said he was Alexander Doyle and the colonel was expecting him. Then there was a quickness in her eyes. After a short wait she told him he could go in. The Colonel was a pale, meaty man who arose and came around the corner of his bare desk to honor Alex with a heavy handshake.

  “So glad to meet you, Mr. Doyle. And this is Captain Derres.”

  Alex shook the narrower hand of a small rumpled captain with a ferret face. They sat down, Alex across the desk from the colonel, the captain at the colonel’s right. The only object on the bare desk was a black-cardboard file-folder. From where he sat Alex could clearly see the title tab of the folder. Alexander M. Doyle. And the never-to-be-forgotten army serial number.

  “You are probably very curious as to what this is all about, Mr. Doyle. Let me say that whether our little venture is successful or not, I am most appreciative to State for their co-operation in this matter. And let me say also, Mr. Doyle, that there is no need for us to ask you any questions.” He touched the folder with the tip of a thick white finger. “We have here all pertinent data. You will understand, before we are through, just why you are singularly suited for this mission.”

  “May I make a comment, Colonel? Before you begin?”

  “Of course, Mr. Doyle.”

  “You used the word mission. And there is a sort of… cloak and dagger flavor about all this. I want you to understand that even though my work during the past three years has been… confidential and investigative, it hasn’t been at all… dramatic. I mostly juggle a lot of papers. Add bits and pieces together. Sometimes I come up with answers. Usually I don’t. What I’m trying to say is that I don’t believe I have the… talent or training for anything very dramatic.”

  “There may well be… dramatic elements in this, to use your word, Mr. Doyle. But we feel you are perfect for our purposes. To begin then, does the name Colonel Crawford M’Gann mean anything to you?”

  “Y-Yes, sir. Something to do with the missile program. A technical type.”

  “Age forty-five. West Point graduate. Flyer in World War II. Work at M.I.T. and Cal Tech after the war. A brave and resourceful and… rather humorless officer. Cold. Brilliant. Could get to the heart of a technical problem and improvise measures to cure the bugs. A perfect man for these times. A driver. We’ll give you a file on all this for your study, Mr. Doyle. I’ll tell you the history briefly. Crawford was rather naive about women. Three years ago he met and fell in love with a woman who was singing some… rather questionable songs in a supper club here. In spite of all the subtle pressure his friends could exert, he married her. We thought her a most unsuitable person. But, to our surprise and pleasure, she did a good job of making herself over into an army… rather an Air Force wife. Entertained properly. Handled herself well. And Crawford M’Gann’s work improved, if anything. A year and a half ago, in November, M’Gann suffered a massive coronary. He did not die. He was given a medical discharge. His wife nursed him. She took him away to a secluded spot. She played the part of the diligent loving wife for a few months, and then it would appear that she became restless. It became necessary for Colonel M’Gann’s sister to come and help care for him. November of last year, Mrs. M’Gann was murdered. The case has not been solved. I personally doubt that it ever will be. It is our desire that Colonel M’Gann return to Washington. He is not well enough to be placed on limited service, but he is well enough to operate in a civilian capacity and give us the benefit of his enormous talents. We need the man, Mr. Doyle. The country needs the man, badly. He is too involved with the murder of his wife to consider anything else. We need someone to change his mind. We think you are the man.”

  Doyle stared at the colonel and wondered if the man was mad. “But this is absurd, sir!”

  “Perhaps I’ve been playing a rather stupid game with you, Mr. Doyle. I’ve left out certain essential facts. Colonel M’Gann lives with his sister in a rented beach cottage at Ramona Beach, Florida. The maiden name of the woman he married was Larkin. Jenna Larkin.”

  Alexander Doyle looked down at his hands and saw that he had clenched them into fists, that the knuckles were white with pressure. He felt as if he had been clubbed across the belly. The colonel and the captain seemed far away, and he knew they were watching him. He slowly became aware of the fact that the colonel was speaking.

  “… send other people down there, but it has been an utter failure. They have been strangers. The local officers of the law have chased them out. Celia M’Gann, the sister, has kept them from seeing the colonel. She thinks we… want to bring him up here and kill him. I’ll be frank. Sustained work might cause his death. But if he were not still under the influence of his dead wife, I know it is a risk he would accept. That town of Ramona seems to… unite against anyone from outside. Our research on you shows you were out of the country when the murder occurred, Mr. Doyle. Otherwise you would have known of it. It received a big and unfortunately gaudy play in the papers. And it has made good copy for those magazines who trade on the sensational. There is a complete file of clippings in the folder we will give you.”

  “I can’t go back there,” he said simply.

  Colonel Presser ignored his statement. “Because you were born and grew up in Ramona, Mr. Doyle, you will be able to fit into the community with little trouble. And it should not be difficult to devise a reasonable cover story to account for your presence.”

  “But I…”

  “If the murder of Jenna M’Gann were to be solved, I suspect that Crawford M’Gann would come out of his morbid trance, but that is a little too much to hope for. It is hoped that you can… penetrate the defenses set up by Celia M’Gann and make an opportunity to talk in private to Colonel M’Gann. You will find in your folder the suggested line you should take in talking to him. She intercepts his mail. There is no phone at the cottage. We think that if an intelligent and persuasive man can get to him and talk privately to him, he may listen. And if he will not listen to the… call of duty, if I may be so trite as to call it that, he may listen to enough of the unpleasant facts about Jenna M’Gann to… weaken his preoccupation. The results of our detailed investigation of her are also in your folder, Mr. Doyle.”

  “But I don’t think you understand.”

  “What don’t we understand, Mr. Doyle?”

  “I… I was born there, Colonel. Right at the bottom. Swamp cracker, Colonel. My God, even talking about it, I can hear the accent
coming back. Rickets and undernourishment and patched jeans. Side meat and black-eyed peas. A cracker shack on Chaney’s Bayou two miles from town. There was me and my brother. Rafe was older. He and my pa drowned when I was ten. Out netting mackerel by moonlight and nobody knew what happened except they’d both drink when they were out netting. Then Ma and I moved into town, and we had a shed room out in back of the Ramona Hotel and she worked there. She died when I was thirteen, Colonel. In her sleep and I found her. She was just over forty and she was an old, old woman. The Ducklins were distant kin and they took me in and I worked in their store for them all the time I wasn’t in school. I don’t even think of Ramona any more. Sometimes I find myself remembering, and I make myself stop.”

  “Are you trying to tell us you are ashamed of your origin, Doyle? And that’s why you don’t want to go back?”

  “No, sir. I’m not ashamed. We did as well as we could. It was… something else. The way I left. What they’ll think of me down there. I was eighteen, sir. Just turned eighteen. That was 1944 and I was about to enlist. I was going on over to Davis, that’s the county seat of Ramona County, and enlist on a Monday. There was a party on Saturday night. Sort of a going away party, sir. And I got drunk for the first time in my life. I passed out. I’ve thought a lot about the way it must have happened. I had a key to Ducklin’s. I think somebody took it out of my pants and went and opened the place up and took the money and a lot of other stuff. Then put the key back in my pants and a little bit of the money. So… I ended up over in the county jail in Davis. I kept saying I didn’t do it. I knew I didn’t do it. I knew what they were all saying. That the Ducklins had taken me in and been decent to me, and that was the way I’d paid them back. Like all the rest of the Doyles. Can’t trust that trash. And I’d never stolen anything in my life. And it was the first time I’d ever been drunk. And the last time I’ve ever been that drunk. I was a confused kid, Colonel. They talked to me over there. They said that if I’d promise to enlist, the judge would suspend the sentence. And I should plead guilty. So I did and he suspended sentence and I enlisted and they took me right away and I never went back, even to get my things. Not that there was much to get. I… I want you to understand, Colonel. I can’t go back. Maybe it’s… too important in my mind, more important than it should be. But I was… proud of myself, I guess. I’d made a good record in Ramona High School. Scholarship and athletics. I was popular with… the better class of kids. And then… it all went wrong for me. What will they say to me if I go back?”

  The colonel stared heavily at him, then slapped the black file-folder with a hard white hand. “I cannot make speeches. I can tell you some facts. You are thirty-three, unmarried. You have no close relatives in Ramona. The incident you speak of took place fifteen years ago. I can appreciate the depth of the… psychic scar. You enlisted too late to see action in World War II. From 1946 to 1950 you attended college on the G.I. Bill, after getting the equivalent of your high-school diploma while you were in the service. After college you were in the Korean action. During the two months before you were wounded in the left bicep by a mortar fragment, you were a competent patrol leader. You were given a bronze star. After your discharge, you passed competitive examinations and went to work for State on a civil service basis. You have received regular promotions. Three years ago you were placed on the kind of investigative work you are now doing. They think highly of you over there. We had the Veterans’ Administration run a hell of a lot of cards through their I.B.M. sorters to come up with seventy-one possibles from Ramona and the immediate area on the west coast of Florida. We eliminated seventy. We were extraordinarily pleased to find you, Mr. Doyle, as we did not expect to find anyone so curiously well qualified for what we have in mind. We had to go very high to get permission to borrow you from State. This is not a make-work project, Mr. Doyle. I shall wave the flag in your face, sir. There are no indispensable men. But Colonel M’Gann comes as close to that category as anyone I should care to name. Meager as is your chance of success, it is an action we must take. Were this a police state, the problem would not exist. We would merely go down and get him in the middle of the night and bring him back. Under this form of government, he must come willingly. Other methods of persuasion have failed. This was Captain Derres’s idea, to use a local person. I find it a good idea. And now Mr. Doyle, you propose that because of an adolescent traumatic experience, we should salve your tender feelings by giving up the whole idea?”

  “Colonel, I…”

  “You have security clearance. You have demonstrated that you have qualities of intelligence and imagination. As a matter of fact, I should think you would get a certain amount of satisfaction in showing the people of Ramona what has happened to that Doyle boy. Have you ever been in touch with anyone down there since you left?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Have you ever run into anyone from Ramona?”

  “No, sir. I’ve always been afraid I would.”

  The colonel opened a lower drawer of his desk and took out a fabricoid zipper folder, thick with papers. He thumped it onto the desk. “This is the material which has been prepared for you under the direction of Captain Derres, Mr. Doyle. I suggest you go through it carefully and come in here tomorrow at two o’clock. You can give us your answer at that time. If it is yes, and I hope it will be, you might give some thought to a cover story before you come in. As one factor you should consider in composing a cover story, please be informed that you will be supplied with ample funds out of an appropriation where strict accounting is not required by the G.A.O.”

  “Mr. Doyle,” Captain Derres said in a soft and humble voice, “I should not want you to construe this as any sort of threat, you understand. I merely make a comment for your guidance. After the extraordinary measures taken to borrow your services, it would seem most odd to your superiors if you were to return immediately for reassignment. They would wonder in what way we found you unsuitable. And it would be only human for them to wonder again when considering future assignments and promotions. On the other hand, your efforts for us, regardless of success, will result in a… pleasant addition to your file.” He smiled thinly. “I am assuming you have your normal share of ambition. Colonel, did you mention his contacting us?”

  “I didn’t. Thank you for reminding me, Jerry. Mr. Doyle, I am afraid that you will be completely on your own. There are good reasons for that which I cannot go into. As far as official records are concerned, you will be on leave of absence from State. If you get into any sort of trouble, it will be up to you to get out of it. We will be unable to replenish your funds should you run out, but we will be able to reimburse you later for any monies you use out of your own savings. At some point you will either achieve success or become convinced that you cannot accomplish anything. You will then, without delay, telephone this office and talk to either Captain Derres or myself. Whoever answers will make an inquiry as to your health. If you are successful, say that you are feeling good. If not, complain of illness. After we receive the call we will inform State that you will be reporting back to them shortly for reassignment. In the event of failure, we will wish to question you after you have returned. If you succeed, it is unlikely you will see either of us again.”

  He took the heavy folder back to his hotel. By eight o’clock that evening he had absorbed all of it. He knew how Jenna had died. He knew what they wanted him to say to Crawford M’Gann. With the instinctive caution of long training, he left the folder in the hotel safe and went out into the April evening to walk the sultry streets during the first heat wave of the season.

  He had come back a long way, from autumn in Uruguay to spring in Washington. And further than that. Back to the pine and palmetto scrub lands, and the night sounds of that land. The whippoorwill and the mourning dove singing counterpoint to the dirge of the tree toads. Water lapping the pilings of the decaying dock and slapping the old hull of the net boat. The grinding whine of skeeters close to your ear. And, often, the muted grunting bray of a ga
tor back in the slough.

  He walked steadily, unaware of direction. There had been all the years of painful accretion of the new identity. He had thought it all so sound. He had believed it to be the real Alex Doyle. But now it was all beginning to flake away. Bits falling from a plaster statue to reveal once again that scared, confused and indignant kid.

  He wondered what it had been like for Jenna to go back. What special torment it had been for her. Because she had been the first to leave. Six months before he left. They had been but one day apart in age, and he had been the elder. Left with a sailor, a Tampa boy on leave who kept driving all the way down to Ramona in a junk car to see her, and had finally driven away with her and never come back. A town scandal. That Larkin girl. The wild one. And old Spence Larkin had been nearly out of his mind because she had been the eldest child and his favorite. A mean and stingy old bastard. Treated the younger two like dirt and was always buying something for Jenna.

  The wild one. Talk of the county. They couldn’t control her. A little blonde with so much life in her, body turning to perfection at thirteen. All that recklessness and that high yell of silver laughter in the night. Up and down the county, carloads of them, at a hundred miles an hour, heaving the beer cans and the bottles into the ditch. Go way up to a dance in Venice and, the very same night, roar on down to the south, to a dance in Fort Myers.

  He remembered how he’d known her without knowing her. Daughter of Spence Larkin. Old bastard has more bucks squirreled away than you’ll see in your whole life, Doyle. She’d come in with a gang and sit at the counter at Ducklin’s and she’d say, “Hello there, Alex.” But they didn’t know each other. And he would hear them talking dirty about her, at Ducklin’s and at the school. “You don’t have no chore getting the pants off Jenna, Herbie. She don’t wear none, boy.” It would give him a feeling of sickness and anger, and he didn’t want to hear it and yet he did.