John MacDonald - The Good Old Stuff

“Yeah. I’m a brand-new wife, practically a bride. Come on in.” She stood aside, and as I stepped past her she swung her body so that I had to brush against her. I smelled the raw liquor on her breath.

The living room was small and perfectly square. The furniture was bright and ugly, the colors too raw, the lines without grace. I stood in the doorway and she minced past me, swinging her hips. She sat down on a green couch and patted the cushion beside her. “He ain’t here yet. Tell me about it.”

I crossed the room and sat in a gray chair with crimson buttons on the cushions. She gave me a mock pout and said, “Unfriendly, huh? I won’t eat you, mister.”

“When does he get home? Maybe I ought to go and then come back.”

“Don’t rush off. He’ll be along in maybe a half hour. Want a drink?”

I nodded and she flounced out. She paused at the door and said, “Come and help me.” I got up and followed her out to a cluttered kitchen. There was a tray of melting ice cubes on the enameled top of the table, along with a half bottle of cheap rye and four or five small bottles of ginger ale.

She jumped up onto the sink shelf and swung her legs. “Make your own, mister.”

I stepped over to the table and mixed a light rye. I opened one of the bottles of ginger ale. It was warm. It foamed up over the top of the bottle. I stepped over to the sink and let it run down my hand. She slid over so that her knees were against my side. I looked up at her in protest just as she launched herself at me, both arms tight around my neck, her loose mouth clamped on mine.

I dropped the bottle into the sink and tried to pry her hands loose. She giggled through the kiss. She didn’t smell clean. I got hold of her wrists and pulled her arms loose. She slid down to the floor and twisted her wrists away from me. She swung and slapped me so hard on the ear that my head buzzed. She stepped back and said, “Just who the hell do you think you are? What makes you think you can come in here and paw me?”

A tired voice behind me said, “Shut up, Janice. I saw more of that than you thought I saw.”

I turned around. A middle-sized man with a tight, disciplined face stepped by me. He slapped her with the hard heel of his open hand. She slammed back into the door to the back hall. A trickle of blood ran down her chin.

“You got no right to hit me, Will,” she gasped.

“All the right there is, baby. That’s the last time I touch you. Pack your stuff and get out of here.”

She opened her mouth to object. He stood and looked at her. She dashed by him and ran out of the kitchen. I heard the quick stomp of her heels as she went to the stairs.

He turned to me. I could see that he was about thirty, even though he looked nearer forty. “I’m sorry, friend. Always thought she was like that, but never had the proof before. A little tough on you, though. What’d you come here for, anyway?”

“This is a hell of a time to bother you with it, Quinn, but I wanted to get your story on the Captain Christoff drowning. He was my friend.”

He looked hard at me, and I returned the stare with as much candor as I could manage. “Sure you aren’t a slick customer trying to open it up again? I don’t want to do any more testifying. That business knocked me out of a promotion I could have used.”

“I understand it did. Sorry. But suppose I come back tomorrow when you aren’t all upset?”

“Never mind that. I’m okay. Who else have you talked to about this?”

I told him whom I had seen. He led me into the living room. I could hear a low wailing noise coming from upstairs. He seemed to ignore it.

“Then I should tell you what the others wouldn’t have had a chance to know, I suppose. Let’s see now. Best place to start is where he came aboard. I was sitting with my legs hanging over the side smoking a pipe. The harbor was quiet. I could hear a hot poker game belowdecks. There were footsteps behind me, and Captain Christoff walked up. I jumped up. I could see two people behind him.

“He introduced me. Miss Constance Severence and a Mr. O’Dell. The girl was in evening dress. O’Dell was in a white jacket with a maroon bow tie. A big guy. She looked slim and cool like most of those British babes do when they’re upper-class stuff.

“I knew that he wasn’t supposed to bring strangers on board. I told him that I had something to tell him in private. I thought maybe he didn’t know the rules. We went up forward, and the two visitors waited.

“I told him about the rule, and he said he wanted to take them out on a short trip. I told him that I was against it, and he said that I should trust him and take orders, that he knew what he was doing. I tried to argue, and after a while he made me stand at attention. Then he told me to shut up and prepare to cast off. There wasn’t a thing I could do. I did like he told me.”

“Did he act drunk?”

“Later, yes. Not when I talked to him.”

“What happened then?”

“They went below with a bottle. About six miles out, they came on deck and went forward. They sat on some life rafts that are strapped down there. I could see them by standing on my toes. I was at the wheel. It began to get rough. He’d told me to go out ten miles. At ten miles I made a sharp hundred and eighty to starboard and headed back. A couple of minutes later, O’Dell bellowed at me. I couldn’t catch it. He came up to the bridge and said that Christoff had gone overboard. I circled back, but we never found him.”

“Do you think there was anything fishy about it?”

He waited a few minutes before he answered. He stared down at the vile brown rug, his forehead wrinkled. “I’ve wondered and wondered about that. Of course, the turn could have caught him off guard. He wasn’t used to boats. I tried to tell the investigating officers that he didn’t act like a guy who was disobeying rules, but then I had only known him a few days. I guess it was just like they decided. He had too many strikes on him. Visitors, an unauthorized trip, and liquor on board. If he hadn’t drowned they’d have skinned him alive and broiled him.”

“Any of the other guys in the crew figure that something was fishy?”

“Not a one. If one of them had, maybe I’d have stuck to my guns a little longer.”

I waited, and he told the story again in more detail. But he kept glancing up at the ceiling as he spoke. When he started on it the third time, I interrupted him and told him that I had to be on my way, thank you very much, sorry about this trouble I caused, glad to hear your slant on it...

He saw me to the door. I got into the car, and I had gone about eight or nine blocks when I remembered that I had wanted to ask about Stenwitz. No specific question. I had just wanted to start him talking about the kid. Something about Stenwitz had bothered me.

I turned around and headed back for his house. I parked in front and walked up onto the porch. I had my finger an inch from the bell when I heard it. A dull smacking sound, as though someone were beating a featherbed with a slat. Through the noise of pounding, I could hear tired screams of pain.

I turned around and walked back out to the car. Mrs. Quinn wouldn’t be leaving home. She’d never leave home. She’d just hang around and collect an occasional beating for the next thirty years. I grinned as I drove off, my question forgotten.

It was a long jaunt back to Chicago. I didn’t let myself think too much. I drove along with tires droning on the concrete, the motor singing heavily in my ears. Dan was dead and I had collected a blank. Not a complete blank, but so close to it that it might as well have been a blank. A little glimmer of doubt in Quinn’s mind. Unexplained resistance by Stenwitz. Those two things plus the fact that the behavior pattern didn’t sound like Dan Christoff. Not at all.