John MacDonald - The Good Old Stuff

“You’ll have a job getting the insurance,” Shay said. “They don’t pay off on big policies where there’s something strange about it. My guess is that you’ll have to bring suit and prove that you were held against your will.”

“Maybe I won’t even try to collect,” Allie said.

Shay propped himself up on one elbow. “Don’t be a damn fool! Money won’t buy happiness, but it’ll make unhappiness a hell of a lot easier to endure. And don’t feel guilty. You gave the tip-off that helped in the roundup of the whole dirty crew. God knows how many poor innocents had the pressure put on them and paid and paid and paid. Old Jim just walked into a trap. And it would have been perfect. Young wife leaves. Farmer hangs himself in fit of depression. Young wife returns, full of remorse but loaded with dough. And their hired assassin did such a neat job it would have been next to impossible to prove murder unless he talked.”

“I–I’ve got to live with myself,” Allie said. “And right now I don’t think much of myself. I’m going away, I guess.”

“Worst thing you could do,” Shay said firmly. “Stay right in that little house. Face it out. You said you liked the country. Get a woman in to stay with you. The neighbors will never know what really happened, unless you tell them. In a year you’ll be a part of the community. Be smart about it. Learn to cook and bake. Take cakes and things around when your neighbors are sick. Cut down on the makeup and don’t dress ahead of the fashions, dress just a little bit behind them.”

She swirled her feet in the water. “Gee, maybe I could.”

“Sure you could,” I said.

She giggled. “Allana Montrose! The real name is Alice Mertz. Allie Mertz. Now it’s Allie Garver. I’m almost back where I started as far as names go. But not in the money department. There were seven kids. The old man had a candy store in Camden. He made book in the back, and when the horses were rough on the suckers, he’d close up and disappear. He’d come back in a week or two with a bad case of the shakes. Then one time he didn’t come back. I was next to the oldest. I quit high school and clerked at the K-Mart. Do you think I can act like a lady, Robby?”

“We’ll see that you do.”

“A lady,” Shay said, “usually has a speaking acquaintance with the arts. We can start right now. Those big windows up there are the windows to my studio. I do figures in clay and cast them myself. If you’d like, we could go up there and I can show you the sort of work I do. Maybe a little later you’d like to pose.”

I glared at their backs as they walked toward the house, Allie small and trim beside Shay’s hulking build.

I swam two angry lengths and got dressed. They were still in the studio.

It was only three o’clock and only five miles to Bets’s house. I walked it.

“Murder for Money” originally appeared in the April 1952 issue of Detective Tales under the title “All That Blood Money Can Buy.”

“Death Writes the Answer” originally appeared in the May 1950 issue of New Detective Magazine under the title “This One Will Kill You.”

“Miranda” originally appeared in the October 1950 issue of Fifteen Mystery Stories .

“They Let Me Live” originally appeared in the July — August 1947 issue of Doc Savage Magazine .

“Breathe No More” originally appeared in the May 1950 issue of Detective Tales under the title “Breathe No More, My Lovely.”

“From Some Hidden Grave” originally appeared in the September 1950 issue of Detective Tales under the title “The Lady Is a Corpse!”

“A Time for Dying” originally appeared in the September 1948 issue of New Detective Magazine under the title “Tune In on Station Homicide.”

“Noose for a Tigress” originally appeared in the August 1952 issue of Dime Detective under the title “Trap for a Tigress!”

“Murder in Mind” originally appeared in the Winter 1948 issue of Mystery Book Magazine .

“Check Out at Dawn” originally appeared in the May 1950 issue of Detective Tales under the title “Night Watch.”

“She Cannot Die” originally appeared in the May — June 1948 issue of Doc Savage Magazine under the title “The Tin Suitcase.”

“Dead on the Pin” originally appeared in the Summer 1950 issue of Mystery Book Magazine .

“A Trap for the Careless” originally appeared in the March 1950 issue of Detective Tales under the title “The Judas Chick.”

One of these, a bizarre revenge story entitled “The Corpse Rides at Dawn” ( Ten-Story Western , April 1948), was reprinted a few years ago in Damon Knight’s anthology Westerns of the 40s: Classics from the Great Pulps (Bobbs-Merrill, 1977).

A selection of MacDonald’s old and new science-fiction stories is available in his collection Other Times, Other Worlds (Gold Medal, 1978).

The ultimate word in MacDonaldology, giving full publication data on every scrap of his that has appeared in print anywhere, is Walter and Jean Shine’s A Bibliography of the Published Works of John D. MacDonald (Gainesville: Patrons of the University of Florida Libraries, 1980).