Джон Макдональд - More Good Old Stuff

I soon found out that I couldn’t roll back up onto my feet in that restricted space. On my fanny, I inched over to the sink, reached up and knocked my razor off the shelf above the sink, using the leg of the headboard. It took me a long time to get my numb fingers to work properly so that I could open the razor. The blade fell out. I managed to pick it up, wedge it on end in a crack between two of the tiles. In the process of slashing the damp necktie, I took a piece out of my wrist.

With one hand free, I cut the other one loose, and freed my ankles.

Chowder had stopped worrying about this world. I weigh two hundred and five. Being too eager to keep him out of action for a little while, I had put him out for a long, long while — forever.

By the time I was ready to leave, it was ten minutes of seven. Knowing Chowder’s habits, I felt around his pulpy middle, and felt the hard butt of the belly gun that he kept wedged under his belt. It had no trigger guard, no sights and a barrel about an inch and a half long. But it threw a .38 slug.

I was telling myself that nobody was going to queer me with the front office by knocking off somebody in the method that I was going to use.

But I wasn’t believing the words I was telling myself.

They had made me stand to hear the fat jury foreman yell out the verdict. Even though I knew what it was going to be, it still sounded much worse than any words are supposed to sound.

The lawyer assigned to me had done his best, but there was too little for him to work with. Even if I’d told him the whole story, he wouldn’t have had enough to go on. He was willing, but he knew when he was licked.

Something was holding me up, but I didn’t know what it was.

The case had been pretty simple. I’d made no attempt to cover my tracks as far as Chowder was concerned. A splinter of his cheekbone had been driven down into the brain. My heel marks were on the flesh of his face, and they had found blood on my heels.

There had even been witnesses to the second murder. Fosting was a half block ahead of me. The big red tractor-trailer had come roaring along, not too fast. Not too fast to keep me from angling over and jumping up on the driver’s side.

Ahead was Fosting. He didn’t turn until the slugs from the .38, at close range, broke Joey’s head like a rotten melon.

Fosting turned as the truck bore down on him. I saw the comprehension, the sudden realization in his face...

A man with sweat stains at his armpits came over to me and took my arm and urged me gently toward the door where I was supposed to go out. The judge had finished mumbling over me. The jury faces had a sick, yet satisfied look. “I sure hate to do this but I’m doing my duty.” That kind of look.

He was urging me toward the door over at the side. Beyond that door was the long corridor, the stairs, the short sidewalk and the waiting police car. And a few months beyond the police car, hazy, and yet promising to grow much clearer, was the picture of a squat chair, a sullen, brooding chair.

A waiting chair.

At the doorway, I turned and looked back at the courtroom. Every day of the trial she had been there. Alone. White, white face and blue-violet eyes. Wide, wide eyes. Lips I had kissed.

Maybe I looked toward her for three seconds before the guy got my arm again. Beside her was the lean leathery face of James Fosting. He had made it for the last day. The kiss-off. I wondered what he was thinking. He knew that I had wrenched the truck out of the course that would have killed him. Yet he had to cover me, to force me to drop Chowder’s belly gun onto the asphalt.

They were sitting very close together. Her lips formed a word. “Thanks.”

And suddenly it seemed as if a lot of things were worthwhile.

But you can’t go soft. Out in the hallway the guard offered me a cigarette. I said, “Don’t smoke, friend. I’ve got none of the minor vices.”

As usual, the tired old gag worked. And I was in a slot to give it a little more impact than it usually had.

He caught on and he repeated the tag line. “None of the minor vices.” The other guard was waiting in the hall.

Between the two of them I walked down toward the stairs.

He was giggling so that his fat belly shook. “This guy’s got none of the minor vices, Harry,” he said, gasping, because, to him, it seemed like a very good joke.

The night heat was a violence that reflected up from the pavements, bounced off the stone walls of the city. Sleep was a thing to be trapped and captured on the fire escape, under the still trees in the park. The tires of the cars made a ripping, sticky sound on the asphalt.

James Forbes walked slowly through the streets of the city. He carried the coat to the suit they had given him over his arm. The cheap white shirt was plastered to his body, outlining the lean strength of his chest and back. His sleeves were rolled up tightly over brown biceps. He wore no hat.

Over his head the neon hummed and flickered. Bar and Grill... Eat... All Legal Beverages... Hostesses... Try Your Luck... Eat... Cocktail Lounge... Topless Barmaids...

A haze had come in from the river with the night heat, making molten halos around the signs.

There was no trace of expression on his face. They had taught him not to show expression. They had taught him that a trace of expression lands you in solitary, if you’re a new one.

The fields had been long and flat and hot, the rows of vegetables stretching into infinity, wavering in the dance of heat waves. The calluses were as hard as leather on his palms.

“Yes, Mr. Commissioner, the prison commissary is almost entirely self-sustaining. Except for the staples like sugar, of course. It does them good to work out in the open air. Yes, you could call it a release.”

Across James Forbes’s temple was a fine white line. A prison screw, sun-touched, had yanked the hoe away from him and struck him down with it. He remembered and could taste again the blood and earth that caked his lips.

The people of the city sat on the high steps of the houses that stood, shoulder to shoulder, beyond the sidewalk. The doughy women fanned themselves and the men drank the cool beer, wiping their mouths with the backs of laborers’ hands. The only notice they took of James Forbes was to wait until he passed before spitting out onto the sidewalk. Just a young guy walking. That’s all. Just walking through the night heat. Probably been stood up by his girl. Got a nice suntan — you notice?

But there were a few smart ones who sat and drank the beer on the high steps. They saw the stuff of which the suit was made and knew where it came from. They saw the cut of the cheap white shirt and remembered the stink of the prison laundry. They saw the brown face with no trace of expression. Those smart ones drank deeply of their beer, remembered the gray of concrete and uniform, the blind misery of the sun... and they were silent.

“Whadya stop talkin’ for, Joe? Whassa matter, honey?”

The measured snarl. “Shaddup, woman!”

“Sure, Joe. Gee, I ain’t done nothin’. Whassa matter?”

“Shaddup, I said!”

The contemptuous retreat, climbing up through the floors of ammonia salts and the stink of many people to lie sleepless and sweating on the gray sheets and remember the sound of a thousand feet in prison shoes stamping to a halt before the cell doors. The bitter-bright clang of the closing doors. The snug chunk of the lugs entering the doorframes as the screw on the tier spun the big wheel.