John MacDonald - The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper

“Are you coming with me or aren’t you?”

“I’m going to stay right here for a little while, thank you.”

“Either you come with me—”

“Or you’ll never forgive me, and we’re through, and so on. Oh, baby, are we ever through! If there’s no trust, there’s no nothing at all. Good-bye, Rickie dear. All the way home to Janice you can dwell on all the nasty things you think are probably going on right here on this bed.”

He spun around, marched out, and slammed the door viciously.

Her attempt to smile at me was truly ghastly. Her mouth wouldn’t hold together. “Hope you didn’t mind me... hope it was all right to...” Then the mouth broke and she sprang up and went, “Waw! Hoo Oh waw,” as she hobbled into the bathroom.

Fort Courtney was nice enough if you didn’t mind it being full of sobbing women trotting into your bathroom, fifty percent of them running with a limp. I took the ice bucket outside and dumped the water out of it and scooped more cubes out of the machine. I thought of dumping out the spiked gin, then changed my mind, capped it, and put the bottle in a back corner of the closet alcove. I unwrapped a fresh glass and opened the second bottle of Plymouth and fixed myself a drink. When she finally came out, slumped, small, and dispirited, I offered her a drink.

“Thanks, I guess not. I’d better be going.”

“Got a car here?”

“No. Rick dropped me off. My car is over at my place. I can phone for a cab from the office.”

“Sit down for a minute while I work on this. Then I’ll drive you home.”

“Okay.” She wandered over and got a cigarette from her purse and lit it. She picked up the thick red-blond wig between thumb and finger like somebody picking up a large dead bug. She dropped it back onto the countertop and said, “Fifteen ninety-eight, plus tax, to try to look like a sexpot.”

“You didn’t do badly.”

“Forget it. I’ve got freckles, straw hair, short fat legs, and a big behinder. And I’m clumsy. I keep falling over things. And people. Lucky little old me, falling for Rick Holton.” She hesitated. “Maybe I’ll change my mind about the drink. Okay?”

I unwrapped the last glass and fixed her one, turned, and handed it to her. She took it over to the chair. “Thanks. Why should you do me favors, though? After what I tried to do to you.”

“Guilt syndrome. I clobbered your romance.”

She frowned. “It hurts. I know. I walked into it expecting to get hurt. You didn’t do it, really. You just brought it to a head a little quicker. He’s been beginning to want out. I could feel it. He was looking for a great big reason. Jesus, you made him mad!”

“I think I was a little irritated too. I couldn’t find out what your plans were unless I faked you out.”

She looked into her glass. “You know something? I think I ought to get smashed. I don’t have to drive. And from the way this one is making me feel numb around the mouth already, it shouldn’t take much.”

“Be my guest. Just don’t sing.” I started to get her glass but she waved me off and went over and fixed her own.

“You sure you don’t mind, McGee? Drunk females are horrid. I learned that from working the emergency ward.”

“Look, how can you two be so sure that the doctor didn’t kill himself?”

“Perfect health. Loved his work and his little projects. He had enthusiasm about things. Like a kid. And I know how he felt about the attempted suicides. Well, like Tom Pike’s wife. It just baffled him. He couldn’t understand how anybody could take their own life.”

“He treated her?”

“Both times. And it was close both times. If Tom hadn’t been on the ball, she would have bought it. He phoned the doctor when he couldn’t wake her up, and the doctor told him to rush her down to the emergency room. He met them there and pumped her out and gave her stimulants and they kept walking her and slapping her awake until she was out of danger. The other time Tom had to break the bathroom door down. She’d lost a lot of blood. There were two of those... hesitation marks, they call them, on her left wrist, where she couldn’t make herself cut deep enough. Then she cut deep enough the third time. It’s slower bleeding from a vein, of course. She’s a nice standard type, and Dr. Sherman put four pints back into her and did such a good job on her wrist I’ll bet that by now the scar is almost invisible.”

“Reported to the authorities?”

“Oh, yes. You have to. It’s the law.”

“Did you have any idea anything at all might have been bugging the doctor?”

“Gee, it’s hard to say. I mean he wasn’t one of those always-the-same people. When he’d get involved in some project, he’d get sort of remote, especially when things wouldn’t be going well. And he wouldn’t want to talk about it. So... maybe something was bothering him, because he’d been acting the way he usually did when things weren’t going the way he expected. But I just know he wouldn’t kill himself.”

“Anything questionable in the autopsy?”

“Like maybe he was knocked out first? No. No sign of it and no trace of anything but morphine, and that was more than a trace.”

I was slouched deep in the armchair, legs resting on a round formica table. After the silence had lasted a little while, I looked over at her. She was staring at me. She had one eye a third closed and the other half closed. She had one brow arched and she had her lips pulled back away from her rather pretty teeth. It was a strange, fixed grimace, not quite smirk and not quite sneer.

“Hi!” she said in a husky voice, and I suddenly realized that the stare had been meant to be erotic and inviting. It startled me.

“Oh, come on , Penny!”

“Well... listen. You’re cute. You know that? Pretty damned cute. What I was thinking, that sumbitch was so ready to think I cheated, right? I was thinking like they say about having the name and the game too. Whoose going anyplace anyways? Friday night, iznit? Dowanna waysh... waste the li’l pill I took this morning, do I?”

“Time to take you home.”

“Yah, yah. yah. Thanks a lot. You must find me real attractive, McGee. Freckles turn you off? Doan like dumpy-legged women?”

“I like them just fine, nurse. Settle down.”

She came around toward me and stood and gave me that fixed buggy stare again, put her glass on the table, then did a kind of half spin and tumbled solidly onto my lap, managing to give me a pretty good chop in the eye with her elbow as she did so. It hit some kind of nerve that started my eye weeping. She snuggled into me, cheek against my chest, and gave me another breathy “Hi!”

“Penny-friend, it is a lousy way to try to get even with good old Rick. You’re bold with booze. You’d hate yourself.”

“D’wanna take d’vantage of a girl?”

“Sure. Glad to. You think it over and come back tomorrow night and scratch on the door.”

She gave a long, weary exhalation and for a moment I wondered if she was suddenly passing out. But then in a level and perfectly articulated voice she said, “I have a good head for booze.”

“Hmmm. Why the act?”

“It ain’t easy, McGee, for a cold-sober girl to offer her all to the passing stranger. Maybe for some, but not for Penny Woertz. No! Don’t push me up. I can tell you easier if I’m not looked at.”

“Tell me what?”

“It’s a bad hang-up for me. With Rick. He really is mean. Do you know how a guy can be mean? Cruel little things. Know why he can get away with being like that?”

“Because you’re the only one with the hang-up?”

“Right. You’re pretty smart. Know what I’ll do now?”