Джон Макдональд - The Last One Left

The girl rapped at the door and came in from the outer office without waiting for a reply. She brought letters in and silently placed them in front of the older man who sat behind the desk. He read each one slowly and carefully, lips moving, before signing it. A straw ranch hat was pushed back from a scramble of untidy white hair. His moustache, thick and unkempt, shaded from white at the hairy nostrils down to a stain of yellow at the lips. He wore khakis, the shirt sweated through so many times the pale streaks of salt formed overlapping patterns at the armpits. In the frigid air of the office the sharp stale smell of him was still detectable.

He signed the last letter and the tall, frail girl picked them up from in front of him as he leaned back.

“Francie,” the old man said, “you go on over to the courthouse and get them two notorial certificates the fella over in Tulsa wants.”

“I could take the deeds along, Judge, and mail them from there.”

“You do that, Francie. And leave that door there open so as we’ll know it when Sam Boylston gets here.”

She nodded, and as she turned and walked out, she gave big Tom Dorra a sidelong, speculative glance. Tom Dorra stared at her hips and legs as she walked out. He dwarfed the oak armchair he was slouched into, a man big enough to be stared at in the street, five inches over six feet, broad as a man and a half. He added almost another foot with the heels of his western boots, and with the very high crown on the custom Stetson. He was half Judge Billy Alwerd’s age. Their skin was almost the same shade of brown, but whereas the Judge’s looked desert dry, Tom Dorra’s hide looked oiled. His tailored khakis were pressed and fresh. His belt buckle was a half pound of ornate Mexican silver.

After the outer door closed behind Francie, Tom Dorra said lazily, “Your Francie, she give me the look about one more time, Billy, even though she got no more ass on her than Fred Astaire, I’m going to purely run her over to the Orange Tree Motel and give her my message.”

The Judge yawned. “Don’t you mess with her, Tom D. I need for her to keep her mind on her work, not wobbling around all sprung and breathing hard. After Milly died, I run through four of them before I found Francie. She’s no Milly, God knows, but she keeps track. Get back to what you were starting to say when she came in.”

“Oh. Here’s the way I see it, why Boylston wants to see us both together. It figures that Bix Kayd cut him into it too, didn’t tell us he was in, but told Boylston we were. So what’s happened has got him a little jumpy too, and he wants to know what we plan on doing.”

Judge Billy shook his head slowly, contemptuously. “That kind of thinking is the best reason in the wide world you better keep checking everything out with me, Tom. First off, young Sam hasn’t got the yen for anything too tricky, and that’s why he give up doing any law chores for Bix, knowing that if he didn’t know the whole story and anything went a little sour, he could spend a lot of time in tax court, explaining. Second, that means that Bix wouldn’t be about to beg Boylston to come in on anything, because the way Bix likes it is having folks lined up and itching to let him he’p them get rich. Third off, that young Boylston is handling himself smart enough he doesn’t rightly need to come in on a little piece of a big one when he can do just as good taking a big piece of a little one and running the show himself.”

“But you said he said on the phone it was about Bix.”

“So he smelled something out, figured you and me had something riding this time, and wants to know what the hell goes on because his little sister is on that cruise, boy, or maybe you forgot.”

“Do you think we ought to tell him anything?”

The Judge chewed at the corner of his moustache. “I think I’m going to wait and see just how he comes at us, and then I’m going to make up our minds for us, Tom D. One thing to bear in mind is that young Sam don’t have a lot of real weight yet, but come a few years from now the way he’s going, you and me could find ourselves needing a favor.”

Tom Dorra looked bleak. “I sure God hope old Bix didn’t get careless about anything. It would give me a case of the shorts for some spell. And you tell me, Billy, just why in the world old Bix had to turn it into some kind of damn game, making it look like a big old family cruise, when by God, he could have fly over and got it all settled in three, four, five days at the most.”

The Judge took a half-eaten cigar from the top drawer of his desk, bit an inch off it, put it back, chewed slowly. “Now you know how Bixby Kayd is. He doesn’t like for anything to look like what it is. He wants the whole world wondering and guessing what’s up his sleeve. Besides, taking his own boat makes the transportation problem easier in one sense. Then, too, the delay would like to make that pack of limeys a little edgier and readier to deal. And being there like that would give him a chance to do some thinking on just how the whole thing should be operated once he’s got hold of it. Bix likes to put on a show, but dog knows he’s no fool.”

He stared at Tom. “Am I keeping you awake?”

“Huh? Oh, I heard what you were saying. I was just thinking back on the onliest time I ever did see that little sister, that Leila Boylston. About four years back, which would make her about fifteen then. Wally and me had flew up to Ritchie’s spread to look over some blooded stock, and that Leila was up there visiting the youngest Ritchie girl. The little Leila, she came riding along with us when we went looking for that stock. She set that roan real nice and pretty, and goddam, Judge, she was dressed like for a street parade in white britches so tight she could have set on a dime and told which president it was. Now a gallop was right interesting, and a canter was something to see, but when that roan moved at a slow walk, that little round can on her, it tippy-tilted back and forth so sweet and fine. I could have fell off my horse like the sun stroke and lay there howling and a-tearing up the sod. That roan liked to stay out in front, and I tell you that Leila was prime. There don’t one like that come along every year. I swear, we stayed there one more day, I’d have slung her under my arm and took off up into Ritchie’s high timber and never been seen since.”

Judge Alwerd sighed, spat into his tin waste basket. “One day, big Tom, you’ll find out how it quietens and eases a man to get past all that stud time of life.”

“Sounds a little too quiet to me,” said Dorra.

Judge Billy shook his head. “A fifteen-year-old girl child you saw that one time four years back. Agitates you to this day. And going on about my Miss Francie. You with seven kids. Makes me wonder if you got enough attention left over for business.”

“Now, Billy, you know I...”

“All I know is we’d better be talking about money around here.” He began to say more, but stopped as Francie touched the buzzer to signal the Judge that Sam Boylston was on his way in.

As the door opened, Billy Alwerd said, “Come on in, Sam. Come in and set. You know Tom D. Pull the door shut, you don’t mind.”

Sam shook hands with them and took an oak armchair about the same distance from the scarred desk as Tom’s was. He wiped his forehead on a handkerchief and said, “Summer seems to be starting up earlier ever’ year. Tom D., you gained some weight?”

“Not one bit. Just seems like I must always look bigger than folks remember. I stay just under two ninety like always, Sam.”

There was a silence as they waited for Boylston to decide how he wanted to bring it up. Sam clicked his lighter shut, huffed smoke and said, “One of the things I learned when I did a little work for Bix, he hates having his name in the paper. I remember when there was a little trouble, he was paying a man to keep it out. Now he’s in the news, and he’s on the front page. The papers keep calling that cruiser a yacht. Bix would be stomping and cursing, wondering how many IRS boys might be wondering if he was being audited close enough. But then again, I was wondering if something might come along that looked good enough so that he wouldn’t mind being in the papers, if it was necessary.”