Джон Макдональд - The Last One Left

She gave him the key. “Like I must have told you last time because I tell everybody, the only three rules I got is don’t smash the place up, don’t steal the furnishing, don’t set fire to it.”

He drove down the row to number ten. There were no garages, but each had a narrow driveway. The untrimmed shrubbery brushed the sides of the car at the driveway mouth. He turned hard right and parked in front of the bungalow steps. The car was out of sight of the road. The front door stuck. He had to kick it to get it open. The layout was exactly the same as the one he’d taken overnight the second week in April after Crissy had told him to find a place where he could hide, a place where they could safely meet after he came back alone from the Bahamas. He remembered how out-of-place she had looked when she had joined him there after dark.

Living room, bedroom, hallway, kitchen, bath. Old porch furniture, torn grass rugs, crusted stove, plastic ashtrays, swaybacked double bed, water stains on the ceiling, gloom, dust and the smell of dampness, and cockroaches scuttling swift and clever in kitchen and bath. Rust stains in the toilet and the sinks. Patched windowshades, gray curtains, jelly glasses, corroded tableware, a refrigerator that made a chattering, whining vibration when he plugged it in.

He brought his suitcases in. He stood in the silence of the cottage and heard, outside, the early evening songs of the mockingbirds, hiss of truck brakes and grunt of diesel horn, a continuing sound of some heavy piece of automatic shop equipment, a slow, brutal whickity-bump, whickity-bump, mingled with the less regular sound of metal being cut at high speed, a prolonged screeching.

He left and drove to a little Handy-Andy food store a few blocks away. As arranged he called Crissy’s number from an outdoor pay booth. It was 532–1732. It was six thirty.

After the third ring Crissy said, “Hello?”

“Charlie there?”

“What number were you calling?”

He told her 532–1710. The last two digits were the number of the bungalow he was in at the Mooney Cottage Court. She said he had the wrong number. He said he was sorry and hung up.

He bought twenty-five dollars’ worth of groceries, beer and magazines and went back to number ten. He parked closer to the steps to make room for her small white car beside his. He felt hungry. He ate half a thick sandwich of cold cuts and cheese, but the next big bite turned into a gluey ball in his mouth. He went in and spat it into the toilet, gagging as he did so. He stripped down to his shorts, put a fan on a chair beside the bed to blow the air across his body. Under the weak bedlamp he sipped cold beer and tried to read one of the magazines. He had to keep going back and reading the same part over. Finally he threw it aside. The beer tasted watery. Night was coming. Crissy would come with the night.

He felt as if it had all been one long linked series of events. Everything had happened in the order it was supposed to happen. It was like looking out a train window and seeing the familiar stations one after the other. It had all been designed right from the day they headed out toward the Stream with the Muñequita in tow, to bring him full circle right back to this place. It was as if the train had stopped. It was on a siding somewhere. They had unhooked the engine and taken it away.

Night was coming, and the Sergeant went over to the table and pumped the pressure up in the gasoline lantern. He cracked the valve and lighted the mantle. It made a hissing sound and filled the shack with its hard white light.

Leila Boylston sat crosslegged on a cushion on a wooden crate. She wore one of the new pair of slacks, the blue ones, and a blue and white checked blouse. She looked down at the dusty sole of her bare foot. Another sob came. A wrenching thing — half snort, half hiccup. So maybe that one was the last. Funny how you could be cried out and have so many dry sobs remaining. Her face felt bloated.

Before he sat down the Sergeant reached and gave her shoulder a little pat. “Now there,” he said. The shyness and gentleness of it made her give him a small quick smile.

“I guess my mind was trying to remember all along,” she said. “I’d get little flashes, like pictures, that didn’t make any sense. Terrible little parts of it. But when I saw you kneeling down there and cleaning that fish.” She shuddered again.

“You said part of it, Missy, when you were out of your head. Those were the bad times for you, yelling and sweating and churning around. I thought it was bad dreams.”

“She was the last. Maybe she was dying anyway. I don’t know. She was running out of the lounge toward the stern when the bullet hit her. Stel. Stel there on the teak cockpit deck in the light that shone out from the lounge, and the boat dead in the water, rocking so far over and back loose things were all thumping and jingling and banging. I was on the roof of the lounge part, holding onto the ladderway that went up to the fly bridge. She was crumpled against the big fish box. Making that terrible sound. With every breath. Like a cawing. And he was below me. Right below me. He kept working the bolt on that rifle and firing at her. But it was just a click every time. It was empty but he kept firing at her. Firing and yelling at her to shut up. He dropped the rifle. It was always up on the flybridge, in clamps. Sometimes Mister Bix fired at beer cans back in the wake with it. Or sharks.”

“Now Missy.”

“He went running back to where Stel was. He tried to kind of saw at her neck with that fish knife. But her head and neck were — loose. Too wobbly to cut. She kept cawing...”

“Missy!”

“He pulled her away from the fish box and straddled her on his knees. She was on her face. He dug his fingers into her hair and pulled her head up and back. And with the knife he...”

She stopped. His hands were hurting her shoulders. She seemed to hear the echoes of her own voice in the shack, too shrill, too loud. The Sergeant was shaking her.

“I’m all right. I’m all right now. Let me finish,” she said in her normal tone. “I remember the end now.”

“It’s a bad thing to talk about.”

“He let go. He dropped her. Into all the wetness spreading on the teak. I was glad the noise stopped, the noise she was making. That’s terrible, I guess. To be glad. He stood up slowly and he saw me. It gave him a terrible start. I guess he had lost track or something. I guess he thought she was the end of it. He came slowly toward the ladderway, never taking his eyes off me. He didn’t have the knife. He’d left it in that — puddle. I couldn’t make a sound. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t make my hands let go of that ladder, not even when he was out of sight and then he appeared again, and stopped, his head a little ways above the level of the roof of the lounge part where I was standing. He held onto the railings and swung out to one side to look up at me. His eyes were so big and round. And the whole bottom part of his face was... soft and loose. And he had a funny little smile. People drop things by accident and they break and they know they’re valuable and that’s the smile they wear.”

She stopped and held her fists against her eyes for a few moments. She frowned at the Sergeant. “His voice was little . He was trying to explain something to me. ‘It was supposed to be the way I practiced,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean for it to go wrong like this. Miss Leila, believe me, Crissy kept telling me over and over the time to do it was when you were all together. Bunched. All eating. But when I started there were only four of them. You should have been there. Both of you. Then you wouldn’t have to be scared.’ I told him to please leave me alone. He said in a very reasonable voice that he couldn’t. I should be able to understand why he couldn’t. He said it never would have had to happen if it hadn’t been for the money. I didn’t know what he was talking about. He said it was so much money Crissy was able to make him do it. He told me not to be scared any more, not to look at him like that. He said he’d make certain there wouldn’t be any pain, the way it was with Stella. He was mad at Stella for running.”