Джон Макдональд - The Last One Left

“Where was the boy while all this was going on?”

“We spoke in the kitchen, sitting with cups of coffee, like old friends. Perhaps in a way we are. She said that all of this has exhausted her. Perhaps the boy was asleep in her bed while we spoke. I could not say. She said that tonight she is going to be very firm with the boy and send him away forever. Doubtless he will make a great scene. She says she cannot endure such nonsense any longer. She says the Captain is a bore and the boy is a fool. She does not want any ugliness here which will bring the police. Tonight she will finish it with the boy and that will be the end of it. And so tomorrow she asks that I remain here all day and all evening. We shall close the big gates. Lock them with the chain and the padlock as when no one is here. She will turn the switch which silences the phone. Should either one arrive, the Captain or the boy, I can go onto my porch and shout to them that she has gone away, and they can see from the gate her car is gone, an accident of some convenience. She explained she wishes to have a very quiet day alone. I shall fix lunch for her, fix an early dinner, and she will take sleeping pills and go to bed early and see if she can sleep the clock around, or longer, to restore herself. She says she will lock the doors to her bedroom to avoid any chance of the boy bothering her when he comes to remove his sailboat. She said he has promised to come by, in the boat of a friend, at dusk tomorrow and take it away from here. She suggests that I might go around to the bay side of the house at nine o’clock to look and see if the boat is gone, and look in at her to see that she is not being bothered by the boy. She has engaged herself in crude behavior I think, and now wishes to escape, and rest, and perhaps find someone more agreeable.” She gave him a wicked wink. “It is possible of course that she is no longer young enough to accommodate such a hearty young man without finally becoming exhausted, even such a type as she is.”

“So we do not go back to the beach tomorrow?”

“It is a pity. When you leave me tonight, you can help me close the gates. They are heavy.” She looked at the clock. “Look! The time! Oh, we will miss the beginning! Hurry!”

As she sat beside him in the new hard-top movie house at the shopping plaza, gasping and squirming at the magic excitements of Bond, digging her nails into his hand and wrist at the moments of deadliest danger, he followed the plot with a portion of his attention, and at last devised a plausible way to handle the situation.

The boy’s car was gone when they returned. When they were in the little apartment she chattered about the movie until he said, “Lovely lady, I, Señor Jaime Bond, must ask your assistance in helping me elude the deadly agents of Schmaltz.”

“Ah!” she said, eyes sparkling. “I am service you, hah?”

“I think your native tongue might be more accurate, Señorita, even though the English version has a certain unique charm.”

“So. How may I be of service?”

“I shall leave now, but I shall only appear to leave. In truth I shall drive away, conceal my car in a small wooded place not far from the entrance to the road which leads here. We shall have left the gate ajar. I will steal back on foot, slip inside, close it the rest of the way and fasten the padlock. I will then creep quietly up to these quarters which by then will be dark, and here I shall hide all night, all day tomorrow, and all of tomorrow night until the deadly agents start seeking me elsewhere.”

The sparkle of fun faded to dubiousness. “You are serious?”

“Of course. I shall take great care not to risk showing myself to your employer, Señorita. She too is an agent of Schmaltz. A very clever one. And I shall have much needed rest and recuperation. We shall be very sly. We shall speak in whispers. And you shall take comfort in knowing you have served The Cause.”

“She would be very angry if...” She paused and shrugged. “But she never comes up here. Anyway, the job is nearly at an end.” Her frown disappeared, and her eyes shone with mischief again. “You ask a great sacrifice of me, Señor. I shall force myself to endure it and help you outwit the forces of evil.” She moved closer. “I shall even share my toothbrush!”

“No one could ask more.”

As he went quietly up her outside stairway after hiding the car, walking back and chaining and locking the gates, he felt the small weight of the revolver against the side of his right thigh as he climbed each step. He opened the screen door and locked it behind him with hook and eye. When she did not answer his whisper, he knew she was in the bedroom. He wedged the revolver down, out of sight, between the cushions of the couch.

As he entered the dark bedroom she said, softly, “Could you be Señor Jaime, sir, who outwits everyone?”

“You have made a correct identification.”

She giggled. He undressed in darkness. He slid into her bed, took her into his arms, feeling the vital warmth of her under the sheerness of fabric. He was prepared for all her cheery, greedy acceptances, her happy little love games and chortlings. But she was strangely rigid in his arms, fists against his chest. Her body was trembling and he heard a little catch of her breath in her throat.

“What is wrong, querida? ”

“I... I don’t know. I feel very shy. Very strange. Why should I be frightened of you?”

“Just rest in my arms. Let me hold you.”

He held her quietly until her body relaxed. But then, at his slightest caress, she would give a little start, a little gasp. Tenderly, gently, carefully he brought her along until all at once she wrapped her slender arms around him with a desperate strength and with her breath fast and hot against his throat, she said, in a voice an octave lower than he had ever heard her speak, and in that special accent of the best blood of the tropic city of his birth, “You are my life. You are my heart. You are my love. You are my soul.”

With stinging eyes he knew that he, Raoul Kelly, had at last wooed and won the lovely daughter of Don Estebán, to have, to hold, to cherish for as long as he might live.

IT WAS ALMOST nine o’clock when Crissy looked again at her watch. She was standing at the bureau in Staniker’s ten-by-twelve bedroom. A mirror was fastened to the wall above the bureau. Enough of the silvering was gone from the back of it to make a fragmented image of the room behind her as she fixed more drinks. She moved slightly so she could see Staniker’s face. The buff-colored windowshade was pulled down to the sill. Though the window was wide behind it, there was no air to move the shade. The rusty electric fan, for all its whining and whirring, did not seem to stir the air.

Staniker lay on the double bed, in pale blue boxer shorts, his mass and weight deepening the hollow in it. He was propped on two pillows. There was an oily gleam of sweat on his face and body. His big face was slack, his speech slow and thick.

She poured him another bloody mary from the big, widemouth Thermos, holding the ice back with the fingers of her free hand after two cubes had clumped into the glass. She took it to him, feeling between the cool glass and her fingertips the crackly crust of colorless nail polish she had applied to the pads of fingers and thumbs. He took the glass from her, and in lifting it to his lips, spilled some on his broad chest, wiped at it with his other hand.

She went back to the bureau and fixed herself a weak bourbon and soda. She wore navy blue slacks. She had rolled them up to just below her knees. The dark kerchief was in the pocket of the slacks. The waistband of the slacks was damp with sweat. She had taken off the forest green silk shirt with long sleeves and tossed it onto a chair. The roots of her hair were damp. A drop of sweat ran down between her breasts to soak into the brassiere band under her breasts, and another trickled from her armpit down to the side of the slacks. She wondered how long he was going to hold out.