Джон Макдональд - The Last One Left

All day Wednesday Corpo kept thinking of chores he had been meaning to do.

An hour before sunset Leila Boylston marched up to him where he was nailing a crude brace to the side of the stairway.

“This is about enough!” she said.

He turned and smiled at her. “Getting hongry, Missy?”

“Now don’t you start that. Sarg, you made a sacred promise on your word of honor. I’m all ready to go. I’ve been all ready since morning. And you’ve been dragging your feet all day. I’m really getting very angry with you.”

“I’ve been thinking on it, Miss Leila. Make more sense to get a nice start in the morning, don’t you think?”

She stamped her foot and began to cry. Ten minutes later she was still snuffling as the Sergeant slowly threaded his narrow channel at the wheel of the Muñequita, towing his skiff on a short line astern.

“Kindly please stop them crying noises,” the Sergeant said. “I’m doing like you want, okay?”

“I c-can’t help it, I’m so huh-happy.”

“Happy to get shut of the ol’ Sergeant. Sure.”

“I’ll come back to see you. I promised. I’ll bring Jonathan and Sam. They’ll want to thank you for everything.”

“Hardly likely,” he grumbled. “Never will see you again, Missy. Never figured on liking anybody around. You did get me real edged up a lot of times, but mostly there was more good to it than bad.”

“Thank you.”

“No cause for thanks. You wrote down the count on that money?”

“Right on your calendar. You shouldn’t keep all that cash around, really. And I’m going to pay back what you spent on me.”

“It was a present. I keep telling you. I never held with trousers on girls, but you look right good in that there pair.”

When he came to the mouth of his channel he slowed, then edged out very cautiously. A tug was taking a big dredge north along the Waterway. About a mile to the north-west, a red runabout was towing three water skiers.

“Clear enough, I guess,” he said and moved out, following the natural channel across the flats, and then, as he reached deeper water, he turned south and looked back to see how the skiff rode as he increased speed.

“What we’ll do,” he called over the louder noise of the two engines. “I’ll take you down close enough so you can see a place where you should tie up. You go in slow with it. Nothing fancy. You understand how?”

“I steer toward the side of the dock and I pull these two things back to half way and kind of coast, and before I bump I pull them back all the way to reverse, and then push them to half way and turn off the keys.”

“I’ll stay in the skiff close by and when I see you’ve made it, I’ll go on back home.”

“And I won’t remember a thing about who took care of me, Sarg.”

About a mile and a half south of his island, Corpo saw a fast launch coming from the direction of town. He eased well off to starboard so they would pass at a good distance. After he was by he looked back and saw the launch make a big fast white-water turn and start coming up very fast behind him.

Corpo stood with his hands locked on the wheel. He heard the pursuing boat slap through his wake. It came up beside him, twenty feet away on the port side, siren growling as it slowed to his speed. He did not look over at them.

“Sergeant!” the familiar voice shouted. “Sergeant Corpol! Kill those engines! Now!”

He pulled the throttles back. The bow lifted and then settled. He put both drives in neutral, turned both keys. He moved back from the wheel and still not looking toward the Lieutenant, he sagged down into a sitting position on the deck. He closed his eyes and rocked slowly back and forth. When your eyes were closed, voices sounded funny. Like the people were talking into empty barrels.

With vivid flashing eyes, body rigid with anger and indignation, Miss Boylston looked directly at Dave Dickerson, then at Gordon Dale, then at Chief Cooley. “I am not going to be given a sedative, gentlemen! I am not going to be knocked out. And the business of Sergeant Corpo is not going to be set aside so you can take care of it later.”

“All I said was...”

“I heard what you said, Mr. Dale. Should I call you Lieutenant the way Sarg does? You and I happen to be the only people in the world he gives one damn about, and I am not going to talk about anything to anybody until I have some kind of guarantee you’ll leave him alone.”

“I don’t rightly see how we can do that,” said Chief Cooley.

“Lock him up, eh? The wonderful answer to everything. I would like to speak to Mr. Dale in private.”

Cooley sighed, nodded at Detective Sergeant Dickerson and they left the hospital room. “Mr. Dale, are you getting tired of being responsible for Sergeant Corpo? Is this just a wonderful opportunity to stick him back into a veterans hospital for the rest of his life?”

“You’re very young, Miss Boylston. He held you there on that island over two weeks. He didn’t seek medical attention for you. He did not report finding the boat and finding you. He told me that in front of Chief Cooley. It’s out of my hands.”

“If you want it out of your hands. That’s my point. When he found me he thought I was dying. I guess I should have been. I think if he tried to bring me in when he found me, I could have died on the way. He is simple, and he is confused, but he certainly is smart enough to know what would happen to him if he brought a girl’s body to the city dock. He is confused about what happened. When I regained consciousness he was going to bring me in. But I begged him not to. I pleaded with him.”

“Why?”

“I couldn’t remember what happened. I knew somebody wanted to kill me. I didn’t want them to find me. I wanted to stay right there on his island where I felt safe. He was very sweet and very gentle, and he did not do anything out of line at all. Why do you people want to punish him for doing what I asked him to do? How was he to know?”

“Then your memory came back.”

“Don’t look at me in that skeptical way. I remembered, and I asked him to bring me here to town. That’s what he was doing when you and that cop started showing off, blowing sirens and waving a gun.”

“Dickerson picked up the name on the transom with the glasses. The Muñequita. What was any cop supposed to do?”

“That’s beside the point. He’s no danger to himself or anyone else. He’s a gentle person. He was released in your custody. He admires you. What’s the matter with you? Does it spoil your image to have to look out for a disabled man who saved your life?”

“Now just a minute!”

“Don’t get stuffy with me. You remind me of my brother. He’s a lawyer too. You’re all defensive because you haven’t been doing your job, Mr. Dale.”

“I’ve done everything possible to...”

“To let him go his own way. So you’ve let him accumulate over twenty-three thousand dollars in cash in two ammunition boxes in that crazy shack of his.”

“That much! ”

“If you cared, you’d know how much. We have something in common. He saved my life too. Why don’t you buy the island from the state? Would it cost more than he’s got?”

“I don’t know. Probably not.”

“If he can’t own property, if he’s legally incompetent, borrow the money from him and buy it and lease it to him for the rest of his life for a dollar. When he dies, dedicate it as a bird sanctuary or some damned thing. But right now, please, get those fools to let him out of the cage they’ve put him in and let him go back to his island. This is a lousy time for you to give up on him.”