Джон Макдональд - Pale Gray for Guilt

“Two, please,” said Puss.

“Well, at least the thundering herd is sacked out by now. Her three and my two.” She looked up at the stars. And we squared our shoulders and went in to drop the sky down upon Janine, to change the shape of her world and the shape of her heart forever.

It was one thirty in the morning when Puss came walking slowly into the big living room, yawning. Connie and I had been sitting for a long time in the dark leather chairs near a small crackling of fat pine in the big fireplace of coquina rock. We’d done a lot of talking.

“I think she’s good until midmorning anyway,” Puss said.

“But Maria better sit there by her just in case.”

“She’s there, Connie. If Jan wakes up, she’ll wake us up. But it isn’t likely.”

Puss went over to the little bar in the corner, put two cubes in a squat glass, poured some brandy over them and then came over and shoved the footstool closer to me, sat on it and leaned her head against the side of my knee and yawned again. “She was trying to be so damn brave,” Puss said. “She wouldn’t let go, and she wouldn’t let go, and then she did. And that’s the best thing. Did you get the calls through, Connie?”

“I got that Sheriff and told him she knew and she was resting, and I’d call him back tomorrow and let him know what she’s going to do next. I got her people and got them calmed down. She’ll have to phone them tomorrow. And the boys have to be told.”

“Jan said not to tell them,” Puss said. “She said it’s her job. She keeps asking how we can be sure he never got her note.”

Connie swirled the ice in her drink and then slugged it down. “Know what I can’t forget? Can’t and never will? Five years and it’s still so clear in my mind. Every word that was said. Oh, it was a typical brooha. Tommy and I had hundreds of them. Yell and curse, but it never really meant anything. We both had strong opinions. What we quarreled about that morning doesn’t matter. After he went crashing out, I ran and yanked the door open and called after him. ‘And don’t be in a great big hurry to come back!’ Maybe he didn’t hear me. He had his jeep roaring by then. He never did come back. He didn’t see the sinkhole and drove into it, and he stayed alive in the hospital two days and two nights without regaining consciousness, and he died there.” She stood up, wearing a crooked smile, and said, “The guilts. That’s what they leave you. Tomorrow is going to be a long rough day too, people. ’Night.”

I was on the downslope into sleep when the bed tipped under Puss’s stealthy weight and she slipped under the sheet and blanket to pull herself long and warm against me, fragrant and gentle, with some kind of whisper-thin fabric between my hands and her flesh.

“Just hold me,” she whispered. “It just seemed like such a dark, dark night to be alone.” Her words were blurred, and in a very little while her breathing changed and deepened and her holding arms went slack and fell away.

The four of us arrived in Sunnydale three days later, at a little before noon on Thursday. Connie Alvarez drove the lead car, a mud-caked black Pontiac convertible of recent vintage and much engine. Janine was beside her. When the road was straight, I had all I could do to keep them in sight. Puss mumbled now and again about Daytona and Sebring.

“The whole thing sounds so nutty,” she said. “Do you really think that funny-looking little old judge knows what he’s doing?”

“That funny little old Judge Rufus Wellington knows what everybody is doing. And he’ll have had the whole morning to pry around.” I braked at the last moment, pulled the rental around a bend and peered ahead for the distant dot that would be the Pontiac. “Have you got any questions at all about your little game?”

“Hah! Can the gaudy redhead from the big city dazzle the young, earnest attorney with her promissory charms? Will Steve Besseker, the shy counselor from the piney woodlands, reveal the details of local chicanery to yon glamorous wench? I might have a question at that.”

“Which is...”

“You were a little vague about the details, McGee. Do I give all for the cause? Do I bed this bumpkin if it seems necessary, or don’t you care one way or the other?”

I risked a high-speed glance at her and met the narrowed quizzical eyes of sexual challenge. I said, carefully, “I’ve always had the impression that if the string on the carrot was too long, and if the donkey snapped at it and got it, he’d lose his incentive and stop pulling the load.”

“I resent the analogy and approve the sentiment, sir.”

But challenges have to go both ways or there is no equality among the sexes. “On the other hand, I imagine that you’re the best judge of your own motivations, and you would be the best judge of the appropriate stimulus and response. Such situations vary, I imagine.”

“Are you trying to be a bastard?”

“Aren’t we both trying?”

After a thoughtful silence she said, “Just for the hell of it, McGee, what would be your reaction if I said I’d keep the carrot on a mighty short string?”

“Killian, I would have to admit that I am just stodgy and old-fashioned enough to enjoy being the dog in your manger. I like a kind of sentimental exclusivity.”

“Romantic exclusivity?”

“If you prefer.”

“I prefer, thank you. So be it. I am now motivated to defend my honor. So suppose you watch yours.”

The appointment had been set for twelve noon with Mr. Whitt Sanders, the President of the Shawana National Bank and Trust Company. I saw the empty Pontiac in the bank lot and parked near it and sent Puss on her way, wishing her luck. When I went into the bank, I could see Connie and Janine sitting in a glass-walled office in the rear, facing a big man across a big desk. The receptionist took me back, tapped on the door, and held it open for me.

Sanders stood up and reached across the desk and gave me a bully-boy handshake. He had tan hair and a big, sun-reddened, flakey face, a barrel of belly, a network of smile wrinkles and weather wrinkles, big red hands like ball gloves, and eyes that seemed to have the same size and expression as a pair of blueberries. “Mr. McGee!” he bellowed. “Pleasure! Sit right down and rest yourself.”

I did and he said, “I was just telling the ladies that my sympathy goes out to Mrs. Bannon in this tragic time. You can rest assured, Mrs. Bannon, that the bank is doing everything in its power to liquidate the properties in question at the maximum figure obtainable. Of course certain unfortunate situations in that area have made it a difficult piece to move at this time, but we have negotiated something which I think anyone would agree is more than fair. As a matter of fact...”

And in came little old Judge Wellington with his cream-colored ranch hat shoved back, locks of white hair escaping in random directions, in his dusty dark suit and gold watch chain, carrying a briefcase that had perhaps first seen duty during the Lincoln-Douglas debates, his face remarkably like one of Disney’s seven dwarfs, but I couldn’t remember which one. “Hidey, Whitt,” he said. “New paneling, eh? Purty.”

“Rufus! I heard somebody say they thought they saw you over at the courthouse! Glad to see you.”

“No. I’m not going to let you get aholt of my hand, Whitt. Not with my arthritis laying quiet for a change. So set.”

Whitt Sanders looked confused. “Rufus, if you wouldn’t mind waiting outside until I finish with—”

“Finish with my client? Now, even a jackass like you knows you can’t keep a lawyer away from his client.”

“ You are representing Mrs. Bannon !”

“Why not? Mrs. Bannon is a dear friend of Mrs. Connie Alvarez here, and Miz Connie owns and operates To-Co Groves up to Frostproof, right in my backyard, which you may have heard of even down here in the wilderness, it being near three hundred thousand trees, prime Valencia on sour orange root stock, and she has enough legal battles going at all times with the Citrus Commission and the growers association and the concentrate plant she’s got a stock interest in to keep me right busy in my declining years.”