Джон Макдональд - You Live Once

I signaled for another drink. I watched the bare velvet of the shoulders of the piano girl. She had a style like Previn. I drank up, paid the check and left.

That was Tuesday evening. I fed my martini hunger on spaghetti al dente with sailor sauce, read the evening paper’s rehash of our big murder and went back to my apartment. I parked the car, started toward my door, then decided to walk off the spaghetti heaviness. It was just getting dark. Children shrilled and leaped the barberry hedges. I walked by the yellow house and wondered which window was Toni’s.

I guess I walked aimlessly for nearly an hour, turning right or left on impulse, but gradually circling back toward my place. I suddenly remembered the trash, and my promise to Mrs. Speers. It wouldn’t be too late. I lengthened my stride. From far up the street I saw the lights in my windows. I hadn’t been in to leave any on. I left the sidewalk and started across the grass of the big side lawn. I planned to stare in my windows and see who it was who felt so much at home. One key was in my pocket. I had given the other to Mary Olan, and it had been used to put her in my closet. It made me feel strange to see the lights.

When I moved further to the side I saw something that stopped me. It was a silhouette between me and my lighted window. The hat shape was official and distinctive and unmistakable. A police car was parked beside my car, and a policeman stood quietly in the night, leaning against my car.

I moved to put the safe wide trunk of a big elm between me and the waiting man. It took me closer to him. When bright headlights swung into the driveway, I moved again to keep the elm between me and the lights. It was a noisy vehicle and when it turned, I saw that it was a tow truck. I could see men moving around inside my apartment. The door opened and Captain Kruslov stood in the doorway and looked out. He walked out into the driveway and a thin man followed him.

The tow truck backed into position by my car and when its motor quieted I heard Kruslov saying, “...and Bird can finish the apartment. You ride on in with the car, Danny, and get to work on the trunk right away. See if you can find anything else.”

That “else” chilled my blood. The chain from the hoist on the. wrecker clinked against the front bumper of my car. A man got the hook in place, the hoist whined and the front end lifted off the ground. The thin man got into the truck beside the driver and it went away, my car swaying behind it.

Kruslov watched it go. The patrolman who had been leaning against my car stood beside him. Light shone from my open front door. Into the light came Mrs. Speers, a shawl around her shoulders.

“Did you take Mr. Sewell’s car away?” she asked sharply.

“Yes m’am, we did,” Kruslov replied.

“Mr. Sewell is going to be very angry.”

“I guess so, m’am. You told me he went for a walk. Is that right?”

“Of course it’s right or I wouldn’t have said so. I don’t know what right you have to go into his apartment and take his car away.”

“We’ve got a warrant, m’am. It’s legal.”

“It may be legal, but it isn’t decent. He’s a nice young man.”

“Mrs. Speers, would you mind if I asked you some more questions about last Sunday?”

“Not at all. But if you think that...”

“You said that Mr. Sewell filled up the back end of his car with trash and took it to the city dump. You mind telling me what he put in his car?”

“Cans and bottles and trash. Why the city can’t collect trash the way they do in other places, I’ll never...”

“I mean, m’am, what were the cans and bottles in? Cartons?”

“There was one carton of trash and then he had a big brown canvas thing packed with trash.”

“How big was the canvas thing?”

“Oh, I’d say about as big as a blanket. He had it full of trash and he held it by the four corners, like a sack.”

“Did he handle it as if it was heavy?”

“Of course it was heavy! It was full of trash.”

“Could the Olan girl’s body have been in there?”

I distinctly heard her gasp, and I could imagine the expression on her face. “Why what a ridiculous idea! You must be out of your mind.”

“No, lady, I am not out of my mind.”

“You must be! Why aren’t you out after dangerous criminals, instead of bothering Mr. Sewell?”

“Because I think Mr. Sewell is a dangerous criminal, lady.”

“That’s incredible!”

Kruslov sighed heavily. Their voices had carried well in the night quiet. I was not more than twenty-five feet from them. The police car radio began to make insane sounds — Donald Duck under a tin wash tub. The patrolman’s heels scuffed the gravel as he went quickly over to the car. He spoke a few times in a low voice.

“Nothing yet, sir,” he said to Kruslov.

“You are making a dreadful mistake,” Mrs. Speers said hotly. Her loyalty touched me.

“We’ll see, lady.”

“What makes you think he’d do a thing like that?”

I had sensed the growing irritation of Kruslov. Mrs. Speers had a penetrating, indignant voice, and he had had too little sleep. Perhaps under other circumstances he would have kept police business to himself. But Mrs. Speers had refused to be brushed off. He said in a hard voice, “Lady, I do not know what would make him do a thing like that. All I know is we took a look at his car today, at the plant. An expert opened the trunk and he found an empty tin can. There had been frozen orange juice in it. There was a white thread caught where the metal was ragged. The lab boys say that white thread came off the Olan girl’s skirt. Now why don’t you go back in the house?”

Mrs. Speers was defeated. She left without a word. I was defeated too. I remembered climbing down the slope to get the can. If I’d remembered Mrs. Speers’ trash on Monday night, the can would now be in the dump and covered up, white thread and all. Maybe there was a moral there, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I stood in the night behind the tree and felt as naked as the day I was born.

A man carrying a black case came out of my apartment. “You through, Bird?” Kruslov asked.

“I’m through.”

Kruslov turned to the patrolman. “You wait in the apartment with the door locked and the lights out. Just because it’s dark don’t go to sleep. I’ll take the car in now. If he’s missed by the other cars, you take him when he comes in. Don’t take any chances. Cuff him to the radiator and phone in. I’ll bet a buck he went to the movies or a bar. If he was still walking, they’d have him.”

Kruslov and Bird got in the car and went away. The patrolman stood in the doorway. He took out a cigar, bit the end off and lighted it. He looked at the night for a while and then went into my apartment. The lights went off. I moved slowly back across the side yard, keeping the tree trunk between me and the apartment. There was a high hedge at the far end of the side yard. I wedged myself into it and tried to do some constructive thinking, but my mind wouldn’t work. If I turned myself in I would have to try to explain why, after finding the body, I had gotten rid of it. The action seemed to scream of guilt. I kept plaguing myself by asking myself why I’d taken the body away in the first place. It was hardly constructive thought.

Fear grew larger and larger in my mind, fear that I was not going to get out of this. I’d taken her into my apartment and strangled her. I’d driven her car away and abandoned it. I’d come back and slept and disposed of the body the next day. My prints were on her car. Now they’d be looking for the tarp and they’d find it. It seemed to me I’d read that they could type sweat, and my hands had certainly been sweaty when I’d lifted the tarp with her body in it. It had been my belt around her throat, and they’d find that too. I wanted to start running through the night. I wanted to run hard out across the night fields, away from this place.