Джон Макдональд - You Live Once

“You don’t act all right.”

“I’m perfectly all right. I don’t know what you mean. The family burial plot is here in Warren, of course. Mr. Upmann said he would make the necessary arrangements. Mother Raymond wants the Reverend Doctor Lamarr to give the service. I phoned him. He was a little reluctant at first, but he agreed. He said it would be in good taste. Mother Raymond has always been a good friend of the church. I think he thought it would be difficult because the Pryors belong to the same church.”

“Nancy, remember me? Clint. I’m your friend. I didn’t come to pay the normal sympathy call.”

Her face broke and she began to cry. She cried herself to exhaustion. She lay on the leather couch in the small gloomy study and I sat beside the couch and held her hand. It took a long time before she could talk again.

“I hadn’t cried before,” she said tonelessly.

“It’s a good thing to do.”

“I was going to go away. I was going to leave him.

And he was in trouble. He should have told me.”

“He couldn’t tell you that.”

“I failed him somehow, Clint. I didn’t... measure up. He wanted more than I had to give.”

“He wouldn’t find it with Mary Olan.”

“I should have guessed something. He’s been acting so strangely.”

“How?”

“I don’t think he slept more than two or three hours the last three nights. Roaming the house at all hours. I tried to call him twice at the office but he wasn’t in. He didn’t seem interested in the plant any more. He seemed to be thinking something over, making his mind up about something. He wouldn’t talk to me. Then yesterday afternoon he talked... wildly. I couldn’t make any sense out of it. He shouldn’t have been home in the middle of the day. He didn’t seem to care. His hands were all dirty when he came home. He didn’t seem to notice the dirt until I mentioned it. Then he looked at his hands and smiled in a funny way and said, ‘Dust of years gone by, darling. Or call it gold dust. That’s just as good.’ He washed his hands and then came out to the kitchen where I was. He acted as if he’d made up his mind about something. He said, ‘I’ve got it made, baby.’ He wouldn’t explain what he meant. He had a wild-looking smile. ‘C.P.P. can go to hell,’ he said. ‘We’re going to really be in business.’ He kept nodding and smiling to himself. He left after dinner. He didn’t tell me where he was going. He made a phone call before he left, but I didn’t hear who he talked to or what he said. I... I won’t ever see him alive again.”

“Easy, gal.”

She looked into space. She held my hand tightly. “It’s all over, isn’t it?”

“Yes. It’s over, Nancy.”

She turned her face away from me. “I keep thinking of something awful,” she said in a small voice.

“Like what?”

“Like waiting until this is all over. Six months. Or a year even. And then going back and finding a way to have the good years.”

“What do you mean?”

She turned abruptly toward me, her eyes almost fierce. “We must be almost the same age, Clint. I’d know how to be good for you, in the job and everything. I know the life. We had tests, you know. It wasn’t me, I can have children. It would be right this time. Young people all living together. And transfers to new places. I know it all. You could be proud of me, people like me. I was always active on committees and things. I made every new place look good. It was all good until we came here. That’s the horrid thing I keep thinking.”

I didn’t say anything and I didn’t release her hand. She turned her face away again.

“Stupid, wasn’t it?” she said.

“You’re upset.”

“It isn’t you. I just want that way of living back. I just want to be like that again, only this time with children. I’m sorry, Clint.”

“Don’t be sorry.”

“You wouldn’t try it, would you?”

“I’m sorry.”

She took her hand away. I stood up and said goodby to her. She didn’t move or answer or look at me. I let myself out. Just as I reached my car, Kruslov drove in. He and another man started toward the house. I cut over and intercepted them.

“Now what?” Kruslov asked. He looked square and dull and tired.

“Now I want to know how proud you are, Kruslov. I want to know how big a charge you got out of slapping me around.”

He eyed me coldly. “Want an apology?”

“You might try one for size.”

“Never, you damn fool. You found a body and moved it. What the hell right has a civilian like you got meddling in police work? You complicate my job, mess up the evidence, shoot off your mouth and then come prancing around looking for an apology. There’s statutes that cover what you did, and if I get too damn annoyed at you I may see if I can make some of them stick. Now get the hell out of my way.”

I got out of his way before he bounced me out of his way with a heavy shoulder. He went on into the house. I felt like a spanked child. I got into my Merc and drove away.

I had won my argument with Toni and moved some of my stuff into a second class hotel room. I won it by telling her that if I knew C.P.P., I wouldn’t remain in my job for more than another few days. We had taken a bag of cheese and liverwurst sandwiches and a cold six-pack of beer far into the country. Before we left, I had brushed off two reporters with more dispatch than finesse.

From the grassy bank we could toss crumbs into the river. Minnows struck the crumbs ferociously. I lay back and her slack-clad thigh fitted the nape of my neck as though designed for that special purpose.

“Stop frowning,” she said softly.

“Can’t help it.”

“It’s all over now.”

“A cold guy, Toni. A type who figured all the angles. A ruthless guy. Could he kill? Yes, if it would give him a big gain, and if he was logically certain he could get away with it. Would he kill himself? Perhaps, if he was aware that he would be caught. So how does it fit? Not at all. No gain in Mary’s death. And he wasn’t about to be caught.”

“In the immortal words of the bard, leave it lay.”

“Can’t.”

“Maybe it’s all different than it looks, Clint dear. So what? We’re out of it. You don’t owe anybody anything. Now we just think of us.”

“Female reasoning. Ten thousand years ago you’d have your own lady-weight club leaning against the cave wall, just inside the door. And uninvited guests — boom.”

“And ten thousand years ago you’d be seeing how close you could get to a saber-toothed tiger. Hah! Male reasoning.”

“But I can’t let go of it, girl. The package is too neatly wrapped. The string is too carefully tied. Maybe too carefully tied around Dodd’s throat.”

“Don’t!”

“I’m not in love with his memory. I’ve got no yen to vindicate him. Good sense says to do as you suggest. Leave it lay. And spend a lot of the tag ends of the hours of my life wondering.”

She ran a gentle thumb along one of my eyebrows and then the other. She sighed heavily. “Meddler.”

“I know.”

“Big fool.”

“I know that too.”

“If you gotta, you gotta.”

“Mmmm. You are a special deal, MacRae.”

“The large economy size deal.”

“Three dimensional, color, bite-sized, built-in flavor.”

We kissed until the river ran uphill. The minnows goggled at us. All the trees applauded, and a brown and white cow strolled down to the river edge to watch with benign gravity. We gave her a spare sandwich. She ate it with the dignity of a baroness. Then we went back to the car. She took hold of my arm. Her fingers bit in. Her dark eyes spotwelded my soul.

“Be careful,” she said.

Yes, I would be careful. But it was something I had to do. I had to know. They had changed me — Kruslov and his hands, the damp cell, the dead girl. Before I had changed I could have said that it was none of my business. But I had changed and become more involved with life. As with John Donne and his talk of no man being an island.