Джон Макдональд - You Live Once

I had seen some of the other guests at the club last night and they knew I had been out with Mary, so I had to tell my story several times, always careful not to deviate from the one I had given the two officers who woke me up. I kept thinking of the silent body I had left in the woods.

I took a short swim and came back to the beach. Somebody gave me a can of cold beer. I was talking to a dainty blonde who seemed to be making a sun-dazed pass at me when I saw Dodd walking toward the beach, obviously looking for someone. He saw me and headed for me, smiling and waving at friends as he passed them.

He is my boss. He’s as tall as I am, but thirty pounds heavier. The extra weight is not concentrated in any one place — it is all over him in an even layer, blurring his outline. His brown-blond hair is wavy, worn just a shade too long. Except for his mouth, his features are good, and his color is high. His mouth is a bit small, so that in anger his expression becomes a bit pinched and womanish. He has friendly, hearty mannerisms. He is almost a nice guy. That was what made it so rough when he reported — to find out he was almost a nice guy.

His predecessor, my previous boss, had been the best there is.

I have been with Consolidated Pneumatic Products, Incorporated, for five years. It is one of the big ones. You hear more about G.E. and General Motors because they have consumer lines and keep the name in front of the public. C.P.P. sells strictly to industry. You find the two page ads in the technical journals. There are sixteen plants, of which the Warren Tube and Cylinder Division is one of the smaller ones.

I started out in Fall River, was moved next to Buffalo, and then out to Warren a year ago. C.P.P. believes in keeping all managerial talent on the jump. Three years in any one place is about as long as you can expect. It is smart policy. It makes your executive talent in all echelons interchangeable and broadens your men. It facilitates standard management methods and procedures. And when a boy graduates from the gypsies to top management he will know quite a few of the plants intimately, and know personally a great many men in the field.

So many of the big corporations have adopted this plan that it has developed a whole new class of people in this country, people without roots. Or, perhaps, people with a different kind of roots. There are thousands upon thousands of us — the married couples filling up places like Park Forest, Illinois, like the two Levittowns, like Parkmerced in San Francisco, and Drexelbrook in Philadelphia. And, of course, like Warren’s smaller version, Brookways. It is the new management caste, and what it will eventually turn into, nobody knows. Joe Engineer and his wife move out of Parkmerced and into Park Forest two thousand miles away. The first day they are there they can start playing do-you-know with their neighbors. Get the latest word. Wilsie quit and went with Reynolds Metals. Dupont sent Kingley back to the business school. The Bowens have three kids now. They live in the big developments, work on community committees, set up sitter banks and draw on each other’s time; live with a minimum of privacy and a maximum of borrowing of gadgets, party glasses and utensils.

As a bachelor, I have not yet gotten into the community living aspects of this gypsy existence. Doubtless it will happen to me one day. A married man seems to have better promotion chances with top management.

I reported to the Warren plant, to Harvey Wills, the plant manager, on a rainy April day thirteen months ago, as the new assistant production manager. I was flushed with brand new promotion and raise, though apprehensive about the personnel, even though Tory Wylan, my personal spy and friend in the home offices in New York had told me it was a good group.

It turned out to be fine. Ray Walt was a sweetheart. He gave me my head and we worked well together. Ray was transferred in January, and Dodd Raymond came in. Before Ray left he told me he’d tried to get me promoted to his job, but the home office and Harvey Wills both thought I was a little too green for it. He told me, though he didn’t have to, to keep my guard high with Dodd Raymond. He said Raymond was smart and ambitious, and had the reputation of always having a fall guy handy when something went sour. I thanked him.

Harvey Wills called me up to his office the day Dodd arrived, both to meet him and to give him the guided tour. Dodd shook hands the right way, said the right things, dressed the right way, and let me call him Mr. Raymond just one time. I wondered if Ray had been wrong.

But a week after Dodd reported I had a personal letter from Tory Wylan. He confirmed what Ray had told me. He filled in the details of some raw situations Dodd had been mixed up in. He’d trampled some good men and he’d come out on top. Tory wrote that Dodd had some of the top management fooled. The proof was in the fact that Dodd had been able to get a transfer to his own home town — a thing that was strictly against C.P.P. policy.

So, had I not been forewarned, maybe I would have thought Dodd a nice guy. He knew the business and stayed out of my hair. I protected myself by starting a work journal, dictating into it all orders he gave me.

After he and his wife got settled he had me to their place for drinks and dinner, with his wife and his mother. That was the beginning. That’s how I started to get mixed up in the lives of Dodd and Nancy Raymond. Were it not for Dodd, and his being a home town boy with a considerable social pedigree, I would never have gotten to meet Mary Olan, much less endure the motel fiasco and later find her body in my closet. Dodd threw me and Mary Olan together, because he needed a cat’s paw.

He had spotted me on the beach and he came on over. In grey suit and necktie he looked far too dressed up for Smith Lake.

“Hello, Marilyn, Clint. Certainly is a beautiful day up here. Getting hot as hell in town. Clint, can I talk to you a minute?”

It had more of a heavy-boss flavor than I liked, but I excused myself and walked over near the boat house with him.

“What’s up?”

“There’s nothing new about Mary. I dropped Nancy off at Mother’s camp. Clint, I’m really worried about her. This isn’t like her. She invited most of these people here.”

“They seem to be doing fine.”

“Did she act all right when she dropped you off?”

“She was fine and dandy, Dodd. Just like I told the police you sicked on me.”

“Don’t be like that, boy! Hell, they asked me. I had to tell them.”

“You’re pretty jittery.”

“Mary is one of my best friends. You know that.”

Sure. One of his best friends. And he thought he was pulling the wool over Nancy’s eyes in fixing it up so Mary would date me and the four of us could make a nice jolly foursome. But I knew, as he didn’t know, that he wasn’t fooling Nancy a damn bit. Mary, in her own special way, had been making a fool out of Dodd Raymond. Maybe she actually wanted him. Or maybe she had been merely getting even for his unthinkable disloyalty in marrying a stranger without asking her permission first. I hadn’t been able to figure out which it was. I only knew that he wanted Mary Olan and that I had been a handy device to keep her within range. Mary had been seven years younger than Dodd. But they had known each other well before he had moved away from Warren. How well I could only guess.

“How is Nancy taking it?” I asked maliciously.

“She’s upset too, naturally. But let’s leave my wife out of it for the time being, shall we? You don’t seem to give a damn about Mary, Clint.”

“She’ll turn up,” I said.

“When you get dressed why don’t you drive over to the camp? Mother will be pleased to see you. We can have a few drinks and talk this thing over.”