Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

“He’ll get fifteen years,” the second deputy said. “His accomplice got fifteen years. They can sing to each other.”

“That’s my case,” Macomber said, slowly, putting on his hat. “I was the first one to look at the boxcar after they bust into it.” He turned at the door. “Somebody’s got to go bring Brisbane back from Los Angeles. I’m the man, wouldn’t you say?”

“You’re the man,” the second deputy said. “That’s a nice trip. Hollywood. There is nothing wrong with the girls in Hollywood.” He nodded his head dreamily. “I wouldn’t mind shaking a hip in that city.”

Macomber walked slowly toward the sheriff’s house, smiling a little to himself, despite the heat, as he thought of Hollywood. He walked briskly, his two hundred and forty pounds purposeful and alert.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” the sheriff said when he told him about Brisbane, “what the hell turns up in Los Angeles.” The sheriff was sleepy and annoyed, sitting on the edge of the sofa on which he’d been lying without shoes, his pants open for the first three buttons, after lunch. “We got a conviction out of that, already.”

“Brisbane is a known criminal,” Macomber said. “He committed entry.”

“So he committed entry,” the sheriff said. “Into a boxcar. He took two overcoats and a pair of socks and I have to send a man to Los Angeles for him! If you asked them for a murderer you’d never get him out of Los Angeles in twenty years! Why did you have to wake me up?” he asked Macomber testily.

“Los Angeles asked me to have you call back as soon as possible,” Macomber said smoothly. “They want to know what to do with him. They want to get rid of him. He cries all day, they told me, at the top of his voice. He’s got a whole cell-block yelling their heads off in Los Angeles, they told me.”

“I need a man like that here,” the sheriff said. “I need him very bad.”

But he put his shoes on and buttoned his pants and started back to the office with Macomber.

“Do you mind going to Los Angeles?” the sheriff asked Macomber.

Macomber shrugged. “Somebody’s got to do it.”

“Good old Macomber,” the sheriff said sarcastically. “The backbone of the force. Ever loyal.”

“I know the case,” Macomber said. “Inside out.”

The sheriff looked at him over his shoulder. “There are so many girls there, I read, that even a fat man ought to be able to do business. Taking your wife, Macomber?” He jabbed with his thumb into the fat over the ribs, and laughed.

“Somebody’s got to go. I admit,” Macomber said earnestly, “it would be nice to see Hollywood. I’ve read about it.”

When they got into the office the second deputy got up out of the swivel chair, and the sheriff dropped into it, unbuttoning the top three buttons of his pants. The sheriff opened a drawer and took out a ledger, panting from the heat. “Why is it,” the sheriff wanted to know, “that anybody lives in a place like this?” He looked with annoyance at the opened ledger. “We have not got a penny,” the sheriff said, “not a stinking penny. That trip to Needles after Bucher cleaned out the fund. We don’t get another appropriation for two months. This is a beautiful county. Catch one crook and you got to go out of business for the season. So what are you looking at me like that for, Macomber?”

“It wouldn’t cost more than ninety dollars to send a man to Los Angeles.” Macomber sat down gently on a small chair.

“You got ninety dollars?” the sheriff asked.

“This got nothing to do with me,” Macomber said. “Only it’s a known criminal.”

“Maybe,” the second deputy said, “you could get Los Angeles to hold onto him for two months.”

“I got brain workers in this office,” the sheriff said. “Regular brain workers.” But he turned to the phone and said, “Get me the police headquarters at Los Angeles.”

“Swanson is the name of the man who is handling the matter,” Macomber said. “He’s waiting for your call.”

“Ask them to catch a murderer in Los Angeles,” the sheriff said bitterly, “and see what you get … They’re wonderful on people who break into boxcars.”

While the sheriff was waiting for the call to be put through, Macomber turned ponderously, the seat of his pants sticking to the yellow varnish of the chair, and looked out at the deserted street, white with sunlight, the tar boiling up in little black bubbles out in the road from the heat. For a moment, deep under the fat, he couldn’t bear Gatlin, New Mexico. A suburb of the desert, a fine place for people with tuberculosis. For twelve years he’d been there, going to the movies twice a week, listening to his wife talk. The fat man. Before you died in Gatlin, New Mexico, you got fat. Twelve years, he thought, looking out on a street that was empty except on Saturday night. He could see himself stepping out of a barber shop in Hollywood, walking lightly to a bar with a blonde girl, thin in the waist, drinking a beer or two, talking and laughing in the middle of a million other people talking and laughing. Greta Garbo walked the streets there, and Carole Lombard, and Alice Faye. “Sarah,” he would say to his wife, “I have got to go to Los Angeles. On State business. I will not be back for a week.”

“Well …?” the sheriff was calling into the phone. “ Well? Where is Los Angeles?”

Ninety dollars, ninety lousy dollars … He turned away from looking at the street. He put his hands on his knees and was surprised to see them shake as he heard the sheriff say, “Hello, is this Swanson?”

He couldn’t sit still and listen to the sheriff talk over the phone, so he got up and walked slowly through the back room to the lavatory. He went in, closed the door, and looked carefully at his face in the mirror. That’s what his face looked like, that’s what the twelve years, listening to his wife talk, had done. Without expression he went back to the office.

“All right,” the sheriff was saying, “you don’t have to keep him for two months. I know you’re crowded. I know it’s against the constitution. I know, I said, for Christ’s sake. It was just a suggestion. I’m sorry he’s crying. Is it my fault he’s crying? Maybe you’d cry, too, if you were going to jail for fifteen years. Stop yelling, for Christ’s sake, this call is costing the county of Gatlin a million dollars. I’ll call you back. All right, by six o’clock. All right, I said. All right.”

The sheriff put the telephone down. For a moment he sat wearily, looking at the open top of his pants. He sighed, buttoned his pants. “That is some city,” he said, “Los Angeles.” He shook his head. “I got a good mind to say the hell with it. Why should I run myself into an early grave for a man who broke into a boxcar? Who can tell me?”

“He’s a known criminal,” Macomber said. “We got a whole case.” His voice was smooth but he felt the eager tremor deep under it. “Justice is justice.”

The sheriff looked at him bitterly. “The voice of conscience. The sheriff’s white light, Macomber.”

Macomber shrugged. “What’s it to me? I just like to see a case closed.”

The sheriff turned back to the telephone. “Get me the county treasurer’s office,” he said. He sat there, waiting, looking at Macomber, with the receiver against his ear. Macomber walked over to the door and looked out across the street. He saw his wife sitting at the window of their house up the street, her fat elbows crossed, with the sweat dripping off them. He looked the other way.

He heard the sheriff’s voice, as though distant and indistinct, talking to the county treasurer. He heard the county treasurer’s voice rise in anger through the phone, mechanical and shrill. “Everybody spends money,” the county treasurer screamed. “Nobody brings in money, but everybody spends money. I’ll be lucky to have my own salary left over at the end of the month and you want ninety dollars to go joy-riding to Los Angeles to get a man who stole nine dollars’ worth of second-hand goods. The hell with you! I said the hell with you!”