Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

Macomber put his hands in his pockets so that nobody could see how tense they were as he heard the receiver slam on the other end of the wire. Coldly he watched the sheriff put the phone gently down.

“Macomber,” the sheriff said, feeling his deputy’s eyes on him, hard and accusing, “I’m afraid Joan Crawford will have to get along without you, this year.”

“They will hang crepe on the studios when they hear about this,” the second deputy said.

“I don’t care for myself,” Macomber said evenly, “but it will sound awfully funny to people if they find out that the sheriff’s office let a known criminal go free after he was caught.”

The sheriff stood up abruptly. “What do you want me to do?” he asked with violence. “Tell me what the hell more you want me to do? Can I create the ninety dollars? Talk to the State of New Mexico!”

Macomber shrugged. “It’s not my business,” he said. “Only I think we can’t let criminals laugh at New Mexican justice.”

“All right,” the sheriff shouted. “Do something. Go do something! I don’t have to call back until six o’clock! You got three hours to see justice done. My hands are washed.” He sat down and opened the top three buttons of his pants and put his feet on the desk. “If it means so much to you,” he said, as Macomber started through the door, “arrange it yourself.”

Macomber passed his house on the way to the district attorney’s office. His wife was still sitting at the window with the sweat dripping off her. She looked at her husband out of her dry eyes, and he looked at her as he walked thoughtfully past. No smile lit her face or his, no word was passed. For a moment they looked at each other with the arid recognition of twelve years. Then Macomber walked deliberately on, feeling the heat rising through his shoes, tiring his legs right up to his hips.

In Hollywood he would walk firmly and briskly, not like a fat man, over the clean pavements, ringing to the sharp attractive clicks of high heels all around him. For ten steps he closed his eyes as he turned into the main street of Gatlin, New Mexico.

He went into the huge Greek building that the WPA had built for the County of Gatlin. As he passed down the quiet halls, rich with marble, cool, even in the mid-afternoon, he said, looking harshly around him, “Ninety dollars—ninety lousy dollars.”

In front of the door that said “Office of the District Attorney” he stopped. He stood there for a moment, feeling nervousness rise and fall in him like a wave. His hand sweated on the doorknob when he opened the door. He went in casually, carefully appearing like a man carrying out impersonal government business.

The door to the private office was open a little and he could see the district attorney’s wife standing there and could hear the district attorney yelling, “For God’s sake, Carol, have a heart! Do I look like a man who is made of money? Answer me, do I?”

“All I want,” the district attorney’s wife said stubbornly, “is a little vacation. Three weeks, that’s all. I can’t stand the heat here. I’ll lie down and die if I have to stay here another week. Do you want me to lie down and die? You make me live in this oasis, do I have to die here, too?” She started to cry, shaking her careful blonde hair.

“All right,” the district attorney said. “All right, Carol. Go ahead. Go home and pack. Stop crying. For the love of God, stop crying!”

She went over and kissed the district attorney and came out, past Macomber, drying the tip of her nose. The district attorney took her through the office and opened the door for her. She kissed him again and went down the hall. The district attorney closed the door and leaned against it wearily. “She’s got to go to Wisconsin,” he said to Macomber. “She knows people in Wisconsin. There are lakes there. What do you want?”

Macomber explained about Brisbane and Los Angeles and the sheriff’s fund and what the county treasurer had said. The district attorney sat down on the bench against the wall and listened with his head down.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked when Macomber finished.

“That Brisbane is a man who should be behind bars for fifteen years. There wouldn’t be any doubt about it, once we got him here. He’s a known criminal. After all, it would only cost ninety dollars … If you said something, if you made a protest …”

The district attorney sat on the bench with his head down, his hands loose between his knees. “Everybody wants to spend money to go some place that isn’t Gatlin, New Mexico. You know how much it’s going to cost to send my wife to Wisconsin for three weeks? Three hundred dollars. Oh, my God!”

“This is another matter,” Macomber said very softly and reasonably. “This is a matter of your record. A sure conviction.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my record.” The district attorney stood up. “My record’s fine. I got a conviction on that case already. What do you want me to do—spend my life getting convictions on a nine-dollar robbery?”

“If you only said one word to the county treasurer …” Macomber tagged after the district attorney as he started for his inner office.

“If the county treasurer wants to save money, I say, ‘That’s the sort of man we need.’ Somebody has to save money. Somebody has got to do something else besides supporting the railroads.”

“It’s a bad precedent, a guilty man …” Macomber said a little louder than he wanted.

“Leave me alone,” the district attorney said. “I’m tired.” He went into the inner office and closed the door firmly.

Macomber said, “Son of a bitch, you bastard!” softly to the imitation oak door, and went out into the marble hall. He bent over and drank from the shining porcelain fountain that the WPA had put there. His mouth felt dry and sandy, with an old taste in it.

Outside he walked down the burning sidewalk, his feet dragging. His belly stretched against the top of his trousers uncomfortably, and he belched, remembering his wife’s cooking. In Hollywood he would sit down in a restaurant where the stars ate, no matter what it cost, and have light French dishes, served with silver covers, and wine out of iced bottles. Ninety lousy dollars. He walked in the shade of store-awnings, sweating, wrenching his mind to thought. “Goddamn it, goddamn it!” he said to himself because he could think of nothing further to do. For the rest of his life, in Gatlin, New Mexico, with never another chance to get even a short breath of joy … The back of his eyes ached from thinking. Suddenly he strode out from under the awning, walked up the steps that led to the office of the Gatlin Herald .

The city editor was sitting at a big desk covered with dust and tangled copy. He was wearily blue-penciling a long white sheet. He listened abstractedly as Macomber talked, using his pencil from time to time.

“You could show the voters of Gatlin,” Macomber was leaning close over the desk, talking fast, “what sort of men they got serving them. You could show the property owners of this county what sort of protection they can expect to get from the sheriff, the district attorney, and the county treasurer they put into office. That would make interesting reading-matter, that would, letting men who committed crimes in this county go off thumbing their noses at law enforcement here. If I was you I would write one hell of an editorial, I would. For ninety lousy dollars. One expression of opinion like that in the paper and the sheriff’s office would have a man in Los Angeles tomorrow. Are you listening to me?”

“Yeah,” the city editor said, judiciously running his pencil in straight blue lines three times across the page. “Why don’t you go back to being the third deputy sheriff, Macomber?”