John MacDonald - Slam the Big Door

“Correction. He had almost everything. And with some people that’s exactly the same as having nothing.”

“What?”

“I better get her home, Lieutenant.”

“Sure. Thanks for helping out.”

He drove her back to the Key. She stood under the kitchen lights. “I think my personal timing is going to be just about right, Mike.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m going to cry my eyes out. It’s just so far away from me, hanging over me like a — glacier. It’s getting closer and there’s going to be just enough time to get to bed before it falls on me. I’m going to let it rip. I’m going to bellow like a herd of sheep. That doesn’t sound right. A flock of sheep. And I guess they bleat, don’t they? But that’s a word with no dignity.” She took a step closer and kissed him lightly and quickly on the mouth and stepped back. “I’ve got to stop thanking you and thanking you. It’s getting to be a dull routine. Good night, Mike.”

In the morning, when phone calls and callers threatened to drive them out of their mind, Mike, with sudden inspiration, got hold of Shirley McGuire who said she would be happy to run interference. The morning paper gave the accident page one treatment, with a grimly specific shot of the accident scene. Mike read the coverage and decided it was both pedestrian and unnecessarily windy. For the first time in a long, long time he had the quick strong wish that he had directed the coverage: pics, captions, makeup and copy.

At a little after eleven there was a lull, and the three of them, Shirley, Mike and Mary, had coffee on the screened terrace. Mary had been very subdued and quiet, without acting dangerously depressed.

“You’ve been a help, both of you,” Mary said to Mike and Shirley McGuire, “and I’m grateful. But all of this isn’t your problem. Mike, why don’t you have Durelda fix a lunch, and you two take Debbie Ann’s little car, and go a long way away and try to forget all this for a little while. You could drive to Marco. There’s a wonderful beach there...”

Mike glanced at Shirley and saw the quick flicker of interest and anticipation in her dark eyes.

He turned toward Mary and said, “Thanks. But there’s too much to do. Red tape. Legal stuff. Checking account. Lockbox. Wills. I can help with that stuff, Mary.”

“I did it before. I know the routines. I can do it again.”

Mary stood up as the phone started to ring. Mike said, “No reason to do it alone when I’m here to help. And... you’ve got to tell Debbie Ann what’s happened, Mary. I think I should be with you.”

“I can tell her, Mike,” Mary said, and turned to go to the phone, but just as she turned away he saw a look of dread, and he knew he could not leave her.

“They say it’s a lovely, lovely beach at Marco,” Shirley McGuire said.

“And we’ll have a fine picnic, girl. Some other time. Okay?”

Finally, remembering that look of dread, Mike got Mary alone and told her he was perfectly willing to go and tell Debbie Ann by himself, that perhaps it would be better that way. Mary argued, but there was little force in her argument.

So it was agreed that he would go and tell Debbie Ann, provided Sam Scherman said it was all right to tell her, and provided some fool nurse hadn’t given her the morning paper — if she was well enough to read it.

Mike located Sam making his morning rounds. He said Debbie Ann was well enough to be told, that in fact he had debated telling her himself and had decided it would be easier for her coming from her mother. No, Debbie Ann did not know. The special had used her head and commandeered the free paper for the hospitalized before Debbie Ann had seen it.

So Rodenska squared his shoulders, pulled his stomach in and marched to Debbie Ann’s bedside. Her color was much better. The left side of her face was heavily bandaged. Her hair was combed. She had been cranked up into a half-sitting position. The special went out and closed the door behind her.

“What are you doing here?” The locked jaw put a hiss in her speech, an odd tonal quality. “Where’s Mommy? Why isn’t she here?”

“She sent me to visit the sick.”

“This goddamn neck brace is driving me out of my mind. They fixed it so I can’t breathe through the left side of my nose. And they took out a perfectly good tooth, a perfect tooth right in front, goddamn them, so I can suck the foul goop they give me through a straw. So the last thing I want to look at this morning out of this one eye is you, you dirty snitch bastard! Go away, for God’s sake!”

“Anybody could tell you’re vastly improved.”

“How the hell did you all of a sudden make her start hating me? You’re pretty damn smart, Rodenska. You sold her the whole story. Thanks so much. You destroyed her love for me. God, I hate you!”

“Not her love, kiddo. Just her liking for you, and respect for you, and pride in you. Love goes on. You don’t turn that kind off.”

“How comforting can you get?”

“I didn’t tell her anything until I had to. Then I had to do it the hard way, to keep her from charging Troy with rape.”

“Is that so bad?”

“It wouldn’t have stood up. There wouldn’t have been a conviction.”

“I don’t care about that. I wanted them to pick him up and take him to a little room and beat the living hell out of him. That’s what they do to rapists.”

“Only on television. Except when they’re the wrong color.”

“Oh. Anyway, somehow he’s going to pay. Even if I have to hire people to do it. I want his face smashed the way he smashed mine. And crack his neck and break a finger, just like what happened to me. He didn’t have to hit me!”

“What did you say to him?”

“He wouldn’t answer me. He just kept walking. It made me mad. So I stopped and got out. He told me to get out of his way. I asked him where he was going and he said just as far from me as he could get. So I just said he didn’t have to worry about it ever happening again. He didn’t have to run from temptation, I told him. Because just once was plenty for me. I said it was pretty dull merchandise, probably because he was so damn old. Then he hit me. When you see him, you tell him I’ll get even sooner or later. That’s all you’re good for — telling people every damn thing you know. It makes you feel important. You stick your nose in other people’s lives because it makes you feel like a big shot. Get the hell out of here! I get sick looking at you and they keep warning me I shouldn’t throw up.”

“I can’t tell him, princess. I can’t tell him a thing.”

“Why? Did he really go away? I thought it was just an act.”

“He did just what he said he was going to do. He got just as far away from you as he could get. And you’ll never get even.”

“You think.”

“I know. I can’t give you this between the eyes, because there is only one eye. And I’m just bastard enough to be able to get a little bit of enjoyment out of this. He’s stone cold dead, baby. It happened last night. Automobile accident. Head-on. He’s one of seven deceased. He didn’t precisely kill himself, and you didn’t precisely murder him. Let’s just say that if you had had the decency or the desire to keep your legs crossed, he’d be alive. And you wouldn’t be in here.”

The eye snapped shut. He saw her sudden pallor, the clenching of her good fist, the spasm of her throat — and he went running for the nurse. She came on the double, snatched up the wire cutters and hovered over Debbie Ann.

“Are you going to be sick, dear?”

“I... don’t know.”

“If you get absolutely sure you’re going to be, nod your head yes and then spread your lips back out of the way.”

They waited in tension and silence for thirty seconds. Just as Mike realized her color was coming back, Debbie Ann said, “I’m not going to be sick.”