John D. MacDonald

“ Everything I owned filled two suitcases.
Charlotte had wept, and it hadn't touched me. I had accepted being fired without any special interest. Ever since the repatriation, since the hospital, I had felt like half a man. It was as though the other half of me had been buried and I was coming to look for it—here in Hillston, a small city I had never seen. Somehow I had to begin to live again. I had stopped living in a prison camp. And never come completely to life again.
I drank in the motel room until my lips felt numb. There was a pay phone in the motel office. ”

“ Business was light. I nursed my drink and wondered how they had picked me up so quickly. I guessed it was from the motel register. I'd had to write down the make of my car and the license number. They'd known who I'd talked to and what had been said. It was a small city and they acted like men who made a business of knowing what was going on.
Just as I ordered the second drink I saw a big man come in and stand at the other end of the bar. He looked like the man I had seen in the blue sedan. But I couldn't be certain. I had forgotten him and the effect he had had on Fitzmartin. ”

“ Antoinette said.
"Don't use that kind of language with kids in the house. I'm warning you." The girl who had cried came up behind her mother and stared at us.
"You're so damn cautious about the kids," Antoinette said with contempt. "Hi there, Sandy."
"Hi," the girl said in a muted voice.
"You give the kids such a nice home and all, Anita."
"I do what I can do. I do the best I can."
"Look at the way she's dressed. I sent money. Why don't you spend some of it on clothes. Or does Doyle drink it?"
"There's no reason for her to wear her good stuff around the house. What do you want here, anyway? ”

“ There was a subtle, sour odor in the car that sickened me. A dark-red tractor moved back and forth across a distant hillside. Drainage water bubbled in the ditch beside the shoulder. A truck went by at high speed, the blast of its passage shaking my car.
I found that a two-day drunk gives your mind a flavor of unreliability. Memory is shaky and dreams become mixed with reality. I began to wonder if I had imagined the body. When there was no traffic I looked into the back seat again. The tarp was there. ”

“ On the following morning, Thursday morning, Hillston lay clean and washed by the night rains, bright and glowing in the April sunshine. Timmy had often talked about the city.
"It's more town than city. There isn't much of a transient population. Everybody seems to know everybody. It's a pretty good place, Tal."
It lay amid gentle hills, and the town stretched north-south, following the line of Harts River. I drove up the main street, Delaware Street. Traffic had outgrown the narrowness of the street. Standardization had given most of our small cities the same look. ”

“ No man would be so stupid as to kill another man and leave the body at the place where he worked. Yet if some attempt was made to conceal the body—Perhaps then they would assume it was a temporary hiding place until Fitzmartin could think of another.
On the other hand, would any man be so stupid as to kill another man and then drive the body to the police station in his car and claim he didn't do it? ”

“ But I don't feel right about the way you fit in, either."
"What do you mean, Captain?"
"Aren't you just a little too damn convenient? You hit town and everything starts to pop open. Why is that?"
"Coincidence, I guess."
"You knew Timmy and you know Fitzmartin. Maybe before you came here you knew Fitzmartin was milking George. Maybe that's why you came here, Howard."
"I didn't know anything about it."
"I'm not through with you, son. Don't take yourself any notion to disappear. I want you where we can talk some more. You're just too damn convenient in this whole thing." ”

“ Why had it been put in my car? Somebody wanted to get rid of it. Somebody wanted to divert suspicion from himself. From the look of the wound, murder had been violent and unplanned. One tremendous, skull-smashing blow. It was inevitable that I should begin to think of Fitz. Of the people I knew in Hillston, he was the one capable of murder, and both quick and brutal enough to have killed a man like Grassman. ”

“ I drove back out through April warmth and picked up Ruth Stamm at the time she suggested. She had changed to a white sweater and a dark green skirt. She seemed more reserved, as if she had begun to doubt the wisdom of coming along with me. As we got into the car I said, "How did the Bronsons take it?"
"Very hard. I thought they would. But I talked them into getting another dog right away. That's the best way. Not the same breed, but a new pup, young enough to need and demand attention."
"Where should we have lunch? Where we can talk."
"The coffee shop at the Hillston Inn is nice." ”

“ A turnstile?"
"Don't get sore."
"You look stuffy to me, Tal Howard. Stuffy people bore me. So what the hell was this? A sentimental journey all the way from prison camp to dig up poor little me?"
"Not exactly. And I'm not stuffy. And I don't give a damn what you are or what you do."
The glare faded. She shrugged and said, "Skip it. I don't know why I should all of a sudden get sensitive. I'm living the way I want to live. I guess it's just from talking about Timmy. That was a tender spot. From thinking about the way I was. At thirteen I wanted to lick the world with my bare hands. ”

“ The narrow dock had been hauled out onto the shore for the winter and hadn't been replaced. The wind had died and the lake was like a gray steel plate. Voices had an odd resonance in the stillness. Captain Marion came out of the cabin with a husky young patrolman. The patrolman had changed to swimming trunks. He wore an aqualung with the face mask shoved up onto his forehead. He walked gingerly on the rough path in his bare feet. He looked serious, self-important, and chilled.
Captain Marion said, "Try to stay on this line right here. The water looks kind of murky. How's the light?" ”

“ I know the people that come stay in them. Knew George and Timmy Warden and their pa. Knew that Eloise, too. Knew when Timmy used to come up and swim all the way across to see Ruthie Stamm. Showing off, I guess. Then last year there was a fellow named Fitzmartin up here. Guess he rented this place from George. First time it was ever rented, and now it's been sold, but that's beside the point. You know there's all this do-it-yourself stuff these days. Takes the bread out of a man's mouth. Takes honest work away from him. People do things theirself, they botch it all up. ”

“ The way he had talked of George, and the way he had talked about holding the knife at Ruth's throat. That can happen to a man. There are men who hunt who do not take their greatest pleasure in the skill of the hunt, but rather in the moment of seeing the deer stumble and fall, or the ragged bird come rocketing down. From animal to man is a difference in degree, not in kind. The lust to kill is in some men. It has sexual overtones. I had sensed that in Fitzmartin. I could even sense it in the tone of his voice as he had called to me when he had passed the cave. ”

“ You're about the only one of his old friends who saw much of him, Ruth. Where did it all go? He liquidated an awful lot of stuff in the past year. What the hell was he doing? Playing the market? Gambling? Women? Drugs?"
"He was drinking it up, I guess."
"Oh, sure," Allan said. "I know what Syler paid for the house. I know what he got when he sold the lease on Delaware Street. I know what he got for the cement trucks. If he didn't touch anything but Napoleon brandy at twenty-five bucks a bottle, he'd have to drink a thousand bucks a week worth to go through that money." ”

“ I think we ought to go after the money. When we get it, we can circle around town and get to the motel from the south. Then we can pick up our luggage and be on our way."
"Then that means spending too much time in the area with the money on us. Why don't we circle around and get the baggage first? Then when we get the money, we're on our way."
"They know where I'm staying. Suppose they're waiting there to pick us up."
"Damn it, how did you manage to mess this up, Tal Howard?"
"I didn't mess it up. It isn't a big city. I'm a stranger. They're after a man named Fitzmartin." ”

“ I told them that Fitzmartin had told me that he had hidden Grassman's body in a barn eight or ten miles south of the city, on a side road. In a ruined barn near a burned house. Marion nodded to Prine. He went out to send men out to hunt for the barn. He had gone out once before, to send men to the island. I had told how to find the cave, and told them what they would find in the cave. I told them they would find the gun in my car. I lied about Grassman, and I left out what I knew about Antoinette.
It would do them no good to know about her. They would learn enough from the Redding police. ”

“ I wandered back to the Aztec. My bartending friend told me that Toni Raselle was out in the casino in back, escorted by a general. He said she was wearing a white blouse and dark-red skirt, and had an evening scarf that matched her skirt.
I tipped him and went out into the casino. I bought chips through the wicket just inside the door. The large room was crowded. It was brightly, whitely lighted, like an operating amphitheater. The light made the faces of the people look sick. The cards, the chips, the dice, the wheels were all in pitiless illumination. ”

“ Fulton. It would link me too closely to Grassman.
Antoinette Rasi then. I would look for her.
The shack was on the riverbank. It had a sagging porch, auto parts stamped into the mud of the yard, dingy Monday washing flapping on a knotted line, a disconsolate tire hanging from a tree limb, and a shiny new television aerial. A thin, dark boy of about twelve was carefully painting an overturned boat, doing a good job of it. A little dark-headed girl was trying to harness a fat, humble dog to a broken cart. A toddler in diapers watched her. ”

“ I went out there because I put my car in a garage here and I told the man I'd known Timmy in prison camp. He said there was another man here who'd been in the same place. Earl Fitzmartin. So I went out there and saw him. Then I came here. I could have come here first and then gone out there. I don't know why you think you have to give me a job or a gun or anything."
He looked at me and then bent over and picked up the bottle again. He put some in both glasses. "Okay," he said. "So it's just like that. Pay no attention to me. Hardly anybody does any more. Except Fitz. He's a good worker. ”

“ Timmy was good on the books, as he had a natural knack for figure work. They had a building supply business, a retail hardware outlet, a lumberyard, and several concrete trucks.
And George had a lush, petulant, amoral, discontented young wife named Eloise.
"I didn't make any play for her, Tal. It just seemed to happen. She was my brother's wife and I knew it was bad, but I couldn't stop. We had to sneak around behind his back. Hillston isn't a very big city. We had to be very careful. I guess I knew all the time what she was. But George thought she was the best thing that ever walked. ”

“ The children looked at me as I got out of the car. A heavy woman came to the door. She bulged with pregnancy. Her eyes and expression were unfriendly. The small girl began to cry. I heard her brother hiss at her to shut up. The woman in the doorway could have once been quite pretty. She wasn't any more. It was hard to guess how old she might be.
"Is your name Rasi?" I asked.
"It was once. Now it's Doyle. What do you want?"
"I'm trying to locate Antoinette Rasi."
"For God's sake, shut up sniveling, Jeanie. This man isn't come to take the teevee." She smiled apologetically at me. ”