Alex Doyle is a tough man on a tough assignment in Ramona Beach, Florida - the kind of place that doesn't trust strangers and is policed by a sheriff who echoes the locals' sentiments with a billy club. But Alex isn't an outsider, exactly. He grew up in Ramona Beach - until they railroaded him out of town. 'Can't trust trash,' they said.
Alex has never been back, until his employer sends him home to locate a government scientist and get him out alive. Unfortunately for Alex, Ramona Beach has a long memory. Unfortunately for Ramona Beach, so does Alex.
Release date:
June 11, 2013
Publisher:
Random House
Print pages:
160
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HE HAD BEEN on special assignment in Montevideo, had been there only a month when, without warning, they had cabled him home. He got Pan Am to Miami and
Eastern to Washington. On the April morning after his arrival, he took his written report on his half-completed job to his chief of section at State, and made his verbal report to the chief and two
of his aides, carefully concealing his surprise and irritation at being pulled off, and his curiosity at who might be assigned to complete the job. And his greater curiosity at what might be in
store for him.
Shoemacher said to him, “Alex, I might say off the record that I do not approve of this sort of thing. I do not believe that any other agency should be entitled to reach down into my
section and lift one of my better people. But, because I do not have the facts as to how important or necessary this action is, and because the orders came, quite bluntly, from upstairs, I am in no
position to protest. The loan period is indefinite. When they return you, Alex, I will be curious to learn your opinion as to whether this was . . . necessary.”
“Who wants me?”
“The name and room number is on this slip. A Colonel Presser. Pentagon. He’ll see you at any time.”
He taxied to the Pentagon and found Presser’s office at eleven-thirty. The girl looked blank and aloof until he said he was Alexander Doyle and the colonel was expecting
him. Then there was a quickness in her eyes. After a short wait she told him he could go in. The Colonel was a pale, meaty man who arose and came around the corner of his bare desk to honor Alex
with a heavy handshake.
“So glad to meet you, Mr. Doyle. And this is Captain Derres.”
Alex shook the narrower hand of a small rumpled captain with a ferret face. They sat down, Alex across the desk from the colonel, the captain at the colonel’s right. The only object on the
bare desk was a black-cardboard file-folder. From where he sat Alex could clearly see the title tab of the folder. Alexander M. Doyle. And the never-to-be-forgotten army serial number.
“You are probably very curious as to what this is all about, Mr. Doyle. Let me say that whether our little venture is successful or not, I am most appreciative to State for their
co-operation in this matter. And let me say also, Mr. Doyle, that there is no need for us to ask you any questions.” He touched the folder with the tip of a thick white finger. “We have
here all pertinent data. You will understand, before we are through, just why you are singularly suited for this mission.”
“May I make a comment, Colonel? Before you begin?”
“Of course, Mr. Doyle.”
“You used the word mission. And there is a sort of . . . cloak and dagger flavor about all this. I want you to understand that even though my work during the past three years has been . .
. confidential and investigative, it hasn’t been at all . . . dramatic. I mostly juggle a lot of papers. Add bits and pieces together. Sometimes I come up with answers. Usually I don’t.
What I’m trying to say is that I don’t believe I have the . . . talent or training for anything very dramatic.”
“There may well be . . . dramatic elements in this, to use your word, Mr. Doyle. But we feel you are perfect for our purposes. To begin then, does the name Colonel Crawford M’Gann
mean anything to you?”
“Y-Yes, sir. Something to do with the missile program. A technical type.”
“Age forty-five. West Point graduate. Flyer in World War II. Work at M.I.T. and Cal Tech after the war. A brave and resourceful and . . . rather humorless officer. Cold. Brilliant. Could
get to the heart of a technical problem and improvise measures to cure the bugs. A perfect man for these times. A driver. We’ll give you a file on all this for your study, Mr. Doyle.
I’ll tell you the history briefly. Crawford was rather naïve about women. Three years ago he met and fell in love with a woman who was singing some . . . rather questionable songs in a
supper club here. In spite of all the subtle pressure his friends could exert, he married her. We thought her a most unsuitable person. But, to our surprise and pleasure, she did a good job of
making herself over into an army . . . rather an Air Force wife. Entertained properly. Handled herself well. And Crawford M’Gann’s work improved, if anything. A year and a half ago, in
November, M’Gann suffered a massive coronary. He did not die. He was given a medical discharge. His wife nursed him. She took him away to a secluded spot. She played the part of the diligent
loving wife for a few months, and then it would appear that she became restless. It became necessary for Colonel M’Gann’s sister to come and help care for him. November of last year,
Mrs. M’Gann was murdered. The case has not been solved. I personally doubt that it ever will be. It is our desire that Colonel M’Gann return to Washington. He is not well enough to be
placed on limited service, but he is well enough to operate in a civilian capacity and give us the benefit of his enormous talents. We need the man, Mr. Doyle. The country needs the man, badly. He
is too involved with the murder of his wife to consider anything else. We need someone to change his mind. We think you are the man.”
Doyle stared at the colonel and wondered if the man was mad. “But this is absurd, sir!”
“Perhaps I’ve been playing a rather stupid game with you, Mr. Doyle. I’ve left out certain essential facts. Colonel M’Gann lives with his sister in a rented beach cottage
at Ramona Beach, Florida. The maiden name of the woman he married was Larkin. Jenna Larkin.”
Alexander Doyle looked down at his hands and saw that he had clenched them into fists, that the knuckles were white with pressure. He felt as if he had been clubbed across the belly. The colonel
and the captain seemed far away, and he knew they were watching him. He slowly became aware of the fact that the colonel was speaking.
“. . . send other people down there, but it has been an utter failure. They have been strangers. The local officers of the law have chased them out. Celia M’Gann, the sister, has
kept them from seeing the colonel. She thinks we . . . want to bring him up here and kill him. I’ll be frank. Sustained work might cause his death. But if he were not still under the
influence of his dead wife, I know it is a risk he would accept. That town of Ramona seems to . . . unite against anyone from outside. Our research on you shows you were out of the country when the
murder occurred, Mr. Doyle. Otherwise you would have known of it. It received a big and unfortunately gaudy play in the papers. And it has made good copy for those magazines who trade on the
sensational. There is a complete file of clippings in the folder we will give you.”
“I can’t go back there,” he said simply.
Colonel Presser ignored his statement. “Because you were born and grew up in Ramona, Mr. Doyle, you will be able to fit into the community with little trouble. And it should not be
difficult to devise a reasonable cover story to account for your presence.”
“But I . . .”
“If the murder of Jenna M’Gann were to be solved, I suspect that Crawford M’Gann would come out of his morbid trance, but that is a little too much to hope for. It is hoped
that you can . . . penetrate the defenses set up by Celia M’Gann and make an opportunity to talk in private to Colonel M’Gann. You will find in your folder the suggested line you should
take in talking to him. She intercepts his mail. There is no phone at the cottage. We think that if an intelligent and persuasive man can get to him and talk privately to him, he may listen. And if
he will not listen to the . . . call of duty, if I may be so trite as to call it that, he may listen to enough of the unpleasant facts about Jenna M’Gann to . . . weaken his preoccupation.
The results of our detailed investigation of her are also in your folder, Mr. Doyle.”
“But I don’t think you understand.”
“What don’t we understand, Mr. Doyle?”
“I . . . I was born there, Colonel. Right at the bottom. Swamp cracker, Colonel. My God, even talking about it, I can hear the accent coming back. Rickets and undernourishment and patched
jeans. Side meat and black-eyed peas. A cracker shack on Chaney’s Bayou two miles from town. There was me and my brother. Rafe was older. He and my pa drowned when I was ten. Out netting
mackerel by moonlight and nobody knew what happened except they’d both drink when they were out netting. Then Ma and I moved into town, and we had a shed room out in back of the Ramona Hotel
and she worked there. She died when I was thirteen, Colonel. In her sleep and I found her. She was just over forty and she was an old, old woman. The Ducklins were distant kin and they took me in
and I worked in their store for them all the time I wasn’t in school. I don’t even think of Ramona any more. Sometimes I find myself remembering, and I make myself stop.”
“Are you trying to tell us you are ashamed of your origin, Doyle? And that’s why you don’t want to go back?”
“No, sir. I’m not ashamed. We did as well as we could. It was . . . something else. The way I left. What they’ll think of me down there. I was eighteen, sir. Just turned
eighteen. That was 1944 and I was about to enlist. I was going on over to Davis, that’s the county seat of Ramona County, and enlist on a Monday. There was a party on Saturday night. Sort of
a going away party, sir. And I got drunk for the first time in my life. I passed out. I’ve thought a lot about the way it must have happened. I had a key to Ducklin’s. I think somebody
took it out of my pants and went and opened the place up and took the money and a lot of other stuff. Then put the key back in my pants and a little bit of the money. So . . . I ended up over in
the county jail in Davis. I kept saying I didn’t do it. I knew I didn’t do it. I knew what they were all saying. That the Ducklins had taken me in and been decent to me, and that was
the way I’d paid them back. Like all the rest of the Doyles. Can’t trust that trash. And I’d never stolen anything in my life. And it was the first time I’d ever been drunk.
And the last time I’ve ever been that drunk. I was a confused kid, Colonel. They talked to me over there. They said that if I’d promise to enlist, the judge would suspend the sentence.
And I should plead guilty. So I did and he suspended sentence and I enlisted and they took me right away and I never went back, even to get my things. Not that there was much to get. I . . . I want
you to understand, Colonel. I can’t go back. Maybe it’s . . . too important in my mind, more important than it should be. But I was . . . proud of myself, I guess. I’d made a good
record in Ramona High School. Scholarship and athletics. I was popular with . . . the better class of kids. And then . . . it all went wrong for me. What will they say to me if I go
back?”
The colonel stared heavily at him, then slapped the black file-folder with a hard white hand. “I cannot make speeches. I can tell you some facts. You are thirty-three, unmarried. You have
no close relatives in Ramona. The incident you speak of took place fifteen years ago. I can appreciate the depth of the . . . psychic scar. You enlisted too late to see action in World War II. From
1946 to 1950 you attended college on the G.I. Bill, after getting the equivalent of your high-school diploma while you were in the service. After college you were in the Korean action. During the
two months before you were wounded in the left bicep by a mortar fragment, you were a competent patrol leader. You were given a bronze star. After your discharge, you passed competitive
examinations and went to work for State on a civil service basis. You have received regular promotions. Three years ago you were placed on the kind of investigative work you are now doing. They
think highly of you over there. We had the Veterans’ Administration run a hell of a lot of cards through their I.B.M. sorters to come up with seventy-one possibles from Ramona and the
immediate area on the west coast of Florida. We eliminated seventy. We were extraordinarily pleased to find you, Mr. Doyle, as we did not expect to find anyone so curiously well qualified for what
we have in mind. We had to go very high to get permission to borrow you from State. This is not a make-work project, Mr. Doyle. I shall wave the flag in your face, sir. There are no indispensable
men. But Colonel M’Gann comes as close to that category as anyone I should care to name. Meager as is your chance of success, it is an action we must take. Were this a police state, the
problem would not exist. We would merely go down and get him in the middle of the night and bring him back. Under this form of government, he must come willingly. Other methods of persuasion have
failed. This was Captain Derres’s idea, to use a local person. I find it a good idea. And now Mr. Doyle, you propose that because of an adolescent traumatic experience, we should salve your
tender feelings by giving up the whole idea?”
“Colonel, I . . .”
“You have security clearance. You have demonstrated that you have qualities of intelligence and imagination. As a matter of fact, I should think you would get a certain amount of
satisfaction in showing the people of Ramona what has happened to that Doyle boy. Have you ever been in touch with anyone down there since you left?”
“No, sir.”
“Have you ever run into anyone from Ramona?”
“No, sir. I’ve always been afraid I would.”
The colonel opened a lower drawer of his desk and took out a fabricoid zipper folder, thick with papers. He thumped it onto the desk. “This is the material which has been prepared for you
under the direction of Captain Derres, Mr. Doyle. I suggest you go through it carefully and come in here tomorrow at two o’clock. You can give us your answer at that time. If it is yes, and I
hope it will be, y. . .
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