Judge Me Not

by John D. MacDonald

Genres: Hard-Boiled; Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

Judge Me Not, one of many classic novels from crime writer John D. MacDonald, the beloved author of Cape Fear and the Travis McGee series, is now available as an eBook.
 
One way or another, change is coming to Deron, New York. The city has long been terrorized by Lonnie Raval, a ruthless bully whose political machine carried him all the way into the mayor's office. After suffering through years of corruption, kickbacks, and psychological torture, the people of Deron have finally achieved a wave of reforms. Bright young go-getter Teed Morrow has been hired as part of the team cleaning up city hall. There's just one problem. Teed has his own laundry list of bad behavior—and that includes getting involved with Lonnie's wife. He knows he's playing with fire—but it's not until he wakes to find her murdered that Teed realizes how badly he's about to get burned.
 
Features a new Introduction by Dean Koontz
 
Praise for John D. MacDonald
 
“The great entertainer of our age, and a mesmerizing storyteller.”—Stephen King
 
“My favorite novelist of all time.”—Dean Koontz
 
“To diggers a thousand years from now, the works of John D. MacDonald would be a treasure on the order of the tomb of Tutankhamen.”—Kurt Vonnegut
 
“A master storyteller, a masterful suspense writer . . . John D. MacDonald is a shining example for all of us in the field. Talk about the best.”—Mary Higgins Clark

Release date: June 11, 2013

Publisher: Random House

Print pages: 160

Sample

Chapter One
 
When the woman left his side he turned, in his sleep, toward the window.
 
The late October sun slanted across West Canada Lake, rebounded from the locked shutters of the other camps, shone with faint warmth through the open window of Teed Morrow’s rented camp, shone red through his closed eyelids as he let himself drift slowly up from a nap of pure relaxation. He lay naked on the red and blue Indian blanket, a rangy, deep-chested man, with muscles laced tightly to the angular bones. The brown hair on his arms and legs was bleached lighter than his summer tan. He yawned and sat up slowly, stretching his left arm until the shoulder popped, scratching his chest with the knuckles of his right hand. His features were heavy, and his eyes were chronically sleepy, and his hair was a tight cap of brown-blond wire, thinning just a bit on top.
 
He squinted appreciatively across the lake at the fading fire-colors of autumn on the slopes of the Adirondack hills, and felt sad that this was nearly the last of the week ends before the camp was taken over by winter.
 
The distant hiss of the shower stopped and the water pump chugged on for a few minutes before it stopped too. He flipped a mental coin and decided on a swim. His trunks were still beside the bed where he had dropped them. As he stood up to pull them on he noticed how neatly the mayor’s wife had arranged her clothes on the cane-bottomed chair at the foot of the bed. Nubby fall suit, with coat fitted over the back of the chair, skirt folded neatly. High-heeled alligator pumps standing side by side, an inch from the hanging toes of the empty nylons.
 
A very neat woman. Very careful. Very calmly and carefully sensuous, a quality making this little affair quite safe while at the same time robbing it of the spice which recklessness would have sharpened.
 
The door of the tiny bathroom swung open and she came out with her faintly, intriguingly knock-kneed walk. She had her head lowered so that the dark hair, damp from the shower, had fallen forward over one eye. She was biting her underlip and her arms were craned up behind her, fastening the bra. Her breasts were small, her hips tautly narrow, the sheer whiteness of the bra and panties startling against the almost mahogany tan.
 
“There,” she said. She tossed her head, flinging the dark hair back, standing smiling at him with measured warmth, with only a trace of consciousness of self.
 
He knew that her pride was in her girl’s body, in her un-sagging tautness, in nut browness that the years—she would not tell him how many, though he guessed thirty-four—had not touched, and so he always felt a strong obligation to make a small salute in the general direction of that pride.
 
He shook his head, clucking. “Not over seventeen, miss.”
 
“Great fool! What woke you up? I was going to sneak out.”
 
“Sun in my eyes. And you floundering and splashing around in there.”
 
She picked up shoes and nylons and sat on the edge of the bed. She pulled the stockings on, her face intent on this small task, and he stood and watched her, trying to gauge within himself the extent of renewed desire, because this was the measure of how long this thing would last. And, instead of desire, he saw a meagerness about her body. In her face there was a touch of something simian.
 
Felice slipped the pumps on, stood up and walked away from the bed and looked down and backward around her hips, curving her shoulder out of the way. “Seams straight, Teed?”
 
“Straight. Say, how about your hair?”
 
“You mean wet? I’ll leave the top down. It’ll be dry by the time I get back to Deron.”
 
She took her purse off the high bureau, turned and smiled at him. “If you’re going to kiss me, better do it before I get my face on.”
 
He tilted her chin up, kissed her lightly, quickly.
 
“And is that all?” she pouted.
 
“For the nonce, Mrs. Carboy.”
 
He sat on the bed and watched her apply the careful make-up, then don blouse, skirt, tailored jacket. She had brushed her hair into shape. The last thing she did was take a pair of tinted glasses with heavy dark frames and put them on. It was the last touch which always seemed to turn her into a reasonably prosperous librarian. She looked at her watch. “Lots of time.”
 
She sat beside him on the bed. He took her purse, dug out two cigarettes, handed her one. She detested having her cigarettes lit for her, then handed to her.
 
He struck the match. He lit hers and then, as he was lighting his own, she said, “What do you think of me, Teed?”
 
“I think you’re the poor man’s chameleon. Twenty minutes after you leap out of bed, you look ready to be speaker at the luncheon club. Unflattering, I call it.”
 
“Teed! I don’t mean that way. I mean when you met me.” She swung a crossed leg and pouted.
 
“Let me see. That was in hizzoner’s office. There I was, a clean young civil servant, looking lustfully at the mayor’s wife.”
 
“Be serious, Teed.”
 
“O.K., so I saw a gleam in your eye.”
 
“Other men haven’t seen it.”
 
“Oh, I’m always alert for a gleam like that. And frankly, hizzoner didn’t strike me as the sort of old party who could do very much about that gleam.”
 
She gave him a cool look. “So the perceptive Teed Morrow decided then and there that I was a loose woman. Now who’s unflattering?”
 
“No. Not then and there. That was just a preliminary survey. I rechecked it that night I bummed a ride home with you after the late work.”
 
“Rechecked!” she said scornfully. “Masterful type, aren’t you? The subtle approach. Fat chance I had to say yes, no, or maybe.”
 
“People say no to hesitant people just because they think they should.”
 
She looked down and drew crosses on the back of his hand with a pointed fingernail. From his angle of vision he could look into the curve of her throat, see the slow beat of a visible pulse.
 
“What’s the matter with me, Teed?” she asked softly. “I ought to feel rotten, all the way through. And my conscience doesn’t hurt a bit. I just don’t want to be caught, and that’s all I care.”
 
“What are you working up to, Felice?”
 
She lifted her eyes slowly to his. Her lips were not far from his. Her mouth trembled, and he felt almost certain that she had made it tremble.
 
“Would I be too terribly silly if I sort of … kid myself, Teed?”
 
“In what way?”
 
“Well … thinking that … doing this with you might help Mark.”
 
He stared at her and wanted to laugh. “Now wait a minute, Felice! Let’s get back on where I fell off. Item—Mark Carboy is the mayor, and your husband. Item—Mark Carboy is a slightly stupid man, a figurehead for the Raval mob. Item—my boss, Powell Dennison, is the new city manager who is very frankly out to take the city away from Raval. What am I supposed to do? Go up to Powell and say, ‘Please, Mr. Dennison, you got to take it easy on Carboy because I’m sleeping with Mrs. Carboy?’ ”
 
She winced. “Damn you, do you have to say it that way?”
 
“Then tell me what you mean.”
 
She shrugged. “Everybody calls you Dennison’s hatchet man, ever since he sent for you six months ago. If you wanted to help Mark, you could find a way.”
 
“If I wanted to.”
 
She looked down again and ran her fingertips up the back of his wrist. “Do you want to take my silly little rationalization away from me, darling?”
 
“And if I did?”
 
“I just really don’t see how I could … let myself go on with this. I mean I love you and need you so dreadfully and all that, but …”
 
“You’d like to think you were really doing it for Mark, eh?”
 
She didn’t look up. “Don’t be cruel to me, Teed.”
 
“I suppose you want me to promise.”
 
“Oh, yes, Teed. Just a little promise. And it won’t hurt anybody. Mark isn’t dangerous.” He saw her mouth twist. “He’s just a fool.”
 
He felt remote, apart from the two figures sitting on the bed, almost as though he were a third person—judicious, objective, slightly scornful. No matter how soulfully they could manage to look at each other, no matter how suggestively her fingertips nibbled at his arm, it was still a tired little scene that did neither of them any particular credit. He wondered if his sudden desire to humiliate her arose simply from a feeling of revulsion at this trade she wanted to make.
 
“That’s something I ought to think over.”
 
She gave him a wide-eyed stare. “Think? For heaven’s sake, why?”
 
“I should promise, eh? Like that. Because you ask me to.”
 
“No. Because I mean something to you, Teed.”
 
“Sure you do, kitten. You mean a lot to me.”
 
She took off the heavy-rimmed glasses, leaned back, bracing herself with her arms, looking at him with a shy, inviting smile.
 
“It isn’t really as late as I thought, Teed,” she said. “Tell me what I mean to you.”
 
“A near miss, Felice.”
 
She stiffened. “What does that mean?”
 
“All along it’s been a good try. But your love-making, my sweet, has been under very precise control. Your little frenzies have been so very exact. Like you have an outline in the back of your mind, a sort of picture of Felice enjoying herself, and you follow it right down to the last semicolon.”
 
For a few moments her face was utterly expressionless. He felt as though he could actually hear the tiny click as the decision dropped into place in her mind. She pivoted suddenly, kicking her feet up, falling back across his lap, looking up at him.