On the Run

Book 419: Murder Room

by John D. MacDonald

Genres: Mystery; Traditional Mysteries; Noir

Synopsis

Sid Shanley couldn't stay in one place very long. He had to keep on the run, changing towns, changing jobs, changing women. He worked out the perfect setup - no attachments, no trails, no explanations. But now a girl has caught up with him. Her name was Paula - and a million dollars lay behind her strange invitation ...

Release date: June 11, 2013

Publisher: Random House

Print pages: 144

Sample

IN HIS dreams there was light and color, remembered faces and old accusations, and in his dreams his voice seemed to go on and on, explaining,
justifying himself to skeptics.

But he would come out of the dreams, out of a remembered litheness, back into a body ninety-two years old, to the hush of a house of illness. He knew his impatience was irrational. The body had
always healed itself in time. Sickness had always been temporary. But this business of dying seemed to involve so much waiting.

He envied the other old ones, dying all over the world, envied them for their blurred minds which made brief and glancing contacts with reality. But he in turn could be envied, he knew. There
was no pain. The lower spine was gone, the legs dead. And there was the money, of course. Money kept you from dying among charitable strangers. Money was a deodorant, keeping you sweet and sanitary
and inoffensive despite the mess of helplessness. But how the clear mind roamed all dimensions of the mortal trap, deploring past acts, dreading blackness, whining about truth.

He looked at the angle of the mid-summer sun, then turned his head and looked at his gold watch in its small wire stand on the table beside the bed. Ten minutes after three, and a time of
dreaming which had not been wasted because, for a little while, he had visited the summertime of 1884, bringing the little blue sloop back across Caydo Lake in a squall, the year it was new, his
mother on the dock anxiously awaiting him, taking the line he threw her as the sail came rattling down. Dreams are the time machines, and this one would give him a lot of new things to remember
about his fourteenth summer.

He reached his right hand down to the frame of the bed and found the button which began the soft humming, the slow raising of the head of the bed. He was glad he had ordered them to move him
into the small library off the living room of the old house. The master bedroom had been too traditional a room to die in. He had tried the living room next, but it was the house in which he had
been born, and too many caskets populated his memories of that room, too many candles and waxy faces, too often the ripe sweet smell of the flowers. A sardonic amusement sufficed for a time to
offset this awareness, but in May he had decided to be moved into the library, had them take the old desk out, place the bed where he could see, when sufficiently elevated, the red maples and a
part of the neglected garden, and a segment of iron fence and stone wall.

Paula Lettinger came in, almost without sound. She went to the foot of the bed and looked at him with a mocking severity.

“You have a bell, you know,” she said.

“Young woman, when I need your attentions, I shall be happy to summon you.”

She came to him, touched his pulse, touched his forehead, shifted the pillows slightly. She was a dark-haired woman in her late twenties, with heavy black brows, a long firm body, high strong
youthful breasts. Her skin had an ivory clarity, and her face had flat planes, prominent cheekbones under the eyes deeply set. He knew that the look of her was a remote heritage, remembering that
her paternal grandmother had Onandaga Indian blood, had been a rebellious girl, a victim of gossip, had married the Lettinger who had failed in the livery stable business, had borne him three sons,
had died of influenza in 1918, along with Lettinger and one of the boys.

She wore slacks and a sleeveless yellow blouse. He had insisted she give up the white garments of her trade, sensing that in so doing, she would also relinquish some of that professional
impersonal bustling of the trained nurse.

He saw the new touch of color on her nose and cheeks, and across her forehead. “Was it pleasant in the sun?”

She was startled for a moment. “You’re a sly old one. Yes it was. I sat at that old cement table and wrote letters. In shorts and a halter, if you need all the details. And the
Ormand boy climbed a tree and stared over the fence at me.”

“His taste is admirable and his manners are foul. Did you write to your husband?”

She had moved to the foot of the bed. “I wish you wouldn’t call him my husband. The marriage was annulled.”

“All right. The man who was once your husband.”

She sighed. “I wrote to him. My God, how you bully me!”

“How do you feel about it, now that you’ve written?”

“A sense of relief, I guess. But I’d hate to admit you might be right.”

“Everybody must be given a chance, and another, and another, as many as the heart can endure, Paula.”

“Jud doesn’t deserve another chance.”

“Who are you to judge? Five years in prison can change a man. If he wants to see you when he gets out next week, he should have the right to know where you are, the right to come and
explain or apologize—the right to know there is somebody in the world who has a little less than absolute hate for him. The thing I most bitterly regret in my life is my righteousness, my
dear.”

She sighed and shrugged. “If he comes here, I’ll talk to him. It won’t change anything. But I guess he should have that chance anyway. At least now you’ll stop hounding
me. Jane has made some divine chicken broth.”

“Not right now.”

“It will have to be right now. A man has come to see you. If you don’t have the broth, he’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”

“Probably some pest.”

“Oh, I know he’s a pest. And he’s cost you a great deal of money in the past year. Chasing wild geese.”

“Fergasson!”

“The broth is delicious.”

“But my dear girl, if he comes here rather than sending written reports, it means he has something impor . . .”

“A very delicate flavor.”

“It is wicked and unprofessional for you to agitate a sick old man.”

“As soon as you start on the broth, I’ll phone him.”

“It astounds me that you should call me a bully, Miss Lettinger. Bring the broth. Please do.”

She came back to his bedside after phoning Fergasson at the Bolton Inn. Fergasson would be out at four o’clock. He sipped the broth slowly. It seemed to have no taste, only heat and
wetness. He told Paula about the little blue sloop and the faraway summer.

“And I found a dog I had forgotten,” he said. “Bismarck. His namesake was alive then, settling affairs with blood and iron. The dog looked savage. He had a basso bark, but blue
jays used to chase him, and he’d hide under the stable.”

“Back to the beginnings,” she said in a gentle voice. She sat on the deep window seat, outlined against the sunshine. “That’s what I was trying to do, coming back
here.”

“I thank God you did, my dear. I can hear them when you go into the village, all their sour little mouths flapping. See her? That’s Paula Lettinger. Came back here and got a job
nursing old Tom Brower, and him dying of every disease known to man and taking his sweet time about it, her shut up in that gloomy old pile of rock Tom’s daddy built out of the money that
came from overcharging the Union Army for uniforms. Just old Tom there and old Jane Weese been housekeeping for him for thirty years, and feeble old Davie Wintergreen, lives out in the back and does
the yard work. Hear tell she’s got a husband locked up in jail due out soon.”

“Don’t, Tom. Please don’t.”

“Paula, my dear, the vulgar and ignorant of this area have spent an appreciable percentage of their empty lives discussing the intimate affairs of the Brower family, and God knows
we’ve given them enough material over the years. And this . . . final mission of mine, which certainly they have heard about and distorted to suit their temper, must be giving them a splendid
finale.”

They heard the door chime. She got up quickly and went through to the front hallway and let Adam Fergasson in. He was a slender and muted little man, with a smile of servility contradicted by
such a flavor of self-importance that he seemed the image of the clerical public servant the world over.

But when young Randolph Ward, Tom Brower’s attorney, had been directed to contact the best investigation firm in the country and ask them to assign their best man to Brower’s
mission, Adam Fergasson had appeared to be interviewed.

The mission could be simply stated, though the clues were vague: Find my two grandsons. Find them before I die.

Fergasson had nodded, made notes, asked only the most pertinent of questions, and had gone away.

Now he came into the library in his dark suit, murmuring his hope that Mr. Brower was having a good day, taking a straight chair at Brower’s right, looking pointedly at Paula
Lettinger.

“Miss Lettinger will stay with us, Mr. Fergasson,” the old man said.

“Very well,” Fergasson said. He took a dark notebook from an inside pocket. A little gleam of pride was evident as he said, “I have located Sidney Shanley. He is going by the
name of Sid Wells. He is working as a used car salesman in Houston, Texas. He does not stay in one place very long.”

“Are you absolutely certain?”

“I am positive, Mr. Brower. But . . . approaching him presents some special problems.”

“In what way?”

“The change of name is part of a significant pattern. He’s very wary. If he suspects any stranger of having a special interest in him, I am afraid he might move on—and be
difficult to find again.”

“Do you mean he’s wanted by the police?”

“He was, for a time. But the charge was withdrawn.”

“Aren’t you being evasive, Mr. Fergasson?”

Fergasson glanced toward the window seat where Paula was. “It’s a rather unpleasant story.”

“Miss Lettinger is aware of the infinite capacity of mankind to create unpleasantness. Please continue, Mr. Fergasson.”

Fergasson turned some pages in his notebook. “From my previous written reports you know that Mr. Shanley owned twenty percent of an automobile dealership in Jacksonville, Florida. Six
years ago, when he was twenty-eight, he married a woman named Thelma Carr. She had come to Florida to obtain a divorce. Shanley had not been married previously. She was twenty-five, childless,
quite a beautiful woman, but without much background. The marriage was a reasonably good one for perhaps three years. There were no children. Then Mrs. Shanley began to . . . uh . . . see other
men. Two and a half years ago Shanley followed his wife to an expensive motel at Jacksonville Beach where she had a rendezvous with a man named Jerry Wain. Shanley broke into the motel unit and
gave Wain a severe beating. Until the beating Wain was considered a handsome man. He was hospitalized. Due to a severe concussion, he was in a coma for several days. Shanley was charged with
assault, but the police could not locate him. As soon as Wain was conscious, he had the charge withdrawn. Shanley reappeared. He made no attempt to contact his wife. He began negotiating the sale
of his interest in the agency. While Wain was still in the hospital, in fact the day before his release, a young mechanic at the agency got into Shanley’s car to move it to a different
parking space to make room for a transport load of new cars coming in. A bomb had been wired to the ignition system. The mechanic was gravely injured. He eventually recovered, but he lost one leg
below the knee and lost the other foot at the ankle. That case has never been solved. Shanley sold his interest in the dealership. The day after he sold it, the wife of the young mechanic received
a cashier’s check in the mail for the exact amount Shanley received, less one thousand dollars. He disappeared at that time.”

“Who is this Jerry Wain?” Tom Brower asked.

Fergasson smiled, a thin smile, quickly gone. “A legitimate businessman, he would insist. And present lawyers and accountants to prove it. A few arrests long ago on minor charges, in
Philadelphia. I’d say he does have many legitimate business interests. But I would judge that he also is involved in bolita, moonshine, call girl circuits and some discreet gambling clubs.
Not as a decision maker or policy maker. An area manager would be more accurate. A showplace home south of Mayport, daughters in good schools, a low golf handicap, a forty-foot cruiser, service on
civic committees, regular church attendance.”

“Is my grandson still hiding from him? After two and a half years?”

“With good reason, Mr. Brower. Wain has, or had, considerable vanity about his appearance. He had cosmetic surgery done, but the nerves in the left side of his face were injured. The
corner of the eye and the corner of the mouth sag. It makes him look remarkably sinister, precisely the impression he has been trying to avoid. My informant in most of this was Shanley’s
wife. She has not heard from him since he left. They are not divorced. She goes by the name of Thelma Carr.” He glanced again at Paula. “She is . . . uh . . . a hustler. She works the
cocktail lounges along the beach. She was the one who gave me the details about Shanley, about his hobbies and habits, the details which enabled us to locate him.”

“How do you mean?” Brower asked.

“A man can change his name and appearance a lot easier than he can change his areas of interest and proficiency, sir. Memberships, magazine subscriptions, mail-order purchases, these are
all . . .”

“Of course. I should have figured that out for myself.”

“At any rate, without my having to ask her, Thelma Carr said that Jerry Wain checks with her every month or so to find out if Shanley has tried to get in touch with her. She gave me what I
believe is a reasonably accurate direct quote, just as Wain said it: ‘A lot o. . .