Sam McCain - 02 - Wake Up Little Susie (26 page)

He didn’t love me but he respected me and he kept me from being hurt. I know how plain I am. But he was always telling me how attractive I looked.” She glanced at me and smiled.

“He even had me half believing it. He was a very good talker, as you know.”

I set the table in the breakfast nook. She brought over the food and I brought over the coffee.

We sat down and ate.

“I’m not scared,” she said, after we’d forked through our food for a while. “I know I probably should be.”

“You’re a good risk for bail. You won’t be in jail long.”

She looked over at me, and I was reminded again of a Roman sculpture. Dick hadn’t been just flattering her. She really .was an attractive woman. Much more attractive the older she got.

“I’ll be spending the rest of my life in prison, won’t I?”

“I really can’t say.”

“But if you had to bet—”

I shrugged. “I’m not much for betting, I guess.”

“How’s the food?”

“Great.”

“I’m going to give Chalmers and Ellie a lot of money.”

“They’re good people.”

“Yes. As unlikely as it seems, he is in fact a good man. And she’s a great kid.

Dick loved her very much.”

“Yeah, I think he did.”

I poured us some more coffee.

“Would you like to be my lawyer?”

I smiled. “That’s very nice of you. But you need a hotshot.”

“Do you know any hotshots?”

“A good one in Cedar Rapids.”

“Would you be willing to call him before you call Cliffie?”

“I really need to call him after I call Cliffie. To keep things kosher with the law, I mean.”

She had a nice, weary smile. “Then that’s what we’ll do, isn’t it?” Then: “I’m sorry I killed them, you know. I mean, I’m not really a heartless beast.”

“Gee, really? You had me fooled. I

figured you for a heartless beast for sure.”

“They were going to destroy us, Dick and me.”

“There had to be a better way, Mrs.

Keys.”

She was silent.

I looked at her for a long time and said very quietly, “Maybe now I should call

Cliffie.”

She looked back at me, andfora moment there I thought she might start crying but she didn’t.

“Yes,” she said. “Maybe now would be a good time to call him, wouldn’t it?”

Mary was in the hospital another week, by which time she remembered just about everything, including the sad—but still spooky—sight of Dick Keys trying to work himself up to killing her in the cold cabin where he’d kept her. Once she went home we spent several evenings playing cards and watching Tv together. I was so grateful she was alive and getting well, I didn’t think about Pamela Forrest much, which was good news for everybody. One night, when we were sure her folks were asleep, we really got into some randy sex on the couch in front of the Tv. We knew we didn’t dare risk going all the way there, but we had a lot of fun anyway. It was like being back in high school again and how could you beat that?

Jeff and Linda got married. Chip

O’Donlon got the crap beat out of him by a jealous husband. And the Judge, over the Thanksgiving weekend, flew to New York, where she was a dinner guest at Lenny Bernstein’s place. At Christmastime, one of our sidewalk Santas got arrested for being intoxicated, Old Lady Arness

emptied a shotgun into the Nash Rambler belonging to an Irs man who was trying to collect back revenues, and our basketball team came within three points of beating the number-one ranked team in the state.

And then one day I got a perfumed envelope, out of which dropped a wallet-sized color photo of the gorgeous mystery lady: the blond hair, the black head scarf, the black shades, the black Ford.

On the back it said: We’ll meet again someday, McCain.

I sat there and stared at it for a long, long time.

And then I took out my billfold and slipped the photo into one of the plastic windows. Right between the photos of Mary Travers and Pamela Forrest.

I was a blessed man. I was, a truly blessed man.

The End