A Century of Great Suspense Stories

Nor Iron Bars John D. MacDonald

Sometimes novelists achieve fame for the wrong books. The Travis McGee novels by John D. MacDonald (1916–1986) are exemplary adventure books of their type, that being an updating and derivation on the private-eye formulas and mechanisms of the thirties and forties. They contain wisdom, grace, and more than a little droll manly humor. But for many they are not MacDonald’s most accomplished work. His novels Cry Hard, Cry Fast (1955), Murdering the Wind (1956), Slam the Big Door (1960), A Flash of Green (1962), and the astonishingly good The End of the Night (1960) were among his finest work. There were also an imposing number of other paperback originals that were also first-rate crime stories — among them Dead, Low Tide (1953) and One Monday We Killed Them All (1961) — that were never done in hardcover in the United States. His best work bore the stamp of John O’Hara and John P. Marquand. He knew that crime was an essential part of the American Century (whether it was crime in corporate boardrooms or crime in a Charles Starkweather — like murder spree) and he made it a point to let his readers know how crime really worked. He was the greatest storyteller of his time.

The appearance of Sheriff Commer’s hand as he sat in the office of the jail told as much about him as most people who had lived in that little Southern city all their lives had learned. It was a square heavy hand with a thatch of brown curling hair on the back and short knobbed powerful fingers, tanned by the sun and wind, yellowed by the constant cigarette. He sat listening to the angry crowd noises, yelling for Burton, roaring from the park across from the jail, his thumb and first finger clenched so tightly on the short butt of his cigarette that the damp end of it was only a thin brown line.

He glanced down at his hand propped against the side of the oak desk and marveled that his finger didn’t tremble; secretly he always wondered at it. He respected and admired the independent nervelessness of his body, the way his brain could whirl in a mad haze of fear, his throat knotted, his heart thumping, and still his body, huge, ponderous and powerful, would go about its appointed tasks, with steady hands, calm eyes, quiet voice.

He kept safely tucked back on a secret shelf of his mind the thought that one day the body would break, the frenzied mind would have its way; and he would collapse into a quivering hulk, moaning over the imminence of pain and death.

The swelling roar of the lynching crowd faded from his conscious mind as he remembered the bright afternoon long ago when he had walked out of the group surrounding the Otis barn, walked steadily across the dark timbered floor, climbed slowly and heavily up the ladder until his head was above the floor of the loft, turned slowly and looked with chill impassivity into the crazed eyes of Danny Reneta. The only objects he saw in the dim hay-fragrant loft were those two shining eyes and the round vacant eye of the rifle which stared at him with infinite menace.

The room seemed to swing around him in a dizzy cycle of remembered fear as he recalled how he had calmly said, “Now, Danny. Better give me the gun,” had slowly reached out with a hand as firm as a rock and grasped the muzzle of the rifle.

The two insane eyes had stared into the two calm ones for measureless silent seconds until Commer thought he would drop screaming down the ladder.

Then a great rasping sob had come from Danny’s throat and Commer had pulled the rifle out of the nerveless fingers.

Now he dropped his cigarette butt on the stained floor and ground it out with his heavy heel while that incident faded with the others from the dark place in his soul.

He rose slowly to his feet, walked over to the window, stood and looked out into the park, saw dimly the shifting, growing crowd, heard the increased roar as they saw his bulky silhouette against the office light. He half-sneered as he realized who they must be: The drug-store commandos. The pool room Lotharios. The city’s amateur Cagneys.

But he felt also the slow certain growth of fear, an ember threatening to ignite the ready tinder of his mind. He realized what a lynching would mean to him and to the city. It would kill his pride and self-respect more certainly than the impact of lead would kill his stubborn body.

He sighed, trying to shrug off his fear, walked to the desk and brought out two large official thirty-eights. He held one in each hand and looked at them then tossed them back into the drawer, slamming it shut with his chunky knee. He fumbled in the wall locker and brought out a submachine gun. He held it and looked down at it, looked at its shining, oiled efficiency, fingered the compensator, tested the slide and then stood silently, testing his strength against the smoldering ember of fear.

He grunted as he stooped and hauled two heavy drums of fifty shells each out of the bottom of the locker. He snapped one onto the gun and then walked back toward the cells, the gun dangling from one blunt hand, the drum clenched in the other.

At the door of Burton’s cell he laid the gun and drum on the floor, unlocked the cell and walked in. The hanging bulb made harsh light and blocky shadows in the cell. Burton slid off the cot and made quick short steps backward until he was pressed against the far wall, his huge black hands pressed palm-flat, fingers spread, against the whitewashed concrete, his face a shining impassive mask except for the wide eyes, dark iris rimmed with white. He was straight and tall, broad-shouldered and slim-hipped, a graceful and living creature, shocked and helpless under the pressure of the threat of sudden, violent death.

Commer stood for a few minutes looking at him, expression calm, eyes friendly. “Got a feeling you didn’t do it, Burton,” he said. “You look like a good boy to me.”

Burton licked his lips, the glaze of fear fading slightly from his eyes as he answered, “I swear to God, Sheriff, I didn’t do it. I ain’t a killin’ man. I hear ’em yellin’ out there like they goin’ to come in and get me any minute. Don’t let ’em do it. Don’t let ’em do it!” The last few words were a sob.

“Whether they come in or not depends on you, Burton.”

“On me, sir? On me?” His tone was incredulous.

“That’s right. Can I trust you?”

“Yes, sir. I do anything you tell me.”

“Would you run away if you had the chance and knew I didn’t want you to?”

Burton stood silently. Then he said, “No, sir.” Commer believed him, believed him because of the pause, the weighing of loyalty against the fear that he could almost see in Burton’s eyes. The man hadn’t answered too fast.

Commer walked out, picked up the gun and drum and went back into the cell. He threw the drum onto the cot and poked the gun toward Burton. The big man stared in silent wonder and then reached out and took the gun in shaking hands.

“Careful, now! This-here thing is the safety. I’ve set the gun so that each time you pull the trigger you get a shot. The drum comes off like this. See? When it’s empty the slide stays back and then you stick on the other drum like this.”

“Yessir, but...”

“Now I’m going to leave you with your cell door open so you can sight down the hall here. If they come in, they’ll come through that door there, the door to my office. Shoot first into the ceiling. If they keep coming put a few in the floor. If they still keep coming, lock yourself in quick. Here’s the key. Then drop behind the corner of the cot and shoot low through the bars at their legs. Understand?”

“Yessir.” Burton stood holding the gun, a glow of hope in his eyes, his face full of a gratitude so deep that tears formed along his lower lids. “I’ll do just like you tell me, sir. I couldn’t let you down after this, Sheriff.” And he held the gun out, cradled in his arms as though it were the present of kings.

Commer grunted, turned on his heel and walked out, leaving the cell door open, walking steadily and slowly down the corridor, through his office, out the front door and onto the porch. There he stopped and watched the crowd, listening to their animal growling, every fiber of his mind screaming to him to turn and run for shelter. But he stood and held his arms up, a travesty of a benediction, calling for silence. For long minutes there was no response, then the shouting died to a murmuring. He heard a few last shouts of “We want Burton” and “Bring him out or we’re a-comin’ in after him!”

In his deep slow voice Commer bellowed into the darkness, “You all can come in after him right now. I just give him a submachine gun and plenty of ammunition. He’s in there a-waitin’ for you. Come ahead, boys! He’s all yours!”

There was an angry mutter from the crowd. Commer imagined that those who had bolstered their frail courage with corn liquor now felt a sudden sobering chill. He was glad that he had always backed up his statements, never bluffed. Yet he could hardly see because of the dizzy spin of fear in his head.

Then a top-heavy man with a shock of light hair came striding out of the shadows into the dim glow of the street lamp. Commer walked heavily down the steps to meet him, recognizing him as Ham Alberts, itinerant handyman, loud-mouth and trouble-maker. But he was a bull in the strength of his youth.

They stared at each other. Commer saw through his film of fear that Ham was quivering with outraged righteous indignation. The offended honor of a taxpayer who had never paid a tax.

“Commer,” he said hoarsely, “you got no call to arm a killer. You’re paid to stay on the side of the law. What the hell you doin’?”

“Just saving a man from a bunch of corner loafers. Why?” Commer’s voice sounded flat and disinterested, but he wondered if Alberts could hear the beating of his heart.

“If any of us gets kilt goin’ in after him, it’s gonna be your fault!”

“Do I looked worried, sonny? I do my duty my own way. No call for you to try to tell me how to do it. Now go on in and get him. What you waiting for? Yellow maybe?”

“Why, you tin-shield copper...” and Alberts lifted a beefy fist back and poised it two feet from Commer’s jaw. In spite of the roaring in his ears, Commer looked calmly at the fist and then into Alberts’ narrowed eyes.

“Don’t know as that there is one of your best ideas, sonny. I’m going down to the corner for some coffee while you boys take care a this little matter.” He turned away from Alberts, jiggling a cigarette out of a crumpled pack as he walked away.

Inside he writhed with terror, but there was room in his mind to wonder at the sober, quiet way his thick legs carried him along down the street. He stopped at the corner and lit his cigarette, his fingers strong and steady, the flare of the wooden match lighting up his stolid cheek bones, his mild brow.

Then he glanced back and saw Ham Alberts under the light, hollering into the shadows, his arms spread wide in a beseeching gesture. Commer couldn’t hear the words, but he could see in the distance the vague forms of the men who had been clustered in the park melting back away from the jail, away from the deadly Burton, ignoring the furious Alberts.

Then Alberts dropped his arms helplessly and wandered after them.

Commer sucked in a deep lungful of smoke and expelled it in a long, blue column into the soft night air. He turned and headed for his coffee, knowing in his heart that the strong body had defeated the fear demons of the mind, this time.

But the next time...