Area of Suspicion Read online

  Praise for John D. MacDonald

  “My favorite novelist of all time.”

  —Dean Koontz

  “For my money, John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee is one of the great characters in contemporary American fiction—not crime fiction; fiction, period—and millions of readers surely agree.”

  —The Washington Post

  “MacDonald isn’t simply popular; he’s also good.”

  —Roger Ebert

  “MacDonald’s books are narcotic and, once hooked, a reader can’t kick the habit until the supply runs out.”

  —Chicago Tribune Book World

  “Travis McGee is one of the most enduring and unusual heroes in detective fiction.”

  —The Baltimore Sun

  “John D. MacDonald remains one of my idols.”

  —Donald Westlake

  “A dominant influence on writers crafting the continuing series character.”

  —Sue Grafton

  “The Dickens of mid-century America—popular, prolific and … conscience-ridden about his environment.… A thoroughly American author.”

  —The Boston Globe

  “It will be for his crisply written, smoothly plotted mysteries that MacDonald will be remembered.”

  —USA Today

  “MacDonald had the marvelous ability to create attention-getting characters who doubled as social critics. In MacDonald novels, it is the rule rather than the exception to find, in the midst of violence and mayhem, a sentence, a paragraph, or several pages of rumination on love, morality, religion, architecture, politics, business, the general state of the world or of Florida.”

  —Sarasota Herald-Tribune

  BY JOHN D. MACDONALD

  The Brass Cupcake

  Murder for the Bride

  Judge Me Not

  Wine for the Dreamers

  Ballroom of the Skies

  The Damned

  Dead Low Tide

  The Neon Jungle

  Cancel All Our Vows

  All These Condemned

  Area of Suspicion

  Contrary Pleasure

  A Bullet for Cinderella

  Cry Hard, Cry Fast

  You Live Once

  April Evil

  Border Town Girl

  Murder in the Wind

  Death Trap

  The Price of Murder

  The Empty Trap

  A Man of Affairs

  The Deceivers

  Clemmie

  Cape Fear (The Executioners)

  Soft Touch

  Deadly Welcome

  Please Write for Details

  The Crossroads

  The Beach Girls

  Slam the Big Door

  The End of the Night

  The Only Girl in the Game

  Where Is Janice Gantry?

  One Monday We Killed Them All

  A Key to the Suite

  A Flash of Green

  The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything

  On the Run

  The Drowner

  The House Guest

  End of the Tiger and Other Stories

  The Last One Left

  S*E*V*E*N

  Condominium

  Other Times, Other Worlds

  Nothing Can Go Wrong

  The Good Old Stuff

  One More Sunday

  More Good Old Stuff

  Barrier Island

  A Friendship: The Letters of Dan Rowan and John D. MacDonald, 1967–1974

  The Travis McGee Series

  The Deep Blue Good-by

  Nightmare in Pink

  A Purple Place for Dying

  The Quick Red Fox

  A Deadly Shade of Gold

  Bright Orange for the Shroud

  Darker Than Amber

  One Fearful Yellow Eye

  Pale Gray for Guilt

  The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper

  Dress Her in Indigo

  The Long Lavender Look

  A Tan and Sandy Silence

  The Scarlet Ruse

  The Turquoise Lament

  The Dreadful Lemon Sky

  The Empty Copper Sea

  The Green Ripper

  Free Fall in Crimson

  Cinnamon Skin

  The Lonely Silver Rain

  The Official Travis McGee Quizbook

  Area of Suspicion is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  2013 Random House eBook Edition

  Copyright © 1954,1961 by John D. MacDonald

  Copyright renewed 1982 by John D. MacDonald

  Introduction copyright © 2013 by Dean Koontz

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  A shorter version of this work appeared in Collier’s under the title “My Brother’s Widow.”

  Originally published in paperback by Fawcett, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 1961.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-82720-3

  www.atrandom.com

  Cover design: Joe Montgomery

  v3.1

  The Singular John D. MacDonald

  Dean Koontz

  When I was in college, I had a friend, Harry Recard, who was smart, funny, and a demon card player. Harry was a successful history major, while I passed more time playing pinochle than I spent in class. For the three and a half years that I required to graduate, I heard Harry rave about this writer named John D. MacDonald, “John D” to his most ardent readers. Of the two of us, Harry was the better card player and just generally the cooler one. Consequently, I was protective of my position, as an English major, to be the better judge of literature, don’t you know. I remained reluctant to give John D a look.

  Having read mostly science fiction, I found many of my professors’ assigned authors markedly less exciting than Robert Heinlein and Theodore Sturgeon, but I was determined to read the right thing. For every Flannery O’Connor whose work I could race through with delight, there were three like Virginia Woolf, who made me want to throw their books off a high cliff and leap after them. Nevertheless, I continued to shun Harry’s beloved John D.

  Five or six years after college, I was a full-time writer with numerous credits in science fiction, struggling to move into suspense and mainstream work. I was making progress but not fast enough to suit me. By now I knew that John D was widely admired, and I finally sat down with one of his books. In the next thirty days, I read thirty-four of them. The singular voice and style of the man overwhelmed me, and the next novel I wrote was such an embarrassingly slavish imitation of a MacDonald tale that I had to throw away the manuscript.

  I apologized to Harry for doubting him. He was so pleased to hear me proclaiming the joys of John D that he only said “I told you so” on, oh, twenty or thirty occasions.

  Over the years, I have read every novel by John D at least three times, some of them twice that often. His ability to evoke a time and place—mostly Florida but also the industrial Midwest, Las Vegas, and elsewhere—was wonderful, and he could get inside an occupation to give you the details and the feel of it like few other writers I’ve ever read. His pacing was superb, the flow of his prose irresistible, and his suspense watch-spring tight.

  Of all his manifest strengths as a writer, however, I am most in awe of his ability to create characters who are as real as anyone I’ve met in life. John D sometimes paused in
the headlong rush of his story to spin out pages of background on a character. At first when this happened, I grumbled about getting on with the story. But I soon discovered that he could make the character so fascinating that when the story began to race forward again, I wanted it to slow down so I could learn more about this person who so intrigued and/or delighted me. There have been many good suspense novelists in recent decades, but in my experience, none has produced characters with as much humanity and truth as those in MacDonald’s work.

  Like most who have found this author, I am an admirer of his Travis McGee series, which features a first-person narrator as good as any in the history of suspense fiction and better than most. But I love the standalone novels even more. Cry Hard, Cry Fast. Where Is Janice Gantry? The Last One Left. A Key to the Suite. The Drowner. The Damned. A Bullet for Cinderella. The Only Girl in the Game. The Crossroads. All These Condemned. Those are not my only favorites, just a few of them, and many deal with interesting businesses and occupations. Mr. MacDonald’s work gives the reader deep and abiding pleasure for many reasons, not the least of which is that it portrays the contemporary life of his day with as much grace and fidelity as any writer of the period, and thus it also provides compelling social history.

  In 1985, when my publisher, Putnam, wanted to send advance proof copies of Strangers to Mr. MacDonald among others, I literally grew shaky at the thought of him reading it. I suggested that they shouldn’t send it to him, that, as famous and prolific as he was, the proof would be an imposition on him; in truth, I feared that he would find the novel unsatisfying. Putnam sent it to him anyway, and he gave us an enthusiastic endorsement. In addition, he wrote to me separately, in an avuncular tone, kindly advising me how to avoid some of the pitfalls of the publishing business, and he wrote to my publisher asking her to please carefully consider the packaging of the book and not condemn it to the horror genre. She more or less condemned it to the genre anyway, but I took his advice to heart.

  In my experience, John D. MacDonald, the man, was as kind and thoughtful as his fiction would lead you to believe that he must be. That a writer’s work accurately reflects his soul is a rarer thing than you might imagine, but in his case, the reflection is clear and true. For that reason, it has been a special honor, in fact a grace, to be asked to write this introduction.

  Reader, prepare to be enchanted by the books of John D. MacDonald. And Harry, I am not as much of an idiot as I was in years gone by—though I know you won’t let me get away with claiming not to be to any degree an idiot anymore.

  To the memory of Joseph Thompson Shaw

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Introduction by Dean Koontz

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  I woke with the feeling of disorientation an unfamiliar bed gives you, woke in a room too small, and too still. It took long seconds to remember this was George Tarleson’s cruiser, the “Vunderbar,” to remember I had borrowed it yesterday noon, Saturday noon, telling George I had fishing on my mind. Actually my motive had been to get away from the Tarleson’s usual noisy week-end house party.

  My bachelor beach cottage is a few hundred yards from their big house at Indian Rocks Beach. It is a good little party house, and when I bought it four years ago, I wanted the gay life—and got it. The cottage was the setting for a party that lasted one year. The personnel changed, but the party went on. For the next two years the parties were shorter, but just as loud. I endured them. During this past year, my fourth in Florida, I tried to escape whenever possible.

  So yesterday noon I had borrowed the cabin cruiser from George, and cast off just in time to avoid the unwanted company of a brown and Bikinied maiden who had decided it would be jolly to shanghai herself. She stood in pigeon-toed wistfulness on the dock and watched me out of sight.

  I trolled north, glad to be alone, and at dusk I found a secluded, mangrove-bordered bay near Dunedin Isles and dropped the hook far enough from shore to avoid the bugs.

  So this was an April Sunday and I had slept long and well. I pulled on swimming trunks and padded out onto the deck. The day was still and gray and silver. Mullet leaped and ripples circles outward. The water was clear and deep. I balanced on the stern rail and dived, and the water washed away the last mistiness of long hard sleep. I swam straight and fast until I was winded, then rolled and floated. The “Vunderbar” was a blue and white toy resting on a display window mirror. This year I was sun-darkened, as during other years, to the shade of waxed mahogany, hair and eyebrows bleached lighter than my skin. But during other years it had been a veneer of health over a permanent condition of either hang-over or a fine high edge. I was back in shape, a testimonial to the abuse the human body will take without permanent damage, and being in shape again was a minor satisfaction which, more and more often, was balanced against vague, unwelcome stirrings of discontent.

  Midge and George Tarleson had thrown the standard party. My group, I suppose, making a busy project out of idleness, giving dedicated attention to a new terrace, or a trip to Nassau, or non-objective art—junior grade—or a meaningless affair. When I felt superior or contemptuous, I told myself all my own little make-work projects in the area were also just so much window-trimming. There was no need for me to do anything except play. I had my inheritance—my nice bundle of eight thousand shares of Dean Products stock, the family enterprise. And every year the dividend was just about eight dollars a share.

  It had been the usual party and Midge Tarleson had tried to pair me off with somebody whose motives were not as transient as my wariness likes to have them. She had been pretty enough, but she wore a lost look, and her prettiness was something she wanted to trade for security.

  Once I had told Midge Tarleson just enough of my emotional history to give her a yen to cure me. She thinks marriage is a cure. But, to her exasperation, my playmates are the little sun-tanned beach girls who want to keep all alliances informal. I want no lost-looking ones.

  Mine was the Great American Dream achieved. Money and idleness. But with it had come a sense of guilt, as though I were accused of some unspecified crime. And I guessed that my playmates, when they were alone, felt the same way. Hence our perpetual and turbulent parties. It was as though we had all begun to have a faint aroma of decay. The world was spinning toward some unthinkable destination, and we sat in the sand with our buckets and castles.

  In spite of the restlessness it caused, it was better to be alone—a condition I was arranging with increasing regularity. Alone where gulls teetered on the wind, and made bawdy shouting, and the stingarees leaped high and came down with hard clap of gristled wings against the water.

  As I swam back to the “Vunderbar” I heard a gutty droning. I looked south down the channel and saw a speedboat swing gracefully around the channel marker. I hauled myself up over the stern of the “Vunderbar,” shaded my eyes against the sky’s pale glare and recognized Jigger Kelsey’s hot little sixteen feet of mahogany hull with its one hundred horses. Jigger was behind the wheel with two women sitting near him. One of them waved and I recognized Midge.

  For a moment I had a quick, inward twisting of alarm, an almost superstitious certainty that something had gone very wrong. But it faded quickly. I had left the party, so here was Midge bringing me a piece of it so that I wouldn’t be lonely. There would be a shaker of rum sours aboard, and an account of the fun I was missing.

  Jigger made a sweep
ing turn and came alongside, reversing the motor, judging the distance nicely. He stood up and caught the rail of the “Vunderbar.” “You’re a tough guy to find, Gev,” he said, his grin white in the tan face. “Don’t you ever use that ship-to-shore?”

  I tried to give the imitation of a man welcoming friends. The girl in the middle was the one with the lost gray eyes. But she looked at me quite absently and resumed her silent study of Jigger’s broad brown shoulders.

  “How did you find me?”

  “I sent out a general call,” Midge said, “and one of the charter boats reported seeing the “Vunderbar” at anchor up here.”

  I frowned at Midge. “General call?”

  She climbed deftly over the rail, ignoring my outstretched hand. Midge is a tall, thin woman with dusty black hair and a pallor the sun never changes. She always looks incongruous in casual beach clothes.

  “Thanks loads, Jigger,” she said. Jigger gave a mock salute and shoved off and dropped into the seat. His boat was planing before it had gone twenty yards. The girl sat very close to Jigger. The bow wave sparkled, the drone faded out of the morning, leaving a white wake in a long curve around the channel marker.

  “What’s up, Midge?” I gave her a cigarette. “George want the boat back?”

  “No. But it was very anti-social of you to take off like this. You act like a hermit lately, Gev.”

  “So you came out to tell me that?”

  She sat in a fishing chair, hiked one knee up and hugged it. “Oh, not just for that.”

  “This is your woman-of-mystery mood.” I made my tone light and casual. I knew Midge well. I knew that the more interesting the news, the longer it would take her to get to it. It all tied in with the twist of fear I had felt when I saw Jigger’s boat.

  I thought about Ken, my brother, and felt the guilt in me again. Not the old guilt of having run out on him years ago, but a new guilt. His previous letters to me had been reserved, cool. But there had been recent ones. Odd letters. Full of vague hints of trouble, oblique statements about the plant, about his wife. Yet nothing definite or positive.