Where Is Janice Gantry? 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.”

  —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

  Where Is Janice Gantry? 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 © 1961 by John D. MacDonald

  Copyright renewed 1989 by Maynard 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.

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

  eISBN: 978-0-307-82713-5

  www.atrandom.com

  Cover design: Joe Montgomery

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  About the Author

  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 indus
trial 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.

  1

  Sometimes the hot night wind brings bad dreams. It came streaming and steaming out of the west, piling the Gulf into a continual rumble of freight trains along the beach of Horseshoe Key, whipping the water of the wide bay inside the Key, and galloping along to rip and clatter the fronds of the cabbage palms beside my mainland cottage, to excite a squeaking and groaning of bamboo, to hiss and sigh through the tall Australian pines.

  I slept deep in a heartbreak dream of the girl that was lost and gone, of my wife Judy, no longer mine, no longer wife. In my dream I looked out of blackness into a lighted room where she smiled upon a faceless man the way she had always smiled at me. I bellowed and pounded on the thick glass between us but she could not hear me. Or would not.

  I came bursting up out of the dream, tense, sweaty, wide-awake, searching through all the turmoil of the west wind for some sound that did not fit the night. There was moonlight, coming and going between a scud of clouds. The curtain whipped and writhed in the moonlight. I did not know what I listened for until it came again, a sly scratching against the copper screening three feet from my head.

  I slid open the bottom drawer of the nightstand, reached into the back of it and fumbled the oily cloth open to take the gun into my hand, feeling more assured but self-consciously dramatic, remembering the last time I had used it, months ago, to pot a palm tree rat eating from the bird feeder. It was loaded, as guns should always be. As I rolled off the bed toward the window, one knee against the harshness of the rattan matting, the scratching sound came again, and this time I heard the voice almost lost in the wind sounds, hoarse, urgent, cautious, speaking my name.

  “Sam! Sam Brice!”

  As I angled closer to look out, the moon was suddenly gone. “Who is it?”

  “It’s Charlie, Sam. Charlie Haywood. Let me in. Don’t turn on any lights, Sam.”

  I went through the small living room and out onto the screened porch and unhooked the door and let him in. I smelled him when he went by me into the dark living room. He stank of the swamps, of sweat and panic and flight.

  “Something I can sit on, Sam? I’m a mess. I don’t want to ruin anything.” His voice was a half whisper, and I could sense the exhaustion in him.

  He sat in a straight chair near the kitchen alcove, sighing as he sat down. “You know about me, Sam?”

  “I read the papers. You’ve been news for five days, Charlie.”

  “They making any guesses, about where I am?”

  “The dogs tracked you south from the road camp before they lost you. They think you’re heading for the Keys.”

  “Those goddam dogs! I circled back, Sam, after I bitched up those goddam dogs. I didn’t know if it would work. An old-timer told me it would. A pint bottle of gas I drained out of one of the trucks. When I got to a piece of open water big enough, I spread it thick on the shore where I went in. They snuff that, it’s supposed to put them out of business for an hour. I did some swimming, Sam. My God, I did some swimming. Have you got any cold milk? A bottle of it. I’ve been thinking about cold milk ever since I can remember.”

  I thumbed the top off a new bottle and handed it to him, and sat near him, hearing the sound of his thirst.

  “My God, that’s good! I’d forgotten how good.”

  I went back into the bedroom and stowed the gun away and looked at the luminous dial of my alarm clock. Twenty after three.

  When I turned he was close to me, startling me.

  “I wouldn’t want you to use the phone, Sam.”

  Anger was quick. “You made the choice, boy. You came to me. If you figured it wrong, it’s too late now, isn’t it? If I’m going to turn you in, you can’t stop me.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said humbly. “I’m not thinking very good, Sam.”

  We went back and sat and he finished the milk.

  “Nice of you,” I said, “to count me in on this. It’s just what I need.”

  “Don’t be sore, Sam.”

  “I didn’t know we’re such close friends, buddy.”

  “I went through the list fifty times, Sam, and it always came out to be you.”

  “Why?”

  “I knew I’d have to have help from somebody. I had to take the chance you’d still be living out here, a place I thought I could get to, and still living alone, Sam. I knew you wouldn’t scare easy. And, working for yourself, you’ve got more freedom to move around. And I don’t know if you remember it, but one time you hinted about the dirty deal you got—just enough so I guess you know how it feels to … get sent up for something you didn’t do. The way you feel so helpless.”

  “For something you didn’t do!”

  “I know how that sounds, Sam.”

  “It sounds as if you’d lost your mind, boy.”

  On the basis of all the known facts, Charlie Haywood was going to have all kinds of trouble peddling that story. Over two years ago he had been a car salesman at the Mel Fifer Agency here in Florence City, and the business I own and operate had brought me in contact with him. He
was a reasonably likeable kid, about twenty-three, a little too dreamy and mild to be a very good car salesman, but, because he lived with his widowed mother who had a small income and also rented rooms to tourists, he didn’t have to make much to get along. I’d had a few beers with him several times and cased him as one of those optimistic, idealistic kids who, if he could find a bride with enough drive and guts, might find enough on the ball to make himself a tidy happy life.

  And I guess it flattered me a little to be with him because he hadn’t recovered from the fact that I was one of his childhood heroes. When he had been in grade school I’d been Sam Brice, fullback, the big ground-gainer in the West Coast Florida Conference, with offers from every semi-pro college team in the East. And he was willing to forget that out of my own arrogance and stupidity I had let the wide world whip me and I had come home after three seasons with the National Football League with my tail tucked down and under.

  Anyway, as the newspapers had brought out, Charlie Haywood had been acting gloomy and erratic for several weeks before he got in the jam. He drove out onto Horseshoe Key late one March afternoon, broke into the luxurious beach residence of a Mr. Maurice Weber, who had recently been a customer of the Fifer Agency, and had been apprehended while trying to pry loose a wall safe set into the rear wall of a bedroom closet. Mr. Weber had found him there, had held a gun on him, disarmed him and called the Sheriff’s office.

  Charlie had spent three weeks in the County Jail awaiting the next session of the Circuit Court. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years. I heard that after a short indoctrination period at Raiford Prison, he had been transferred to one of the state road camps down in the ’Glades.

  Though he had been gone over twenty-eight months, I could remember the gossip at the time he was sent up—how Weber had paid for a new car with cash, so it was possible there was more cash at the house. They said Charlie had been drinking a little too much, and his performance had been so poor the sales manager had warned him to straighten out or be fired.

  “I haven’t lost my mind, Sam. I pleaded guilty. I had to. I couldn’t tell the whole story. It was the only thing I could do. I mean that was the way it seemed at the time. But … I’ve had a lot of time to think. And one day, a month ago, it all seemed to come together in my mind, all the loose parts of it, and I knew I’d been the worst damn fool the world has ever seen, and I knew I had to get out and come back here.”