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  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

  You Live Once 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 © 1956 by John D. MacDonald

  Copyright renewed 1984 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.

  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 1956.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-82710-4

  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 industrial Midwest, Las Vegas, and elsewhere—was wond
erful, 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.

  chapter 1

  I have never awakened easily. I have always had a sneaking envy for those people who seem to be able to bound out of bed, functioning perfectly. I have to use two alarm clocks on work mornings.

  The prolonged hammering at my door finally awakened me. I groped blindly for my bathrobe, and shouldered into it as I walked heavily, still drugged with sleep, from the bedroom of my apartment out through the living room to the front door.

  I knew that it was a Sunday morning in May, and knew that I had a truly sickening headache, far out of proportion to the drinking I had done on Saturday night—two cocktails before dinner and two widely spaced highballs afterward. I wondered if I had been poisoned by something I had eaten. The headache seemed focused over my right ear in a tender area as big as an apple. My hangover headaches are aches that go straight through. And why the sore spot?

  I opened my front door and squinted at the two men standing on the shallow front stoop in the bright morning sunshine. One was in uniform and one was not. Their prowl car stood where I usually park my car. I remembered where my car was.

  “You Clinton Sewell?” the man in the grey suit asked. I said I was and they walked in.

  “Were you out with Mary Olan last night?”

  I sat down and looked up at them. I was afraid I knew what this was all about. “An accident? Is she hurt?”

  Grey suit was spokesman. “What makes you ask that?”

  “I swear she seemed all right to me. The night air straightened her out. She said she could drive and I believed her.”

  “You had a date with her last night.”

  “That’s right. She played golf with some woman yesterday afternoon at the Locust Ridge Club. It was arranged that I’d meet her later, along with the Raymonds, and we’d have dinner there. There was a dance last night. I drove out about six, and the Raymonds arrived a little later. Mary had brought a change of clothing with her, and she was waiting in the cocktail lounge.”

  “When did you leave?”

  “About two this morning. That was about … nine hours ago according to my watch.”

  “But you didn’t take her home?” The uniformed man strolled over and looked in my bedroom, then the bathroom, and came back.

  “No. She had her own car. She got a little high. Too high to drive safely. That made it complicated. I had my car there. It’s still there, in fact. After an argument she agreed to let me drive her home. I was going to take a cab from her house, either back here or back to my car, whichever I felt like. I hadn’t decided. We had the top down on her car. I got her almost home and she said she felt fine. She seemed to be okay. So I turned around and drove back here and got out and she went on home. Did something happen on the way home?”

  “She never got home, Mr. Sewell. Her aunt got Mr. Stine, the Commissioner of Public Safety, out of bed this morning. That gave it a priority. I guess you know what the Olans and the Pryors mean in this town. Did Miss Olan say anything about going any place else?”

  “No. She was pretty tired. She’d played twenty-seven holes of golf. We planned to go up to Smith Lake this afternoon and do some water skiing.”

  “Why did she drive you here, instead of back to your car?”

  “She started to, but then we decided that she’d drive me on up to Smith Lake in her car today, picking me up here. Then when we got back to town late today, she would leave me off at the club.”

  They had both relaxed a bit. The one in uniform said, “It’ll turn out she went to see somebody and stayed with them.”

  Grey suit shrugged. “Could be. Thanks, Mr. Sewell. Sorry we woke you up.”

  I stood in the doorway and watched them get in the prowl car, swing around and drive out. It was a beautiful day—bright, clear and warm. This would be my second summer in Warren, my second summer in the Midwest. I wondered what had happened to Mary. I wasn’t particularly worried; she was unpredictable. I decided I would go up to the lake anyway, on the off chance that she’d show up. Some of her friends would be up there.

  I was close to the phone when it rang.

  “Clint?” It was the cautious voice of Dodd Raymond, my new boss.

  “Good morning to you, Dodd. Do you feel as bad as I do? You had the lobster too, didn’t you? Got a headache like mine?”

  “Clint, have they asked you about Mary?” I could tell from the tone of his voice that he was speaking so that his wife, Nancy, couldn’t overhear the call. I ached to call him a fool.

  “The police were here. She didn’t get home last night. She dropped me off here.”

  “I thought you were going to drive her home?”

  “We had the top down. She felt better after a while.”

  “They phoned me. Her aunt told them she heard her say she planned to see us at the club. I told them she had a date with you.”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “Knock it off! I told them where you live.”

  “Thanks. So why didn’t you phone me and tell me they were coming?”

  “Clint, that damn phone rang twenty-three times before
I hung up.”

  “Well, they don’t know anything so far. She’ll turn up. I’m going on up to the lake anyway. Will you?”

  “I don’t know yet. See you Monday if we don’t.”

  He hung up. I went and opened the can of cold tomato juice, poured a high glass and laced it with Tabasco. I leaned against the sink and let it go down slowly. The headache throbbed over my right ear.

  I thought about Mary and about my damn fool boss, Dodd Raymond. My dating Mary Olan was supposed to be misdirection, the way a magician operates. I wouldn’t have stood still for any such fool arrangement had it not been for Dodd’s wife, Nancy. And I had earnestly tried to follow Nancy’s unspoken plea. Even last night when I had parked Mary’s car in the dark driveway beside my apartment, turned out the lights and made an expansive pass. Mary had permitted herself to be kissed. But her heart wasn’t in it. She was a highly exciting, and excitable, woman but I was just a good friend. She told me so. Emboldened by her intake of liquor, not my own, I had suggested that she leave Dodd alone. She hadn’t gotten angry; she had just laughed. I had made another halfhearted try, but it had been ruined by some damn fool who had used my driveway to turn around in, lighting us up like a stage.

  That had spoiled the mood. We’d planned the trip to the lake and I had explained to her my unique habits of sleep. After she’d promised not to use cold water if I wasn’t up, I went and unlocked my front door and took the key out to her. The spare key was in the drawer of my desk. I made a mental note to take it with me to the lake.

  I remembered that after I had gone to bed, in the few minutes before sleep fell on me like a woolly bear, I had gotten erotically fanciful about Mary Olan’s coming in to wake me the next day. There wasn’t a chance in the world that she would let me float up out of sleep and pull her down into my warm bed, but there was no law against dreaming.

  In some ways I couldn’t blame Dodd Raymond. Mary Olan is smallish but sturdy. I think I could span her waist with my hands. She is brown and rounded and firm. She has black, black hair and about all she does with it is keep it out of her eyes. She has a thin face, a wide mouth, black caterpillar eyebrows, a go-to-hell expression, limitless energy and several million bucks tied up in various trust funds. She has an air of importance. Waiters and doormen snap, pop and crackle when she lifts one finger, or one millimeter of eyebrow. In a faded bathing suit in the middle of Jones Beach she would still be unmistakably Somebody. She has an electric something that could disorganize the equipment in a research lab. Even the halfhearted kisses she had allowed me would each have melted an acre of perma-frost above Nome.