On the Run (20 page)

“I heard. What do you want?”

“He was after you, of course. He must have been skilled. But this one went badly for him.”

“What do you want?”

“I was curious about you, Mr. Shanley. You have stayed alive a long time. I think you are bright, and lucky.”

“Lucky! Oh, yes, I have more luck than I can use.”

“You were fond of her.”

Shanley frowned at him. And turned and started toward
the house. Fergasson called to him. He stopped and turned.

“Mr. Shanley, I just wondered if you were going to keep running.”

Shanley stood there a long time. He had the strange feeling that he had remembered something terribly important, something he had been trying to recall for a long time. “Run,” he said softly and wonderingly. He moved back toward Fergasson. “No. I don’t think I’ll run any more.”

Fergasson’s smile was obsequious. “You’ll wait here for them to try again?”

“No.”

Still smiling, Fergasson said, “Then what do you think you will do, Mr. Shanley?”

Shanley felt a pain in the corners of his jaw, in the palms of his hands and in the muscles of his back. He felt as if he had come awake. He spoke with an effort. “Wain, Boardman. And other names from them. And other names.”

“As soon as the old man dies, Mr. Shanley, you will have ample money. You will have the money, the intelligence, the luck and the hate. It’s a rare combination. I have been looking for many years for that combination, Mr. Shanley. It would be a shame to see it all smashed because of—let us say—a combination of rashness and faulty information.”

“What do you want of me?”

“I am not a likeable man, Mr. Shanley. But I am a very very clever man, and I am a very thorough man, and I am a very inconspicuous man. I can take a long leave of absence. The firm would not approve of … such a hobby. I can add, also, that I am a very indignant man. My indignation has been growing for quite a few years. I can find the names for you, Mr. Shanley. And I can draw maps, make up schedules of daily habits and find appropriate tools of execution. You do not have to like me, Mr. Shanley, in order to use me. And, believe me, without help, you will not live out the month. Unless you run.”

Shanley looked at him for a long time. “The running is over.”

Just as he took Fergasson’s outstretched hand, Shanley
saw the practical nurse coming toward them across the lawn, billowing along through the summer sunlight, wearing such a tight stiff expression of satisfaction that he knew the old man had just died.

John D. MacDonald was an American novelist and short story writer. His works include the Travis McGee series and the novel
The Executioners
, which was adapted into the film
Cape Fear
. In 1962 MacDonald was named a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America; in 1980 he won a National Book Award. In print he delighted in smashing the bad guys, deflating the pompous, and exposing the venal. In life he was a truly empathetic man; his friends, family, and colleagues found him to be loyal, generous, and practical. In business he was fastidiously ethical. About being a writer, he once expressed with gleeful astonishment, “They pay me to do this! They don’t realize, I would pay them.” He spent the later part of his life in Florida with his wife and son. He died in 1986.