John D. MacDonald
First Offense
Malcolm Rainey was released from prison on a morning in May when thick clouds drifted low and slow and there was a humid smell of earth and growth in the prison town. He had been permitted to phone his wife the evening before his release. There had been people in the office when he had phoned, and so he had tried to keep his voice level and factual, but Mary had been under no such restraint. She had tried to laugh at herself in the midst of tears, saying in a shaking voice, “I wasn’t going to... be like this. I’ll be there, darling. I’ll be there.”
The assistant warden had said, “You’ll be reporting to Laurts. He’s one of the best. He won’t be on your back. And it’s only for eighteen months.”
Rainey had thanked him.
“I’m glad you adjusted the way you did, Rainey. What I said five years ago still goes. Don’t work up a sweat. Let the ball bounce. Canelli was doing his job. I damn near believe your story. Suppose it’s true. Should Canelli believe it? The jolt for armed robbery, even on a first offense, is stiff. It has to be. Don’t go out with a con psychology. Canelli was a rookie. He was nervous. You had a gun in your hand, and he shot you.”
“He got a medal,” Rainey had said.
Now the phone rang. The assistant warden answered it, grunted, hung up. “That was the gate. Your wife is there.”
“You settled me down. So I didn’t have to do time the hard way. Have you got personal rules about shaking hands?”
“No. I did my job. You did your time. Good luck, Rainey. Don’t come back.”
“I won’t come back.”
The main gate had double doors. They were devised so the second one could not be opened until the first one was shut. A guard behind bulletproof glass controlled the area between the doors. The rain had started again. The old black Chewy coupe was parked across the street. He saw the pale blur of hair through the wetness of the side window of the car as he stood, the first gate shutting behind him, and he was glad she was in the car so that this meeting would not be where the gate guards could watch them. He looked up at the guard behind glass. The man gave him a mock salute. The last gate opened. Rainey walked out. He walked to the car, feeling as though he were crossing a stage. She moved over. He got in behind the wheel.
She reached toward him. “Mal! Mal, darling...”
“Wait,” he said. “Not here.”
He did not want to look at her yet. He was aware of her next to him, the familiar perfume. He stalled the car, then started it. He went through the town and out beyond it on the highway that led to the city. He pulled over on a wide shoulder and yanked the hand brake on. He reached for her then, holding her tightly, her face in the hollow of his neck and shoulder, his eyes burning. She was warm against him, breathing warm against his throat, breathing more quietly as the long minutes passed. Then he held her away and kissed her and held her away again and said, “Hello.”
“Hello, darling,” she said. Five years had changed her. He had been aware of it on her visits. She had been twenty-seven when he went in. Five years showed in the texture of the skin under her eyes, in a deepening of lines that had been faint near the corners of her mouth. They had taken five of his years. He could resent that bitterly. But five years of her. That was the unforgivable part. Five years of the security he could have given her. All the little abrasions of uncertainty and loneliness. It would always be there, that sense of loss.
They drove on, and she told him how to find the apartment. It was very small. It had a bed that pulled down out of the wall and a matchstick screen to hide the kitchen part. But it gleamed. She had saved the best pieces of their furniture. There were cut flowers in two vases. There were three presents for him, in gay paper. He felt awkward as he untied them. There was a shirt, pale blue in a good soft flannel, new gray slacks in the second box, and a bottle of champagne, last of all. She found room for it in the small refrigerator, said, her back still turned, “This darn oven better work right this time. I put a little scrawny wretch of a turkey in there this morning before I left, all wrapped in foil and the heat turned to three hundred.”
“Turkey and champagne. A celebration.” Something in his voice was not quite right.
She turned quickly. “Why not, Mal? Why not?”
“I... I’m sorry, I don’t know. It just seems...”
“Silly? Sentimental? I love you. You’re my husband. You’ve been away, and you’ve come back. It could have been away to the wars, or off on a slow freighter around the world, or... I mean you’re back. Don’t I have a right? Mal, please, don’t I?”
He went to her quickly and held her and said quietly, “I’m sorry. I’ve got rough edges. It isn’t easy for either of us. I want to make it easier for you, not rougher.”
“Me, too,” she said in a small voice.
“So we celebrate,” he said, the gaiety a bit forced.
It was a strange day. There were awkward silences. They did not want to talk of past or future. Slowly, for him, the apartment became a small, safe place, and it was good that it rained outside as though it would never stop. Their love-making was, in the beginning, queerly shy and stilted, as though they were strangers to each other, but then it became a bridge across five years, bringing them close and safe at last in remembered hungers.
The next day was Saturday, and she had taken the two days off from the store where she sold women’s clothing. They slept late. The sun was out, bright across the small table where they ate breakfast. He sensed, as he drank his coffee, that she would want to talk of the future. It made him resent her. Because he knew what he would have to tell her.
She tilted her head a bit, watching him, and started it in a way that surprised him. “Mal, I can’t get all the way close to you. There’s something sort of closed up in your mind. Like a door you’ve shut. Like you said last night, it’s going to be difficult for us. So we’d better start as clean as we can. So you better tell me how you feel about everything.”
He had meant to say it calmly, but it exploded in him so that the smash of his fist on the small table, the bounce and chatter of cups, were sounds he heard from far away. “He lied! He made a mistake and he lied, and they took five years out of my life. Just because he was a green cop. He was nervous. He didn’t want to make a mistake. So he lied and got a medal.”
“Mal! Please. You can’t afford that.”
He got up quickly, turned his back, hands shut tightly. “Good Lord, Mary, I’ve been over it ten thousand times in my head. The way they laughed at me when they questioned me in the hospital.”
They had laughed as if he were telling a joke. To them, it had been a joke. He’d gone over it and over it for them:
“I was walking home from the gas station. I close it at midnight. There wasn’t anybody on the street. I walked by that pawnshop. I saw the light move inside, and then it was dark. I walked on about twenty feet, and then I stopped. I wondered about the light in there. I wondered if somebody was robbing it. I should have called a cop. But I didn’t. I thought if I was wrong I’d look like a fool. I went back and looked in. It was dark. There was a big iron grate over the door. I had the feeling there was somebody in there. I wondered why there wasn’t any night light on. I seemed to half remember there always being a night light on. I took hold of the iron grate and pulled. It opened up.
“I should have gone away then and called a cop. I tried the inside door. It swung open. I stood there, and all of a sudden I thought how I was silhouetted against the street lights. I moved inside and started to move over to one side to get away from the door. Somebody ran right into me. He was moving fast. I grabbed him. I guess you grab instinctively. We both went down. He dropped a mess of stuff. I heard it clatter around. He kicked me in the pit of the stomach. It knocked my wind out. I got up on my knees. I heard him running down the street. I could have chased him if he hadn’t kicked me. I stood up. I stepped on something, and it broke under my foot. I took out my lighter. There were watches and rings and things on the floor. And there was a gun on the floor. I picked it up. I started to pick up the watches and things. I was afraid I’d step on them in the dark.