Dead Low Tide: A Novel - Softcover

MacDonald, John D.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 081298420X ISBN 13: 9780812984200

Verlag: Random House Publishing Group, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

Dead Low Tide is an iconic early thriller from John D. MacDonald, the mastermind behind Cape Fear and the Travis McGee novels. On the coast of Florida, a working stiff is wrongfully accused of murdering his boss—and must outwit one of MacDonald’s signature villains to save his life.

Introduction by Dean Koontz

A college graduate and amateur fisherman, Andy McClintock is stuck toiling in the office of a construction company. But when Andy tries to quit, his boss offers him a promotion and a raise—and then promptly kills himself with a harpoon gun. At least, that’s what it looks like, until the police rule it homicide—with the murder weapon belonging to Andy.

The harpoon gun had been stolen out of Andy’s garage, and the boss’s wife makes the outrageous claim that she and Andy were having an affair. He’s been set up. To clear his name, he’ll have to find the real killer. But Andy soon discovers that he’s up against more than a two-bit thief—he’s been targeted by absolute evil, a monster with no compassion for his fellow man.

Praise for John D. MacDonald and Dead Low Tide

“John D. MacDonald was the great entertainer of our age, and a mesmerizing storyteller.”—Stephen King

“The writing is marked by sharp observation, vivid dialogue, and a sense of sweet warm horror.”—The New York Times

“To diggers a thousand years from now, the works of John D. MacDonald would be a treasure on the order of the tomb of Tutankhamen.”—Kurt Vonnegut

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

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.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

One

I worked pretty late on the estimate. The lady wanted to know how much the ten-unit motel was going to cost her, and John Long, my boss, had worked on her, so of course nobody else in the world could possibly put it up except John Long, Contractors. She already had her piece of land fronting on the Tamiami Trail, and it was September, and she wanted the motel up before the season began and the tourists started wandering around with money falling out of their pockets.

It was September, like I said, and hotter than hell’s hinges, so my fingers left smudges on the paper and sweat rolled down my bare chest, and all I wanted in the world was to get finished and put the top down on the car and drive thirty miles to Sarasota and sit in a booth in line with the air conditioning and have Red bring me a Mule, which I would drink with my hand around the chilled copper, while Charlie Davies played “Body and Soul” for me. I was fed up with John Long, and tired of making estimates without either the proper knowledge or experience, and weary with chasing around after cement here and cinder blocks there and cull cypress the next place. John Long had given me the big talk about opportunity, so rich it left my eyes glazed, so I’d started in the office, answering the phone and typing on two fingers. A year of it and I still answered the phone, typed on four fingers, and made estimates and chased materials and got twenty bucks more a week than a year ago.

Gordy Brogan and Big Dake were the foremen and one of them would handle this job, this motel, for the lady, while John Long went ahead with his Key Estates. And if the lady got restless, somebody would tell John and he’d come down in the Cadillac and bellow at the crew for twenty minutes, and give the lady that big ripe boyish grin and that would keep her happy for a couple of weeks, because he could do that with just the grin, and knowing when and how to use it. And I knew that if any profit came out of the motel it would go right into Key Estates, because that was where John Long had decided he would make the killing he’d waited for.

Anyway, my eyes had slowly got unglazed, and I had got lately into the habit of talking to myself in a most formal fashion. “Andrew Hale McClintock, exactly what in hell are you doing here?”

For the kind of building she wanted, it was a case of multiplying out the square footage and multiplying that by a cost factor which John Long had decided would give him a decent profit margin, then figuring the extras, and then rounding the total off to the next highest round number. Then there was a kid John knew who was working in a grocery store and taking a correspondence course in architecture. Given the working drawings, he would whip up a drawing of a front elevation that would look pretty, professional, and very impressive. John gave him ten bucks apiece for those drawings.

It got so dark I had to turn on the fluorescent desk lamp, and it seemed to make the room hotter. When the door clacked shut behind me I lifted about six inches off the chair, since I hadn’t heard it open. I turned but I couldn’t see well into the darkness because of the white glare of lamp on the paper I had been working on.

She came closer and I saw that it was Mrs. John Long. I jumped up and grabbed for my shirt, and she said, “No, don’t bother. It’s too hot in here for a shirt, Andy.”

John had introduced me to her after I had gone to work for him. I would see her in the office once in a while, and we would nod and show our teeth, and I had seen her around town at sundry civic functions and those places of entertainment where the common people mingled with the gentry. I kept seeing her picture in the paper, for charity drives and things going on at the Beach Club and all that sort of thing. She is one of those dark-haired Alabama girls, a kind of a stringy little girl, dark, and, if you look closely, feature by feature, you can see that she is not pretty. But her face is so alive all the time that afterward you would swear she is pretty. There are no kids, and I would say she is thirty, to John’s forty.

She sat down in a chair near my desk, sat down a bit heavy and tired. She had on a sort of blue denim play suit thing, and she slouched in the chair and crossed her thin brown legs and asked for a cigarette. Her face was in shadow, and when I held the light for her I saw her face looked sort of dulled. It wasn’t alive, the way I had always seen it before, and there wasn’t much lilt in her voice.

She said, “I was driving around, going no place, and I saw the light. I sure hope I haven’t kept you from finishing something, Andy.” Always before, it had been Mr. McClintock. Maybe guys without shirts revert to first names.

“I just finished,” I lied. It didn’t seem in character for Mrs. John Long to be driving around doing nothing. According to the papers she couldn’t have too many free minutes in a day.

“Do you like working here, Andy?”

“I like it fine, Mrs. Long.”

“How did you happen to land here, Andy?”

I wondered if she was spending a hot evening improving employee morale, by getting the serf to talk about himself. “I answered an ad in the paper.”

“I mean before.”

“The whole history?”

“Andy, don’t you sound so all bristly now. I really want to know.”

The appearance of genuine interest always seems to soothe us. “Well, Mrs. Long, I graduated from Syracuse University three years ago. Business Administration.”

“Only three years out of college?”

“I was an old college boy. The class called me ‘Daddy.’ I’m twenty-eight now. A war got in the way of my education. Anyway, I went to work for a big corporation in Buffalo. I found out that made me nervous. It was just too big. It was like a special form of social security. All I had to do was keep my hair combed for thirty years and get myself retired. So I saved some money, took off like a bird, and came down here to the Land of Opportunity. The New Frontier.”

“Any girl, Andy?”

“You’re getting quite a dossier, Mrs. Long. They come and go. I cook pretty good, and I’m pure hell at pressing a pair of pants.”

“I’ve wondered about you.”

“Why, Mrs. Long?”

“You call me Mary Eleanor, hear? That Mrs. Long makes me feel awful old.”

“O.K., Mary Eleanor.” The southland seems to insist on giving the ladies two names. “Why were you wondering about me?”

“I don’t know, for certain. John has always had such little old dumb ugly people in the office. And you’re big and nice looking and smart. But he doesn’t pay much, I guess. So I--”

“Mrs.--Mary Eleanor, just what have you got on your mind? We’re having a nice visit, but what do you want?”

“It’s awful darn hot in here, Andy. If you’re finished up like you say, come on for a ride.”

The last thing I wanted to do was go for any rides with the boss’s wife. That’s frowned on in schools of business administration. Bosses’ daughters they approve of--not wives. Something was chewing on Mary Eleanor, and she didn’t want to come right out with it. I know now that if my heap, my old Chevy convertible, had been parked out in front instead of being incarcerated in Gadgkin’s Repair Garage for an overdue ring job, I would have pleaded a date. But it was a hot night, and I was carless, and perhaps careless. The vehicle would save me a hike to the bus stop, and...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Random House Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 081298420X
• ISBN 13: 9780812984200
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 240
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland