The Deceivers: A Novel

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 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.

ONE

The new County Memorial Hospital was just beyond the eastern edge of the city of Hillton. It had been opened less than a year ago, a four story, U shaped structure of pale tan stone with aluminum trim, curving walks, plantings, a large asphalted parking area. It was in pleasant country of rolling hills, spangled with the bright colors of the ranch types and split levels of the middle income housing developments that had grown up since the war. The hospital itself was a half mile from a long climbing curve of the six lane turnpike that had been opened in 1955.

Carl Garrett had told himself, and told Joan—possibly too many times—that it certainly would be a lot more pleasant for her in the new hospital than down in the dingy old red brick structure on Gollmer Street in the middle of the city. At County Memorial she would only be a little over a mile and a half from home.

Sunday, the fourteenth day of July, was a most peculiar day for them. Dr. Bernie Madden, family doctor and family friend, had confirmed the presence of ovarian tumors large enough to merit removal back in April, and he had agreed that July would be soon enough, when both Kip and Nancy would be away at summer camp for six weeks.

On the first of July they had driven the kids sixty miles into the mountains to Lake Muriel, depositing Kip at Way-na-ko on one side of the lake, and Nancy at Sar-ay-na on the other side, both camps under the same ownership and general management.

Kip, at fifteen, was returning to Way-na-ko for his third summer, and was consequently very blasé about the whole thing, yet barely able to conceal his eagerness to meet the choice friends of previous summers. It was Nancy’s first summer away from home. She was thirteen. Kip, as the deadline for departure came closer, had alternated between a patronizing and superior attitude, and filling her with horrendous and disturbing lies about the treatment and facilities at Sar-ay-na. Nancy was both enormously excited and nervously apprehensive about the whole situation. She had packed and repacked an astonishing number of times, vacillating between the bare minimum required, and an inclination to take along every valued possession.

A week before they were due to take the kids to camp, Carl had informed the kids of the operation. He had caught them on the fly, so to speak, and told them in the back yard on a hot Sunday afternoon.

While you tykes are up cavorting in the hills, your female parent is going into the hospital for a general overhaul. Even as he said it, he wondered why it had become so habitual, and even necessary, to use a light touch when talking of serious things with the kids. It was, he supposed, essential not to alarm them, but it did make for communication on a rather grotesque level.

Kip was in blue knitted swim trunks that made him look very rangy and very brown. He had a towel over his shoulder and he was anxious to go jump on his bike and pedal down to the Crescent Ridge Community Pool. He had inherited his mother’s round and rather placid face, and her dark brown hair, which he wore in what was, to Carl, a distressing variation of the crew cut called a flat-top.

His impatience to be away evaporated very suddenly. Joan, who had been weeding by the rose bushes, sat back on her heels and looked toward them and said, with a thin note of strain that Carl hoped was too subtle for the kids to catch, My million mile overhaul.

Kip sat down abruptly on an aluminum and plastic lawn chair and said, his eyes grave and very direct, Is this anything … bad, Dad?

No, he said, rather irritably. And suspected that his own irritation might be an index to his own fears. It’s just one of those things, Kipper. No cause for flap. She goes in on the weekend of the fourteenth for an operation, and you kids will be completely informed, and we’ll set up a deal where you can be near phones so I can call you and tell you all is well. Which it will be, according to Bernie.

He took out my appendix very nicely, Nancy said in a rather defensive manner, and she went directly to her mother. Joan stood up and Nancy hugged her, and held onto her longer than was usual. Nancy, at thirteen, showed much promise of growing into a vivid and striking woman. She had Carl’s dark coloring, his lean face, his long legs. At thirteen her body had begun to blossom at hip and breast—the merest hint of what was to come—and she was perhaps a fractional part of an inch taller than Joan.

You kids run along now and don’t fret, Joan said when Nancy released her. I’m not nervous, so there’s no reason for you to be.

They left with an air of reluctance. When they were in sight again, beyond the house, going down the hill, Kip was walking his bike and Nancy was beside him and they were talking intently. Joan stood by Carl’s chair and they watched them disappear behind the Cables’ tall hedge.

A good group of offspring, Carl said, his tone casual, his voice slightly husky.

A week later, after they had left the kids at camp, they drove back to the house, and it seemed very empty. Joan said, Honey, do you realize this is the first time in … fifteen years they’ve both been away?

Good practice for a pair of old floofs, he said. College coming up before you know it.

But it’s so awfully quiet, she said.

Restful, you mean, he said, grinning at her.

The hospital seemed a long way off, but the time went by too quickly. Joan had the house gleaming by the end of the two weeks. They had bought it in 1952, the year after the Ballinger Corporation had transferred Carl from the plant in Camden to the Hillton Metal Products Division. They had spent the first year in Hillton in an ugly and inconvenient rented house in the city. They had purchased the Crescent Ridge home on the basis of the architectural drawings and the promoter’s promises at a time when the cellars were being dug for the first block of fifty homes.

It was more house than he had felt they could legitimately afford, but he had never regretted making the decision. It was on a one-acre plot at the highest point on Barrow Lane, the first paved road in the development. It was a ranch type, with three bedrooms and two baths, a double car port, a twenty-six by twenty foot living room, complete, on occupancy, with oil heat, dishwasher, garbage disposal, electric range, washer and dryer.

He remembered the excitement of driving out in the evening to see how much more had been done each day. Joan would go out during the day and she somehow managed to get the workmen to make small improvements for her as they went along. When at last it was ready, they drove out on a day in May, following the moving van. Nancy, at eight, was tearful about leaving behind her very dear friends on the block. The lot was raw dirt and the road was being paved, but the new house had a wonderful smell of paint and newness. Joan supervised the placement of the furniture. After the van left they all wandered around, turning on hot water, flushing toilets, clicking the light switches. Carl went into the living room and found Joan sitting on the couch with the hopeless tears running down her face. When he sat beside her and took her in his arms and asked her what the trouble was, she began to sob in earnest. It seemed that she had thought everything would look so wonderful, but now the house made the furniture look horrid. He could see what she meant. The inevitable scars and abrasions inflicted by small children had not been very noticeable in the gloom of the rented house. But in this light and airy home they were all too evident.

Nancy came and stood by the couch for a few moments, and then with a wail of heartbreak she flung herself onto Joan’s lap. Kip came and expressed silent contempt at such female goings-on, but his lips were tightly compressed and his eyes were suspiciously shiny.

When Joan pulled herself together, she had a hundred ideas about how they could make the furniture look right without really spending any money hardly.

Carl Garrett, in spite of the fact that his father had been a building contractor, had always been unhandy with tools. But during the five years they had lived at 10 Barrow Lane, he had pleased himself and astonished Joan by turning into a reasonably competent carpenter, a dogged stone mason, a timid electrician and a strikingly inept plumber. During leisure hours he had paneled the cellar, dividing it into play room and workshop. He had put in a fifteen by thirty foot flagstone terrace behind the house, and surrounded it with a low wall. He had installed a whole storage wall in the car port, built a fieldstone barbecue fireplace in the rear yard, built an insulated study in the attic, assembled the components of a high fidelity system, built low bookshelves and coffee tables. The house was comfortable, livable, and quite handsome in barn red with white trim. The plantings had thrived and the lawn was healthy. Most of his projects had been accomplished with a great deal of advice and a certain amount of help from his neighbors on Barrow Lane. In turn he passed along the hard-earned results of his experience.

After five years the original mortgage of $15,500 had been reduced to $12,000 and he knew that if he were transferred he could get five thousand over the twenty he had paid for the house. At least five thousand.

During the two weeks after the kids had been put in camp, Joan was endlessly busy. She had him bring boxes down out of the attic, and she sorted and discarded. She emptied drawers all over the house. She made lists for him, and tore them up and made other lists. He was tempted to tell her to take it easy, but he sensed that she had a need to keep herself busy.

Sunday, the fourteenth, finally came. It was a sticky day with far off thunder. They had breakfast at ten-thirty, and then she packed what she would need at the hospital. Bernie wanted her delivered there at four o’clock.

At one o’clock they locked the house and drove down into Hillton, nine miles away in the red and white Ford wagon, with Joan’s small suitcase on the rear seat.

Good-by, house, Joan said.

By the time you get back I’ll have turned it into a shambles, he said. Dishes piled all over. Empty bottles in the yard. Grass up to your knees.

I’m not going to be gone that long, and anyway, Marie is coming on Thursday to clean, and Bernie says I’ll be out probably a week from Tuesday.

That seems awfully quick to me. I mean, it’s abdominal surgery and …

You heard Bernie, dear. They used to keep them in for weeks, but now they have them walking around in a day or two.

They were heading down the turnpike into Hillton, and they both looked at the hospital off to the left. Chrome twinkled in the parking area, and the flower beds were bright patches of color.

Better than Gollmer Street, he said.

Oh, much much better!

They had had experience with the dingy hospital on Gollmer Street, when Nancy had had her appendix removed, and when Kip had broken his left wrist’ in a fall from the railing of the porch of the rented house a month after they had arrived in Hillton.

On the eastern outskirts of Hillton, the new turnpike made a long curve to the north and crossed the Silver River on the big sweep of the Governor Carson Bridge, bypassing the congestion of the city. When they had first bought the Crescent Ridge house, the commuting problem had been severe. Carl had had to drive nine miles to Hillton on a winding two-lane highway in fast traffic, find his way through the city, cross the inadequate Prince Street Bridge, and drive three more miles to the parking lot of the Hillton Metal Products Division of Ballinger. Though only a little over twelve miles, he could never make it in less than forty minutes, and when there was sleet or snow or heavy rains, it would often take over an hour.

When the limited-access turnpike was opened, it cut the trip to a comfortable fifteen minutes. He could bypass the city and exit from the turnpike just three blocks from the plant. Now, however, he turned off at the eastern edge of the city and drove down through the quiet streets of a Sunday summer afternoon and parked in a metered space almost in front of Steuben’s, the best restaurant in the city. They took a small table in the air-conditioned, dimly lighted cocktail lounge and had two rounds of martinis.

Their conversation had a strange tempo. There would be times of being very gay and amusing—and being too amused by what they said. And then she would give him earnest instructions about all manner of household trivia. And then would come a silence that would begin to be uncomfortable.

It’s like a funny kind of celebration, she said.

I know what you mean.

You’ve gone away, but this is the first time I’ve gone away.

Don’t stay as long as I did, he said, knowing that she was thinking of his two years overseas in the war.

Darling, don’t try to come out for the afternoon visiting hours tomorrow. Tomorrow they’re just going to be doing tests and things. Tomorrow evening will be soon enough. Seven to eight-thirty.

That isn’t very long.

To sit and look at somebody in bed? It’s long enough. And please don’t think you have to come in and sit for the whole hour and a half. I know how restless you get.

I’m paying for the accommodations. I guess I can sit as long as I want to.

God knows I’m going to have enough company, she said. Every one of the girls will come piling in, dragging their reluctant husbands whenever they can.

Time to eat, he said, glancing at his watch. He paid the bar check and they found a corner table in one of the smaller dining rooms. They ordered abundantly and told each other how good the food was at Steuben’s, but neither of them finished the dinner. As they were having coffee, Carl looked across the room and saw their reflections in a mirrored wall. He tried to look at the two of them as a curious stranger might. After seventeen years of marriage, it was as difficult for him to be objective about Joan’s appearance as about his own. He thought that it would have to be a most inquisitive stranger to waste more than the single glance required to ascertain that this was a married couple, the man about forty-two, tall and quite spare, with black hair thinning on top, rather swarthy complexion, two deep lines bracketing the mouth, the habitual expression rather morose and withdrawn. The woman was a year or two younger, not over five feet six inches tall, a round, brown-haired woman, with an open face, a woman probably merry and competent. She would weigh about a hundred and forty pounds, and she would be forever attempting miracle diets. The man wears a pale gray sports jacket, a white dress shirt with a blue necktie. The wife wears a gray skirt, a white blouse, with a dark red cashmere cardigan around her shoulders.

Nothing startling about this pair. Perhaps there is a detectable flavor of contentment, the aura of a marriage that is good and has lasted, and will continue to last.

But the stranger would not see what happened when Carl looked at his watch and said, Time to saddle up.

Then Joan found his hand under the table and squeezed it very hard, and he looked into her eyes and saw the shadows.

I guess I’ve got a right to be a little scared, she said.

I would be completely terrified. So go ahead. Be scared a little.

She smiled at him. I’m okay now. And they left. As he followed her out, he thought, You look at your woman from the time she is twenty-three until she is forty, and somewhere along the line you stop being able to see her. You see a face that is dear to you, and a body you love, and you have no idea how she looks to anyone else. I like her tidiness and her gift of laughter. Her face is round and her eyes are gray and her hair is brown and silky. Her waist is slim and her legs are good, and her body is firm and solid. I feel good when I see her across a room. In the beginning it was magical, full of electric excitements, quivering emotional scenes. Now it is all warmth and custom and habit and content. But in the beginning she was a stranger. And now, when I think of the scalpels and the wound they will make, I feel a horror and a sickness as though it were my own belly they will cut.

She stood by the car while he unlocked the door for her, and then they drove to the hospital and parked in the big lot as the afternoon visitors were leaving at the end of the two-thirty to four visiting hours. He carried her small bag and they went to the admissions office. They gave the information required and he turned over the hospitalization policy. Bernie had reserved a bed in a semi-private room on the third floor, Room 314.

The visitors had left by the time he took her up to her room. The bed was freshly made and turned down. A floor nurse came in and explained the call system. The other bed was rumpled but empty. Just as he was about to leave, a small sallow brunette on aluminum crutches came hobbling in and went over to the bed by the