He gave Shayne a fat envelope, addressed to the Honorable Nicholas Tucker at his campaign headquarters. It had been stamped with triple postage and sealed, but not mailed.
“Written on this typewriter?”
“It seems so. There’s a floating capital A. Tucker identifies the typewriter as his wife’s.”
Shayne sat down and began reading.
Darling man,
Though I don’t know if I should call you that any more. I’m a mess, Nick. And getting worse. And worse and worse.
Is this news to you? Or have you been too wrapped up in the affairs of state? By which I mean the affairs of Nicholas Tucker! Excuse me, of the
Honorable
Nicholas Tucker, and I have to remember to write that on the envelope or you may refuse delivery. I’m being mean, which comes naturally to me, as you never hesitate to point out. But all of a sudden I begin to ask myself if some of this meanness has been absolutely necessary. I’m in what used to be known as a predicament. I got there because I was bound and determined to be nasty, to do something so thoroughly nasty that our friends and acquaintances, that dear crowd, would decide I must be out of my mind. Which I am, I suppose. Consult our sweet asshole Dr. Gold. I don’t know why you wanted to pay that charlatan thirty dollars an hour so I could listen to myself talk. I can do that in the bathroom for nothing.
I’m leaving this subject. New paragraph.
Fuck you, buster.
That’s not what I meant to say, either. Why is it an insult, anyway? The action described by the verb has given mankind a great deal of pleasure for years. I’ve treated myself to quite a lot of it since leaving your bed and board, and I found most of it highly enjoyable. You’ll recall that one of the things the doctor and I have been working on is the fact that I couldn’t come. That turns out not to be true, given certain combinations of people. I’ve had some spectacular blast-offs. All this shocks you considerably, I hope. I’ve been among people who have no trouble getting erections, which is more than I can say for a congressman I know. Some of these erections have been black. I know you hate blacks. You, yes. You pretend you don’t because in some parts of the state they’ve been emancipated and given the vote, but you hate them and you fear their potency.
That’s not what I started to tell you…
I’m scared, honey lamb. I’m scared out of my wits, such as they are these days — they’ve deteriorated badly. You remember I used to get all A’s. Now I doubt if I could find the school.
Decisiveness was never my strong suit, even in saner days. But a lightning bolt came down out of the sky and hit me, it was that sudden. I don’t want to run you off the highway anymore! Isn’t that odd? I don’t know what happened. I think just wrenching myself up out of one situation into another made me put our differences into perspective. There are more important things in life. Such as death!
Honestly, Nick, I’ve been so mad at you at times I wanted to crush you like a bug. Now I’m asking myself. If a person’s a bug, and you are, why be angry when he behaves like a bug?
The next step is easy. Actually I don’t consider you as buglike as I once did. You know how I hate to admit I’m wrong! Well, I’m wrong. You can’t be holier-than-thou and win elections, and of course that’s what you do for a living. You can’t give every voter a morality check before you allow him in the booth.
I look back on those dippy right-left fights we had as conversations in a dream. Did I really say those dumb things? America does have to keep herself strong! We have to go on being the number one country in the world, or the world won’t last a year. I’d like to talk to the good doctor about how I reached that simple conclusion. The fact is that I could use an aircraft carrier and a battalion of marines right now myself, and that may have something to do with it.
I’m sorry as hell for what I’ve done. And what I did was this.
There’s a man whose initials are FC. You don’t know him. He has a mat of curly hair on his back, running all the way down. I don’t know why that seemed so exciting to to me, but it did, or why I feel like telling you about it now. Be patient.
I’ve been looking for shortcuts to happiness the last few years, for new kinds of visions. You know that, even though you haven’t known it with the top of your mind, because for somebody in politics a wife who’s a dope fiend is a handicap, that I freely concede. This man I’m talking about, this prick — and I shouldn’t use that lovely word either — saw to it that I had all the “medicine” I needed, or that I thought I needed. All very high quality. I met him whenever I could, which was often. Didn’t you ever wonder what I did with my afternoons? No, you were TOO BUSY, bless you. F. is an evil person, not very articulate, but there’s one thing in his favor, and that is that he was always willing to listen to me talk, like Dr. Gold. And I talked about you, mainly, what else? And he had an idea. Why didn’t I sell my rings and so on, those bonds Mother left me, cash in my savings, and MAKE A MOVIE? I blush to say that I jumped at it. Because at that point in time, my dearest husband, my dearest wish was to put a period to Nick Tucker’s political career. I couldn’t
stand
the idea of you as governor.
And the money entered into it, a little. I’d made my break, that was definite, but I thought I deserved something in the way of alimony. What would you give me if I came to you and asked for a modest sum like $50,000? Airplane fare and a pitying smile. F. said I needed something to threaten you with. I went along with it. I did something I knew was wrong. I hope you don’t ever find out what it was because it was awful! And the awfullest thing was that I enjoyed it! I enjoyed it so much that I changed my mind again, and I decided I’d be damned if I went through with it.
I looked at the calendar once last week and five days had disappeared! Disappeared. You’re sober and upright and ambitious and you believe the lies they told you in Sunday school, and you can’t possibly know how it feels.
Well, F. takes the position that he’s invested a certain amount of time and trouble in this, and I suppose he has. Speaking of mean and nasty, I couldn’t be half as mean and nasty as this man. And speaking of threats, one or two have been made to your confused and chastened ex-wife, who among other things is ten pounds lighter than when you saw her last. I’ve stayed straight for two days, believe it or not. I’ve made arrangements. I think it’s going to be all right, and nobody will know about this little aberration.
But I have to get out of town, and I have to do it in an intelligent way, or I’m sorry to say there’s a good chance that I’ll end up dead!
And if I’m dead, I won’t be able to take back what I’ve told people about you. I don’t think I hate you anymore, now that I’ve flown the cage and taken a good look at the actual world. You’re rotten in certain respects, but compared to the real thing you’re a saint! And I wish I’d realized it long ago.
Now darling, down to brass tacks.
F. has no reason to believe I’m not where I’m supposed to be, which is in bed with a hypo and an empty bag beside me. But I didn’t shoot the contents of that bag into my arm, I shot it into the bathroom toilet, and if you don’t think that took courage and character! I’ve got a reservation on a plane leaving at eleven, and never mind to where because you’ll never see me again. It was too risky to stay where I was. I didn’t want to come out and sit in the airport, because this man of mine has friends and informants and connections. So I took a cab. And here I am, typing this long letter. Where? At the motel. I think it was actually rather clever. There’s always one or two weird people at every motel who like to get going at dawn. They leave the key inside and the door unlocked, and if somebody like me walks in and hangs a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door, they won’t be bothered till check-out time. I’ll be airborne by then.