Roughneck

by Jim Thompson

  It happened one quiet summer evening when I was strolling home from work. A cab swept past me as I started across an intersection. It skidded around in a U-turn and headed back in my direction; it headed straight toward me, seemingly out of control, and as I leaped back to the sidewalk, it climbed the curb and followed me. I was frightened out of my wits. Darting back into the street, I began to run for dear life, and I tripped and fell sprawling. The cab drew abreast, and Allie leaned out the window.

  "How terrible," he said. "Such a fine young man to be lying in the gutter!"

  Well, I had always liked Allie, and despite the weird doings which usually resulted from our association, I was glad to see him. So I cursed him out mildly and entered the cab, first making sure that he was carrying no concealed weapons or other items which might involve us with the police.

  Allie pressed a pint of whiskey upon me. Uncorking another for himself, he drove off, bringing me up to date on his affairs. He had left Texas, he said, shortly after I had. The police had had nothing against him, actually, but they had intimated that all parties concerned would be happier if he traveled for a while. And Allie had thought it well to follow their suggestion. He had moved up through Oklahoma and the Midwest, working "the twenties" and other small con rackets. Arriving here in Lincoln well-heeled and under no necessity to "work," he had taken this hack-driving job by way of divertissement. He intended leaving town in the morning. Meanwhile, tonight...

  He outlined his plans for the night's entertainment. I told him, firmly and profanely, he could count me out.

  "What's the matter?" Allie coaxed. "All I want you to do is drive me and my lady friend around. What's wrong with that?"

  "There's everything wrong with it!" I said. "For one thing I don't have a license to drive a hack."

  "So what? I've got a dozen. The guy I bought them from gave me a quantity rate."

  "Now I'm not going to argue with you, Allie," I said. "I'm tickled to death to see you, but I absolutely refuse—"

  Allie wheedled. He reproached me sorrowfully. Was this his one-time protege—the youth he had rescued from the life of a burlesque house candy peddler? Was I so far gone in respectability that I could not do a small favor for an old friend?

  "Just answer me one question," Allie demanded. "Are you going to drive this cab or are you going to be a horse's ass?"

  We drove on, arguing and drinking. I began to waver. It had been almost a year since I had tasted real whiskey. For months I had been a model of hard-working respectability, and the existence was beginning to pall. College was over until the fall term. Why not, now that I had a little free time, make a break with tiresome routine?

  "Well, all right," I said at last. "But no rough stuff, Allie. You've got to promise to keep it clean."

  Allie removed the cap from his head and put it on mine. He promised, as I had asked.

  "You'll have to promise, too," he said. "This is a very refined young lady we're picking up. I'm taking her to the country club dance."

  "You're kidding," I laughed.

  "You'll see," said Allie. "By the way, stop at this drug store, will you? I'm taking her a few cigars."

  I pulled in at the curb. I turned and looked at him, startled. "Cigars! You're taking her some—"

  "Havanas," murmured Allie. "Like I say, she's very refined."

  He was in the drug store for some time, deliberately lingering, I suspect. When, finally, he emerged, I was finishing my first pint and much of my trepidation and curiosity about the expedition had vanished with it.

  He directed me to a particularly execrable section of the city. I drew up at a house he pointed out—a tumble-down, unpainted shack—and Allie debarked again. He remained in the house for about five minutes. He came out with one of the fattest, ugliest women I have even seen.

  Her enormous legs were bare. Her hair frizzled out from her bloated head like the thongs of a mop. She was costumed in tennis shoes (with the toes cut out) and a filthy gray house dress.

  Both she and Allie were smoking cigars.

  He assisted her, waddling, across the yard. Helping her into the seat with a stream of courteous and honeyed patter, he climbed in at her side.

  The door slammed. The rear curtains came down. "James," said Allie. "Take us to the club."

  "The club," I said suavely, and I put the cab into gear.

  The place was several miles out in the country. By the time we arrived, there was a long line of cabs and cars waiting to debouch their passengers at the brilliantly lighted entrance. I fell in at the end of the line. As it moved up, I edged the cab forward with it. We got nearer and nearer the entrance, and from the back seat came sounds of high—very high—revelry.

  I had a pretty good idea of what was under way back there, although I did not realize how far it had progressed. But being very merry by now, I saw no reason to admonish my passengers nor to remind them of their whereabouts. Allie had wanted to come to the club. All right, I had brought him and his lady friend here. The rest was up to them. As I saw it, the "lady" could look no worse than she originally had, whatever her present condition.

  The cab crept forward, a car length at a time. Bathed in a boozy, rosy glow, I gazed out at the splendor immediately ahead...Men in tailcoats and tuxedos, women in evening gowns. They milled around beneath the gaily decorated canopy, roamed up and down the broad steps. Laughing, talking, calling hellos to each new arrival.

  The last vehicle ahead of me drove away. I pulled up in its place. The doorman stepped forward smartly and flung open the rear door. There was a grunt, a gasp, a curse—and a thud.

  And out into the entrance, the cynosure of a hundred horrified stares, tumbled Allie and his lady. Each puffing on a cigar. Both completely naked.

  I took one startled glance at them. Then, sliding out of the door on the opposite side, I ran.

  7

  Things went very well for me until early spring of the following year. Then the manager of the store which employed me was fired, and everything began to go wrong. The former manager had been a quiet, gentlemanly sort, as kindly to everyone as his job would allow. The man who replaced him was a brassy loudmouth—one of the most deliberately offensive men I have ever known. I had barely got to my desk the day of his arrival when he called me on the carpet.

  "Notice you're keeping a couple of women," he growled. "What I want to know is how you're doing it. How you buying stuff for whores on the dough you make?"

  "Buying stuff for—for—?" I stared at him, open-mouthed. I didn't have the faintest idea what he was talking about.

  "Maybe you've been knocking down a little, huh?" he went on. "Well, you'd better lay off. You want to buy stuff for whores, you have 'em co-sign the account with you. And no phoney names, see? None of this crap that it's for your mother and sister."

  I understood him then, all right. But I could still only stand and stare, sick with a swiftly mounting fury...Mom and Freddie. In one and the same breath he had accused me of fraud and referred to my mother and sister as whores.

  I think I have never been closer to murdering anyone.

  Apparently he saw how I felt.

  "Well,"—he forced an uncomfortable laugh—"guess I kind of got my wires crossed, huh? No offense."

  I didn't say anything; I couldn't. So, after a word or two more of grudging apology, he waved me out of his office.

  My last class at the college let out at 11:50 in the morning, and I had to be at the store at noon. I had no lunch period, then, as the other employees had; and I usually grabbed a bite when I made our afternoon deposit at the bank. I was never more than a few minutes about it—just long enough to gulp down a sandwich and some coffee. Both Durkin and the former manager had consented to the arrangement.

  The new manager, having given me a few days to cool off, called a halt to it.

  Whether I ate or starved was strictly my own headache—see? I could drop my last morning class, or I could do without lunch; that was for me to decide. All he knew was tha
t I was not going to do any more "fugging around" on company time.

  "Getting too goddamned much money, anyway," he grunted. "We could get a full-time employee for what we're paying you."

  Well, I had to hold the job, at least until the end of the school term. So I restrained my temper—and went without lunch from then on—and I continued to swallow his insults and arrogance in the miserable days that followed. I had plenty of company in my misery. As boorishly rude as he was with me, he was often more so with the other employees. No one could do anything to suit him. He was always "taking over" on a sale or a credit interview, showing the "goddamned incompetents" (us) how it should be handled. And when the sale or the interview went sour, as it often did, he was furious...Goddammit, couldn't we do anything right? How the hell could he do his job and ours, too?

  The credit manager, Durkin, an executive in his own right, caught as much hell as the rest of us. But while he appeared a little hurt at times, he showed no resentment. As a new man, he said, the manager should be given every chance to make good. It was his job to give orders. It was ours to carry them out, insofar as we conscientiously could. That was the only way you could run a business.

  "I'm sure he means well," Durkin would assure me earnestly. "After all, we're all here for the same purpose. We all have the store's best interests at heart."

  I was sure the manager did not mean well, and that he had no one's interest at heart but his own. But I had learned the futility of arguing with Durkin. Not too intelligent outside of his work, he was utterly devoted to the store. And in his mind the absentee owners were minor gods. They 'had' to know what they were doing, and since they had put the manager here, 'he' had to, also...That was that, as far as Durkin was concerned, and it continued to be that until early summer, a couple of weeks before the end of the school term. Then...

  By way of getting new customers into the store, the manager had written a sales letter. Durkin, who had been charged with having it mimeographed and mailed out, showed me a copy of it.

  "You're a writer, Jim," he said. "You know all about these things. What do you think of it?"

  I read it, shaking my head. It was filled with wornout catch phrases which were completely uninformative and brassily offensive. No one was going to believe that we were giving away merchandise. No one would believe that we were in business solely to "befriend the good people of Lincoln" and that we yearned only to be their pals and buddies.

  "It's the worst kind of junk," I told Durkin. "If this doesn't put us out of business, nothing will."

  "Oh?" Durkin frowned troubledly. "You really mean that, Jim? You're not just saying it because he wrote the letter?"

  "It's the awfullest bunch of tripe I ever read in my life," I said, "and you can tell that stupid bastard I said so."

  "Well," Durkin murmured worriedly. "You certainly ought to know, Jim. You're an authority on writing. Maybe I'd better..."

  Turning away from my desk, he went into the manager's office. Almost verbatim he gave that gentleman my opinion of the letter. Then, as the manager gaped at him, apoplectic with fury, Durkin suggested that I be commissioned to write a "really good" letter.

  Well, the manager finally found his voice, and all hell began to pop. He cursed Durkin out at the top of his lungs. Then he called me in and he cursed us both out together. He'd show us, by God. He'd teach us to make fun of our betters. He would have ten thousand of the letters printed up—ten thousand instead of the five thousand he had originally contemplated. And we—Durkin and I—would have the job of addressing, sealing and stamping them. We'd do it on our own time, with no assistance and no extra pay.

  He dismissed us with another string of profanity. Putting through a rush order to the print shop, he got a delivery on the letters that very evening. And for the rest of the week, and part of the next, Durkin and I worked night and day. I was sore as a boil, naturally. Durkin, strangely enough, seemed completely at peace with himself. He remained stolidly polite to the manager. In fact, the more the latter gibed and nagged at him, the more polite he became.

  It was the manager's idea to "sweep the town off its feet," to hit it such a blow that it would be "rocked to its heels." So the letters were allowed to accumulate instead of being sent out a thousand or so at a time. He kept close watch on our progress. Seeing that we were near the finish, he remained with us that last night, although he did not, of course, help us with the work. He looked on, grinning maliciously, as we packed the letters into boxes and loaded them into Durkin's car.

  "I guess that'll teach you," he jeered when, at last, the job was finished. "Snap into it, now, and maybe you'll get that stuff mailed before midnight."

  He drove away laughing. Durkin told me to go on home, that he would take the letters to the post office himself. I protested my willingness to help, and for the first time in our acquaintance he was curt with me. He didn't want my help, he said. He preferred taking care of the letters himself.

  I went home. He got into his car and drove off. Late the following afternoon, I learned the reason for his unprecedented conduct.

  I was working the cashier's window at the time. A quiet, nondescript little man came up to the wicket and asked to be taken to the manager. I suggested, according to store practice, that I might be able to help him.

  "I'm not sure the manager is available at the moment, sir. If it's something about your account, some misunderstanding or—"

  "Post office department," he said, displaying his credentials. "Are you in charge of the mail?"

  "I handle some of it, yes," I said. "I'm not in charge, but—"

  "I'm in charge." Durkin came up and stood beside me. "This young man has nothing to do with the mail."

  "I see," the little man nodded. "Well, we received a call from the sanitation department a little while ago." He broke off cautiously. "I think I'd better see the manager."

  "You can't. There's no need to see him," said Durkin.

  The little man looked at him. Reaching through the window he tapped Durkin on the arm. "Mister," he said, and his voice cracked like a whip, "you get the manager for me and be damned quick about it!"

  Durkin shook his head stubbornly. The manager, having heard himself referred to, came out of his office. Surlily, he inquired what the hell was up.

  The inspector introduced himself. He explained. And what happened then is impossible to describe adequately. The manager gasped. He choked. His face purpled, puffing up like a balloon, and his eyes stood out from his head like doorknobs. He began to bellow, to scream.

  Durkin was fired within the hour, as soon as approval could be obtained from the home office. I, a mere clerk, was discharged immediately—the suspected instigator of, if not an actual accessory to, the credit manager's crime.

  "I'm certainly sorry, Jim," he apologized. "I tried to keep you out of it, you know. That's why I sent you on home instead of—"

  "But why did you do it at all?" I said. "My God, Durk, you might have gone to the pen for a deal like that. We both might have, if the company wanted to get tough with us. Why the hell did you do it, anyway?"

  "Why, Jim," he said, reasonably, "you know why I did it."

  "Dammit, I don't know," I said.

  "Sure, you do. You said the letters were junk; they'd hurt the store. So, naturally I..."

  ...so he had taken all ten thousand of them—all carefully addressed, sealed and stamped—and thrown them into the city dump!

  8

  With the school term finished, I got a full-time job in another department store—a tumbledown old emporium on the outskirts of the business district which catered largely to the farm trade. It was a strange place, operated by a baffling network of absentee owners and concessionaires. Although an approximate fourscore people worked in it, the auditor and I, his assistant—and a few custodial employees—were the only employees of the store proper. The others were all in the pay of the various concession owners.

  A man named Carl Frammich was the auditor. Our duty was to k
eep tabs on the concessions—the grocery and clothing departments, the cosmetics counter, the cream-buying station, the barber shop, the restaurant, and a dozen-odd other stores within our store. We collected their receipts, and supervised their help.

  Complaint department? That was us. Credit and Collections? Us again. Personnel, Purchasing, Payroll? You guessed it. Everything that no one else did—and the clerks did nothing but sell—was handled by the auditor and his assistant. Frankly, I was soon overwhelmed by the job, and, for much of the time, didn't know what I was doing or why.

  Carl Frammich...Of all the weird, off-trail characters I have known, he was the weirdest, the most off-trail. Stacked up beside Carl, my old friend Allie Ivers was a dull-normal person. Carl looked like the devil—literally, not in the slang sense. He was Satan come to life, and he had the devil's own cynicism; and he could rarely say three words without two of them being blasphemies or obscenities. Yet his voice was angelic. It was the sweetly piping falsetto of a five-year-old. Musical and high-pitched, and with such a pronounced lisp that it was often impossible to understand him.

  "Tompn," he would say, "bwing at doddam fuddin cash ledger in here an ess oo an me twike a skewin balance on uh sonabitsin bastud." Or, "Tompn," he would say, "do down and tell at doddam assho in weddy-to-weah to top skewin up his salestickets or I'll tum down air an kick uh fuddin kwap outta im..."

  Despite my own errors in that direction, I have always said that no man can work while he is drunk. But I say this with one mental reservation—lisping, Satanic-looking Carl Frammich. Carl was dead drunk throughout the three months of our association. He came to work drunk, and he drank throughout the day. Straight alcohol when he could get it, anything from horse liniment to "female tonic" when the alcohol was unobtainable.