The Criminal

by Jim Thompson

  “Terrible,” he repeated. “I think those things are always so much harder when one has young children.”

  Whoremonger, filth-eater! Go on and turn the screws. Tickle that floozie. But one of these days, powie! A five-alarm fire…

  “Well,” he went on, “I suppose the situation could be worse. At least you have the satisfaction of knowing you’re doing everything possible. The very best doctors and surgeons, the finest care without stint. That’s something to be grateful for, isn’t it, Don?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “Teddy and I are very grateful, Captain.”

  “A lovely girl, Don. Fine and uncomplaining and courageous. The children would be lost without her.”

  Monster, bastard, inhuman son-of-a-bitch. Keep it up! I’ll reach right through the phone and grab you!

  “Let’s see, what are you making now, Don? Twenty-five thousand, isn’t it?”

  “Twenty-two fifty.”

  “Not enough,” he said. “Oh, that’s not nearly enough, Don. Why, if I had someone like Teddy to work for—someone who depended on me and whose very life depended on…Did you say something, Don?”

  “N-No, sir,” I said. “I—I just coughed, Captain.”

  “You should be making thirty-five thousand, Don. You’re letting Teddy down. Oh, I know you think you’re doing everything possible, but you can’t know it. You simply haven’t had the resources to try everything. If you were getting thirty-five thousand, now, twelve thousand five hundred more, it might make a big difference. It might mean life for Teddy and a mother for those little tots of yours and…Yes, Don? You said something?”

  “No, sir,” I said. “I didn’t say anything, Captain.”

  He was silent for a moment. I eased my desk drawer open, got the cap off a pint of bourbon and took a big slug.

  “Feel better?” he said. “Well, there’s something I’d like you to do, Don. I want you to walk over to the window and stick your head out.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  It was coming now. We were getting into the main stretch. I walked over to the window and stuck my head out. Oh, yes, yes, indeed. I did exactly as I was told. He’d know if I didn’t, just as he’d known when I took that drink. The Captain always knew. Part of it was instinct, the bestial cunning you find in the very lowest of the animals, but he didn’t depend entirely on that. Only a very small fraction of the people in the Captain’s pay were employed on his newspapers. The rest were spies, his spies, and they knew every goddamned thing.

  Once, years before, the Captain had told a managing editor to go out and get a cup of coffee. He was eating the poor bastard out, you see, telling him he was asleep at the switch. Well, the guy went down to a restaurant, but he wasn’t a coffee drinker, it seems, so he took a glass of milk instead. And when he came back to the phone, the Captain fired him. He’d had a stool on his tail, and when the guy drank milk, whiz, the old axe.

  The rotten, stinking, son-of-a-bi—

  I picked up the telephone. “I’m back, Captain,” I said.

  “Good,” he said. “Perhaps you can tell me whether it’s raining or not?”

  “No, sir,” I said. “It’s not raining.”

  “Very good,” he said. “That checks with my information. You’ve taken a great load off my mind, Don. I was beginning to have some doubts as to whether you’d know if it was raining or not.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  Goddammit, why couldn’t he get on with it? I should have been talking to the news desk, the telegraph editor, the city editor; figuring out the play on the day’s stories. I glanced at the clock, and Jesus! it was only twenty minutes until our early-noon went to bed. If it wasn’t ready in twenty minutes there’d be overtime in composing, overtime in the press room, overtime in circulation— overtime! overtime! the lousy, filthy union bastards—and we’d hit the street late, and—

  I’d kill him! By God, I would kill him! I’d sneak into that castle at night, and he’d be ass deep in teletype flimsies and whores, and I’d have that good old gasoline and those good old matches—big kitchen matches—and I’d burn him alive! BURN HIM—

  “You had a story in your late-final yesterday, Don. A paltry eight lines back near the classified pages.”

  “Yes, sir? Yes, Captain?” He was crazy. If it was a good story we’d have played it.

  “A rape-murder out in the Kenton Hills section. Some fourteen-year-old girl. Very badly handled, Don. Should have been right column front page or better still a center-page spread with banner and lots of art.”

  “B-But, Captain—” I took the receiver away from my ear and stared into the mouthpiece. He was crazy, by God. “But, sir, there’s nothing—nothing at this stage, at any rate—to justify—”

  “You don’t think so, Don?”

  “Well,” I said, “of course, I could be wrong. But there doesn’t seem to be anything. Our courthouse man talked to the district attorney, and he doesn’t feel—”

  “Perhaps you could change his mind, Don. Build a fire under him. Throw a few matches his way, if you get my meaning.”

  “Well, I—”

  “What about this boy they’re holding? This Talbert?”

  “They’re letting him go,” I said, “for the present at least. He admits intimacy with the girl, but the rape if any would seem to have been the other way around. All the people in that neighborhood—her own parents, for that matter—say she was pretty much of a chaser. She’d take out after anything that wore pants while this boy, on the other hand, did everything he could to keep out of her—”

  “But he was intimate with her.”

  “This one time, yes. But he was miles away at the time she was strangled. Honestly, Captain, I—”

  “Can he prove that he was miles away?”

  “Well—well, perhaps not. He doesn’t have any ironclad alibi. But he went out to the golf course several days a week, we know that much. We know what kind of a boy he is—character-wise—and the kind of girl she was. Under the circumstances, the d.a. is reasonably satisfied that he’s telling the truth. He went on to the golf course. She lingered in the canyon waiting for a chance to slip into her house and get her clothes changed. Someone came along and found her there—they’ve fixed the time of her death at about noon—and—”

  “And who might that mysterious someone be, Don? Does the d.a. have another suspect?”

  “Not at present, no,” I said. “They think it might have been some hobo, someone that dropped off a freight there where they slow down for the trestle. I understand that quite a few tramps, because of the water and the trees—”

  “But the d.a. doesn’t have anyone in custody? Aside from Talbert, there are no other suspects and there is every chance that there will be no other?”

  “Well—”

  “We’ve flubbed a good story, Don. Moreover, we’ve been remiss in our duty to the public. We don’t know the facts in this case. We haven’t given the public the facts. Just what do we know about this boy, anyway? What do we know about his background, his character, what he might or might not do? How do we know the district attorney has done his job thoroughly? How do we know he isn’t soft-headed or incompetent? We don’t, do we? We don’t have anything to go on but his word. We’ve failed our trust to our readers.”

  I shook my head. Hell, it was a juvenile case, wasn’t it? How could you, with no real evidence to go on, smear a—

  “It’s a murder case, Don. Murder and rape. There’s been too much hush-hush about these juvenile criminals. We’ve got to call a halt, and this is an ideal time to begin.”

  An ideal story, he meant. It had just about everything. Young love and sex and murder and mystery. With the opposition still playing ethical—

  “We’ll run them off the stands, Don. By the time they wake up, it’ll be too late. It’ll be our story with the readers.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “But—”

  But why not kidnap the kid and hang him from the flagpole? That would make a good
story, too, and it wouldn’t be any worse than this.

  “Don’t misunderstand me, Don. All we want is facts, no distortions or exaggerations. We find out everything we can about this boy. We see that the d.a. and the police do their jobs properly. That’s all. We don’t try the case in the newspaper.”

  Oh, we don’t, huh? What the hell did he call it? All the facts, all the dirt we could dig up and nothing to offset it. The “facts” and the d.a. doing his job—doing a job if he wanted to keep his.

  “All right, sir,” I said. “I understand.”

  “I read your quarterly report, Don. It’s quite good.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said. “I thought you’d be pleased with it.”

  “Yes, it’s good. For a man getting twenty-two thousand five hundred. My very best wishes to Teddy, Don, and please do everything you can for her.”

  He hung up.

  I hung up.

  I glanced at the clock, squeezed my forehead between my hands. It was too much, by God; a man can take just so goddamned much and then he’s had it.

  I snatched up the phone, called for a conference hookup and gave news, and telegraph and city desk the word on the late-noon. Then, I told the city editor, Mack Dudley, to drag his ass in, and, yes, those were the words I used.

  He came in, carefully closing the door behind him. I waited until he started to sit down, and then I brought my fist down on my desk as hard as I could.

  He jumped like he was shot out of a gun.

  “What kind of crap is this?” I yelled. “What the hell kind of city editor are you? You get a prize story dumped in your lap, and just because I’m not around to write it for you, you louse it up! I’m through, get me? You think you can wander around in your goddamned sleep, and let me take the ass-eatings I’ll—”

  “Now, look,” he said. “See here, Don—Mr. Skysmith. I don’t—”

  The phone rang.

  “Excuse me, Mack,” I said, picking it up. “Yes? Skysmith speaking.”

  “Don”—it was the Captain again—“I don’t like to make any suggestions concerning your personnel, but…”

  “Yes, sir?” I said. “I’m always delighted to have your suggestions on anything, Captain.”

  “That operator who handled my call a while ago; she struck me as being a very intelligent young woman. I hope she isn’t transferred to the night shift.”

  “No, sir,” I said. “She won’t be.”

  I’d put her on early swing. Drag her ass out of bed at three in the morning. That girdle full of mud she thought was an ass.

  “I’d like her to stay on her present shift. Oh, yes, and you might give her a five-dollar raise…if, of course, that’s agreeable with you.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “I’ll take care of it right away.”

  I wouldn’t give her five inches if she was the last god-damned woman on earth. I’d cut her pay five bucks, and blame it on the business office. Say that I sent the raise through and they screwed it up.

  “She may feel a little shy, Don, about expressing her appreciation. You tell her that I’ll be very glad to get a note from her—that I’ll be looking forward to it.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  The lousy, filthy, bastardly, son-of-a—

  7

  William Willis

  It was obvious, as I stepped through the door, that Skysmith had gotten it from the Captain, and Dudley had gotten it from Skysmith. It was also obvious, since I had been summoned, that one William Willis was about to be handed a package.

  Dudley gave me his very best glare, developed after long years of practice on freshman copy boys. Skysmith stared at me with a mixture of sadness and sternness.

  That Skysmith slays me. Always making like a character out of The Front Page, always tossing his weight around and getting nothing but his ass out of joint. I never could figure out what the Captain saw in him. Not that he’s a bad guy, you understand. Just a fathead who came up too fast.

  I gave him, Skysmith, a pleasant good morning. I winked and grinned at Dudley. He harrumphed, getting slobber on his chin in the process. He brushed it away, quickly, adding another five-hundred watts to the glare.

  “Putting you on a story,” he barked. “Think you know how to handle one?”

  “We-el, I don’t know about that,” I said. “A story, eh? Isn’t that a little unusual to have a reporter do a story?”

  “Now, goddam you,” he said. “You keep on pulling that smart sarcastic crap and—”

  “Just a moment,” I held up my hand. “One moment, Mr. Dudley. I would like to quote you the Guild-Star contract as it pertains to the use of obscene and profane language by Star supervisory employees when addressing—”

  “Stuff your goddamned contract!” He turned to Skysmith, pointing a trembling finger at me. “Don, you’ve got to do something about this character! He’s destroying morale. I can’t say anything—give an order to anyone—without him—”

  He choked up, slobbering on his chin again, and I obligingly continued for him: he couldn’t raise hell with someone just because he felt like raising hell. He couldn’t fire anyone except for cause. He hadn’t been able to since I’d organized the Star chapter of the Guild and become its shop steward.

  “All right, Bill,” Skysmith said. “We’re all familiar with the contract provisions, so let’s just drop the subject, huh? And, Mack, you lay off of Bill, too. Goddammit”—he scrubbed his forehead—“this is a newspaper, not a kindergarten. Honest to Christ, I don’t know what the hell’s wrong with some of you birds! All you can think about is sniping at each other, getting even, carrying on some goddamned stupid feud! It’s got to stop, get me? By God, I—I’m—”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. And, right at the moment, I was sorry—for him. The way he looked, I couldn’t help it. “What’s the story, Don?”

  “Sure,” Mack said gruffly. “Bill and I don’t mean anything; just kidding around.”

  “Well, all right,” said Skysmith. “It’s that rape-murder out in Kenton Hills, the one that broke late yesterday. You may have seen the second-section squib we carried on it?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t recall…Wait a minute,” I said. “You mean that juvenile case? The one where—”

  “I mean a murder case,” Skysmith said firmly. “Rape and murder.”

  “Well,” I said, “maybe I’m dumb—now, now, Mack!—maybe I’m dumb, but where’s the story? The girl was fourteen, the boy fifteen. We can’t print a lot of dirt about—”

  “Facts,” said Skysmith. “Facts are what we can print.”

  I looked at him, and I think my eyebrows must have gone up a couple of inches. “What are we going to hang those facts on?” I said. “What’s our justification for tossing our last shred of ethics out the window? I could see it, when and if they pick up the nut who knocked the girl off, but just to go to town on a couple of kids who had a little…”

  My voice trailed off. After a minute, I said, “Oh, no! You’re kidding. you’re not going to imply the boy killed…”

  “What the hell’s wrong with it?” Skysmith wouldn’t look at me. “The kid got in, didn’t he? He was there at the scene of the crime, wasn’t he? He can’t prove, positively, that he wasn’t there at the time she was killed. He went on to the golf course—he says—but he didn’t go all the way. He was about a quarter of a mile away when he saw that there were only a few players out and a hell of a gang of caddies, so—”

  “I know all that,” I said. “The guys were kicking it around over at the Press Club. The d.a. knows it, too, and he doesn’t feel there’s sufficient grounds for charging the kid.”

  “Goddammit”—Skysmith brought his hand down on his desk. “I didn’t say the kid was guilty. But how the hell we going to know unless we get all the facts? We don’t know a goddamned thing about him, Bill. What his background is, what his reputation for—uh—truth and veracity is, what the folks out in that neighborhood, his playmates and teachers and so on think of him. All
we’ve got to go on is hearsay, just what that lardassed d.a. says, and you know that stupid son-of-a-bitch, Bill. I’ll bet he still hangs up his socks on Christmas Eve.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve always thought he was a pretty good man. As public officials go, of course.”

  “I’ll tell you what I think,” said Mack Dudley. “We give this the full treatment—get the facts like Don says and pour the coal on the d.a., I’ll bet the kid cracks. I’ll bet he confesses he took it away from that poor girl and then killed her to keep her from telling.”

  “Oh, I agree absolutely,” I said. “I’m confident of it, Mack. In fact, I’d go a step further than that. I’ll wager that if the Star gave you the treatment and sicced the d.a. on you, you’d confess to the crime yourself. Incidentally, and nothing personal intended, but where were you around noon yesterday?”

  “Now, Bill,” said Skysmith. “For Christ’s sake—”

  “You refusing to handle the story?” Mack snarled. “Go on! Tell me you won’t do it!”

  “Isn’t there some alternative?” I said. “Something clean like scrubbing out the john? I haven’t had much experience, but I’m strong and willing to learn.”

  “He refuses,” said Mack. “According to paragraph six, clause b, the refusal of an editorial employee to—”

  “Shut up!” Skysmith yelled. “Goddammit, SHUT UP!…Now, look, Bill, this is a perfectly legitimate story. It violates orthodox newspaper practice, perhaps, but there’s nothing—uh—essentially wrong with it. All we want is the facts, no distortions or exaggerations. All we ask of the district attorney is a thorough investigation. That’s not unreasonable, is it? There’s nothing wrong with that?”

  I shrugged. “Nothing I know of,” I said, “that you don’t.”

  He scrubbed his forehead again, his eyes squeezed shut. He opened them and leaned forward. “That’s the way it stands,” he said, and his voice was steady but there was an undercurrent of trembling in it. “You’re a good reporter, and I’d like to see you handle the story. But it’s going to be done, regardless. We’ve got other good reporters, and they aren’t trouble makers. They’re too busy with their jobs to fool around with unions. Now, what do you want to do?”