Hot Spot

by Charles Williams

  She told me.

  She was still telling me when she slid the wheels to slow down a little to let me out three blocks away from the rooming house. I didn’t mind walking. It gave my ears a chance to stop ringing, and gave me a breather to let the fact soak in that I was through with her at last. It was wonderful. Everything was wonderful.

  It was a happy few hours. The next morning at ten o’clock Sutton walked into the office to see me.

  Gulick was up the street having coffee. I was at my desk doing some paper-work when I heard the car stop outside on the lot. I’d just shoved the papers aside and started to get up to see who it was when he walked in the door. He pulled a chair over and sat down in front of the desk. His face was still a mess, but I didn’t pay much attention to it. I was watching his hands. He didn’t have on a coat and I couldn’t see any place he could be carrying a gun, but if he did have one I didn’t have a chance, with that desk between us. By the time I got to him it wouldn’t make any difference whether I got there or not.

  He fished in the breast pocket of his shirt for a cigarette and then reached down. I waited, scarcely breathing. When the hand came out of his pants pocket it held nothing but a big kitchen match. He raked it along the edge of the desk and lighted his cigarette.

  “Don’t mind the way my face looks,” he said. “I fell out of bed. I was having a funny dream.”

  “What’s on your mind?” I asked.

  “That’s the way to do business,” he said, with what might have been a grin. His face was so puffed and cut not much of it moved. “Always get right to the point. Well, I’ll tell you. I’m thinking of buying another car pretty soon.”

  “How about just paying for the one you’ve got now?” I said.

  “Oh. That’s all right. I’ll trade it in on the new one.”

  “Like perpetual motion, huh? You want to trade in a car you don’t own for another one you can’t pay for. You ought to be in the government.”

  “It must rub off on you,” he said. “You’ve been a big shot less than a week and you sound just like Harshaw already.”

  “Maybe I was wrong,” I said. “You ought to work for the newspaper.”

  “Oh, I take an interest in things. But how about the car? I’ve kind of got my eye on that Buick up there at the end.”

  “That’s twenty-four hundred dollars worth of car. Eight hundred down. What are you using for money?”

  “I told you. I’ll trade mine.”

  I was beginning to get fed up with it. It didn’t look as if he had a gun or was looking for trouble, and I couldn’t figure out what he was getting at.

  “Cut it out,” I said. “If you haven’t got anything to do, I have. Your equity in that Ford is about three hundred dollars, and we both know how you got that much in it. And just to jog your memory, that gravy-train has quit running.” I stopped and looked at him. “Incidentally, your next note is two or three days overdue, so unless you’ve got fifty-five dollars on you you’d better start thinking about walking home. Thanks for bringing it in.”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” he said. “But you still don’t catch on. Why should I make another payment on it when I’m going to turn it back? On that Buick. Let’s go take a ride in it. We can work out the down payment then.”

  I started to tell him to beat it when I looked up and saw Gulick coming back. There was no use letting him get an earful. “O.K.,” I said. I got the key out of the drawer. “Let’s take a ride.”

  We went out to the car. “Mind if I drive?” he asked.

  “No. Go ahead.”

  I climbed in beside him and he eased it out into Main. “Nice car,” he said. “Radio and everything, huh?”

  “Now listen, you stupid bastard,” I said, “I don’t know what you’re driving at, but I can get a bellyful of you quicker than most people. So why don’t you get wise and shove? You fall out of that bed about once more and the grasshoppers’ll start talking to you.”

  “You know,” he said, “I been thinkin’ about that.” He turned right beyond the bank and started down the street where the Taylor building had been. “Thought I might go out to the Coast.”

  “Now you’re getting smart.”

  He jerked his head towards the charred rubble and the ashes. “Quite a fire they had, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” I said. I’ll never know why I didn’t begin to tumble then. Maybe it was that silly, half-witted act he was putting on.

  He turned again at the second cross street and started around the block. And just after he’d made the last turn he pulled to the kerb and stopped. We were facing up the street towards what had been the rear of the Taylor building. There was a big elm hanging out over the kerb and we were in the shade. There was something awfully familiar about it. And then the warning began to go off in my head at last. This was the exact spot where I’d parked the car that day of the fire. The chill was going all over me now in spite of the midmorning heat. There wasn’t one chance in a thousand he’d stumbled on this spot accidentally. And the only way he could have known about it—I didn’t want to think about that.

  “You know, it’s funny about this place,” he said. “Familiar, sort of; ain’t it? You ever get that feeling? You know, that you’ve been in a place before.”

  “Break it up,” I said. “What are you talking about?”

  “That day they had the fire. Seems to me I was walking along here, going back to town, about a half hour after it started. I’d been over there, watching it, see, but I’m kind of funny; fires bore me after a while. The way I see it, there’s no money in ’em. Or at least that’s what I thought then. That just shows you how stupid a man can be when he don’t use his head. Now, you take a smart son-of-a-bitch like you, a real big-shot sort of guy, he knows there’s money in fires.”

  “How about getting to it?” I said. “It wouldn’t take much to finish that face for you.”

  He lighted a cigarette and shook his head. The simpleton act was gone now. “I wouldn’t advise it, pal. You know how the monkey was caught in the lawn-mower. The best thing to do in a case like that is to hold still.”

  “Hold still for what?” I asked, feeling the sweat gathering on my face.

  “Well, let’s say about five thousand, plus the Buick. They say you tapped the bank for ten, which probably means about fifteen grand, so I figure around half will do for me. The way I see it, why be a hog? People wouldn’t like you.”

  “I think I’m beginning to get it,” I said. “You’ve got a goofy idea I had something to do with that bank business, and so—”

  “Let’s just skip all that part, pal,” he said. I could see I was boring him. “Let’s just talk about the geetus. It’s more fun that way. As far as thinking you clouted the bank, you’re talking about the Sheriff and that deputy, Tate. They think you did it. Me, I’m another guy altogether. I just happen to be the only one who can prove it. But we wouldn’t want to make it that easy for ’em, would we, pal? As I see it, let ’em earn their money. So that being the case—”

  “You keep talking, but you haven’t said anything,” I broke in. “What do you mean, you can prove a crazy pipe dream like that?”

  “Just like I said. I saw you drive up here in a hell of a hurry thirty minutes after the fire broke out and everybody who wasn’t staying for the second show had started home—”

  “What does that prove?” I said angrily. “Maybe I was supposed to punch a time-clock, or something?”

  “Please, pal. Keep your stories straight. I can see you’re just breaking in. You tell them you got there with the fire-wagon, and now you tell me you can come dragging in any time you want. You got to tell everybody the same story, see. I get in more trouble with girls that way. Of course, I run around with more the female type of girl myself.”

  I went for him, but he saw it in my face before I got started. His hand slipped inside the shirt, under his right armpit, and came out with it. It was a woman’s gun, a little pearl-handled automatic, not as big as his
hand as he let it rest in his lap, but there’s no difference between being killed with one of them and with a .45 unless it’s prestige you’re after.

  I slid back and left him alone.

  17

  “NOW,” HE SAID, “LET’S TALK about the geetus.”

  He’d deliberately needled me into lunging for him so he could flash that gun. It made him feel better—that and the way he had sucked me out of position with that simpleton act of his.

  “Let’s get this straight,” I said. “You really expect me to give you five thousand dollars I haven’t got and a Buick that doesn’t belong to me?”

  He shook his head. “Let’s cut out the horsing around. You go dig up that dough from wherever you hid it and slice me five grand off the little end, nothing bigger than twenties. Then you make out the papers on this car, take mine in on the down payment, and you can take care of the notes any way you want.

  “You see, pal,” he went on, “you’re in a worse spot than it looks like at first. Remember what you told me? If I didn’t quit touching Goldilocks for a sawbuck now and then for beer money you’d slap me around till I started shuffling my feet and talking back to the bedbugs. Because you’d be around here to do it. But the catch is, you won’t. You’ll be up the river trying to think up a spiel to give the parole board in 1971, and wondering how Sweetie-pie is making out in the sawbuck department.

  “You catch on? I can’t lose either way. But you sure as hell can if you don’t go along with me. So just shell out, like I told you, and I’ll take off for the Coast. You’ll still have half of it left, so you can settle down and join the Chamber of Commerce and talk about the dirty crooks in Washington.”

  And I’d thought he was stupid. I sat there feeling the sick emptiness inside me and listening to him drive the nails in it one at a time. He had me any way I could turn, and he wasn’t bluffing. As he said, he won either way. There wasn’t any way out. They still might not prove it when they picked me up again, but all the odds were on their side. They’d know now for sure and without any doubt at all, and there wouldn’t be anybody to spring me this time before the questions drove me crazy. Harshaw would fire me, and Dolores Harshaw might have to get on the stand and admit she’d lied. All that business would come out, and it’d settle me with Gloria. He was right. There not only wasn’t any way he could lose; there wasn’t any way I could win.

  “Look,” I said at last, “how do I know you’ll go?”

  “You don’t, pal.” He tried to grin with that messed-up face. “You’ll just have to take my word for it.”

  “Well, geez,” I said. “I’ve got to have a little time. I’ve got to think it over. You’re pulling all this stuff on me, and I can’t figure out whether I’m up or down—”

  “There’s nothing to think over. Just take my word for it, pal. You’re down.”

  “Yeah, but—Look. I’m not admitting a thing, understand, but even if I had that kind of money it’d take me a while to get hold of it. And the car—It’s almost noon Saturday, and we can’t get the paper-work done on it today.”

  “That’s all right. I notice there’s a dent in the right rear fender, anyway, and I want that fixed. I’m not in that big a hurry; I can pick it up from you on Monday. You’re not going anywhere; you know what’ll happen if you try to run.”

  He stopped talking and turned to look at me out of eyes sunk back in that scrambled and puffed-up face. “A real neat package,” he said. “Isn’t it, pal?”

  The long, hot Saturday afternoon was an endless hell of sitting at the desk looking at papers I didn’t even see while everything tumbled around me. The finishing touch had come at noon, when I picked Gloria up to take her to lunch. One glance at her face was all it took. He’d been to see her too. We sat in a booth in the crowded restaurant, unable to talk about it for fear of being overheard, while we looked at the ruin of everything we had planned. She couldn’t know what he’d told me, and I didn’t say anything about it, but she didn’t have to to understand the spot we were in. All that mattered was that he was back again for more and all our bright ideas for getting the books straightened out by November or any other time were shot to hell. I tried to cheer her up, but it was useless.

  I’d see her that night, but what was the use? What could I say? That he’d promised to leave, and go to California? That was too stupid to repeat. There was a fat chance he’d go off and leave a gravy-train like this. This was just the opening wedge. He’d stick around until he got it all, and then he’d stay right on, milking both of us for what we made or what we had to steal to keep his big mouth shut.

  Why had he waited all this time? I couldn’t even figure that out. I shuffled unseen papers in the heat, thinking, going around and around in the same smooth rut from which there was no escape. I hadn’t even got to the worst part of it yet. Suppose he got the money. Suppose he got all of it. That still wasn’t it. It was what was going to happen the minute he got his hands on it. He’d start throwing it around, making a big show around the beer joints and pool halls, and that was exactly what that cold-eyed Sheriff was waiting for, some citizen with too much sudden prosperity. They’d pick him up, and to get out from under he’d tell ’em where he got it. So in paying him off to keep out of jail, I’d just be buying a one-way ticket right into the place.

  I picked her up a little after seven and we drove out into the country and parked the car on a side road. I held her in my arms for a long time, not talking, and at last she stirred a little and looked up at me so hopelessly it was like a knife turning inside me.

  “He wanted five hundred dollars,” she said.

  “Did you give it to him?”

  “Not yet,” she said dully. “I told him we didn’t have it in the safe, and the bank was closed.”

  “Good,” I said. “We’ll think of something.”

  “We have to, Harry,” she said. “He said he’d go away. He said he was going out west. If we give it to him, maybe he’ll stay away.”

  I wasn’t thinking, or I’d have kept my big mouth shut. “Like hell he will. Blackmailers are all the same. Every bite is always the last—until the next one.”

  “I know. But what can we do? He might go.”

  “He won’t. And we won’t get anywhere by paying him. The thing to do is stop him.”

  “But how?” she asked frantically. Then she thought of something. “Harry, did you do that to his face? I never saw anything so—so horrible.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I won’t lie to you. I did it. And a fat lot of good it did.”

  “I hate that sort of thing, Harry. You won’t do it again, will you?”

  “All right. It didn’t do any good, anyway.”

  “We’ll just have to give him what he wants, and hope he’ll leave.”

  “He’ll never leave if you give him what he wants,” I said.

  “Then you don’t want me to give him the money?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. “Don’t give him anything till I tell you to.”

  “What are you going to do, Harry?”

  “I don’t know yet, baby. I just don’t know.”

  “Darling, please tell me why you don’t want to give it to him. Isn’t that the best thing to do?”

  “It’s the very worst thing we could do. The way to get a blackmailer off your back is to stop him, not pay him.”

  “What do you mean? How can we stop him?”

  “I don’t know yet,” I said. “But you just leave it to me.”

  I took her home around midnight and went back to the rooming house. I lay in bed thinking about it, and after a while I was conscious that I was no longer wondering what to do. I was thinking of how to do it. Sometime during the afternoon or evening I had already arrived at the only answer there could ever be to Sutton. I was going to kill him.

  How?

  The match flared as I lighted another cigarette. I could see the face of the wrist watch. It was nearly two-thirty.

  There was no use trying to kid myself.
It was dangerous, it was dangerous as hell. I thought of that Sheriff. Anybody who committed a crime in his county was taking a long, long chance. And I already had one strike on me. He had his eye on me. I was a marked man, and he was probably having me watched. I had to get down there and do it and get back without Tate’s knowing I had left town.

  How?

  I rolled over on my back and lay staring up at the ceiling. I not only had to get past the Sheriff; I had to fool Gloria. There was no telling what a thing like that would do to her. She’d probably crack up if she ever found it out.

  How? How? How?

  And what about Sutton himself? I knew by this time I was dealing with no fool. He was plenty smart, and he was armed. I thought about the guns. He had that Junior League automatic, a .22 rifle, and a shotgun. And then I began to get it.

  I sat up in bed.

  It didn’t come to me all at once. It took a long time to work it all out, step by step, thinking of all the possibilities and when I was through it was dawn. It was a hot, breathless dawn, the way it is before a storm, and as the sun came up I looked out across the back yard at the high board fence splashed with crimson. Red in the morning, I thought, sailor take warning.

  It meant nothing except that it would probably rain by tonight. I turned on my side and went to sleep.

  I awoke around noon with a bad taste in my mouth and my body drenched with perspiration. Outside the sun was a brassy glare, and there was no whisper of a breeze. I walked uptown and bought the Houston paper and took it into the restaurant, propping it up before me while I drank some orange juice. I remembered none of the news, even while I was reading it, but this had to look like any other Sunday. I was tight and nervous, for I could feel that cold-eyed Sheriff looking over my shoulder at every move I made. It had to be natural from start to finish, for he had a merciless eye for anything that didn’t fit.

  It was a day that would never end. Around five o’clock I drove over to the Robinsons’, but Gloria had gone out about an hour ago, they said. I talked to them for a few minutes, and then left, unable to sit still. Time crawled. Tension was building up already, and I still had hours to go.