by Jim Thompson
“Do it yourself!” Bugs grunted. “I’ll wait for you in the car.”
He slammed out of the house and climbed into the convertible. A couple of minutes later, Ford joined him. He had a fresh cigar in his mouth. He was wearing a coat that matched his blue serge trousers, and a tan ranch-style hat.
“Couldn’t reach Mrs. Hanlon at the hotel,” he announced, as he headed the car toward town. “Have to look around a little for her.”
“All right,” Bugs said.
“Now, I been thinkin’—got an idea I better fix you up with a gun for your job. Don’t figure you’ll have any call to use it, but sometimes the best way of not needin’ one is to have it.”
“Yeah?” Bugs said. “What about yourself?”
“Oh, well, me, now…” Ford paused to turn the car into the curb. “That’s a different situation. Me, I’m never around any action. Never run into nothing where a gun might be necessary.”
He had parked at the end of the old town’s main street, the beginning of the boom town’s chief thoroughfare. They walked to the end of it, then crossed in the deep reddish dust, and started back up the plank sidewalk on the other side.
Mammoth sixteen-wheeled trucks lumbered down the street toward the oilfields. The smell of white-corn whiskey drifted from doorways. There was an incessant tinkling of juke-boxes, a clang-clinking of slot machines, the rattle-and-smack of dice and the whirr-and-click of roulette wheels. The noise rose and fell, a chorus that faded with the passing of one doorway and picked up, in perfect tempo and tune, at the next.
There were no “women.” None, at least, who appeared to be anything but women (no quotes). So Ford apparently did draw the line somewhere. The men were young, not-so-young, but never old. Most of them wore hats spattered with drill-mud, and the “rattlesnake insurance” of laced eighteen-inch boots.
Ford paused at each establishment and glanced inside. Near the end of the second block, he looked over the swinging doors of a gambling house, and gave Bugs a nod of satisfaction.
“In here,” he said, taking a pair of black kid gloves from his pocket.
He began putting them on, smoothing them over his tapering, delicate-looking fingers. A man came hurrying through the swinging doors, a burly, pasty-faced man with a slit for a mouth and eyes that were like tiny black buttons.
“Well, Lou!” He smirked nervously. “Saw you lookin’ inside. Nothing wrong, is there?”
Ford didn’t answer him. He didn’t look up from pulling on his gloves.
“Lou. Be reasonable, huh, keed?” There was desperation in the guy’s voice. “I didn’t know she was in there. I swear I didn’t! I just this moment came back from eatin’, and I told those jerks I got working for me a thousand times not to let her—”
Bugs didn’t see the blow, or, rather, two blows, that Ford delivered. They were so unexpected and executed so swiftly that he saw little more than their results…The man bent double suddenly, gasping for breath, ropish food spouting from his mouth. The man spinning ludicrously, spin-staggering off of the curb and collapsing in the street.
Ford brushed his gloves, one against the palm of the other. He went through the twin swinging doors, and immediately two chairs crashed out through the windows.
Bugs blinked and shook his head. Customers were stampeding out the doorway, but he lunged through them and past them to the inside. Again, he could hardly believe what he saw.
Ford was strolling toward the rear of the room, leaving a shambles of broken furniture and fixtures behind him, adding to it with every step he took. He moved unhurriedly, effortlessly; he was completely unruffled and the cigar was still in his teeth. And yet he gave the impression of raging, barely controllable fury. It came from the very deliberation of his movements, perhaps: a feeling that he was building up, relishing and prolonging the savagery, forestalling the cataclysmic climax that would end his game.
A couple of the joint’s employees rushed him, one from each side. Ford rocked them with two simultaneous backhands, whipped his arms around their necks and crashed their heads together.
And he hardly seemed to break stride. He was moving on before they hit the floor, tipping his hat politely to a woman who stood pressed against the rear wall.
She was the last customer in the place, the only remaining person aside from Bugs and Ford. An ash-blonde, she had a kind of washed-out but interesting prettiness; full, high breasts, and a waist approximately half the circumference of her hips.
“Now, that was a hell of a thing to do!” she said angrily. “Honestly, Lou Ford! I—I—could just absolutely murder you!”
“Told you to keep out of these joints,” Ford said. “Told ’em to keep you out.”
“And just who are you to order me around? Where do you get off at telling me what to do with my own money?”
“But it ain’t your own,” Ford said gently. “Might not be none of your own either, if you got hard-pressed and had to start grabbin’. No, sir, sure might not be, and that’s a fact.”
The woman looked at him sulkily. “Well,” she said. “Well, anyway, you didn’t need to act like this!”
“No?” Ford shrugged. “Well, maybe not. But, look—I want you to meet a fella…Mrs. Hanlon, Mr. McKenna.”
Her eyes swept Bugs contemptuously, taking in the worn clothes, the run-down shoes, the tired haggard face. Then she reddened, for far from flinching, she found Bugs looking her over in exactly the same way; adding her up point by point, and arriving at an obviously unflattering total.
“Well!” she said, unconsciously sucking in her breath. And then she smiled suddenly and extended her hand. “I’m very glad to meet you, Mr.—Mr. McKenna, is it?”
“Yeah. That’s right, Mrs.—Mrs. Hanlon?”
He grinned at her insolently. But Joyce Hanlon refused to be offended. She moved in on him, clinging to his hand, until her breasts were almost against his body. She looked up at him through silky eyelashes, spoke in the voice of a plaintive child.
“I’m sorry. Don’t be mad, hmmm? Pretty please? Pretty please with sugar on it?”
Bugs had no defense for that kind of stuff. He turned six different colors at once; mumbled desperately that s-sure, he wasn’t angry and he hoped she wasn’t and he was sorry, too, and—and so on, until he was sure he must sound like the world’s biggest horse’s ass.
At last Ford rescued him with the suggestion that they get out of the place. Go somewhere they could talk. They went to one of the old-town restaurants, with Joyce holding to Bugs’s arm. And strangely it didn’t fluster him much now. When she sat down in the booth opposite him and Ford, he missed the pressure on his biceps, the intimate, secretive probing of her fingers.
A waitress brought coffee. Ford brought up the subject of the house dick’s job, stating Bugs’s qualifications along with a casual mention of his criminal record.
“Plenty husky and gutsy. Been a big-city dick. An’ like you can see, he’s a real friendly fella to boot. Shouldn’t ought to matter much that he’s done a few things that wasn’t exactly legal.”
“It shouldn’t?” Joyce looked at him doubtfully. “I mean, well, no, it shouldn’t. It certainly wouldn’t matter to me, I know. But…”
She stared, frowning, into Ford’s eyes, seeking some clue to his reasoning. The deputy looked back at her blandly. “Well, it won’t matter to Mis-ter Hanlon, then,” he said. “People’s all alike, the way I figger. All kind of brothers under the skin.”
“Oh, Lou! You corny so-and-so. But seriously—”
“Ain’t never been nothin’ but serious. I’m one of these Pag-lee-atchee fellas, serious as all hell behind a mask of laughter. So you just do like I say. Take Bugs, Mr. McKenna, here, right to the head man, so’s he don’t get lost or strayed in the application-blank stage. And Mis-ter Hanlon’ll sign him up as fast as fox-hair.”
“I don’t think so. The mere fact that I want him hired will be enough to get him turned down. I’m perfectly willing to do it, Bugs”—she used the nickna
me easily, slanting a smile at him—“but I know how Mike is.”
Bugs nodded uncomfortably. He started to say that they could forget the whole thing as far as he was concerned: he didn’t want to be pushed off on anyone. But Ford was already talking:
“Seems to me you don’t know how he is,” he said. “Or what he is. Hard-headed. Long-shot player. Can’t run his own game, he’ll tackle the other fella’s, try to take the play away from him. That’s your husband, honey, and I don’t figger he’ll step out of character with Bugs.”
“Mmm, yes. I see what you mean.” She took a thoughtful sip of her coffee and pushed the cup aside. “I think you’re right, Lou. Now, do I mention that I met Bugs through you, or—?”
“It’s up to you, but it don’t make much difference. He’d probably think it, even if you didn’t tell him.”
“And don’t you know it! Trust him not to give anyone the benefit of the doubt!”
“Well, doubts is cheap these days,” Ford said. “Goin’ at the same rate as their benefits, which was nothing-minus the last I heard.” He slid out of the booth and stood up. “Guess I better run along, now that we’re all squared away. Some fellas I know are leavin’ town, and I want to give ’em a send-off.”
“Have fun,” Joyce smiled and flirted a hand at him. “I’ll let you know how everything comes out.”
“And thanks,” Bugs said gruffly. “Thanks a lot.”
“What for? Ain’t done nothin’ to call for thanks,” Ford declared. “No, sir, I sure ain’t. And that’s a fact.”
3
Most of the Hanlon employees worked the more or less standard long-day, short-day of the hotel world. A shift came on duty at seven in the morning, quit at noon, returned at six and remained until eleven. The following day, this shift would work a short-day—from noon until six—with the opposite shift catching the double-watch long day.
The exceptions to this routine were night workers, certain professional and maintenance personnel, employees of the store-room and laundry, Bugs McKenna, and Mr. Olin Westbrook, the executive manager. Bugs was on call at all times. But there was rarely any need for him during the day—he had been called only once during the month of his employment—so, in practice, he was a night worker. Mr. Olin Westbrook, on the other hand, not only was supposed to be available at all hours of the day, but invariably had to be.
Oh, perhaps he could retire to a checked-out room for an hour or so. Freshen up with a shower, or catch a few winks of sleep. But these brief periods were more tantalizing than satisfying; he couldn’t really rest and relax. If someone didn’t buzz him—and someone usually did—he would be expecting them to. And the expectation, coupled with the worry over what might be going on during his absence, kept him on nerve ends.
Westbrook was a hotel man of the old school, of the days when it was a pleasure to stop at a hotel instead of an adventure into indifferent food and accommodations, insolently or ignorantly administered. Now, at the Hanlon, he tried to do too much with too pitifully little. The job might be killing him, but he had to have it. He was in his late fifties, and for the last ten years he had been fired from every job he held. So it was this job or nothing.
…At eleven o’clock at night, he was in his mezzanine-floor office, re-auditing the hotel’s books for the last three months. It was the third time he had been through them, and the result had been the same each time. There was a broad, fixed smile on his face: a frozen grimace. In his mind, deliberately overlaid with protective dullness, was terror.
Cold sober, Westbrook had many of the reactions of a man who is dead drunk. The direst personal catastrophe had no meaning for him. He could be face to face with a fact, yet remain completely withdrawn from it. He had been that way for years—God, how many years? Only when the alcoholic content of his blood was at a certain level could he think and act as he should.
At last he pushed aside the papers and took a pint bottle from his desk. It was about a third full. It was the last of three pints with which he had started the day. Westbrook drank half of it at a swallow and lighted a cigarette. After a few puffs on the cigarette, he drank the remainder. Warmth came back into his small paunchy body. His fixed, foolish smile gave way to a scowl of concentration.
Well? he thought. And then: I don’t know.
But you’ve got to! It’s your tail if you don’t. You hired Dudley, did it over the old man’s objections. You said that he was a hell of a good auditor, and you’d vouch for him personally. And now that the son-of-a-bitch has done this…
I know! I know all that, dammit. But I still don’t know…Perhaps if I had another drink—And of course I’ll close out the watch before I take it; get the night shift under way…
Mr. Westbrook stood up resolutely, ignoring a small and despairing voice of warning. Rolling down his sleeves, he refastened the links of the French cuffs and rebuttoned his fawn-colored vest. He put on a black broadcloth coat, carefully adjusting the white linen handkerchief in its breast pocket. Then, after swiftly examining his fingernails and flicking a speck of dust from one shoe, he stepped out onto the mezzanine.
Rosalie Vara, the mezz’ maid, was dusting furniture a few feet away from him. Studying her from the rear, Westbrook again complimented himself for assigning her to her present duties. She would have got herself raped if he hadn’t. Any girl who looked like she did—who could easily have passed for white and yet admitted to being a Negro—was obviously too stupid to look after herself. All that was necessary was opportunity, which, on the job he had given her, was practically nonexistent.
Westbrook let his eyes linger on her a moment longer, his ultra-cynical mind again considering the possibility that instead of being stupid she might be very, very smart. Considering it, and again rejecting it. She couldn’t be working a gimmick. He knew every trick and dodge in the book, and if there was any way that a gal could pull a swiftie by admitting that she was a Negro…well, there just wasn’t. She was simply dumb, that was all. Too damned dull-witted to tell a lie. So he’d put her in a job where no one could take advantage of her.
Of course, she was upstairs occasionally. It was unavoidable, since all the day maids knocked off at eleven o’clock, and there were a few rooms, like Bugs McKenna’s, which had to be put in order before the morning shift came on. For ninety-five per cent of the time, however, she worked as she was working now. Out in the open. Away from the danger of private bedrooms and locked doors.
Westbrook took a final look at the girl’s delicately rounded bottom; a look of unconscious yearning. Then he turned away conscientiously and descended the curving staircase to the lobby. He walked with his head tilted slightly upward, as though about to sniff the air for some evil smell. His pale puffy face was as self-assuredly haughty as that of a pure-bred Pekingese, to which it bore some slight resemblance. People were tempted to smile at their first glimpse of Westbrook. But the very briefest contact with the little man was sufficient to still the temptation. Westbrook had begun his career as a page boy. Working his way upward, he had become not only highly efficient but exceedingly tough—a man who could cope with the hurly-burly hotel world at every level and on its own terms.
The staircase terminated in the lobby near the three front elevators. Two of the cars were out of service, as they should have been at this hour. The third was being manned by a member of the day crew, which it definitely should not have been.
Westbrook glanced up the lobby to the front-office desks. He moved toward them ominously. The youngish night clerk, Leslie Eaton, was in the cashier’s cage. (The clerk handled all front-office duties at night.) Chaffing with him, his back turned to the lobby, was the dayshift bell captain. Neither he nor the clerk noted Westbrook’s approach. They were suddenly made aware of it by a bellowed inquiry as to what the hell was going on.
The captain jumped and whirled. Westbrook let out another bellow. “You working this shift now? Well? Are you too stupid to talk? What about you, Eaton? You were doing plenty of yapping a minute ago!”<
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“I—I—I’m sorry, sir,” the clerk stammered. “I m-mean—”
“Been getting a lot of kicks on you. Not answering your phones. Chasing all over the house instead of staying where you belong. I know, I know”—Westbrook made a chopping motion with his hand. “You have a little auditing to do. Have to check up on the coffee-shop and the valet and so on. But that’s no reason to be gone from the desk for thirty or forty minutes at a time.”
“I’m not!—I mean,” Eaton corrected himself, “I’m not aware that I have been absent for more than a few minutes.” He was a rosy-cheeked young man addicted to college-cut clothes.
Westbrook looked at him distastefully, advised him that he was aware of it now, and turned back to the captain. “Well,” he demanded, “where’s the night bellboy? What’s that day man doing on the elevator?”
“We’re both working over,” the captain shrugged sullenly. “Night boys haven’t shown up yet.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t know. Look, Mr. Westbrook,” the captain protested, “what are you jumping on me for? Those birds aren’t on my shift.”
“And aren’t you tickled to death that they aren’t!” Westbrook jeered. “Got you buffaloed, haven’t they? Bet they’re in the locker-room right now, and you haven’t got the guts to run ’em up!”
The arrival of a guest ended his harangue. The captain scurried away, gratefully, to take the man’s baggage. Westbrook left the lobby and started down the back stairs. The door to the bellboy’s locker-room was partially open. Pausing in the dimly lit corridor, Westbrook looked through the aperture.
Like many “boys” in the hotel world, Ted and Ed Gusick, respectively the night bellboy and elevator operator, were boys in name only. Ted was about forty, Ed perhaps a year or so older. They had prematurely graying hair, and pinkish massaged-looking faces. They were well-built but slender; narrow-waisted, flat-stomached: wiry and strong. Born of the same mother, they may or may not have had the same father. Even she was unable to say. Amoral, vicious, treacherous and dishonest, they bore the hard polish of men who have spent a lifetime squeezing out of tight places.