Wild Town

by Jim Thompson

  “He won’t for me, anyway.” Bugs shook his head firmly. “I’m grateful to you, Ollie, but I think you’ve got a hell of a lot of guts. You’re afraid to tackle this deal yourself, yet you’ll ask me—a guy walking a tight rope—and—”

  “Afraid, hell!” Westbrook exploded. “I’d take on fifty skunks like Dudley if it would do any good. But it wouldn’t! I insisted on hiring him. I swore that he was straight as a string. How can I do an about-face now and call him a thief? He’d laugh in my face. I’d just be tipping him off that it was time to scram. You see that, don’t you? You’re not completely dumb, are you, you overgrown meathead?”

  McKenna colored. He said coldly, “Not this dumb, at least. I’m sorry, Ollie.”

  “You won’t do it? After all I’ve done for you, you—”

  “I won’t do it,” Bugs nodded. “And I’ll be damned careful not to accept any other favors from you from now on.”

  Westbrook brushed the back of his hand against his mouth. He said, hell, he was sorry; he didn’t want Bugs to feel that way. He hadn’t done anything more for Bugs than he’d do for any man that he liked, and Bugs didn’t owe him a cent. But—but—

  His voice rose, turned suddenly ugly. The alcohol washed over him like a tide, killing all inhibitions, leaving nothing but his terror and sense of outrage. And hateful words spewed from his small hard mouth in a poisonous stream.

  He didn’t mean what he said. It was the alcohol talking, not the man. But he was inherently cynical, gifted with the faculty for totting circumstance with circumstance and arriving at invariably unflattering conclusions. Conclusions—answers—which were at once laughably illogical and insidiously convincing.

  Bugs gaped at him, not knowing whether to laugh or get sore.

  The reddish haze cleared from Westbrook’s brain, and his tirade ended as abruptly as it had begun. He got to his feet, stood weaving on them slightly murmuring dull-voiced apologies.

  He was sorry…just lost his temper…worried and burned up about Dudley, and—that was all. He hadn’t meant a word of it…

  “Well, Christ,” Bugs frowned, “I should hope not.”

  “Sure, not. Not a word.” Westbrook tottered toward the door. “So just forget it, huh? Enough trouble now without…”

  The door closed behind him.

  Bugs stared at its polished surface, a sickish disturbance spreading through the pit of his stomach.

  He was supposed to bump off old man Hanlon? That was why Joyce Hanlon and Lou Ford had done so much string-pulling to get him this job?

  Nuts! How crazy could you get, anyway? Still, if that wasn’t the reason behind Ford’s and Joyce’s unusual interest in him—and, of course, it wasn’t, what…?

  Well, it was like Ford had said. A good tough house-dick at the Hanlon saved work for him and his deputies. But that wasn’t true. Nothing had happened at the Hanlon thus far that required any great amount of toughness or muscular activity.

  So? Well, so nothing. Perhaps things had just been unusually quiet so far. Or, well, maybe Ford had just been doing him a favor in a way that would be easy for him to accept. That last didn’t seem very likely, but…

  Ford was a grafter, a crook. And Joyce Hanlon was obviously pretty low-down. The two of them were both money-hungry. And if they were looking for a guy to pull a murder, what could be more natural than to pick someone who’d—?

  Bugs let out a disgusted snort, a sound filled with forced disbelief. He told himself that just because Ollie Westbrook was acting screwy was no excuse for him to do so. Ford and Joyce knew that he was on the level. He’d made it damned clear that he was, and that he intended to stay that way. And if they’d actually been looking for a killer, he wouldn’t have got the job.

  That was that. Poor Ollie had just been grasping at straws, saying the first thing that popped into his mind.

  Bugs slipped on his shoulder holster, with its .38 Police Special. Then, putting on his hat and coat, he left the room.

  He was supposed to make a complete tour of the hotel at least once a night. Tonight, as he sometimes did, he decided to make part of it before eating, and the rest afterwards.

  Since he was here, he did his own floor first, walking the main hall and the two wing corridors. Then, mounting the two flights of steps to the fourteenth—the top—floor, he began working his way downward.

  To save doubling back on his tracks, he descended the east-wing steps on one floor, those on the west wing the next. In this fashion, he arrived some twenty minutes later on the eleventh floor…at the room of the auditor, Dudley.

  He had been thinking about Westbrook, meanwhile. Worrying about him. Fretting himself into a state of stricken conscience. He’d acted like a heel, he decided. Just turned the little man down flat without a crumb of comfort. Naturally, he couldn’t go to the lengths that Westbrook had suggested, but there was every chance in the world that they wouldn’t be necessary. Westbrook was too rattled to think straight, to suggest anything but threats and violence. Whereas, if the auditor actually was a thief, he might easily knuckle under to a few firm words.

  At any rate, Bugs thought, there was no harm in trying. And he certainly owed it to Westbrook to make the try.

  So, impulsively, without stopping to listen at the door—and, God, how he was to regret that later!—he knocked briskly.

  There was silence. The kind of silence that follows the sudden cessation of sound. Bugs waited a moment, and knocked again.

  Still silence. Then, a sudden creak and rattle, the brisk chatter of the bathroom shower. And Dudley’s irritated voice.

  “Yeah? Who is it?”

  “McKenna,” Bugs said. “I want to see you.”

  “This time of night? What the hell, Bugs?”

  Bugs didn’t say anything. Dudley muttered something and turned the key in the lock, stepping into the bathroom as Bugs entered. “Be right with you,” he called sourly. “Just as soon as I dry off, and get…”

  He slammed the door, cutting off the last of the sentence. Bugs went on through the entrance areaway and sat down. Except for the moonlight drifting through the window drapes, the room lay in darkness. The bed was rumpled as though slept in. Dudley’s clothes were flung over a chair. Or, rather, part of them were. The trousers, with the belt half-pulled out of them, lay on the floor in an untidy heap.

  Bugs looked at them, frowning unconsciously. That was funny. Dudley was kind of a lady’s man. A real dude about his clothes. It was strange that he’d drop them on the floor in a wad, as strange, say, as his getting out of bed in the middle of the night to take a bath…

  The bathroom door opened. A figure darted past him suddenly. Dudley, his hair rumpled, naked save for the towel tied around his middle. He snatched up the trousers, clawed frantically at the inside surface of the belt. He dropped them again and turned on Bugs, eyes glittering in the darkness, teeth bared in an animal-like grimace.

  “All right,” he hissed. “Let’s have it, you son-of-a-bitch!”

  “Huh?” Bugs scrambled from his chair. “What the hell are you—”

  “It’s mine. You can’t prove that it isn’t. I know the law, see, and you either fork it over or—or by God, I’ll kill you!”

  The words came out in a rush. He came at Bugs with a rush. And hell, he was a set-up for Bugs, a flabby, wild-swinging punk like that.

  Bugs side-stepped expertly, effortlessly. As the auditor shot past him, he chopped his hand against the back of his neck. “Now, simmer down,” he warned, turning. “I don’t know what—what—”

  He stopped talking. There was no one to talk to. There were only the soles of Dudley’s bare feet on the window sill…and then they were no longer there. They had slid over it, following his body through the fluttering drapes.

  Into the eleven-story void of space.

  5

  Ted Gusick set down his load of baggage and turned to the cross, dyspeptic-looking guest. In hushed, funereal tones, he advised the gentleman that the house doctor was on cal
l at all times, and that the corner drugstore had twenty-four-hour prescription service.

  “Of course, you may be all right here,” he said on a note of hopeful worriment. “A lot of people—the really rugged types, you know—it hardly bothers ’em at all. But if you should feel yourself getting sick…”

  The man stared at him nervously. He asked worried questions. Dolefully, Ted declined to reply.

  “I guess I’ve said too much already, sir. After all, I’ve got a big family to support, and if I lost my job…” He hesitated, then threw in the clincher. “Probably I wouldn’t have said anything at all if you hadn’t been double-rated. That was just a little more than I could take. To charge you a double rate for a room like this, this room above all rooms…”

  “What? That clerk charged me double, you said?” Anger was added to the man’s nervousness. “What’s all this about, anyway? What’s wrong with this room?”

  Ted wouldn’t tell him. He just couldn’t, as much as he wanted to and felt that he should. He was just scraping by, see, and he was too old to get another job. And—

  “Oh, thank you, sir,” he said smoothly, pocketing the guest’s five-dollar tip. “Now, don’t let on that I told you, but they call this the dead room. I guess it’s something in the wallpaper, know what I mean? Arsenic or something like that. Anyway, practically everyone that stays in it gets sick as a dog, and quite a few of ’em have died. So if you’ll take my advice…”

  He left as the guest was acting on his advice; i.e., he had Leslie Eaton, the clerk, on the phone, and was demanding another room…“a decent room, by God,” he concluded furiously. “And don’t try to gyp me on the price either.”

  Thoroughly bewildered, the clerk agreed to a transfer. Ted accepted another key from him, moved the gentleman to a room less desirable than the first one, and collected a tip of another dollar.

  The next guest to arrive was flushed faced, jaundiced of eye. After considerable sly coaxing, and a ten-dollar tip, Ted revealed to him that there were indeed a great many “girls” in the hotel.

  “The clerk’s got a whole stable of ’em. Some of the hottest babes you ever laid eyes on. Now, don’t let on that I told you because he gets kind of embarrassed about it. But just tell him you know damned well he’s got ’em—you been hearing about it all over Texas—and that if he don’t come across, the old crap’s going to fly…”

  The gentleman licked his lips. He reached for the telephone, and Ted made his exit. Arriving at the elevator bank, he found Ed waiting for him.

  “Let’s have your passkey.” His brother spoke impatiently. “Old man Reimers just came in fried to the gills.”

  “Forget him. If he’s really fried, he hasn’t got any dough left.”

  “Says who? How the hell do you know so much? Give me that key or I’ll paste you one!”

  Ted stepped into the car. He pulled the door shut, gesturing his brother into silence. “No key,” he said. “I got rid of it. I dropped in on Dudley a while ago, and after I made the hit…”

  He named the figure he had hit for. Ed let out an admiring whistle. “Dudley, for Christ’s sake! Must have tapped the till, don’t y’suppose? How’d you ever get wise that he was carrying heavy?”

  “Didn’t.” Ted shrugged modestly. “Didn’t even know it was his room until I got inside. Well, I knew, sure, but I wasn’t even thinking about whose room it was. I heard the shower running as I passed by, and I could tell by the sound that the bathroom door was closed. So naturally I paid him a fast visit.”

  “Naturally.” Ed opened the door at the lobby floor. “A chance like that, you don’t get every day…Well, what d’you know”—he chuckled dryly. “So Dudley gets cleaned while he’s getting clean!”

  “I figure that isn’t all he got. I wouldn’t say for sure but I got a hunch there was someone in the bathroom with him. It kind of figures, see? Otherwise, he’d’ve had the door open. You have it closed with the shower on, and you practically get drowned in the steam.”

  Ed nodded wisely. Entertaining a lady guest in the bathroom, with the water running, was one of the very oldest of tricks. It was poor for neatness, as the saying was, but perfect for secrecy.

  Ted returned to the front office and went behind the key rack. Seating himself in the open window of the air well, he lighted a cigarette; relaxed, grinning, as he listened to Eaton’s high-pitched voice. He was talking to that ruddy-faced guy, apparently, the last one that registered. And the guy obviously—as Ted had advised him—was refusing to take no for an answer.

  “…you listen to me, sir! I do not have any girls! I do NOT!…Well, I don’t care…All I’ve got to say is that they’re just a bunch of nasty old liars, and they ought to be ashamed of themselves and—What? What? Don’t you talk to me that way, thir!”—excitement was bringing out Eaton’s lisp. “I thimply will not lithen one more minute to thith—thith—”

  He banged up the telephone. Chuckling softly, Ted flicked his cigarette out the window. And then, as his eyes followed its course to the bottom of the shaft, he emitted a startled curse.

  He sat staring downward for a moment. His stomach churning queasily, a faint chill gripping his hard wiry body. But he had seen suicides before—leapers, like this one. And Dudley, thief and chiseler that he was bound to be, was certainly no great loss to the world.

  Ted slid from the window sill and lighted another cigarette. He dropped it to the floor, emerged from behind the key rack, and joined Eaton in the room-desk cage. The clerk was still indignant from his talk with the ruddy-faced man. He told Ted about it, his voice cracking and squeaking, announcing his conviction that the gentleman was plain raving mad.

  Ted nodded soberly. “It’s this weather,” he said. “You take a night like this, if people got any mental weakness at all, they blow their lids like bedbugs.”

  Eaton giggled cautiously. “Oh, you! What’s so different about the weather tonight?”

  “You ain’t noticed?” Ted shook his head. “Well, I guess you wouldn’t. But if you were an old-time hotel man, you’d know this was nut weather. The kind of night when people go sailing out their windows like airplanes.”

  “Oh, sure!” Eaton giggled again. “Now, what are you up to, you crazy thing?”

  “No kid, kid. Why, I’ll lay you ten to one we have a suicide tonight.”

  Eaton laughed ecstatically. Ted took him by the elbow, led him to the air-well window and pointed.

  The clerk looked out. He fainted. Leaving him lying on the floor, Ted picked up the telephone.

  He called Westbrook’s room first. There was no answer, which was as he had expected, since, by this time of night, the manager would be pretty thoroughly anaesthetized with alcohol.

  Ted jiggled the receiver hook, and called Bugs McKenna.

  6

  When Bugs thought about that night later, everything seemed to move in the hazy yet well-defined grooves of a dream. He had committed murder, yet he had not committed it. It was something of the moment, something that would have no meaning once the moment was gone. Similarly, he was in dire danger, yet none at all. The means for extricating himself were ridiculously obvious: as easily and immediately accessible as those in a clumsily constructed story.

  Even after Lou Ford came on the scene—entered the dream—there was no rift in the smooth haziness. Ford, in fact, proved its happy culmination…A suicide, huh? Well, now, wasn’t that somethin’! Must’ve been an awful nice fella too, y’know, gettin’ hisself all cleaned up before he did it…

  Ford wasn’t at all suspicious. He had no reason to be—and almost every reason not to be—and Bugs was sure that he wasn’t. Later, within a few brief days—But that was later.

  Taking things as they happened:

  Bugs stared at the still-fluttering curtains of the window, and a black and terrible sickness engulfed him. He had killed Dudley. For the second time in his life, he had killed a man. He hadn’t meant to; it was an accident. But he had done it, and for a moment he wanted to die him
self.

  The moment passed. The blackness and the sickness went away. Fear gripped him, shook him back into his senses. Shattering his regrets before they were fully formed.

  Dudley was no good. Dudley had brought about his own death. He had betrayed Westbrook, a man who had befriended him, and indirectly the betrayal had cost him his life.

  As to what had happened to the money that Dudley had stolen, and which he apparently believed had been stolen from him, Bugs did no thinking at all about that. Not at the time, he didn’t. He simply got out of the room fast, as soon as he had ascertained that the hall was clear. He was out the door almost as soon as Dudley was out the window. Racing up the stairs. Bursting into his own room, and picking up the telephone. Speaking with a yawn in his voice:

  “McKenna. Guess I fell asleep again after you called me. What time is it?…That late, huh? Well, maybe you better try Mrs. Hanlon for me anyhow.”

  She had been asleep, she said; and she was a little slow about answering the telephone. Bugs apologized for waking her up, and she said it was okay but she hadn’t really wanted to see him about anything important, so why didn’t he give her a ring tomorrow? Bugs said he would, and they hung up.

  So that took care of that. He hadn’t left his room at the time of Dudley’s death. Or, at least, he had been in his room at the approximate time of that death. Of course, the body might not be discovered immediately, or even for hours. And if it wasn’t, his alibi would be worthless or at least seriously weakened.

  But again, before he could feel any real sense of danger, a solution presented itself. Nothing was required but to leave his room immediately and proceed straight to the elevators. That gave him three witnesses instead of two. It proved—in the absence of contrary evidence—that he had gone downstairs within seconds after his second awakening.

  Oh, it wasn’t perfect, naturally. No alibi ever is. But it would take a finger to upset this one, and a finger was conspicuously absent. No one had seen him go to Dudley’s room, no one had seen him leave. And so, necessarily, no one could say that he had been there.