Wild Town

by Jim Thompson

  He left the sentence unfinished. He could see something of her now, his eyes having adjusted to the darkness, and the expression on her face stopped him.

  “I see,” she said, at last. “You thought I was the woman with Dudley. You thought I was trying to blackmail you, and you tried to—”

  “No! I didn’t really think it, Rosie! I was just desperate, snatching at straws, you know, and—”

  “It’s all right, Mr. McKenna,” she said gently. “I understand. Believe me, when you’re what I am, when you’ve lived as I have, you get a lot of understanding. All that matters is that you don’t think that about me now.”

  “I don’t. I never did.”

  “I’m glad…Were you getting up now, Mr. McKenna? I’m doing a room on the floor below, and if you are getting up…”

  “Sure, save you another trip,” Bugs said. “About that time, anyway.”

  “I’ll run along, then. ’Bye, now.”

  ’Bye, now. Good-bye, period, to anything more than friendly politeness. Bugs dressed and left the room, wondering why things had to be the way they were. Reluctantly relieved that they were that way.

  He ate.

  He made his tour of the corridors, and started his back-o’-the-house inspection. Except for the kitchens, it was generally inactive, its various entrances and exits closed and locked at this hour. It was part of Bugs’s duties to unlock them and have a look around. Making sure that no sneak-thief had wangled his way inside, watchful against the ever-present danger of fire.

  Bakery, laundry, grocery. Printers’, painters’, electricians’, plumbers’, and carpenters’ shops. Ice plant and ice-cream plant. Rug reweaving, upholstering, linen repair. Boiler-room, engine-room, waterworks…The hotel was a city, and it contained everything necessary for the operation of a city.

  Twice during his tour, Bugs encountered Leslie Eaton, once the clerk was hustling toward the valet department, the second time as he was leaving the telephone-switchboard room. He was carrying a batch of charge slips on every occasion. So, ostensibly, he was in pursuit of his duties. But Bugs guessed that he did a hell of a lot of chasing around that wasn’t necessary. Westbrook had always thought so; and Eaton seemed to be absent from the front office about as much as he was there.

  The clerk smirked and blushed as they passed. Frowning, Bugs looked after him from the door of the telephone room.

  Now, what was there about that guy, anyway? What possible connection could there be between Eaton and the jam he was in?

  Not a thing that he could think of, although there was a troubled stirring in the deep recesses of his mind. Bugs shrugged, and went on through the door.

  It was a three-position board, but only one operator was on duty now. Bugs sat down next to her on one of the long-legged swivel chairs, chatting idly with her between calls, watching the nimbly casual movement of her fingers.

  It was interesting. Everything about the hotel was interesting to him. Often since he had come here, he had looked back into the past, compared its drabness and dullness and sameness with the ever-changing, always-intriguing world of the hotel. And he had shuddered over what he had escaped from, felt the deepest gratitude for what he had escaped into.

  He never wanted to leave here. It would be nice, of course, if he could rise to a better job, but if he couldn’t…well, he wouldn’t kick. Just staying on here would be enough.

  And he was going to do it! He wasn’t going to take another rap. He wasn’t going to take it on the lam. He was going to stay. Somehow, somehow. Regardless of the price for staying.

  He’d shot square with people all his life, and it hadn’t got him anywhere. Now, if shooting square wouldn’t do the job, he’d get it done the other way.

  The operator glanced at the clock. Propping her morning call-sheets in front of her, she pushed a plug into the board: “Good morning, sir. It’s six o’clock…”

  Bugs left. He went down to and through the lobby, strolled around the block, and entered the coffee shop.

  He had breakfast, read the morning paper. By then it was eight o’clock, the end of his shift, and he started for his room.

  He heard his name called. He turned and waited as Lou Ford came up the steps from the side entrance.

  “Well?” he said.

  “You’re in trouble,” Ford said. “Let’s talk about it.”

  15

  They went to Bugs’s room. Ford settled himself into the one easy chair, lighted one of his thin black cigars, and spewed out a fragrant cloud of smoke. He fanned it with one hand, staring at Bugs with absent thoughtfulness. Bugs stared back at him stolidly.

  There was something different about the deputy today, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Then Ford spoke again, and he realized what it was.

  Ford’s drawl was gone; his errors and exaggerations of speech. He spoke as any literate person might have.

  “I said you were in trouble, Bugs. That may have been putting it a little strong. I might be more accurate to say that you’re on the verge of trouble, but that you can avoid it. I can help you to.”

  “I see.”

  “I hope so, but I doubt it. Perhaps we’d better let that lie a moment, and go back to the beginning. Back to the day when I took you out of jail and got you your job here.” He took another puff from his cigar, tapped the ash into the wastebasket. “Incidentally, I gather that you like it here. You wouldn’t mind sticking around permanently.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’d like to have you stick around.”

  Bugs shrugged, waited silently. There was a faint flicker in Ford’s eyes, a hint of annoyance which might readily become something else. But he went on level-voiced.

  “Well, as I said, perhaps we’d better go back to the beginning. I don’t like to. It’s not my way to do favors for people and then throw it up to them. Or even to let them know I’m doing them a favor. But in this case…You came here with nothing, Bugs. Nothing but a bad record. I got you out of jail. I staked you. I got you linked up with this job. I introduced you to—”

  “Better stop there. Leave her out of it.”

  “All right. We’ll stop with the other things I did. You were sore at the world, about as touchy as a man can get. So I tried not to make you feel that you were being favored. I did what I did in a way that you could accept, so that you could possibly feel that you were favoring me. I told you that this place needed a good two-fisted house dick. It would save me and my boys work if you’d take the job.”

  He paused, puffing at his cigar again. Bugs yawned, making no very great effort to stifle it.

  “Maybe you’d better get to the point,” he said. “You gave me the world with a ring around it. Now, you want something in return. All right, I don’t expect something for nothing. What is it you want.”

  “Not as much as I gave, Bugs. Not nearly as much. I was established here; I had a lot to lose if I was wrong about you. And judging by your record, I could easily have been wrong. But I took you on trust. Now, I’d like some of that trust back.”

  “That still doesn’t tell me anything. You still—”

  “Doesn’t tell you anything! Now, goddammit—” Ford’s mouth snapped shut. After a moment he went on again. Drawling a little, gradually slipping back into his usual manner of speech. “Let’s get to that trouble we was talkin’ about. Cut around the frills and get right to the heart of it. You went to Dudley’s room for some reason. You scuffled with him, and he got knocked out the window. Now—”

  “Uh-uh. I’ve got an alibi for the time of his death.”

  “You have, huh? An’ what time would that be?”

  “Well—uh—what I mean is,” Bugs said, “that I’ve got all my time covered. I went straight from my room to the elevator, and I didn’t go upstairs after that until…”

  “You went straight from your room to the elevator, sure. An’ you sure went to a hell of a lot of trouble to be able to prove it. But you got no way of provin’ that you didn’t leave
your room before that. Or”—Ford cocked an eyebrow at him—“have you? You prove it to me, if you can, an’ me, I’ll vamoose right out of here.”

  “I don’t have to prove it.”

  “I wouldn’t lay no bets on that. No, sir, I sure wouldn’t, and that’s a fact.”

  “Now, look,” Bugs said doggedly. “Why tab me with this thing, anyway? The fact that there was a man in Dudley’s room—if there was one—doesn’t necessarily mean that it was me. You’ve got no—”

  “Let’s talk about what it does necessarily mean. The guy didn’t break in. He didn’t sneak in, like with a passkey maybe. A sneak would’ve just copped and cleared out. He wouldn’t’ve been scufflin’ with Dudley, or—”

  “He would if Dudley had caught him.”

  “Which”—Ford winked—“Dudley was havin’ too much fun to do. Howsome-ever, suppose he did. The guy’d have no right to be there. No matter how no-account Dudley was, he’d’ve put up a racket about it, let out a yell or called for help. An’ we know he didn’t do that. Then there’s that gal in the bathroom—the one we both know was there. In a case like we’re supposin’ about, I don’t see her livin’ but a mite longer than Dudley did. Because this fella’d be a pro. He wouldn’t leave nothin’ behind that was worth takin’, or nothin’ that’d put the finger on him. So, he’d check that bathroom just as sure as God made green apples. An’ that’d been the end of the gal.”

  Ford leaned back in his chair, crossed one booted foot over the other. Bugs glowered at him helplessly, wanting nothing so much as to smash his fist into the deputy’s bland, saturnine face.

  “Ain’t hard to figure out at all, is it?” Ford said. “No, sir, they’s prob’ly plenty of four-year-old boys that could do it without turnin’ a hair. Dudley let this fella into his room. The guy was someone in authority, an’ he had to. Who had that much authority—enough to make a man open up his room late at night? Not more’n two people that I can think of. One of ’em was Westbrook, an’—”

  “Forget him!” Bugs said curtly. “Westbrook couldn’t have had anything to do with it.”

  Ford nodded. His tone decidedly less edged. “Glad you said that, Bugs. A man that’ll stick up for a friend when it hurts has got plenty to him. But o’ course you’re right. The first thing I done was to check on Westbrook, an’ I know he wouldn’t’ve been callin’ on Dudley. His hands were tied. He’d insisted that Dudley was absolutely okay, so he couldn’t…But they’s no use goin’ into that, is there? Or into the set-to of ours over in Westex.”

  “What is there use in going into?”

  “What happened, Bugs? Did Westbrook ask you to help him out with Dudley? Try to get the money back for him?”

  “No! Well, all right, he did ask me. But I refused.”

  “Uh-huh, sure. Just couldn’t take a chance on gettin’ into trouble.” Ford drew on his cigar, exhaled a thin stream of smoke. “And then you changed your mind. An’ this trouble you was afraid of happened.”

  Bugs shrugged. Ford could talk, theorize, until he was blue in the face. But he couldn’t prove anything.

  The deputy studied him narrow-eyed, spoke as though in rebuttal to a statement.

  “Not yet,” he said. “But I ain’t tried real hard. Ain’t really put my mind to it. Ain’t decided whether I want to do any provin’. If I do…”

  “Then you’ll have to do some proving against someone else. The woman who gave Dudley the chloral.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” Bugs frowned. “Why, dammit, because you will! You can’t—couldn’t—”

  “Why not? What’s to stop me?” Ford spread his hands. “Maybe there was a mistake about the chloral. Maybe the gal just saw you comin’ out of Dudley’s room, and wasn’t actually there herself.”

  “But—but she was there! You’ve said so a dozen times!”

  “Could be I was wrong. Might say somethin’ else the thirteenth time. Wouldn’t be too unreasonable, y’know. If she was willin’ to stand right up and be counted—to do her duty, irregardless, like an upstandin’ citizen should—why, a fella’d just about have to figure she was on the level. Yes, sir, it wouldn’t be no bother for him at all—even if it wasn’t sort o’ handy for him to figure that way.”

  “And even if he wasn’t in a position where he could call his shots any way he wanted to.”

  “Now, you’re gettin’ the idea,” Ford beamed. “Really smartenin’ up now. You keep on an’ you’ll be able to pour sand out of a boot without a book of directions.”

  Then, he laughed pleasantly, infectiously, stroked his jaw with a slender-fingered hand.

  “Now, listen to me, will you? Been carryin’ on that way so long that I can’t stop even when I want to. Just slide into it without thinkin’. But we all got our little peculiarities, usually got good reasons for ’em, too, the way I see it. And as long as a man don’t fault the other fella for his—”

  “Look,” Bugs cut in. “If you’ve got something to say—”

  “Sure. You’re tired, and I ain’t exactly the soothingest man in the world to talk to. So we’ll wind it up fast. I can’t see you as deliberately tyin’ into Dudley, not for money or anything else. Aside from that—and maybe I got kind of a funny outlook on these things—I figure there wasn’t nothing lost when he died. Just saved the law a job it’d have to do sooner or later. So you tell me it was an accident, and I’ll believe you. Won’t be nothin’ more said or done about it.”

  “Yeah? Well, I’m not telling you that!”

  “Well—” Ford hesitated, his lips pursed thoughtfully. “Well, okay. We’ll still skip it. I gave you a lot of trust in the beginning, and I’ll give you that much more. And, now, Bugs”—he lowered his voice, leaned forward in his chair—“I want a dividend on that trust. You know what’s building up here. You know why Mrs. Hanlon was so helpful in getting you a job; you’d just about have to by this time. All right, take it from there. What have you got to say about it?”

  He leaned back in his chair again. Bugs squirmed fretfully. He was over a barrel. What was he supposed to say that would take him off of it?

  “Listen,” he began. “What…I mean, dammit, what do you—”

  “I can’t tell you that. If I had to, it wouldn’t mean anything. Wouldn’t know for sure whether it jibed with what you had in mind. And if it didn’t, I’d be behind the eight ball. I’d fluff somethin’ that just better not be fluffed.”

  “But, hell…”

  “I’m already way out on a limb, Bugs. A lot further than even a real trustin’ fella ought to go. I’ve saddled a hoss for you an’ given you a hand-up, and all I’m doin’ now is grippin’ the bridle. Just holdin’ a little in my finger tips, until I see which way you’re headin’.”

  “And if it isn’t the way you’re heading, I get set down hard?”

  “If you’re that dumb, yeah. Me, I got an awful low boilin’ point for dumbness. Riles me worse’n a cactus under a saddle blanket.”

  “But what—”

  But there was no use asking that again. Ford, in a way, occupied the same position Bugs was in.

  Did he want Mike Hanlon killed?—Bugs’s cooperation in murdering the old man? Possibly, in fact, very probably, it would seem. But Ford couldn’t say so until he was sure of Bugs’s feelings.

  Or did he want the opposite? To pin a rap of conspiracy of attempt to commit murder on Joyce Hanlon? That also was possible. But again Ford could not admit it without knowing Bugs’s sentiments. Bugs might tip off Joyce. Forewarned, she would hold her plans in abeyance, and Hanlon would never be safe.

  “Well?” Ford said. “Well, Bugs?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking ’bout,” Bugs said. “I don’t know and I don’t want to know.”

  Ford took the cigar from his mouth, studied the tip of it absently. He rolled it between his fingers, then let it drop into the wastebasket.

  “So you don’t know,” he said. “Ain’t got the slightest idea of what I been talkin’ about. Cou
ld be that that’s an answer itself, which ain’t to say, of course, that I’m real fond of it.”

  “Look, Ford,” Bugs said. “Honest to God, now, don’t you think you’re asking a hell of a lot?”

  “Well, maybe,” Ford nodded judiciously. “Yes, sir, I could be. Wouldn’t be too much to ask of a man, but seein’ that you’re more in the nature of a man with a boy’s head…”

  “Go on,” Bugs grunted. “You know I have to take it.”

  “Ain’t it the truth? Yes, sir, it’s plain gospel an that’s a fact…”

  Ford continued to talk. For a full five minutes, the bitter, biting drawl lashed Bugs unmercifully, leaving him sick and shaking with fear and fury. Then, at last, it was over, and the deputy stood up.

  “Been meanin’ to tell you that for a long time,” he said mildly. “Just by way of bein’ helpful, y’ know. It ain’t got no direct bearin’ on the problem we been discussin’. About that now—that no-answer answer you gave me—I guess we’ll just have to wait an’ see. Or maybe it’d be better to say I’ll wait and see. I’ll do the waitin’ and seein’, and you can be doin’ some real hard hopin’.”

  16

  Bugs ate dinner at Amy’s house that night. It was a simple but tasty meal of baked beans, salad and cornbread. But you couldn’t have proved it by him. As absorbed in worry as he was, he could have eaten sawdust and brickbats and never known the difference.

  A full stomach stilled the worries to an extent. Replaced them with an uneasy sluggishness. He helped her wash and dry the dishes, and then they moved into the living-room. They talked, seated on the ancient horsehair sofa, with Bugs’s contributions to the conversation growing fewer and fewer, shorter and shorter. Finally, he lapsed into a complete and prolonged silence.

  Amy nudged him. She got up suddenly, sat down on his knees, and kissed him on the mouth. Now, she said, would he wake up? Would he or not wake up? Bugs woke up. Even in his black mood, the treatment was effective. Amy allowed him to demonstrate that he was fully awake. Then, pulling away a little, she tilted his chin up with her hand.