by Jim Thompson
“Mac…what’s bothering you? I’m sure something must be.”
“Naw,” Bugs shrugged. “Just dopey, is all. Didn’t sleep too good today.” Then he shifted his eyes, added casually, “What have I got to be bothered about?”
“I don’t know. Would you tell me if you were in—if you were having trouble of any kind?”
“Well, sure. Why not? If I thought you wanted to hear about it.”
“You wouldn’t be…you wouldn’t think that you couldn’t trust me?”
Bugs kissed her. He couldn’t or wouldn’t answer the question in his own mind, so he did it that way. Amy seemed satisfied, and dropped the subject.
But the following night, as he was leaving, she brought it up again.
“I’m not asking what the trouble is, Mac. Just if there is any.”
“Now, listen, Amy—”
“I’m sorry. I just thought that might be the reason, you know. Why you didn’t say anything to me about…anything. I mean, if you were in trouble you might feel that—Oh, just listen to me!” She laughed suddenly, with brittle shrillness. “Did you ever hear anyone so mixed-up in your life?”
“Amy…” Bugs began.
“No. No, please, Mac!” She stepped back through the door, leaving him on the porch. “I’m tired and its getting late, and—You run along, now, and I’ll see you tomorrow night.”
The door closed, the lock clicked, the hall light went off. Bugs turned uncertainly and headed for the hotel.
It was still short of ten-thirty when he reached the Hanlon. Plenty of time yet before he was due on the job. He parked his car at the side of the building and remained in it. Smoking and brooding. Watching the street ahead of him.
The more he thought about it, the more chagrined he became over his trip to Westex City. He’d really pinned a label on himself with that stunt. Tied a rope around his neck and handed the other end to Lou Ford. And, hell, even if he hadn’t run into Ford, or if Ford hadn’t been tailing him, the trip still would have been so much time wasted.
He couldn’t hang around the Westex general-delivery window. He couldn’t hang around indefinitely outside the building. Rather, he could, but what the hell could he expect it to make him? Because, naturally, as any damned fool should know, the blackmailer wasn’t going to go near the place. There’d be a third party, someone Bugs wouldn’t know or recognize. And why, in the name of God, he hadn’t seen that—!
Well—Bugs grudgingly excused himself—there’d been no apparent necessity for him to think of it. He’d been sure that the blackmailer was Rosalie Vara—equally confident that she was sufficiently naive to walk into his trap. He’d’ve known better, of course, if he’d known that the woman in question was a mickey artist. But he’d had no way of knowing that. So he’d done what he had, and it wasn’t particularly stupid under the circumstances. And, anyway, there was no use in beating himself over the head about it now.
The point was that the traditional trap for a blackmailer—the only one he could think of—would not work in this case. Not for a man who was on the wrong side of the fence himself and could get no aid from the other side. Somehow, he’d just have to figure out who she was—if it was a she. And he already knew that it wasn’t, that it couldn’t be, and he also knew that—
Savagely, Bugs hurled his cigarette out the window, severed the nagging circle of his thoughts.
Similarly, he refused to think about what he would do when, and if, he caught up with-him-her-it—whoever the blackmailer was. He’d do something, that was a cinch. Whatever was necessary. Couldn’t say what it would be until the time came.
A bellboy was crossing the intersection at the next corner. A slick-haired youth, with a pale phlegmatic face. A cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth, and he carried a canvas mailsack over his shoulder.
He came down the walk with the tiredly jaunty stride peculiar to bellboys. Nearing the side entrance, he took a long pull on the cigarette, flicked it into the street. And went through the double doors at what was practically a trot. Bugs grinned sourly to himself. Those damned bellboys; they worked at a hotel, rather than for it. The hotel was only one of numerous bosses, the people they waited on: the cranks and drunks, the grouches and snides, the rubes and the sharpies. And to survive they learned every trick in the book. They had to be pulling some kind of swiftie—no matter how small—or they just didn’t feel right.
This lad now, he’d probably dogged it all the way to the post office and back. But, returning, he went through the door like he was shot out of a gun.
Bugs smoked another cigarette. Then he got out of the car and moved slowly toward the side door. The mail the bellboy had brought would be the last one until tomorrow. It was a light mail, due to the lateness of the pick-up, so it should be all put up in the room-boxes by now. He could find out now whether—
He didn’t want to. If there was a letter, well, there’d be a letter. But there was no point in running to look for a headache.
He walked around to the front of the Hanlon and entered the coffee shop. He had coffee and some cherry pie à la mode, and went through the doors to the lobby.
Feet dragging unconsciously, he came down the marble checkerboard of its floor to the front office. He stopped parallel with the key rack, turned and looked.
There wasn’t any letter. Only another call-slip from Joyce Hanlon. He accepted it with a suppressed sigh of relief and began his tour of the corridors.
Probably, he decided, he ought to give Joyce a ring sometime soon. After all, she might want to talk to him about something other than what he had assumed she did. And, anyhow, there could be no harm in just talking. It could be, even, that he’d be doing himself a favor. Might find out something from her that would be useful to know. As, for example, just how things stood between her and Lou Ford.
Yeah, he guessed he’d better do it. Every reason why he should, and none—practically—why he shouldn’t.
By two in the morning, he had completed his rounds of the room floors. He had also worked up enough appetite to want a square meal. He got off the elevator and started for the coffee shop. And, then, as he was passing the front office—the key-rack section—he came to a dead stop.
He stared, incredulously.
He moved slowly up to the counter.
Leslie Eaton was gone, and Ted Gusick was tending desk. He reached the letter out of Bugs’s box and handed it to him. Bugs looked at the pencil-addressed envelope, at the faint Westex City postmark. He stood tapping it on the counter, dully. Wondering what—how—why—
Wondering.
There’d been no mail since that last one, the one that he’d seen the day bellboy bring in. If this letter had been in that mail, it should have been put in his box hours ago.
Slowly, Bugs raised his eyes, looked into the smooth poker-face of Ted Gusick.
“Something wrong, Mr. McKenna? Any little thing I can do for you?”
“What?” Bugs blinked. “Oh, no. No, everything’s swell. I was just wondering—uh—well, where Eaton was. Nothing that can’t wait, but—”
“Well, I’ve got three bells that can’t wait much longer. One of the parties has already called down a second time.”
“Uh-huh. Yeah, sure,” Bugs murmured vaguely.
“Understand there’s a new night engineer. Big muscle man, y’know. Maybe he’s got our blushing boy bent over a boiler.”
He laughed, winked. Then, misreading Bugs’s startled scowl, he retreated swiftly into his usual suavely reserved self. “Not a very good joke was it, Mr. McKenna, sir? Of course, I couldn’t really think that about a fine young man like Mr. Eaton.”
Think it? Hell, it was something you’d know if you knew anything at all! It stuck out all over the guy. And…and it must be the answer to the puzzle. It hadn’t been a woman in Dudley’s bathroom. Not a woman literally, but—
“Now, that I think of it,” Ted continued. “I believe you might find Mr. Eaton down in the valet shop. He had some charges to
check there, and he probably stopped to get a free pants-press.”
“Pants…pressed?” Bugs said, not knowing what he said. Or that he said anything. “Pants pressed?”
“Excuse me—ha, ha—I honestly didn’t mean that as another joke, Mr. McKenna. But, yes, sir”—Ted nodded seriously. “The valet’s always glad to do those things if he isn’t busy, so Mr. Eaton could be getting his p—suit pressed.”
Bugs turned abruptly and walked away. In the alcove leading to the coffee shop, he paused and took the letter from his pocket.
He hadn’t really taken a good look at the first one, its envelope rather. Still, unnoticing he had noticed; certain things about it had registered on his subconscious. And repeated on this envelope, they soared to the surface of his mind, attained glaring significance.
He ran his fingers over the paper where the address was inscribed. He studied the almost indiscernible date of the postmark. Grimly, then, he went on into the coffee shop, returning the letter unopened to his pocket.
Never mind what the thing said. The guy who had said it—written it—was what he was interested in.
He sat down on a stool near one end of the horseshoe counter and gave his order to a waitress. Then, with a grunt of dismay, he hastily got up. “Just remembered a phone call I got to make. Hold that order a few minutes, will you?”
The girl smiled and said she would. Bugs laid his hat on his stool, squeezed through the service slot between counter and wall, and moved swiftly toward the rear of the coffee shop. Back of the coffee shop was the hotel’s main kitchen. Bugs entered it through another service slot and hurried down its vast, dimly lit length. It was not in use at this hour, since the dining-room, which it served, was closed. Bugs left it by a door at its far end and emerged onto the back landing.
The out-of-use service elevator was parked there. He entered it, cut off the lights, and piloted it down to the first basement. Quietly, he eased the door open, stood listening in the darkness.
The valet shop was about twenty feet to his right. Eaton’s voice drifted down the corridor to him:
“Oh, don’t be so nasty! I guess I had to check these charges, didn’t I?”
“Charges? Goddammit, you been here long enough to check Fort Knox!”
Eaton emitted a high-pitched giggle. Bugs squirmed nervously. As busy as the coffee shop was, time would go very quickly for that waitress. He could stay away twenty or thirty minutes and it would seem like only a “few” to her. Longer than that, however, he’d be putting a dangerous strain on his alibi. And at the rate this damned silly Eaton was stalling…!
“I AM going, darn it! I said I was, and I am. How many times do I have to tell you?”
“None, by God! Just show me! Just get the hell out, so I can get some work done!”
Eaton made a pouting sound. The gate to the railed-off valet shop clicked open; swung creaking, to and fro, as his footsteps came hurriedly down the corridor.
Bugs tensed. His hand shot out, suddenly, grasping Eaton, yanking him into the car, flinging him with breath-taking impact against its rear wall. Then, almost before the door had closed, he shot the elevator upward.
17
Between the seventh and eighth floors, he brought the car to a stop. He switched on the lights, and turned slowly around.
Eaton met his gaze, smirking. He was still a little startled, but apparently not at all frightened. His seeming cocksureness infuriated Bugs.
“All right, buster,” he growled. “Start talking!”
“Talking?” The clerk tittered nervously. “Juth—just about anything, Mr. McKenna?”
“Don’t pull that crap on me! You try crapping me, and I’ll scramble every goddamned cell in your skull!
“B-but Mr. McKenna”—Eaton’s smirk had frozen. “Mr. McKenna, I juth d-don’t—”
“You think I’m stupid? You think I wouldn’t ever see through a deal like that? Two weeks ago—about two weeks—you went over to Westex City. You mailed some letters addressed in pencil to yourself back here. Then, you erased your address and readdressed them to me. And—”
“But I didn’t! W-what—why would I do that?”
“To give yourself an alibi, damn you! I’d get a letter, but you wouldn’t have been in Westex the day before—the day it would ordinarily have been mailed to me. Might have got away with it, too, if you’d done a little more erasing on these postmarks. Well”—Bugs took him by the lapels—“that’s it. Now—”
“Mr. McKenna,” Eaton said evenly. “Why would I write you a letter? What would I write you about?”
“You know what about! You were there in the r—” Bugs stopped abruptly. Eaton might not be positive of his information. Mustn’t say anything that would corroborate what he had. “I know those letters didn’t come in on the regular mail. Not the one I got tonight, at least. So—”
“The first one didn’t either, Mr. McKenna. I mean, I know it didn’t now. That’s why I—why I got to wondering about them.”
“Go on. Keep talking, and make it good.”
“I found it lying down on the floor between the counter and the room-boxes. I thought at the time that it must have fallen out of the box, so I just dusted it off and put it back in. But”—the clerk’s eyes fell, and his voice went very low—“but-but you never get any letters, and, well, I’m—I’ve always been interested in anything that concerns you. So I did notice the date. I saw that it had been postmarked two days before, a day before that day it should have been. And, well, that made me more curious, and—”
“Spill it out,” Bugs said gruffly, unaccountably embarrassed. “Come on!”
“Mr. McKenna…I guess you haven’t opened the second letter have you? If you had, you’d know that I wouldn’t, uh—” He broke off hurriedly, timidly. “Well, anyway, I found the second letter right where I’d found the first. On the floor, between the counter and the room-box rack. And it had the same date as the first one. And, naturally, I really became curious then. I know I had no right to—to be so interested—because I’m sure you haven’t the slightest interest in—in—”
“Never mind.” Bugs flushed. “You found this letter tonight, huh?”
“N-no, sir…” The clerk’s voice had sunk to a mere whisper. “I found it…well, it was the night you looked so tired. I guess you’d been up most of the day…”
The day he’d gone to Westex? It must have been. Eaton had held the letter up since then.
“…I opened it, Mr. McKenna. Oh, no, sir! I didn’t open the first one. I just wasn’t curious enough, you know. But I did this one, the second. And I wanted to h-help—”
“All right,” Bugs said uncomfortably, “I think I understand. No sense in breaking up about it.”
“I was waiting for payday, Mr. McKenna. That’s the reason I held it up. I didn’t want to be f-forward or embarrass you, but I hoped you’d know that the money came from me, and—Oh, Mr. McK-Kenna!” Eaton suddenly buried his face in his hands. “I’m s-so ashamed. So ashamed!”
Bugs took the letter from his pocket, and ripped open the envelope. There was a curt message inside:
I want that money, Mr. McKenna, and I’m not waiting much longer.
There was also a fifty-dollar bill.
“Will it help any, Mr. McKenna?” Eaton looked at him pleadingly. “I didn’t know how much you might need, but—”
“I don’t need any,” Bugs said flatly. “This is just a gag, see? A bad joke that someone is pulling. I haven’t quite figured out who the guy is, but I will. I can handle it, and I want you to let me. Just keep out of it. If there are any more of these letters, just put them in my box and forget them.”
“Yes, s-sir. I’ll certainly do that, Mr. McKenna. I’ll—”
“I don’t need any help but you do. So, goddammit, get it!” He took fifty dollars from his wallet, added it to the other fifty, and slapped it into the clerk’s hand. “There’s bound to be a psychiatrist or a good psychologist in Westex. Go see him and keep seeing him until
you straighten out…Will you do that, Les? You may have to do some skimping on other things, but—”
“I can manage.” Eaton raised his eyes. “I think my father might help. He hasn’t had much use for me, but he’s quite well-off—”
“Tell him what you’re doing, what you’re trying to do, and he’ll have plenty of use.” Bugs gave him a hearty slap on the back. “Meanwhile, we just forget this other. You don’t know anything about it. It never happened.”
“No, sir, it never happened,” Eaton nodded. “But I’m awfully glad it did.”
Bugs lowered the car to the first floor. He returned to the coffee shop; and Leslie Eaton, walking very straight, went back to the front offices.
…So now Bugs was back to Joyce Hanlon again. Joyce who had been his favorite suspect right from the start. Like Lou Ford, she couldn’t openly proposition him. Like Ford, she was forcing him to show his hand before she showed hers.
She was the one person of Bugs’s acquaintance who might be willing and able to do him a very substantial favor. In return, of course, he would have to do her one—the nature of which had already been indicated to him. But he must approach her in the matter. She had to be assured, before she would take him off the hook, that he would do what she wanted done.
What if he didn’t approach her? If he just ignored the letters?
Well, she wasn’t apt to give up that easy. She and Ford were after the old man’s millions, and they’d go right on being after them. They wouldn’t let a three-time loser—a pushover for a fourth fall—stand in their way. Since he wouldn’t play ball, they’d put him out of the game—permanently. Make room for someone who would play on their terms.
But, hell—this was all theory. The way he thought things stood. And there was still that one big hole in the theory: the fact that Joyce had been in her room at the time Dudley plunged from his window.
If there was some way of explaining that…
Bugs finished eating. Leaving the coffee shop, he began his long tour of the back-o’-the-house.