Wild Town

by Jim Thompson

  “Sure. Just like you haven’t been trying to.”

  “But I can’t help it, honey. You know that. There’s another person involved. What I want or don’t want, doesn’t really make much difference.”

  Bugs tossed his cigarette into a tray. He squared around on the bed a little, sat looking down into her face.

  “All right,” he said. “We’ll say it’s that way. But now you’re going to tell me something. No more of this damned hinting and beating around the bush, get me? No more of this am-I-all-right and how-am-I-feeling stuff. You’re going to come right out and tell me what you do want. I want to hear you say it.”

  “B-but—but you already know, honey. Why should I—”

  “I said, I wanted to hear you say it! Spit it out. Do it and do it fast, or I’m through, so—Shut up! Don’t threaten me or I’ll break your goddamned neck!—so make up your mind. Say it or drop it.”

  “But—”

  Her head moved irritably against the pillows. She took a deep breath and held it; then, slowly let it out again in a quiet sigh of surrender.

  “All right, Bugs,” she said. “All right, darling. You don’t trust me, but I’ll still—”

  “Out with it!”

  “I want you to kill him. I want you to kill my husband!”

  …There was a kind of peace on this new level at which he found himself. Uneasy but still soothing, and peculiarly satisfying. Marvelously trouble-free compared with the black turmoil he had come through.

  He had known such peace before. Experiencing it now he wondered why it must be so insistently impinged upon by the leering image of Chief Deputy Lou Ford. Because, of course, Ford was all wrong about him. The deputy had apparently dug deeply into his background, excavated the facts behind the bleak syllabus of the police record. And he’d twisted the annals of Bugs’s life into that seemingly factual but cruelly and viciously distorted case-history which he had recited to Bugs several days ago.

  He made trouble for himself, Ford had said. He deliberately plunged himself into one scrap after another. In so doing, he bulwarked his self-pitying conviction that the whole world was against him—and it was a hell of a lot more fun, as well as a hell of a lot easier, than doing something constructive.

  There was that dame he had married, for example. Yeah, sure, he was a greenhorn when it came to women, but that was no excuse. A ten-year-old boy—anyone that had sense enough to come in out of the rain—would have known that she had to be a tramp. And he, Bugs, had damned well known it, even if he wouldn’t admit it. He’d simply stuck his neck out because he liked being hit over the head.

  Another example: that screwball detective Bugs had shot. Now, here was a guy who was obviously dangerous, and who obviously had a pick on him. Yet Bugs hadn’t done a damned thing to forestall the disaster which he must have foreseen. He’d just hung around waiting for the lightning to strike.

  Pride? Guts? Balls! He wouldn’t kick a skunk, would he? Or lie down next to a rattlesnake? Making a damned fool of yourself didn’t take pride or guts, did it? Well, then.

  Ford had had a lot more to say, but it was all in the same vein. He liked being in jams. He’d rather have things go bad than good.

  Which, of course, was screwy on the face of it, Bugs thought angrily. Anyone could see that it was. It had just been some more of Ford’s whipcracking, pouring in on him because he knew he had to take it. The guy couldn’t open his mouth without needling someone. And when that someone was really under his thumb…

  Bugs finished his shift. He went to bed, slightly hungover from the booze he had drunk, grasping at that strange, uneasy peace which kept slipping away from him. He started to doze, and a disturbing thought pushed into his mind. Clung there stubbornly, forcing him back into wakefulness:

  Everything was going fine. No trouble. No way for anyone to make trouble. And then I went to Dudley’s room. Ollie had no right to ask me to; he couldn’t have honestly expected me to. But I went, anyway. Knowing that it wouldn’t do any good to talk to Dudley. Knowing that I didn’t dare to do anything more than talk. Boiling it down, I didn’t have to go, and I didn’t have any reason for going. And yet—

  Bugs squirmed irritably and flopped over on his back. He lay scowling, eyes squinted, staring up at the ceiling.

  Suppose there had been no woman in Dudley’s bathroom. Suppose Dudley hadn’t gone out the window. Wasn’t it still pretty likely that he’d have gotten into trouble? In fact, wasn’t it virtually inevitable that he would have?

  And hadn’t he known that he would at the time he went to the room?

  Well?

  Well…Of course not! It was easy to second guess on a deal, to see where you’d goofed after you’d done it. If he’d known it was going to land him in a scrape, why—

  He rolled over on his side again. He burrowed his head into the pillow, closed his eyes firmly, and kept them closed. At last, he slept, and when he awakened, it was night. The night.

  21

  Mike Hanlon was in the bathroom when Bugs arrived at his suite. Braced against the sink, he finished washing his hands, then sank back down into his wheelchair and rolled himself out into the living-room.

  “Well, Bugs”—his shrewd old eyes swept over Bugs’s face. “We get our tour at last, huh? I was beginning to think you’d forgot all about me.”

  “No. No, I hadn’t forgotten.” Bugs looked away from him. “I—well, I just kept putting it off, and—”

  “Sure, I understand. Well, I’ll be with you in a minute or two. Help yourself to a drink while you’re waiting.”

  Bugs decided he could use a drink. He poured a stiff shot from a nearby carafe, and took it into the bathroom. He added ice water to it, gulped it with a shudder. As he bent over to draw another glass, his head bumped lightly against the medicine cabinet and its mirrored door swung open.

  Sipping the water, he stared absently at the crowded shelves of nostrums. One bottle was sitting right on the edge of its shelf, in danger of falling off. He pushed it back inside, then, frowning unconsciously, continued to stare at it for a moment longer.

  It was almost empty. The liquid in the bottom was a clear white, and had an oily look about it. Bugs couldn’t say why it interested him, subtly disturbed him. Any number of medicines were a clear white, and oily looking. But still…

  He was reaching for it, starting to turn it around to examine the label. But Hanlon called to him at that moment, so he closed the door and went back into the living-room.

  He wheeled the invalid out into the hall. Unlocking the door of the elevator he had appropriated, he switched on the light and wheeled him inside.

  “I see you haven’t forgotten my preference for lighted elevators,” Hanlon grinned. “Not that I’d ever be worried, of course, about you being careless.”

  “Yeah.” Bugs closed the door, turning his back to him. “Where’d you like to start, Mr. Hanlon?”

  “We-el…how about the roof?”

  Bugs nodded silently. He was calm enough, not afraid to speak. But the words somehow would not form themselves; and something whispered that it was best to leave them unformed. As much as possible, Hanlon should do the talking.

  They reached the roof. Bugs wheeled him out of the car and across the tiled floor to the guard-wall, and they looked out over the oil fields.

  Bugs didn’t think. There was plenty of time. Nothing needed to be done or decided now. In this moment all there was was this: he and the old man, and the night, and the blazing, thundering jungle of steel.

  Flame licked the sky from a thousand flambeaux. The huge torches—set up to consume excess gas—were everywhere, barely burning at one moment, then suddenly ripping the darkness with a fifty-foot spear of flame.

  “…still smell like rotten eggs to you, Bugs?”

  “Huh? No, I guess it doesn’t. Got to where I kind of like it.”

  “Thought you would,” Hanlon murmured. “I mean, how can you dislike a thing like that? Anything that comes from the oil. Be
cause…well, maybe people got hurt the way I went after it. But damned little, relatively. And most of ’em profited in the long run. Y’know—” he laughed a little sadly. “It’ll sound funny to you, but that was originally what attracted me to the business. You could help yourself in it—get rich maybe—without hurting other people. You didn’t have to squeeze ’em. You didn’t have to push them down to push yourself up. All you had to do was find the oil, and everyone was better off, and no one was hurt…unless it was you.”

  “Yeah? Yes, sir?” Bugs said.

  “Yes. Because there’s one thing a man needs damned bad if he hits it rich, and it’s the one thing he can’t buy. He can’t buy someone he can trust. If he could…do you think he could, Bugs? Do you think if I bought a man—offered any price he named within reason—that he’d stay bought?”

  He waited, looking up into Bugs’s face. Bugs shrugged silently, indifferently. But his heart quickened its beat.

  “Well,” Hanlon sighed. “Well, that’s that, I guess.”

  They remained at the guard-wall for a few minutes longer. Then Hanlon peered around in the darkness, gestured toward a shadowy mass a dozen or so feet away. “That’s where the remodeling is going on, isn’t it? The terrace extension? Well, let’s go over and have a look at it.”

  Bugs pulled the chair back from the wall and wheeled him down the tiles. They reached the array of building materials and tools, and Bugs paused to let him look around. He waited a minute or two, then started to resume pushing. The old man stopped him quickly.

  “Nothing to see over there, I guess. Just more brick and lumber.”

  “Whatever you say,” Bugs said.

  “Let’s see, now. I wonder if you could squeeze me through this stuff, and out to the terrace. Ought to be a good view from there.”

  “Well, yeah, I guess there is. But…”

  He stared down at Hanlon, eyes blank and dull. He seemed to stand there for hours, hesitating, yet it was not even a split second. For there was no decision to reach, nothing to make up his mind about. That had all been done right in the beginning.

  “Just a minute,” he said. “I’ll see how it looks.”

  He moved a wheelbarrow out of the way and went down a narrow aisle between some cement sacks and a long mixing-trough. At the terrace doors, he pushed two stacked saw-horses aside and pulled them open. He took a cautious step or two forward, came to an abrupt stop.

  Ahead of him, there was a breach in the guard-rail: an open door into emptiness. On the left, where the terrace was being extended, the rail had been completely removed.

  A man would have to be damned careful out here. And even then, in the deceptive darkness, it would be easy to…

  Bugs hesitated, deliberating. Then, he went back through the doors and returned to Hanlon.

  “Guess we better not,” he said. “Too dangerous.”

  “Dangerous! But—”

  “Yeah. You might wind up down in the street. I’ll just block those doors again, and—”

  “Bugs!” Hanlon cut him off sharply. “Bugs, I want to go out there, and I know that you—I mean, there isn’t a thing for you to worry about. I’ll take the responsibility. Everyone knows that I like to have my own way, and—and—”

  He looked up at Bugs with a kind of wheedling eagerness. He waited. The eagerness fading, giving way to something else; and then he laughed nervously, and shifted his gaze. “This damned robe”—he plucked it from his lap. “Don’t need it any more than—ha, ha—that gun I had with me last time. Should’ve left if back in my suite with the gun. I—Okay, Bugs. Well?”

  “Well?” Bugs said. “Look, Mr. Hanlon, I guess we’d better be shoving off. I’ve got work to do, and—”

  “Wait!” The old man gripped the wheels of his chair, holding them motionless. “What’s the matter? I told you it’d be all right, didn’t I? I showed you. You won’t be taking any risk at all, and…”

  His voice trailed off into silence, and one hand went up to his face, rubbed it shakily; and he heaved a tired and wondering sigh.

  “Bugs,” he quavered. “I-I don’t know how to say it. I…I was right, wasn’t I, Bugs? Right and all wrong. You can’t buy a man, and you don’t have to. All you have to do is—” His voice broke. He sighed again and went on. “You’ll stay here in Ragtown, won’t you, Bugs? Stay with the hotel? I’m not trying to buy you, but you’re capable of something a lot better than a house-dick’s job. And—”

  Bugs shook his head in honest bewilderment. For consciously he could not understand. Briefly, his path had run parallel to an abyss of evil; but now it was aeons behind him. It was a bad all-but-forgotten dream, rather than a one-time reality.

  “I’m sorry Bugs,” Hanlon said apologetically. “I should have known you wouldn’t do it. You couldn’t. You couldn’t commit a cold-blooded murder.”

  “Told you so myself”—Lou Ford’s voice drifted out of the darkness. “Too bad I can’t say the same for you, Mis-ter Hanlon.”

  22

  Trailed by another deputy, he emerged from behind a pile of brick. He sauntered up to Bugs and Hanlon, flicking the head from a match, touching the flame to the tip of his cigar.

  “Yes, sir,” he grinned easily at Bugs. “I told him you wouldn’t. Catch you doing anything that anyone wanted you to.”

  Bugs stared at him dumbly, hardly hearing what he said, still trying to digest what Hanlon had said. Ford’s grin changed imperceptibly, and for a moment the bite went out of his voice.

  “You wouldn’t do it, period,” he said. “Just ain’t built that way. Now, Mis-ter Hanlon here, he could do it—probably make a pretty slick job of it too. F’r example, he could make out like he was scared to death hisself, and while he had the law lookin’ the other way—”

  “That’s enough!” Hanlon snapped. “I made a mistake, and I’m damned glad it was one. However, if you feel that you’ve imposed upon, that I’ve taken your time up needlessly, why, just say so and I’ll give you a tip.”

  “A big one?” Ford asked in an awed tone. “Maybe a big shiny two-bit piece? Aw, gee, Mis-ter Hanlon…What do you think, Al? A whole two-bitses to divvy up between us!”

  “Makes my mouth plumb water,” the other deputy drawled. “Prob’ly go hog wild and spend it all in one place.”

  Ford chuckled. Hanlon let out an angry snarl. “I said to cut it out! Go pull your clown act somewhere else! I don’t have to take it, and I’m not going to!”

  “Well, okay,” Ford said sadly. “I guess if we don’t get our two-bits and you ain’t even going to offer us a drink…Did your wife have a drink with you tonight, Mis-ter Hanlon?”

  “Did she have a drink with me! What the hell has that—”

  “Did she, Mis-ter Hanlon?”

  “Well—I—I believe she did. She was in my suite tonight. She usually stops by at least once a day, and we usually have a drink together.”

  “Uh-huh. Sounds real homey. Got any chloral hydrate around your suite, Mis-ter Hanlon?”

  “I believe so. I had a prescription for some. I seldom use it because of the aftereffect, but—”

  “Then you got practically all of it left, right?”

  Hanlon started to nod. Then, caught himself, remained silent for a moment.

  “You don’t need me to tell you, do you, Ford?” he asked quietly. “If you knew I had some, as you undoubtedly did, then you know how much I have left. You already had the answer to every question you’ve asked me. Now, what are you implying? That I doctored my wife’s drink with chloral?”

  “We-el…Don’t hardly believe implyin’ is the right word.”

  “I see. You really think I’m stupid enough to do a thing like that?”

  “Well”—Ford’s eyes glinted. “You was stupid enough to chisel a lot of folks that like you and trusted you. But I guess you wouldn’t figure that was stupid, would you? Probably looked on that as real smart.”

  The old man’s shoulders slumped a little. His hands moved in a tired gesture, and th
en he dropped them into his lap.

  “How is she—No, never mind,” he said dully. “What’s the charge? Murder or attempted murder?”

  “Murder.”

  “I see. The poor damned fool.” Hanlon shook his head. “Must’ve figured on sticking me with an attempt rap, and she took too big a dose. Well. Murder isn’t a bailable offense, is it, Ford?”

  “Nope. It sure ain’t, and that’s a fact.”

  “Then, what are we waiting for?”

  …At the twelfth floor. Ed Gusick brought the car to a stop, and Bugs—prompted by a nudge from Ford—got off. The deputy also got off and escorted him a few steps down the hallway.

  “Want you to stick around your room a while,” he said quietly, quickly. “Now, you got that? You understand what I’m sayin’? You ain’t maybe in a kind of a daze?”

  Bugs nodded. Shook his head. He was pretty well out of the stupor which the rush of events had thrust him into.

  “But what—why—”

  “Because someone’s comin’ to see you. And it’s damned important that you be there. Wait a minute!”—he peered down the hall. “Ain’t that your room with the door open?”

  Bugs turned and looked. He heard the faint hum of a vacuum cleaner. “It’s just Rosie; the maid, you know. Now—”

  “The maid, huh? Well, that party ought to be comin’ to see you any minute now.”

  He clapped Bugs on the shoulder, ran back to the elevator. Its door clanged shut, and Bugs went on to his room.

  His head ached. His body was damp with sweat of nervous excitement. He’d had it tonight, he thought. If anything else happened before he got a chance to pull himself together—!

  He supposed he should feel relieved because Joyce was out of his hair for good, which meant that if Ford ever had been in it, he also was out. He had to be, obviously, since he could only work through Joyce.