Bad Boy

by Jim Thompson

  The door was still locked from the outside. We unlocked it cautiously, looked in and went in.

  Red was gone.

  Obviously, he had left by the fire escape. But what he did after reaching it, I do not know. He may have crept down to the alley at night and hailed a cab. Or he may have gone up the escape to another room, helped himself to the occupant’s clothes and then made his exit. I don’t know how he got away from the hotel. Only that he did.

  Allie and I learned that he had been fired from the force, presumably for absence without leave. Yet the grins and winks of the other cops hinted that this was not the sole reason for his dismissal. Apparently and literally, Red had been caught without his pants. As a result of this, we gathered, he had not only been fired but also “floated” out of town.

  “Like a bum,” said Allie. “And what’s wrong with that?”

  21

  Pa—my grandfather—used to say that being broke wasn’t so bad, but going broke was pure hell. Watching Pop’s decline, his brief and occasional ups and his long steady downs, I saw the bitter wisdom of Pa’s philosophy.

  Having drilled four dry wells for himself, Pop began drilling on contract for others, mortgaging his oil field equipment to get the necessary financing. He did very well on the first contract, and almost as well on the second. But the third was a financial failure plus. The drill bit struck granite a few hundred feet down, and this virtually impenetrable rock forced him to take a year to drill a well which should have been completed in a month. He lost all of his earlier profits and all of his drilling equipment and wound up thousands of dollars in debt.

  Our cars were sold, our house and furniture mortgaged. He leased a smaller rig, and went into the business of pulling pipe from abandoned wells. But the cycle of mild successes and whopping failures still pursued him. Two jobs made money, the third was a break-even, the fourth put him out of business, his credit ruined and more deeply in debt than ever.

  He set himself up as a rig (derrick) building contractor—an enterprise which required only hand tools and labor. And here at last, it seemed, he was on his way back up. He squeezed the last possible penny from every contract. He oversaw his own jobs. He did hard physical labor himself.

  But he was getting old, nearing an age when active participation in an exacting business would be impractical. And while he made some money on every job, it was never very much. With little but his time and experience to invest, his income was proportionate. To get into the big money you had to take turnkey contracts—i.e., you supplied all necessary material for a job, as well as the labor. By so doing you profited on dozens of commodities, instead of one, and your overall reward was large, if, of course, you figured correctly and nothing went wrong.

  So Pop sunk everything he had and everything he could get into a turnkey contract. And his estimates were so sound that he completed it days ahead of the penalty date. He sent due notice to the contractee. The latter wired his congratulations. He would arrive the following day to inspect and accept the job.

  Well, he arrived all right. But the following day, there was no job to inspect. The first tornado in its history had struck the area. Splintered to smithereens, the rig was scattered over half the county.

  With no capital and no credit, Pop became a dealer in leases, or, to use a contemporary and contemptuous term, a lease louse. There were thousands like him in the oil country cities. Middlemen of middlemen—men so far removed from the principals in a deal that they frequently did not know the latters’ identities.

  One would get hold of a lease on a short-term option. Another would assume the job of getting it drilled (necessary to validation) on a percentage basis. He had no assets of his own, but he knew someone who knew someone with assets, supposedly. And this last person knew someone who knew someone who would do the drilling for part cash and an interest. And the part-cash man knew someone who knew someone who could get workmen on a cash-interest basis. And—

  But enough. It was not as funny as it may sound.

  Sometimes, at the end of a transaction, there were a few thousands to split up between the dozens of “lice.” Rarely, however, was a transaction carried through to a successful culmination. Somewhere along the way, as it moved from one broke broker to another with each snipping away a fragment, it simply disappeared.

  One of the choice jokes around Fort Worth concerned a “louse” who turned out to be a dozen other guys. He put a short-time option into the mill. Then, knowing the ramifications through which it must proceed, plunged back into the milieu of someone who knew someone. After weeks of frantic effort the first deal seemed ready to bear fruit. All the principals and sub-principals and sub-sub-principals were to meet in his office. As he waited for them, his one worry was that they might not all be able to crowd into the tiny cubbyhole.

  The time of the meeting came and went. Hours passed and it grew dark, and still the louse remained alone. Finally, the tragicomic truth dawned on him. No one was going to show up, because “everyone” was already there.

  I could never laugh much over that joke, since Pop was the louse involved. He gave up his cubbyhole and became a curbstone operator. I looked him up one morning and asked him to come to breakfast with me.

  He did so, rather coolly. He had been cool and formal with me for some time. At first he had argued sternly against my going to work at the hotel. Then, his affairs went from bad to worse, and my earnings were necessary for the maintenance of the family. Pop’s attitude changed. He no longer argued.

  It seemed to him, I suppose, that I had usurped his position in the family. I could not help it, perhaps, nor could he, but the fact remained. I was my own man. So be it.

  We were like polite strangers to one another, rather than father and son.

  So, this morning, we sat across from each other in the restaurant booth, dabbling aimlessly with our food and talking in monosyllables. And, finally, after a number of false starts, I managed to broach the subject that was on my mind.

  “It’s about one of the guests at the hotel, Pop. He’s acted kind of funny ever since he checked in. Always watching me when he thought I wasn’t looking, and making up excuses to talk to me. Prying into my background. Well, last night I took some cigarettes up to his room, and he opened up with me. I found out what it was all about.”

  “I see,” Pop murmured absently. “Very interesting.”

  “Well,” I hesitated. “The point I’m getting at—what I wanted to ask you was, did you ever hear of a man named L——?”

  “L——?” Pop showed a little more interest. “I knew him fairly well. He was on President Harding’s private train with me for a day and a night.”

  “What became of him?”

  “No one knows. He was president of some corporation in Kansas City. He disappeared one night with more than a million and a half dollars of the company’s assets—cash and negotiable securities. Why do you—?”

  Pop broke off abruptly, his eyes suddenly sharp with interest. I nodded.

  “He’s here, Pop. It’s the same guy I was telling you about. He’s still got most of the loot, and he’ll give it up if he’s promised immunity from prosecution. He trusts you, more than he trusts anyone else, anyway. Can you swing it? I mean can you—c-can we make the bonding company give us a cut for—?”

  I was afraid he’d say no, he was always so straitlaced and upright about everything. But he had been a lawyer and knew that such deals were made every day. The proposed transaction was entirely legitimate, he said, and he became almost as excited over it as I was.

  “What’s his room number? I’ll call him right now, and tell him—”

  “He’s checked out,” I said. “He moved out of the hotel as soon as he’d talked to me, and I don’t know where he went to. But we made arrangements for us to meet him tonight. How much would we make on the deal, Pop? Five or ten thousand?”

  Pop laughed fondly. “Somewhat more than that,” he said. “Ten percent is the usual fee for a negotiator, an
d I imagine the bonding company would be very happy to pay it. In other words, if L—— has as much as a million and a half left, we should get—”

  “A hundred and fifty grand? Wow!”

  We talked and talked, becoming really friendly for the first time in months. I confessed that along with being pretty stubborn and hard to handle I had been drinking far too much—that anything at all was too much for a boy my age. Pop confessed that his own behavior left much to be desired, and declared he was turning over a new leaf. Things would be different with us from now on. He’d get into some safe but reasonably profitable branch of the oil business. I’d quit the hotel and concentrate on school—get out of high school some way, and go on to college.

  Pop and I agreed that it was best to say nothing to Mom about the impending deal. Not too worldly wise, it would only worry her.

  We ran through the arrangements for meeting that night, making sure we had them right. Then, since it was far too late for me to go to school, I went on home.

  Mom was pretty cranky with me. Unlike Pop, she did not feel that my financial contributions to the family exempted me from parental dominion. She wanted to know why I hadn’t gone to school instead of “loafing around town.” And she obviously did not care at all for the evasive answers I gave her.

  She scolded and fussed, until at last there was nothing left to say and she was as weary as I. I went to bed, then, telling her to call me at seven as I wished to see a show before going to work.

  I was supposed to meet L—— at eight-thirty on the bridge over the North Trinity River. He would pick me up in a car, providing I was alone and he deemed it safe, and we would drive on into the packing-town section of Fort Worth. At nine-thirty, still providing that L—— was given no cause for alarm, we would pick Pop up in an isolated area. They would then exchange commitments, as attorney and client, and the details of the transaction would be worked out.

  Well, Mom did not call me at seven, but at nine. She said that if I was too tired to go to school, I was too tired to go to shows. It was ten o’clock before I got to the bridge, an hour and a half late for my appointment with the suspicious, badly frightened L——.

  It was too late, of course. I waited for him until it was almost one, making myself seriously late for work, but he never showed up. Where he went or what became of him, I do not know.

  I was sick with disappointment, and the blow was a crushing one for Pop. As for Mom, well, what was the use in telling her the truth—that the two hours of sleep she had forced on me had cost more than one thousand dollars a minute?

  22

  On weekdays I went from work to school and remained in class until three-thirty in the afternoon. It was usually five or six o’clock before I could get to bed, and I had to rise at nine-thirty in order to be at work on time. Obviously, I did not get much sleep. Daytime sleep is apt to be an uneasy thing, achieved in spats and spurts which leave one wakeful but unrested. Frequently, during the dazzlingly hot Texas summer, I went whole days with no sleep at all.

  Being of very hardy stock, I seemed little affected by my rigorous near-sleepless life for more than two years. But it was telling on me. I had acquired a persistent and annoying cough. My appetite was almost nonexistent. I was drinking more and more, so much that I was buying pints and quarts instead of depending on free drinks from guests.

  Also, although the fact was hard to detect on one with my wiry build, I was losing weight steadily.

  As I passed my eighteenth birthday and entered my third year at the hotel, the hitherto concealed signs of illness began to break through to the surface. I was suddenly gaunt instead of merely thin. I had brief but frightening spasms of nervous trembling. My cough had a hollow echoing sound. I was filled with morbid self-doubts, and no amount of whiskey would completely dispel them.

  Mom and Pop begged me to quit the job. In our circumstances, the suggestion seemed maddeningly foolish and I refused to discuss it.

  Because I was supposed to be a “fairly good boy,” the nominally hard-boiled management tried to give me a hand. The word filtered down from somewhere that I should not be fined or disciplined except on higher authority, and I should not be held over except in extreme emergencies. Moreover, if I chose to sleep an hour or so at night in one of the checked-out rooms, no one was to take notice of it. And whatever I wanted to eat within reason was to be provided at no charge by the coffee shop chefs.

  I appreciated these favors, both for their intrinsic value and for the good will they reflected. But I enjoyed them no more than a week or two before I was forced to call a halt. They made the other boys too resentful. A man may survive with the disesteem of his employers, but let him be generally disliked by his fellow-workers and he is through.

  My friend the assistant manager, he of the sensitive soul and the terrible temper, had shown increasing concern for my obvious illness. He always lingered for a few moments after handing me his hat, mumbling diffident inquiries as to how I was getting along and grumbling suggestions to take it easy.

  “Better get off of bells,” he suggested one morning. “Try you on something else.”

  And try me he did.

  In succession, I worked as assistant night auditor, valet, food checker, telephone operator, elevator operator, steam presser and assistant maître d’hôtel. But in the end I came back to bell-hopping.

  I believe that the challenge of so many jobs was good for me, and I certainly acquired much valuable experience. But I was not improved healthwise, and I could not afford the financial loss which the other positions put me to. They paid well enough, I suppose, but the amounts seemed niggardly compared with my bellboy earnings. So, half regretfully, I returned to my original job.

  I dragged through the months, obsessed with a weird feeling that I was slowly falling apart. And though I felt pretty hopeless about it, I attended school faithfully. This was my last chance, I knew—the last year I would be going to school. Either I got out now, with proper scholastic credit, or I never would. My six years of misery and frustration there would be wasted.

  Spring came, and suddenly I felt better than I ever had. I was eating and sleeping less than ever, coughing harder and drinking more. But still I felt wonderful. Nothing seemed to bother me. I was never tired, my mind had never been sharper. I was brimming over with good feeling, always smiling, always ready to burst into laughter at the smallest joke.

  My extensive reading had not carried me into the fields of psychiatry and morbid psychology; hence, I accepted my feeling of well-being at its face value instead of as the euphrasy—the false elation—which precedes collapse. Persons far advanced in alcoholism know that feeling. So do tuberculosis patients, and those suffering from severe nervous complaints. It is Nature’s way of preparing the afflicted for the ordeal of breakdown.

  Being triply prepared, for reasons you may probably guess, I felt triply good.

  On Friday afternoon of the next-to-the-last week of school, I paused at the doorway of a study hall, called gaily to the girl inside, then—moved by a sudden hunch—went in and joined her.

  “How you doing, Gladys?” I said. “Keeping you in after school, are they?”

  “N-no.” She tittered shyly. “Everyone’s so busy getting ready for graduation that they asked me to help with this stuff.”

  She was a bashful, dowdy girl, one of those helplessly homely drudges who knew everything in the books and little outside of them, and who would go through life in some minor, ill-rewarded capacity. I had known her in several classes, during my periods of self-promotion, and while I was a different type of outcast I sympathized with and felt sorry for her. Because she was shy and obliging, she was constantly being imposed on. The school employees were always dragging her in on jobs which they were paid to do.

  “Making out report cards, huh?” I said. “Like to have me read the record cards off to you? You can go a lot faster that way.”

  “We-el—” She tittered again. “If you’re sure you want to.”


  “There’s nothing I want to do more,” I said truthfully. And dragging a chair up to the desk, I sat down at her side.

  I took charge of the record file, and began calling the names and grades off to her. Coming to my card, I made myself a senior and gave myself passing grades in every subject.

  She looked up, a faint frown on her face. “I—uh—I didn’t know that—”

  “Yes?” I said.

  “Nothing. I mean, I was just going to say how funny it is that people can be in the same grade and have different teachers for every subject.”

  “Well,” I shrugged, “it’s a big school. Incidentally, some of these record cards are pretty badly worn. I think we’d better make out some new ones.”

  I pulled a dozen odd cards from the file, sliding my own in among them. Somewhat troubled, she began making out new cards from the information I gave her.

  I called out my name. I called out the class—senior, second semester. I started calling off credit hours.

  Slowly, she laid down her pen and looked up again.

  “J-James, you can’t. You’re not going to graduate, are you? The diploma list is already made out, and I d-don’t believe I saw your name on—”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not going to graduate, Gladys.”

  “B-but—”

  “I don’t have enough credit hours to graduate,” I said. “Just enough for college entrance.”

  “Y-yes, but—”

  “That isn’t much, is it? I’ve gone to school here for six years. I’ve made some of the highest grades ever made by a senior. But I still can’t graduate. All I have is enough credits to go to college—if I ever have the chance to go. Does that seem like a lot to you? Do you think it’s too much, Gladys?”

  She looked at me steadily. Then, slowly, she shook her head.

  “No,” she said, “I don’t think it’s too much.” And she picked up the pen again.

  A new card went into the file, one of more than a dozen. It gave me fourteen and a half credit hours, one and a half short of the number necessary to graduate.