The Transgressors

by Jim Thompson

  He slammed up the receiver.

  He jerked his head toward Buck Harris, and Harris wobbled after him toward the door, a spattering trickle of blood trailing behind him.

  Bradley went on through the door. Buck paused on the threshold, and slowly turned around.

  He looked like a tortured puppy. He looked like a rabid dog. He looked all the hideous things that only a sensitive man can who has seen his friendship flouted and his trust betrayed.

  Lord could not meet the look. Savagely, his eyes averted, he filed another indictment in the endless litigation of Lord vs Lord. Tom Lord—in Tom Lord’s opinion—was a goddamned liar. He behaved as he did, not out of any necessity or compulsion, but simply because he was a no-good bastard, and his incessant rationalizations to the contrary were so much crap. There was no excuse for what he’d done. He’d simply felt like kicking asses, and poor old Buck had been handy.

  “Buck,” he said, still looking away from that terrible face. “I’m sorry. You want to pistol-whip me all over the courthouse steps, I’m givin’ you the privilege.”

  A drop of blood oozed over Buck’s overhung upper lip, and down onto his teeth. He brushed at it with a frayed shirtsleeve, silently staring at the result. And then, with an almost polite little nod, he turned and left.

  Lord sighed, on a note of exhaustion. Absently, he lighted a cigar, stood outside of himself as he puffed it; curiously considering the man at the desk.

  Looked about like anyone else out here. Talked like them. Acted like them. Was like them except for what went on inside of him. And yet that, the last, was the most important thing of all, the only important thing when you got right down to cases. It was him, not what showed up on the surface. It was what made him love or hate, die or give death. Yet no one was aware of it; no one could diagram its workings or predict their results. Certainly he, the man it inclined and impelled, could not. The machinery had become too complex; too many moments had been added to its sum.

  It was easy to believe, of course, that the irking contradictions of his own life justified almost anything he did. He’d had it tough all the way down the line. Obviously—obviously, to his own way of thinking—he was a classic case of the square plug in the round hole, and he should be excused where others should not. And, hell. How stupid and blind did you have to be to think that way? Everyone was unique particularly, but no one generally. Every man’s life was a different road, but all paralleled one another. Everyone was a son of a bitch, everyone an angel, everyone both. A man couldn’t go very wrong, probably in treating everyone like a good guy. At worst, he probably wouldn’t catch the dirty end of the stick more than fifty per cent of the time—which was about the best he could do now.

  Tom Lord roused himself, and arose from the desk.

  He had to get moving. He had to get the hell out of here; to stave off or, perhaps, hasten the tide of events which already threatened to engulf him. He had to go from here to there, from where he was to where he was not, inevitably taking with him, of course, the circumstances which necessitated the move.

  Tom Lord and Tom Lord had to be on their way, and philosophizing must wait until another time. There were things to be done—ah, so many things—before they left. And there was no time for the merely crucial.

  Donna McBride was sleeping peacefully, and obviously would be for hours to come. He took her pulse, listened to her heartbeat. Gently, he pulled back her eyelids, and gently released them. She was all right. Nothing wrong with her that a good rest wouldn’t cure.

  It was around midnight when he left the house. Some six blocks away, as he was nearing the old-town business district, he deliberately stalled the car beneath a street light.

  He had chosen the spot carefully. There were no houses for more than a block and a half behind him, and the car back there would have no legitimate reason for stopping. So it came on, moving at the discreet fifteen miles per hour which local ordinances demanded. It passed him, necessarily very close because of the intersection, and Lord got a glimpse of the driver.

  Without appearing to, he kept an eye on the vehicle; watched as it turned in at the curb in front of a drugstore. Then, after stalling a minute or two longer, and repairing the car’s fictitious difficulty, he slammed down the hood and drove on.

  He was hardly a block past the drugstore when the other car hastily backed away from the curb, its driver momentarily sticking his head out the window. It trailed him at what the man apparently thought was a safe distance. And the gears of Lord’s memory meshed, and a bell rang.

  So he hadn’t been dreaming. There had been a man there at Joyce’s house, the same one who was following him; and in the light of his present actions, his presence at Joyce’s house had a sinister aspect.

  Joyce didn’t “work” any more, but she had plenty of money. And this man—a nonresident—was on familiar terms with her.

  Joyce had wanted him, Lord, out of town. It had been extremely important to her. And he, Lord, was obviously important to this man.

  Lord’s heart quickened; the deadness fell away from him, and his eyes sparkled with interest. Now, why? he mused. Now, where the hell have I seen that mug before—

  The word mug did the trick. The gears of memory whirred again, and a clanging bell announced a jackpot.

  Back when the boom began to build, he’d made Bradley see the danger of a gangster influx, and Bradley had consented to the setting up of an identification department. He wouldn’t authorize any money for it, of course, since the taxpayers had none to waste on “frills.” He was also very watchful of any time which any of his men might devote to it. About the only one willing to help was Buck Harris, a man who was patently as useless to such an enterprise as tits on a stud horse. So Lord had warded off his persistent offers of assistance, and done what had to be or could be done himself. The result naturally left something to be desired. One man couldn’t swing the whole load, and the other police organizations grew weary of being forever begged and borrowed from. Still, it was an R & I department of sorts; and its mug-book library was reasonably complete in the category of career criminals. And among these last was the man following him:

  August Pellino (Fat Gus, Augie the Hog); eighteen arrests, one conviction: six months. Susp. murder, extortion, narcotics, prostitution. Presumably inactive at present. Known associates, Salvatore Onate, ditto-ditto; Carlos Moroni, ditto-ditto; Victor Anglese, ditto-ditto, et cetera, et cetera.

  Another bell began to ring; they were ringing all over the place tonight. Lord turned onto the highway, and then off of it, and saw happily that he was still followed.

  Highlands and gangsters. Highlands and Gus Pellino.

  McBride had been killed. Then Highlands’ president—what was his name, Harrington?—had got it. In less than a month, two peculiar deaths right together. And Joyce had fought to get him out of town, seemingly at Pellino’s urging. And now Pellino was tailing him.

  Well?

  Lord shrugged. He couldn’t see the whole picture, only its shadowy outlines. But even those were highly revealing.

  Tom Lord, for some reason, had to be gotten out of the way, and since he would not cooperate in the getting out, his exodus would have to be compelled. He couldn’t be killed; at least, he couldn’t be murdered. Otherwise, he would have been dead long ago. But he did have to be removed from the scene. And just how Gus Pellino planned to manage that removal, what plans he had, were a mystery.

  Lord drove at as even a pace as the road would allow, grinning wryly at his occasional glances into the rear-view mirror. Pellino was keeping about a quarter-mile between them. Now and then he cut off his lights for a few minutes; seeking to give the impression, apparently, that one car turned off the road and after an interval, another turned on.

  “A real smart fella,” Lord murmured, chuckling. “Ought to learn me a lot when I get around to talkin’ to him.”

  Two hours slipped by. In the moonlight’s dusky darkness, they passed the abandoned wildcat where Aaron McBride
had died. And Tom Lord, though not seeing it—only aware that it was off there in the loneliness to his right—ceased to smile, and the night seemed suddenly colder.

  He turned on the heater.

  He lighted a cigar, and took a drink from a half-pint bottle in the glove compartment. And his eyes looked broodingly into the rear-view mirror.

  It wouldn’t be any trick at all to collar Pellino now. Pellino was doubtless a real handy boy around the big towns, but out here he probably stumbled over his own feet. Set a little trap for him, and he’d run over himself to get into it. Still…

  Lord hesitated, then reluctantly shook his head. Better play it Pellino’s way. Better let him run the rope out, and then see what he’d do with it.

  Some ten miles past the abandoned drilling rig, Lord slowed the big convertible and switched on his spotlight. Its yellow beam jounced ball-like across the prairie, spearing a fear-struck covey of quail, glowing greenly on the saucer-size eyes of an enormous mule rabbit. A coyote, lips snarled, crouched in front of it. It flicked over a bull rattler, reared up ropishly from his hole. Then, at last, it picked out an almost indiscernible trail; two overgrown, dust-blown wheel tracks. The car turned onto them.

  The shack was approximately a mile back from the road, a long, low one-room structure, with an open lean-to on its far side. Who the builder had been, Lord didn’t know. Some drought-driven nester, perhaps, from pioneer days—some greenhorns had been foolish enough to attempt farming here. Or it might have served as the bunkouse for some long-ago cattle spread. As the Mexicans put it, “Quien sabe?” This sandy, sage-brushed vastness was a crazy quilt of mysteries. Try to trace out the threads of one, and you ran into a dozen.

  Tom Lord had discovered the place years before, back when he was first coming into manhood. And gradually, through the years since then, he had made it into and maintained it as a comfortable retreat. He needed such a place—had always needed it. He needed the isolation that transcended loneliness, that gradually swung him out of the depths and up to the safety of the opposite shore.

  He had never painted the exterior; and the weathered wood was part of his own background. One might pass it a hundred times, from the road, and never see it. Only a very few of his associates knew of its existence. None had visited it to his knowledge, and certainly none by his invitation.

  Ordinarily, he parked his car beneath the lean-to. But tonight he stopped at the front of the shack, leaving his lights on full so that Pellino would be sure to see it.

  He went into the building and lighted a lamp. Moving deliberately, frequently lazing in front of the headlights, he carried in his supplies.

  He disposed of the last of them, a total of several armloads. Then, switching off the car lights, he re-entered the shack and slammed the door.

  He mixed a drink, lighted another cigar. He smoked it down halfway, stamped it out, and blew out the lamp. He listened. A look of bewilderment spread over his face.

  Pellino’s car could be little more than a mile away, obscured by the growth of the roadside ditch. Lord had heard him when he cut his motor—sound traveled a long way in this chilled thin air—yet there had been no sound of the car’s restarting.

  What was the guy doing, anyway? Could he really be this night blind—so hard-of-seeing that he still had to assure himself of the shack’s location?

  Lord guessed he probably was, judging by Pellino’s clumsy job of tailing. He couldn’t see good himself, so he thought no one else could.

  There was a push-up shutter on the lean-to side of the house. Lord raised it silently, went through the window, and crept to the corner of the building.

  He had guessed right. Pellino had gotten out of the car and come up the trail on foot. He was standing two or three hundred yards away, but his white shirt—a white shirt, for Pete’s sake!—was clearly visible.

  Lord hesitated, then moved boldly out from the shack. Pellino obviously didn’t see him, for he kept on coming. And he proceeded to advance, as Lord watched motionlessly, until he was little more than a hundred yards away. That was close enough for him, seemingly. From that distance, he could at last confirm what he had seen from the road.

  He turned and started back down the trail. Grinning wickedly, Lord scooped up a handful of pebbles and followed him. He trotted, crouching, ducking low, weaving silently through green-black clumps of sagebrush. Moving at an angle to the trail, he came parallel with Pellino.

  He paused there, dropping down behind a bush. Peering through its foliage, he tossed a pebble.

  Pellino jumped and whirled; stood stock-still for a moment. Then he went on, and Lord continued to move after him.

  His second pebble struck in front of the fat man; the third and fourth to his left and right. Each time Pellino went into a kind of startled little jig, and each time he hurried forward at a somewhat faster clip.

  Lord was cautious with his tossings, making sure that Pellino only heard the pebbles without seeing them. In this way, he would doubtless accept the thumps and thuds as some ghastly local phenomenon. Something that was nerve-racking but entirely natural. For, naturally, he must not be frightened away permanently. A little fun, that was all Lord wanted. Fun for himself, and a case of nerves for Mis-ter Pellino.

  The gangster scrambled into his car and drove away. Lord turned back toward the shack.

  Prob’ly hadn’t been very smart, he admitted, to chase around here at night; man could get himself snake-bit real easy that way. It sure hadn’t been smart, and that was a fact. But it sure had been fun.

  “A real entertainin’ fellow,” he told himself. “Plumb full of piss and high spirits. Can’t hardly wait until we get t’gether again.”

  He grinned, and his teeth gleamed whitely in the darkness.

  14

  Feeling stronger than she had felt in days, Donna McBride took a hasty shower in the bathroom, her ears keyed to any sound at the door. She had propped a chair beneath the knob—there being no door key or latch—but she was still very apprehensive. Mr. Lord, her husband’s friend or no, was enough to make a person nervous. Mr. Lord apparently did exactly how he pleased, and she had had one shameful sample of how he pleased.

  She toweled her body, rinsed out the towel, and draped it over the tub to dry. She hastened into her underclothes, the innumerable skirts and slips, and pulled her dress over her head. With each layer of garments, she had seemed to add corresponding layers of self-assurance and primness. Fully dressed at last, she felt entirely equal to Tom Lord. She was certain of her ability to handle Lord and a half-dozen more like him.

  Since his help had been thrust upon her, and in a highly embarrassing fashion, she owed him nothing. But of course she would thank him and proffer a reasonable sum in payment. She would not, however, suffer any more of his nonsense. She would not bandy words with him.

  He had the answers, or he should have them, to the mystery surrounding her husband’s death. He had them—something to tell her, at least—and he would give them to her. She would ask the questions, and he would provide the answers. And then she would do what she had come here to do.

  She made the bed, laid the nightgown across the pillows. Her fingers lingered over it; and blushing, suddenly, she jerked her hand away and rubbed it against her dress.

  She removed the chair from the door, crossed to the dresser for her purse. It was then that she saw the message lying beneath it, a single sheet of paper filled with exaggerated illiteracies.

  Donna read it, and her face slowly assumed the hue of a freshly baked brick:

  Sorry I cant stik around 2 C U. Hope 2 C more of U (ha-ha) when we meat agin. Help yourself to vittles, an fele free to pack a lunch. U need more meat on U, an it will probly improve your dispasistion. Also U had better not keep pickin at that itsy-bitsy mole on your rite

  There were several scratchings-out at this point, the seeming results of Lord’s attempts—or misattempts—to spell certain words like “breast” and “bosom.” Finally, finding himself hopelessly inadequa
te to the task, he had drawn a tiny picture of the object in question; labeling it R (for right) and indicating a mole beneath the nipple.

  He concluded:

  Pickin’ at it mite give U a infeckshun, an besides it is kind of cute. Hopping U R the same.…

  There was no signature. In its place was a cartoon of a man waving good-bye to a woman with a suitcase in her hand. The fatuously beaming man was unmistakably Lord, and the woman—her face set in a look of preposterous rectitude—was obviously intended as Donna McBride. She wore a Russian shako, earmuffs, overshoes, a blanket-size scarf, and enormous fur gloves. Her body was so voluminously clothed that she appeared practically as wide as she was tall.

  Donna wadded the revolting document and hurled it to the floor. Then, with angry reluctance, she snatched it up and examined it again. Her color deepened. Unconsciously, her hands strayed over her body, tested the quiltlike volume of her clothing. Unwillingly, she stole a glance at herself in the mirror.

  Did she really look like the woman in the cartoon? Was there actually any resemblance between her own expression and the one worn by that ridiculous creature?

  The questions weren’t worth answering, she decided. She would not dignify them with her interest. She looked as she should look, as a decent, self-respecting woman. And if people thought there was something funny about that, why—why—

  She threw the paper to the floor again, and stamped on it. Then, having made sure that Lord was not hiding on the premises, she left the house.

  It was still quite early in the morning, but people arose early out here, and the sheriff and several deputies were already on duty. As Donna paused in the office doorway, stood there looking about her sternly, the deputies arose with elaborate casualness and lounged into an adjoining room. Donna turned a severe gaze on the sheriff. And to her surprise, he gave her a smile of welcome.