The Nothing Man

by Jim Thompson

  “And where do I come in? What do I get out of it?”

  “Nothing more than you deserve. To put it succinctly, you do not get a murderer who is not one. You do not get some half-witted odd-job man and sap him into making a confession. It wouldn’t work, Stuke, even if I were willing to let you do it. We know the murderer is someone of fairly high intelligence. You’d be laughed out of town if you tried to pin the job on one of your typical fall guys.”

  “Yeah?” His eyes glinted. “So suppose I hang it on some smart baby. Someone like you.”

  “You do that,” I said, “and we’ll discuss the matter again.”

  He stood up, slamming on his hat. He walked toward me slowly and I crossed my legs, bringing one foot up in line with his crotch. I hoped he would try something, but I was sure that he wouldn’t.

  He didn’t.

  “Look, Brownie. Don’t you see what you’re doin’ to me, pal? It ain’t just a matter of gettin’ no credit—of knockin’ myself out and losin’ out on all the easy dough and not getting no credit for solving the murder. That’s bad enough, but it ain’t just that.”

  “No,” I said, “it isn’t just that.”

  “You see it, huh? If I don’t get the murderer—”

  “If you don’t get the murderer, or, let us say, until you do get the murderer, you have to keep on looking for him. You won’t be able to let things get back in the shape they’ve been in. Yes, I see that, Lem, and now that you see it I think you’d better leave.”

  He left, cursing. I waited until I heard him drive away, and then I got up and stood in the doorway a few minutes.

  It had stopped raining about an hour before, and now the moon had come out and a few stars, and the air was clean and balmy. I stood drinking it in in long deep breaths. I turned and craned my neck, looking in at the kitchen clock. It was only one, a few minutes after one. It seemed like years had passed since—

  And it was only a little after one.

  I closed and locked the door. I went into the bedroom and turned on the light. I came back and turned off the living-room light. I started back into the bedroom. I went a few steps and then I dropped down on the lounge and began to cry.

  About nothing, really; I suppose you would call it nothing. Certainly not over a problem. How can one cry over a problem? Or an answer—if there was an answer? I cried because—Just because, as kids cry, as she had used to cry.…

  Because things were a certain way, and that’s the way they were.

  8

  After a while I got up and went into the kitchen. I cracked four eggs into a glass, filled the glass with whisky, and tossed them down. I stood very still for a moment, swallowing fast, letting them get anchored. When I was sure they were going to stick, I took another drink and lighted a cigarette.

  Another long time had passed, at least ten years. But the clock said twenty minutes of two. I refilled my glass with whisky and began cleaning the kitchen.

  There was not a great deal to be done since the soot is more or less ineradicable and my meals at home are confined largely to eggs, milk, and coffee. But I did what little there was to do: scrubbing the sink, wiping off the drainboard and stove, sweeping the floor, and so on. I put the egg shells into the garbage pail and carried it out to the incinerator. I lingered a minute or two after dumping it, looking down at the railroad tracks. I often stand there at night, on the bluff overlooking the tracks, watching the trains go by, wondering if it wouldn’t be better to…

  But the last train for the night had passed more than two hours ago. The last one was the “milk” train—a combination freight and passenger that left Pacific City at eleven-thirty and loafed into Los Angeles some seven hours later. There wouldn’t be another train until six forty-five.

  I went back into the house and returned the garbage pail to its container. I filled my glass again and went to work on the living-room.

  I cleaned it up—two-fifteen.

  I cleaned up the bedroom—two thirty-five.

  I made a stab at cleaning the bathroom (that part of the house that I have made into a bathroom)—two forty-three.

  I had put a big pan of water on the kitchen stove and lighted a couple of burners under it. When it had heated, I carried it into the bathroom, climbed upon the ancient cast-iron stool, and, reaching upward and outward, dumped it into a five-gallon can that rested on a shelf near the ceiling.

  I undressed and stepped under the can. I pulled a rope and the water rained down from a nozzle in the bottom of the can.

  I put some clothes back on and mopped up the bathroom.

  I finished at seven minutes after three. And I had never been more wide awake in my life.

  Obviously it was time for stern measures. I took them—two full glasses, one behind the other.

  I went to sleep then. Or, I should say, I lost consciousness. I didn’t come out of it until a little after seven when the phone started ringing.

  I sat up and looked at it. I mumbled what the hell and cut it out, for God’s sake, and it went right on ringing. I rubbed my eyes and reached for the whisky. The bottle was empty, so I went out into the kitchen and opened another one. I came back into the living-room and sat down on the floor in front of the phone. I slugged down a few drinks, lighted a cigarette, and eased the receiver off the hook.

  I shouted “HELLO” at the top of my lungs.

  I heard a clatter at the other end of the line, then someone breathing heavily. The someone was Dave Randall.

  “Brownie…hello, hello, Brownie!”

  “Don’t yell so loud,” I said. “It hurts my ears, Colonel.”

  “I hated like hell to bother you, Clint, but—can you come down for a while?”

  “Come down? You mean to work?”

  “Don’t do it if you don’t feel up to it, but I’m short-handed as hell. I’ve got three people working out of the police station—our friend Stukey is really bearing down on this clean-up campaign—and what with Tom Judge off sick I—”

  “He’s sick,” I said. “I hope it’s something serious?”

  “It will be,” Dave promised, “when I get hold of him. His wife called in to the switchboard this morning before I got down. I’ve been trying to call him back, but I haven’t been able to raise anyone at their place.…How about it, Brownie? If you could just lend a hand for a couple of hours, just until some of the people in society and sports show up.…”

  I let him wait while I took a drink. Then I said, “Well, I’ll tell you, Colonel. I am a true-blue Courier man; I flinch from neither rain nor sleet nor Chamber of Commerce luncheons, but—”

  “Never mind. Sorry to have bothered you,” he said. “Take it easy and—Oh, yes, Brownie? Are you still there?”

  “Yours to command, Colonel. Up to a point.”

  “I thought you’d want to know. They’ve got a red-hot clue to the murderer.”

  “So soon?” I said. “I think I’d better have a little talk with Mr. Stukey.”

  “He isn’t pulling anything this time, Clint. It’s the real thing. You know how those Golden Eagle cottages sit up on posts? Don’t have any real foundation under them?”

  “Y—No. I’ve never been around the island much.”

  “Well, some guy was crawling around under them last night. The cops figure that he may have been hurt when he—when he was struggling with her and crawled under there to pull himself together. Or perhaps he was just too scared or drunk to know what he was doing. Anyway, it looks like he must have been there not too long after the murder.”

  “Why does it look like that?”

  “Why? Well, because of the imprint of his body, his hands and knees. They picked up several almost perfect handprints.”

  “How do they know they were made last night?”

  “Because there wouldn’t be any imprints, otherwise. Last night was the first time it’s rained in weeks. There’s a little seepage under the cottages and—Look, Brownie, I can’t talk any longer now. I’ll call you back the first
chance I get.”

  “Don’t bother,” I said. “On second thought, I think I’ll come down.”

  I hung up the phone. I sat there cross-legged on the floor, staring blankly into the black perforations of the mouthpiece as I reached for the bottle.

  I tried to remember and, as I had last night, I drew a blank. I was bending over her. Then I was at the boat. And in between there was nothing.

  My clothes…? No, all that water would have washed them clean in seconds. I couldn’t remember, and there was no way I could find out. The finding out would have to be done by someone else.

  Thinking, or rather, trying to think, I put coffee on the stove and went into the bathroom to shave.

  I didn’t believe I had crawled around under there. Surely, or so it seemed to me, I would not have wiped away my fingerprints only to leave a much broader clue. Then there was the matter of time. I had no recollection of events between my setting the fire and my arrival at the boat, but I did have a very strong impression that they were but briefly separated.

  I hadn’t done it. I was sure—almost—that I hadn’t. It had been someone else. But why would anyone else? Probably some drunk had wandered out of a bar, or been tossed out, and he had holed up under the cottages for a snooze. He’d awakened when the cops arrived; he’d heard the ruckus and decided it would be a damned good idea to take a powder. And—

  That was what had happened. I hoped.

  I got cleaned up, and went into the kitchen. I poured whisky into an outsize cup and filled it with coffee.

  I leaned against the sink, sipping it, taking an occasional long look at my hands. What I don’t know about criminology would fill a five-hundred-foot bookshelf, but I’d learned at least one thing in my police-beat years: leaving or picking up a recognizable set of fingerprints is not as simple or easy as it is reputed to be. I talked to a detective one time who, on one of his off days, dusted and picked up prints throughout his five-room house. He didn’t get one of himself or his wife or their two kids that would have served to identify them. This under so-called favorable conditions.

  In mud, now, in anything as coarse as earth…Well, there might be handprints, but fingerprints—huh-uh. I didn’t think so.…I hoped not.

  If Stukey had picked up a decent set of prints, even one good fingerprint, I’d have heard about it. By now, he’d have been printing me. Unless, of course, he was afraid of what I would do if he was wrong and he intended to do it casually. That would be Stukey’s way, no doubt. To build the thing up big, and himself with it, then, say, to invite me to have a drink from a nice clean glass.

  It was strange the way I felt. I hadn’t given a damn for years, not a good goddamn whether I lived or not. And last night I had sort of tried to get the whole meaningless mess over with. I had taken a hands-off attitude in a gone-to-hell situation, and I had gone to hell and come right out again. And now I cared. Now I wanted to live. I wanted to badly enough to be afraid.

  I turned the matter over in my mind, examining my emotions, probing their perverse strangeness, and, need it be said, consulting frequently with the whisky bottle. And so, gradually, I became clear-eyed and keen, and I could see my feelings for what they were—not abnormal but normal. Normal to a degree which, where I was concerned, would never do.

  But there was no cause for alarm. I had known such feelings in the past, and down through the years their duration had become increasingly brief. They were in the wrong soil. They bloomed and withered almost simultaneously. I cared, yes, but only about a game, only about a problem, not about living or dying. It was an interesting game—the one interest without which there would be emptiness. And I wanted to win; I wanted to make them lose. But it was nothing to become fear-sick about.

  Let them worry. With me it was only a game.

  The old two-way pull began to assert itself. I headed for town, sitting very straight and circumspectly in the car seat but moving sidewise, mentally. Moving off to one side, off into a world known only to me, where I could see them without being seen.

  Just a game. That was all I could win or lose. That was all I could do.

  I parked the car in front of the Press Club and went upstairs. Jake, the officer of the day, was at his post. We went through maneuvers. We held close-order drill ending with a barrage. I stood back from the bar and we saluted.

  “All secured, officer?”

  “All secured, sir!”

  “An excellent patrol,” I said. “Everything is shipshape, jim-dandy, and crackerjack, and I hereby decorate you with the highest order of the land, the most coveted of awards, the—”

  “On the house,” he said, and he shoved my money back. “Look, Mr. Brown, maybe it ain’t none of my business but shouldn’t you be—”

  I brought him to attention with a crisp command. I marched out and proceeded to the Courier.

  Dave Randall hadn’t exaggerated his need for help. He had taken a typewriter over to the city desk and was trying to do rewrite and his own job. The only regular rewrite man he had was Pop Landis. And Pop, nice guy that he was, was slow as all hell, and he was more than swamped with the running story of the murder and the crime clean-up.

  I took his carbons off the hook and sat down at my desk. I began to read, briefing myself to take over, stopping now and then to write some minor but “must” story.

  They had handled Ellen as delicately as they could without distorting the facts. Our relationship was barely mentioned. The dirt would fly in the out-of-town papers, but here the emphasis was all on the murderer and the consequent criminal roundup.

  I skimmed through the dupes…long-estranged wife of Courier reporter, Clinton Brown…burial to be in Los Angeles…death attributed to asphyxiation…

  Asphyxiation? I read back through that part again, somehow glad that it had been that way.

  …painfully but by no means critically burned, according to the coroner’s office. The relatively minor nature of the burns, coupled with the fact that the mattress was almost completely consumed, indicates that Mrs. Brown must have revived soon after the maniac’s departure. Panic-stricken and dazed, she was unable to find her way out of the smoke-filled cottage before succumbing to…

  It was surmised that the murderer (for reasons best known to himself) had crawled about beneath the cottages. There were handprints, kneeprints, elbowprints (no mention of fingerprints). There was the imprint of his body, where he had apparently lain prone…

  I paused. My heart did a small flip-flop—strictly, of course, because of the excitement of the game. I looked down at the typewritten page again. I read…and sighed with relief. About five feet seven inches tall and rather heavy-set…shoes, approximately size eight.…

  It wasn’t me, then. Not by more than five inches and two and a half sizes. There was no way it could be twisted into being me. And whoever it was—some stumblebum, doubtless—he was safe; he wouldn’t suffer for what I had done. Stukey would never find him. He didn’t know enough about the guy, and what he did know fitted too many people.

  I’d been working less than an hour when Mr. Lovelace came in. He gave me a startled look, then passed on by. He said something indistinguishable but obviously sharp to Dave Randall, and Dave followed him into his office.

  He came out after about five minutes and scuttled over to my desk. Redfaced, almost cringing, he told me to beat it. “Right now, Brownie. The old man gnawed me out to a fare-thee-well. I knew it was a hell of a bad thing to have you come in to work right after—to handle a story about it. But I didn’t know who the hell else to—”

  “I would have been grieved,” I said, “if you had not called me. I am wed to my work and stand ready at all times to do my husbandly duty, and I shall so inform—”

  “Don’t! For God’s sake, Clint, just get out of here. If you want to do something, go out and see if you can get hold of Tom Judge. Tell him I said by God to get in here, and do it fast.”

  “Suppose he is locked in nuptial bliss with his wife? Do I have the colonel�
�s permission to—”

  “Brownie! Please!”

  I stood up and slid my coat off the back of my chair, put it on, and picked up my hat. I—

  I don’t know what prompted me to say it; perhaps something in Pop’s stories jogged my memory. Or, perhaps, it was the constant jangling of the telephones. I don’t know why, but I said, “By the way, Colonel, did you talk to—did Ellen call in here yesterday?”

  “Not that I know of. Why?”

  “No reason.” I shrugged. “She usually did call as soon as she hit town.”

  “Well, she didn’t call yesterday to my knowledge. No one said anything about it. Why don’t you ask Bessie?”

  “I’ll do that,” I said, but I didn’t do it.

  I left the city room, walking right on past the cubicle where Bessie and her switchboard sat. I didn’t want Bessie’s memory jogged. I wanted her to forget that Ellen had called and that the call had been answered.

  It was evidence, you see. Or, rather, it would be evidence if the person who had talked to Ellen could not satisfactorily explain his whereabouts on the night before. And little as I liked Tom Judge…

  9

  Lem Stukey’s office was so crowded that I could hardly get in the door. He had two secretaries answering telephones; he was surrounded by reporters, our boys and those who had flown in from out of town; a dozen-odd cops and detectives milled around his desk. Being Lem, of course, with an eye ever to the main angle, he spotted me at once. And he pushed his way through the crowd and grabbed me by the hand.

  “Jesus, keed, I’m glad to see you. Been thinkin’ about giving you a ring, but…Let’s get out of here, huh?”

  He propelled me across the hall into an unoccupied jury room. He closed the door and leaned against it, mopping his brow with exaggerated dismay. “You ever see anything like that in there, pal? I ask you now, ain’t that something?”