by Jim Thompson
Conway would see to that, even if Doc Bony-face didn’t have a special sort of interest in me.
I’d kind of figured that the Doc might show up with his hard-rubber playthings, but I guess he had just enough sense to know that he was out of his class. Plenty of pretty smart psychiatrists have been fooled by guys like me, and you can’t really fault ’em for it. There’s just not much they can put their hands on, know what I mean?
We might have the disease, the condition; or we might just be cold-blooded and smart as hell; or we might be innocent of what we’re supposed to have done. We might be any one of those three things, because the symptoms we show would fit any one of the three.
So Bony-face didn’t give me any trouble. No one did. The nurse checked on me night and morning, and the two attendants carried on with pretty much the same routine. Bringing my meals, taking me to the shower, cleaning up the room. The second day, and every other day after that, they let me shave with a safety razor while they stood by and watched.
I thought about Rothman and Billy Boy Walker, just thought, wondered, without worrying any. Because, hell, I didn’t have anything to worry about, and they were probably doing enough worrying for all three of us. But—
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
They, Conway and the others, still weren’t positive about that piece of evidence they had; and, like I say, they preferred to have me crack up and confess. So, on the evening of my second night in the asylum, there came the stunt.
I was lying on my side in bed, smoking a cigarette, when the lights dimmed way down, down to almost nothing. Then, there was a click and a flash up above me, and Amy Stanton stood looking at me from the far wall of the room.
Oh, sure, it was a picture; one that had been made into a glass slide. I didn’t need to do any figuring at all to know that they were using a slide projector to throw her picture against the wall. She was coming down the walk of her house, smiling, but looking kind of fussed like I’d seen her so many times. I could almost hear her saying, “Well, you finally got here, did you?” And I knew it was just a picture, but it looked so real, it seemed so real, that I answered her back in my mind. “Kinda looks that way, don’t it?”
I guess they’d got a whole album of her pictures. Which wouldn’t have been any trouble, since the old folks, the Stantons, were awfully innocent and accommodating and not given to asking questions. Anyway, after that first picture, which was a pretty recent one, there was one taken when she was about fifteen years old. And they worked up through the years from that.
They…I saw her the day she graduated from high school, she was sixteen that spring, wearing one of those white lacy dresses and flat-heeled slippers, and standing real stiff with her arms held close to her sides.
I saw her sitting on her front steps, laughing in spite of herself…it always seemed hard for Amy to laugh…because that old dog of theirs was trying to lick her on the ear.
I saw her all dressed up, and looking kind of scared, the time she started off for teachers’ college. I saw her the day she finished her two-year course, standing very straight with her hand on the back of a chair and trying to look older than she was.
I saw her—and I’d taken a lot of those pictures myself; it seemed just like yesterday—I saw her working in the garden, in a pair of old jeans; walking home from church and kind of frowning up at the little hat she’d made for herself; coming out of the grocery store with both arms around a big sack; sitting in the porch swing with an apple in her hand and a book in her lap.
I saw her with her dress pulled way up high—she’d just slid off the fence where I’d taken a snap of her—and she was bent over, trying to cover herself, and yelling at me, “Don’t you dare, Lou! Don’t you dare, now!”…She’d sure been mad about me taking that picture, but she’d saved it.
I saw her…
I tried to remember how many pictures there were, to figure out how long they would last. They were sure in a hell of a hurry to get through with them, it looked like to me. They were just racing through ’em, it seemed like. I’d just be starting to enjoy a picture, remembering when it was taken and how old Amy was at the time, when they’d flash it off and put on another one.
It was a pretty sorry way to act, the way I saw it. You know, it was as though she wasn’t worth looking at; like, maybe they’d seen someone that was better to look at. And I’m not prejudiced or anything, but you wouldn’t find a girl as pretty and well-built as Amy Stanton in a month of Sundays.
Aside from being a slight on Amy, it was damned stupid to rush through those pictures like they were doing…like they seemed to be doing. After all, the whole object of the show was to make me crack up, and how could I do it if they didn’t even let me get a good look at her?
I wasn’t going to crack up, of course; I felt stronger and better inside every time I saw her. But they didn’t know that, and it doesn’t excuse them. They were lying down on the job. They had a doggone ticklish job to do, and they were too lazy and stupid to do it right.
Well…
They’d started showing the pictures about eight-thirty, and they should have lasted until one or two in the morning. But they had to be in a hell of a hurry, so it was only around eleven when they came to the last one.
It was a picture I’d taken less than three weeks before, and they did leave it on long enough—well, not long enough, but they let me get a good look at it. She and I had fixed up a little lunch that evening, and eaten it over in Sam Houston Park. And I’d taken this picture just as she was stepping back into the car. She was looking over her shoulder at me, wide-eyed, smiling but sort of impatient. Saying:
“Can’t you hurry a little, darling?”
Hurry?
“Well, I reckon so, honey. I’ll sure try to.”
“When, Lou? How soon will I see you, darling?”
“Well, now, honey. I—I…”
I was almost glad right then that the lights came back on. I never was real good at lying to Amy.
I got up and paced around the room. I went over by the wall where they’d flashed the pictures, and I rubbed my eyes with my fists and gave the wall a few pats and tugged my hair a little.
I put on a pretty good act, it seemed to me. Just good enough to let ’em think I was bothered, but not enough to mean anything at a sanity hearing.
The nurse and the two attendants didn’t have any more to say than usual the next morning. It seemed to me, though, that they acted a little different, more watchful sort of. So I did a lot of frowning and staring down at the floor, and I only ate part of my breakfast.
I passed up most of my lunch and dinner, too, which wasn’t much of a chore, hungry as I was. And I did everything else I could to put on just the right kind of act—not too strong, not too weak. But I was too anxious. I had to go and ask the nurse a question when she made the night check on me, and that spoiled everything.
“Will they be showing the pictures tonight?” I said, and I knew doggone well it was the wrong thing to do.
“What pictures? I don’t know anything about pictures,” she said.
“The pictures of my girl. You know. Will they show ’em, ma’am?”
She shook her head, a kind of mean glint in her eye. “You’ll see. You’ll find out, mister.”
“Well, tell ’em not to do it so fast,” I said. “When they do it so fast, I don’t get to see her very good. I hardly get to look at her at all before she’s gone.”
She frowned. She shook her head, staring at me, like she hadn’t heard me right. She edged away from the bed a little.
“You”—she swallowed—“you want to see those pictures?”
“Well—uh—I—”
“You do want to see them,” she said slowly. “You want to see the pictures of the girl you—you—”
“Sure, I want to see ’em.” I began to get sore. “Why shouldn’t I want to see them? What’s wrong with that? Why the hell wouldn’t I want to see them?”
The atten
dants started to move toward me. I lowered my voice.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I don’t want to cause any trouble. If you folks are too busy, maybe you could move the projector in here. I know how to run one, and I’d take good care of it.”
That was a pretty bad night for me. There weren’t any pictures, and I was so hungry I couldn’t go to sleep for hours. I was sure glad when morning came.
So, that was the end of their stunt, and they didn’t try any others. I reckon they figured it was a waste of time. They just kept me from then on; just held me without me saying any more than I had to and them doing the same.
That went on for six days, and I was beginning to get puzzled. Because that evidence of theirs should have been about ready to use, by now, if it was ever going to be ready.
The seventh day rolled around, and I was really getting baffled. And, then, right after lunch, Billy Boy Walker showed up.
24
Where is he?” he yelled. “What have you done with the poor man? Have you torn out his tongue? Have you roasted his poor broken body over slow fires? Where is he, I say?”
He was coming down the corridor, yelling at the top of his lungs; and I could hear several people scurrying along with him, trying to shush him up, but no one had ever had much luck at that and they didn’t either. I’d never seen him in my life—just heard him a couple of times on the radio—but I knew it was him. I reckon I’d have known he’d come even if I hadn’t heard him. You didn’t have to see or hear Billy Boy Walker to know he was around. You could just kind of sense it.
They stopped in front of my door, and Billy Boy started beating on it like they didn’t have a key and he was going to have to knock it down.
“Mr. Ford! My poor man!” he yelled; and, man, I’ll bet they could hear him all the way into Central City. “Can you hear me? Have they punctured your eardrums? Are you too weak to cry out? Be brave, my poor fellow!”
He kept it up, beating on the door and yelling, and it sounds like it must’ve been funny but somehow it wasn’t. Even to me, knowing that they hadn’t done a thing to me, really, it didn’t sound funny. I could almost believe that they had put me through the works.
They managed to get the door unlocked, and he came bounding in. And he looked as funny—he should have looked as funny as he should have sounded—but I didn’t feel the slightest call to laugh. He was short and fat and pot-bellied; and a couple of buttons were off his shirt and his belly button was showing. He was wearing a baggy old black suit and red suspenders; and he had a big floppy black hat sitting kind of crooked on his head. Everything about him was sort of off-size and out-of-shape, as the saying is. But I couldn’t see a thing to laugh about. Neither, apparently, could the nurse and the two attendants and old Doc Bony-face.
Billy Boy flung his arms around me and called me a “poor man” and patted me on the head. He had to reach up to do it; but he didn’t seem to reach and it didn’t seem funny.
He turned around, all at once, and grabbed the nurse by the arm. “Is this the woman, Mr. Ford? Did she beat you with chains? Fie! Fah! Abomination!” And he scrubbed his hand against his pants, glaring at her.
The attendants were helping me into my clothes, and they weren’t losing any time about it. But you’d never have known it to hear Billy Boy. “Fiends!” he yelled. “Will your sadistic appetites never be satiated? Must you continue to stare and slaver over your handiwork? Will you not clothe this poor tortured flesh, this broken creature that was once a man built in God’s own image?”
The nurse was spluttering and sputtering, her face a half-dozen different colors. The doc’s bones were leaping like jumping-jacks. Billy Boy Walker snatched up the night-can, and shoved it under his nose. “You fed him from this, eh? I thought so! Bread and water, served in a slop jar! Shame, shame, fie! You did do it? Answer me, sirrah! You didn’t do it? Fie, fah, paah! Perjurer, suborner! Answer, yes or no!”
The doc shook his head, and then nodded. He shook and nodded it at the same time. Billy Boy dropped the can to the floor, and took me by the arm. “Never mind your gold watch, Mr. Ford. Never mind the money and jewelry they have stolen. You have your clothes. Trust me to recover the rest—and more! Much, much more, Mr. Ford.”
He pushed me out the door ahead of him, and then he turned around real slow and pointed around the room. “You,” he said softly, pointing them out one by one. “You and you and you are through. This is the end for you. The end.”
He looked them all in the eye, and no one said a word and none of them moved. He took me by the arm again, and we went down the corridor, and each of the three gates were open for us before we got to ’em.
He squeezed in behind the wheel of the car he’d rented in Central City. He started it up with a roar and a jerk, and we went speeding out through the main gate to the highway where two signs, facing in opposite directions, read:
WARNING! WARNING!
Hitchhikers May Be Escaped
LUNATICS!
He lifted himself in the seat, reached into his hip pocket, and pulled out a plug of tobacco. He offered it to me and I shook my head, and he took a big chew.
“Dirty habit,” he said, in just a quiet conversational voice. “Got it young, though, and I reckon I’ll keep it.”
He spat out the window, wiped his chin with his hand, and wiped his hand on his pants. I found the makings I’d had at the asylum and started rolling a cigarette.
“About Joe Rothman,” I said. “I didn’t say anything about him, Mr. Walker.”
“Why, I didn’t think you had, Mr. Ford! It never occurred to me that you would,” he said; and whether he meant it or not he sure sounded like it. “You know somethin’, Mr. Ford? There wasn’t a bit of sense in what I did back there.”
“No,” I said.
“No, sir, not a bit. I’ve been snorting and pawing up the earth around here for four days. Couldn’t have fought harder getting Christ off the cross. And I reckon it was just habit like this chewing tobacco—I knew it but I kept right on chewing. I didn’t get you free, Mr. Ford. I didn’t have a thing to do with it. They let me have a writ. They let me know where you were. That’s why you’re here, Mr. Ford, instead of back there.”
“I know,” I said. “I figured it would be that way.”
“You understand? They’re not letting you go; they’ve gone too far to start backing water.”
“I understand,” I said.
“They’ve got something? Something you can’t beat?”
“They’ve got it.”
“Maybe you’d better tell me about it.”
I hesitated, thinking, and finally I shook my head. “I don’t think so, Mr. Walker. There’s nothing you can do. Or I can do. You’d be wasting your time, and you might get Joe and yourself in a fix.”
“Well, now, pshaw.” He spat out the window again. “I reckon I might be a better judge of some things than you are, Mr. Ford. You—uh—aren’t maybe a little distrustful, are you?”
“I think you know I’m not,” I said. “I just don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”
“I see. Put it hypothetically, then. Just say that there are a certain set of circumstances which would have you licked—if they concerned you. Just make me up a situation that doesn’t have anything to do with yours.”
So I told him what they had and how they planned to use it, hypothetically. And I stumbled around a lot, because describing my situation, the evidence they had, in a hypothetical way was mighty hard to do. He got it, though, without me having to repeat a word.
“That’s the whole thing?” he said. “They haven’t got—they can’t get, we’ll say, anything in the way of actual testimony?”
“I’m pretty sure they can’t,” I said. “I may be wrong but I’m almost positive they couldn’t get anything out of this—evidence.”
“Well, then? As long as you’re—”
“I know,” I nodded. “They’re not taking me by surprise, like they figured on. I—I mean this fellow I’m tal
king about—”
“Go right ahead, Mr. Ford. Just keep on using the first person. It’s easier to talk that way.”
“Well, I wouldn’t cut loose in front of ’em. I don’t think I would. But I’d do it sooner or later, with someone. It’s best to have it happen now, and get it over with.”
He turned his head a moment to glance at me, the big black hat flopping in the wind. “You said you didn’t want anyone else to get hurt. You meant it?”
“I meant it. You can’t hurt people that are already dead.”
“Good enough,” he said; and whether he knew what I really meant and was satisfied with it, I don’t know. His ideas of right and wrong didn’t jibe too close with the books.
“I sure hate to give up, though,” he frowned. “Just never got in the habit of giving up, I reckon.”
“You can’t call it giving up,” I said. “Do you see that car way back behind us? And the one up in front, the one that turned in ahead of us, a while back? Those are county cars, Mr. Walker. You’re not giving up anything. It’s been lost for a long time.”
He glanced up into the rearview mirror, then squinted ahead through the windshield. He spat and rubbed his hand against his pants, wiped it slowly against the soiled black cloth. “Still got quite a little ride ahead of us, Mr. Ford. About thirty miles isn’t it?”
“About that. Maybe a little more.”
“I wonder if you’d like to tell me about it. You don’t need to, you understand, but it might be helpful. I might be able to help someone else.”
“Do you think I could—that I’m able to tell you?”
“Why not?” he said. “I had a client years ago, Mr. Ford, a very able doctor. One of the most pleasant men you’d want to meet, and he had more money than he knew what to do with. But he’d performed about fifty abortions before they moved in on him, and so far as the authorities could find out every one of the abortion patients had died. He’d deliberately seen that they did die of peritonitis about a month after the operation. And he told me why—and he could’ve told anyone else why, when he finally faced up to the facts—he’d done it. He had a younger brother who was ‘unfinished,’ a prematurely born monstrosity, as the result of an attempted late-pregnancy abortion. He saw that terrible half-child die in agony for years. He never recovered from the experience—and neither did the women he aborted.…Insane? Well, the only legal definition we have for insanity is the condition which necessitates the confinement of a person. So, since he hadn’t been confined when he killed those women, I reckon he was sane. He made pretty good sense to me, anyhow.”