by Jim Thompson
For that matter, he did not need to look or listen to follow the pitch. It was pretty well standardized, the gradually put-together product of years of attack and counter-attack on the same general issues.
“Why, certainly, sir,” Mr. Corley would say. “Certainly, you could put out a special edition yourself. You could make yourself a suit of clothes, too, I suppose, or build your own house. But you don’t do those things; you don’t do them, because you’re not an expert at them. And you know and I know and we all know that when you want something done right, you go to an expert.…”
Or knocking down another sore point:
“I’m glad you mentioned that, sir. Glad. Very glad. It’s quite true that some advertising departments can’t sell an inch of space behind a special edition. They’ve had it for a year afterward. Their explanation is that there’s just so much ad money in a town, and if you take it out on a special, you can’t get it day-to-day. Oh, yes, I’ve seen advertising departments like that—alibi departments, I call them. And I’ve seen publishers who let them get away with it. Soft-headed types, you know: men who ought to be running a soup kitchen instead of a newspaper. But if you were that type, as of course you’re not, and if you did have that kind of advertising department, you’d still be ahead with a special. You’ve got it made in a wad, instead of having it spread over a year and…”
And still another:
“Why, that’s wonderful, sir. Just about makes you unique. All the business you can handle, all you need. So much that you’re not even interested in a time-tried and proved proposition which has earned the whole-hearted endorsement of almost two hundred daily newspapers. My congratulations, sir. I can only hope that some of my less fortunate publisher friends don’t move in on your bonanza. Now, I was talking to a man just last week who was looking for another location.…”
And so on and so on.
Some towns did not have to be promoted after the first time. They were sold solid and would go for a special every year or, more often, every two years. But this seemed only to increase the pace. There was lost time to make up for, hard times to be anticipated. And there were arrangements to make, the chiefest of which was the rounding up of personnel, the professional high-pressure salesmen who made up the special-edition breed.
When working, some of them made several thousand a month. When not working, which was about two-thirds of the time, they made for the nearest big city, there to live it up with booze and broads until they were broke and Corley or someone like him made contact. Often, Corley would send them money, never to see either it or them again. Often, they would arrive more fit for a hospital than work. Eventually, however, a crew would be put together, and things would start to jump.
On an average, there were from six to a dozen salesmen, depending on the size of the town. Headquarters was any empty storeroom which could be rented cheaply: the furniture—boxes, packing crates, and telephones. You had only to stick your head in the door to know why it was called a boiler room. You had only to listen to the constant clamor of the phones, the muted incessant roar of fast-talking voices, to understand the cursing, the chain-smoking, the opened bottles of whiskey convenient to every man’s hand. Yet they seemed to enjoy what they were doing. They were all savagely good-natured.
In mid-conversation, a man would swiftly thrust his phone at Mitch. Want to piss in this guy’s ear, kid? Or covering the mouthpiece of his phone a moment, Well, crap on you, Cicero! Sometimes there would be a screw-up, and top-of-the-head apologies were necessary. Oh, no, madam, that isn’t at all what I said! You see, we have a very elderly gentleman here in the office who is taking a trip around the world—we fellows are sending him, as a matter of fact—and he was wondering which was the cheapest way to go. So I said, Oh, ship—s-h-i-p.…”
There was laughter, excitement. The sense of great things afoot, of vast sums pouring in. Of magic doors to be swung open by the quick and the glib. But being so close to his parents’ affairs, Mitch knew that what he saw here was only the shadow and not the substance; the perilous periphery of the big time. Minds and bodies were being bet in a fixed race. You might beat it, sure, and you might also become rich by saving a dollar a day for a million days.
Mr. Corley strode in and out of the boiler room a dozen times a day, but mostly worked outside. His wife, Helen—Dutch (for Duchess) as she was usually called—worked the inside; keeping track of sales, occasionally taking over a phone, frequently circulating the room to see that nothing or no one got too far out of hand.
Although she was a small woman, her clothes never seemed quite large enough for her. Her round little rear-end was always molded against her skirt, her full little bosom strained constantly against her blouse. She moved around the room pepperily, her voice snappish, her quick movements making her jounce all over. Now and then, she leaned down, her hand resting impersonally (impersonally?) on a guy’s shoulder as she lit her cigarette from his or listened in on a call. Occasionally, needing to get off her feet for a moment (or so she said), she sat down next to a guy, butting him over on his packing-box chair with a waspish little fling of her hips.
All day, day after day, the men were her life. All day, day after day, there was the salty talk of men, the rousing sight of men, the harsh-sweet smell of men, the roughly tender feel of men. And then at night, in the in-itself-suggestive hotel room, where even the towels and toilet, the thick tubes of the bedstead, the dangling knob of the chandelier, the table legs—where everything achieved a phallic symbolism—there were no longer any men. There was no man.
Corley and his wife played different roles, but essentially they shared the same life. Yet draining him dry, it simultaneously replenished her. Everything that had been taken from him seemed to have been given to her. And late at night, with Mitch supposedly asleep in the connecting room, they quarreled furiously and fruitlessly.
“Dutch, for Christ’s sake…”
“Answer me, damn you! Do you know what this thing’s for? Do you know what you’re supposed to do with it?”
“Aah, honey…”
“No! No, by God! Don’t you love me up unless you’re going to go all the way!”
“Dutch, it’s this goddamned life! The first good spot I see we’ll settle down.”
“Balls! What’s wrong with this life, anyway?”
“I mean it! I’m taking a regular job!”
“Oh, lay off, for shit’s sake! Selling sand on the Sahara—that’s a regular job I see you in!”
It was probably true. In the rarefied atmosphere of the fast buck, Corley was slowly strangling, his lungs gradually robbed of elasticity. Yet he knew himself completely incompatible to the valleys, the world below his slippery mountain top. Even as a young man he could not adapt to it, and he was now very far from young.
Mitch changed schools every two months on an average. Being bright and personable, as well as transient, he escaped the authoritative attention which the regular and less-favored students received. After all, he would be moving on in a few weeks. After all, he was well-mannered and smart—far ahead of his grade in some respects. Why bother then, why make things harder for him than they doubtless already were, if he made only token obeisance to curriculum and routine?
That was the way things went until he was in his second year of high school. Then, at last there was a crackdown—a truant officer caught him in an all-day burlesque house—and his derelictions were laid before his parents. They responded typically.
His mother made a dash at him, and jerked him vigorously by the shoulders. She said he needed his little backside blistered and she was just the gal to do it.
His father said a kid’s brains weren’t in his butt, and the thing to do was reason.
“Now, I want to ask you something, boy,” he said, pulling Mitch around in front of him. “I want to ask you something—look at me, boy! I want to ask you just one goddamned question. What do you want to do with your life, boy?”—wag, wag—“what do you want to do with your life?
Do you want to get yourself a good education?”—wag, wag—“a good education, boy, or do you want to be a jerk? It’s up to you, boy, strictly up to you. You can have an easy chair or a broom, boy. You can loll back in that easy chair in a fine, big office, with a pretty little gal like your mama for a secretary; you can do that, boy,”—wag, wag—“or you can take the broom, and go along the gutter sweeping up horse turds. Now, what’s it going to be?”
Mitch made the indicated response. Over his mother’s furious protest, his father handed him a fifty-dollar bill. “That represents education, boy. Education is money, money is security. You’ve learned something here today, boy, and it’s already put money in your pocket.”
Mitch promptly lost the fifty in a crap game in the bellboys’ locker room. Dutch’s reaction was typical. Ditto, her husband’s.
“Now, goddammit, boy, maybe your brains are in your butt, after all! Goddammit, that old broom handle’s reaching for you already! Boy, boy,”—wag, wag—“don’t you know there are people who can handle dice? Don’t you know there are people who’ve educated themselves to make the dice behave?”
“Well…there wasn’t anyone like that in the locker room.”
“You don’t know that, boy, you don’t know it. Because you don’t know a goddamned thing about dice, and you’ve just proved it. I say you proved it!”—wag, wag. “You can’t see to hit the pot, and you’ve peed all over your own feet. So you’d better squat on it, boy, squat on that pot! Play it safe or hold your pee until you can find the light switch of education. Otherwise, I fear for you, boy,”—wag, wag. “I say I fear for you. The shadow of the broom is hanging over you, and I can smell those horse turds already.”
Mr. Corley died during Mitch’s last year of high school. Mrs. Corley shook her son furiously, hugged him frantically, wept wildly, and calmly had the body cremated. Back at the hotel, she studied her mirrored reflection for a long time, at last anxiously asking Mitch if he thought she looked to be forty-two.
Mitch thought a little lightness was in order. He said she didn’t look forty-two—not a day over forty-one and nine-tenths.
Dutch burst into tears again, looked around for something to throw at him. “What a lousy thing to say! And your poor father lying cold in his grave!”
“You mean hot in his jar, don’t you? All right, all right,”—dodging hastily. “Sure, you don’t look forty-one, nothing like it. You could pass for thirty-four or -five any day.”
“Honest? You’re not just saying that?” Her face cleared, then clouded again. “But what am I going to do, for God’s sake? I can’t work alone. I’ll have to hook up with another guy, and how the hell can I do that with you on my hands?”
“Gee,” said Mitch, “maybe I’d better jump out a window.”
“Now, honey. But you do have your school to finish, and God only knows where I’ll be lighting next. It’s going to take some time to make the right kind of tie-up—I don’t mean marriage, of course—”
“Of course.”
“Will you shut up? You’re so smart, you think of something instead of bugging me all the time!”
Mitch shrugged. He suggested that he stay right here where he was, and she could do as she pleased. They were old customers of the hotel, on friendly terms with the management. And hotels had many jobs for presentable youths. Surely, they could give him some kind of part-time work, something that would allow him to finish his school term.
“Wonderful! Oh, that’s marvelous, darling!” She clapped her hands together. “Why don’t you see about it right away?”
It was almost five years from that day before he saw her again. Five years—and she had remarried, and he had married. He was still married, Red’s belief to the contrary. Still married, still married…
In his sleep, Mitch stirred uneasily. The words, the ever-present threat of his mind, whispered voicelessly with the clicking of the rails. If Red found out, if she ever found out that their supposedly loaded safe-deposit box was virtually empty…
She’ll kill you, she’ll kill you. Red’s the gal to kill you.…
3
Houston.
The Blackest Land, The Whitest People…
Where You Never Meet A Stranger…
They say that as Texas sloped to the south, the cream of its population was drained off into Houston. They say that Houston does what other cities talk about doing—and never, never talks about it. One does not flaunt his wealth here. One makes his multi-million-dollar gifts to universities and philanthropic foundations—if he has it, he is expected to—and shuns the publicity ordinarily accruing from such largesse.
Houston is south, you see, and it cherishes all that is best of the south. Gallantry, generosity, hospitality. Forth Worth is west and Dallas is east and Houston is south. And don’t you ever forget that it is south!
The whitest people (it says here). Where you never meet a stranger (it says here). But don’t ever forget that word white—particularly if the adjective doesn’t fit you…
…Red still had the frost on the next morning as they stepped down from the train at Houston, a striking-looking pair who left a wake of envious and admiring glances behind them. The trim, handsomely tailored man, jauntily distinguished with the touch of gray at his temples. The impeccably dressed woman, regal with her high-held red head, her square little shoulders trailing an improbable length of silvery sable.
Her gloved hand rested on Mitch’s arm as a matter of course—she detested public breaches of etiquette. But it was purely a formality. Her occasional smile went no further than her lips; there was bare politeness in her responses to his remarks.
Mitch knew it was time for drastic measures. Otherwise, her anger allowed to deepen, Red might easily turn drastic herself.
Reaching the interior of the station, he excused himself and signaled the redcap to wait. Then, he entered a phone booth, and opened the directory. He was in the booth for quite a while. Red was obviously puzzled and irritated by the delay, but of course she said nothing.
Not until they had been in the cab for several minutes and she suddenly became aware of its direction, did she turn to him.
“What’s this? I thought we had reservations downtown.”
“I cancelled them. We’re checking in at a hotel-apartment for a month.” Mitch dropped his voice, glancing meaningfully at the driver. “We need to be together for a while, Red. Some place where being together won’t seem out of line.”
“We were together last night, remember?”
“I know, and I’m sorry, dear. Terribly, terribly sorry. Please forgive me, won’t you?”
“I’ll think about it. Keep asking me for a few years.”
Mitch took her hand. She pulled it away, but not until he had held it for a moment or two. So she was melting a little. He went on talking to her, pressing his advantage.
“I know a month’s a long time in one place. But we can both use a rest. The Fat Stock show in Fort Worth coming right after that convention in Mineral Wells…”
“I can take it. I’m not the one who’s blowing my top all the time.”
“I know. But, anyway, I thought we might rent us a car while we’re here. It’s only about a hundred and fifty miles to the school, and we could drive over and see the boy.”
“Big deal! I should care about seeing your kid.”
Mitch repressed a smile. She was nuts about his son. There was a moment of silence, while Red somehow moved a little closer to him. Then, with vast indifference, she asked how soon they could see the boy.
“I mean,” she amended hastily, “when do we have to?”
Mitch laughed fondly. He told her that they could and would do anything she wanted to any time she wanted to, and they would never do anything she did not want to do.
Red said they would go tomorrow, in that case. Then, barely whispering, a lovely blush suffusing her paleness, “I suspect we’ll be pretty busy today.”
Her hand gripped his convulsively.
Han
d in hand, they arrived at their destination.
Mitch registered for them in the usual manner, Mr. and Miss Corley: Once you started a thing like that you were stuck with it to the end. Since they were taking the place by the month, the rent was payable in advance. Mitch paid it, adding on another thousand as a credit—an amount certain to be used up in charges long before the month was out. Ever so faintly worried, he turned away from the desk and joined Red at the elevator.
Of course, there were still a few bills in the safe-deposit box; a little better than three grand, probably. But even so, he was very low on money, almost dangerously low by the standards of the big-time hustler. Even without splurges like the present one, the overhead for Red and himself—travel, payoffs, everything—was conservatively fifty thousand a year. And he had other expenses, his son’s among them, besides Red’s and his own.
With that kind of money pouring out, with the necessity to be able to bet big and to absorb the rare but inevitable losses, wisdom demanded a bankroll of at least twenty thousand dollars. Now, including the dough in the deposit, he had barely half that.
Something would have to break fast, he told himself. Something would break fast. Houston was a hell of a town. All the money in the world was here…well, most of it, anyway…and the people were wonderful.
Confidently, with Red’s incredible body brushing against him, he stepped out of the elevator and into their apartment.
Red suppressed a gasp when she saw it. The bellboys had hardly departed before she had her arms around him, hugging him with fierce, half-fearful delight.
“Oh, my God, honey! What have you done?”
“Like it?”
“Like it! B-But—I’m afraid to ask what it cost.”
“Don’t. Not unless you want to be called One-cheek Red.”
“Mmm?”
“I mean I’ll bite a big juicy chunk out of your tail.”