Texas by the Tail

by Jim Thompson

  The world’s prettiest, best-dressed women—that’s Dallas. The world’s smartest, most aggressive business men—that’s Dallas.

  This is where you find it, mister. Whatever you’re looking for, it’s right here.

  Want to buy a million-dollar jet plane? The first aisle over—right next to those two-bit fishing poles. Want a thousand-dollar-a-night girl? Here you are, sir, and worth every penny of it. Want to jump a broad for a buck? Just look around and you’ll find someone as hard up as you are. Want to hire a thousand men? You bet—and you won’t find a single Red-Fascist Communistic-CIO labor agitator in the lot. Want to carry a gun? Well, now, that’s all right. Want to give someone a schlamming? It can be arranged, sir, it can be arranged. Want to start a hate group? Welcome, friend.

  Just don’t do anything controversial.

  …It was around noon when Mitch stepped off the plane. He checked his bag at the airport, and rode the airline’s limousine into downtown Dallas. Since the hour did not seem a good one for paying a call on Frank Downing, he stopped in at a bar and grille that he remembered from his last visit to the city. But he was not remembered by the personnel of the place.

  “Sorry, sir.” The bartender idly swabbed the counter with a damp towel. “It’s against the law to sell liquor by the drink in Texas.”

  “So what?” Mitch laughed, “You’re a new man, aren’t you? Where’s Jiggs McDonald?”

  “There’s no one here by that name, sir. Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  Mitch said angrily that he didn’t want any coffee. He was tired and worried and hot, and getting a drink was suddenly very important to him. “Now, come on and give me a bourbon and water!” he demanded. “What the hell? I’ve been buying drinks in here for years!”

  “No, sir. We don’t serve drinks here.”

  “The hell you don’t!” Mitch jerked his head at a man a few stools away. “What’s he drinking if it isn’t booze?”

  The man turned and looked at him, a man with a very broad face and a forehead that ended at his eyebrows. He rattled the ice cubes in his glass, then arose and moved down the counter to where Mitch was sitting.

  “What do you want?” he said. “Coffee or trouble?”

  “I think I’ll settle for some air,” Mitch said, and he left the place very quickly.

  He felt like nine kinds of a damned fool. It was always stupid to start a beef, and he had done it without the slightest excuse. He was in the worst jam of his career, and he needed to be fast and smart. Smarter and faster than he had ever been before. Yet he had virtually stuck out his neck and asked to have his head kicked off!

  The incident left him badly shaken up. He forced himself to calm down, taking a long second look at his mental makeup. As a result, he cancelled an earlier plan to call on Teddy while he was in Dallas; to appeal to her to be reasonable in her demands. Teddy had never been reasonable. Only the wildest grasping-at-straws thinking had let him hope that she might be reasonable now.

  At any rate, his problem was an immediate one. Thirty-three thousand dollars or its approximate had to be had now. Without it, he had no future—none that Red would be a part of. Without it, he would be broke. And just how could a man be broke, Red would wonder, when he has a safe-deposit box full of money?

  He hailed a cab. The driver looked back over his shoulder as Mitch gave him an address.

  “Too early, mister. They won’t be open this time of day.”

  “We’ll see,” Mitch said.

  “I’m telling yuh. Why don’t you let me take you to a real live place?”

  “Why don’t you,” Mitch said, “for God’s sake take me where I told you to? Are you going to do it or am I going to have to call Frank Downing and give him your name and license number, and tell him that I can’t keep an appointment with him because—”

  The cab started with a jerk. It moved swiftly, without further conversation from the driver, for the next thirty minutes until it reached the wrought-iron gateway to Downing’s domain.

  Mitch got out there and paid off the driver. At this innocuous hour, the gate was, of course, unlocked and he started up the long curving driveway to the house.

  The neighborhood had been a very good one at one time. Even as it was crowded downhill by the expansion of the business and industrial districts, there had been a number of holdouts against the march of progress. People who had lived here almost as long as there was a city. People with four-story mansions (with two-story living rooms), and grounds that occupied a square block.

  Downing had picked up one of these magnificent old houses early in the area’s transition period. He had restored and renovated it completely, and enclosed the grounds with a tasteful tapestry-brick wall. Aside from that, and certain essential modifications to the interior, the place was almost unchanged.

  The front door stood wide open. The interior hummed with the activity of cleaning people—men and women with mops and brooms and vacuum cleaners. Beyond giving Mitch a polite glance or nod, they showed no interest in him. He was not their problem. He would be taken care of by someone whose problem he was.

  Mitch met that someone very suddenly. He was starting down a small side corridor which led to Downing’s office when a thin, tired-looking man lazed out of the shadows.

  “Selling something, mist—” He broke off, a flicker of recognition in his eyes. “What d’you say, Mitch?”

  “Who can kick?” Mitch said. They shook hands, Mitch with his right, the other man with his left, since his right was in his pocket. “Is the boss in, Ace?”

  “You should know,” Ace said. “He must have told you he would be or you wouldn’t be here.”

  “Well, I’m afraid I don’t have an appointment. I just happened to be in Dallas—”

  “Tsk, tsk.” Ace clucked his tongue reproachfully. “Be nice now.”

  Taking Mitch by the elbow, he guided him up the corridor to Downing’s office. There he rapped on the door in a certain way, waited a moment and then moved inside with Mitch.

  The gambler was seated at his desk; sharply dressed as always, except for his rolled-up shirt sleeves, slick-haired and freshly shaven. There was a pile of account books and ledger sheets in front of him, as well as a small adding machine. He was making a computation on it as Mitch and Ace entered, and he did not look up until he had completed it.

  Then without a word of greeting or the smallest sign of surprise, he asked Mitch how he was on income taxes.

  “You mean what do I know about them? Nothing,” Mitch said. “I always hire an accountant.”

  “I hire three. You’d think that would be enough, wouldn’t you?” Downing shook his head. “Three guys ought to be able to keep one set of tax records, and do it right.”

  “Well, those people have to be awfully careful, Frank. If they try to claim something you’re not entitled to—”

  Downing said that wasn’t what he was kicking about. His trouble was that the accountants kept claiming too much. “I tell ’em not to, by God. I tell ’em to figure everything from the government’s angle, and then tack on ten percent. But will they do it? Hell, no! Okay, Ace.”

  Ace went out, giving Mitch an approving little pat on the back. Mitch accepted the offer to fix himself a drink, and Downing poured coffee for himself from a Thermos carafe. Taking a sip of it, he asked how Red was doing.

  “I liked that kid. By God, I liked her! How come you didn’t bring her with you?”

  “I didn’t know I was coming myself,” Mitch said. “It was one of those spur of the moment things. You see…”

  He explained about the checks. Downing listened expressionlessly. “And you want me to collect on them for you?”

  “That’s right. Or I’ll discount them to you.”

  “Then go ahead and ask me. I’ll smile when I tell you to go to hell.”

  “You’re too good for your own good,” Mitch sighed. “But what about the fifty grand you collected for yourself?”

  “What about the sixty gran
d I spent collecting the fifty grand?” Downing shrugged. “I’ve got principles, pal, but they don’t extend to your dough.”

  Mitch was disappointed, but not surprised. He said he guessed he’d better be running along; he had a date with a west-bound plane. “It’ll get me in Big Spring tonight, and I can drive out to the ranch in the morning.”

  “Save yourself a trip,” the gambler said. “I can get your head beat off here for free.”

  Mitch scoffed that the Lords couldn’t be that bad. “Let’s face it, Frank. This is still Texas and it’s still the twentieth century.”

  “Why would I kid you?” Downing asked. “They’ll push your tonsils right out your tail, Mitch. You’ll have to take off your pants to brush your teeth.”

  “You’re just saying that to cheer me up,” Mitch said. “Well, thanks anyway, Frank. I—”

  “Sit down.”

  “I wish I could, but—”

  “Sit down,” Downing said. “I’ve got some questions to ask you.”

  Mitch sat down, not liking it but accepting it; wondering at the change that had come over the gambler. Downing lighted a cigarette, studying him through the smoke.

  “Now, lay it on the line for me. The Lords have let you know they don’t want to pay those checks. Just how do you figure to make ’em? How do you figure to gain by walking right into their own private little kingdom?”

  “I don’t know,” Mitch said. “It’s simply something I’ve got to try.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?”

  “Uh-huh, why? You’re a gambler. You don’t buck the odds. You’ve been pulling down heavy for years, and you’ve got a lot of years left to go on pulling it down. Yet here you are, pissing it all off on a long shot chance of collecting a few stinking bucks.”

  “Thirty-three grand stinks?”

  “You know what I’m talking about,” Downing said. “You’ve got a big kitty. You can afford to swallow a loss like this. Now, why don’t you do it instead of jumping into a bear-trap?”

  “Why, Frank,” Mitch said lightly. “I didn’t know you cared.”

  “I asked you a question. And about you I don’t care. But I liked that redhead, and I know she’s nuts about you. I figure it would just about break her heart if anything happened to you. So I want to know just why you’re so damned anxious to get your head parted.”

  Mitch hesitated, seeking a way out, knowing that there was none. He said quietly, “I’m broke, Frank. There isn’t any kitty.”

  “I figured,” Downing nodded, “and Red doesn’t know it. That’s why you didn’t bring her with you. If she knew the truth, she’d never let you do this.”

  “If she knew the truth,” Mitch said, “she’d probably kill me.”

  Downing shook his head. “How could she do that when I’m going to? Or maybe you’ve got a real good reason for cheating the nicest kid I ever met.”

  “Ah, Frank, for God’s sake…!”

  “Let’s have it!” Downing snapped. “Start talking and talk fast, or by Christ you won’t be able to! You’ll be at the bottom of the Trinity talking to the turtles!”

  His saturnine face was white with anger. Mitch started talking and he talked fast.

  He told the whole story, starting with his marriage to Teddy; then, going on to the birth of his son and the discovery that she was a whore. He told it all—his meeting with Red, his sincere belief that Teddy had died or divorced him, her unexpected reappearance and the years of blackmailing that had ensued.

  “Well, that’s it, Frank,” he concluded. “That’s the story. That’s where the money went.”

  Downing looked at him, no longer angry so much as puzzled. “I guess I must have missed something,” he said. “Like why do you let this half-baked whore clip you for practically everything but your bean money?”

  “I told you. To keep her quiet.”

  “And this was the only way? You couldn’t think of anything better than taking from the woman who loves you to give to the one who hates you?”

  “Well, what else—?” Mitch broke off, looking into the dead flatness of Downing’s eyes. “No, Frank,” he said quietly. “I couldn’t do anything like that.”

  “Who said you had to? You could have it done.”

  “It’s the same difference. I don’t play that way, Frank.”

  “And why the hell not? You don’t have to have her killed, dammit. Just a little working-over would do the trick.”

  Mitch said again that he couldn’t do it. He agreed that Teddy would never be satisfied, and that getting out of his present predicament would only postpone the inevitable showdown. He agreed that Teddy deserved anything that happened to her. But still…

  It would be so simple, of course; so easy and swift and final. Just a few little words to the right people, and then no more trouble from Teddy. Yes, there was a chance that you might have trouble with those aforesaid right people. And there was every likelihood that solving your problems in this way would become a habit. You would become addicted to it, substituting it more and more often for talent and intelligence and all the other qualities which distinguished you from the animals you employed. Until, in the end, you were identical with them.

  “I’m sorry, Frank,” he said, and possibly he was sorry—the thing would have been so easy. “Maybe I’m a sap, but that’s the way I am.”

  Downing scowled at him. Then, he laughed and spread his hands, seemingly accepting Mitch’s perversity. “Well, skip it. It’s your problem and I figure you can work it out. Need any scratch to travel on?”

  “No, I’m not completely flat.”

  “Then, lots of luck with the Lords. You can use my name with ’em if you want to.”

  “Why, thanks,” Mitch said. “That’s nice of you, Frank.”

  They shook hands. Downing bent back over his ledgers, and the adding machine began to click and hum. Mitch went out the door, too relieved by the gambler’s geniality to consider the reason behind it. Without knowing it, he saw the reason—a double one—coming toward him as he emerged from the side corridor and entered the main one.

  They were very boyish and gay-looking young men; black-haired, olive-skinned, trim and slender of build. They wore crisp white linen jackets, perfectly creased dark trousers and two-tone black and white shoes. Their names, their actual names—probably the only thing they had ever received from best-forgotten parents—were Frankie and Johnnie, and they were fraternal twins.

  They had begun to snicker and whisper to one another, at first sight of Mitch. Suddenly, when he was only a few feet away (and doing his best to ignore them) they came at him with a rush.

  “Mitch, sweetheart! How are you, baby? Now, aren’t you the big, beautiful chunk of man!”

  They flung themselves on him, squeezing his arms, slapping his back, sniggering and giggling at his obvious discomfiture. Mitch drew his elbows in, then abruptly shot them backwards, throwing the brothers against the wall.

  “Now, I’m telling you bastards!” he said angrily. “You ever lay a hand on me and you’ll pull back a stump!”

  “Aw, now baby! We just wanted to kiss you.”

  “Get out of my way!” he snapped, and he pushed past them savagely, and their taunting sniggers followed him until he had left the corridor.

  Appearances to the contrary, he knew the fag bit of the two was strictly an act. Another way of adding to their general obnoxiousness. That was how they got their kicks, Frankie and Johnnie. By making themselves hateful to people. It was another facet of the sadism which made their work a pleasure for them.

  Mitch knew quite a bit about them—all of it unpleasant. What he didn’t know was how they had ever managed to live so long.

  He took a taxi back through town and on to the airport. After lunch, and after wiring Red of his plans, he caught a plane for Big Spring in West Texas.

  It would be a several hours’ drive from there to the Lord ranch, but it was the only nearby town large enough to have a car rental service. Also h
e had a friend in Big Spring…a man who just might be of help to him.

  19

  Having passed her fortieth year, Teddy was just about out of the business of turning tricks. She didn’t need the money—for all her wild spending she could not begin to get rid of her blackmail from Mitch. Moreover, she could seldom recapture the excitement which the excesses of her body had once given her. And never at all unless the buyer of her favors was very young and very handsome. Unfortunately, the young and handsome men who were in the market for prostituted flesh invariably chose to buy it from young and pretty women. Which—whatever else could be said for her—Teddy was not.

  She still had a good figure; not as extravagantly exciting as it had been, but good. She still had a reasonably good face. But forty is forty, or, rather, it is much more than forty for a whore, and to the young it is ancient. To her own generation of males, or those preceding it, Teddy still appeared a highly desirable woman. But just as she was rejected by the young, she also rejected the old—and she looked upon any man as old who was not a great deal younger than she. Such “old” men had always been repugnant to her. But what had once been a strong distaste for them was now a phobia. They filled her with a sickish terror, a feeling of incestuous violation, and she would almost choke with revulsion if one even came near her.

  Women normally reach their peak of sexual desire in their early forties, so Teddy still wanted and needed men. But they had to be young. That was all that she asked of them—youth, not money. She was ready to give them money along with herself, if they were young and handsome.

  Her need had led her into some unusual experiences.

  Once she had hustled a guy on the street, a prim-looking youngster who wore white socks with black shoes, and she had taken him home with her, and there—of all things!—he had begged her to go down on her knees with him and pray for her soul.

  Another time she had picked up a prospect in a bar, and taken him back to the apartment, and for a while it looked like he was going to be all right. He talked the lingo like an old head, and talk could be pretty exciting in itself. He sent out for a couple of jugs of good booze, and that was all right, too; Teddy’s appetite for the whiz had increased with her years. But the hours went by, and she began to itch with her craving, and still he didn’t get down to business. And finally when she was on the point of taking it away from him, he gave her his card—even Teddy recognized the name of the psychiatric clinic—and he also gave her fifty dollars. And he told her there would be another fifty for her, twice each week, when she reported to the clinic.