by Jim Thompson
“Then he was with you Monday night, wasn’t he? Monday evening before the murd—before it happened. There’d been someone with you; I could tell it the minute I stepped into the house. Two people had been here, drinking and smoking…and if there wasn’t anyone else…”
“Baby,” I said. “You’re making a lot out of nothing. So what if he was here, what if it works out that I wasn’t collecting that night? Don’t you—”
“I want to know,” she said. “That’s what I want to know. Why you lied if it didn’t matter.”
“Don’t you trust me?” I said. “Don’t you love me? My God, maybe I did get a little mixed up and forget a few things, but—”
She moved away from me, shrugging my hands off her shoulders. “Why, Dolly? And where? Where were you Monday night, and where did you get that money?”
“Leave me alone,” I said. “Goddammit, leave me alone!”
I didn’t like to talk to her that way, understand, but why did she have to give me a hard time? And all over nothing.
“I’m waiting, Dolly.”
“I already told you,” I said. “I mean, maybe it wasn’t the truth exactly. But that doesn’t mean I did anything wrong. I am—m-my God, you act like you thought I’d killed those two people. Beat the old woman to death and shot Pete and…Where you going? Where do you think you’re going?”
“Oh, Dolly,” she said. “H-how—what have you—”
I tried to tell her, then, what had happened. How things really were. How they could have been. And how did she know it wasn’t true? How did she know that the old woman wasn’t a kidnapper and that this money didn’t belong to Mona’s wealthy parents who had died years ago of broken hearts and…
And she wouldn’t even listen to me. She was tugging at the doorknob, staring at me with her eyes getting wider and wider like I was a goddamned maniac or something.
I made a grab for her, just trying to make her listen to reason you know. And for a moment I thought she was going to scream—yeah, call for help against her own husband—but she didn’t. All she did was say—nothing. Nothing I remember. Not anything important.
It was an accident, of course. Hell, you know me, dear reader, and you are aware that I wouldn’t hurt a goddamned fly if I could get out of it. I was just trying to grab her, to hold onto her while I made her listen to reason. But I grabbed pretty hard, I guess—sort of swung—and an unkind Fate decreed that the small understanding between us should end otherwise than happy…TO BE CONTINUED (MAYBE).
…She said, “N-no, Dolly. Oh, n-no. I had to come back. I wanted to, anyway, but I had to. I was going to tell you as soon as everything was settled—”
“Everything’s settled,” I said. “It’s damned good and settled.”
“…don’t know what you’re doing! You can’t, Dolly! N-no, please, NO! I’m pregnant!”
It was too late to stop. Anyway, how could I have stopped, even if it hadn’t been too late?
I hooked her, and she went down in the bathtub. I bent over the tub, and…And when I finally stripped off the nightgown and lifted her out, she didn’t look like Joyce any more. Or anyone.
I carried her out the back door. I tossed her body up on the top of one of the coal cars, and climbed up after it. I dug down in the coal with my hands, scooping out a long shallow hole, and I buried her in that. Buried them.
19
It was enough for one night. It was too much for a million nights, and I came back into the house feeling pretty good and relaxed. You understand. Nothing else could happen now, because everything had already happened. The worst. They couldn’t throw anything more at me after this. They couldn’t ever give me a bad time again.
It was too much, but now it was all over and they couldn’t—
I came back into the house. I washed and cleaned up, thinking, thinking—just thinking—but not worrying.
They couldn’t identify her. That train would be three days getting into Kansas City, and it stopped a half a dozen places between here and there. They wouldn’t know where it had happened, when she’d been put onto the coal car, who she was. All I had to do was get rid of her clothes when I cleared out of here—and I’d be clearing out damned fast.
Because too much had already happened, and now nothing else could.
Mona could stay here with me tonight. Why not? The deal was on ice—nothing to worry about—and she was one swell kid. And I needed someone to be with me. I’ve always needed someone to be with me, and tonight—
So she’d stay here tonight, and in the morning I’d quit the store. Pick an argument with Staples and then tell him to go to hell, and walk out. And then Mona and I would take off, just the two of us and that good old hundred grand. It would be okay. There wasn’t a hole in it any place, not on my side or hers. The county had ordered her to clear out of the house. No one could make anything out of it if she got out a little ahead of time.
We’d take off together, Joy—Mona—and me, and from then on, from now on…Nothing more could happen.
I finished cleaning myself up and cleaning up the bathroom. I went out into the living room and had a good stiff drink. It seemed like it should have been awfully late, but it was only a little after eight-thirty. Almost twenty-five minutes before I was to meet Mona—before someone would be here with me.
I poured another stiff drink. I drank it, and I got to thinking it couldn’t have happened—so much, so quickly—and if it couldn’t, why it hadn’t. And maybe I ought to take her back a little drink, since she wasn’t feeling well. And I poured it out for her.
And drank it.
There was a knock on the door. I gave a little jump, and then I went to answer it; and, no, I didn’t hesitate. Because there couldn’t be anything more now, nothing ever again, and there was nothing to be afraid of.
I opened the door. Staples said, “Good evening, Frank,” and I didn’t answer—I couldn’t answer—and he walked in past me.
“Well, Frank. You don’t appear at all pleased to see me. Aren’t you going to ask me to sit down?”
I shook my head. I said, “No. What the hell do you want, Stape?”
He sat down, crossing his fat little legs. “What do I want, Frank? We-el, let’s say I’ll be quite happy with pot luck. I’ll take whatever you have.”
20
He couldn’t mean what I thought he probably did. He couldn’t know anything, and too much had already happened and…I sagged down in a chair across from his. It was the chair Pete had sat in, and he was in the place I had sat in when I was talking to Pete. I was in Pete’s place, and he was in mine.
I started shaking my head. I didn’t know what to say or do so I just shook my head.
“Yes,” he said. “Oh, yes, Frank. Yes, indeed.”
“No-no! I won’t—” I broke off, made my voice steady. “What do you want? What are you talking about, anyway?”
And he laughed softly.
“Oh, Frank. You’ve been so clumsy, so obvious; such a thorough botch from the very beginning…Must we go into the tiresome details, or can’t you see it for yourself?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “You h-hear? I don’t—”
“Well,” he sighed, “if we must, we must. I’ll begin at the beginning and spell it out very slowly. Item…”
He held up a hand, then folded one of the chubby little fingers back into his palm. “Item one, Frank. On the day before your arrest for stealing company funds, you collected some thirty-eight dollars from the late Pete Hendrickson. On the same day you made a cash sale—or, rather, you turned in a cash-sale contract—in the amount of thirty-three dollars to one Mona Farrell. In the morning, then, on these two accounts, you should have checked in about seventy-one dollars. And frantic as you were to stave off arrest, you certainly would have turned it in, if you had had it. But you didn’t; all you had was the money for the silverware. You used Pete’s money, or most of it, to buy the girl a present.”
“Now, wait a minute,�
� I said. “That doesn’t mean—you can’t prove—”
“Prove?” His lips pursed thoughtfully. “Well, perhaps not, if we take it out of context, which, happily, I am not forced to do. At any rate, and at the moment, we are not discussing proof. I am merely pointing out your initial error, delving down to the center strand of that very ugly rope which you have hung around your neck.
“You gave the girl a thirty-three dollar present, and perhaps that is meaningless of itself. One more manifestation of a distorted personality. But it is not meaningless—it is not, my dear boy—when this same girl arrives at the store, and bails you out to the tune of more than three hundred dollars…Or are you going to tell me that it wasn’t the same girl?”
There was no use in denying it. I knew now who’d been watching her, who’d turned the car lights on her.
“All right,” I said. “So I know her, I like her and she likes me. What of it? My wife skipped out and—”
“Please!” He held up his hand again. “I’m not at all interested in your morals. Nor in you personally, for that matter. Only in the money you obtained from what must be the two clumsiest murders on record.”
He waited, waiting for me to deny it. And it wasn’t any use, of course, but I did. “Money?” I said. “Murders? I don’t know what you’re—”
“Money. Murders,” he nodded. “And, please, Frank, you’re trying my patience. I don’t know how you got next to the girl or how you managed to frame Pete, but I know that you did. The girl tipped you off to the fact that the old woman had a substantial sum of money. You—skipping over the gory details—you got it, and you still have it. Except for those amounts which you checked in as collections.”
“Now, wait a—”
“Which you checked in as collections,” he said firmly. “Would you like me to show it to you? I’ve laid it aside just in case you became stubborn. Approximately a dozen bills, supposedly collected from an assorted group of people but with their serial numbers in sequence. You got it, Frank, and you got a very substantial sum. Nothing less would have tempted you to take such a terrible risk, and Ma Farraday was just the woman to have had a hefty chunk of cash.”
“But—Ma Farraday?” I said.
“Mmmm. Do you recall my telling you that I’d been to visit an old friend? That was Ma—better known locally as Mrs. Farrell. I went to see her in the morgue after my suspicions about you became aroused. Once I recognized her, I was certain that—but I see you don’t recognize the name?”
He waited again, one eyebrow cocked upward. Then, he grinned and went on:
“A little before your time, I imagine, but the Farraday gang was notorious in the Southwest some twenty to twenty-five years ago. Bank robbers. Ma and her three sons. Ma doing the planning, and the three men faithfully carrying out her orders. Three of the orneriest, coldest-blooded killers ever to shoot a teller in the back. And their wives and children—they all lived together near the town where I worked—their wives and children were just as ornery as they were. Why—Yes, Frank?”
“N-nothing,” I said. “I mean, I thought…”
“I know. I was confident that your interest in the oil business and my early days in Oklahoma was something more than casual. But, no, there was no oil on the Farraday property; they lived too far back in the hills. For that matter, I doubt that even had they owned oil-producing land, it would have altered their way of life a whit. They were cruel, vicious, because they wanted to be. It was all they understood—men, women and children. Being a very clannish lot, with little trust in the law, their neighbors protected and put up with them for years. In the end, however, they finally became so outraged that they moved in and massacred the lot of them. Shot them like the swine they were, then burned their dwellings. Wiped out the entire family—supposedly.”
Mona. She was part of an outfit like that. No wonder she’d been so ready to kill her own aunt—her grandmother, probably. No wonder that she acted like—
“I said supposedly, Frank. Criminal investigation was just emerging from swaddling clothes in those days and, of course, neither Ma nor the various children had police records. A number of bodies were found in the smoldering ruins; also the charred remnants of a quantity of currency. Ergo, and in the absence of proof to the contrary, it was assumed—believed, I should say—that the entire family was wiped out, and with them their ill-gotten gains. But you and I know better, don’t we, Frank? We are the only ones who do know.”
He winked at me, grinning with his puffy little lips drawn back from his teeth. Like a cat that’s just had a good meal. He licked his lips slightly, grinning and waiting, and my stomach turned over and over. And the band grew tighter and tighter around my head.
I began to tremble. My mouth opened and I felt a scream crawling up from my throat, and I had to swallow hard to choke it back.
“N-no!” I said. “You’ve got it all wrong, Stape! I—”
“Dear, dear,” he said. “Oh, dear me. You are such a tiresome fellow, Frank.”
“I’m telling you! It’s the God’s truth, Stape. The girl was kidnapped, see. She was actually the daughter of a very wealthy family, and the money was ransom money and—and—”
He laughed out loud. “And you were going to act as custodian of it, eh? Oh, my dear boy, I’m almost embarrassed for you.”
“It’s true, goddammit!” It had to be true. Something had to be true besides what—what was true. “That’s why the old woman didn’t spend any of the money, see? She found out it was marked, and—”
“But it wasn’t marked, Frank. I know it. You must know it also, unless you’re a much bigger fool than you appear.”
“Well-uh-well, then, she found out—she figured out—that the serial numbers had been recorded, and—”
“Oh? Then why, since it was unspendable, did she keep it all these years?”
He was playing with me, laughing at me, having a hell of a time for himself. “Yes, Frank? And why—if the authorities are on the lookout for those serials—why aren’t you in custody?”
“Well—” I had to go on. I was talking crap, making a horse’s ass of myself, but I had to go on. “Well, there’s bound to be something wrong with it. If there wasn’t, why didn’t she spend it? Why did she go on living like a goddamned hog when—”
“Because she was one, a grasping old sow.”
“You don’t know,” I said. “You don’t know that the money isn’t hot. She could have found out that—”
“Then, why, as I asked a moment ago, didn’t she destroy it?”
“Well—uh—well, because she couldn’t! Jesus, you’ve got a hun—a pretty good wad of dough, how can you destroy it? I couldn’t. She couldn’t. So she just hung onto it, figuring that maybe some day, somehow, she might be able to shove it—”
“Oh, Frank…”
“You don’t know,” I said. “Goddammit, you can’t be sure, Stape!”
“I not only can be, but I am. You see, I had some several dealings with the Farradays at this store I managed. Delivered merchandise to their mountain retreat at considerably above the market prices. There was nothing criminal about our association—nothing provably illegal, I should say—but the company became embarrassed to the point of transferring me to another town…However! Enough of personal history. My point is that the Farradays were strictly bank robbers.”
“But they might have pulled one kid—”
“Stop it! No more nonsense, Frank…How much did you get and where is it?”
I looked down at the floor. I looked up again, keeping my eyes away from the corner where the sample case was.
“She didn’t have as much as I thought. Just ten thousand dollars. I can—well, I got it out in the country, see—but I can bring it in the morning.”
“Ten thousand? You mean, a hundred thousand, I’m sure. You almost said it a moment ago.”
“All right,” I said. “So goddammit, there’s a hundred thousand. Come on with me and we’ll go and get it.”
; He hesitated. Then he nodded, smiling faintly. “Very well, Frank, but perhaps I should tell you something first. I left a letter with the night clerk at my hotel—a very reliable man, incidentally. He’s instructed to mail it if I fail to return by midnight.”
His smile spread, and he laughed out loud again.
I thought, It can’t be like this…And I guess I must have said it.
“But it is, Frank; it is like that. And now you will produce the money. Immediately!”
I got up. I brought the case over to the coffee table and snapped it open. I started to reach in for the satchel, digging it out from under the samples, and he brushed my hands away and grabbed it himself.
He opened it. He made a funny purring sound.
“Mmmm. Wonderful…I hope you won’t think I’m greedy if I don’t offer to share with you?”
“You’ve got to,” I said. I kept saying it. “You got to, Stape. A—a few grand, well, one grand. Something! Anything! I ki—I did it all, and—”
“So sorry.” He shook his head. “But I’ll be happy to give you a word of wisdom. You have no problems which money will solve.”
“You son-of-a-bitch,” I said.
“You really don’t, Frank. You’d be just as miserable with the money as without it…Well, much as I hate to leave such pleasant company…”
He buttoned his coat, and stood up. He tucked the money satchel under his arm.
“I want that silverware contract back,” I said. “By God, you’ll never be able to hold that over me.”
“The sil—oh, yes, to be sure. And very shrewd of you. You can pick it up in the morning, get your wages to date at the same time.”
“My wages,” I said.
“Well? No more questions? You’re not wondering why I delayed calling you to account until tonight?”
“Get out,” I said.
“The girl, dear boy: the clinching bit of proof. I didn’t really need it, but—”