by Jim Thompson
Furiously, he reached over the seat and snatched up another bottle of beer. The cap grated against his teeth, popped loose, and he spat it out and drank.
He coughed, leaning back in the seat, and the old joviality came back into his voice. A little strained, but nonetheless there.
“Aaahh, kid. This is no way for pals to talk to each other, and I’ve always been your pal, ain’t I? Always friendly and easy to get along with, and tossing the dough around. I liked you, see? I felt like you were my kind of people and I know you felt the same way about me. Why, who did you come to this morning when you were in a real jam? Why, you came to me, didn’t you, and I didn’t hesitate a minute, did I? I had plenty big worries of my own, but I just said, Why, sure, Dusty. Just leave it to me and I’ll take care of it. Ain’t that right, now?”
“That’s right,” Dusty murmured.
“And I didn’t know what I was getting into, didn’t I? I didn’t have the slightest idea that it was going to work out so’s I could put the squeeze—ask you to do me a favor. Help me out and put yourself on easy street at the same time. I didn’t have any idea it was going to be that way. All I knew was—that you were a pal, and I was ready to knock myself out to give you a hand…”
His voice droned on earnestly…pals…favors…give you a hand…didn’t know. And Dusty nodded earnestly. Fighting to keep his sudden excitement from showing in his face.
Suppose Tug had known. Suppose he had arranged the whole thing! It made sense, didn’t it? It made sense to a degree that no other explanation could approach. It explained things that could be explained in no other way.
Bascom. Why had he allowed Marcia Hillis to register—a woman alone, arriving late at night? Why, because Tug had told him to and he had been afraid to refuse. And the ten-dollar room? Why, the answer to that was beautifully simple, too. There were only a few such rooms in the hotel, and one of them was on Tug’s floor. Without arousing Dusty’s suspicions, she had been put right where Tug wanted her—and wanted him—when she sprang the trap. The circumstance would practically impel his appeal to the gangster. His old pal, Tug, would be right there at hand, and he would run to him automatically.
The kidnaping. The “kidnaping.” And he had been afraid that they wouldn’t get away with it—justifiably afraid. For they wouldn’t have got away with the real thing. They wouldn’t even have attempted the real thing. It was all an act, part of the scheme to make him vulnerable to Tug’s demands.
There were a few loose ends to the theory, but on the whole it made a very neat package. And relatively, at least, it was as comfortable as it was plausible. If Marcia Hillis was working with Tug, then naturally she was in no danger. If she worked with Tug, then she was attainable by him, Dusty. Not through money alone, of course. Despite the part she had played, or appeared to have played, he didn’t believe that she could be influenced very far or very long by money alone. But certainly, with a woman like that, money would be an essential. She would expect it, take it for granted. And with Tug’s help, by helping Tug with his scheme, whatever that scheme was…
“Just a minute, kid.” Tug leaned over him, flipped open the door of the glove compartment. “I know you maybe think I’m giving you a snow job about that babe, so take a gander at this.”
He drew it out of the compartment, a crumpled eight-by-ten oblong of glossy cardboard. He smoothed it out carelessly and handed it to the bellboy, and Dusty’s breath sucked in with a gasp. It was her picture, a theatrical shot, with her name written along the bottom in white ink. She was posed against a background of artificial palms; she lay, smiling, along the sloping trunk of one. A wisp of some thinly leafed vine was between her thighs. Her hands, fingers spread in a revealing lattice, lay over her breasts. Otherwise she was nude.
“Well, kid”—Tug took the picture from his hands and crammed it back into the compartment—” she’s just what I said, huh? I wasn’t lying, was I?”
Dusty shook his head. So she was an entertainer, or had been one. That still didn’t prove that she wasn’t working with Tug.
“A lot of woman, huh, Dusty?” Tug smacked his lips. “You ever see anything like her in your life?”
“No. I mean not quite, I guess,” Dusty said.
“But she ain’t got a bit more on the ball than you, Dusty. For a man, you’ve got just as much as she has. All the looks and the class that she has, and then some.”
“And you really think”—Dusty cleared his throat—“you really think that she would—that she might—”
“That she’d go for you? If you were in the chips? I’ll tell you what I think, kid.” Tug tapped him solemnly on the knee. “I’d guarantee it, know what I mean? Yes, sir, I’d guarantee she would.”
Dusty hesitated. It was all wrong. He was all mixed up. Tug had aroused first one instinct, then another; played upon one after another. Self-preservation, avarice, fear for her, outright desire. He had offered too much, too eagerly; threatened too much. And the end result was confusion, or, more accurately, the canceling out of everything he had said.
She was in no danger, Dusty guessed. He guessed that he was in none—none that he could not escape from with a little fast thinking. At this point, he could still pull out with no harm to anyone but Tug. And, yet…
Well, he was only guessing, wasn’t he? He might be figuring the thing wrong, and if he was she’d be lost to him. Dead. And if he was right, she would still be lost to him. He would have to go on as he was now, barely getting by from one day to the next. Trudging through a gray emptiness that grew emptier and grayer with every step.
He shivered innwardly; he couldn’t stand it, even the thought of it. But could he—could he, on the other hand, accept the sinister alternative? Could he adopt a course which must certainly run counter to all the plans and preparations of years?
His voice faltered. “I don’t know, Tug. It seems kind of crazy that I should even be thinking about…well, what we’ve been talking about. You see, I’ve always wanted to be a doctor, my father and mother wanted me to be one. I was just working at the hotel—temporarily until—”
“Yeah?” Tug chuckled softly. “Who you trying to kid, kid? You’re there at the hotel because the easy money’s there, and you’re an easy money guy. I know, see? I can spot ’em a mile off. Maybe you think different, but I know. You wouldn’t go back to school if you was paid to.”
“But I—”
“We’ve talked enough, Dusty. A lot longer than I figured on talking to you. But maybe I ought to tell you one thing more. Them boys of mine are pretty jumpy. They’re pretty leery of you, kid. If they got the notion that you might jump the wrong way, I don’t know as I could hold ’em in line.”
Tug nodded at him grimly, and abruptly the doubts and confusion were dispelled from Dusty’s mind. He didn’t know Tug’s hoods, as he knew Tug. He had never been friendly with them. To them he would just be a stumbling block, a guy who’d made trouble and might make more. And what they might do, would do, was reasonably easy to predict.
“…won’t be around much longer, y’know, kid. They’ll be on their own. So what’s it going to be?”
What was it going to be? What could it be? The choice was not his.
“All right,” he said. “All right, Tug. What do you want me to do?”
And Tug told him.
10
As the body has its limits to suffer, so is the mind limited to shock. One can be startled just so much, alarmed just so much, and then there can be no more. The wheel of emotions becomes stalled on dead-center. And instead of turmoil there is calm.
So with Dusty. In little more than an hour a whole way of life had been jerked from beneath him and a new one proffered. He had been pushed to the outermost boundaries of shock; now he answered Tug quietly:
“It can’t be done, Tug. Those deposit boxes are theft proof. It takes two keys for each one, the hotel’s and the depositor’s, and even if you could get them both…”
“Yeah? Go on, kid.”
“Ther
e’s a box for each room. It would take all night to unlock them all. And you wouldn’t know whether they were worth robbing unless you did open them. I couldn’t tell you. Practically all the deposits are made in the day time and—”
“Uh-huh, sure,” Tug interrupted. “I know all that. Maybe I’d better lay it on the line for you, huh?”
“Maybe you’d better.”
“The racing season starts the week after next. All the big bookies will drift in next week. They’ll want to look over the track, study the early workouts, and so on. They’ll be loaded with cash. There’s no damned guess work about it, see? They’ll have the dough, and with the hours they keep, they’ll have to bank with the hotel. So we make ’em for their keys, say, six or seven of the biggest operators, and we hit the jackpot. We knock down a couple hundred grand, maybe a quarter of a million, in five minutes.”
“Yes, but…” Dusty licked his lips. “How do you mean, make ’em for their keys? You mean you’d—you’d—”
“Naah.” Tug nudged him jovially. “Nothing like it, kid. I’ll just throw a little party for ’em up in my suite; hell, they’ve been to plenty of my parties in the past. Then, me and the boys will give ’em a little surprise. Knock them out and hogtie them, y’know. Take ’em out of circulation for a while.”
“Well…” Dusty hesitated. “But that still leaves the hotel keys. Bascom”—he paused again. “God, I can’t do that, Tug! Bascom will be right there; and there’s no way I could use the keys without—”
“Hold it. Hold it!” said Tug. “You ain’t going to use them. Bascom is. All you’re going to do is take the dough and lock it up in the checkroom. Put it in a satchel I’ll give you and check it, just like it was a regular piece of baggage. I—”
“But Bascom! What about him?”
“—don’t want it with me, see, in case of a foul-up. My boys might get a little excited, know what I mean? They might get to quarreling over the split. So you check it and tear up the stub—memorize the number first, of course—and I’ll get in touch with you as soon as the heat dies down.”
“Yes, but—”
“I’ll split the take with you, kid. A full half for you and the other for me and the boys. You hang on to yours a few months, and then you get yourself fired, and—”
“I asked you about Bascom!” Dusty insisted. “Now, what about him?”
Tug’s eyes shifted for a moment. He looked out into the brilliant sunlight, gaze narrowed musingly, and then he again looked at Dusty.
“All right, kid. I guess I’d better spread it all out. But you don’t know from nothing, see? You don’t know nothing about Bascom. He don’t know that you and me got a deal.”
“I understand.”
“One of my connections tipped me off to Bascom three-four months ago. He’s on the lam from a pen back east, crashed out with twenty years to serve of a thirty-year bank-robber rap. One word from me, and he’ll be back doing time again.”
“Well…oh,” said Dusty, and he nodded, remembering.
“They asked you about it, huh?” Tug grinned out of the corner of his mouth. “You know why I wrote that letter to the management, kid? Because of the way he was treating you. Yeah, I noticed it all right—I notice plenty. You did everything you could to get along with him, and all he could do was make it tough for you. I spoke to him, and he covered up while I was around. But I knew he hadn’t stopped. So I figured I’d better give him a real jolt.”
“Well,” Dusty said, “that was, uh, certainly nice of you. But I still—”
“I know. I know just what you’re going to say. You’re going to say that Bascom can’t play ball on this deal. If he does, he’ll do his twenty years and maybe twenty more on top of it. But here’s the angle, see? He plays, but it don’t look like he does. He has a gun drawn on him and he loses his nerve, acts like a goddamned dope instead of—”
“He’ll never get away with it.” Dusty shook his head. “He just can’t, Tug! A man on the outside of the cashier’s cage couldn’t cover a man on the inside with a gun. The window opening is too small. The cashier, the man on the inside, could just drop down to the floor or move a little to one side and he’d be out of range.”
“He could if he thought fast enough. If he wasn’t scared out of his pants.”
“You can’t make it look good,” Dusty said doggedly. “They’re bound to know that it was an inside job.”
“Huh-uh. Maybe they think it is but they can’t prove it. All they can prove is that Bascom ain’t much of a hero, that he didn’t use good judgment.”
“I can’t see it,” Dusty frowned. “They’ll never—I mean, I don’t think they’ll ever believe he was held up. Not from the outside. Now if there was a guy on the inside—one of the lobby porters, say—it would be different. He could be working in there and suddenly stick a gun in Bascom’s ribs, and Bascom would have to come across. He couldn’t get away, and—and—”
He swallowed, leaving the sentence unfinished. There was a long moment of silence, with Tug staring at him steadily, and then he found his voice again.
“Bascom. He’s willing a take that kind of chance?”
“It’s a chance,” Tug shrugged. “If he don’t take it, he doesn’t have any chance at all. I see that he goes back to the pen.”
“Well…” Dusty said. “And what about me? Where am I supposed to be while all this is going on?”
“Right there in the cashier’s cage with him. Helping him with the work like you always are around two-thirty in the morning. You’ve got to be there, see? That money satchel will be too big to squeeze through the window, and there won’t be time to chase all the way around the counter. You’ll have to grab it and get rid of it fast.”
“But that leaves me on the spot, too! If I’m right there—”
“How does it? You’re just a bellboy; Bascom’s your boss. You’re supposed to try to stop him, risk getting yourself killed, if he’s willing to open the boxes? Huh-uh, they couldn’t expect it of you, kid. They’d think you was a damned fool if you tried it.”
“Well,” Dusty nodded, “maybe. I suppose you’re right about that. But—well, what about the other? When I take the satchel and check it? You said that Bascom wasn’t supposed to know anything about me, that I was in on the deal. But—”
“He don’t. He won’t. And you don’t know anything, get me? Nothing about him, and nothing about what’s coming off.”
“But if I take the money right in front of him—”
“Kid,” Tug sighed. “Dusty, boy. Jesus Christ, ain’t there any goddamned little thing you can leave to me? You think I just dreamed up this caper five minutes ago?”
“No. But—”
“Bascom won’t see you! When he gets back up near the window I grab him by the tie and slug him. Knock him unconscious. He’ll hold still for it, see; it helps to make the thing look good. I knock him out cold, and he’ll still be out when you get back from checking the dough and lock yourself into the cage again. So far as anyone knows you never left the cage.”
“But if the satchel won’t go through the window opening, he’s bound to—”
“Goddammit, I—! It goes through when it’s empty, don’t it? It’s got to, don’t it? So on the return trip, I maybe take out part of the dough. Stuff it into my pocket or down the front of my shirt.”
Glaring, his face mottled with irritation, Tug snatched another bottle from the pail. He almost slammed the cap against his teeth, jerked it with a grunt of pain. And drank. He did not lower the bottle until it was emptied.
“Sorry, kid”—he forced an apologetic laugh. “I don’t blame you for wanting to know the score, of course. But, Jesus, every damned little thing! It kind of sounds like you thought I was a boob. Like maybe you didn’t trust me.”
“No,” Dusty said hastily. “No, I don’t feel that way. It’s just—well, mixed up. There’s so many things that might go wrong, and if anything does—”
“Nothing will.” Tug dropped a friendl
y hand to his shoulder. “Let me tell you something, Dusty. It always seems that way when a guy’s going on a caper. Always, particularly if it’s his first one. He gets to thinking that everyone knows what he knows, that they see all the little holes he sees and that they’re liable to reach through and grab him. But it ain’t that way, y’understand! He’s the guy with the answers, the only guy. The others—they don’t see nothing or know nothing, or if they do it don’t mean nothing to ’em.”
Dusty nodded reluctantly. He hadn’t said what he wanted to, he hadn’t got to the heart of his concern, and he couldn’t know. A gate had closed in his mind, blocking the words, cutting off the half-formed thought that lay behind them.
“Look at it this way, kid…I’m not taking the dough with me, am I? You know I’m not just giving you a line about that?”
Yes—Dusty’s lips moved wordlessly—he was quite sure of that. Positive of it.
“It’ll be just like I said. You’ll check the dough, and tear up the stub. You’ll have to do it, see? The cops are going to talk to you, and they just accidentally might frisk you. Anyway, it just ain’t a good thing to have around. There’s too damned many things that could happen to it.”
I know—Dusty’s lips moved again. Memorize the number. Tear up the stub. Yes, that was the way it would have to be.
“Well, there you are, kid. There’s only one way in the world I can get to that dough, get my share of it. And that’s through you. So I can’t let anything happen to you, can I? I’ve got to be sure that everything’s going to go smooth, and that you’ll come through without a rumble. I got to, see? I’ve got to be sure, and I am sure. Why, hell, I’d be crazy to pull the deal otherwise, now wouldn’t I?”
Dusty nodded. He agreed with that, also. For his own sake, Tug would have to be positive of his safety. But, still…
He couldn’t say it. That tiny gate in his mind had closed tightly, imprisoning, with similar shoddy and hideous prisoners, the thought that he could not yet consciously accept.
“That’s it, Dusty. That’s all of it. You play it absolutely safe, and you get a cool hundred grand for your share. At least a hundred grand. Hell”—Tug nudged him, grinning. “I’ll even take care of the babe’s ten g’s out of my end.”