by Jim Thompson
“I understand,” I said.
“In that case—” He stood up. “How about another drink before you leave?”
“I guess not,” I said. “I mean, no, thanks, sir.”
He walked out to the car with Fruit Jar and me, walked between us with an arm around each of our shoulders. He shook hands with both of us, and stood at the side of the car talking a moment.
“A beautiful evening,” he said, breathing in deep. “Smell that air, Charlie? I’ll bet Arizona doesn’t have anything finer than that.”
“No, sir,” I said.
“I know. There’s no place like Arizona, is there? Well—” He gave Fruit Jar a playful punch on the arm. “Why don’t I see more of you these days, hey? Not for business. Just a little quiet get-together?”
“Well, say”—Fruit Jar began to puff up—“just say the word, and—”
“We’ll make it Sunday…No, no I’ll come to see you.” He stepped back from the car beaming. “Sunday afternoon, say. I’ll look forward to it—”
Fruit Jar drove away, so swelled up that he could hardly sit behind the wheel. And I wanted to burst out laughing. Or crying. Because he was a no-good son-of-a-bitch, but I felt sorry for him.
“I guess you got told off,” he said, flicking a glance at me. “You’re lucky he didn’t do nothin’ but eat you out.”
“He told me off,” I said. “I’m lucky.”
“You think me’n him ain’t like that? You think he didn’t mean that about coming to see me?”
I shook my head. The Man would see him all right. He’d have a quiet get-together with him Sunday afternoon.
They’d have Fruit Jar embalmed by that time.
9
The trouble with killing is that it’s so easy. You get to where you almost do it without thinking. You do it instead of thinking.
…I told Fruit Jar that I’d take the subway into town, and he drove me over near Queens Plaza. I had him pull up there in the shadows of the elevated, and I said. “I’m sorry as hell, Fruit Jar. Will you accept an apology?” And he was feeling good, so he stuck out his hand and said, “Sure, kid. Long as you put it that way, I—”
I jammed his right hand between my knees. I gripped the fingers of his left hand, bending them back, and I snapped the knife open.
“J-Jesus—” His eyes got wider and wider, and his mouth hung open like the mouth of a sack, and the slobber ran down his chin, thick and shiny. “W-whatcha d-doin’…whatcha…aaahhhhh…”
I gave it to him in the neck. I damned near carved his Adam’s apple out. I took the big silk handkerchief out of his breast pocket, wiped my hands and the knife, and put the knife in his pocket. (That would give them something to think about.) Then I shoved him down on the floor of the car, and caught the train into town.
And I hadn’t ridden to the next station before I saw what a fool I’d been.
Fruit Jar…He could have told me. I could have made him tell me—the thing that might mean the difference between my living and dying. And now he couldn’t tell me.
His brother…HIS BROTHER HELL! I almost yelled it out; I think I did say it. But I was up in the front of the car by myself, and no one noticed. People hardly ever notice me. And maybe that’s the reason I’m…
His brother…Detroit, 1942…not sure of the details…Not sure! The Man wasn’t sure! Christ Almighty. As if he’d have hauled Fruit Jar into this deal without knowing every damned last thing there was to know about him!
He’d hauled him in. Fruit Jar had been sitting pretty with no heat on him and a swell income, and The Man had hauled him in on something that could be very hot. He couldn’t say no to The Man. He couldn’t even let on that he didn’t like it. But he didn’t like it; he was sore as hell. And since he couldn’t take it out on The Man, he’d taken it out on me.
That was the trouble. Just what I’d thought it was all along. It must have been that…I guessed.
His brother. Even if he’d had a brother, even if he’d had fifty-five brothers and I’d killed them all, he wouldn’t have done anything about it. Not, anyway, until after I’d done my job. I should have known that. I did know it when I stopped to think. But The Man had shot me the line fast, and I wasn’t thinking. Why think when it’s so easy to kill?
The Man wanted me to believe that Fruit Jar had come down to Peardale that day on his own. He had to make me think that, or I’d think of another reason for Fruit Jar being there…the real reason. Because he’d been sent. It might blow the job if I knew that. I might blow it and get away…instead of getting what a guy always got for blowing or running out.
Fruit Jar wasn’t very bright. He hadn’t needed to be very bright for the job The Man had sent him to do—to deliver some dough, maybe, or maybe to throw in a good chill as the clincher to a deal. But he hadn’t been even that bright. He’d missed connections somehow with the party he was supposed to see, and instead of beating it and trying again later he’d screwed around waiting. He’d gone out of his way to needle me.
I’d scratched him up with the knife, and he’d been a little worried when he took off for the city. He had a pretty good idea that he’d pulled a boner. And he should have known what The Man was like—when The Man was really sore at you, you never knew it—but he wasn’t bright, like I’ve said, and…
Or was it that way? Was I knocking myself out over nothing? Had The Man given me the straight dope?
He might have. A guy like me—well, he gets so used to looking around corners that he can’t see in a straight line. The more true a thing is, the less he can believe it. The Man could have leveled with me. I was damned sure he hadn’t, but he could have. He had—he hadn’t. He hadn’t—he had.
I didn’t know. I couldn’t be sure. And it wasn’t The Man’s fault and it wasn’t Fruit Jar’s. There was just one guy to blame, a stupid, dried-up jerk named Charles Bigger.
Big shot…Bright boy…
I could feel it. The hard glaze spreading over my eyes. I could feel my heart pounding—pounding like someone pounding on a door. Pounding like a scared kid locked in a closet. I could feel my lungs drawing up like fists, tight and hard and bloodless, forcing the blood up into my brain.
There was a crowd of people waiting to get on the train at Times Square. I went through them. I walked right through them. Giving it to them in the ribs and insteps. And no one said anything, so maybe they sensed what was in me and knew they were lucky. Because they were lucky.
There was a woman getting on, and I gave it to her in the breasts with my elbow, so hard she almost dropped the baby she was carrying. And she was lucky, too, but maybe the baby wasn’t. Maybe it would have been better off down under the wheels. Everything ended.
Why not? Tell me why not.
I walked back to Forty-seventh Street, and somewhere along the way I bought a couple of newspapers. I rolled them up tight under my arm, and their hardness felt good to me. I rolled them tighter, and slapped them against the palm of my hand. And that felt good, too. I walked along, swinging them against my hand, swinging them like a club, the motions getting shorter and shorter, jerkier and jerkier, and…
“Temper, temper—”
Who was it that’d said that?…I grinned and it made my mouth hurt, and the hurt felt good…“Temper, temper—”
Sure. I knew. Have to watch the temper-temper. So I’d watch it. I liked to watch it. There was only one thing I’d like better…but everyone saw how lucky they were. And in a minute or two I’d be alone in my room. And it would be all right then.
I walked up the two flights of stairs. There was only one elevator and it was crowded, and I had enough sense to know that I’d better not get on it.
I climbed the stairs to the third floor, and walked down the corridor to the last room on the right. And I leaned against it a moment, panting and shaking. I leaned there, quivering like I’d been through a battle, and…
And I heard it. Heard the splashing and humming.
The quivering and the panting stop
ped. I turned the door knob. It was unlocked.
I stood in the doorway of the bathroom looking at her.
She was scooted down in the tub of suds, one arm raised up so she could soap it under the pit. She saw me, and she dropped the washcloth and let out a little squeal.
“C-carl, honey! You scared me to death.”
“What are you doing here?” I said.
“Why”—she tilted her head to one side, smiling at me lazily—“you don’t recognize Mrs. Jack Smith?”
“What are you doing here?”
“Don’t speak to me that way, Carl! After all—”
“What are you doing here?”
The smile began to shrink, pull in around the edges. “Don’t be mad, honey. I—I—don’t look at me like that. I know I was supposed to come in tomorrow, but—”
“Get out of there,” I said.
“But you don’t understand, honey! You see, sis and her boy friend drove out to Peardale, a-and I—it was perfectly n-natural for me to r-ride back to the city with them—No one could think there was anything w-wrong with—”
I didn’t hear what she said. I didn’t want to. I heard but I made myself not hear. I didn’t want any explanations. I didn’t want it to be all right. I was scared sick, so damned sick, and I was already sliding into Fruit Jar’s shoes. And I couldn’t pull back, I couldn’t run. They were all watching and waiting, looking for the chance to trip me up.
All I could do was kill.
“Get out of there,” I said.
I was slapping the newspapers into my palm. “Get—slap—out—slap—of there—slap, slap, Get—slap…”
Her face was as white as the suds, but she had guts. She forced the smile back, tilted her head again. “Now, honey. With you standing there? Why don’t you go on and get in bed, and I’ll—”
“Get-slap-out—slap—of there—slap, slap…”
“P-please, honey. I’m s-sorry if—I’ll be sweet to you, honey. It’s been more than a year, and h-honey you don’t know—Y-you don’t know how s-sweet—all the things I’ll—”
She stopped talking. I had my hand knotted in her hair, and I was pulling her up out of the water. And she didn’t try to pull away. She came up slowly, her neck, her breasts, the soapsuds sliding away from them like they didn’t want to let go.
She stood up.
She stepped out of the tub.
She stood there on the bathmat, fighting with everything she had to fight with—offering it all to me. And she saw it wasn’t enough. She knew it before I knew it myself.
She raised her arms very slowly—so slowly that they hardly seemed to move—and wrapped them around her head.
She whispered, “N-not in the face, Carl. J-just don’t hit me in the—”
I flicked the newspapers across her stomach. Lightly. I flicked them across her breasts. I drew them back over my shoulder and—and held them there. Giving her a chance to yell or try to duck. Hoping she’d try it…and stop being lucky.
There were too many lucky people in the world.
“You’re a pretty good actress,” I said. “Tell me you’re not an actress. Tell me you haven’t been leading me on, acting hardboiled and easy-to-get so you could screw me up. Go on, tell me. Call me a liar.”
She didn’t say anything. She didn’t even move.
I let the newspapers drop from my hand. I stumbled forward, and sat down on the toilet stool, and made myself start laughing. I whooped with laughter, I whooped and choked and sputtered, rocking back and forth on the stool. And it was as though a river were washing through me, washing away all the fear and craziness and worry. Leaving me clean and warm and relaxed.
It had always been that way. Once I could start laughing I was all right.
Then, I heard her snicker, and a moment later that husky saloon-at-midnight laugh. And she hunkered down in front of me, laughing, burying her head in my lap.
“Y-you crazy tough little bastard, you! You’ve taken ten years off my life.”
“So now you’re sixteen,” I said. “I’m going to count on it.”
“Crazy! What in the name of God got into you, anyway?” She raised her head, laughing, but looking a little worried. “It was all right to come in, wasn’t it, as long as sis and—”
“Sure, it was all right,” I said. “It was swell. I’m tickled to death you’re here. I’ve just had a hell of a hard day and I wasn’t expecting you, and—Let it go at that. Let me up off this toilet before I fall in.”
“Yeah, but, honey—”
I tilted her chin up with my fist. “Yeah? We leave it at that or not?”
“Well—” She hesitated; and then she nodded quickly and jumped up. “Stinker! Toughie! Come on and I’ll give you a drink.”
She had a pint of whiskey in her overnight bag. She opened it after she’d slipped into her nightgown, and we sat cross-legged on the bed together, drinking and smoking and talking. There weren’t many preliminaries to go through. I’d broken the ice but good there in the bathroom. She knew who I was now, if she hadn’t had a damned good idea before. She knew why I was in Peardale. She knew why I’d had her come into the city. And it was okay with her.
“Little Bigger,” she said, her eyes shining at me. “Little Bigger. Why, my God, honey, I’ve been hearing about you ever—”
“Okay,” I said, “so I’m famous. Now just wipe it out of your head, and leave it wiped out.”
“Sure, honey. Carl.”
“I don’t know how I’ll do it. We’ll have to work that out. Now, about the dough—”
She was smart there. She might have said fifteen or twenty grand. And I might have said yes. And then I might have thought, I might have passed the word along: The dame’s hungry; maybe we’d better keep her quiet…
“Aw, honey—” She made a little face. “Let’s not talk about it like I was doing it for—for that. We’ll be together, won’t we? Afterwards? And I know you’re not the kind to be stingy.”
“It’ll be a long time afterwards,” I said. “I’ll have to stay there at least until summer. You can leave any time, of course, but I couldn’t get together with you before summer.”
“I can wait. Where would we go, honey? I mean after—”
“We’ll work it out. That’s no problem. You got money, there’s always some place to go. Hell, we could live here or anywhere after a couple of years, when things cool off enough.”
“You won’t…You don’t think I’m awful, do you, Carl?”
“How do I know? I haven’t had you yet.”
“You know what I mean, honey…You won’t think I’d—I-d do the same thing to…You won’t be afraid of me, honey? You won’t think you have to—”
I tamped out my cigarette.
“Listen to me,” I said. “Listening? Then get this. If I was afraid of you you wouldn’t be here. Know what I mean?”
She nodded. “I know what you mean.”
“Carl, honey…” That husky voice; it was like having cream poured over you. “Aren’t you—?”
“Aren’t I what?”
She gestured toward the light.
10
That next week is hard to tell about. So much happened. So many things that I couldn’t understand—or, that I was afraid to understand. So many things that kept me worried and on edge or scared the living hell out of me.
I had time. I knew I had to take time. The Man didn’t want the job done for at least ten weeks, so I should have been able to get my bearings and plan and take things kind of easy. But after that first week—hell, before the week was halfway over—I had an idea that what I and The Man wanted didn’t make any difference.
This might be the first week, but I had a damned good idea that it wasn’t far from the last one.
That was the week that Kendall really began to show his hand…At least, it seemed he was showing it.
That was the week that Jake tried to frame me.
It was the week he tried to kill me.
It was the
week Fay and I began brawling.
It was the week Ruthie…
Jesus! Jesus God, that week! Even now—and what do I have to worry about now?—it rips the guts out of me to think about it.
But let’s take things in order. Let’s go back to the Friday before the week began, to Fay and me at the hotel.
…She’s said it had been over a year since you know what, and I kind of think it must have been an understatement.
And, then, finally, she gave me a long good-night kiss, about fifty kisses rolled into one, and turned on her side. And a minute later she began to snore.
It wasn’t a real snore, one of the buzzsaw variety. It was as though there was some small obstruction in her nose where the moisture kept gathering and cutting loose in a little pop-crack on about every tenth breath.
I lay there, stiff and tense, counting her breaths, wishing by God that it was a faucet, wanting to grab her by the nose and twist it off. I’d lie there counting her breaths, getting set for the little pop-crack that stabbed through me like a hot needle. And just when I had the damned thing about timed, she broke the rhythm on me. She started pop-cracking on a seven count, then a nine, and finally a twelve.
It went up from there to a point where she was taking twenty breaths before it came, and finally—God, it seemed like about forty-eight hours later!—finally it stopped.
Maybe you’ve slept with someone like that; tried to sleep. One of those people who can’t get into dreamland good unless they’re lying all over you. Well, she was that way. And now that she’d got that goddamned pop-cracking out of her system, she started in on the other, scrounging around in the bed. It was hell.
I tried to make myself sleep; but it was no dice. I got to thinking about a guy I’d met that time I skipped out of New York. I couldn’t sleep, so I began thinking.
I’d been afraid to show myself on a train or bus or plane, so I’d started hitchhiking up toward Connecticut. I planned on getting up near the Canadian border, where I could jump across fast if I had to, and swinging west from there. Well, this guy picked me up, and he had a good car, and I knew he must have dough on him. But…well, it doesn’t make sense the way it turned out; he didn’t make sense, like you ordinarily think of a guy making it. Anyway…