Recoil

by Jim Thompson

  “Do you have to know that?” I said.

  “Got to know whether you’re worth killing. Whether you’re in a business, say, which would suffer from your permanent absence.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Heavy on the cuff to anyone? Anyone out real dough if you kick off?”

  “No.”

  “No dependent nor close relatives? No wife?”

  “No.”

  “But you think you may have been insured without your knowledge?”

  “I—yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I don’t actually think that I am,” I said. “I just thought that I might be.”

  He didn’t say anything for a minute or more. Finally, when I was beginning to think he’d dozed off, he spoke:

  “Went to a dentist one time to get a tooth pulled. Knew the one that needed pulling would hurt like hell, so I pointed out another one to him. Looks like you’re about as smart as I was.”

  I laughed. “I’m not deliberately lying to you, Eggleston. There are people who would be hurt pretty badly if they knew I’d made an inquiry like this. I can’t let them know that I have.”

  “So?”

  “About a month ago a certain party did me a very expensive favor. Since then I’ve received several others. I’d never met this party before, and I can’t think of any way I could provide a return on the investment. Unless I’ve been insured.”

  “Ask this party why he or she had done said favors?”

  “Not a straight question. The implication was that they were pure philanthropy. That doesn’t fit in with what I know about this party.”

  He sat motionless, silent, staring down at his hands.

  “I thought there might be some sort of underwriters’ bureau that could give you the information,” I said. “Without, of course, letting this party know that I’d asked.”

  “Um,” he said. “It’ll cost you twenty dollars, Mr. Cosgrove.”

  “That’s reasonable,” I said, and I took out a twenty and laid it on the desk.

  He lifted a foot slightly and dragged the bill under his heel.

  “You’re not insured, Mr. Cosgrove. Anything else?”

  “Now, look,” I said. “I paid for certain information—”

  “Which you received, on very good authority. I’ve done a great deal of insurance work. No one has taken out a policy on you—providing you’ve told me the truth.”

  “I’ve told it, but—”

  “For one party to insure another, he must have what is known as an insurable interest. He must present reasonably good evidence that he has little or nothing more to gain by the insured’s demise than he has by his continued existence. The insured’s death must represent a sentimental loss, as in the case of husband and wife, a monetary one, or both. No one, it would appear, has an insurable interest in you…”

  Apparently he had little to do but sleep, and insurance was a hobby of his. He continued to talk for almost fifteen minutes, scarcely moving or altering the deep, soft monotone; covering every phase of the business that might possibly concern me.

  At last he stopped, and I stood up.

  “By the way, Mr. Cosgrove…”

  “Yes?”

  “Anyone with the education which you ostensibly have should have known he wasn’t insured. Anyone who gets around at all would know it.”

  “Maybe I don’t get around very much,” I said.

  “My own thought.”

  “From what I knew,” I said, “I was pretty sure I wasn’t insured, but I thought things might have changed recently.”

  “Not that recently, Mr. Cosgrove. You’re still a young man. You couldn’t have been out of circulation very long.”

  “Good-bye,” I said.

  “Known the party about a month,” he droned. “Did you a very great favor. And you’re suspicious. Why don’t you remove yourself from this party’s vicinity? From the state, for that matter?”

  I stopped and turned. He nodded drowsily.

  “You can’t leave, can you? So. Yes. You can’t leave. I’m beginning to think you might have excellent grounds for your suspicions. Another twenty, please?”

  I went back to the desk and laid a second bill on it. He raked it under his heel.

  “How long were you in, Mr. Cosgrove?”

  “Fifteen years of ten to life.”

  “And you were unacquainted with the party who got your parole—bought it, shall we say?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So are you, Mr. Cosgrove. You have good reason for alarm. A pardon could have been obtained as cheaply and easily. With a pardon you could have gone away—far out of your benefactor’s periphery. He is not a philanthropist.”

  “Good-bye,” I said.

  “So.”

  He nodded and seemed to fall asleep, and I left.

  More information…which I didn’t know how to use.

  17

  One of the worst things that prison does to a man is imbue him with the feeling that he is always in the wrong: that others may rightfully do what they will with him, while the things he does, through error or otherwise, are wholly inexcusable.

  I felt that way about Doc, about the way he had seen Lila and me. I was certain by now that I was being forced to work against myself. I was sure that I owed him nothing, apologies included. Still, I did feel guilty. I did, and I couldn’t help it.

  I stayed away from the house until almost midnight that night, and got away early the next morning. By the evening of that day, some of my sense of guilt had worn off. I was still uneasy but I hoped, if he noticed the fact, he would attribute it to the business over the car.

  I brought the subject up as soon as he stepped inside my room.

  “Mmm,” he nodded, thoughtfully. “I should have known that Myrtle would read the legal papers.”

  “I appreciate it just the same,” I said.

  “Don’t mention it, Pat. We’ll try to do better next year.”

  He left after a quick drink with me. I flopped down on the bed, relieved, and hating myself for being relieved.

  Willie came in to remove my dinner dishes, and I tried to tell myself that it was he, and not Doc, who had looked in on Lila and me. He would have been in the house while Doc would have had no reason to be there.

  But I knew better than that. It had been Doc. He’d expected me to come there, because of the car. Probably he’d followed me from the sales lot. And when he’d seen Lila and me…

  Why hadn’t he reacted as he should, as the insanely jealous Doc I knew would have? Did he intend to settle with me later, when I was least expecting it? Or had he held off for purely practical reasons—because a blow-up would spoil the plan in which I played a part?

  It could be either way or both. And it could be—I sat up on the bed, suddenly—it could be that Doc actually didn’t care about his wife; that the jealousy was all an act!

  I got up and paced the floor, excited, almost seeing the answer to the riddle.

  It had been an act! Looking back now I could see the falsity of it; how badly it had been overplayed. Doc showing up, always at the most embarrassing moment. Lila haughtily dramatic, taunting him. Throwing whiskey in his face.

  It had been rotten acting, but I had been taken in by it. I had been so impressed that I was afraid Doc might drop my parole. I’d told Hardesty that, hinted that I might skip out, and immediately the funny business had stopped. They didn’t want me to leave. They’d wanted only to build Doc up in my mind as a certain type of person.

  It all added up. Hardesty had told Doc how I felt, and Doc had told Lila to leave me alone. He’d followed me to the house the day before to reassure me in case Lila fell down on the job. And when he saw Lila apparently was doing more than all right he’d gone quietly away again.

  But what about Hardesty? Why, when he so obviously distrusted and detested Doc, had he told him of my visit? He wanted me to share his distrust and hatred. He meant to work me up to the point where I
would. That was my answer: I was not yet, in his opinion, sufficiently worked up. I was not ready to be used. Until I was, he was chiefly interested in seeing that I did nothing which might cause me to be returned to Sandstone.

  Myrtle Briscoe—I stopped in my pacing and sat down again. Myrtle. She was using me to get Doc. I was a rope she was giving him with which to hang himself.

  And Doc…Doc had foreseen that she would know, and guessed that she would react as she had. He was tolling out rope of his own. He was certain he could tighten it before she could tighten hers.

  And Mrs. Luther? Was she working with one of the three or did she, too, have a plan?

  And Madeline…?

  No, not Madeline. I’d never had the slightest doubt about her. My instinct told me just one thing about her: that she was good and that she loved me. If I was wrong about that, then I was wrong about everything. And maybe I was.

  I didn’t know anything. All I had was guesses. Guesses which, when you probed them and tried to follow them out, became ridiculous.

  If Eggleston was wrong about the pardon, then most of my conjecturing collapsed. Doc might be my friend. It could be that he had become aware that we were being pressed toward a dangerous situation and that he intended to avoid it at all costs.

  Oh, hell, though. That couldn’t be right. It—

  I gave up. I undressed and got in bed. Yes, and I went to sleep. You can only think so much and I was far ahead of my quota for the day.

  The next day was the beginning of my second thirty-day period on parole. I called Myrtle Briscoe’s office from a drug store, and asked what time I should report. She told me curtly that I needn’t bother to come in—unless there was something I wanted to tell her.

  I said there wasn’t. She banged down the receiver.

  It wasn’t much after nine when I reached Madeline’s apartment, and she was still in bed. Instead of coming to the living room door, she stuck her head out the other one, the one to her bedroom.

  She closed it after me, gave me a fiercely affectionate hug and flung herself down on the bed again. She was wearing white sleeping shorts and a white sleeveless pullover.

  She sprawled out on the pillows, raised her legs straight in the air, and grinned at me impishly.

  “Guess I’ll just stay here all day,” she announced.

  “All alone?” I said.

  “Guess I won’t either.” She let her legs down, sat up and yawned. “So-oo tired. Make me some coffee, huh, honey?”

  “All right,” I said.

  “I’ll get into something while you’re gone. So you won’t be thinking evil thoughts.”

  I told her I never had such things, and went on back to the kitchen.

  I put a pot of coffee on the stove, and slipped a couple of pieces of bread into the toaster. While they were getting ready, I put a napkin on a tray, laid out marmalade and butter, and sliced an orange. The whole business didn’t take more than five minutes. I was pretty practiced in getting her breakfast.

  I picked up the tray and started for the bedroom. And, then, I halted there in the kitchen door and stood staring. The bedroom door was still open, as I had left it, and I could see her almost as plainly as though I’d been in the room with her. And what I saw sent a cold chill of shock along my spine.

  The sleeping trunks and pullover lay on the floor at her feet. She’d got into a pair of thin white panties, and her hands were behind her, working at the clasp of her brassiere. She was completely lost in thought. She wasn’t thinking about dressing, but about something—someone—and those thoughts were anything but pleasant.

  Always before, even when she was serious, she’d appeared gay, good humored, light hearted. I’d never seen her any other way. She’d never let me see her any other way. And now not a vestige of that gaiety and good humor remained. I could hardly believe it was the same girl, the same woman—this woman whose face was a hideous and sinister mask of hatred.

  I stepped back into the kitchen, and waited a minute or two. Then I began to whistle and started for the bedroom again.

  “Well,” she said, as I put the tray down on a reading stand. “What took you so long?”

  “Oh, I took my time,” I said, carelessly. “I didn’t want to catch you undressed.”

  “No-o!” she said. “I’m sure you wouldn’t want to do that.”

  I poured coffee and sat down on the bed with her. She’d put on a pair of slacks and a sweater and was propped up on the pillows, her knees drawn up.

  “Good,” she said, nibbling on an orange slice. “Very good.”

  For the first time since I had met her, I found it difficult to talk. To respond to her aimless, impish chatter. It was grotesque in the light of what I had just seen. I had the impression of being drawn into a game while a flood tide rose around my neck.

  She finished eating, and I lighted a cigarette for her. My hand trembled a little as I held out the match, and she steadied it with her own hand.

  “What’s the matter with you this morning, Pat?”

  “Matter?”

  She didn’t say anything. She merely lay back, waiting, her brown eyes inscrutable.

  “I’ve been a little worried,” I said. “Maybe that’s it.”

  “Worried about what?”

  “About what’s going to happen to me. About what is happening to me.”

  “Is?”

  “Yes,” I said, and I told her about the car and my talk with Myrtle Briscoe. At some point in the telling, she suddenly sat up and gripped my fingers.

  “Pat,” she said. “Had you thought about telling Myrtle?”

  “Yes,” I said, looking squarely at her. “I’ve thought about telling her everything. About everyone and everything. It might send me back to Sandstone, but I think I’d have plenty of company on the trip.”

  “You might”—she released my fingers—“Why don’t you do it?”

  Her voice was flat, her gaze as steady as mine. I’d made a threat and what it had got me I didn’t know. Advice—or another threat.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “You’re the only person I know to turn to, and turning to you doesn’t seem to do any good. There’s no reason why it should, of course, why you should help me—”

  “Do you really believe that, Pat?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “what to believe.”

  “No,” she nodded, “and there’s your answer to everything. You don’t see anyone’s problems but your own. You don’t trust anyone but yourself. The fact that I won’t tell you everything I know is interpreted to mean that I’m against you. That’s all you can see.”

  “I don’t think that,” I said.

  “Yes, you do, Pat. And you’re wrong in doing it. I haven’t told you any more than I have because it isn’t a good thing for you to know it. You’d blunder into something that you’re not big enough to handle.”

  “I’m supposed to sit still and do nothing?”

  “That’s about it.” Her face softened. “That has to be it for the present, honey. Whenever there’s anything to be done, I’ll let you know.”

  She squeezed my hand, and then she sat up and put her arms around me. She drew me down to the pillows, her cheek against mine, her lips moving against my ear.

  “Poor red-haired Pat,” she whispered. “He mustn’t worry any more. In just a little while now…all his troubles will be over.”

  18

  The trap was snapping shut, I could feel it; a sensation of things rushing in on me from every side.

  On Monday morning I stopped by the capitol to leave a bunch of the survey forms for Rita Kennedy. They were meaningless, of course, but appearances had to be kept up. Firmly entrenched as the highway department crowd was, even they were not taking unnecessary chances in an election year.

  Rita Kennedy wasn’t in, and she’d left word that she wanted to see me. I passed the day reading and driving, and went back to the capitol again that evening.

  Rita took the forms I handed her with a cri
sp smile.

  “I hope I didn’t inconvenience you by not being here this morning, Pat?”

  “Not at all,” I said.

  “I’m glad to hear it. Is it raining out?”

  I said it was. “At least, it’s starting to.”

  “Oh, damn,” she said. “I’ll never be able to get a taxi this time in the evening. And, of course, this is one day when I wouldn’t bring an umbrella.”

  “I’ve got my car here,” I said. “The state car, that is. If you’d care to have me…”

  “I would,” she said instantly. “Get down my coat while I’m locking my desk. I want to get out of here.”

  I helped her on with her coat, and she gave my arm a little squeeze as we went out the door. She held onto my arm all the way down the corridor and out to the car. And she didn’t exactly lean away from me.

  “I’ve been meaning to have a talk with you for some time, Pat,” she said, as I pulled the car away from the curb. “Can you talk while you’re driving?”

  “Why, yes,” I said.

  “Perhaps I’d better not have you. This traffic makes me nervous, and the rain makes it worse. We’ll wait until we get to my apartment.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  “You don’t have to hurry home for any reason?”

  “Not at all.”

  “We’ll wait, then. I won’t keep you long.”

  “It’ll be all right if you do,” I said.

  “I won’t. Don’t talk any more, please.”

  She gave me her address, and I kept quiet all the way. I stopped in front of a large apartment house, and a doorman with an umbrella ushered us to the door. An elevator shot us up to some floor near the top.

  I don’t know how many rooms there were in the apartment. But I know it must have been large and expensive. It was the kind of place you have when you like good things and have had the money to buy them for a long time.

  A Negro maid in a white cap took our wraps, and Rita asked me what I’d like to drink.

  “Scotch will do me fine.”

  “I’ll have the same…Sit down there by the fire, Pat.”

  I took a chair in front of the fireplace, and Rita came over and stood by the mantel, pausing on the way to arrange a vase on the grand piano. When the drinks came she nodded to me over her glass, lifted it, and set it down almost empty.