Recoil

by Jim Thompson

  Doc’s fingers tightened on the package he was unwrapping. He stared down at it, blindly, and then he went on picking at the string. He didn’t say anything.

  Hardesty scowled at him angrily.

  “Well, by God!” he said. And then he raised his shoulders in a shrug of helplessness. “Pat, I’m sorry but—”

  “I’m talking to Doc,” I said. “Let’s see if I’ve got things straight. You’d been wanting to break loose for a long time, Doc. You knew that the next election was going to force you to. You needed to make one last big killing, and when you got my letter from Sandstone you saw a way of doing it with Madeline’s and Hardesty’s help. You insured yourself heavily in Madeline’s—your wife’s—favor, you got me out. To kill you, ostensibly, after a quarrel. Actually, of course, you won’t get killed. It’ll be made to look like I killed you and dumped you in the river where no one could find you. But it won’t be that way. You’ll clear out and go into hiding, and Hardesty will push the insurance claims through for Madeline. And after a year or so, when it’s absolutely safe, she’ll join you. Is that what you planned?”

  “That,” said Doc, “is what I’m going to do. Incidentally, Pat—”

  “What about Lila?”

  “Well, what about her? My wife wouldn’t live with me, but she insisted on the protection of insurance. That’s the story.”

  “It looks to me like the insurance companies will claim fraud. No company would knowingly insure a man with such potentially dangerous living arrangements.”

  “Correct,” Doc nodded. “Too bad they didn’t look into the matter more closely. As it is, they’ve accepted my premiums and Madeline’s down as the beneficiary. It’s a binding contract and they’ll have to pay.”

  “I see,” I said. “How much are you going to have to live on the rest of your life? How much insurance have you got?”

  “Well”—he hesitated for a second—“I guess there’s no reason why I shouldn’t tell you. Ten policies for ten thousand each. It’ll come to a hundred thousand, double indemnity.”

  “What’s Hardesty’s share?”

  “Sixty-five thousand, roughly. A third.”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t think of anything to say for a moment. It seemed to me that everything had been said that needed to be, and it was time for Myrtle to—

  “By the way, Pat. As I started to mention a moment ago…”

  “Yes?” I said.

  “It was a nice try—but I’m afraid Myrtle isn’t going to be with us. I checked on her whereabouts just before our little soiree at the house. She’s out of town.”

  29

  I swallowed, and my Adam’s apple stuck in my throat. And I think I must have looked as sick as I felt.

  Doc grinned sympathetically. “You weren’t going to tell me that you tipped off the police? They’d grab you on that Eggleston rap, and before you could get clear of it—”

  “No,” I said, “I didn’t go to the police. I was just going to say that—that—How can you do it, Doc? You’re sentencing me to death! Doesn’t that bother you?”

  “I suppose it should,” said Doc. “But, no, it doesn’t. Not much, Pat. You’d have died in Sandstone if I hadn’t got you out. This way, at least, you have had a little fling.”

  “That car Lila bought for me doesn’t really mean anything?” I said. “I’m going to be allowed to get away?”

  “I’m afraid not, Pat. Not finding my body is one thing. Not finding the man who is supposed to have killed me is another. It would be more than would be swallowed comfortably. You’ll have to be caught, I’m afraid, somewhere near the spot of our nominally fatal quarrel.”

  “And you don’t see any danger in my being caught?”

  “You mean you’ll talk?” He smiled faintly, shucking a pair of socks out of a paper bag. “Who’s going to believe a fantastic story such as you’ll have to tell when all the evidence points to murder?”

  “It isn’t going to work, Doc,” I said.

  “Oh, it’ll work all right, Pat,” he grinned. “It’s just improbable enough to seem completely plausible. You’re the best evidence of that yourself. You’ve had the puzzle in front of you for weeks yet you never arrived at the motive for my getting you out of Sandstone.”

  “That isn’t what I meant,” I said. “I’m talking about the insurance companies. They’re not going to make settlement on those policies.”

  “They wouldn’t, ordinarily,” he nodded. “They wouldn’t pay a death claim without positive proof of death—a body, in other words. But where the evidence is so clear cut—well…”

  “What makes you so sure of that?” I said.

  “Our friend, Hardesty, here.” Doc perked his head. “One of our leading legal lights, regardless of what you may think of him on other grounds. Hardesty says they’ll have to pay. If he says so, they will.”

  That was true. Hardesty would know. But why, then, had he wanted me to—? Suddenly, it hit me. The last piece of the murderous puzzle fell into place. And I laughed.

  I was caught, stuck in the middle no matter what I did. But I couldn’t help laughing.

  Hardesty re-crossed his legs, shifting nervously on the lounge. His right hand crept into the pocket of his coat and remained there.

  “Doc,” I said. “You’re not very bright, Doc. Not about some things. I’ve had a feeling all along that you were into something beyond your depth, but I didn’t think you were quite this simple.”

  “No?” He grinned, but a tinge of red was creeping into his cheeks. “Just how simple am I supposed to be, Pat?”

  “Simple enough to believe a man who hates you and loves your wife. Simple enough to believe that he’d be content with a third of that two hundred thousand when he and she can take the whole pile. Sure, he knows what the insurance companies will and won’t do. But there’s a hell of a big difference between what he knows and what he’s told you!”

  “I—” Doc looked from Hardesty to Madeline and then back to me. “I don’t understand…”

  “There’s nothing to understand,” said Hardesty curtly. “Don’t pay any attention to him, Doc. He—”

  “Think it over, Doc,” I said. “And while you’re doing it, Hardesty can make me his offer. I want you to see why you’re going to be killed, but you’ll have to think fast. I won’t be able to play my part in this little drama if the police catch up with me.”

  Doc stared at me silently, his eyes blinking behind the thick lenses. I nodded to Hardesty.

  “All right,” I said. “What’s it going to be? Do I kill him and get away or do you do it and let me get caught?”

  “Pat!” Madeline cried. “Don’t—”

  But Hardesty’s hand had already come out of his pocket. “You do it,” he said, and he tossed the snub-nosed automatic to me. “You do it and get away.”

  I caught the gun, and motioned with it.

  “All right,” I said. “Stand up. All three of you.”

  “Pat,” said Hardesty. “You—”

  “Up,” I said, and yanked him to his feet.

  I lined the three of them up, and searched them. I shoved Madeline to one side, and looked at Doc and Hardesty.

  “Now,” I said, “I’m going to call the police.”

  “Police!” They spoke the word simultaneously.

  “I know,” I said. “They won’t believe me; probably they won’t. But I’ve got to try.”

  “But what’s it going to get you!” Hardesty’s face was dead white. “You could get away, Pat! We’ll—I’ll see that you have plenty of money to—”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “A man can’t get away from himself.”

  “You’re talking in riddles!” snapped Doc. “You’ve knocked this insurance scheme in the head. I’ve cleaned up the political mess. Let it go at that, and—”

  “Sure,” said Hardesty. “Be sensible, Pat. We’re all kind of off on the wrong foot here tonight, but it’s not too late to straighten things out…Doc, why don’t we
shake hands all around, and—”

  “Why not?” said Doc heartily, and his hand shot out.

  It closed around my wrist. He bore down on it with all his weight; and Hardesty stepped in close, swinging. And I laughed again. It was too easy. It didn’t give me an excuse to really get rough—to give them the only punishment they’d probably ever get.

  I weaved around a few of Hardesty’s windmill swings, letting him wear himself out. Then I gave him an open-palmed uppercut, and he rose up on his toes and shot backwards, and went down in a heap against the wall.

  Doc was still struggling with my gun hand. I let it sag suddenly, jerked upward again, and he went back against the wall with Hardesty.

  They sprawled there, looking at me dazedly.

  I looked at Madeline, and she was smiling at me happily, joyously. Hugging herself. And before I could think, wonder if I had been right, if just this one time something would go right…the bedroom door banged open.

  Myrtle Briscoe walked in. Myrtle and two state troopers. She blew a whistle and two more troopers burst through the hall door.

  She pointed, and the troopers took hold of Hardesty and Doc. She jerked her head and they started toward the hall with them. It happened in split seconds, so fast that Doc and Hardesty lacked even time for surprise. They went out the door, wordlessly, tottering between the troopers, and Myrtle patted Madeline on the shoulder.

  “Our girl friend beat you to the tip-off, Red,” she grinned. “Had yourself a pretty bad thirty minutes, didn’t you?”

  “I—uh—yes, ma’am,” I said.

  “Well, you asked for it. Tried to get you to level with me, didn’t she? I tried, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Well—” her eyes swept over me swiftly, “that little tussle doesn’t seem to have hurt you any. I was afraid there might be shooting if I busted in on it. Couldn’t let you get shot before I got you a pardon.”

  “No, ma’am—what?” I said.

  “Why not?” said Myrtle Briscoe. “I think the governor’s going to sign just about anything I lay in front of him.”

  And she clumped out the door, slamming it behind her, and Madeline was in my arms.

  30

  That, I believe, is about all.

  I got my pardon. I got the job, which I still have, as investigator with the Department of Corrections. Madeline got her divorce, and we got married.

  Doc got ninety-nine years for Eggleston’s murder, plus an additional thirty years—to run consecutively—for bribery and attempted fraud. Hardesty got a total of forty years.

  That’s a lot of “gots,” and there are still more concerning Burkman and Flanders and the rest of Doc’s old gang. But I won’t go into those. I’ll only say that Doc doesn’t lack for friends, if they can be called that, there in Sandstone.

  Lila…

  Well, Lila did quite well for herself, everything considered.

  She sold her life story, ghost-written, of course, to a newspaper syndicate. That got her a nice chunk of money and a great deal of publicity, very valuable as it turned out. The last I saw of her—Madeline and I—she was headed for Hollywood with a B-picture contract.

  She stopped to say good-bye to us before she left. Afterwards, I caught Madeline looking at me thoughtfully.

  “I’m wondering,” she said. “I’m wondering if I ever will know what went on between you and that dame.”

  “What went on?” I said. “Surely, you don’t think I’d…do that, Mrs. Cosgrove!”

  “Uh-hah. I’ll bet you wouldn’t!”

  “Well,” I said, “I don’t know of anything I can say to convince you…”

  “And you can’t think of anything to do either?”

  “As a matter of fact,” I said, “I believe I can. You’ve given me an idea.”

  It wasn’t a new idea, but it proved to be a very, very good one. Good enough to make Madeline forget all about Lila.

  Good enough, period.

  About the Author

  James Meyers Thompson was born in Anadarko, Oklahoma, in 1906. In all, Jim Thompson wrote twenty-nine novels and two screenplays (for the Stanley Kubrick films The Killing and Paths of Glory). Films based on his novels include The Getaway, The Killer Inside Me, The Grifters, and After Dark, My Sweet.

  …and The Criminal

  In July 2012, Mulholland Books will publish Jim Thompson’s The Criminal. Following is an excerpt from the novel’s opening pages.

  The Criminal

  It had been a pretty good day in many ways, so I might have known it would turn out bad. If you’ve read any papers lately I guess you know that it did. It’s always that way with me, it seems like. I’ve never known it to fail. I’ll wake up feeling rested and be able to eat breakfast for a change, and maybe I’ll even get a seat on the 8:05 into the city. And it’ll go on like that all day—no trouble, everything rocking along fine. My kidneys won’t bother me. I won’t get those crazy headaches up over my eyes. Then, I’ll come home, and somehow or another, between the time I get there and the time I go to bed, something will happen to spoil it all. Always. Anyway, it seems like always. There’ll be a dun from the Kenton Hills Sewer District or a gopher will have eaten up what blamed little lawn we have left or Martha will break her glasses. Or something.

  Take the night before last, for example. I’d had a pretty good day that day—as good as any day can be, now. Then, after dinner, I sit down to read the paper, and—bingo!—I hop right back up again. Martha’s glasses were in the chair, or, rather, what was left of ’em. Both lenses were broken.

  “Oh, my goodness,” she said, fluttering around and picking up the pieces. “Now, how in the world did that happen?”

  “How did it happen?” I said. “How did it happen? You leave your glasses in my chair, and then you wonder how it happens when they get broken.”

  “I must have left them on the arm of the chair,” she said. “You must have brushed them into the seat when you sat down. Oh, well, I needed some new ones anyway.”

  I looked at her, taking it all so calm and casual, and something seemed to snap inside my head. I wanted to hurt her, to hurt someone and she was the nearest thing at hand.

  “So you needed some new ones,” I said. “That’s all you’ve got to say. You throw fifteen dollars down the drain, and it doesn’t make any difference to you, does it? You’ll never change, will you? If you weren’t so scatter-brained, if you’d kept an eye on Bob instead of letting him run wild and do as he pleased he wouldn’t have—”

  Her face went white, then red. “And what about you? What kind of a father are you to—to—” Her hand went up to her mouth, pushing back the words. “D-Don’t,” she whispered. “I—I d-don’t need any glasses. I can’t read any more, anyway. I can’t—all I can think about is…Oh, Al! Al!”

  I put my arms around her, and she tried to pull away—but not very hard—and then she buried her face against my shirtfront, and she cried and cried. I didn’t try to stop her. I wished I could have cried myself. I stood holding her, patting her on the head now and then; noticing how gray she had gotten. It was funny, strange I mean. You hear about someone turning gray almost overnight, and you think, oh, that’s a lot of nonsense. It couldn’t really happen, not to normal people anyway. And then it does happen, right to your own wife, and I don’t imagine they come more normal than Martha.

  It’s like it is with Bob. With Bob’s trouble. You hear about some fifteen-year-old boy killing a neighbor’s girl—raping and strangling her, and you think, well, I’m pretty well off after all. My boy may be a little wild but…but Bob was never really wild; he was just all boy, I guess, just about average…but my boy would never do a thing like that. That could never happen in our family. He—

  Your wife couldn’t turn gray overnight, and your fifteen-year-old couldn’t do what that other fifteen-year-old did. The idea is so crazy that—well, you just laugh when you think about it. And then…

  “Al,” Martha whispered. “Let’s move
away from here!”

  “You bet,” I said. “We’ll go to work on it tomorrow. We’ll move way off somewhere, clear to the other side of the country.”

  I was just talking, of course, and she knew it. I couldn’t start in all over at my age, get a job that would support us. We don’t have any money to move on. I had to borrow against the house to pay that lawyer. All the equity we’ve got in it now you could stuff in your ear.

  Anyway, moving wouldn’t do much good. Because it isn’t the other people so much, the way they talk and act and the way we imagine they talk and act: it’s not them so much as it is ourselves. Wondering about it, and not being sure. Sure like you’ve got to be about a thing like that.

  “Al,” Martha whispered, “h-he—he didn’t do it, did he?”

  “Of course, he didn’t,” I said. “It’s too ridiculous to think about.”

  “I know he didn’t do it, Al!”

  “I do, too. We both know it.”

  “Why, he just couldn’t! I mean, why—why—how could he, Al?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I—it doesn’t matter. He didn’t, so there’s no sense wondering about it. We’ve got to stop it, Martha. We’ve got to stop wondering and talking and—and—”

  “Of course, dear,” she said. “We won’t say another word. We both know he didn’t, that he couldn’t have. Why, my goodness, Al! How could our Bob…?”

  “SHUT UP!” I said. “Stop it!”

  It ended as it usually ends. We kept telling each other that he hadn’t done it, and it was crazy even to think he had. Finally, we went to bed, and all night long, whenever I woke up, I heard her mumbling and tossing. And in the morning I caught her looking at me worriedly, and she asked me if I’d slept well. So I guess I must have been doing some mumbling and tossing myself.