Wild Town

by Jim Thompson

  “Just practical, Bugs. Just practical.” The old man leaned forward confidentially. “Do you suppose he will show up again? In a few days, you know, as soon as he snaps out of his drunk?”

  “Well, sure. Why not?”

  “You can’t think of any reason why not? Don’t try to cover up, Bugs, for him or me. It just wouldn’t wash. I’d hate it if it’s like it could be—like I was afraid it might be. It would cause a hell of a scandal, get us into a whopping lawsuit if Dudley had anything as close as a fourth cousin. But I still couldn’t go for a cover-up. So if Ollie had anything to do with what happened to Dudley—”

  “He didn’t,” Bugs said steadily. “He knew it wouldn’t do him any good to see Dudley.” He elaborated briefly, explaining the matter as Westbrook had explained it to him. Hanlon seemed something less than satisfied.

  “We-ell, I’ll buy that part. Ollie’s a practical guy, drunk or sober, and he wouldn’t have talked to Dudley when he knew it wouldn’t make him anything. Still, he is missing. And five thousand dollars is missing. And Dudley is dead.”

  “Dudley could have spent the money,” Bugs shrugged. “He could have had it cached somewhere. And as low as Ollie was feeling…”

  “Yes, I can see that, too. He can’t face the music, so he just goes off on a bat. He’s done the same thing in other places. But this suicide—” Hanlon lingered over the word. “As a cop, Bugs, doesn’t that jar the hell out of you? Dudley’s stolen the money. He’s gotten away with it; he can’t be touched. That being the case, why—”

  “It beats me.” Bugs shook his head soberly. “Probably there was some trouble in his past. Something that finally caught up with him.”

  “Well, yes. That could be, of course. And, of course, if a suicide behaved logically he wouldn’t be a suicide. Yes, that figures. It’s not so unreasonable when you look on it that way. You’ve taken a great load off my mind, Bugs.”

  Bugs murmured modestly. He held another match for Hanlon’s cigarette.

  “But I’m still left with one question”—the old man blew out the flame. “Rather, I’m left without the answer to one question. I wonder if you’d like to supply it.”

  Bugs looked blank. Or tried to. But he knew what Hanlon meant; it was the question he’d been dreading…Why had Westbrook visited him the night before? Just to babble? Just to explain his predicament, to weep on a friendly shoulder? Or for another and very practical reason?

  That was the question troubling Hanlon, Bugs knew. Essentially the only question. The one he’d been leading up to right from the beginning. And he knew something else: that Hanlon didn’t really give a whoop about Dudley, per se. That he was only mildly worried, if at all, about the possibility of a scandal or a lawsuit. He was interested in Dudley’s death, only in so far as it might be the forerunner of his own. For if Bugs had killed Dudley, if he would kill for money…

  And Bugs couldn’t admit what he knew. He couldn’t confess to his growing conviction—or suspicions—that he had been hired for the purpose of murdering Hanlon. Obviously, he couldn’t. The admission that he entertained such suspicions, while continuing to remain on the job, would be damning in itself.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bugs said. “Maybe you’d better tell me.”

  “I’ll tell you one thing, Bugs. I’m not doing Ford any favors, and I’m not interested in playing cops and robbers…or killers. Anything you say will be strictly between us. So if it was an accident—or even something a little more than that. If you were just trying to do Ollie a favor, and you lost your temper or—”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bugs repeated. “But I sure don’t like the way it sounds. Now, either stop beating around the bush, or throw your stick away. Otherwise, I’m walking out of here, and if I do I’ll keep right on going!”

  That did it; the return to his normal surliness. Hanlon’s eyes searched his face, the haunted look in them giving way to relief.

  “Forget it, Bugs,” he said. “It’s nothing important. Just a foolish idea I had for a moment.”

  “Well…”

  “Forget it. And thanks very much for stopping by.”

  Bugs started to leave. At the doors to the terrace, he paused and turned around. He didn’t know why he did it at the moment. He didn’t know why he said what he did. It was something instinctive, a long step forward—or downward—taken into the darkness of the future.

  “I was just thinking,” he said. “I promised I’d pick you up some night and we’d do the rounds together…”

  “Yes? Oh, yes, I guess you did,” said Hanlon. “Well, I didn’t really expect you to bother about it.”

  “No bother. Would you—I don’t suppose you’d still like to go, would you?”

  Hanlon hesitated for the merest fraction of a second. He seemed to waver a little, to melt and lose form like candy over a hot flame. Then, as though plunged suddenly into cold water, he was himself again. Reassembled into a harder, steadier self than he had been that split second before.

  “Yes,” he said, “I’d still like to go. Why not, Bugs?”

  “I’ll do it then,” Bugs said. “I’ll stop by…some night.”

  He returned to his room, and went back to bed. Lying there wakefully, too tired to sleep, rested just sufficiently to keep him from resting more, he struggled with a question. Why did I invite him, anyway? I didn’t have to. He didn’t expect me to. So, why? Why?

  The answer finally came to him. Aided by weariness, it weeded its way through the many mental blocks he had set up. Burst forth into his consciousness.

  And, yes, you know it. It scared hell out of him.

  9

  It was three days after Dudley’s death that Bugs received the letter. A blackmail letter demanding the five thousand dollars which he had supposedly murdered Dudley to obtain. The writer left no doubt about the fact that he, or rather she—it just about had to be a she—meant business. She made it clear that she had the goods on him—and she did have in a hideously false but irrefutable way—and that, failing to get the five thousand, she would turn the matter over to Lou Ford.

  So Bugs was back again in his natural habitat: that vulgarly named creek which he always seemed to wind up in. And this time he was not only without a paddle but also a boat.

  Because, naturally, he didn’t have and couldn’t get the five thousand which he had to have, or else. He couldn’t get five hundred. He couldn’t have scraped up fifty without seriously straining himself.

  That left him with only one alternative. To find out who the blackmailer was. To find her and give her something in place of the five thousand. This presented something of a problem, of course. But he had a good strong lead on the dame, a pretty good idea of who she was—he thought. So it boiled down to a matter of leading her on, concealing his suspicions, and then—

  But that was then. All that began on the third day after Dudley’s death.

  Taking things as they came, the events following his interview with Mike Hanlon:

  …Bugs had a hard time getting to sleep. In fact, it was almost three in the afternoon before he finally did doze off. Then, around six, he was awakened by a soft but persistent rapping. And his several who-is-its and what-is-its being ignored, he yanked on his trousers and went to the door.

  It was Joyce Hanlon, dressed in her usual uniform of flank-fitting skirt and overstuffed sweater. She smiled at him brightly, and Bugs tried to smile back at her. The best he could manage was a fearsome baring of teeth.

  “Hi, Bugs,” she said. “Were you asleep?”

  “Asleep? Oh, no, nothing like that,” he laughed hoarsely. “No, I never sleep in the daytime. I do that at night when I’m walking around the hotel.”

  “Oh…Well, I hope I didn’t wake you up.”

  Bugs let out an angry moan. He tried to control himself, to smirk politely, to say it was all right and that it didn’t matter a bit. But—but—

  She hoped she hadn’t waked him up! Goddammit
, he’d just got through telling her that he was asleep, and then she hoped she hadn’t waked him up!

  How goddamned stupid could you get, anyway? And what did she want, anyway?

  The questions growled and snarled through his mind. They rushed out of his mouth before he could stop them.

  Her eyes widened, and she took a startled backward step. “Well!” she said. “I can’t say that I appreciate—”

  “Who gives a damn? I just got to sleep, for Christ’s sake, and then you—I—all right, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to blow my top, but—”

  “Now, that’s better,” she said primly. “Well, aren’t you going to invite me in?”

  “Hell, I guess so. I mean, certainly, glad to have you. I—Aah, to hell with it. Come in or stay out, whatever you damned please.”

  She marched past him, mouth quirked, cheeks flushed. She sat down on the bed gingerly, and Bugs closed the door with a bang, slouched down in a chair in front of her.

  She crossed her legs, brushed at a tiny crease in her skirt. Bugs plucked at an imaginary hangnail. They looked up, and their eyes met. They looked quickly down again, and then slowly up again.

  And suddenly she exploded into laughter, flung herself backward on the bed, her heels drumming against its sides, her entire body quivering and quaking with amusement.

  “Oh, Bugs—ha, ha—the way you looked, like some old bear just out of its cave! And when I asked you if you’d been asleep—ha, ha, ha—when I asked you—oooh-whoops, ha, ha, ha, ha…”

  Bugs grinned, chuckled self-consciously, tried to keep his eyes off those long, luciously fleshed legs. He said he guessed he had acted like the king of the grouches, and that she shouldn’t let it bother her.

  “Now, don’t apologize. I’m glad. I feel like I’m finally getting acquainted with you, and I was beginning to think I never would…Come here.”

  “Uh—where? What for?” Bugs said.

  “Here, silly!” She held up her arms, wiggled her fingers at him. “Here to mama. And what do you think, what for?”

  So that was how it came about. That was how Bugs wound up in the hay with Joyce Hanlon, the wife of his employer. By talking ugly, telling her to go jump, to go to hell and like it or lump it. That broke the ice between them, advanced their relationship to a point which might ordinarily have taken months to achieve.

  But it was a hay-roll only in the literal sense. Just a petting spree, with plenty of kissing and clinching, and probing and pinching, but without the usual climax. And it was no fault of Bugs’s that the climax was missing.

  He might be strait-laced, prudish, but a man changes under enough stress. Also, he couldn’t feel that he was depriving or injuring Hanlon; the old man would be disappointed in him, perhaps, but he wouldn’t care about her. So, such credit as was due for their continence, was due to Joyce. It was she who held off, holding him just far enough, letting him go just far enough, to keep a firm grip on him.

  That, she said, was a bedtime story. That wasn’t nice. That was something she really couldn’t bring herself to do—yet.

  “But why not, dammit! If you didn’t intend to—”

  “Because, that’s why. Now, be a sweet darling, hmm? Give Joyce one of those real pretty smiles.”

  “Horseshit!”

  “With sugar on it? Hmm? Hmm? Come on, now, grouchy. Let’s see you smile.”

  She tickled him in the ribs. Bugs squirmed, grinned unwillingly.

  “Now, that’s better…What did Mike want with you this morning, honey? What did he talk to you about?”

  “Nothing. How do you know he talked to me at all?”

  “Now, Bugs. I’m a very bright little girl, and the wife of the owner finds out lots of things.”

  “Then, find out what he talked to me about…Well, hell,” Bugs said, “it wasn’t anything much. Just wanted a report on the suicide. Why I thought Dudley had done it, and so on.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, he was short in his books I know. At least, Westbrook said he was. Incidentally, I suppose you’ve heard that Westbrook has—”

  “Yes, yes,” Joyce cut in. “Forget Westbrook. All I’m interested in is Dudley.”

  “Why? You and him pally, were you?”

  “Now, silly. I hardly knew him to speak to. I doubt if I’d ever passed a half-a-dozen words with him. Why—”

  “Whoa, whoa up, now”—Bugs drew his head back to look at her. “I just asked you a question. It’s not a federal case.”

  “Well, I didn’t know Dudley at all! He was just another one of the employees, as far as I was concerned. I only asked about him because of you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes! Now, stop it, Bugs! This is serious. Did Mike—did he blame you? I mean—well, you know. Do you think he, uh, held it against you for any reason? That he, uh, trusted you any the less because of it?”

  Bugs was getting tired. Perhaps because of his increasing awareness that that was all he was going to get. He studied her covertly, noting the tiny wrinkles around her eyes, a thin furrow of powder on her neck—a dozen distasteful things which the excitement of sex play had blinded him to. Self-disgust rose in his throat. He felt ashamed, dirty, filthy. He told himself—and he meant it—that he wouldn’t take her now if she was served up on a platter.

  God, what had he been thinking about, anyway? What kind of a guy was he getting to be? He knew what she was angling for, and here he’d gone right ahead and jumped at the bait.

  “No, Joyce,” he said. “No, he does not trust me any less, Joyce. Not one damned bit. And do you know why he doesn’t, Joyce? Because he knows damned well he doesn’t have any reason to. And, Joyce, he never will have!”

  He nodded his head firmly. Joyce gave him a playful pat on the cheek, spoke with forced lightness.

  “Now, isn’t that nice? That’s real nice, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Bugs. “I think it’s very nice.”

  “It’s too bad that he isn’t a younger man. That he’s sick and old. He might do a great deal for you. You’re still young, and—What’s the matter, honey?” Her eyes shifted nervously. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “I was just thinking,” Bugs said. “You know I used to play a lot of football? Pretty good at the game at one time.”

  “Football? But what—”

  “It isn’t worth getting up for, so I was wondering. Whether I could give you a good hard kick in the ass from a prone position.”

  “Wh-aat!” She let out a gasp, sat up angrily. “Well, of all—”

  Bugs’s hand slid under her buttocks. He boosted, viciously, and she soared from the bed, came down on her feet on the floor.

  “Now, beat it,” he said. “Clear out before I bounce you out.”

  She sputtered furiously. Her eyes raged for a moment; there was something close to murder in them. And then she laughed. Laughing down his threats. Leaving him frustrated and disarmed.

  She wouldn’t get angry with him. She was not the kind to get angry where it would cost her. And after her first brief flash of temper, she had felt no anger. The rough stuff—she’d been weaned on it. She’d known plenty of guys who substituted a kick in the slats for a kiss, and more than once she had found herself thinking of them fondly. They weren’t so bad, some of those fellows. At least, a girl never got bored around them.

  So as Bugs grumbled and cursed futilely, she sat down on the bed, again; rumpled his hair, patted and poked him with caressing tenderness.

  “Now, just stop it, you old bear…big overgrown brute. I’ll come back tonight after you’ve rested, and—”

  “You’d by-God better not come back tonight!”

  “Well, soon then. Whatever you say. We’ll have a nice, sweet talk real soon, and maybe…”

  “Get out of here!…”

  “Okay, Mama knows he’s tired, so she’ll just tuck him in real good, and—”

  “Mama? Mama!” Bugs’s voice cracked with outrage. “Jesus Christ, what kind of a woman are y
ou, anyway? How the hell can—”

  “Now, now. Just hold your legs out like a good boy.”

  She gripped the cuffs of his trousers, pulled them off expertly. Draping them over a chair, she tucked the bedclothes up under his chin and planted a lingering kiss upon his mouth.

  “Now,” she said, gathering up her purse. “Now, you’ll sleep good!…”

  It was probably the misstatement of the century. Despite two cold showers and four aspirins, he didn’t sleep at all. And it did no damned good at all to tell himself that he was eight kinds of a heel, and that he ought to be ashamed.

  He was ashamed. He was also frightened—plenty. But it didn’t change anything.

  He was so far gone that when Rosalie Vara came to do his room, he made occasion to brush against her.

  She stood perfectly motionless for a moment, still bent over from the bedspread. Then, gently but firmly, her founded hips returned the pressure of his body.

  Bugs got out of the room fast.

  10

  By morning, he was approximately his old self again. He had wallowed in worry and reproach, shrived his shamed soul with the acid of disgust; and then finally he had emerged, shaky, a little frayed around the edges. But also spotless—practically—and filled with firm resolve.

  Dammit, every man had an occasional weak moment. Every man played the jerk at least once. That didn’t mean, however, that he was a weak man, or that he would continue to be a jerk. On the contrary, he was better off for having got the nonsense out of his system.

  Bugs was all right now, he told himself. He was back on the ball again, and he intended to stay there. There’d be no more of this hank-panky. Not only that, but he’d steer clear of any and all situations which might lead to such.

  He hung a “Don’t Disturb” sign on his door when he turned in. He also warned the telephone operator that he would accept no calls from anyone, except, of course, Mike Hanlon.

  Hanlon didn’t call. Bugs got a solid ten hours of sound sleep, awakening about six in the evening. He yawned and stretched luxuriously. He squirmed against the pillows, grinning with contentment. And then remembering his resolutions and the dangers they were meant to forefend—he almost flung himself from the bed.