Wild Town

by Jim Thompson

  Bugs got out of the car. He asked what the hell Ford was pulling. “If your questions are do damned important, why didn’t you ask them sooner? Why did you wait until now? Why did you just let everything slide until now, and then—”

  “Could be I wasn’t ready until now,” Ford said blandly. “What’s wrong with now, anyways?”

  “Everything! Miss Vara’s—she’s had a hard day, and she doesn’t feel well. And we both have to work tonight. Work, understand? W-o-r-k! We’re working tonight, and if we don’t get back and—”

  “W-o-r-k, eh?” Ford said. “Now, I always thought you spelled it with a u. Fella learns somethin’ new every day, don’t he?”

  “Now, dammit, Ford…”

  “But I see your point, got to be gettin’ in your beauty sleep. Can’t say that Miss Vara stands in need of any more beauty-in’, but I can see where you…” He broke off grinning, beckoned without turning around. “Amy, girl. Come on over.”

  Amy came forward reluctantly. Lou Ford gave her a jovial nudge toward Bugs.

  “Got some talkin’ to do to Miss Vara, here,” he explained. “But her and Bugs have got to be gettin’ back. So I figure maybe you better ride with him, and she can just come along with me.”

  “Now, really, Lou”—Amy’s shamed eyes dropped. “I’d be glad to ride with Mac, of course, but—”

  “Miss Vara’s riding with me,” Bugs said bluntly. “I brought her here, and—”

  “No, please!” Rosalie gave him a quick smile. “It’s perfectly all right, Mr. McKenna. Let’s do as Mr. Ford says.”

  Bugs hesitated, assented surlily. There was nothing else to do that he could see. As Ford and Rosalie departed, he yanked the car door open, grunted a rude invitation to Amy Standish.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I think I’d better take a bus.”

  “Oh, come on, dammit! If I’m willing, why—”

  “Yes, why?” she cut in shakily. “Why should I do anything but grovel with gratitude? You can get upset and lose your temper and act just as nasty as you know how, and that’s all right! That’s your privilege and I’m just supposed to put up with it. I’m not supposed to have any feelings! I’m not supposed to feel any humiliation! I’m not entitled to any c-courtesy or u-understanding or—”

  She was about to cry, Bugs observed with an inward groan. God, he’d already had one crying woman on his hands today, and a woman in tears was one thing that had always got him. He just couldn’t take it. And he didn’t want to hurt Amy. His feelings about her might be pretty mixed up, but he certainly didn’t want her hurt.

  So he apologized profusely. He got her into the car, and they headed for Ragtown. The traffic was even heavier now than it had been in the morning. The around-the-clock oilfield shifts were changing, and the cars of the workmen vied with the mammoth trucks and tractors for space on the highway.

  It was impossible to make any time. Bugs finally gave up trying to. Idling along between two trucks, he slanted a glance at Amy, caught her studying him with a peculiar expression on her face.

  It vanished instantly. Looking straight ahead, she remarked that Miss Vara was a very pretty girl.

  “What is she, Spanish? Mexican?”

  “No—I mean, I guess she could be,” Bugs said. Because he wasn’t ashamed, naturally, and of course she’d probably find out the truth from Ford, sooner or later. But right now he wasn’t up to explaining why he’d been in Westex with a Negro maid.

  “She’s very pretty,” Amy repeated. “If you like that type. She doesn’t strike me as someone who’d wear very well, but I’m probably mistaken. I hope she isn’t in any trouble?”

  “She isn’t. Your friend Ford was just throwing his weight around.”

  “That isn’t like Lou.” Amy shook her head serenely. “Perhaps he didn’t go about it in the right way, but I’m sure that he must have had a good reason to—”

  “And I’m sure he didn’t have! What were you doing over there today, anyhow? I mean”—Bugs got a grip on his temper—“it’s your own business. You don’t owe me any explanations. But—”

  “Why, I don’t mind,” said Amy; and she didn’t seem to. On the contrary. “Lou goes to Westex quite frequently. I don’t know why exactly, but it’s the largest city in the county, so I suppose there’d be any number of reasons why he might have to. I rode over with him to see about finding a job.”

  “Then it was just a coincidence that we bumped into each other?” Bugs said disbelievingly. “He wasn’t—huh? You went to see about a job?”

  “Yes. The schoolboard discharged me yesterday. That’s why I was so upset when you came to the house last night.”

  “But why did—” he caught himself. “I guess you’d probably rather not talk about it.”

  “I don’t mind, now. I was pretty torn up about it at the time, but now that it’s happened…It was because of that day I was at Lou’s house. You know. The afternoon that y-you—that you came there. Someone saw me going out the back door, and the word got around. And yesterday I was fired.”

  “I see,” Bugs mumbled. “Uh—did you get the job today?”

  “No. I think Lou took steps to see that I wouldn’t get it. In fact, I think he may have had quite a bit to do with my losing my teacher’s job.” She looked at him, smiling at his expression. “No, I’m not angry about it. I was, and I probably will be again. But I always know that Lou thinks a great deal of me. If he does something like this—well, it’s meant for my own good.”

  Bugs’s eyes narrowed angrily, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t trust himself to. Ford had compromised her. He’d helped to get her canned from one job, and he’d kept her from getting another one. And he was fully prepared, apparently, to continue with the same hateful line of conduct. Yet she sat here defending him. Saying he did these things for her own good!

  “You see,” she went on, “Lou feels that his own life is wasted. He hates what he’s doing. He’s not suited to it, and it’s twisted him. Actually, he’s very scholarly. He was a brilliant student, and—”

  “Him? Ford?”

  “It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?” Amy nodded. “But, yes, Lou’s very brilliant. He graduated from high school when he was fifteen. He went through pre-med in three years. Then, in his first year of medical college, his father took very ill and Lou came home. Doctor Ford—his father, that is—didn’t get any worse, but he didn’t get any better either. He just lingered on, year after year. And Lou…”

  Ford had felt that he had to stay with the old man. But there was nothing in the small town for him to do. No suitable work, no real challenge for his mind. Still, he had to do something, and because he was “old family” he had been given a deputy sheriff’s appointment. It was no job for a book-learned dude, obviously. For a man with ambitions which would be interpreted as pretensions. You had to blend with those around you, with the public’s conception of a cowtown deputy. So Ford had blended. He had fitted himself into the role with a vengeance, exaggerating it until it bordered on caricature. And with this outward twisting of the man, there had been an inward one. In the brain—the intelligence—which could not be used as it had been intended to be.

  “…very high-handed and arrogant,” Amy was saying. “He won’t explain himself. If you can’t see things as clearly as he does, then it’s your own fault. You’d better smarten-up, as he’d put it. But he’ll do a great deal for someone he really likes, and what he does is usually right.”

  Bugs gritted his teeth. It was all he could do to control himself. Finally, his voice merely sarcastic, he asked just what great plans Ford had in mind for her.

  “Well,” Amy said thoughtfully. “I believe he originally intended to make me leave town. To force me out into the world. Now, I think he’s decided that I may belong here, so…” she broke off, blushing for some reason. “Why don’t we change the subject, hmm? It’s hard for me to understand Lou, and I know it must be a lot harder for you.”

  Bugs let the statement pass,
but he did understand Ford—to his own way of thinking. He had Ford figured right down to a tee. He hadn’t reached his conclusions hastily. On the contrary, he’d been willing, even anxious, to believe that the deputy was okay. But Ford’s own actions, one piled upon another, had made any such belief impossible.

  He was convinced of Ford’s unalloyed, unrelieved blackness, because Ford himself had so convinced him.

  That was that. It was maddeningly aggravating that Amy couldn’t see the truth about the man.

  …It was about ten o’clock on the night of his return from Westex. Dozing uneasily, almost as much awake as asleep, Bugs heard a faint sound at his door.

  He sat up, started to jump up. Then, he quietly lay down again. Listening. Watching with slitted eyes.

  There was a click; a faint draft of air and flash of light, as the door opened and closed. Silence for a moment. An almost-silence. Then a rustling sound, a series of rustles, protracted over several seconds. And then stealthy footsteps.

  They traversed the brief areaway past the bathroom. They stopped, right at his bedside.

  Bugs couldn’t actually see the intruder; only that there was one. Only a blurred shadow among the darker shadows of the room. But that was enough.

  He moved suddenly, moving with that incredible swiftness of which very big men are sometimes capable. His arms swept out and swept shut. His body rose and came down again, pinning the intruder beneath him.

  “Now, by God!” he grunted savagely. “Just what the—”

  The sentence ended in a startled gulp. He had reacted rather than acted, his movements rushing ahead of his thoughts. But now—

  The body squirmed delicately. Making certain adjustments. Fitting him into its bared flesh, its soft, warm, gently undulant contours.

  Then, there was a contented sigh. And a delicious shudder of anticipation. And a tense, almost desperate whisper:

  “You’re not angry, Mr. McKenna? Y-You think less of m-me, Mr. McKenna? I’ve wanted to so long, and…”

  “Rosie,” said Bugs.

  And that was all he said. That either of them said. For quite a while.

  14

  He had gotten to bed about five after his return from Westex. Very tired, but with too much on his mind for sleep. With a riddle which had to be solved, yet was seemingly unsolvable. For Rosalie Vara was out of the blackmail picture now—and he was very glad of it. But if she was out, then who was in?

  In actuality, she had been his only suspect. There had been two possibles—she and Joyce Hanlon—but Joyce had been in her suite at the time of Dudley’s death. So it had to be Rosalie. It had had to be something that wasn’t and couldn’t be. She was in the clear and Joyce was in the clear. The only two women who, by any stretch of the imagination, could have been in Dudley’s room, or, rather his bathroom.

  The only two women…

  Well, couldn’t it possibly have been a man? It could have been, couldn’t it? After all, there was someone and if it wasn’t a woman, then it had to be a man. That makes sense, doesn’t it, McKenna?

  Bugs supposed that it did. But he also knew no man was involved in the matter.

  Dudley had been staging a little party there in his bathroom. A sex party. And in the intimacy of their secret carousing, his guest had slipped him a mickey.

  He wouldn’t have had a man in his bath. What would have been the point in that? Why would a man want to keep secret the presence of another man?

  Then there was that mickey—the choloral hydrate. As Ford had pointed out, it was traditionally a woman’s weapon. A man might clout you or mug you, or stick a gun in your ribs. A woman did the job with chloral. She couldn’t muscle you, so she honeyed up to you. She got your guard down, got you to thinking about things that weren’t discussed in Sunday school. Got you to the point where you weren’t thinking at all—just wanting—and then she gave you a drink. And right after that the party suddenly ended. You were in the land of bye-bye. And if you’d gotten a big enough dose, you might not ever emerge from it.

  So it had to be a woman, which meant that it couldn’t be a man. But since it couldn’t be a woman either—despite its having to be, why—well, where were you for God’s sake?

  Bugs was acquiring a violent headache. Also, at long last, he was beginning to get drowsy.

  Now, who…what…he thought. Not a man or a woman. Not a man…or a woman. Not someone you’d think of as being…

  He almost had it. The only logical answer. He thought the seeming paradox through, was on the verge of the exceedingly simple explanation. And, then, at that very moment, he’d fallen asleep.

  And when he awakened he had other things to think about.

  …She came back from the bathroom, bringing him a drink from the ice-water tap. She sat down on the edge of the bed, a little shy now, timid, and pulled a corner of the sheet over her naked thighs. Bugs had been about to make a suggestion: that she should address him less formally in view of what had transpired between them. Now, he decided that he wouldn’t. She was a funny kid. Apparently, she was more comfortable mister-ing him, yet she might take his suggestion as an order.

  Out in the oil fields somewhere, there was a sudden mass of light. Not a flash but a mass, racing and spreading through the darkness, so brilliant and far-extended that some of its glare came down into the court of the Hanlon, and filtered around the drapes at Bugs’s windows. There was the light; then, since sound, of course, travels much more slowly than light, a thunderous explosion. It came from at least a mile away, Bugs estimated, but the blast rattled the Hanlon’s windows.

  Rosalie shivered and gripped Bugs’s hand. He squeezed it reassuringly. “A big one, huh? Must have been a battery of boilers going up.”

  “Oh, how terrible! Do you suppose anyone was hurt?”

  “Naw, sure not,” he lied, touched by her concern. “Look Rosie, I—Is it okay for you to come on duty so early? It won’t get you in trouble?”

  It wasn’t the question he’d started to ask. He’d checked himself out of regard for her. Because in telling him what he really wanted to know—as she probably would have out of loyalty and affection—she could get into trouble.

  “No”—she shook her head to the query. “As long as I put in a full shift, and get my work done, I can come early or late. Within reason, of course.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, that’s good,” he said.

  Drifting in on the night breeze now was a wailing, eerie chorus of sirens. Ambulances were speeding out from the emergency hospitals—as numerous in the oil fields as drinkstands at a carnival—to the scene of the disaster. The sound dwindled and was lost in the distance. Rosalie freed the hand that Bugs was holding and got up.

  She had left her clothes in the areaway. Bringing them back to the bed, she sat down again and began to dress. Bugs made a movement to help her. Shyly, she drew away a little.

  “I want to tell you something, Mr. McKenna. Two things. First—I won’t do anything like this again. I’m glad it happened. I wanted to—wanted you to have me. You stood up for me against Mr. Ford, and I can’t tell you how grateful I am. And—”

  “I don’t want you to be, Rosie. I don’t want you to feel that you owe me anything.”

  “I know. You wouldn’t want me to.” Her soft voice trembled with emotion. “But, anyway. What I started to say, Mr. McKenna, was that—that—”

  This was both the beginning and the end of their affair she said in effect. It would have to be, obviously, since its continuation was certain to bring tragedy and trouble.

  Bugs protested—he felt that he had to—but he was deeply relieved. He wasn’t in love with her, nor she with him. And a thing like this, life being as it was, could only drag them both downhill. As the Hanlon’s house detective, the official paid to nip potential trouble in the bud, he was in a far better position to avoid discovery than most; than, say, Dudley had been—one of the watched, rather than the watchman. Yet discovery was virtually inevitable, in the long run; and he was in enough of a mess
now without taking on another.

  Hell, if he could just get out of this present mess; get out of it, and get to feeling right about Amy, or stop feeling anything about her. Either accept what had happened between her and Ford, or—

  “There was something else I wanted to tell you, Mr. McKenna. About Mr. Ford. He—”

  “Don’t,” Bugs said. “I don’t think you’d better.”

  “I’m going to,” Rosalie said firmly. “He doesn’t really suspect me. Probably you guessed that. But that’s only part of it. The real reason he wanted to talk to me—”

  Bugs cut her off. “Didn’t he warn you not to tell me, Rosie? Well, then, let me say it. He figures that there must have been two people, a man and a woman, with Dudley. The woman gave him the chloral, and the man knock—pushed him out the window. And he’s got me figured as the man.”

  “Yes, sir. And it’s so crazy, Mr. McKenna! I mean, why would you—why would anyone do it? If the woman had already killed him, as good as killed him, why—”

  “That misunderstanding we had at the post office today,” Bugs said. “I imagine Ford asked you about that? No, don’t tell me—”

  “Of course, I’ll tell you! Yes, he did ask me, and—and I didn’t know quite what to say, Mr. McKenna. I didn’t understand it myself, and I was afraid if I tried to lie to him—”

  “I’m glad you didn’t. You did the right thing, just telling him what happened and letting it go at that. But…but that’s the set-up, Rosie. It’s a pretty weak thread, but he wants to stick me, and he’s trying to use that little frammis at the post office to do it.”

  “But I…I don’t see how that…”

  “Well,” Bugs said cautiously, “it’s really pretty simple. I’m just guessing, of course; I don’t actually know. But it seems to me that Ford’s thinking would just have to run like this: The man doesn’t know that the woman is in Dudley’s room. Perhaps she’s in the bathroom, see? But she knows that he’s in there—and knows who he is—and when he apparently kills Dudley, and takes the money she came there to steal, why…”