Wild Town

by Jim Thompson

  So there was much to feel relieved and grateful about. And Bugs was. But not very much. Right at the moment, he couldn’t feel much of anything.

  He entered his room, nodded an absent greeting to Rosie. Her bright smile faded, and she looked at him anxiously as he dropped into a chair.

  “Is there something wrong, Mr. McKenna? Anything I can do for you?”

  “Thanks, I’ll be all right.” Bugs shook his head. “Just a little upset. You see…”

  He told her about Joyce’s death and Hanlon’s arrest. Rosie’s lovely eyes sickened with horror.

  “Oh, how awful! How terrible! You know, Mr. McKenna, she must have already been poisoned at the time I saw her tonight. She didn’t look at all well, but she insisted that she’d be all right after she laid down awhile. So I just got her suite cleaned as quickly as I could, and left. If I’d only known…”

  “Forget it,” Bugs said. “No way you could have known.”

  “Perhaps not, but I can’t help feeling a little guilty. Are you sure she is dead, Mr. McKenna? Not just dying, I mean? There’s no chance that they may be able to—”

  “No, she’s dead. Dead when they found her, I guess.”

  “How awful!” Rosie repeated. “If I’d only—”

  There was a brisk knock, and Amy Standish came through the open door. She was very prim, chilly of manner. As Bugs got clumsily to his feet, took a hesitant step toward her, she gestured curtly to Rosie.

  “No, don’t leave, Miss Vara. Go right ahead with your work. What I have to say to Mr. McKenna will only take a minute.”

  “Amy,” Bugs said. “I’d like to—”

  “Please!” She held up a hand. “I want to get this over with. You’re in some kind of difficulty, I believe. I think you mentioned something about it. Well, I don’t know whether the amount is sufficient to be of help. But I have five thousand dollars at the house. If you’ll stop by I’ll give it to you.”

  “But—” Bugs was starting to scowl. “Where’d you get that much money? Why should you give it to me?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “You got it from Ford, right? You’re trying to help him, not me?”

  “Am I?”

  “Sure, you are! He can’t use me anymore. Everything is washed up for good, and if I stuck around I might get to be a nuisance. So this is my payoff. I’m supposed to take it, and get.”

  Amy smiled peculiarly. A smile of tired and wondering amusement. Bugs’s scowl deepened…What was so funny, anyway? What he said made sense, didn’t it? Well, maybe it was a little odd that Ford would pay him to clear out. Ford could doubtless run him out if he chose to, do it without any fear of repercussions. And Amy could have borrowed the money on her house. But still…

  He didn’t know. He couldn’t say why he’d said what he had. It was as though he’d been compelled to. As though some inner compulsion had swerved him out of a smooth path and into a rock-strewn rut.

  “I couldn’t believe it,” Amy said wonderingly. “Lou told me you’d react like this. He told me what you’d say, almost word for word. And I—”

  “So he did put you up to it! You admit it.”

  “Did I? I don’t recall that I did.”

  “But—Well, all right then,” Bugs said stubbornly. “Tell me I’m wrong. You tell me I’m wrong, and I’ll—”

  “I’ve said all I have to say. The money’s at the house. If you want it, I’ll give it to you.”

  “But—”

  But she was gone, jerking the door shut behind her. Bugs remained standing, one hand half-extended, feeling very lost and lonely in the echoing silence. Just ain’t happy when things are going good. Can’t foul ’em up one way, you’ll do it another.

  He heard a faint sound: a suppressed gurgle. Quickly he dropped his hand to his side, and turned, glaring, to Rosie. She was shivering, shuddering with laughter. Her eyes danced with impish merriment.

  “Well,” he said. “What’s so goddamned funny?”

  “You,” she said. “You are, you sweet, stubborn stupid lummox!”

  She came to him suddenly, drawing him into her arms, laying her head against his chest. Her arms tightened, pressing him into the soft length of her body; and then her hands began to roam, probed sensually, delicately.

  “Uh, look, Rosie,” Bugs began. “I don’t think we—”

  “No, you don’t do you? You don’t think at all. And I really think it’s pretty wonderful. Do you know, darling, if things were only a little different I’d take you with me. I have more than enough brains for both of us, and you’d be so easy to manage…and you are such a pleasant bed companion…”

  “Rosie!” Bugs said sharply. “I—what the hell is this?”

  “…Oh, yes, my stupid sweet, I really enjoyed myself very much. Sex is one thing I simply can’t fake about. Of course, sex wasn’t my primary purpose. You didn’t have the money in your room, so I thought you might be carrying it next to your body. And when I found out you weren’t…well, you didn’t get any more of those letters, did you? And you never saw any connection between the two events, did you?…Don’t do it, darling! Don’t ever try! Because you must have an awful lot of guts—literally, I mean—and these .38 Specials do make such a mess.”

  She stepped back quickly, levelling the gun—his own gun—at him. She said again, “Don’t do it, darling! Don’t even look like you’re going to. I’d hate terribly to kill you, but—”

  “Like you hated to kill Joyce, huh? And Dudley?”

  “Who says I did? What proof is there? No, I don’t have any murder charges against me yet, and I won’t if I can possibly avoid it. So if you’ll just take out your car keys and drop them on the floor…Come on! Do what I told you to!”

  Bugs did it, hastily. Rosalie ordered him to turn around, gesturing impatiently when he hesitated.

  “I mean it, darling. I’m trying to be nice to you, but I’m liable to get tired very suddenly.”

  “But I don’t get it,” Bugs said stubbornly. “Ford doesn’t have anything on you. Why do something that will—”

  “But Mr. Ford is a very peculiar man, sweetheart. If he ever got the notion that there should be something against me—and I have an idea that he’s about to—he’d never stop until he found it. Aside from that, there’s nothing more for me to do in this hole. I haven’t accomplished what I came here for, but I’ve made a good start on it. Even after I’ve deducted for a protracted vacation in Mexico, I’ll have practically enough to…”

  “To what?”

  “Sorry. I can’t tell you that. Now, if you’ll turn around, please…”

  “Wait a minute!” Bugs said. “You—you’re talking about that five thousand? You’re going to rob Amy?”

  “Of course. But you needn’t worry, honey. She won’t get hurt at all…if she’s sensible.”

  Bugs looked into the placidly beautiful face, a face as free of warmth, as lacking in honest compassion, as something chiseled out of marble. Sensible!—he groaned inwardly. What would the word mean to a dame like this? Just how “un-sensible” would you have to be to get the curtain drawn on you?

  “Don’t do it, Rosie!” he begged. “It’s armed robbery; you can get a life sentence for it in Texas. Why run a risk like that for five thousand bucks? You don’t have to, for God’s sake! Why, a girl with your looks could—”

  “Thanks. But believe me, darling, five thousand dollars can be very hard to get. Particularly for a girl with my looks…when those looks become a little too well known, you know. She finds it difficult to move around where the money is available.”

  “But, dammit—”

  “That’s all. Turn around…Turn around or I’ll kill you!”

  There was finality in her voice. Bugs turned.

  “All right. Now, over to that closet and open the door…Tha-at’s the way. That’s my darling…Now get in there!” The gun suddenly prodded him in the back. “Go on, you overgown ox—you can make it! Get in and get down on your knees.”

/>   Bugs squeezed and jammed himself into the closet. He went down on his knees.

  “Fine,” Rosalie Vara said softly. “He’s a real nice boy, and now he’s going to have a real nice nap.”

  The gun crashed down on his head. The door closed and the lock clicked.

  But Bugs didn’t hear it.

  23

  It was very peaceful in the large corner room of the city hospital. The lights were dimmed to a friendly glow. The air-conditioner purred sleepily. There was the gently pungent smell of antiseptic, and subdued murmur of voices, intermittent glimpses through the doorway of white-uniformed nurses and white-jacketed men. Life was all around you, all its sights and sounds and smells. Pressing against you, but never obtrusively. Leaving you alone until you were ready to join it.

  Mike Hanlon yawned luxuriously, squirmed his tough old body against the cool-feeling sheets of his bed. It was the first time he’d really felt relaxed since he didn’t know when. He decided, wryly, that he’d have to get arrested for murder more often; and he said as much to Lou Ford as the deputy came through the door.

  Ford sat down, looking a little discomfitted. Hanlon laughed good-naturedly.

  “But don’t let me take all the fun out of it for you, Ford. I’m okay now, but you really had me sweating for a while.”

  “Well, now,” Ford said sheepishly. “Wouldn’t want you to think I did it just to give you a bad time. I had to make it look like a real cinch, or—”

  “Sure, you did. I understand, and no hard feelings…How’s Joyce doing?”

  “Still talking ninety to the minute. Nothin’ like a person’s thinking they’re going to die to start ’em to talking.” Ford tucked a cigar into his mouth and struck a match to it. “Course she never was in no real danger of dyin’. She got help too quick for that.”

  “How did that happen, anyway?” Hanlon said interestedly. “You’d anticipated an attack on her?”

  “Nope. Probably should have but I didn’t,” Ford said. “Joyce is alive because she played it smart. She keeled right over and played dead the minute she felt the stuff working on her, so Rosie didn’t stick around to make sure that she was dead. She beat it, and Joyce was able to use the phone before she passed out.”

  “I see,” Hanlon nodded. “Now, here’s something else I don’t get. In fact”—he hesitated—“there’s damned little of the deal that I do get. I know you’re probably tired of talking about it, but if you wouldn’t mind filling me in—”

  “Wouldn’t mind at all,” Ford said promptly. “If you hadn’t asked me,” he added grinning, “I’d probably have told you anyway. It ain’t often that I get to take a hand in anything real interesting, and—”

  The telephone rang. Ford murmured a word of apology, and picked it up. “Lou Ford speakin’…Yeah, well that’s good…Uh-huh, uh-huh…No, I guess I can wait until tomorrow…Swell. See you then…”

  He hung up. Hanlon shot him an inquiring glance. “Was—?”

  “Who?” Ford said innocently. “Looky, Hanlon, you did invite me to tell you the whole story, didn’t you? You want it all instead of a pecky piece here an’ there that won’t give me no chance to show how smart I am?”

  “Sure,” Hanlon laughed. “Not that I need to be shown. Take it right from the beginning, then, with Dudley getting killed.”

  “But that ain’t the beginning. Dudley’s gettin’ hired was the beginnin’. Why did Westbrook hire him, an’ why did he insist that Dudley was on the level, an’ why did Dudley turn out to be not on the level?”

  “Well…” Hanlon frowned. “I’m afraid I don’t…”

  “You’d say Westbrook was one hell of a shrewd guy, wouldn’t you? It was his job to size people up, an’ he risked that job when he stood up against you an’ hired Dudley. Now, why’d he do that, anyway? What made him so sure that Dudley was absolutely okay? Just one answer, isn’t there?”

  Hanlon hesitated for a moment. Then, he let out a startled grunt. “Why, of course! Westbrook was sure he was okay because he was! He…But, Ford, wait a minute. If that was the case, why…”

  “Why,” Ford nodded. “An’ that one little why is the key to the whole thing. Dudley was up in his middle years. He’d been in the hotel business all his life, and he’d never pulled a dishonest trick before. An’ now a good friend had got him into a good job. He didn’t have no family dependin’ on him. He wasn’t in no personal jam where he had to have money. All he had to do was just like he’d always done, an’ he was hunkydory. An’ he didn’t do it. He did somethin’ that was bound to cost him his job an’ his reputation. He broke faith with Westbrook, an’ he knew Westbrook would get him blacklisted in every hotel in the country. In other words, he washed himself up—for a lousy five thousand dollars. Just don’t make much sense, does it? Makes a hell of a lot less when you know he could just as easy’ve knocked down ten thousand. Wouldn’t’ve hurt him a bit more than stealin’ the five.”

  Ford paused to relight his cigar. He puffed on it, grinned enjoyably at the hotel owner. “Well? Gettin’ any ideas?”

  “None that isn’t pretty obvious. All Dudley needed was five thousand. I can’t see how he expected to live the rest of his life on…” Hanlon’s voice trailed away. Then, as Ford continued to grin at him, a slow grin spread over his own face. “Why, hell, yes! That five thousand was supposed to make him rich! He was going to invest it in—well, oil. Couldn’t be anything but oil out here. He—but wait a minute! Five thousand is peanuts in a proven oil field. Even if he’d had ten times that much, he couldn’t have done anything with it. Well, sure, maybe he could have bought a tiny interest in an operation, but he’d be about as well off puttin’ his money in government bonds.”

  “So we got another of those can’t-be-but-is riddles,” Ford said. “An’ the only person with the answer, as I saw it, was the person that killed Dudley. Which brings us to Bugs McKenna. Now, I ain’t got the slightest idea what Bugs did scuffle with him—prob’ly went there as a favor to Westbrook…”

  “That’s right. I’d take an oath on it.”

  “But Dudley was already a dead man, before he ever tumbled out the window, so we know our killer is someone else. A woman, by all appearances. One of two women. Well, Joyce was out of it, as far as I could see. If she’d wanted five thousand bad enough she could’ve hocked some jewelry or talked it out of you. So that leaves us with Rosalie Vara. And Rosie’s the biggest, dangdest riddle yet.

  “A mickey artist is a pro, you know. Bound to have a record somewhere. And Rosie didn’t have one. I put out two-three hundred information-wanted’s on her—every place big enough for a gal like that to operate—and I didn’t turn up a thing. Still I was sure she had to be it, and I got a lot surer when I saw Bugs give her a shakedown as she was comin’ out of the Westex City post office. Must’ve been tryin’ to blackmail him, the way I figured—on the Dudley deal, since there wasn’t nothing else. She knew he’d been in Dudley’s room, so she must’ve been there herself. Well, she was too smart to let Bugs catch her, but—” Ford laughed gently, absently. “That poor damned Bugs. So scared of doin’ something wrong that he couldn’t do nothin’ right. Should have know I couldn’t expect him to cooperate with me, and I guess I’ve been pretty hard on him. Put him under all kinds of pressure to go bad. But I felt I had to do it, see? There was a third person involved, a young lady I think the world of, and if Bugs couldn’t stay straight, no matter what, I wanted to…’Scuse me. Ain’t borin’ you, am I?”

  “No, no, not at all.” Hanlon stifled a yawn. “You were saying something about a third party?”

  “About covered the subject, I guess. Goin’ back to Rosie, and that day in Westex: I had her ride with me on the return to Ragtown, and that hunch of mine just kept growin’ and growin’. She was just too good to be true, y’know. Pretty as a picture, nice manners, intelligent, pretty fair education apparently. And so dadblamed honest. Honest in a way that hurt her and didn’t do no one any good. I mean, the gal was whiter-lookin’ than me. Co
uldn’t be more than a teensy bit Negro, so why make such a big to-do about bein’ one? Well, though, I pretended to take her at her face value. Told her I was really after Bugs, and asked her to keep an eye on him for me. And she got all wide-eyed and trembly, but she promised she would.

  “Now, o’course, if I’d mugged her or fingerprinted her, I’d’ve known the truth right away. But I didn’t have no grounds for doin’ that, an’ unless she was wanted somewhere, she’d be long gone fast. Anyways, a murder had been committed in my county, an’ I wanted it solved before I turned her over to anyone else. So I put out another information-wanted on her—practically the same one I’d put out before except for one word. I didn’t identify her as a Negro.

  “Well, hell. You never saw anything like it. Must have got fifty replies on her. Looked like she’d been workin’ the chloral hydrate before she was old enough to walk. No, she wasn’t wanted for anything right at the moment. All that these different places wanted out of her was to keep the hell away from them. And any time she showed up in one of ’em they gave her the roust.

  “They had plenty more to say about her, none of it flatterin’, but I’ll just hit the high spots. Her folks came from here, and they were pretty good people. Poor but honest. She was of Mexican or Spanish descent. Her real name was Vera Rodriguez…Oh, yeah, and she had a pal named Joyce. And Joyce had disappeared from her usual haunts about two weeks after Rosie did.

  “Yeah, it was the same Joyce—your wife. Rosie came here first, an’ then Joyce showed up. Looked to me like Rosie must have sent for her.

  “Well, I began to get the framework of the story about then. T’see how it just about had to shape up. Rosie was layin’ low, but why’d she traveled fifteen hundred miles to a town where she couldn’t operate and she didn’t know no one? She had to have a reason, a mighty good one. And she had to have it before she came here; it couldn’t be somethin’ she run across afterwards. Only thing I could think of was that it must be somethin’ connected with her folks, and since her folks was Spanish or Mex.…