Wild Town

by Jim Thompson

  “Maybe I better tell you that I’m part Spanish on my mother’s side. Some of my ancestors came over here way back in the sixteenth century, and one of ’em got a whopping land grant from the King o’ Spain. God knows how many times the title changed hands in the next three-four hundred years, but it had existed. An’ if a person could prove it, like I could, and if he could prove that he was a descendant of the original grant owner—like I could—he’d be in a pretty nice spot. He’d have a hell of a time takin’ the land away from the current owner; probably wouldn’t live long enough to fight it through the courts, and it’d cost him more than it was worth if he did. But he could make one awful nuisance of himself. You know, he could cloud the title to the property. Keep it from bein’ sold. Stop any business havin’ to do with it from being transacted. In the end, if you were the owner of the property, you’d just about have to cut him in with you.

  “Yeah, that’s where my money comes from. Drawin’ a percentage of production from two oil companies over near Westex. I had to swear to keep quiet about it, naturally, because a lot of people around here have at least a little Spanish blood and it might give ’em some ideas. But it’ll all be comin’ out in court now, anyways, so—Say, you are gettin’ tired, ain’t you? Maybe I better—”

  “Huh? No, I’m fine,” Hanlon protested. “Just resting my eyes for a moment.”

  “Well, I’ll wind it up fast. Cut out my surmisin’ and deductin’, and tell what actually happened…Spanish people take a lot of pride in their ancestry, and a lot of Mexicans like to claim Spanish descent. So Rosie’s dad told some pretty tall tales about what big shots his ancestors had been—stories he’d probably heard from his own folks. And when he died he left her a number of old papers and maps and legal-lookin’ documents. Well, the time comes when she’s got to lay low for a while, go some place where she ain’t known. So she takes this stuff to some lawyers to see if she can cash in on it. They tell her she can; that she’s got a bonafide claim to several thousand acres of this country. But they’ll need a five-thousand-dollar fee to prove the claim in court.

  “Now, that was a dead give-away right there. It proved they were shysters. Because if the case had been that much of a sure thing, they’d’ve wanted to take it on a percentage basis. But Rosie fell for the story, probably talked herself into it as much as they did. And since she had to do some travelin’ anyway, she came here to see just what she had claim to. An’ what it was, o’course, was your holdings. Millions and millions of dollars and all she needed to get it was five thousand.

  “Well, bein’ so close to that kind of dough, she didn’t like to take any chances. So she sends for Joyce, promisin’ to cut her in on the deal. Joyce has been mixed up in some off-color stuff, but nothin’ really serious. In a boom oil town, it won’t be no trouble at all for her to gold-dig a few thousand bucks.

  “Howsome-ever, Joyce looks the situation over an’ she gets a lot better idea. Why split with Rosie—an’ she don’t exactly trust Rosie, any more than Rosie trusts her—when she can grab the whole hog for herself? So she marries you, and right away she starts figuring out how to get rid of you. She was afraid if she didn’t do it pretty pronto, y’see, if she waited to inherit in the normal course of events, you wouldn’t have nothin’ for her to get. She had to grab the property and cash it in, or Rosie would take it away from you.

  “Naturally, she couldn’t blow the whistle on Rosie. If she did, Rosie would do some talkin’ herself, more or less prove that the marriage had been entered into in bad faith which would be grounds for havin’ it dissolved. So Joyce stalled, tried to kid Rosie that she was doin’ her best to squeeze five thousand out of you. An’ I guess you know that Rosie wasn’t kidded a bit. She pretended to be; she’d visit Joyce in her suite and everything would be friendly as hell. Meanwhile, however, she was working on Dudley. Gettin’ him to steal the five thousand for a half-interest in her claim.

  “He steals it. She bumps him off, because she never had no intention of splittin’ with no one. But somethin’s happened to the money—just what I don’t know, but I reckon I will some day. Anyway, she thinks Bugs got it, and she tries to get it out of him. Until she’s finally convinced that he don’t have it.

  “Well, according to my calculations she’ll look around for another sucker…and I plant one on her. A guy that’ll grab her when she tries to bump him off. But Rosie’s afraid to move just yet, and if she can get Joyce out of the way she can take all the time she wants.

  “So, while she’s workin’ in your suite, she taps your chloral hydrate, like she did, yeah, when she killed Dudley. She fills up the fountain pen or cigarette lighter, or whatever she carries the stuff in. Then, she drops in for a visit with Joyce, and dumps most of it into Joyce’s drink. Joyce keels over. Rosie washes their glasses and puts ’em away, then puts the rest of the chloral into an empty perfume bottle. It’s supposed to be suicide, see? Joyce supposedly killed Dudley, an’ now she’s gotten scared or remorseful an’—’Scuse me.”

  Ford picked up the phone again. He said, “Lou Ford speak—oh, hello, Amy, how are you? Understand the boys grabbed Rosie without no trouble.”

  “Never mind about Rosie!” Amy snapped. “Mac just got here, and—”

  “Figured it was about time,” Ford chuckled. “Bet he ran all the way from town, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, he did, the poor darling! He was actually crying, he was so afraid something had happened to me. And—you stop that laughing, Lou Ford!”

  “Me?” Ford grinned. “What’s the matter, Amy? Almost sound like you was mad about somethin’.”

  “You’re doggoned right, I’m mad! You lied to me, Lou! You promised me he’d be safe. You said he couldn’t be hurt a bit. Y-you said that she—she’d—” Amy choked with fury, and her voice broke. “S-she—why, it’s just terrible! He’s got a lump on his head as big as an egg!”

  “No kiddin’,” Ford said. “Well, I don’t imagine it hurt him much. Prob’ly went to sleep right afterwards.”

  “You just wait, Lou Ford! Just wait’ll I get my hands on you! I’ll—No, you may not talk to Mac, and I’m not letting him talk to you! I’ve got him lying down with an ice-bag on his head, and he’s not getting up until I say he can.”

  Ford’s face tightened, pain stabbed through his heart, flooded the jeering black eyes. For a moment his world had been penetrated—that private, one-man world—and he knew a sense of loss so great that it was almost overwhelming.

  “That’s real good, Amy,” he said gently. “You keep on takin’ care of him that way, don’t never stop. Because he’s a mighty nice fella, and I know he’ll take good care of you.”

  “Lou!” she said quickly. “Wait a minute! I—”

  But Ford had already hung up the phone.

  He bit the end from another cigar, tucked it into his mouth. He flicked the head from another match. “Now, about that missing five thousand,” he began. “I don’t know what—”

  A soft snore interrupted him. Hanlon’s mouth was slightly open, and his eyes were firmly closed. And he slept the peace of the just. Or the adjusted.

  The loneliness swept over Ford again, the loneliness and the bitterness. But only briefly; it was gone almost as soon as it came. He grinned and stood up quietly. He tiptoed out of the room.

  He went down the hall, Stetson shoved back on his head, cigar gripped between his teeth, rocking in his high-heeled boots. Laughing at himself, jeering at himself. Laughing away the unbearable.

  He reached the entrance, and he stood there for a moment. He breathed in the cold air of darkness and stared up into the heartbreaking beauty of the Far West Texas sky.

  It sure was a fine night, he decided. Yes, sir, it sure was, and that was a fact…

  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 Geta
way, The Killer Inside Me, The Grifters, and After Dark, My Sweet.

  …and Nothing More than Murder

  In December 2011, Mulholland Books will publish Jim Thompson’s Nothing More than Murder. Following is an excerpt from the novel’s opening pages.

  Nothing More than Murder

  WANTED: Unencumbered woman for general work in out-of-town home. Forty to forty-five; able to wear size 14 uniform. Excellent wages, hours. Box No.—

  I’ll let you write in the box number,” I told the girl behind the counter. “Have to let you do something to earn your money.”

  She smiled, kind of like an elevator boy smiles when you ask him if he has lots of ups and downs. “Yes, sir. What is your name, please?”

  “Well,” I said, “I’m going to pay for the ad now.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, just as much as to say you’re damned right you’re going to pay now. “We have to have your name and address, sir.”

  I told her I was placing the ad for a friend, “Mrs. J.J. Williamson, room four-nineteen, Crystal Arms Hotel,” and she wrote it down on a printed slip of paper and stabbed it over a spike with a lot of others.

  “That runs one word over three lines. If you like, I think I can eliminate a—”

  “I want it printed like it stands,” I said. “How much?”

  “For three days it will be two dollars and forty-four cents.”

  I had a dollar and ninety-six cents in my overcoat pocket—exactly enough if Elizabeth had figured things right. I pulled it out and laid it on the counter, and fumbled around in my pants pocket for some change.

  I found a quarter, two nickels, and a few pennies. I dropped them into my coat as soon as I saw they weren’t enough, and reached again. The girl stared at my hands—the gloves—her eyebrows up a little.

  I came out with a half dollar and slid it across to her.

  “There,” I said, “that makes it.”

  “Just a minute, sir. You have two cents change coming.”

  I waved my hand at her to keep it. I didn’t want to try to pick up those pennies with my gloves on, and something told me she’d make me pick them up. I wanted to get out of there.

  She hollered something just as the door closed, but I didn’t turn around. I hit the street and I kept right on walking without looking back.

  I guess I must have gone a dozen blocks, just walking along blind, before I realized I was being a chump. I stopped and lighted a cigarette, and saw no one was following me. It began to drift in on me that there really wasn’t any reason why anyone should. I felt like kicking myself for letting Elizabeth plan the thing.

  She’d insisted on my wearing gloves, which, I could see now, was a hell of a phony touch. She’d had me print out the ad in advance on a piece of dime-store paper, and that looked funny, too, when you put it with the other.

  And then she’d figured out the exact price of the ad—only it wasn’t the exact price.

  I went on down the street toward film row, wondering why, since she always fouled me up, I ever bothered to listen to Elizabeth. Wondering whether I was actually as big a chump as she always said I was.

  I wish now that I’d kept on wondering instead of plowing on ahead. But I didn’t, and I don’t think it proves I wasn’t smart because I didn’t.

  Books by Jim Thompson

  After Dark, My Sweet

  The Alcoholics

  Bad Boy

  The Criminal

  Cropper’s Cabin

  The Getaway

  The Golden Gizmo

  The Grifters

  Heed the Thunder

  A Hell of a Woman

  The Killer Inside Me

  The Kill-Off

  The Nothing Man

  Nothing More than Murder

  Now and on Earth

  Pop. 1280

  Recoil

  The Rip-Off

  Savage Night

  South of Heaven

  A Swell-Looking Babe

  Texas by the Tail

  The Transgressors

  Wild Town

  Acclaim for Jim Thompson

  “The best suspense writer going, bar none.”

  —New York Times

  “My favorite crime novelist—often imitated but never duplicated.”

  —Stephen King

  “If Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Cornell Woolrich would have joined together in some ungodly union and produced a literary offspring, Jim Thompson would be it.…His work casts a dazzling light on the human condition.”

  —Washington Post

  “Like Clint Eastwood’s pictures it’s the stuff for rednecks, truckers, failures, psychopaths and professors.…One of the finest American writers and the most frightening, Thompson is on best terms with the devil. Read Jim Thompson and take a tour of hell.”

  —New Republic

  “The master of the American groin-kick novel.”

  —Vanity Fair

  “The most hard-boiled of all the American writers of crime fiction.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  Copyright

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 1957 by Jim Thompson, copyright © renewed 1985 by Alberta H. Thompson

  Excerpt from Nothing More than Murder copyright 1949 by Jim Thompson

  Cover design by Julianna Lee, cover art: Getty Images. Cover copyright © 2011 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the US Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Mulholland Books Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

  www.mulhollandbooks.com/jimthompson

  www.twitter.com/mulhollandbooks

  www.facebook.com/mulhollandbooks

  www.hachettebookgroup.com

  First e-book edition, December 2011

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  ISBN 978-0-316-19594-2