The Outsider

by Richard Wright

  “Hell, no.”

  “Then why did you do it?”

  Cross laughed. Just as every man, perhaps, has his price, so every man, it seems, has a limit to his intelligence. Hilton knew that Cross was sincere and it bewildered him.

  “I’ll trade with you,” Hilton urged him. “I don’t know what your angle is, but shooting’s not going to help anybody…”

  “It’s not that easy, boy,” Cross told him. “You and your crowd are smart. I trust nobody now.”

  “I’ll not tell ’em, neither the Party or the police,” Hilton swore. “Look, I just left Party headquarters. I’m taking Gil’s place, in addition to my other assignment. So everything’s settled. I was after getting my hands on a quick boy like you, but, hell, you got away. Okay. No hard feelings. You go your way and I’ll go mine. To hell with Gil. I don’t care. I know you’ll never speak of it, and God knows I won’t. After all, I helped you with the D.A., didn’t I? I kept making a racket about how Herndon was the murderer, didn’t I? And Eva worships you…You got what you want, hunh? Things went your way.”

  Hilton’s voice had come in a low, urgent stream of words, all precise and straight to the point.

  “What about Bob?”

  “Bob?” Hilton blinked. “What the hell do you care?” Hilton’s eyes were round with surprise. “Was he your brother or something?”

  “No. You sent Bob to Trinidad, to his death—”

  “So what? There are a million Bob Hunters. What do they mean? They don’t count…”

  Cross smiled bitterly. How those quiet words riled him! He had to deal with this man in a way that would make him feel what he felt.

  “Sit down, Hilton.”

  Hilton hesitated; he did not know what was coming; his eyes darted and glittered. He licked his lips.

  “Make no mistake, Hilton,” Cross warned him. “I’d kill you in a minute. If you’ve got any tricks in mind, forget ’em.”

  “I’ve no tricks, Lane. I want to live…”

  “So did Bob,” Cross said. “Now, sit down…In that chair there, where I can see you.”

  Hilton sat and Cross sat on the edge of the bed and held his gun on Hilton.

  “I want to know some things, Hilton,” he began.

  “Let’s be reasonable,” Hilton said. “Let’s not be foolish about this. There’s no sense in being drastic…”

  The man had begun to plead for his life.

  “How is it that you care so much for your life and nothing for Bob’s?” Cross demanded.

  “And what in hell do you care for life?” Hilton shot at him.

  Cross smiled bitterly. It was a fair question.

  “Who do you think you are to kill as you did?” Hilton demanded. “Herndon’s no loss. But Gil was helping you, wasn’t he? He took you into his home, trusted you, didn’t he? And I shielded you from the cops, didn’t I? What are you kicking about, Lane? Let’s call it quits.”

  “No,” Cross said thoughtfully. “There’s something here I want to understand…I’m caught in these quicksands of compulsive actions, just like you are. But, Hilton, I’m reluctantly in it. I don’t like it. I want to get out of it…”

  “But killing me isn’t going to get you out of it,” Hilton reminded him eagerly, seizing upon every angle to save himself. “The only way out is to stop.”

  “I won’t stop; I can’t stop as long as men like you keep playing your dirty, tricky games,” Cross said; and there was a genuine despair in his voice. “I won’t ever feel free as long as you exist, even if you are not hunting me down. You and men like you are my enemies. Bob Hunters will go on being shipped to their deaths as long as you live…And don’t give me this goddamn argument about your helping me. You help others when it suits you, and when it doesn’t, you don’t!”

  “That’s the law of life,” Hilton stated simply.

  “It isn’t,” Cross contradicted him in a frenzy that made Hilton’s face turn still whiter. “Maybe you’re trying to make it into a law—”

  “It’s what I’ve found, Lane; and it’s what you’ll find too.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Cross said, realizing that what Hilton had said was true from the past nature of his own experience. “And even if it’s true now, we can change it. We can make it different; it must be different…”

  “Why?” Hilton asked mockingly.

  “Because—Because—”

  “You’re looking for paradise on earth,” Hilton told him, managing a soft smile. “You’re confused, Lane. You’re seeking for something that doesn’t exist. You want to redeem life on this earth with so-called meaning—But what you see before your eyes is all there is. Get all that idealistic rot out of your head, boy—”

  “I’m not idealistic,” Cross insisted.

  “You are!” Hilton swore. “You’re an inverted idealist. You’re groping for some overall concept with which to tie all life together. There is none, Lane.” Hilton was struggling to master his fear; he was trying to get at Cross’s feelings, trying to make him feel that he was his older brother, that they shared basically the same views of life, and that Cross should accept his guidance. “Living in this world, Lane, is what we make it, and we make what there is of it. Beyond that there’s nothing, nothing whatsoever, nothing at all…To think that there’s something is to be foolish; to act as if there is something is to be mad…Now, let’s do business like rational men. Let’s make a deal. You do what you want to do, and I’ll do what I want. We’ll leave each other alone. I don’t give a damn what you do…”

  But Cross was not moved. He still held the gun on Hilton, smiling a little, appreciating Hilton’s tactics. Then he shook his head; he could not accept what he had heard. There was an anchorage somewhere to be found. The logic of Hilton reduced all actions of life to a kind of trading in death. And that was not his sense of it; he had killed, but not to exalt that. He had been trying to find a way out, to test himself, to see, to know; but not killing just to live…

  “You don’t feel that there is any real justification for anything, hunh, Hilton?”

  “Hell, no! I am here, alive, real. That’s all the justification there is and will ever be, Lane,” Hilton spoke earnestly, advancing arguments to save his life. “Let’s start from that. I let you live and you let me live…”

  “Why should I, if there’s no justification? And suppose we break our contract?”

  “Then one of us dies, that’s all. What the hell is there so important about men dying? Tell me. We’re not like the goddamn bourgeois, Lane. We don’t make deals in shoes, cotton, iron, and wool…We make deals in human lives. Those are the good deals, the important deals, the history-making deals when they are made in a big way. Sweep your illusions aside, Lane. Get down to what is left, and that is: life, life; bare, naked, unjustifiable life; just life existing there and for no reason and no end. The end and the reason are for us to say, to project. That’s all. My wanting to live even in this reasonless way is the only check and guarantee you have that I’ll keep my promise.”

  “That’s not enough!” Cross shouted.

  “You’re a romantic fool!” Hilton shouted in turn. “You’re a kid! An idiot! You’re just going about spilling blood for no reason at all, looking for what doesn’t exist!”

  “And what do you kill for?” Cross asked tauntingly.

  “Practical reasons.”

  “And Bob was betrayed to death for practical reasons?”

  “Yes. For practical reasons.”

  “But they were such trivially practical reasons,” Cross protested, remembering the agony on Bob’s face. “Couldn’t there be—?”

  “A pretense? Why? Look at it simply, Lane. Why fool yourself? I’m speaking to you now out of the depths of my heart. You know and understand too much to go about looking for rainbows. Let’s trade. I’ve no proof against you. If anything ever happens to you, I’ll help you; I’ll remember and will stand by you. After all, Lane, no matter what plan I had in mind, I wasn’t going to kill you�
��”

  “That’s just it!” Cross burst out. “I might forgive you if you had been going to kill me. But, no; you were going to make me a slave. I would never have been able to draw a free breath as long as I lived if you had had your way. I’d have suffered, night and day. You would have dominated my consciousness. No, no, Hilton, there’s more here than you say. Goddammit, there is! If not, then why all this meaningless suffering? If you had killed me, that would have been a simple act. Killing Bob might have been in a way merciful. He wasn’t happy. But to make him suffer ten long years! Hell, no! You say life is just life, a simple act of accidental possession in the hands of him who happens to have it. But what’s suffering? That rests in the senses…You might argue that you could snatch a life, blot out a consciousness and get away with it because you’re strong and free enough to do it; but why turn a consciousness into a flame of suffering and let it lie, squirming…? No!” Cross’s eyes were unblinking, seeing not Hilton sitting there staring at him, but Eva’s diary, those pages telling of deception, of shame, of fear; and, too, he was remembering his own agonies in Chicago. He rose from the bed and looked wildly about the room.

  “No, Lane,” Hilton was saying. “What are you going to do?”

  Yes, he would turn up the radio, good and loud; it would help drown out the pistol shot. He turned the knob up and a leaping flood of jazz music filled the room. Hilton rose slowly, sensing that Cross was preparing to act. Cross kept the gun on him, then he saw the bed. Yes, make him get down there between those mattresses, and the sound of the bullet would not be heard.

  “Lane, Lane, you’re crazy!” Hilton was saying, his head shaking.

  Cross saw that the man was losing his grip, was going to pieces.

  “Take it easy, Hilton,” Cross told him.

  “You can’t get away with it, Lane!” Hilton begged. His hands lifted themselves in a plea. “They’ll hear the shot—Somebody will know—They’ll catch you—Listen, you want money? I got a few thousand—I’ll give you anything—But don’t do this…”

  Cross was possessed. He was crouching a little in the knees and his finger was conscious of the trigger. No, not yet; load the .32 and use it…That was better…He backed off from Hilton, pulled out the .32, and, holding his own gun on Hilton, he took one bullet from his pocket. He took his handkerchief and quickly wiped the bullet clean of his fingerprints and slipped it into a chamber of Hilton’s gun, his eyes hard on Hilton’s face. His fingers fumbled as he worked, for he expected Hilton to make an effort to overpower him while he was nervously busy breaking the .32 and putting the cartridge in…

  Trusting, hoping for luck, Hilton rushed at him and Cross met the attack with a sharp blow from the butt of his gun across Hilton’s forehead. The man slumped to the floor, still conscious, his eyes filmed with fear.

  “No, Lane; no, no!”

  Hilton was weeping now, suffering. Cross knew that he had to do it quickly or he could not do it at all. The sight of that tortured face was unnerving him. He stopped, grabbed Hilton by the collar, and yanked him toward the bed. He was surprised at how light the man was; and Hilton, in his craven fear, offered little resistance, as though he thought that being pliable might placate Cross and make him compassionate enough to spare his life.

  “No, no, no…For God’s sake, Lane, don’t kill me!”

  He put his gun in his pocket and now held the .32 in his right hand. He kicked Hilton and muttered:

  “Get on the bed!”

  He had to act quickly, or this man’s wild face would make him stop. Hilton, with glazed eyes, scrambled obediently upon the bed, his hand still held shakingly before his eyes.

  “Lane, Lane, listen—Please!” he sobbed.

  Cross paused. Never in his life had he seen a man so undone by fear. He grabbed Hilton’s head and, pulling one corner of the mattress up, he forced it over Hilton’s head. Quick, quick, or he could not do it. Hilton’s fingers were now clawing at Cross’s hand that held his head to the bed. Cross placed the .32 at Hilton’s temple and squeezed the trigger; there was a click. Oh, God, four of the chambers were empty; only one chamber was filled. Hilton’s mouth was moving, but fear robbed him of the capacity of speech. Cross squeezed his finger on the trigger again and another empty click sounded, then again and there was a spurt of blue flame and a gaping hole showed in Hilton’s temple and Cross was aware of the dancing waves of jazz music that swirled around the room. He saw that circling the bloody bullet hole in Hilton’s temple were black powder burns.

  He dropped the corner of the mattress and lowered the volume of the radio. Hilton’s hands still moved; a labored breathing went in and out of the thin lips; there was a groan and the form on the bed was quiet. Cross strained, listening. There were no sounds in the corridor. He had to get out of here…The .32…Yes…He wiped it clean of fingerprints on the sheet of the bed and tossed it beside Hilton’s hand. He paused, then forced the gun into Hilton’s fingers.

  He looked about. His fingerprints—Suddenly he did not want to try to save himself. What was the use? But he had to. He took a dirty shirt of Hilton’s and wiped wherever he thought he had touched. He had to go, had to get out of this room. He was more concerned with getting away from the sight of that grotesquely grey face with its gaping mouth than with saving himself. He went to the door, opened it slowly and looked into the corridor. He saw the retreating back of a man. He waited until the man had turned a corner, then he went out of the room, drawing the door to, and walked toward the elevator. He seemed to be floating along without effort; he was never able to remember afterwards making any attempt to run or hide. But when he got to the elevator, he pushed a button and then seemed to realize that he ought not be seen by the elevator boy. The shadow of the car heaved into view through the glass door of the elevator and he ducked away. He saw a flight of steps leading down; he took them, running, then slowed and walked on down to the lobby. Act natural, he told himself. He walked across the lobby, passing one or two people who glanced casually at him. He came to the newsstand and stopped.

  “A Daily News,” he said.

  He paid for the paper and, as he turned to walk to the door, there flitted through his head an idea of a way to establish something resembling a partial alibi for himself…Ought he try it? Why not? Holding the paper before his eyes and pretending to scan the headlines, he glanced quickly about. No one seemed to be aware of him. Yes, he would do it. He went casually to the desk and asked the clerk:

  “Is Mr. Hilton in?”

  “Oh, yes; I think he’s in now, sir,” the clerk replied; he seemed to remember that Cross had asked for Hilton before. Turning, he examined the board holding the keys, then spoke to a brunette girl who sat facing a switchboard to his left. “Will you ring Mr. Hilton, please…? Room 342.”

  “Okay,” the girl said.

  “Who shall we tell him is calling?” the clerk asked.

  “Lionel Lane.”

  “Tell ’im Mr. Lane is calling,” the clerk told the girl.

  Cross watched the girl plug in on room 342 and jiggle a tiny lever. A young woman with a suitcase came to the desk and Cross stepped to one side and listened as she inquired for a room…

  “There’s no answer from Mr. Hilton,” the girl at the switchboard told the clerk.

  “No answer?” the clerk asked. “But I saw him go up a few minutes ago.”

  “I’ll try again,” the girl said.

  “Won’t you wait a second?” the clerk asked Cross. “We’re trying to locate Mr. Hilton.”

  “Certainly.”

  “Did you have an appointment with ’im?”

  “Well, yes. He asked me to come and see him as soon as possible. No time was specified,” Cross explained.

  “She’s ringing him again,” the clerk said, giving the woman with the suitcase the hotel register to sign. “Won’t you sit down?”

  “Thanks,” Cross said.

  He sat. He hoped that his present actions would indicate in any future inquiry that he had not b
een upstairs. Would a murderer act as calmly and politely as he was acting now?

  “There’s no response at all from Mr. Hilton’s room,” Cross heard the girl speaking.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the clerk said, “but we don’t seem to be able to locate Mr. Hilton for the moment.”

  “That’ll be all right,” Cross said, rising.

  “Would you care to wait awhile?”

  “Well…”

  “Would you like to leave a message?”

  Before Cross could answer the elevator door opened and several people came out into the lobby.

  “Just a minute,” the clerk said, turning to the elevator boy. “Say, Sam, did Mr. Hilton go up?”

  Sam looked blank and shook his head.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s the matter with your eyes?”

  “I can’t remember everybody who rides in this elevator,” the boy complained.

  “Maybe he’s in the dining room,” the clerk said.

  “Maybe,” Sam said, getting into his elevator to ride another load of passengers up.

  “Look,” Cross said. “I’ll just leave a note.”

  “Right, sir.”

  On a pad of paper supplied by the clerk, Cross wrote:

  Dear Hilton: I was by to see you twice this afternoon. I’ll try again tomorrow morning. Everything’s fine. Hope you got some sleep after that session last night.

  Lane.

  P.S. Don’t worry about anything. Eva’s doing wonderfully well.

  P.P.S. Since you’re so busy, why don’t you phone me instead and let’s fix a time?

  He folded the note and handed it to the clerk who pushed it into the letter slot, numbered 342, of the keyboard behind him.

  “Thank you,” Cross said.

  “You’re welcome, sir.”

  It was not until Cross had gone out into the cold streets that the full reaction to what he had done began to set in. He trembled as he walked. Had he acted normal enough? Could it not now be argued in favor of his innocence that he had asked for Jack Hilton twice? As his mind grasped more fully the folly of his having killed Hilton, a sense of nauseous depression seized him. He had killed Jack Hilton for many reasons: to redeem Bob’s betrayal, for the sake of Sarah’s indignation, for Eva’s deceived heart; but mainly it had been to rid himself of that sense of outrage that Hilton’s attitude had evoked in him, Hilton’s assumption that he could have made a slave of him. He was mired deeper now than ever in the bog of consequences flowing from his compelling acts. He would be caught…Surely they would come at him now. To be found on the fringes of two crimes would certainly make the police think that something was wrong…All right; so what? Was he not already lost anyway…?