The Transgressors

by Jim Thompson

  “Oh? Uh, well you really didn’t, Mr. Pellino. I—”

  “Just decided to come on your own, huh? Well, that’s just fine, George. We’ll go right on in the house, someplace where it’s nice and private, and have ourselves a little talk.”

  Carrington made a polite attempt to hang back. He said that he’d have to be rushing right off, and there was really no point to going inside. “It’s about Mrs. McBride, Mr. Pellino. About her husband’s murder, that is. I mean, she thinks it’s murder.”

  “Murder? You mean suicide, don’t you?”

  “I—I’m afraid not,” said Carrington, and he hastily babbled his reasons, Donna’s reasons, why he did not. “Think it’s up to us to lend a hand, Mr. Pellino. Tab the killer for her, you know.”

  “But how could we do that, George? How would us businessmen know who the killer is?”

  “Well, I—I just thought that, uh, perhaps—”

  “Uh-huh. I think I know what you thought. I think you think too much, George. We’ll have to have a nice long talk about it.”

  They had reached the steps leading up to the porch. Carrington made a frantic effort to break free. “Really must pop right off, old man. Can’t even stay a mom—aaah!” His face went suddenly white with agony, and his knees half-buckled. Pellino gave him a yank, practically flung him up the steps to the porch.

  “You could get your fingers broken that way,” he grinned. “Might get them mashed right together, a man out of condition like you are.”

  “D-dont!” Carrington gasped. “Really shan’t put up with this, you know. I—aaah!”

  “That’s your trouble, George. You think too much, and you don’t get enough exercise. Let yourself get all rundown. Guess we’ll have to take care of that, won’t we?”

  He yanked again, hurling Carrington into the dark hallway. Motioning for Carrington to precede him, shoving with his thick, bulging arms, he followed him down the hallway and into the kitchen.

  A flour smudge on her nose, Mrs. Pellino was rolling out dough at a worktable. She looked up for a moment, glanced blankly at Carrington, and smiled incuriously at her husband. Then she went back to her work, and August pointed to a door on the far side of the room.

  “Down there, George. And watch the stairs, huh? Get right on down them. Might fall if I crowd in on you.”

  “B-but, really. I—”

  “Or maybe you don’t mind falling? Well…”

  He started lumberingly across the room. Carrington jerked the open door and went down the long, steep stairs. Above him the door closed, and the basement lights were turned on. Dully, he looked around.

  Part of it was used as a wine cellar, lined with bottles in long, slanting bins. The rest formed a comfortably unpretentious recreation room. There was a small bar with three leather stools. There was a long leather divan, and four or five deep leather chairs.

  Pellino gripped Carrington by the necktie, nodded toward the lounge. “Look all right, Georgie? Like to sit over there?” he said. And shifting his weight suddenly, he flipped Carrington over his shoulder and sent him flying across the room.

  Carrington landed half-off, half-on the lounge, aching, stunned, the breath knocked out of him. Before he could rise, Pellino was on him again, again gripping him by the tie.

  “Ain’t very comfortable there, huh, George? Well, let’s see. Suppose we try that chair over there.”

  His shoulders weaved again with the shifting of his weight. He stooped and jerked, and Carrington went hurtling through the air a second time. He came down, as he had before, half-on, half-off, the leather target.

  He wasn’t comfortable there either, of course. Pellino was sure that he wasn’t. He must try another chair, and another, and another, until all were tried. By then, his whole body was one great ache, and his head was roaring, and his kidneys seemed to have been torn loose from his body. The worst pain, the worst indignity, was to his loins, where he had come down straddling a chair arm. Somehow, he managed to gasp out a request, and Pellino nodded and led him to a sink; stood there watching while he relieved himself. Then the torture was resumed.

  He made the circuit of the room twice before Pellino was satisfied. Perhaps he would have made it again, but more was obviously unnecessary. More would have accomplished no more.

  There was nothing left in him, nothing of what one needed to live. He had had very little to begin with, and now even that little was gone.

  Studying him narrowly, drawing a chair up in front of him, Pellino wondered if he might have gone too far.

  “Okay, Georgie?” he said, a trifle anxiously. “Think you got all the crap knocked out of your skull?”

  “Eh? Oh, right-o. Quite,” Carrington said.

  “Then I’ll cut you in on this McBride thing. Give you a piece off the top…”

  “No need, old man. Can’t say that it really interests me.”

  “Well”—Pellino took another look at him—“thought you’d be better out of it, myself, but as long as the subject’s come up.…Now, the lid’s probably going to blow off on McBride; don’t know why it hasn’t already. But we’ve got to clamp it back on fast—we, not you; you don’t know nothing. We’ve got to have a cinch, and we’re lining one up. A way of tossing it under the carpet and stomping it down, without a peep or a wiggle. No investigations. No battling back and forth, with a lot of side issues being dragged in. You get me, George? You see why it has to be that way, why we can’t have some private eye or screwball like you messing into it?”

  “Oh, quite,” said Carrington vacantly. “Right-o, check, and all that rot.”

  “Good,” said Pellino, but he didn’t sound certain that it was. “Like a drink, Georgie? Like to lie down a while?”

  Carrington declined with courteous flatness. “Just brush up a bit, if you don’t mind. Lave the old jowls.”

  “You do that,” Pellino said. “Me, I think I’ll take that drink.”

  Carrington bathed his face at the sink; combed his mussed, graying brown hair. He straightened out his tie and carefully adjusted his rumpled clothes. Pellino watched him, his small eyes worried and wondering.

  Smiling warmly, outwardly himself again, Carrington faced around from the sink.

  “Well, must toddle on, I suppose. Thanks for everything, old man.”

  “Thank…Oh, yeah, sure, Georgie,” Pellino said; then, “Look, George, tell me something, will you?”

  “But, of course. Anything I can.”

  “Well, look. What—how did you see the picture when we first showed it to you? You know, back when you opened the door for us and we moved in on you. Didn’t you smell anything, Georgie? Did you figure we were tossing all that bread in your lap just because you were hungry?”

  Carrington hesitated, puzzling out the translation of bread and hungry. He laughed his polite little laugh. “Think I may have, old man. Quite understandable, you know.”

  “Understandable, Georgie?”

  “Understandable to me. Sort of thing I’d ’ve done myself if our positions had been reversed. Say I had scads of the old gilt, and I see some nice chap struggling against terrific odds and sinking in the sea of life, et cetera et cetera. Must give him a hand-up, what? Can’t just sit on the jolly life preserver when it’s so simple to toss it to him.”

  He smiled brightly, palm extended in a so-there-you-are gesture. Pellino came slowly to his feet, his body trembling with sudden unreasoning fury.

  “You dumb son of a bitch,” he snarled. “You scram out of here, get me? Beat it, and don’t you ever come back! You show your stupid pan out here again, and—”

  “Oh, I won’t,” Carrington promised. “Scout’s oath, honor bright, and all that rot.”

  Taxiing back into the city, Carrington looked out into the gathering night and was completely relaxed and content for the first time in a long, long time. It had been a truly wonderful day, he thought. A truly jolly day. Mrs. McBride had proved to be a terrifically nice person—amazingly understanding and considerate. An
d how could anyone have been more pleasant than Mr. Pellino? Yet he had actually rather dreaded seeing both!

  It just went to show how wrong a chap could be about people. Not too pure in heart himself, p’raps—that must be it, mustn’t it?—so he suspected them. Whereas, on the other hand, if one’s own auricles and ventricles were properly scrubbed, then he had nothing to fear and so on or something.

  “My soul it has the strength of ten,” he murmured, “because my—my, uh—hands are clean.” Or was that right? Never could remember those jolly old rhymes. Maybe it was, uh—

  AND JUDAS WEPT, SAYING, YEAH, VERILY I ABOMINATE ONIONS YET I CAN NEVER WITHSTAND THEM.

  Silly. That wasn’t it, of course. How did those silly things pop into a chap’s mind?

  The cab drew up at the entrance of a downtown office building. Carrington got out, pressed a five-dollar bill into the driver’s hand, and curled his fingers around it.

  “You’re a wonderful man,” he said warmly, “I can see it in your eyes. A truly beautiful and wonderful man.”

  “Yeah?” The driver jerked his hand away. “Well, you better line yourself up something else, buddy. I’m workin’ tonight.”

  “Oh, right,” said Carrington. “Going to be rather busy myself.”

  The cigar-stand clerk, a new man on the job, was locking up for the night. Carrington took a package of mints from the carton on the counter, and refused the change from a ten-dollar bill. “You deserve it,” he said. “You deserve the best of everything.”

  The clerk examined the bill suspiciously, saw that it was good, and quickly palmed it. “Look, mister,” he said, “take it kind of easy, huh? I don’t know how you got away from your keeper, but—”

  “Oh, I didn’t get away from him,” Carrington said. “Have him with me all the time.”

  He rode up to the nineteenth floor, one-half of which was now occupied by Highlands. As he stepped off the elevator, he gave the operator a twenty-dollar bill, the last of his money. The boy accepted it reluctantly, along with Carrington’s assurances of his goodness.

  “Let me get you some coffee out of it, anyway, Mr. Carrington. A big carton of black coffee, and maybe a sandwich. That’ll snap you out of it.”

  Carrington declined with thanks. “Not at all hungry, laddie. Hardly decent to gorge at such a time, anyway.”

  The biggest and best of Highlands’ offices were devoted to the legal and accounting departments. Carrington’s was in the rear, facing the alley; a cubbyhole similar to the one he had occupied in his pre-Pellino days.

  Carrington entered it, flung open the French windows, and stepped through them.

  10

  Tom Lord drove away from Joyce Lakewood’s cottage with that rare good feeling a man has when he has been persuaded to do exactly what he wanted. Sobering up the last couple days, getting off the booze entirely, he had decided to get away from Big Sands for a while. Not far away, not splendidly away, but just away. There was nothing to hold him here now—although, of course, he must come back. He could not picture himself as living permanently in another place. But for the time being, he needed a change. And it was the one need, among his many, which he was able to satisfy.

  He had been about to tell Joyce of his decision, to suggest that she might like to accompany him, when she herself had begun to hint at just such an excursion. And Lord, knowing her nature, had immediately put on a long face and demurred.

  “But you should get away, Tom! It would be good for you.”

  “Maybe. Hard to say. Be a lot of trouble for you, though.”

  “No, it wouldn’t, honey! Honestly! I’d love to do it.”

  “Well, that’s different,” Lord drawled. “You want to do it, why, I will. Just for you, baby.”

  Joyce kissed him delightedly. He did lov—like her a lot, didn’t he? More than anyone else?

  “Hell, don’t it look like it?” Lord said. “Catch me pulling up stakes on a minute’s notice for any other gal.”

  He left her glowing with happiness, babbling with a thousand plans for their trip. He was to hurry right back, now. Just as soon as he could pack a bag. And she’d be ready when he got back.

  Lord promised, feeling pretty good himself, only faintly disturbed by the fact that having seemingly won her way in this matter, she was hopeful of a still greater victory. Because she obviously was hopeful. She was keeping it corked up, trying not to show it, but he could see it just the same. Which meant that she was building herself up for a hell of a letdown. But that was her fault, not his.

  He wasn’t marrying her. He wasn’t marrying anyone, and he particularly wasn’t marrying her.

  A man—a Lord, anyway—couldn’t. He couldn’t go through life wondering how many of the guys he passed had laid his wife. He didn’t hold her past against her; everyone had a reason for being what he was, and she doubtless had hers. But he couldn’t live with that past. She shouldn’t expect him to become a partner in it.

  The Lord residence was in the old-family section of Big Sands, a single long row of houses overlooking the town from a gentle slope. The newest of the twenty-odd homes there was more than sixty years old, and most had been built in the Civil War era or earlier, yet all were of such reserved architecture—the commodious, clean-lined American Plains school—and all had been so well-constructed with no sparing of time and expense that none seemed dated, none was even incipiently run-down or wearing out.

  The Lord home, one of three houses in its block, occupied a corner, with grounds stretching some seventy-five yards along the street. Despite the perpetual scarcity of water the lawn was always green, when the seasons permitted; the shrubs and trees were always nourished and flourishing. Imbedded in the roadside hitching block and affixed to the front door of the house were bronze plates with the identical legend:

  Thomas DeMontez Lord, M.D.

  Physician and Surgeon

  Lord’s great-grandfather had put the plates in place. His son and his grandson, both bearing the name, both following the same profession, had left them there. And the last of his line, ex-Deputy Sheriff Thomas DeMontez Lord, had never thought of removing them. They belonged there. They were not his to remove.

  With the coming of the boom, the plates brought an occasional intruder, newcomers looking for a doctor and encouraged to walk in by the hospitably unlocked front door. But Lord regarded this as rather amusing, and no real bother at all. And he saw no reason to change his ways or break with tradition because of it.

  The plates remained where they had been put. The doors remained unlocked. And strangers continued to stray inside. As he entered the house today, paused in the doorway of his father’s office, he saw that still another had come in. She was a pretty little gal, he thought. Cute as a bug’s ear and just about as tiny, but with proper amounts of meat in all the right places. Awful peaked-looking, though. Seemed to have just enough blood in her to pink up her mouth and put a spot on each cheek.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said, looking her over impassively. “Were you waitin’ to see the doctor?”

  “Well, no. No, I wasn’t.” She half came to her feet. “I wanted to see his son—that is, I guess it would be his son. Tom Lord…?”

  The statement came out as a question. She found herself smiling weakly, already pleading and placatory when there was no reason at all to be. She had a right to be here. She certainly had the right to come to this town, to press the investigation into Aaron’s murder. But while these people—all of them out here—did not deny that right, neither did they concede it. They volunteered nothing. They looked at you and through you, as though you had no real substance. And if you blew up and lost your temper, as she had already done once today, they remained completely unmoved. Coolly polite, laconically impassive. Silently demanding that you justify yourself, while they decided what should be done about you.

  “Tom Lord,” she said firmly. “I want to see Tom Lord.”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Yes! Can you tell me where I c
an find him?”

  “Might be I could. What’d you want to see him about, ma’am?”

  “About m-my, my—” Her head swam with sudden dizziness, and she sank back on the lounge. “P-lease,” she said. “Can’t you answer a simple question? Can’t anyone in this crazy place answer a question without asking one?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Can you?”

  “Can—? All right,” she sighed. “I’m Mrs. Donna McBride. My husband, Aaron McBride, was recently killed out in the fields. I want to talk to Mr. Lord about his death.”

  “Tom’s not a deputy anymore, ma’am. Seems like you ought to talk to the sheriff.”

  “I know he’s not a deputy, and I did talk to the sheriff! I talked to him and all those other stupid oafs that’re supposed to be officers, deputies, and they were as bad as you are! Worse even! I almost exhausted myself just finding out where Mr. Lord lived!”

  “Maybe they figured Mr. Lord didn’t want to see you.”

  “But I—I—!” She wanted to yell. In fact, she realized, she had been yelling. “Please,” she said, fighting down the swelling hysteria, struggling up from the growing dizziness. “Please. I can’t tell you exactly why I want to see Mr. Lord. I’m not completely sure myself, and I just don’t know why I should. It’s between Mr. Lord and me.”

  “You mean it’s none of my business, ma’am?”

  “Well…frankly, no, it isn’t.”

  “Reckon I better not butt into it then, had I? Shouldn’t be asking me to.”

  She stared at him, dully, despairingly. He looked back at her, his expression blankly polite. Or—or was it completely so? Wasn’t there a trace of amusement, of mockery, in the cool dark eyes.

  “All right,” she said, her voice shaky with weakness. “I’ll go now. You won’t help me. No one in this rotten, filthy place will help me. Just where anyone ever got the notion that Westerners were p-polite and courteous is—is—”