The Nothing Man

by Jim Thompson

  “I see.” I nodded slowly. “You think that’s what she intended to do, huh? She tried to get her money, but got the poem instead. Mmm, I suppose it might have been that way. But that still doesn’t explain the poem.”

  “What’s there to explain? Lots of people carry poems around. We got a fellow down at the office—you know him, Stengel, works over in identification—and he does it. He clips ’em out of newspapers, or maybe he hears ’em over the radio and copies ’em down. Never seen him yet when he didn’t have some verse in his wallet, ready to spring it on you.”

  “But this particular little item—”

  “Look, Brownie, pal”—his eyes flickered with annoyance—“you’re fighting me. It was pretty cute, wasn’t it? Something a dame like—something she might have got a big bang out of. Maybe she copied it off a privy wall. Maybe some place where she was working, slingin’ hash, say, and one of the waitresses passed it around and she got hold of a copy. The point is it don’t mean nothing, so we don’t even have to consider it. I ain’t even going to mention it in my report.”

  “Well—” I stared at him absently.

  “Well?” he said. “It was an accident, huh? We let it go at that. I don’t give you no trouble; you don’t give me none.”

  I hesitated. I was trying to remember something. Everything was reasonably clear up to a certain point: I could remember swinging the bottle, spilling the whisky over her, dropping the matches. But after that…

  After that, from that time until I reached the boat, nothing. Only the long blue oblong of flame, and then nothing. If Stukey hadn’t been so sure of himself, if he hadn’t gone off half-cocked, he might have tripped me up in a dozen places.

  “You were very sure,” I said, “that she’d been slugged. There wasn’t any doubt in your mind. What made you so certain, Stuke? Just the fact that she couldn’t have easily struck the top of her head against something?”

  “That was a big part of it, sure, but there was this quart whisky bottle layin’ in the bed an’—”

  “I see. You thought she’d been hit with that. What brand of whisky was it?”

  “Couldn’t say. It was all charred, see, the label burned off and—”

  “And the fingerprints? Did you dust the place?”

  “Uh-huh. The boys went over it from top to bottom, and the only prints they found was hers an’ a few of the maid’s. I figure she must’ve cleaned the place up good before she started her party. Nice clean little lady, huh?” He drooped a lid over one eye. “Looks like she even wiped off the doorknob.”

  “I suppose the boys also looked for tracks around the outside?”

  “Tracks? Why, keed, there could have been a herd of elephants around that place and their tracks wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in that rain.”

  “Now, that poem—”

  “Forget it. Put it out of your mind, pal. Typewritten—God knows when or where. The paper, it might have come from anyplace. A dime store or a drugstore or—”

  “You were completely wrong then in your initial suspicions? There is absolutely nothing to connect me with this murder?”

  “Absitively and possolutely, Brownie. I was all wet up to here. But don’t use that word, huh? Don’t say murder. It was an accident and—”

  A car was pulling into the yard. He paused, shooting me a look of inquiry.

  “That would be my publisher,” I said, “and my editor. They have come to condole with me. Also, I suspect—at least on the part of Mr. Randall—to lend me moral support.”

  “Yeah? Well, that’s nice.” He stood up, brushing at his pants. “I guess I’ll just trot along, then, an’—”

  “You,” I said, “will stay right here.”

  “But, pal…Oh, well, sure. You want me to square you up with ’em, huh? I don’t remember saying anything out of the way, but—”

  “You will square yourself up,” I said. “You will explain just what you intend to do about apprehending my wife’s murderer.”

  7

  Mr. Lovelace was patently not in the most pleasant of humors. A man of regular habits was Mr. Lovelace, a man who, like so many of the lower lower-animals, liked his full ten hours’ sleep each night. Now that sleep had been disturbed; he, Austin Lovelace, had been disturbed twice in one night! And without, as he saw it, any very adequate cause.

  It was the old, old story. Because he was strong and wise—a tower of strength among pygmies—he was constantly overburdened. Everyone loaded his trifling troubles upon him.

  He was sleepy, puzzled, fretful. Very, very fretful. For me, the loyal, hard-working—and appreciative—servant, he managed a mumbled word of sympathy and a semi-fatherly handclasp. But it was obviously an effort.

  “Very sad. Tragic.…Insist you take the remainder of the week off, understand? Take as much time as you need—uh—within reason.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said. “I believe two or three days will be sufficient. I own a burial plot in Los Angeles, and I thought—”

  “By all means. Certainly. Much better than a local burial. Incidentally, Mr. Brown”—his lips pursed pettishly—“I was rather shocked to learn that—uh—that a man of your caliber was married to—to—”

  “I understand, sir,” I said. “But I was very young at the time. It was long before I came to the Courier. I hadn’t yet had the chance to profit from my association with you.”

  “Well—ahem—I, uh, certainly wouldn’t want to chide you in your hour of bereavement. Am I correct in understanding that you had not lived together as man and wife for some time?”

  “Not for several years, sir. Not since I entered the army.”

  “Ummm. I see.” The stare he gave me was considerably less peevish. “A marriage in name only, eh? A youthful mistake from which you were unable to extricate yourself?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “You might call it that.”

  It was bad, shameful, to speak of her in this way. But, you see, there no longer was a her. Now there was merely a problem, and out of the bad much good could come.

  He gave me a forgiving clap on the back. Then, after a look of puzzled distaste at Lem Stukey, he turned annoyed to Dave Randall.

  “Well, Randall? I believe there’s nothing more to be said or done, eh?”

  “N-No, sir.” Dave started nervously. “I—I guess it wasn’t necessary for you to—I guess I shouldn’t have bothered you to come out here, sir.”

  “My own thought. Why did you, Randall? I seem to recall that you mentioned that you would later explain the need for my presence.”

  “Well, I—I—”

  “Yes? Speak up, man!”

  Lovelace fed on nervousness, even as he did on flattery. Let him catch you jumpy, uneasy, and he would be after you like a hungry hound. And Dave couldn’t explain, of course. He couldn’t say what he’d thought—that he was sure I was in a bad hole and was apt to need plenty of help to climb out.

  He’d been positively pale with fear when he arrived, and he’d been almost pitifully relieved when it dawned on him that I was very far from the shadows of the gas chamber. That was all he could think of: that I wasn’t guilty; that what he had done to me, through a serious error in judgment when he was my commanding officer, had not resulted in murder.

  Now he had to think of something else. The old man was demanding an explanation. And Dave could only stand and squirm, stammer helplessly.

  “Mr. Randall! Are you keeping something from me?”

  “N-No, sir. I—I guess I was just a little excited, sir.”

  “Yes? I would not have said that you were an excitable type, Mr. Randall. Are you—uh—are the duties of your position too much for you? Would you like to step down for a time?”

  I decided to intervene. Not, you understand, that I greatly minded Dave’s squirming. The good colonel—he who had been so cocksure, so peremptory with his orders—would do much more squirming before I was finished with him. I intervened because it suited me. It was time to start taking the good from th
e bad.

  “I believe I can explain, sir,” I said. “We’ll want the story for our first edition. I imagine Dave thought we’d better discuss the handling of it.”

  “Oh? Well, why didn’t he say so, then? No reason to—Story!” He gulped, his eyes widening in a horrified double-take. “Did you say story, Mr. Brown? Surely, you don’t plan on—”

  “We’ll have to, sir. This is one we won’t be able to bury. It’s another Black Dahlia case. The Los Angeles papers will give it a whopping play. It’ll be a front-page story in every paper between here and L.A. We couldn’t pass it up, even if we wanted to.”

  “If we wanted to? If, Mr. Brown? You know the policy of the Courier. A family paper for family people.”

  “If,” I repeated, and Lem Stukey cleared his throat.

  “Them other papers,” he said. “They won’t play up the story if there ain’t one. We keep quiet about it here—call it an accident—and what are they gonna—”

  “But it wasn’t an accident,” I said. “It was murder. And knowing Mr. Lovelace as I do, I feel certain that he will not blink at it. He will not hush it up, and thus leave unchanged the conditions that gave rise to the crime.”

  Lovelace’s jaw sagged. Slowly he sank down on the lounge.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” I said. “I’m sure you must see that I am right.”

  “B-But the Courier…Pacific City! I just—Uh, what did you mean, Brown? About the conditions which gave rise to it?”

  I didn’t answer immediately. I poured a drink and pressed the glass into his hand, and he took it like a child taking candy. He swigged it, shuddered, and swigged again. I sat down and began talking.

  Stukey scowled down at the floor. Dave listened, watching me curiously, but nodding occasionally at what I said.

  “…a very unhealthy situation here for some time, Mr. Lovelace. The sort of situation that breeds murder. Riffraff drifting in from everywhere because of the climate. Thieves, pickpockets, prostitutes, confidence workers. Keep that—them—in mind, and then bear in mind that we have a large floating tourist population, people with money and—”

  “But—but I don’t understand!” Lovelace frowned querulously at Lem. “Why have you allowed this, sir? Weren’t you aware of these undesirables in our midst? What kind of chief of detectives do you call yourself?”

  “As a matter of fact,” I said, carefully, “Mr. Stukey has kept them under quite good control. But he’s only one man, not the entire department. And I think we’ve made his job seem a pretty thankless one. There’s been little or no recognition for work well done. There’s been no incentive to give the city the wholesale housecleaning it needs.”

  “Incentive? Recognition?” He continued to frown at Stukey. “He draws a very handsome salary, as I recall. Why should he—?”

  “Don’t we all, sir? Don’t we all need more than mere money? For that matter, we’ve had something worse here than a lack of incentive. There’s not only been no encouragement to do something about local crime, there’s been every encouragement to do nothing. I think you know what I mean, sir. You’re sensitive about the good name of Pacific City. The police department knows it, as do we all. Naturally, the tendency has been to keep the lid on crime rather than to expose it and cast it out.”

  He didn’t like that. Mr. Lovelace, need it be said, liked no criticism, either implied or direct. So, after letting him hang for a moment, I lifted him off the hook.

  “Of course, I’m not excusing Mr. Stukey. In the final analysis, the fault is largely if not completely his. He chose the easy way out, the course of least resistance. After all, sir, it hasn’t been exactly pleasant for me to lay these facts before you. But I felt that it was my duty to do it—I did not see how I could delay longer in view of tonight’s happenings—and I knew that you, sir, regardless of your personal feelings, have nothing but respect and admiration for the man who does his duty.”

  He puffed up a little. Some of the sag went out of his shoulders. “Quite right, Mr. Brown. And—uh—thank you for the compliment. I hope, naturally, that the situation is not as bad as you believe.…What do you recommend?”

  “Solving this murder,” I said, “should be the first item on our agenda. At least, we should leave no stone unturned in trying to solve it. We want to serve notice to the world at large that murder is not taken lightly in Pacific City.”

  He sighed, hesitated, nodded firmly. “Yes, yes. By all means.…You, sir—Stukey, is it? What are you doing about this murder?”

  “What murder?” Lem grunted, sullenly. “He says it’s murder. I don’t.”

  “How’s that? Mr. Brown—?”

  “Mr. Stukey is a conservative,” I said. “He’s jumped to the wrong conclusions a time or two and it’s made him ultra cautious. I wish it were an accident, sir, but I’m sure you’ll agree with me that it couldn’t have been.…”

  I explained the circumstances under which the body had been found, bearing down heavily on the wiped-away fingerprints. He nodded grimly, scowling at Stukey.

  “Certainly it was murder, some mentally deranged person.…You don’t agree, sir? You intend to persist in your quaint theory that—”

  “I ain’t overlooking any bets,” said Lem, hastily. “I got the island boys workin’ on the murder angle. I thought maybe—maybe I might have a line on the killer myself, but…but I’ll keep ’em on it, Mr. Lovelace. We’ll turn that place upside down.”

  “Well, I should think so!” snapped Lovelace. “An accident! Whatever led you to think for a moment that—?”

  “I was just tryin’ to keep an open mind, Mr. Lovelace.” Stukey was almost whining. “Like I said, I ain’t passing up any bets.”

  Lovelace harrumphed angrily and glanced at me. I said I had complete confidence in Mr. Stukey’s ability to handle the case. “I’m not sure that he needs or wants any suggestions from me, but—”

  “Certainly he does! Why shouldn’t he?”

  “Well,” I went on, “it seems to me that the two things tie in together—that is, the solving of the murder and the city-wide clean-up. I believe that every known or suspected criminal, every person who has no legitimate reason for his presence here, should be brought in and questioned. Probably the murderer will be among them. If not—well, we will have done our best. At any rate, as rapidly as the suspects are eliminated, they should be ordered out of the city and kept out.”

  “Excellent,” said Lovelace firmly. “Is that all clear to you, Chief?”

  Stukey hesitated, but only for a fraction of a second. Mr. Lovelace might be a fathead but you didn’t say no to him in Pacific City when he asked for a yes.

  “I got it,” he said. “Me and Clint understand each other real well.”

  Mr. Lovelace stood up. He shook my hand again, then sauntered toward the door with his arm around my shoulder.

  “I—uh—” He paused. “I—it has occurred to me that we have been rather inconsiderate here tonight. You have lost your—she was your wife, after all—and under such tragic circumstances. Yet we have allowed you to—we have called upon you to—”

  “I am a Courier man,” I said simply. “I have tried to act as I know you would have acted.”

  “I—uh—ahem—I am afraid you do me too much credit. In your case, I…Are you feeling entirely well? I was thinking that—uh—well, shock, you know. I would be happy to refer you to my own physician if—”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said, “but I believe the worst is now over. Now it is largely a matter of prayer, of consulting the spirit, of rising above personal tragedy into a newer and finer life.”

  “Well—uh—”

  “Onward and upward,” I said. “That is the answer, sir. My head in the clouds, my feet firmly on the ground.”

  I helped him into the car and closed the door. Dave took me by the arm, drew me away a few feet. “I’m sorry as hell, Brownie. I know how much—how you felt about her.”

  “A woman that wasn’t my wife?” I said. “A youthful mistake? A
floozy? A—”

  “Brownie!”

  “Yes, Colonel?”

  “Is there anything at all—? Would you like to have me come back and stay tonight?”

  “Why don’t you?” I said. “We can talk over old times, our joyous carefree days in the army when—”

  He let go my arm. He almost threw it away from him. Then he got a grip on himself and made one more try. “You did a swell job on Stukey, fellow. What you’re doing—Ellen would have been proud of you.”

  “I wonder,” I said. “I’ll have to ask her the next time I see her.”

  “We’ll get the guy who did it, Brownie! By God, we’ll pour the coal on Stuke until—”

  “Yes,” I said, “we’ll get him. Someone will get him.”

  “Well.…Think you’ll make it all right? You wouldn’t like to have me send out a doctor?”

  “Send out a surgeon,” I said. “I am heavily burdened and wouldst shed my balls.”

  He whirled and walked away.

  I went back into the house. Lem Stukey had moved over to the lounge and was taking a drink from the bottle.

  “Well, keed.” He didn’t seem particularly discomfited now. If anything, he appeared pleased, and I was confident I knew why. “It looks like we got to find ourselves a murderer, don’t it?”

  “Not necessarily,” I said. “We, or rather you, have to look for one. You have to round up our local riffraff and eliminate them as suspects, also eliminating them from Pacific City.”

  “For nothin’, huh? I drive all the easy dough out of town and I don’t get nothin’ out of it. That ain’t reasonable, Brownie. I’m willing to play along with you—hell, don’t I always go along with a pal? But you got to—”

  “I don’t got to,” I said. “I’ve played along with you too long, Lem. Now I’m through.”

  “But why? You’re sore about tonight? Jesus, pal, you can’t blame me for—”

  “I don’t blame you. I’m not sore,” I said. “Not in the way you mean. Something very bad has happened; that bad has to be offset. That’s as close as I can come to explaining what I mean.”