The Nothing Man

by Jim Thompson

  I agreed to handle it.

  I got up at six in the morning. At seven I was at the border city’s airport, where I met the plane.

  The president was on it, but so also were two Federalistas. They had got on at Los Angeles, and they took charge of Señor Presidente as soon as the plane touched in Mexico. They hustled him into a waiting limousine and sped away. I learned that they intended taking him fifty miles down the coast to another city, but that was all I learned.

  I called Dave. He talked with Lovelace while I waited. The decision was for me to continue to the second city.

  I did. The president had been put aboard a government plane and was on his way to Mexico City.

  So there went my story, for the local authorities could give me no information on the case. The chief of police, a surprisingly young, friendly guy, sympathized volubly and insisted on drinking his lunch with me.

  We drank and drank and drank, tequila mainly with an occasional mescal and chasers of that wonderful creamy cerveza—beer such as I have seldom tasted outside of Mexico. The chief became very gay. It was too bad, he said, that I was driving a car. Otherwise he would take his car and we would go to the island together—“your Rose Island, Cleent”—and then I could cross over to Pacific City on the ferry.

  I blinked, rather owlishly, according to the mirror in the back bar. I said, “Now, wait a minute, amigo caro. Just how in the—?”

  “You do not know, yes? You think I keed, no?” He grinned delightedly. “Come. I show you.”

  He led me over to the wall, stabbed a shaky finger at a framed map of Baja California. The finger weaved, slid, and came to a stop at a point near the Mexico-California border.

  “Here is—hic—is how you say, pen—pen-in—?”

  “Peninsula.”

  “Yes. Pen-in—well, you see eet, yes? How way out here eet come? Yes. And here is teep of island. And here…what you say is here, Cleent?”

  “Something never to be taken internally,” I said. “An insipid beverage, somewhat salty in this instance—”

  “Ha, ha. Is water, you say, yes? You be wrong, Cleent. Poquita, sí. Two, three inches, yes, but no more. Underneath is beeg—how you say?—reef. Rock. Like pavement.”

  “You’re joking,” I said. “You mean to tell me you can drive a car from here to here?”

  “Sí. Many time I have. Many peoples they do. Like I say, is rock. Muy bueno camino—ver’ fine road.”

  Many peoples they do, but I never had. In fact, I had never heard of the reef. It wasn’t so surprising, I guess; I seldom got over to the island. I could do all the drinking I wanted to at home or in the Pacific City bars. And as far as the cat-houses went—

  So you see, I had no reason to know much about the island, and how you got there other than by ferry or charter boat.

  But still, the information disturbed me. It was an extra little item in a story I thought I knew pretty well letter-perfect. Now I saw I didn’t know it all. It was another piece of jigsaw puzzle that I thought I had all locked together.

  The information shouldn’t really have disturbed me. Since Stukey knew everything else that might possibly be of use to him, he doubtless knew of this land route to the island. And he had quite properly ignored it as a factor in shaking my alibi. I couldn’t have made this roundabout round trip on the night of the murder; I wouldn’t have had time. For that matter no one could have done it during the storm. To have driven across almost four miles of reef—almost three times the width of the bay—to have done that on a pitch-black rainy night with a heavy sea running, well, it was simply out of the question. It was many times as fantastically dangerous and impossible as what I had done.

  It had no bearing, then; otherwise, Stukey would have mentioned it and have looked into it. It didn’t affect me. It didn’t affect Tom Judge. It didn’t—it was meaningless. But somehow it bothered me.

  It lingered in my mind, nagging me, long after I had shaken hands with the Mexican police chief and headed back toward the border. I reached the U.S. customs station early in the afternoon. I knew several of the guards there, and I asked them about the reef. They knew about it, of course. It wasn’t worthwhile to keep a customs officer there, but it was kept under observation by the border patrol.

  I wondered about that—whether any very close watch had been kept on the night of the storm. I doubted it like hell.

  We talked a minute or two more, and I mentioned casually that they had probably had an easy time of it during the storm. They admitted as much. “Sat around on our cans all evening, Brownie. Didn’t a thing cross over but one taxi.”

  “Do you re—?”

  I cut off the question abruptly. I didn’t want them curious, and anyway, they couldn’t have told me anything. A dark stormy night outside and a snug, comfortable guardhouse. And cabs always got a very fast check. They weren’t searched as private passenger cars were. There would have been a quick glance through the window, and fast, “Birthplace? U.S. citizen?” and then a wave onward—dismissal.

  I drove on, still vaguely disquieted. I stopped in Pacific City for a few groceries and some bottles and went on out to the house. I mixed eggs and whisky. I drank them, took a bottle into the living-room, and sat down on the lounge. I got up and sat down on the floor. I stared at the telephone.

  Tom Judge was on a very bad spot. Stukey was certain to find him soon unless he was diverted from him. An element of doubt should be introduced; another person should be brought into the case. Why not push that reef business at Lem? Talk it up to him? Why not sic him on that lone taxicab that had crossed the border? Point out that a man might have gone down in a cab, and walked across on the reef?

  No, no. No! That was stupid. Lem would already have thought about it. Crossing on foot would have been even more hazardous than by car. And what would have been the purpose in it, anyway? What could he—Dave Randall—have hoped to accomplish by it? To catch me there, perhaps? To go in after I had left and—and—?

  And nothing. It was reasonless. It was impossible. Absolutely without basis. How in the hell had I started thinking about this? Why did I persist in so thinking?

  A taxicab had crossed the border. There was a submerged reef connecting with the mainland. And that fathead Tom Judge had said Dave had it in for me.…That was all I had to go on. The reef, the cab, and the twisted imaginings of Tom, a guy who was always trying to stir things up, dividing the world into enemy and friendly camps, and attaching to first one side, then the other. And out of that—and despite the fact that I knew who had killed Ellen—

  But did I know? She’d got up after I left. Somebody had wiped away fingerprints. She’d died of asphyxiation, not—

  Suddenly I laughed out loud. I laughed so hard that the whisky slopped out of my glass. For at last I’d remembered, and I was almost foolish with relief.

  Dave had been at home that night. Stukey had called him there and then Dave had called me. Everything had been happening at once, and I guess I’d been halfway off my rocker, but now I remembered. Dave had been at home. The colonel had been in the bosom of his family, tossing the wee ones on his knee perhaps while the little woman hummed a happy roundelay.…

  I sat drinking and thinking, musing idly, trying to sort out my feelings about Dave. They were pretty confused.

  In a way, I liked him; I felt sorry for him. Yet there was another side of me that hated him, that was determined to make him go on suffering for what he had done to me. I wanted him to steer clear of trouble for two reasons. Because I liked him—because I hated him. He was a nice guy—and I wanted him to stay right where he was. Where I could get at him, dig at him day after day until…

  I don’t know. It is hard to be specific about one’s emotions. It is difficult to stop a story at a certain point and give a clear-cut analysis of your feelings, explain just why they are such and such and why they are not something else. Personally I am a strong believer in the exposition technique as opposed to the declarative. It is not particularly useful
, of course, when employed on an of-the-moment basis, but given enough time it invariably works. Study a man’s actions, at length, and his motivations become clear.

  12

  I drove up to Los Angeles on Sunday and took a room at the Press Club. The Pacific City undertaker got the lead out of his can and the one in L.A. did likewise, and the funeral was held late Monday.

  It was a nice funeral, I thought. Stukey and the Randalls sent flowers, also Mr. Lovelace and the Courier staff. Too, the newspaper lads I knew in Los Angeles had bought a couple of big bouquets, and there was one giant-sized wreath without a card on it. I didn’t think much about it. I supposed that it had been bought by the city hall crowd in Pacific City and that the card had been lost.

  There were four press cars in the funeral procession. They were there on business, the boys were, since the story was still news. They had to shoot pictures and get me to do some surmising about the killer and so on, enough to pad out into a few paragraphs. But I was acquainted with most of them, and having them there was good. It made the thing seem more like a real funeral.

  They were on overtime at the end of the ceremony. So the reporters phoned in their stories and the photogs sent in their plates by motorcycle courier, and we all went to the Press Club. We bumped a couple of tables together and started drinking. We had dinner and continued drinking.

  Luckily, they wouldn’t let me pay for anything. I had to borrow on my car to bury Ellen, and I was very, very short of money.

  A waiter came up with a telephone call slip. I looked at it, casually, and shoved it into my pocket. I didn’t recognize the number. I couldn’t recall knowing anyone by the name of D. Chase. It was probably some friend of Ellen’s, I thought. Someone who wished to offer condolences.

  The party broke up about nine, and I bought a bottle and went up to my room. As a tried and true Courier man—one who did not need to be watched to do his duty—I suppose I should have driven back to Pacific City that night and gone to work Tuesday morning. But I was tired, and there was much heavy thinking to be done. And something told me it could not be done amid the hustle and bustle of Pacific City’s greatest and only daily.

  I stood at the window of my room, gazing out and downward. A fog had settled over the city, and the lights bloomed up out of it, blurred and hazy. Now and then there was the muted scream of a siren as an ambulance weaved northward through the traffic to Georgia Street Receiving.

  Los Angeles. Sprawling, noisy, ugly, dirty—and completely wonderful. It would always be home to me, this place and no other. It would never be home to me.

  I turned out the lights and dragged a chair up to the window. I cocked my feet up on the radiator and leaned back.

  Tom Judge: at the outside, Stukey would have him in a day or two. Logically, he should have run him down before this. And exactly what was I going to do about it?

  Tom might be able to hold out. He might be able to take a seventy-two-hour sweat—the three-day “investigation” period in which his sole hope and defense would rest on his own personal guts.

  As I say, he might. But there was at least a fifty-fifty chance that he wouldn’t. And once he broke down, it would be too late for me to do anything.

  If only the murderer could have been tied in more closely with the poem. That is, if it could be established that the poet and the murderer were the same man. So far the poem had drawn very little attention. It had been mentioned by the police, paraphrased in various papers, and that was all. Ellen had had it, for reasons known only to herself. Dazed and dying she had grabbed it up—doubtless accidentally. That was the official attitude, and it was too bad that it was that.

  Anyone who knew Tom would know him incapable of the poem. A few paragraphs of plodding prose were Tom’s literary limit.

  So it was unfortunate that the poem had been brushed off so lightly. It was unfortunate that there was not some way of proving that the murderer and the poet were one and the same man.

  The phone rang. Softly, in actuality, yet it seemed loud and ominous, as phones do at night in dark hotel rooms.

  I frowned at it. Then, I stretched an arm out and lifted it from the writing-desk. A husky, feminine voice said, “Mr. Brown—Brownie?”

  “Who is this?” I said.

  “I’ll bet you can’t guess. I’ll bet you’ve forgotten me already.”

  I sighed. I said nothing. There is nothing much to say to people who ask you to guess their names while betting that you have forgotten them.

  “It’s Deborah, Brownie.” She laughed a little uncomfortably. “You know, Deborah Chasen.”

  I remembered. I said something then, but I don’t recall what. Something like: “Well, how are you?” or “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “I’ve been here all the time, Brownie. I was—I heard about your wife.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “I heard about it, so I didn’t go. I’ve been waiting here for you. Did you get the flowers I sent?”

  “Flowers? Oh, the wreath,” I said. “I wondered who it was from.”

  “I sent them for you,” she said. “Just on your account, Brownie, not hers. I’m not sorry about her. I’m glad.”

  “Well, that’s very nice of you, Deborah,” I said. “I see you’re still your subtle, tactful self. Now, if you’ll give me that horse laugh of yours my evening will be complete, and I’ll go to bed.”

  She did laugh; then her voice went soft and throaty. It was as though she were breathing the words rather than speaking them.

  “Brownie, darling—isn’t it wonderful? I was just sick when I left Pacific City that afternoon. I wanted to die; I would have, too; I didn’t care about anything any more. And then the next morning I read that—about her! It was like being born again, Brownie. Honestly, I was just so happy I cr—”

  “Jesus, God,” I said. “What kind of a woman are you? Do you realize that you’re talking about my—”

  “I don’t care. You love me; I know you do. We love each other, and she was in the way. Now—well, now she isn’t.…I want to see you, darling. Shall I come over there, or do you want to come over here to my hotel?”

  I cursed her silently. It was on the tip of my tongue to say that I was leaving immediately for Pacific City, but I caught myself in time. As surely as hell was full of sulphur, she’d follow me there.

  “Deborah,” I said, wearily, “you are a goddamned pest. I don’t want any part of you, or any other woman. I’ve tried the double harness once and I damned well got a belly full of it, and I’m playing it alone from now on. I—”

  “Pooh. I’ll change your mind.”

  “Nothing will change my mind,” I said. “Now, I suggest you take a nice cold shower and eat a couple of pounds of saltpeter and—”

  “Oh, Brownie!” She laughed delightedly. “You sweet crazy thing you! I’ll come over there, darling.”

  “No!” I said. “No, wait a minute, Deborah. I do want to see you, naturally, but I’ve had a pretty rugged week and I…Well, why don’t we let it ride until tomorrow, baby? I’ll give you a ring, and perhaps we can have lunch and a few drinks.”

  Silence. Then the sound—sounds—of a cigarette lighter clicking, and a long, slow exhalation. I could imagine the green eyes narrowing, hardening.

  “Brownie,” she said, quietly.

  “Try to understand, Deborah. Put yourself in my place. My wife was killed less than a week ago. I buried her today. Now you expect me to—”

  “Brownie.”

  “Well?” I said.

  “I was doing all right before I met you. I didn’t have anything, but I didn’t expect anything. Then y-you—you know what you did, Brownie. You didn’t tell me you were married. You held me and kissed me, and y-you…you did a lot of things I wouldn’t have let you do if I’d known. And then you—now you—”

  “Deborah,” I said. “Just put it this way. Just say that I was a heel and I still am, and let it go at that.”

&nbs
p; “No! You’re not, Brownie. You couldn’t be if you tried.…Boy!” She sniffed. “I’m an expert on heels! I know all about ’em, and I know…So what is it, darling? Is it the money? Are you afraid I’ll embarrass you? Are—”

  “Wait,” I said. “Wait a minute, Deborah.”

  “I’ll do anything you say, Brownie, Anything! Just d-don’t—don’t drive me away from you.”

  “Wait,” I repeated. “I’ve got to think.”

  She waited. I thought. And, of course, I didn’t need to, I already knew what I would have to tell her, prove to her if necessary. That I simply couldn’t provide what she above all women would want.

  She would be sorry, doubtless, perhaps even angry, but there would be no further argument; she would have no illusions about its importance. Deborah might have a very beautiful soul, but it was no good at all in bed. She would be stunned at the idea of substituting a fireside chat for a good hard roll in the hay.

  So…I would have to tell her. But I couldn’t do it over the phone. I couldn’t—I didn’t think I could make it stick—and I didn’t want to.

  I wanted to see her one more time.

  “There’s a little bar near here,” I said. “A couple of blocks south on Main. It’s called the Gladioli. If—”

  “I’ll find it. I’ll be there. Right away, Brownie?”

  “Right away,” I said.

  I put on a clean shirt and a fresh tie. I combed my hair in front of the dresser mirror, and suddenly I drew my arm back and hurled the comb against the glass.

  My reflection tossed it back at me. His lips moved, and he cursed, and he asked why the hell it had to be this way. Why, if he didn’t have the other, did he have to have all this? He said oh, you’re a pretty bastard, you are. A knock-’em-dead son-of-a-bitch. They turn around to look at you, they stretch their goddamned sweet necks to get a peek. And…and that’s all there is. Only what they can see. I don’t get it, by God! Why, when there’s nothing to do with, do you have to look like…?