The Nothing Man

by Jim Thompson

  The reflection shrugged. He said, that’s the way it was, so that’s the way it was.

  Then he reached for his coat and turned wearily away. And I turned off the light, and left.

  She was there ahead of me, standing up near the glazed front of the place, peering anxiously up and down the street. I came up while she was looking the other way, and she whirled around, startled, taking a swift step forward so that for a moment we were pressed against each other. I gave her a little hug, and she said, “Brownie! Oh, Brownie!” and gave me a harder one.

  We entered the dimly lit bar. She let go of my arm and led the way to a rear booth, rounded hips swinging, slim-ankled, full-calved legs stretching and pressing impatiently against her skirt, horsetail of corn-colored hair brushing the small, square shoulders. She had a mink stole draped over her arm. She was wearing a thin white blouse and a tailored fawn-colored suit. They made her look bigger in all the big places and smaller in all the small ones.

  We sat down on the same bench of the leather-upholstered booth; she pulled me down beside her. A sleepy-looking waiter brought drinks and went away again.

  “Brownie,” she whispered. “Brownie, darling.…” And her breast shivered against my arm.

  She pulled my face down to hers and we kissed. And then gently she pushed me away again.

  “I’m terribly sorry, Brownie. I must have sounded awful. It was just that I love you so much, and I know how mean she must have been and—”

  “She wasn’t,” I said. “Foolish perhaps, but not mean.”

  “Well, anyway, I’m sorry. I’m—you won’t have to be ashamed of me, Brownie. You just tell me how you want me to be, and whenever I get—”

  “Deborah,” I said, “listen to me.”

  “Yes, darling.”

  “I’m—there’s something I have to tell you. I should have told you in the beginning, but it’s not an easy thing to talk about and—well, I didn’t think it was necessary. You were leaving. I never expected to see you again.”

  “Yes?” She lighted a cigarette. “What is it, Brownie?”

  “I can’t marry you. I can’t sleep with you.”

  “Oh?”

  “No! That was the trouble between me and my wife, why we were separated. I couldn’t be a husband to her.”

  “Oh…I see. And all the time I thought—” The green eyes flashed happily and her face broke into a smile. “That doesn’t mean a thing, darling! Not a thing.”

  “It—it doesn’t mean anything?” I said.

  “Why, of course, it doesn’t! It was the same way with me and my husband. You just…a certain person simply isn’t the right one, and you get to where you not only can’t—”

  “Listen,” I said. “You just don’t understand, Deborah. What I’m—”

  “I know. I know exactly what you mean. I—No, let me tell you, Brownie. You’ve got a right to know, anyway. Even after he died, I couldn’t. I tried—I’m human and I—I—well, I tried; just like you have, probably. And I couldn’t do it. It was like there just wasn’t any such thing as far as I was concerned. I’d lost all desire for it, and I was sure it was gone for good. I was sure until that day in Pacific City when I—”

  “Deborah,” I said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. What I’m talking about.”

  “You think I don’t.” She laughed. “You just think I don’t, Brownie! That’s why I was so completely broken up when I found out you were married. I knew it had to be you or no one; that if it weren’t you then there simply wouldn’t be anyone.…You’ll see, darling.” Her voice sank to a throaty, caressing whisper and her eyes burned like green fires. “It’ll be all right for both of us. It’ll be like nothing ever was before.…”

  You see, you do see, don’t you, how very hard it was? How even I, with stalwart purpose in my heart and lofty motives in my mind, might hesitate? She had to be told, yes, and certainly I intended to tell her. But she was making it so hard and she was so sure of herself, so positive that everything was now all right, so happy.…And in a way I loved her.

  Her small hard hand moved under the table and came to rest on my thigh. It moved down, up, down, up. It stayed up, pressed there firm yet trembling. She shivered and leaned against me.

  Then, that sleepy-soft whisper again: “You’ve made me so happy, darling, and I’ll make you so happy. You’ll see, Brownie. You’ll never be sad again.”

  “Sad?” I said, and I pressed the buzzer for the waiter. I needed one more drink. I would tell her after the second drink. “You are speaking in paradoxes, Deborah. I am a jolly Courier man, a member of the happy Courier family. We know no sadness, only joy in a job well done.”

  “You’re sad,” she said. “That’s why you write those terribly sad poems.”

  13

  The waiter came and went, came back with drinks and went away again. In the interim, while we were waiting for him to get out of the way, we made meaningless small talk.

  He left for the second time. She sipped her drink, her fingers toying with the cardboard menu, a faintly teasing smile on her lips.

  “Surprised you, didn’t I? You thought it was a secret.”

  “A very rare type of secret,” I said. “One dealing with the non-existent. Newspapermen don’t write poetry, Deborah, never, never, ever. That’s traditional.”

  “Oh, ye-es?” she drawled, smiling. “I know one that does. He was writing one the first time I saw him. In the office. He got rid of it very fast, but not quite fast enough.…Not for someone who could read a menu upside down and across the table.”

  I lifted my glass. I took a very long swallow and set it down again. “Poetry,” I said. “It places me in a pretty bad company, doesn’t it? I mean, that poem she had. They think there’s a possibility that the killer may have written it.”

  “Do they?” She shrugged. “Oh, well.…” Just, oh, well. Meaning nothing; meaning a great deal.

  “Yes,” I said. “That’s what they think, and I have a strong hunch they may be right. I think they may have even more reason to think so in the not-too-distant future.”

  Here was my answer. Just a matter of minutes before—in my hotel room—I had been wondering how I could draw Stukey’s attention away from Tom Judge, how I could prove once and for all that the murderer and the poet were the same person.

  Now I knew how I could prove it.

  Through Deborah.

  If, say, there was another murder, and if a poem similar to the first one was found on the victim…

  “Let’s not talk about…it.” She frowned. “But you won’t write any more of those poems, will you? I think they’re bad for you.”

  “I think they could be, myself,” I said. “I certainly wouldn’t care to have them become a matter of public knowledge, Deborah.”

  “Don’t you worry, darling.” She patted my thigh. “I’d never tell anyone. Now you just stop being sad, hmmmm? Because there’s nothing to be sad about, now.”

  “Perhaps not,” I said. “How can one be sad when he has the sky and the stars to gaze upon and God’s own green carpet to rest his aching arches? Morning’s at seven, Deborah. Morning’s at seven, the hillside’s dew-pearled, God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world.”

  “That’s awfully pretty, Brownie. Did you write that?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I did it under my pen name, Elizabeth Khayyam. I wrote it one eventide on a windswept hill while watching a father bird wing home to his wee ones. There was a long caterpillar in his beak and he had it swung over his shoulders, muffler fashion, as a shield against the wintry cold. I…Listen to me, Deborah! For God’s sake, listen!”

  She had been laughing, looking at me fondly. Now she went serious and she said, “No, Brownie. Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it. Not tonight, anyway.”

  “But you just don’t—”

  “You don’t know everything about me either. What’s the difference? I just don’t care, Brownie! We’re together and we’re going to stay togethe
r, and that’s all that matters. Oh, it’s so wonderful, darling. Just think! Me, finding you, getting you back after I thought I’d lost you. The only man in the world I could—”

  “Please,” I said. “I—The world’s a hell of a big place, and—please, please—”

  “No. No,” she said. “I won’t listen. I only know I’d die without you. I don’t want to hear anything that might—I don’t want to hear anything. I don’t need to. It wouldn’t matter. Nothing about her or you and her or.…It wouldn’t matter, Brownie. I—I—I wouldn’t care if you’d killed her!”

  She nodded firmly, her eyes somehow cold yet burning. Up near the bar, the jukebox suddenly began to blare, shaking the walls with its clamor before someone turned down the control.

  I took a cigarette from my package. I lighted it and inhaled, slowly, stalling for time.

  Had the poetry meant anything to her? Had she been hinting, giving me a warning, when she said that it was bad for me? Did she know that I had killed Ellen, and…?

  Probably she wouldn’t care now—that is, if she did know. She could rationalize that. Ellen was no good. Ellen would have had it coming to her. Ellen was nothing to her, and I was everything. But—

  But what about later when she discovered that I was not everything, that I was nothing? That I was merely another blank page in her book of life. How would blunt, straight-to-the-mark Deborah Chasen behave then? She would have no use for me—would she? And I knew what her attitude was toward people for whom she had no use. “She was dead, and I was so happy.…” Wasn’t that what she had said?

  Perhaps I could tell her the truth and it would be all right. But if it wasn’t all right—if she turned spiteful and vengeful—I’d be sunk. It would be too late to draw back, too late to try to silence her. I’d have lost the game, and there wouldn’t be another one.

  So…?

  I tamped out my cigarette and swallowed the rest of my drink. “Your fabulous fanny,” I said. “Is it quite comfortable, Deborah? Then keep it where it is while I procure my car and carpetbag, and we shall then head south into the dawn.”

  She let out a delighted squeal.

  “Brownie! You sweet, funny…But hadn’t I better—?”

  “We will send for it,” I said. “Whatever you need we will send for, Deborah. Meanwhile, with me providing a toothbrush and you providing yourself we shall want for nothing. We shall have paradise now.”

  She smiled, looking a little puzzled through the tenderness, but she didn’t argue. She was right up on top of the load after a hard climb, and she was going to do nothing to upset the applecart.

  “Do you believe in a personal paradise?” I said. “A personal hell?” Do you have a soul, Deborah?

  “Hurry,” she said. “Hurry as fast as you can, darling. We get in your car, I’m going to take this girdle off.”

  I hurried, but I was quite a little while at that. Because I had something more to do than get my car and check out at the club.

  There was a hotel up the block and on the opposite side of the street. I remembered its arrangements well from the days when I was working in Los Angeles and covered conventions there.

  Immediately inside the lobby entrance, a staircase led to the mezzanine. A little beyond the head of the stairs was the public stenographer’s desk. She wasn’t there at this hour, naturally, but her typewriter, a silent machine, was, and her wastebasket hadn’t been emptied.

  I sat down, dipped into the basket, and selected a discarded second-sheet with only a few lines at the top. I creased it and tore them off.

  I turned the paper into the typewriter.

  The poem went very fast; I suspect that I was lifting it, at least in part, from my original manuscript. When I had finished, I laid it on the desk and scrubbed both sides of the page with my handkerchief. I folded it, using the handkerchief, picked it up with same, and stuffed it into my pocket.…

  I am somewhat hazy in spots about the ride to Pacific City, but my general recollection is that she enjoyed it immensely. Not that I didn’t—although my mind was not exactly pleasure-bent—but I didn’t matter. I meant it to be her party, and I believe it was a dilly.

  The highway was practically barren of traffic. I had had the foresight to lay in a plentiful supply of beverages, and I saw to it that she sampled them generously. We rode southward into the fog, her laughter growing louder and louder. She braced her feet against the dashboard and raised her hips off the seat, trying to remove the girdle. She tried it a half dozen times, and each time she’d barely get started when laughter overpowered her. She flopped back in the seat, snickering and sputtering and guffawing. She hugged me around the hips, giggling and choking, shivering against me.

  “B-Brownie, you—you s-st.…Ha, ha, ha, ha—y-you s-stop n-now, B-Brownie…!”

  “You bray like a goddamned jackass, Deborah,” I said. “Like a bitch baying at the moon.”

  “B-Brownie! Now, that’s not in…ha, ha, ha, ha.…”

  “Shall I breed you, Deborah? Is your tail tingling, my prize bitch?”

  “Ha, ha.…D-don’t talk about d-dogs, Brownie. I—I—Oh, d-darling…ha, ha, ha, ha.…”

  She was so wonderfully earthy and human. Eve before the apple, Circe with the giggles, Pompadour on a night off.

  About thirty miles out of Los Angeles, I turned the car onto the beach and got out. I opened the door on her side, and she lay back with her legs stuck out and her skirts up, and I got a good two-handed grip on the girdle.

  I gave a hell of a yank.

  Well, I got rid of the thing, the girdle, and I found out something. About her size. However big she looked in certain places, she wasn’t actually; it was simply the way she was built. There just wasn’t enough of her to be big. As a man with some experience in such things, I’d say that she couldn’t have weighed much more than a hundred and ten pounds.

  So I yanked, thinking there was much more ballast than there was, and the girdle skidded off of her. My hands shot upward and backward, flinging the girdle into the ocean. I stumbled and fell flat on my back. Then she was out of the car and beside me.

  She sat back, looking down at me almost gravely. And the sand felt peaceful and soft and warm, and so did she.

  “You’re very soft,” I said. “Very soft and warm, Deborah.”

  “I don’t have any pants on,” she said. “I guess that’s why I feel that way.”

  “I’ll tell you something,” I said. “You’ll never die, Deborah. There is no death in you, only life. So long as there is laughter, so long as there is warmth and light, so long as there is soft flesh, fresh and sweet-smelling like no perfume ever made, so long as there is a breast to cup and a thigh to caress…you’ll live, Deborah. You’ll never die.”

  “That’s awfully pretty,” she said. “Want me to tell you something?”

  “Please do,” I said.

  “I don’t care if I do die. Not now, Brownie. Not after tonight.”

  We drove on to Pacific City.

  We got to my shack just before dawn.

  And I killed her.

  14

  I didn’t kill her right away. As a matter of fact it was that night, more than sixteen hours later. Just as I was about to decide that I wasn’t going to do it.

  You see, the two-way pull wasn’t working as it should. It was pulling on me, trying to jerk me out into that other world, but she was pulling, too, pulling me in the opposite direction. And she was stronger than it was.

  It was strange, very, how strong she was, how one so small could be so strong. I didn’t believe that I could kill her. I was afraid to do it. I wasn’t afraid of being caught, you understand. I was quite sure that I wouldn’t be, and, since I am writing this some weeks later, you are aware that I was not. It was a fear away from and beyond the purely personal. It was as though she were life itself, the root of all life, and when I killed it, that, her, all life would vanish.

  And I had visions of a parched and withering earth, a vast and empty desert wher
e a dead man walked through eternity.

  I didn’t think I could kill her.

  It is hard to believe that I did.

  Even now, now more than ever, as I sit here alone in the Courier city room, and I am above self-delusion and below reproach—now when my one task is to set the record straight—it is hard to believe that I did it.

  I find myself thinking that there must have been someone else, someone who knew about her and—

  But, of course, I did do it. The act of murder is not to be forgotten quickly, and I remember the facts of this one well. I did it…but not then. More than two thirds of a day passed, in the meantime, and I think you should be told about that.

  I think we should keep her alive as long as we can.…

  I parked the car at the side of the house, and we went inside. She went to the bathroom while I drew the shades, and then she came out and I went.

  She’d slept for about the last hour of the ride, and she was fairly wide awake now. She stood in the center of the living-room, smiling at me a little timidly as I came in, and she said she bet she looked a sight, didn’t she?

  “Awful,” I agreed, and I gave her a kiss on the mouth and a small swat on the rear. “A hung-over hussy if I ever saw one. You must have a drink and pull yourself together.”

  “Oh—uh—” She hesitated. “Do you want a drink, Brownie?”

  “It gags me to think of it,” I said. “But I shall force it down. I will not let you drink alone.”

  I fixed us two whopping drinks and brought them in to the lounge. She curled up at my side, pulling my arm around her, and we sat there drinking and talking. And saying very little. A train thundered by, leaving the house a-tremble. She pulled my arm tighter, pressing my hand against her breast.

  “Brownie. You’re…you’re not still afraid? I mean, you don’t think it might not be all right?”

  “I am sure it will be,” I said. “In such a package only quality could prevail.”

  “No, really, darling. If you’re—”