The Nothing Man

by Jim Thompson

  I uncorked a bottle and upended it into my mouth. The stuff wasn’t halfway down before it started bouncing. I choked and made another try. The same thing happened—and more.

  A great hand seemed to grab me in the guts and squeeze. The bottle fell from my hands. I fell to the floor, writhing.

  That one passed, that convulsion. But there were indications that others were on the way. I staggered into the bedroom, jerked open the bureau drawers. I knew what I had to do, but there was something else I had to do first. Get into some pajamas. A pair with all the buttons and no holes. Even then there was a chance that they might see, but—

  But I had to risk it. I knew I’d die if I didn’t.

  I was struggling to get my pants over the pajamas when Stukey arrived. He gave me one startled glance. Then, with none of the questions asked which he had doubtless come to ask, he started helping me with the pants.

  “Jesus, keed!” he panted. “Come on! Let the screwin’ clothes go. I’ll take you in my car, open up the siren. You got any particular place in mind?”

  “Any of them,” I said. “Any hospital.”

  “Jesus!” He pulled my arm around his shoulders, lugged me toward the door. “When’d it hit you, pal? What done it?”

  “I—rubber gloves,” I said. “An original recipe.”

  “ ’At’s the ol’ keed, the Brownie boy,” he said. “Pile it in, pal.”

  16

  As you have probably guessed, it was a case of acute food poisoning, one of the more painful and dangerous kinds since it was the result of spoiled meat. The franks had had pork in them, and bad pork can be deadly. Fortunately, I’d expelled the stuff quickly, and I’d wasted no time in getting to the hospital, where my stomach was washed and penicillin administered. Such crisis as may have existed was over within an hour or so. My insides were sore as a blister and I hardly had the strength to raise a hand, but I was out of danger.

  I was in the hospital two days—very dreary ones, since the authorities made drinking difficult for me and sometimes impossible. There was little to do except lie there and think, endlessly, unproductively, unpleasantly, to chase myself around and around in that unbroken, seamless circle.

  Kay…well, of course, she’d done it deliberately. I’d had a standing dinner invitation for weeks, and she’d known that I’d come eventually. So a few franks—just enough for me—had been allowed to spoil, and, their rottenness disguised with more slop, I’d eaten them. Yes, she must have done it deliberately, or so I believed—and I will admit to some slight prejudice where Kay is concerned. But just what her motivation had been, I was not sure. Was it merely some more of her sheer orneriness, a typical Kay Randall stunt? Had the little woman only been demonstrating that regardless of poor ol’ softie-Father’s feelings, she had no use for me and I’d better behave if I didn’t want to catch what-for?

  That was probably the case. And to be fair to her—a painful necessity—she probably had had no intention of killing me. Dave told her everything, practically, or, rather, she wormed everything out of him in long jolly evenings beside the mayonnaise bowl. She would sit him down amid the antimacassars and pull his sweet ol’ funny head into the environs of her cute little old belly button, and then Father would simply have to tell her what was on his mind. She would be very hurt if he did not; she would be afraid he didn’t love her any more. And when Kay felt that way—as Father well knew—the aforesaid environs went out of bounds. There were no larksome expeditions thereto, nor invasions thereof, nor maneuvers thereon. So Father, who was already yearning for a brisk patrol with a barrage at the end, would tell all (approximately). He would say, “Well, it’s Brownie, dammit. I don’t mind, personally, but I’m afraid Mr. Lovelace will…” And Kay’s eyes would grow moist and her mind murderous, and she would say, “Oh, how awful. Perhaps if we showed more interest in Clinton, invited him out for a good home-cooked meal.…”

  Exit Father and Mother to bedroom. Enter frankfurters, parsnips, mayonnaise, and Clinton Brown.

  That must have been the deal. Kay had given Clint a lesson, and Clint would know that he had had one. He—I—would know that the poisoning had been intentional, and take the hint. I was to lay off of Father or else.

  So…

  But there was Tom Judge, what he had told me. And there was the fact that Dave had been away from home on those two nights, that he had lied about his whereabouts and let me think, at least in the instance of Ellen, that he had been at home. Then there was that reef connecting the mainland and the island, and a lone taxicab crossing the border. And…and most of all there was Deborah, that strange feeling I’d had about her, that I could never have…

  Did I say yes? Did I say that it did make sense? I did not. I didn’t pretend to know what it all meant—if it meant anything. Nevertheless it existed, so much to be explained, and I had been poisoned. I had almost been killed.

  I went round and round the circle, thinking, trying to look into myself, where the clue to the mystery probably lay. What had I overlooked, what small factor, that kept me from seeing what I should see?

  I didn’t know. I don’t know now—now, when this manuscript is approximately two thirds finished and its pages flow higgledy-piggledy over my desk. (And has someone crept into the room? Is someone lurking in the shadows behind me, trying to read what I have written?)

  But I can tell you this, my good friends—oh, yes, and you sorry ignominious foes—I have a strong hunch that I will know before it comes time to type # # # or—30—. And my hunch tells me that I will be quite as much surprised as you are.

  Now, perhaps a few words about the doctor are in order.

  I had slept almost none at all the first night, but promptly at seven o’clock a nurse came in and induced me to wash and presented me with a breakfast tray. She was a grimly prim little person, unpleasantly reminiscent of Kay Randall. She crisply advised me that I was to partake of the food at once and that it would do me a lot of good (an obvious and preposterous falsehood). I replied that it was just such victuals as these that had put me where I was and that the burned child shuns the fire.

  We were discussing the matter, i.e., the digestibility of cold oatmeal, skim milk, and stale toast, when the doctor came in. He told the nurse to leave the tray; I could eat or go hungry, just as I pleased. She left, and without preliminary he asked me how much whisky I drank a day. I replied that I never kept track of it.

  “You’d better start in,” he said curtly. “The amount of alcohol in your bloodstream now would be lethal for the average person. I can’t answer for the results if you keep on going as you’ve been doing.”

  “That’s fair enough,” I said. “After all, I don’t believe I consulted you in the matter. May I ask a question, Doctor?”

  He nodded, flushing, an angry glint in his eye. “If you make it snappy.”

  “It’s a question that’s frequently arisen in my mind when coming in contact with the medical profession. Briefly, if treating the sick annoys you so much, why don’t you get into another racket?”

  “All right”—he turned on his heel—“I’ve warned you. And I’m telling you this, too. You’ll do no drinking while you’re here. You can crack up and go into d.t.’s, that’s up to you. But you won’t do it in this hospital.”

  He stalked out righteously, a true-blue man of mercy, a man who took no nonsense from the people who paid him. Around nine o’clock in the morning, Stukey arrived.

  I thanked him for his help the night before. I demanded the pint which I felt sure was responsible for the bulge in his coat.

  “Well, look, keed.” He hesitated. “They told me downstairs that—”

  “They are insane,” I said. “Feeble-minded. A few of the worst mental cases, allowed to play hospital as occupational therapy. My word on it, Stuke, also my hand. Place the pint in it.”

  “Yeah, but—pal. If it’s going to—”

  “Did it ever? Have I ever been noticeably affected by it? Give, my friend.”

  He
gave it to me, watching the door anxiously as I drank. I had a small one—no more than a third, at most—and tucked the bottle under my pillow.

  “Now,” I said. “Now, you will have some questions.”

  “Yeah,” he nodded tiredly, “I guess. Goddammit to hell, anyway.”

  He didn’t get down to the questions immediately. He was sore about having to let Tom Judge go, and the dragnet wasn’t producing anything, and he knew it wasn’t going to (nothing but a reduction in his graft). And he was completely baffled as to how to proceed.

  I told him to keep a high heart; honest effort was never lost. If nothing else resulted from the investigation, we would at least have a clean city.

  “Yeah.” He looked at me oddly. “A lot of fun, ain’t it?”

  “We-ell,” I said, “I do believe there are slight overtones of humor.”

  “Uh-huh, sure. Real funny, all right. I try to be a pal to you, an’—”

  “Perhaps I can be one to you,” I said. “I was down to Mexico the other day, and I learned about a reef—”

  “I know all about it. Hell, there was waves running ten feet high over the damned thing. A guy tried to cross that, and he’d’ve wound up in Key West.”

  “Still, it’s within the realm of possibility,” I said.

  “That realm I don’t know nothing about. Maybe they got a bay up there, too, and a guy who could’ve swum across it in the storm.”

  “Is that an innuendo, Stuke? Are you returning to your original evil suspicions?”

  He grinned sheepishly and shook his head. “Lay off, will you? How many times I got to apologize? I was sore and I wasn’t thinkin’ straight and—well, to hell with it. What d’you know about this Mrs. Chasen?”

  “Something special,” I said. “Something extra special, Stuke. I wanted to bring her down to the police station that day, but she wouldn’t go. Afraid you’d want to fingerprint her, I believe—very broadly speaking—and her rear end was tender from previous attempts.”

  “No foolin’, keed. Where—”

  “I drove her around for the better part of a day. I fed her lunch, booze, and put her on the train.”

  “You took her out to the dog pound.”

  “And back. With many a pleasant way stop along the lonely route. As I say, Stuke, she was quite a dish. A wonderful partner in the ancient and honorable pastime of parking.”

  He sat staring at me steadily for a second. He frowned and said, “Yeah, but, keed—” Then he shrugged and went on: “You know she was supposed to take a boat to Europe? Well, how come she didn’t instead of hangin’ around L.A.?”

  “Doubtless she was in love with me,” I said. “She couldn’t leave California as long as I was in it. Of course, we’d only known one another for less than a day, but—”

  “Cut it out, Brownie. What’d she say when you saw her in L.A.?”

  “Now now, Stuke. Puh-lease!”

  “Okay, so you didn’t see her. Didn’t talk to her either, I suppose?”

  “I did not,” I said. “The record of her call to the Press Club is an outrageous forgery, one more link in a Communist plan to do me in.”

  Stukey grinned reluctantly. “No offense, keed. Just habit. I even try to trip myself up. What’d she call you about?”

  “About Ellen. You know, to say that she was sorry and so on.”

  “Yeah? What else?”

  “Oh, just to say that she loved me and there could never be another man in her life

  and—”

  “Always clownin’.” He sighed. “She didn’t mention any other guy? Someone that could have brought her back here, or she might’ve come back here to see?”

  “No, she didn’t. As I mentioned a moment ago, there could be no other man where she was concerned.”

  “Keed,” he said. “I’m beggin’ you. Be serious, huh? This thing has got me runnin’ in circles. The autopsy—well, maybe it wouldn’t have told us nothin’, anyway, but even that nothin’ would have been some help. We could’ve found out what didn’t happen to her, if we’d had anything halfway like a corpus, an’—an’ it’s all like that, keed! Just nothin’ to work on. There’s fifty buses into here a day and six trains and four airplane flights, an’ how the hell you goin’ to know when she got here or whether she came alone or…or what? I’m telling you. Let me tell you how it stands. I got a couple of pretty good pictures of her from her home-town paper, and we duped a batch and showed ’em around. Well. Up to date we got her placed on eight buses and one train and there’s a truck driver that swears she tried to thumb a ride out of Long Beach with him.”

  I opened the bottle and had another drink. I offered him my deepest sympathy. “Just keep striving, Stuke,” I said. “Your head in the clouds and your feet on the ground.”

  “I’m laughin’,” he said. “It’s funny as hell, this is. On top of everything else I got those bollixing poems. All the something I got is something to screw me up.”

  “You don’t think they’re a clue?” I said.

  “Clues, schmooz. Sure, they’re a clue and what the hell you goin’ to do with it? The guy’s got a head on him, he’s sharp like tacks, he ain’t a money killer. That’s your clue, an’ you can buy it cheap. It ain’t givin’ me nothing but ulcers.”

  “Terrible,” I said. “Now, wait a minute, Stuke. I’m not laugh—”

  “Well”—he shrugged and stood up—“I wish I could. Why’n’t you kill that jug, so’s I can take it with me.”

  I took the last drink and handed him the bottle. He trudged out drearily, his snappy hat pulled low over his eyes, a pronounced sag in the shoulders of his suit.

  I was a little ashamed for having laughed at him, and I’d honestly tried not to. But I hadn’t been able to help it. Poor Stuke, lord of the pimps and bookies, terror of the panhandlers—Stukey, stripped of his last penny of graft and with no prospects but hard work. No graft, no glory. Nothing but having to earn his salary if he hoped to keep drawing it.

  Poor Lem. I couldn’t help laughing, pathetic as he was.

  He returned that night with another pint, and the next morning, ditto. Not officially. It wasn’t business, keed, he said. He just happened to be out this way and figured I could use a little company.

  He came out Saturday morning and drove me home, and he remained to visit there, with rather startling, even alarming, results. You see, I was getting just a little weary of him. I had had several hours of his moaning and groaning in a mere forty-eight, and—

  But let’s move back a bit. Back to the hospital and Thursday.

  Stukey didn’t know about my trouble with Dave, so, as a friendly act, he’d left word of my illness at the office. He hadn’t talked with Dave, just the switchboard operator. But I knew that Dave would be informed as soon as he arrived at work, and I was frankly worried when he didn’t call.

  It was just possible that he had fired me, that he intended to make it stick, or try to. And I knew what would happen if he did. Lovelace was already a little down on Dave just as he was very much up on me. He’d never let Dave fire me. He’d insist that I be taken back. Moreover, he’d credit Dave with one more error in judgment, one more than Dave could comfortably stand.

  And if Dave got stubborn, he’d be fired himself.

  I didn’t want that. I didn’t want his position made so shaky that he might fall out of it. Not yet, anyway. Status quo—with, naturally, reasonable deviations: that would do me for the present.

  It was almost noon before he did call. But the delay was not, it developed, due to stubbornness or a last-ditch struggle with Lovelace. It was just that he had difficult and embarrassing things to say, and he had put off saying them as long as possible.

  “Brownie,” he began, “I—are you all right? I m-meant to call you earlier, but I thought you might be asleep, and the nurse said you were fine.”

  “A true conservative,” I said. “I hope her noncommittal prognosis didn’t upset you?”

  “Brownie. Look, fellow—”

/>   “As a matter of fact, Colonel, I am doing as well as could be expected. A little light in the abdominal area, but then I have been for several years. One of those things, you know, or rather the absence of one of those things. I—yes, Colonel?”

  “About last night, Brownie. I—that was all my fault. You were deathly sick, and she—we tried to prevent you from leaving. I’m sorry, and I’m sure you’re sorry. Why don’t we just say the whole thing never happened?”

  “All of it? The climactic scene where we faced one another across the Marshmallow Grape Surprise, our stomachs growling in agony and bitter frankfurter-flavored burps on our lips?”

  “Brownie”—he laughed nervously—“I…well, of course, you know you aren’t fired. I’d never have said it if—if you hadn’t practically forced me to. I’m not saying that I wasn’t at fault, too, but—”

  “Let’s just lay it to mayonnaise nerves,” I said. “I’ll be ready to return to work Monday, Colonel, according to the latest dispatch. So if you’re positive you didn’t mean it—”

  “Of course I didn’t mean it! My God, Brownie, how could we break up after all the years we’ve been together? I”—he hesitated and cleared his throat—“I have tried to be a friend, Brownie. I—I know how you feel about that—the accident, and I’ve tried to make up for it the best I could. I…Look. Will you do me a very great favor?”

  “Such as eating a nice home-cooked meal? Practically anything but that, Colonel.”

  “It’s about Lovelace. What I want you to tell him about…about why you’re off work.”

  “Yes?” I said. And suddenly I was frowning. “Just what am I supposed to tell him?”

  “I had to do it, Brownie! I”—his voice broke, and picked up again, shamed, embarrassed—“I…maybe it wasn’t necessary, but I was afraid to take the chance. You know how he’s been toward me lately. And he—he and his wife have been down on Kay ever since—well, you can guess. They spent an evening with us, too. I just couldn’t risk it, Clint. I’m head over heels in debt and—”