by Jim Thompson
“I can’t be waiting around here every morning while they bring a pound or two, can I?” Dusty rammed the package of meat into the refrigerator. “I can’t hang around town in the morning until the stores open. I’m tired when I get off work. I want to get home and get to bed.”
“Cornmeal,” murmured the old man. “And flour. We never use anything like that, Bill.”
“Well”—Dusty’s lips pressed together—“I did the best I could. I didn’t suppose there’d be any use in asking you what we needed. When I leave it to you, we usually wind up without anything.”
“No coffee,” said Mr. Rhodes, worriedly. “No fresh milk. Or bread. No—”
“All right!” Dusty yanked a five-dollar bill from his wallet and flung it on the table. “That ought to take care of it! Now, I’m going to bed.”
“You don’t want something to eat first?”
“I’ve already eaten. Ate downtown. I—honest to God, Dad, I—”
“You shouldn’t have bought so much, Bill.” The old man shook his head. “All this stuff, and you eating at home so seldom. You’d better let me do the buying after this.”
“How the hell can I? Goddammit, I keep handing money out to you and—”
He broke off, choking down the angry words, ashamed of himself; seeing the futility of talk. His father’s mouth had drooped open in that loose, imbecilic way. His eyes were vacantly bewildered. Swiftly, as he always did when the perplexing or troublesome loomed, he had retreated behind the barrier of helplessness.
“Sorry,” Dusty said, gruffly. “Have a good day, Dad.”
And he entered his bedroom, and closed the door behind him.
Well, hell, he thought, with a kind of sullen remorsefulness. Probably he can’t help it; maybe it’s the way it has to be. He’s had too much to cope with in too short a time. He’s all right, as long as things run along smoothly, but the minute any trouble starts…
Dusty drew the shades, and turned on the electric fan. He took a few puffs from a cigarette, tapped it out in the ash tray and stretched out on the bed. He turned restlessly, flinging himself around on the rumpled sheets…Should have come straight home from work, he thought. Got to sleep while it was still fairly cool. Going to be a scorcher today, and that fan didn’t really do any good. Just stirred up the same old air, made a lot of racket. And…and how the hell could a guy sleep, anyway? How could you when you were knocking yourself out night after night, and never getting anywhere? When you knew you were never going to get anywhere? His father could go on living for years, and, hell, of course he wanted him to. But—
Dusty groaned, and sat up. He lighted another cigarette, smoked moodily, sitting on the edge of the bed. Dammit—the frown on his pale face deepened—it wasn’t fair! It was too much to swallow. There was no excuse for it.
So the old man had lost his job. And I suppose I didn’t lose anything! He’s lost his wife. Well, she was my mother, wasn’t she? I lost my mother…
Dusty winced, unconsciously. He didn’t like to think about his mother. They’d been so close at one time. He could always talk to her, and whatever his problems were she always seemed to understand and sympathize. Then, well, that rumpus over the Free Speech Committee had come up, and Dad had been kicked out of his job. And after that—everything had been different. All her thought, all her sympathy was for his father. To Dusty, she was like—almost—a polite stranger. She wasn’t at all concerned about his dropping out of college. College could wait: he was young and his father was old. She took his sacrifices for granted, as something he was obliged to make, a debt that he had to pay. The trouble wasn’t his, but it was. He was shut out of it—she drew further and further away from him, drew closer and closer to his father—but he was expected to pay for it. She wouldn’t share it with him, this or anything else. Not really share, as she’d used to. He was just a stranger paying off a debt.
…It was almost noon before he fell asleep. Five minutes later—what seemed like five minutes—a steady ringing roused him into wakefulness. Automatically, his eyes still closed, he thrust his hand out to the alarm clock. He pressed down on the alarm button—pressed and found it already depressed. He fumbled with it a moment longer, then drowsily opened his eyes.
It was still daylight. Not quite three o’clock. The ringing continued.
He jumped up, ran into the living room and snatched up the telephone.
It was Tolliver, the Manton’s superintendent of service.
“Rhodes—Bill?” he said crisply. “Sorry to bother you, but I’ll have to ask you to come down to the hotel.”
“Come…you mean now?”
“Sorry, yes. Mr. Steelman wants to see you, and he’s not available after five. Come straight to his office, Bill. If anyone gets curious, you can say you came down to see the auditor. A mix-up in your pay or something like that.”
“But I don’t—is there something wrong? I certainly hope I haven’t done—”
Tolliver’s laugh was friendly. “Sounds like you’ve got a guilty conscience. No, it’s nothing like that. Nothing that concerns you directly…We can expect you right away, Bill?”
“Just as fast as I can get there,” Dusty promised.
He was on his way out of the house within ten minutes, still too grumpy with sleep to care much about the reason for the summons…That Steelman, he grumbled silently. You’d think he was God instead of just the Manton’s manager. He “wasn’t available” after five, Mr. Steelman wasn’t, just couldn’t be bothered, no matter what came up. But everyone else had to be available. He could drag you out of bed in the middle of the day, and that was perfectly all right.
Dusty found a parking space at the rear of the hotel, and went in the employees’ entrance as usual. He rode a service elevator to the second floor, walked on past the auditor’s offices and the switchboard room and entered the outer room of the manager’s office. The receptionist nodded promptly when he mentioned his name.
“Oh, yes. They’re waiting for you. Go right on in.”
She gestured toward the door marked PRIVATE. Dusty opened it and went in.
The manager was seated behind his desk, crisp and cool looking in a white linen suit. Tolliver, the superintendent of service, sat a little to one side of him, his fumed-oak chair pulled up at the end of the desk. They were studying some papers when Dusty entered, and they continued to study them for a few moments longer. Then, Steelman murmured something under his breath and Tolliver laughed unctuously, and the two of them looked up.
“Sit down, Bill.” Tolliver motioned to a chair. “No, better pull it up here. We’ll get this over with as quickly as possible.”
Dusty sat down, a faint feeling of nausea in his stomach. It was almost a physical shock to come into this air-conditioned, indirectly-lighted room from the blinding heat outside.
Tolliver went on. “Now this is strictly confidential, Bill. Not a word about it to anyone, you understand? Good. Here’s what we want to know. You’ve been working with Mr. Bascom for about a year. You’ve been around him more—presumably talked with and observed him more—than any of the rest of us. What can you tell us about him?”
“Tell you?” Dusty smiled puzzledly. “I guess I don’t understand what—”
“Put it this way. Has he done or said anything that would lead you to believe he wasn’t strictly on the level?”
“Why—why, no, sir.” Dusty shook his head. “I mean, well, I don’t believe that he has.”
“Has he told you anything about his past, what he did before he came here? Any of his experiences, say, at other hotels?”
“No.”
“To the best of your knowledge, he’s an honest man who does his work as it should be done?”
“Yes, sir.” Dusty looked from Tolliver to Steelman. “I’m not being inquisitive, but maybe if you could tell me what the trouble is I might—”
“Here’s the trouble,” the manager said crisply. “We’ve received an anonymous letter about Mr. Bascom. It’s not at
all specific, doesn’t give us any details, but it does indicate that Mr. Bascom’s character leaves something to be desired. Ordinarily, we’d pay no attention to such a communication. If one of our other clerks was involved, someone we knew something about—”
“Someone you knew something about?” Dusty frowned. “You mean, you don’t know anything about Mr. Bascom?”
“Practically nothing. According to his application blank, he’d always been self-employed, kind of a small-time jobber. He bought novelties and candy and the like from wholesale houses and resold them to retailers. Now, there’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but it doesn’t tell us much about him. Doesn’t give us anything we can check on. And it’s the same story with his character references—the director of a YMCA where he lived a few months, the minister of a church he attended. Virtually meaningless. Those people hand out references right and left.”
“But”—Dusty spread his hands—“but why did you hire him, then?”
Tolliver laughed wryly. “Doesn’t sound much like the Manton, does it, Bill? But you see, Bascom was hired during the war, right back at the beginning of it. We had to take what we could get, and very few questions asked. Afterwards, since he seemed to have worked out very well, we simply let matters ride. We can’t very well start questioning him about his background at this late date. Always assuming, of course, that questioning would do any good.”
“It wouldn’t,” said Steelman. “When a man’s applying for a job, he tells everything he can that will be a credit to him. No, we have to go on accepting Bascom at his word, which is just about what it boils down to. Or we have to let him go.”
“I’d hate to do that,” Tolliver said, “with nothing more against him than an anonymous note. I—yes, Bill?”
“I was just going to say that the bonding company must have investigated him. As long as they feel—”
“He isn’t bonded. We’ve never felt it necessary to bond the night clerk. He carries a very small change bank, doesn’t handle much cash. He doesn’t have access to any valuables. So…”
“Let’s see,” said Steelman. “Do you have many one-shift guests, Rhodes? People who arrive after midnight and leave before seven?”
“Not very many. If you wanted to check the transcript—”
“We already have. I was wondering whether Mr. Bascom ever ordered you to make up those checked-out rooms instead of leaving them for the maids.”
“You mean have I helped him steal the price of the room?” Dusty said. “No, sir, I haven’t.”
“Now, Bill”—Tolliver frowned. “That wasn’t Mr. Steelman’s question.”
“I’m sorry,” Dusty said. “No, sir, Mr. Bascom has never told me to do anything like that. He knows that I wouldn’t do it if he did ask me. If he was going to pull anything crooked, he’d get rid of me before…”
His voice trailed away, leaving the sentence unfinished, Steelman glanced at him shrewdly.
“Go on, Rhodes. He’s been riding you, trying to get rid of you?”
“Well,” Dusty hesitated. “Yes, sir, he has. But I’m not sure he doesn’t mean it for my own good. You see he thinks—he seems to think—that I ought to go back to college.”
“Mmm. I wonder,” said Steelman. “If he could get another bellboy on the job, work out a deal with him…Tolly, do you remember that night team they caught out in Denver a while back? Stealing rent. Refunding—right into their own pockets. Carting out linens and supplies by the armload. God only knows how many thousands of dollars they cleaned up.”
“I remember,” Tolliver nodded. “But with nothing more against the man than this one letter, which doesn’t really tell us anything, I’d be very reluctant to jump to any conclusions. After all, Bascom worked with a number of other bellboys before Bill came here. His work is audited daily, and we run comparison reaudits from month to month. It seems to me that if he was pulling anything, we’d have found out about it in ten years time.”
“Perhaps he hasn’t pulled anything. Maybe he’s just getting ready to.”
“Well,” said Tolliver. “Maybe.”
“I don’t like it, Tolly.” Steelman’s lips thinned fretfully. “A letter like this concerning the one man we know nothing about. If a man’s been a crook once—and this indicates that he has—he’s very apt to be one again. He feels a sudden pinch, has to get money in a hurry, and he’s off to the races.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” Tolliver nodded. “What about that, Bill? Does Mr. Bascom have any money problems that you know of?”
“No, sir. He’s never mentioned any.”
“Well, there’s still another angle,” the manager went on. “Suppose the author of this letter is trying to blackmail Bascom. He doesn’t want him dismissed from his job, so he says just enough to disturb us. As he sees it, we’ll be impelled to make some mention of the matter and Bascom will be frightened into paying off. Otherwise, there’ll be another letter with more details.”
Tolliver frowned solemnly. Then, suddenly, his mouth twisted and he bent forward laughing. “Excuse me, John, but—ha, ha, ha—when I try to picture poor old Bascom in the toils of a blackmailer, I—ha, ha—I—”
“Well,” Steelman grinned a trifle sheepishly. “Maybe I’d better start reading westerns instead of detective stories. I can’t see the prim old boy in the role myself. Seriously, however…”
“We’ve gotten crank letters before, John. It’s not unnatural, after all the years he’s been with us, that one should eventually crop up about Bascom. If we get another one, we certainly ought to take some action, but I don’t see how we can at this point. For the present, we can just keep our eyes and ears open—that means you particularly, Bill—and—”
“What about putting Bascom on a day shift?”
“If you say so, but I wouldn’t like to. He doesn’t have the zip, the polish for a front-office day job. Aside from that, it takes a long time to break a man in on the night paper work.
Steelman nodded. “All right, Tolly. I’ll leave it up to you. You don’t think you should mention the letter to Bascom? Very casually, of course. If he’s on the level, there’s no harm done, and if he isn’t, well, it might keep him out of trouble.”
“Except with that blackmailer, eh?” Tolliver laughed. “But I think you may be right, John. Now…”
They discussed the matter for a minute or two longer. Then, Tolliver looked at Dusty and stood up. “There’s no reason to keep Bill around for this, is there? There’s nothing more you have to say to him?”
“Can’t think of anything.” The manager shook his head. “Thanks for coming down, Rhodes.”
“And remember,” Tolliver said, “under your hat, Bill. You don’t know anything about this matter.”
“Yes, sir,” said Dusty.
…Later, when it was too late to do much about it, it seemed to him that he should have seen the connection between the letter and Marcia Hillis and Tug Trowbridge and Bascom…and the threat they represented to himself. Later, he did not know he had been so blind as to fail to see. It was all so simple, simple and deadly. All the parts to the puzzle had been in his hands, and he had only to look at them.
That, however, was later. At the time, it was only an annoyance and one for which there was little excuse. His sleep had been broken into. He had been dragged downtown on a hot afternoon. And all because some nut, some guest probably with a hangover grouch, had written an anonymous note. That was all it amounted to when you got right down to it. If the hotel had any real doubts about Bascom, he wouldn’t have stayed there ten years.
Dusty went home, found that his father had returned from his stroll or wherever he had been, and went to bed. It was now nearing six o’clock, but he was too tired and hot to eat. Too tired to sleep, for that matter. He heard his father moving about in the kitchen, closing and reclosing the refrigerator, rattling ice trays, setting a pan on the stove. It went on and on, it seemed. Interminably. It would—he began to drift into sleep—always go on. The heat and
the noise…and…and his father. And nothingness.
A vivid image of his mother flashed into his mind, and he tossed restlessly. The image changed, a line here, a line there, and it was another woman: alluring, youthful, and above all warm and interested…and understanding.
He fell asleep, half-frowning, half-smiling.
5
The night was about average for the Hotel Manton. Bascom seemed about the same as always, with little to say and that cranky and carping. If Tolliver had shown him the letter, and if it meant anything to him, he gave no sign of the fact.
Dusty drove straight home from work. Or, rather, he started to. Halfway there he remembered that his father was to see the optometrist and that he had no clean clothes. Wearily, cursing, he let the car slow. Of course, the cleaning and laundry might get back early today, but it also might not. And now that he’d taken a firm stand with his father, he’d better carry through with it. There was going to be no more of this putting off, letting him go on with his expensive and embarrassing shiftlessness. He’d been told to see the optometrist today, so today it would be.
Dusty drove back to town, eating breakfast while he waited for the stores to open. He bought a pair of summer trousers, a shirt and underwear, and started home again.
Mr. Rhodes was in the kitchen, dabbling ineffectually at the suds-filled sink. He lifted a platter from the dishwater, peering at his son reproachfully as he began to scrub it.
“Had a nice breakfast fixed for you, Bill,” he said. “Bacon and eggs and toast, and—”
“Sorry,” Dusty said, shortly. “Wash up, and put these on, Dad. I’ll drive you down to the optometrist.”
“Thought sure you’d be here,” the old man went on. “After buying all that stuff yesterday. If you’d told me you were going to be late, I’d—”
“I’m telling you now!” Dusty snapped. “I mean, I’m sorry, but please hurry, Dad. I want to get to sleep. I’ll drive you down, and you can come home by yourself.”
Mr. Rhodes nodded mildly, and put down the platter. “This night work, son—do you really think it pays? You don’t get your proper rest, and it costs more to—”
