A Swell-Looking Babe

by Jim Thompson

  “Well”—his voice was casual; he spoke almost over his shoulder—“I guess you’re not going to go back to college?”

  “I’m still thinking about it,” Dusty said. “I want to, but it’ll take time to work it out.”

  “I see,” Bascom noded. “At any rate, I don’t suppose you could go back before the fall term.”

  “No, sir. Not very well.”

  “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Bascom said. “You know where to reach me if anything comes up.”

  He went out the side door, raising the umbrella as he stepped under the marquee. Dusty leaned his elbows on the marble desk top, and let his eyes wander around the lobby. He yawned pleasurably. A good night, any way you looked at it. Bascom, the weather, money-wise. Tug Trowbridge had given him a ten-dollar tip. If he didn’t make another nickel between now and quitting time, he’d still have a good shift.

  At his elbow, the bell captain’s phone rang suddenly. Dusty jumped, startled, then picked up the receiver.

  It was her, Marcia Hillis. He recognized her voice instantly, and she recognized his.

  “Dusty? Can you bring me some stationery?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Right away, Miss—I mean, I can bring them in a few minutes, Miss Hillis. The room clerk’s gone out to eat, and I have to watch the desk.”

  “Oh? Are you afraid it will run away?”

  “No, ma’am, I—”

  She laughed softly. “I was teasing.…As soon as you can, then.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  He hung the receiver up clumsily. Opening a drawer, he took out a stack of stationery, small and typewriter size, and laid it on the counter. He went behind the keyrack to the lavatory and combed his hair. He came out front again, and looked at the clock. Bascom had been gone…well, he’d been gone long enough. Should be back any minute. He looked at the stack of stationery, shook his head judiciously, and returned two thirds of it to the drawer.

  Something in the action stirred his memory. Or, perhaps, it was the other way around: memory, a recollection, brought about the action. Something the superintendent of service had lectured him about at the time of his employment.

  “…Very careful about waste, Bill. Lights not in use, leaky water taps, two trips with the elevator when one might suffice, more soap and towels and stationery than a guest can legitimately use. Little things…but they aren’t little when you multiply them by several hundred. It’s those little things that count. They make the difference between profit and loss…”

  Dusty glanced at the clock again. For no reason that he could think of, merely to kill time, he walked up the aisle to the room rack. There was nothing to be learned there, of course. She was just another one of hundreds of small white slips…a capital-lettered composite name, place of residence, rate and date.…He returned to the bell captain’s section, drummed nervously on the neat stack of stationery.

  He picked up the outside phone, dialed the first two numbers of the lunch room, and replaced the receiver. This wasn’t important enough to have Bascom come rushing back. If she waited until this time of night to write letters, she could wait a little longer. That’s the way Bascom would look at it. That was the way he looked at it. She was just another guest, good for a two-bit tip, perhaps. So what was the hurry?

  Dusty leaned over the counter, and looked up the expanse of lobby to the front entrance. He went out the door and waited in front of the counter.

  Stationery at three in the morning. Not usual, but it wasn’t extraordinary either. A guest couldn’t sleep, so to pass the time, he or she wrote letters. It happened. Every few nights or so there’d be a room call for stationery. As for the way she’d talked over the phone, the way she’d acted that first night…

  Well…

  He shrugged and ended the silent argument. Why kid himself? She’d been interested in him from the beginning. Now, she’d worked herself up to the point of doing a little playing. And so long as she wasn’t a spotter—and she wasn’t—so long as he let her take all the initiative and he damned well would—it would be okay. No trouble. Not a chance of trouble. He’d never done anything like this before, and he never would again. Just this once.

  Bascom came in the front door. Dusty signaled to him, jabbing a finger into the air. The room clerk nodded, and Dusty picked up the stationery and trotted off to the elevator.

  At the tenth floor, he opened the door of the car and latched it back with a hook. He started down the long semidark corridor. There was a low whistle from behind him, then a:

  “Hey, Dusty!”

  Dusty turned. It was Tug Trowbridge, standing in the door of his suite in undershirt and trousers. Two men—the two he had met a few nights before—were with him.

  “In a big hurry? How about running my friends downstairs?”

  “Well”—Dusty hesitated—“yes, sir,” he said. “Glad to.” It had to be done. He couldn’t leave them waiting indefinitely for an elevator.

  He took them downstairs, said good night and went back to the tenth floor. He latched the door back quietly, and started down the hall again.

  Slowly, then more slowly.

  Now that he was here, rounding the corner of the corridor, approaching her door, standing in front of it—now, his nervousness, his sense of caution, returned. An uneasy premonition stirred in him, a feeling that once before he had done something like this with terrifying, soul-sickening results. There had been another woman, one who like this one was all woman, and he—

  He shook himself, driving the memory deep down into its secret hiding place. It had never happened, nothing like this. There had been no other woman.

  He raised his hand, tapped lightly on the door. He heard a soft, rustling sound, then, dimly, “Dusty?”

  “Yes.”

  “Come in.”

  He went in, let the door click shut behind him. He stood there a moment, his eyes still full of the light outside, seeing nothing in the pitch black darkness. His hand unclasped, and the stationery drifted to the floor.

  She laughed softly. She murmured…a question, an invitation. He felt his way forward slowly, guided by the sound of her voice.

  His knee bumped against the bed. A hand reached up out of the darkness. He sat down on the edge of the bed, and her arms fastened around his neck.

  There was one savagely delightful moment as his mouth found hers, as he felt the cool-warm nakedness of her breasts. Then, suddenly, he was sick, shivering with sickness and fear. It was all wrong. It wasn’t like it should have been.

  Her mouth was covered with lipstick. He could taste its ugly flatness in his own mouth, feel the sticky smears upon his face and neck. And she wasn’t naked. Only part of her was nude, and there the nakedness was not complete. It was as though her night clothes had been torn. It—

  She didn’t speak. She was still clinging to him, smearing him, digging her nails into his face. She didn’t speak, but there was a voice:

  “Y-you filthy, sneaking little bastard! Yes, bastard, do you hear? We got you out of a foundling asylum! And God curse the day we…No, I won’t tell him. I won’t do that to him. But if you ever—”

  He was almost motionless for a moment, paralyzed by the unbearable voice. But it had never happened. It was only a bad dream. And this…

  There was a roll of thunder. The drawn curtains whipped back in a sudden gust of wind, and lightning illuminated the room just for a second, but that was long enough for him to see:

  The over-turned chairs. The upset lamp. The deliberate disorder. The night-gown, half ripped from her body. And the smeared red mouth, opened to scream. He hit her as hard as he could.

  7

  The next thirty minutes was a nightmare. A confused and hideous dream, the incidents of which piled terrifyingly, bewilderingly, one atop another. He was bent over her—pleading and apologizing—hysterically trying to bring her back to consciousness. Then, he was leaving her room, running blindly down the hall, bursting into Tug Trowbridge’s suite. And Tug was grippi
ng him by the shoulders, slapping him across the face, forcing him into a semi-calm coherence…“So okay, kid. I’ll try and square the dame some way. Now straighten up and beat it back downstairs. Before old Bascom sends out an alarm for you.”

  He was washing his face, combing his hair, under Tug’s supervision. He was in the elevator, then crossing a seemingly endless expanse of the lobby. With Bascom’s eyes on him every step of the way. And at last—at last, immediately—he was facing Bascom across the marble counter.

  Trying to explain the inexplicable.

  “Bill! Answer me, Bill!”

  “Y-yes, sir…?”

  “What took you so long? What have you been doing up there in Miss Hillis’ room?”

  “I—I—”

  It made no impression on him at the time: the fact that, illogically, Bascom knew where he had been. He was still too frightened, too conscience-stricken, to raise even a silent question.

  “Bill!”

  “N-nothing, sir. The—the window in her room was stuck. I had to pry it open for her. P-prop it open.”

  “And that took you thirty minutes? Nonsense! What were you doing up there? What have you done to—to—”

  Bascom’s voice trailed away. Eyes fastened on Dusty’s face, he picked up the telephone. Gave a room number to the operator.

  Dusty would have run, then. He would have, but his legs refused to obey the frantic signaling of his mind. He could only stand, paralyzed, wait and listen as Bascom spoke into the phone.

  “…uh, Miss Hillis? This is the night clerk. The bellboy tells me that you were having some trouble—that there was some trouble with your window, and…I see. You’re all right—I mean, everything is taken care of, then? Thank you very much, and I hope I haven’t disturbed you.”

  He hung up the phone. Incredibly, he hung it up…without summoning the police or the house detective. And, seemingly, the nightmare began to draw to a close.

  Dusty could breathe again. He could talk—and think—again.

  Tug had squared the dame some way. He’d bought her off. Or, more likely, he’d frightened her away from whatever stunt she’d been attempting. Probably he’d been there in the room with her when Bascom called. Letting her know—making her believe—that she’d get her teeth slapped out if she pulled anything funny.

  At any rate, everything was all right. A miracle had happened, and he was too grateful to inquire as to its creation or authenticity.

  “I told you,” he said—he heard himself saying. “What the hell did you think I was doing?”

  Bascom frowned at him puzzledly. He gave him a long, level look, and at last turned back to his work on the transcript sheets.

  “I’ll tell you what I think,” he said. “What I’ve been thinking for quite a while. You don’t belong here in this job. Sooner or later, if you stay on, you’ll find yourself in very serious trouble.”

  Dusty laughed. Almost steadily. “What have you got it in for me about, anyway? I can’t turn around any more without you making a production out of it.”

  “Come around the desk,” said Bascom. “Give me some help. Do a little something to earn your pay.”

  “Sure,” Dusty grinned. “Why not?”

  He and the clerk finished the few remaining two man chores. Then, Bascom retired to the cashier’s cage, and Dusty sauntered back to the bell-captain’s area. Elbows propped on the marble counter, he wondered—without really caring—how Tug had managed to square Miss Marcia Hillis, of Dallas, Tex.

  A little slapping around, he supposed, not enough to mark her up, but more than enough to scare hell out of her. She hadn’t counted on his having a friend like Tug. She’d framed him into a case of seeming attempted rape, the objective a hefty lawsuit against the hotel. But now that she’d seen what she was up against, that the only thing she was likely to collect was a broken neck…

  Dusty frowned, still not actually caring or worrying about her, but continuing to wonder. He’d have sworn that she wasn’t a shakedown artist. How could he have been so wrong? And if she was one—since she was one—why had she waited so long to pull this rape setup?

  A dame as smart as she seemed to be would have made the try right away. She’d have known that the hotel might become suspicious, decide that her room was subject to “previous reservation” and that, regrettably, no others were available.

  She should have known that. Anyone who knew anything at all about hotels, had to know it. And yet…Dusty’s face cleared, and he smiled almost pityingly. Despite the ordeal she’d put him through, he felt a little sorry for her.

  She didn’t know anything about hotels: that was the answer to the riddle. She was a swell-looking babe, and doubtless smart enough in other respects, but what she didn’t know about hotels was everything. As little as she knew about the rackets.

  He’d been right about her. She wasn’t a shakedown operator. This was her first attempt. She’d been rocking along somewhere, respectably enough, and then she’d gotten this big idea—one she thought was completely original. So she’d gone to work on it. And made every blunder in the book.

  The Manton itself had been blunder number one. A professional would have chosen a really big house with heavy turnover in personnel and guests. Then, there was error number two—a thing to make a real pro wince. That was her biggest bonehead, checking in in the middle of the night, without a reservation for God’s sake! And demanding a low-priced room! And making a play, arousing the suspicions of an employee, before she was ready to carry through with it.…

  One mistake after another. In a way, her many and incredible blunders had protected her. Ignorance had masqueraded as innocence, and while he had been disturbed by her, he had had no strong suspicions.

  Well…Dusty sighed regretfully. She wasn’t the only one who’d been stupid. If he’d seen the simple truth sooner, he could have avoided tonight’s terrifying experience. Replaced it with one exceedingly more pleasant. He could have said, Look, honey. You’re trying this in the wrong place and on the wrong guy…And doubtless she would have been grateful. Very grateful.

  As things stood now—well, just where did things stand now? Covertly, he glanced down the long aisle toward Bascom, hesitated, then sighed again. The clerk was already suspicious. Aside from that, a call or a visit to her room was out of the question. She’d be frightened and angry, afraid of and ready to repel any overtures he might make. Also, Tug might still be with her…and so occupied as to make him resent an intrusion. That would be like Tug. She had made trouble for the big man; in a word, she owed him something. And he would collect as a matter of course.

  Dusty wished he could get her out of his mind. He wished he could feel more relieved, grateful, for escaping from what had seemed an inescapable mess. But as the long night drew to a close, he felt only one thing: a sense of irreplaceable loss. He had lost her again. For the second time, he had lost the only woman in the world.

  The vanguard of the day shift began to arrive. The first elevator boy went to work, the first mezzanine maid, the first lobby attendant. The head baggage-porter retrieved the checkroom key, unlocked it under the drowsy gaze of a black-shirted subordinate.

  As dawn spread into daylight, Dusty was forced out of his reverie. With the calls piling on top of each other he was kept too busy to think about her.

  He raced up and down on the service elevator, de rigueur, when in use, for the hotel’s employees. He raced up and down the long, deeply carpeted hallways. Tapping on doors. Delivering cigarettes and morning papers and toilet articles and a dozen-odd things. Everything moved in a blur of automatic action. There were no people, only room numbers. And the numbers themselves soon lost meaning. They were connected with the transitory moment’s errand, and beyond that they had no existence.

  …He said, “Thank you, very much, sir,” and pocketed a quarter tip. He rounded the corner of the corridor, moving at a fast trot.

  He looked up, just in time to keep from piling into them.

  The baggage por
ter was in the lead, her overnight case under one arm, her hatbox and suitcase in his hands. Sauntering along behind him was one of Tug’s men, and at the rear of the procession was another. She was walking between the two. Knotted at the back of her head were the cords of a heavy black veil.

  Dusty gulped. He turned and darted back around the corner. He couldn’t say why the scene was such a shock to him, why it sent waves of sickness through his brain. Because, naturally, he should have expected something like this. Tug would feel that he had to get her out of the hotel. Nothing less would be safe—absolutely safe—and Tug was not the kind to take unnecessary chances. So…so there was nothing wrong. Tug, or, rather, Tug’s boys would see that she checked out. They’d slip her a little money and load her on a train, and—and that was all they would do. Just enough to insure Tug’s safety and his, Dusty’s, own.

  Everything was as it should be, then. As he should have expected it to be. But still he was sick, and getting sicker by the moment. It was as though he’d witnessed a death procession, a criminal being led to the execution chamber.

  He ran down the service stairs to the next landing. He raced down that corridor, and around to the service elevator. Why, he couldn’t have said, because certainly he couldn’t interfere. It would be his own neck if he did, and…and why should he, anyway?

  Why, he demanded furiously. She tried to get me, didn’t she? They won’t do anything to her, but why should I care if they did?

  The sickness mounted. It disintegrated suddenly, still in him but spread through his body, no longer a compact, centralized force. And mixing with it, adulterating it, was a strange feeling of pride. Tug Trowbridge. He and Tug. She’d stepped on Dusty’s toes, and now, by God, she was learning a lesson. They were showing her, her and the Manton and the rest of the world. She had everything on her side, all the forces of law and order. And against him and Tug, they didn’t mean a thing. She was being kidnaped in broad daylight from one of the biggest hotels in town.