A Swell-Looking Babe

by Jim Thompson

  “Well,” Dusty murmured. “I…you, uh, don’t need to do that. But, well, I was wondering about her, Tug. I mean, you said she was on the level, and—”

  “So what? She’s been around, she knows what the score is, she ain’t some punk bobby-soxer with the mood in her eyes. Dames in her racket, kid—bouncing around in these nightclubs with everything showing but their appetite—they all belong to the same club. The let’s-see-the-dough-honey-and-I’ll-ask-you-no-questions.”

  Dusty laughed, a little unwillingly. Tug laughed with him, studying him, then continued, his voice confidentially low. “I’ll tell you what, kid. If there ain’t no hitch anywhere, like I’m sure there won’t be, I’ll put her in touch with you. Before we split the dough, yeah. We may have to wait quite a while for that, but there’s no sense in you waiting for her. How’d you like that, huh? Connect with her right away, almost.” He slapped the bellboy on the back, not waiting for an answer. “I’ll fix it up for you, Dusty. You can count on it. Now about the dough, the split…”

  “I was wondering about that,” Dusty frowned. “You know, I can’t carry any packages out of the hotel, Tug. I mean, they have to be opened and examined before they can be carried out. And—”

  “Forget it,” Tug interrupted. “I’ll figure out something when the time comes.”

  “How will I—how will you get in touch with me?”

  “I’ll figure that out, too. It depends on how things are at the time, see? Just leave it to me, for Christ’s sake—it’s my headache, ain’t it?—and stop knocking yourself out!”

  His face had become flushed again, the irritation was back in his voice. Surlily, he hurled the emptied bottle through the window.

  “Jesus, kid. I don’t mean to blow my top at you, but—well, skip it. We’re all set, right? We’ll be running through it some more between now and next week, but we’re all set. We’ve got an agreement.”

  “We’re all set,” Dusty said steadily—“We’ve got an agreement.”

  11

  Strangely, during the time intervening between his meeting with Tug and the morning of the robbery, he felt quite calm, quite at peace with himself. Only when he tried to examine his feelings—studied their nominal strangeness—was there any rift in the peace. And even then his qualms were faint and of brief duration. There was simply nothing for them to feed upon.

  His handsome, olive-skinned face was as unfurrowed, as openly honest, as ever. The wide-set eyes remained clear and unworried. His voice, his manner, the manifold minutiae which comprised personality—they were all normal. For, for the first time in his memory, all his self-doubts were gone and he felt sure of himself. He was about to be made whole. He knew it, and the inner knowledge was reflected in the outer man.

  Despite Tug’s ambiguity, the robbery would be successful. He knew it and it was all he needed to know. More important, most important, he would have Marcia Hillis. Despite Tug’s intentions, good or bad, he would have her. He felt it, knew it, and it was all he needed to know.

  In his new-found sureness, he was unusually patient with Mr. Rhodes. He was quietly pleasant and polite to Bascom—a Bascom who had become drawn-faced, shifty-eyed, moodily silent unless he was forced to speak. It was easy to be patient now, easy to be pleasant and polite. Feeling as he did—unconquerable and unfearful—he could not be any other way.

  The sureness grew. It remained with him, strong and unwavering, during the most acid of tests—his meeting with I. Kossmeyer, attorney at law.

  The second day after his fateful talk with Tug Trowbridge, the day bell captain handed Dusty a note when he came on duty. It was from Kossmeyer, a curt scrawl on one of the attorney’s letterheads. It said, simply, Rhodes: Think would be advisable for you to drop into my office tomorrow morning.

  Dusty shredded the note, and its enclosing envelope, into a wastebasket. He did not call at Kossmeyer’s office. He didn’t like the little attorney, and he had—he told himself—better things to do with his time.

  Two mornings later, as he was leaving the hotel, Kossmeyer met him at the service entrance.

  “Want to talk to you, Rhodes,” he said, brusquely. “What about some coffee?”

  “Certainly,” Dusty nodded. “Wherever you say, Mr. Kossmeyer.”

  They took a booth in a nearby restaurant. Dusty sipped at his coffee, set it down and looked up. And for the first time in days he felt a ruffling of his calm.

  Not that he was afraid. He certainly wasn’t afraid of this little pipsqueak of a man. But he was extremely irritated, almost angered. He stared across the table, his irritation mounting, a red flush spreading over his face.

  The attorney’s eyes had become preternaturally wide, brimmed with an exaggerated sincerity that made mock of the term. He had tightened the skin of his face, smoothing away its habitual wrinkles, leaving it bland and untroubled. His lips were curled with serenity—a preposterous caricature of it—and his chin was slightly outthrust, posed at an angle of quiet defiance. He was dignity distorted, bravery become knavery, sanctimoniousness masking sin. He was a mirror, jeering at the subject it reflected. Yet so muted were the jeers, so delicate the inaccuracies of delineation, that they evaded detection. True and false were blended together. The false was merely an extended shadow of the true.

  Dusty’s flush deepened. Unconsciously, he tried to alter his expression, and the attorney’s face moved, following the change. Now he was wounded (“wounded” with quotes). Now he was losing his temper—in the manner of a Grade-C movie hero. And now—then—he was himself again. Neither friendly nor unfriendly, simply a man doing a job in the best and quickest way possible.

  “You see, Rhodes? It doesn’t mean a goddamned thing, does it? It’s what you’ve got inside that counts.”

  “What do you want with me?” Dusty snapped. “Say it and get it over with.”

  “I’ve already got part of it over, showed you that you’re not kidding anyone but yourself. Anyway, you’re sure as hell not kidding me. Now that you understand that, you can stop trying. Stop covering up and come clean. Why did you sign your father’s name to that petition?”

  “Why? Why would I—”

  “That’s right. Why would you, why did you?” The attorney leaned forward, his shrewd face suddenly sympathetic and understanding. “It was just one of those things, wasn’t it, son? You signed it without thinking, without any idea of what the consequences might be. It never occurred to you that with you and your dad having the same name—with your signatures so much alike…I imagine he taught you how to write, didn’t he? Probably set down examples for you when you were a kid, and had you try to copy ’em.”

  Dusty hesitated. He wanted to explain, to make someone else believe and thus bolster his own belief. The words were in his mouth, almost, practically ready to emerge.

  “Sure,” Kossmeyer continued, earnestly. “That’s the way it was—couldn’t have been any other way. Hell, a signature that good, it takes practice; you had to have had it right back from the beginning. And it was perfectly natural that you would have it. You were your dad’s junior, an only child to boot. That always makes a kid something special. The father identifies with him more closely—sort of tries to form him into his own pattern. It’s a protective gesture, I suppose. By making his son part of him, he…Excuse me. Yeah?”

  “It was that way,” Dusty nodded, slowly. “It—he— was even more that way with me, I imagine, than if I’d been his own son. Yes…that’s right. I was adopted. It was so long ago that I can hardly remember it, and I doubt that Dad knows that I know. So—”

  “Sure, I’d never mention it. He and the wife couldn’t have any kids of their own?”

  “I guess not. Probably she could have; she was a lot younger than he was, and I think she…well, that she was physically okay.”

  “Mmm. A very beautiful woman, wasn’t she? I seem to have heard that she was.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve been wondering: have you any idea why she married a guy so muc
h older?”

  “They met while he was lecturing at college. She was trying to work her way through, and he helped her a lot, I guess, and she felt like she couldn’t…”

  Dusty caught himself, with a start. How had they gotten to talking about her? How, and why, had he been led so far from the original subject?

  He said shortly, “What’s all that got to do with it?”

  “What?” The attorney’s eyebrows shot up. “Why, nothing that I know of. Just being curious. A set-up like that always makes me kind of wonder. It’s none of my business, of course, so don’t take it the wrong way, but—”

  “Yes?”

  “I wonder if she didn’t marry him because she loved him. Do you suppose that could have been it?”

  “Well,” Dusty nodded, hesitantly, “I suppose she did. Naturally.”

  “She just didn’t give a damn about surface appearance, don’t you imagine? She knew a right guy when she saw him, and she latched onto him.”

  He stared at Dusty, gravely: a man discussing an interesting but impersonal problem. His bright bird’s eye moved thoughtfully over the other’s face. And narrowed imperceptibly.

  “Now, getting back to this signature deal. You didn’t forge your dad’s name. It just came natural to you, and you didn’t have to forge it. That’s about the case, isn’t it?”

  “Well”—Dusty examined the insidiously objectionable statement, and was unable to object to it—“well, yes.”

  “And you just kind of accidentally left off the junior part. Without thinking of the consequences. Your dad was a public figure; everyone was certain to associate that signature with him. But that never occurred to you…did it?”

  “No, it didn’t!” Dusty snapped. “I—look, I didn’t even know what the petition was about. A woman on a street corner asked me to sign, so I signed. Like a lot of people did probably, just to be obliging.”

  “But you must have looked at it?”

  “Certainly, I looked at it, but it didn’t mean anything to me. You know how they phrase some of those things. You have to study them carefully to get at the meaning.”

  “Yeah,” Kossmeyer nodded. “They get pretty cute sometimes. How was this one phrased?”

  “Committee to Defend the Constitution—that was the heading. Then it said, ‘Recognizing the vital importance of an unhampered exchange of ideas, I, the undersigned, hereby—”

  His voice died on a strangled note.

  Kossmeyer grinned at him wolfishly. “So you didn’t know what it was all about, huh? It didn’t mean a thing to you.”

  “I—no! No, it didn’t. I read it afterwards, after the paper came out with the story.”

  “Yeah? And what about that junior deal? Why didn’t you tack it onto your name?”

  “Because there wasn’t room for it! If I’d known how important it was going to be, of course, I’d have—”

  “You had room for all the rest. First name, middle name, last—the whole damned handle, all written out big and bold so that even a blind man couldn’t miss it…Don’t try to horse-shit me, buster. You ain’t even half-way smart enough.”

  “But you don’t understand…” And he wanted him to. He wasn’t afraid of Kossmeyer, but he did want him to understand. “I know it probably doesn’t make much sense, but—”

  “It makes plenty of sense.” The attorney leaned forward grimly. “You’ve lived in this town all your life—you know how people think here, how they’d react to a thing like this Free Speech business. You grew up in a school-teacher’s family, and you know what a teacher’s problems are. How they can’t even look crosseyed without some know-nothing bastard taking a pot-shot at ’em. You knew all that and you knew something else. You knew the old man was sick and that a blow like this one could easily kill him. And that’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? You wanted him dead!”

  Dusty’s mouth opened. It snapped shut again, and, quite calmly, he lighted a cigarette. He exhaled the smoke, staring back at Kossmeyer insolently.

  “That’s ridiculous. But as long as you seem to be so sure…”

  “You know why. For the same reason I didn’t come out to the house to see you. He’s a swell guy, the kind this country needs a hell of a lot more of, and I didn’t want to make things any harder for him. If he knew what kind of pure-d, rotten son-of-a-bitch he’d given his name to—”

  “That’s about enough,” Dusty snapped. “I’m leaving.”

  “You’d better not,” Kossmeyer assured him. “You do and you’ll be the sorriest son-of-a-bitch in sixteen states.”

  “What”—Dusty sank back down into the booth—“what do you mean?”

  “I can’t do anything about what’s happened. All I can do is kind of let the case die quietly. But that’s for the past, the present. The future, that’s something else, buster. You won’t be so lucky next time. You pull another stunt on him, and, by God, I’ll stick you for it. If there isn’t a law I can do it under, I’ll get one passed!”

  “You’re crazy,” Dusty said, coldly. “This whole thing’s crazy. Why would I do anything to hurt him?”

  “I’ve got a pretty good idea about that, too. A damned good idea. And I’m going to keep on digging until I can prove it. So don’t try anything, get me? If you do”—Kossmeyer drew a finger across his throat—“zip! Curtains. It’ll be the last goddamned thing you ever try.”

  He slid out of the booth, tossed a coin on the table and walked away. Dusty finished his cigarette, studying himself in the mirrored panels of the wall.

  Nothing had changed. He was still as sure, inside and out, as when he had entered the restaurant. Kossmeyer had temporarily cracked his calm façade, but now the crevices were smoothly resealed.

  The attorney had only been guessing, trying to frighten him. He realized that he could no longer get any money from Dusty—via his father—and the fact had enraged him. But there was nothing he could do.

  He couldn’t reveal the truth (rather, Dusty corrected himself, the seeming truth) about the petition. He couldn’t possibly know what had motivated him, Dusty, to sign the petition. The motive—what might have been the motive—was gone. It had been buried, figuratively and literally, with her.

  Confident and calm, he left the restaurant and drove home. As was frequently the case, Doctor Lane was just leaving the house when he arrived. The doctor had long since recovered from the exacted politeness of their one interview. Now, he was himself again, the self, at least, that he normally displayed to Dusty: irritable, brusque, virtually insulting.

  How was Mr. Rhodes getting along? Well, he was getting along as well as could be expected, which was not, in Doctor Lane’s opinion, very damned well.

  “I’ve told you before, Rhodes,” he said testily. “This is as much a morale problem as a physical one. Your father needs to feel wanted, that he’s still of some importance. And no man can feel that way when he’s forced to live and look like a tramp.”

  “He’s not forced to,” Dusty retorted. “I give him plenty of money to keep up his appearance. Anything he wants, within reason, I—”

  “You do, eh? Within reason, eh?” The doctor gave him a cynical stare. “Well, you’d better start giving him a little more, get me? Be a little more reasonable. Do something, for God’s sake! This is getting to be a disgrace.”

  He yanked the car door open, tossed his medicine kit upon the seat. With an irritated scowl, he started around to the opposite door, then, whirled and stamped back to the bellboy.

  “Yes?” he said, his face thrust almost against Dusty’s. “You said something to me, Rhodes?”

  “I said,” said Dusty, evenly, “that if you don’t want to treat the case, I can call in another doctor.”

  “No”—Lane shook his head. “No,” he said again, his voice muted to an icy purr. “I’ll tell you what you can do, Rhodes. You can start taking better care of your father, or you can hire someone who will take care of him. Do I make myself clear? You can do it of your own free will, as a son should, or
I’ll take steps to compel you to.” He hesitated, wet his lips, continued in a milder tone. After all, he’d been the Rhodes’ family doctor for years. And he’d known this young man since he was a squirt in short pants. “Sure that, uh, nothing of that kind will be necessary,” he went on. “I know your expenses have been pretty high, and it’s hard for a man holding a full-time job to do much else. But, well, see what you can do about it, eh? Do the best you can.”

  Dusty promised that he certainly would. He was no more afraid of the doctor than he was of Kossmeyer, but there was no point in making an enemy of him. He needed friends; he was very apt to need them, at any rate. And—and the realization startled him—he had none. There were friends of the family, friends of his father. But there was none of his own. No one who could be depended upon to fight for him, stick up for him, if he got into trouble.

  “I’ll get busy on it right away,” he promised. “I’m only sorry that you had to be bothered about such things, Doctor.”

  “Well. Well, that’s all right,” Lane said gruffly. “Know you’ve got the old man’s welfare at heart—just a little thoughtless perhaps—or I wouldn’t have said anything.”

  He drove away.

  Entering the house, Dusty again sent Mr. Rhodes to the barber, again gathered up his clothes and called the laundry and cleaners. It would mean losing sleep today and still more tomorrow. But that would be the end of this particular difficulty. Kossmeyer was dropping his father’s case. He would be making no more demands for money, and the old man would thus cease to flich from the household funds as he had been doing.

  Dusty dialed the telephone, thinking of the attorney with sardonic amusement. That was always the way with these holier-than-thou guys, these guys who made such a show of standing on principles and to hell with the cost. They didn’t care about money—oh, not at all!—but they never turned any down. They were too good to give you a decent word, to show a little understanding for you, but they weren’t too good to take your money. If they couldn’t get it in one way, they’d do it in another. Squeeze it out of someone close to you who was too trusting to see through them.