A Swell-Looking Babe

by Jim Thompson

  “Well,” he said. “I hardly—you do remember this lady, Rhodes?”

  Rhodes hesitated. He said, his voice strangely tight, “I remember.”

  “And you can’t—I’m not ordering you to, understand—you can’t release a piece of baggage without a check? You don’t do that under any circumstances?”

  “No.”

  “Not even if the owner identifies the contents?”

  “N-no. I mean, she—she—”

  “Answer me! Speak up!” Fillmore was sure of himself again. His voice rang with authority. “That is the custom, isn’t it?…I’m sorry you were delayed, madam, but if you’ll just identi—”

  “But I already have! I satisfied the boy that it was my bag, but apparently”—she laughed a little wryly—“he wasn’t satisfied with the tip I gave him.”

  “Oh, he wasn’t eh?” Fillmore’s lips tightened grimly. “Give me that bag, Rhodes, do you hear me? Give it here instantly!”

  Reaching across the counter, he snatched the bag from the bellboy’s hand, presented it to the lady with a courteous bow. “I’m extremely sorry about this, madam. May I see you to your cab?”

  Murmuring apologies, muttering sternly about the bellboy’s conduct, he escorted her out into the lobby. At the steps to the side entrance, she interrupted, laying a hand on his arm.

  “He won’t lose his job because of this, will he? I’d feel dreadful if I thought he would.”

  “But, madam. The Manton cannot and will not tolerate discourtesy on the part of—”

  “Oh, I’m sure he didn’t mean to be discourteous. It was more thoughtlessness than anything else…Promise?” She gave his arm a little squeeze. “Promise he won’t be fired.”

  “Well,” said Fillmore, and then, grandly, “Very well. I understand that he does need his place here. Has his father, a semi-invalid, depending on him.”

  “I know,” said Marcia Hillis. “I mean, I thought he must be upset about something.”

  17

  Dusty never knew how he got through that night. It seemed endless, and each of the year-long moments was a nightmare of soul-sickening rage, of rage and hate and frustration—repressed, seething inside him, until the mental sickness became physical. He wanted to kill Fillmore, to choke him with his bare hands. He wanted to hide in a dark corner and vomit endlessly. He wanted…

  He wanted the unattainable. He wanted what he had always wanted—her. And now he was not going to have her. She was Tug’s woman, obviously, irrefutably. Everything else had been pretense, all the caresses and the whisperings and the promises. All for Tug, nothing for him. They’d be together now, on their way out of the country together. They’d be laughing—she’d be laughing, as she told how she’d hoodwinked him. He’d been on the point of giving her the satchel. He couldn’t bear to see her hurt, to have her think that he didn’t trust her. Goddam, oh, Goddam! And he’d been just a little suspicious of her last-minute firmness, her insistence, but if she’d kept up the act a moment longer…

  But it hadn’t been necessary for her to keep it up. He hadn’t had time to reach a decision. That goddamned stupid Fillmore had butted in, and there’d been nothing to do but let her have the bag. Jesus, what else could he do? Call her bluff? Say that she hadn’t identified the contents, and risk Fillmore’s taking over, calling the house dick maybe or the manager? He couldn’t do that and she knew it, knew that he’d have to do just what he had done. Let her go, and keep his mouth shut. Let her take the money, and herself, to Tug. Tug’s money, his money—the whole two hundred and thirty-two thousand.

  And the terrible part about it was that he couldn’t hate her. He tried to, but he couldn’t. He wanted her as much—Christ, he wanted her more!—as he ever had.

  Still sick and seething, he drove home that morning. A kind of vicious delight welled up in him as Mr. Rhodes met him at the door, mumbling worriedly about Miss Hillis’ absence. He shoved past the old man. He turned and faced him, his pent-up fury spewing out at this easy and defenseless target.

  “So she’s left. What about it? What business is it of yours, anyway?”

  “B-but—” Mr. Rhodes gave him a startled look. “But I—where could she have gone to? Why would she have left, gone away at night, without saying anything? Everything was all right when I went to bed. We’d sat up talking rather late, and then I helped her make down the lounge and—”

  “I’ll bet you did. It’s a goddamned wonder you didn’t try to go to bed with her. Christ knows, you haven’t left her alone for a second since she’s been here!”

  “B-but—” The old man’s mouth dropped open. “Son, you can’t mean—”

  “The hell I don’t! That’s probably why she left, because she couldn’t stand the sight of you any more. She had all she could take, just about like I’ve had all I can take…Yes, you heard me right, by God! I’m sick of you, get me? Sick of looking at you, sick of listening to you, sick of—”

  The phone rang. Raging, he let it ring on for a moment. And then he snatched up the receiver and almost yelled into the mouthpiece.

  A muted chuckle came over the wire. “Something riling you, kid?” said Tug Trowbridge.

  Dusty’s hand jerked. His fingers went limp, and the receiver started to slide from his grasp.

  “Now get this, kid,” Tug went on swiftly. “I’ll be by the side entrance there tonight, tomorrow morning rather, at one o’clock. Driving, yeah. I’ll give three short taps on the horn, and—Dusty! You listening to me?”

  “I’m l-lis—You can’t!” Dusty stammered. “You—”

  “Why not? I’ll have this little collapsible bag you can slip under your jacket. You put mine in that, and bring it back out again, just like I’d given you a check on it. What—”

  “But I—”

  “Yeah?” Tug chuckled again. “Kind of surprised you, huh, thought it would be more complicated? Well, that’s it. One o’clock tonight. Three taps on the horn.”

  “Wait!”

  “Yeah? Snap into it, kid.”

  “I’ve got to see you,” said Dusty. “Something’s—I’ve got to see you!”

  “Huh-uh. No, you don’t. You just—”

  “But I can’t! I m-mean—” He wouldn’t dare tell Tug the whole truth. Tug had killed three men for that money, his share of it, and he would not believe the truth if he heard it. He would think that—“I mean, that’s what I’ve got to see you about.”

  Heavy silence for a moment. Then, softly, “You wouldn’t be hungry, would you, kid? You wouldn’t want it all…and that ten grand reward besides?”

  “No! My God, you know I wouldn’t—that I couldn’t do that.”

  “Yeah. Well, just so you know it, too, that you’d hang yourself if you tried it. They nab me and you’re sunk, or you try putting the blocks to me and you’re—”

  “I’m not! It’s—I can’t explain now, but I’ve got to see you, now—”

  “All right,” Tug cut in, curtly. “I don’t like it, but all right. Same place in about an hour.”

  The line went dead.

  Dusty hung up the receiver, glanced at his father. The old man was slumped down into his chair, staring vacantly into nothingness. There was a stunned look on his face, a look of sickness that transcended sickness in his eyes. He was obviously unaware of the telephone conversation. It had meant nothing to him. Nothing, now, meant anything to him.

  Dusty took a bill from his wallet, the first one his fingers touched, and flung it into his lap. A ten-spot, too damned much—anything was too damned much—but he had an idea that it wouldn’t be much longer, now; with the props kicked out from under him, the old bastard might have sense enough to die. Meanwhile, it was worth any amount to crack the whip and see him cringe. To toss the bill at him as though it were a bone to a dog.

  He waited a moment for the old man to speak—hoping for, wanting the opportunity to shut him up again. Then, as his father remained silent, he slammed out the door and headed for his rendezvous with Tug.

&n
bsp; Things could be a lot worse, he thought. Yes, sir, they were not nearly as bad as they had seemed a while ago. He’d lost her, but at least she hadn’t gone to Tug. She’d been working for herself, not Tug, and somehow that was not so hard to bear. He’d lost everything he wanted, but the loss had done something for him. It had pushed him to the point of losing, getting rid of, something he didn’t want—someone who, he realized now, he had always hated. Yes, hated. Hated, hated, hated! Hated when he had touched her, the woman who was all woman. Hated—hated him—if he even came near her. Hated and wanted him to die. As he probably would die soon, now that he was completely stripped of reason to live.

  And perhaps…perhaps she was not lost yet: the she reborn in Marcia Hillis. Perhaps, with the ten thousand dollars in reward money, he could find her and…

  He turned off the highway, crossed over the railway tracks to the abandoned road on the other side. A car was parked just beyond the crest of the first hill. It was old and battered, but there was a look of sturdiness about it and the tires were new. The man behind the wheel was heavily bearded, dressed in faded overalls and jumper, and had an old straw work hat pulled low on his forehead. A sawed-off shotgun lay across his knees. He gestured with it impatiently as Dusty greeted him.

  “So you wouldn’t have known me. So forget it and start talking. What the hell did you have to see me about?”

  18

  Tug cursed. He mopped his face with a blue bandanna handkerchief and went on cursing, pouring profanity through the polka-dot folds until he was strangling and breathless.

  “Those bastards! Those stupid, blockheaded sons-of-bitches! Boy, I wish I hadn’t already bumped ’em off! I’d like to do it all over again.”

  “Then you intended to kill her all along,” Dusty said. “All that stuff you told me about how much she liked me and how you’d fix things up—”

  “You kicking about it?” Tug turned on him fiercely. “You let her screw you for your share of the dough, and you’re kicking?”

  “I just want to get things straight. If you’d told me the truth in the first place…”

  “Well, now you got it straight. We’d snatched her, hadn’t we? Yeah, I know what you thought, but sure it was a snatch. So naturally she had to be bumped off. And if those stupid jerks had had any sense—” Tug broke off, choking, ripped out another string of curses. I should have known better’n to trust ’em with a dame like that. I should have known they’d try to keep her around a while, take her for a few tumbles before they knocked her off.”

  “But I don’t understand. If she got away from them—”

  “If? What the hell do you mean, if?”

  “But why didn’t they tell you?”

  “Because they didn’t know about it, goddammit! She made the break the night of the robbery, while we were all busy at the hotel. It had to ’ve happened, then. You can see that, can’t you, for Christ’s sake? If she’d got away before then, there wouldn’t have been any hold-up. She’d have yelled to the coppers.”

  Dusty frowned. He stared out through the grimy windshield at the sun-sparkled pavement. Back in the hillside underbrush a raincrow cawed dryly. A gust of hot wind rolled over the abandoned fields, rattling the yellowed, waist-high weeds.

  “She knew all about me,” Dusty said. “She knew where the money was, that we hadn’t settled on a way of splitting it up. So if she wasn’t working with you—”

  “Goddammit, does it look like she was? She didn’t know nothing—it was just guesswork. She figured we couldn’t decide on how to divvy the dough until afterwards. I wouldn’t know when you’d be going back to work. I wouldn’t know how soon I could get in touch with you and—”

  “She couldn’t have guessed everything,” Dusty said. “She couldn’t have guessed that the money would be in the checkroom. Someone told her, that and everything else.”

  Tug shrugged irritably. “What’s the difference? You got screwed, that’s the main thing, so that means I take a screwing, too. To hell with her. What the hell difference does it make if—”

  “I want to know,” Dusty insisted. “I’ve got to know.”

  Tug hesitated, shrugged again. “All right. It don’t make me look real pretty, but—I guess I don’t, anyhow, huh? And it’s got no connection with you. I’ve been playin’ pretty rough, but I couldn’t cross you if I—”

  “Who was she?”

  “Bascom’s daughter. She was a dancer like I said; that part was on the level. Hillis was her stage name, and—”

  “B-Bascom’s—his—?”

  “You want me to tell you or not? We ain’t got all day. Every cop in town is looking for me. Yeah, his daughter. I slapped the truth out of her that morning. He’d had her check in there at the hotel. He’d done everything he could to make you quit and it hadn’t worked, so she set you up for the push. She’d accuse you of attempted rape, see, tell you she’d file charges if she ever saw you again. If you got stubborn she’d actually call Bascom—her father, only you wouldn’t know that—and the way things would be stacked against you, you’d have to quit. So…so that’s the way it was, kid. Me and the boys put the snatch on her. Bascom saw that I’d found out about him trying to cross me, and he figured she’d have a lot better chance of living if he got back on the track and stayed there. I kind of let him think that, see? He knew he was a goner himself, whatever happened, and all he could do now was—”

  “Bascom,” Dusty said slowly. “Why did he want me to quit? Why did he do all that, try so hard to—to—” He broke off, staring at Tug. Tug’s eyes shifted uncomfortably. “Oh,” he said. Then, “Well…”

  Tug coughed and spat out the window. He shifted the shotgun slightly, mumbled something about, Christ, the goddamned heat.

  “You were going to kill me,” Dusty said. “Someone had to be killed and I was supposed to be it.”

  “What the hell?” Tug said, gruffly. “It was just business, kid, nothing personal. I really wanted it to be Bascom, right from the beginning, but—”

  “Yes. He made a better fall guy, didn’t he? But why did it have to be him or me? What difference would it have made if I’d quit or got fired and another bellboy had taken my place? You could still have gone right ahead and—”

  “Huh-uh. It had to be someone that’d been there quite a while. Someone who knew the ropes and who’d have had time to pal up with me. Nope, if Bascom had got rid of you there wouldn’t have been any hold-up. We’d have had to wait until the next racing season, and he knew I couldn’t wait.”

  Dusty nodded. He had no more questions. None, at least, that Tug could answer. She’d spent two days there at the house, talking to him, probing him, watching him. And perhaps she’d been drawn to him, as she’d said; perhaps she’d felt pretty much the same about him as he felt about her. But there’d been some doubts in her mind. She hadn’t been sure of his guilt, whether he’d been a willing and knowing accomplice to her father’s murder, but neither had she been unsure. So—well, there was the answer: the clue to the exact amount of her sureness and unsureness. She had left him here practically penniless, to face Tug empty-handed with a story which might not be believed. She had been sufficiently sure-unsure to put him on a spot where he might have been killed, or—

  Or? Dusty’s pulse quickened suddenly…Tug. She’d have had no doubts about his part in the murder. Tug would have been the guy for her to get, and what better way was there—what other way, rather—than this one? She could only get to Tug through him. By making off with all the dough, she probably figured on—

  Nuts. Nothing. It was all a pipedream. She’d wanted the money period. She’d got it period. That was all there was to it. That was as far as she’d thought. Like she’d pointed out, a hundred-odd grand wouldn’t last long—only half as long as twice that much. So—

  But maybe not! Jesus, maybe the Pipedream was true! And there was nothing to lose by believing in it, nothing to lose regardless. Tug couldn’t be told the truth. God, what he might do—would probably do—
if he was told! Tug had to die, and—

  Tug was watching him, studying him. Dusty lit a cigarette casually and thumbed the match out the window.

  “Well?” he said.

  “It ain’t well,” Tug grunted. “It ain’t a goddamned bit well, but I guess I got to take it. Christ, if I’d known it was going to turn out this way, all that planning and sticking my neck out for a lousy fifty grand or so—”

  “Fifty?” Dusty pretended surprise. “But she only got my half. Yours is still—”

  “Who you kiddin’?” Tug glared at him savagely. “You’d just hand it all over and like it, huh? You wouldn’t try to pick yourself up a few bucks—about ten thousand of ’em—some other way? Don’t crap me, kid. Don’t act stupid any more than you have already. You wouldn’t play with me any longer’n it paid you, so I’m paying. I’m splitting with you right down the middle.”

  “Well,” Dusty murmured. “I’ll, uh, certainly appreciate—”

  “Screw your appreciation. Forget it. Just don’t pull anything funny, get me? Because maybe I’d get bumped off, but it wouldn’t make you anything. They’d want to know why I was there, see, and they’d turn that place upside down to find out. And…”

  And they wouldn’t find anything. They might be suspicious, but they’d have no proof.

  “All right,” Tug concluded. “You better get going. I’ll see you at one tomorrow morning just like I gave it to you over the phone.”

  “Suppose I can’t be there right at one? I might get tied up on a call and—”

  “Well, right around one then. Say five minutes of until five minutes after. I’ll circle the block until I see you on the floor. And make sure you have my money.”

  Dusty nodded. He pushed open the door of the car and started to get out. Tug’s voice, strangely strained and faltering, brought him to a halt.

  “I—I always been nice to you, ain’t I, kid? Always treated you like a friend, gave you plenty of dough without never makin’ you feel cheap to take it?”