by Jim Thompson
“You’re sure about it?” I said. “You didn’t misunderstand him, Fay? If you did, you’d better tell me.”
“I—I—” She hesitated. “W-well, maybe I—”
“No lies. If that’s the way it is I’ve got to know.”
Her head moved shakily. “T-that’s the way it is.”
“I see,” I said.
“I—I’ll talk to him, Carl! I’ll m-make him—he’ll listen to me. I’ll try to make him change his mind.”
“You talk him into it,” I said. “Then you try to talk him out of it. Huh-uh, baby. You’re not that good.”
“B-but I—what makes you think I—?”
“Don’t kid me,” I said. “How was it supposed to be, anyway? Jake’s a nice boy, so they give him plenty of privileges in the jug, huh? He’ll be safe and you can go right on seeing each other, and he won’t be missing a thing. Is that it?”
She bit her lip. “M-maybe he doesn’t mean it, Carl. Maybe he knows I didn’t intend to—”
“Maybe,” I nodded. “Maybe a couple of times. But like you said he’s got the idea, and he doesn’t let go of his ideas.”
“B-but if…Oh, Carl, honey! W-what will they—?”
“Nothing,” I said, and I lay down again and pulled her into my arms. “I’ll straighten it out. We should have waited, but as long as we can’t—”
“You’re sure it’ll be all right? You’re sure, Carl?”
“I’m sure,” I lied. “I’ll fix it up. After all, Jake could have got the idea by himself. They won’t know that he didn’t.”
She sighed and relaxed a little. I kept on soothing her, telling her it would be all right, and after a while I got rid of her. She slipped back to her room.
I uncorked a pint I had, and sat on the edge of the bed drinking. It was around daylight when I went to sleep.
…I called The Man from a booth in that quiet little bar I’d found. He answered right away, and the first thing he asked me was where I was calling from. He said that was good, splendid, when I told him. And, dammit, it was; it was as good as I could do. So many drunks phone from bars that no one pays any attention to the calls.
But I knew he didn’t think it was good. He didn’t think I should be calling him at all.
He told me he’d call me back. I hung up and had a couple of drinks while he went to another phone.
“All right, Charlie—” his voice came over the wire again. “What’s on your mind?”
“Our—that merchandise,” I said. “It looks like it was going off the market. We’ll have to act fast to get it.”
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“You’d better speak plainly. I hardly think that our conversation can be completely camouflaged and comprehensible at the same time.”
“All right,” I said. “Jake’s talking about going to jail until after the trial. I’m not sure whether he means it or not, but I thought I’d better not take any chances.”
“You want to do it now, then. Soon.”
“Well”—I hesitated—“I can’t do it after he’s in jail.”
“That isn’t what we agreed on, Charlie.”
“I know,” I said, “but I—”
“You said he’d been talking about it. To whom?”
“To Mrs. Winroy.”
“I see. And does she still have your fullest confidence, Charlie? You’ll recall, I believe, that I had some few small doubts about her myself.”
“I think she’s telling the truth,” I said.
“Why does she say Jake’s going to jail?”
“She doesn’t say. Jake didn’t tell her.”
“Strange.” He paused. “I find that slightly puzzling.”
“Look,” I said. “I know it doesn’t seem right, but Jake’s halfway off his rocker! He’s running around in circles.”
“A moment, please. Am I wrong or wasn’t it Mrs. Winroy’s job to keep Jake available? You were very sure she could do that, weren’t you? And now the opposite has happened.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Why, Charlie?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know whether he’s really going to do it.”
He was silent for a long time. I’d about decided he’d hung up. Then, he laughed softly and said:
“You do whatever you think is necessary, Charlie. As soon as you think it’s necessary.”
“I know how you feel,” I said. “I haven’t been here very long, and…I know it would look better if I could have waited.”
“Yes. And there’s the matter of publicity, having the story kept alive for weeks. Or perhaps you’ve forgotten that in the press of your other affairs?”
“Look,” I said. “Is it all right or not? I want to know.”
He didn’t answer me.
That time he had hung up.
I picked up my books off the bar and went on to school. Cursing Fay, but not putting much heart into it. It was my fault for bringing her into the deal.
The Man hadn’t wanted her in. If she hadn’t been in and Jake had got this jail idea on his own, I wouldn’t have been held responsible. As it was…
Well, a lot depended on how things worked out. If it all went off all right they’d go easy on me. No money, of course. Or, if I had the guts and was stupid enough to ask for money, a few bills and a beating. They’d leave me here—that would be my payoff. I’d be left here to rot, with no dough but the little I had and no way I could get any more. Just barely scraping by on some cheap job, as long as I could hold a job and then…
The Man would get a kick out of that. Hell—the hell—he knew you didn’t have to dig for it, too.
And if the job didn’t go right…
It didn’t make much difference. I couldn’t win.
19
It was Sunday when Fay had given me the bad news. We set Jake up for Thursday night.
So there were four days there, between the first thing and the second. Four whole days. But it didn’t seem that long. It seemed like I’d walked out of the bar, after I’d talked to The Man, and stepped straight into Thursday night.
I was through, washed up. I wasn’t living; I was just going through the motions.
Living is remembering, I guess. If you’ve lost interest, if everything is that same shade of gray, the kind you see when you look into light with your eyes closed, if nothing seems worth storing away, either as bad or good, reward or retribution, then you may keep going for a while. But you don’t live. And you don’t remember.
I went to school. I worked. I ate and slept. And drank. And…Yes, and Ruthie. I talked to her a few times on the way to and from school. I remembered—yes, I did remember her. I remember wondering what would become of her. Wishing I could help her some way.
But aside from Ruthie, nothing.
Except for the few minutes I was with her, I moved straight from Monday into Thursday. Thursday night at eight o’clock.
I snapped out of it then, and came back to life. You have to at a time like that whether you want to or not.
It was a slow night on the job, one of the slowest in the week. I was all caught up on my work, and no one had any reason to come into the stockroom.
I stood in the outer storeroom with the light turned off, watching the other side of the street.
Fay went by, right on the dot at eight.
I studied my watch, waiting. At eight-fifteen, Jake went by.
I unlocked the door and stepped out.
It was a good dark night. He was moving in a beeline for the house, not looking to right or left.
I sauntered down the side of the street the bakery was on, until he’d passed the intersection. Then I crossed over and followed him, walking faster because he’d got quite a way ahead of me.
I was about fifty feet behind him when he started across the parallel street to the house. Just about the right distance, allowing for the time he needed to open the gate. He fumbled with it, unable to find the catch, and I slowed down to wh
ere I was barely moving. At last he got it open, and I…
I froze in my tracks.
He—this guy—was a drunk, I found out later. He’d come out of that little bar catercornered to the house and wandered across the road, and I don’t know how the hell he’d managed it but somehow he’d fallen over inside the fence. He was lying there when Jake came along, inside and up against the fence. As Jake opened the gate, he rose up and sort of staggered toward him. And Jake let out a yell.
And that front yard was suddenly as bright as day.
Two big floodlights struck it from the vacant lots on each side of the house. Cops—deputy sheriffs, rather—swarmed up from everywhere.
I stood frozen for a second, unable to move. Then I turned around and started walking back to the bakery.
I’d gotten almost to the corner when I heard a yell from the sheriff rising above the other yells. “Wait a minute, dang it! This ain’t the right—”
I kept right on going, and I was crossing the street to the bakery before the shout came. “You there! Halt!”
I didn’t halt. What the hell? He was almost two blocks away. How should I know he was hollering at me?
I went right on into the bakery, locking the door behind me. I went into the main stockroom, closed the connecting door, and sat down at my work table.
I picked up the batch cards for the night, and began checking them off against my perpetual inventory.
Someone was banging on that outside door. I stayed where I was. What the hell again? I couldn’t let anyone in that door this time of night. Why, it might be a robber, someone trying to steal a sack of flour!
The banging stopped. I grinned to myself, flipping through the cards. I was alive again. I’d have laid down for them, but since I couldn’t do that, I’d make them lay me.
The door to the baking room slammed open. Kendall and the sheriff and a deputy came in, the sheriff in the lead.
I stood up. I went toward him, holding out my hand.
“Why, how are you, sheriff?” I said. “How is Mrs. Sum—”
He swung his hand, knocking mine aside so hard that it almost spun me around. His fingers knotted in my shirt, and he yanked me clean off the floor. He shook me like a dog shakes a rat. If ever I saw murder in a mug it was his.
“You snotty little punk!” He shook and swung me with one hand and began slapping me with the other. “Think you’re cute, huh? Think it’s smart to go around so danged nice an’ lovey-dovey, gettin’ people to trust you and then—”
I didn’t blame him for being sore. I guess no one can ever be as sore at you as the guy who’s liked and trusted you. But that hand of his was a hard as a rock, and Kendall couldn’t get past the deputy to stop him like he was trying to do.
I passed out.
20
I wasn’t out very long, I guess, but it was long enough for Dr. Dodson to get there. I came to, stretched out on the floor with my head on some flour sacking and the doc bent over me.
“How are you feeling, son?” he said. “Any pain?”
“Of course, he’s in pain!” Kendall snapped. “This—this creature beat him within an inch of his life!”
“Now, wait a minute, dang it! I didn’t—”
“Shut up, Summers. How about it, son?”
“I—I feel all right,” I said. “Just kind of dizzy, and—” I coughed and began to choke. He raised my shoulders quickly, and I bent over, choking and coughing, and blood spilled down on the floor in a little pool.
He took the handkerchief out of his breast pocket and wiped my mouth with it. He lowered me back to the floor again, and stood up, staring at the sheriff.
The sheriff looked back at him, sullen and sheepish.
“Kinda lost my temper,” he mumbled. “Reckon you would’ve, too, doc, if you’d been in my place. He was all set t’do Winroy in, just like the note said he’d be, and then this danged drunk gets in the way an’ he comes saunterin’ back here, just as pretty as you please, and—”
“You know,” the doctor cut in, quietly. “You know something, Summers? If I had a gun I think I’d blow that fat head of yours right off your shoulders.”
The sheriff’s mouth dropped open. He looked stunned, and sort of sick. “Now, now looky here,” he stammered. “This—you don’t know who this fella is! He’s Charlie Bigger, Little Bigger, they call him. He’s a killer, an’—”
“He is, eh? But you took care of him, didn’t you?”
“You want to know what happened or not?” Sheriff Summers’ face turned a few shades redder. “He—”
“I’ll tell you what happened,” Kendall spoke up coldly. “Carl stepped out for a little walk, as he has my permission to do when his work is caught up. In fact, I’ve encouraged him to do it since his illness. He was in the vicinity of the Winroy house when this ruckus broke out, and having something better to do with his time than gawk and gape at matters which did not concern him—”
“The heck they didn’t concern him! How come the note said he—”
“—he came back here,” said Kendall. “A few minutes later, Summers came storming into the bakery with this—uh—hireling and started babbling some nonsense about Carl’s having tried to murder someone and failing to stop when he was ordered to. Then he rushed in here and attacked him, beat him into unconsciousness. I’ve never seen such savagely inexcusable brutality in my life, Dod!”
“I see,” the doctor nodded, and turned to the sheriff. “Well?”
Sheriff Summers’ lips came together in a thin hard line. “Never mind,” he grunted. “You want it that way, you have it that way. I’m takin’ him to jail.”
“On what charge? Taking a walk?”
“Attempted murder, that’s what!”
“And what are your grounds for such a charge?”
“I already told—!” The sheriff broke off, his head lowered like a mad bull. “Never you mind. I’m takin’ him in.”
He started toward me, the deputy hanging back like he was pretty unhappy, and Kendall and the doc stepped in his way. In about another ten seconds, I think he’d have had a knockdown drag-out fight on his hands. And there wasn’t any sense in that, so I got up.
I felt all right, everything considered. Just a little smaller and weaker than I had felt.
“I’ll go,” I said.
“We can settle it; you don’t need to go,” the doctor said, and Kendall added, “No, he certainly does not need to!”
“I’d rather go,” I said. “Sheriff Summers and his wife have been very nice to me. I’m sure he wouldn’t be doing this if he didn’t think it was necessary.”
There was some more argument from Dodson and Kendall, but I went. We all went.
We got to the courthouse just as the county attorney was going up the steps, and the deputy took us into the c.a.’s office while he and the sheriff stood in the corridor talking.
The sheriff had his back to the door, but the county attorney was facing it, and he looked weary and disgusted. All the time the sheriff was talking, he just stood there with his hands shoved into his pockets, frowning and shaking his head.
Finally, they came inside, and he and the sheriff started to ask a question at the same time. They both stopped, one waiting for the other, then they started again, both at once. They did that about three times, and the doctor let out a snort and Kendall sort of half smiled. The county attorney grimaced and leaned back in his chair.
“All right, Bill,” he sighed. “It’s your headache, anyway.”
Sheriff Summers turned to me.
“What’s your name? Your right name?”
“You know what it is, sheriff,” I said.
“It’s Charlie Bigger, ain’t it? You’re Little Charlie Bigger.”
“Suppose I said, yes,” I said. “Then what? I’d like to accommodate you, sheriff, but I don’t see how that would help.”
“I asked you what your—!” He broke off as the county attorney caught his eyes. “All right,” he grunted. “What
was you doin’ sneaking along behind Jake Winroy tonight?”
“I wasn’t sneaking anywhere. I was walking.”
“You always go for a walk at that time o’night?”
“Not always. Often. It’s a slack time for me.”
“How come you was walkin’ toward the Winroy place instead of the other way?”
“These work clothes. Naturally, I wouldn’t want to walk up toward the business district.”
“I got a note about you. It had you right down to a t. Said you was gonna do just what you—what you tried to do.”
“What was that?” I said.
“You know what. Kill Jake Winroy!”
“Kill him?” I said. “Why, I didn’t try to kill him, sheriff.”
“You would have! If that danged drunk—”
Dr. Dodson let out another snort. “Anonymous notes! What next?”
“He was there, wasn’t he?” The sheriff whirled on him. “How come I got that note if—”
“I believe it has been established,” the county attorney sighed, “that he is in that vicinity almost every night at approximately that time.”
“But Winroy ain’t! It ain’t been established how I—”
Kendall cleared his throat. “Since you seem to be unwilling to accept the note as the work of some crank who has observed Mr. Bigelow’s movements and who profited by an unfortunate but by no means extraordinary coincidence—”
“It’s too danged extraordinary for me!”
“As I was saying, then, the note can only be explained in one way. This shrewd and crafty killer”—he smiled apologetically at me—“the most elusive, close-mouthed criminal in the country, went around town confiding his plans…Something wrong, sheriff?”
“I didn’t say he done that! I—I—”
“I see. It’s your theory, then, that he wrote you—or I believe it was printed, wasn’t it?—he sent you the note himself. So that you’d be on hand to apprehend him.”
Doc Dodson burst out laughing. The county attorney tried not to laugh, but he couldn’t quite hold it back.
“Well,” he said, bringing his hands down on the desk. “Bill, I think the best thing we can do is—”
