Recoil (14 page)

I
swallowed, and my Adam’s apple stuck in my throat. And I think I must have looked as sick as I felt.

Doc grinned sympathetically. “You weren’t going to tell me that you tipped off the police? They’d grab you on that Eggleston rap, and before you could get clear of it—”

“No,” I said, “I didn’t go to the police. I was just going to say that—that—How can you do it, Doc? You’re sentencing me to death! Doesn’t that bother you?”

“I suppose it should,” said Doc. “But, no, it doesn’t. Not much, Pat. You’d have died in Sandstone if I hadn’t got you out. This way, at least, you have had a little fling.”

“That car Lila bought for me doesn’t really mean anything?” I said. “I’m going to be allowed to get away?”

“I’m afraid not, Pat. Not finding my body is one thing. Not finding the man who is supposed to have killed me is another. It would be more than would be swallowed comfortably. You’ll have to be caught, I’m afraid, somewhere near the spot of our nominally fatal quarrel.”

“And you don’t see any danger in my being caught?”

“You mean you’ll talk?” He smiled faintly, shucking a pair of socks out of a paper bag. “Who’s going to believe a fantastic story such as you’ll have to tell when all the evidence points to murder?”

“It isn’t going to work, Doc,” I said.

“Oh, it’ll work all right, Pat,” he grinned. “It’s just improbable enough to seem completely plausible. You’re the best evidence of that yourself. You’ve had the puzzle in front of you for weeks yet you never arrived at the motive for my getting you out of Sandstone.”

“That isn’t what I meant,” I said. “I’m talking about the insurance companies. They’re not going to make settlement on those policies.”

“They wouldn’t, ordinarily,” he nodded. “They wouldn’t pay a death claim without positive proof of death—a body, in other words. But where the evidence is so clear cut—well…”

“What makes you so sure of that?” I said.

“Our friend, Hardesty, here.” Doc perked his head. “One of our leading legal lights, regardless of what you may think of him on other grounds. Hardesty says they’ll have to pay. If he says so, they will.”

That was true. Hardesty
would
know. But why, then, had he wanted me to—? Suddenly, it hit me. The last piece of the murderous puzzle fell into place. And I laughed.

I was caught, stuck in the middle no matter what I did. But I couldn’t help laughing.

Hardesty re-crossed his legs, shifting nervously on the lounge. His right hand crept into the pocket of his coat and remained there.

“Doc,” I said. “You’re not very bright, Doc. Not about some things. I’ve had a feeling all along that you were into something beyond your depth, but I didn’t think you were quite this simple.”

“No?” He grinned, but a tinge of red was creeping into his cheeks. “Just how simple am I supposed to be, Pat?”

“Simple enough to believe a man who hates you and loves your wife. Simple enough to believe that he’d be content with a third of that two hundred thousand when he and she can take the whole pile. Sure, he knows what the insurance companies will and won’t do. But there’s a hell of a big difference between what he knows and what he’s told you!”

“I—” Doc looked from Hardesty to Madeline and then back to me. “I don’t understand…”

“There’s nothing to understand,” said Hardesty curtly. “Don’t pay any attention to him, Doc. He—”

“Think it over, Doc,” I said. “And while you’re doing it, Hardesty can make me his offer. I want you to see why you’re going to be killed, but you’ll have to think fast. I won’t be able to play my part in this little drama if the police catch up with me.”

Doc stared at me silently, his eyes blinking behind the thick lenses. I nodded to Hardesty.

“All right,” I said. “What’s it going to be? Do I kill him and get away or do you do it and let me get caught?”

“Pat!” Madeline cried. “Don’t—”

But Hardesty’s hand had already come out of his pocket. “You do it,” he said, and he tossed the snub-nosed automatic to me. “You do it and get away.”

I caught the gun, and motioned with it.

“All right,” I said. “Stand up. All three of you.”

“Pat,” said Hardesty. “You—”

“Up,” I said, and yanked him to his feet.

I lined the three of them up, and searched them. I shoved Madeline to one side, and looked at Doc and Hardesty.

“Now,” I said, “I’m going to call the police.”

“Police!” They spoke the word simultaneously.

“I know,” I said. “They won’t believe me; probably they won’t. But I’ve got to try.”

“But what’s it going to get you!” Hardesty’s face was dead white. “You could get away, Pat! We’ll—I’ll see that you have plenty of money to—”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “A man can’t get away from himself.”

“You’re talking in riddles!” snapped Doc. “You’ve knocked this insurance scheme in the head. I’ve cleaned up the political mess. Let it go at that, and—”

“Sure,” said Hardesty. “Be sensible, Pat. We’re all kind of off on the wrong foot here tonight, but it’s not too late to straighten things out…Doc, why don’t we shake hands all around, and—”

“Why not?” said Doc heartily, and his hand shot out.

It closed around my wrist. He bore down on it with all his weight; and Hardesty stepped in close, swinging. And I laughed again. It was too easy. It didn’t give me an excuse to really get rough—to give them the only punishment they’d probably ever get.

I weaved around a few of Hardesty’s windmill swings, letting him wear himself out. Then I gave him an open-palmed uppercut, and he rose up on his toes and shot backwards, and went down in a heap against the wall.

Doc was still struggling with my gun hand. I let it sag suddenly, jerked upward again, and he went back against the wall with Hardesty.

They sprawled there, looking at me dazedly.

I looked at Madeline, and she was smiling at me happily, joyously. Hugging herself. And before I could think, wonder if I had been right, if just this one time something would go right…the bedroom door banged open.

Myrtle Briscoe walked in. Myrtle and two state troopers. She blew a whistle and two more troopers burst through the hall door.

She pointed, and the troopers took hold of Hardesty and Doc. She jerked her head and they started toward the hall with them. It happened in split seconds, so fast that Doc and Hardesty lacked even time for surprise. They went out the door, wordlessly, tottering between the troopers, and Myrtle patted Madeline on the shoulder.

“Our girl friend beat you to the tip-off, Red,” she grinned. “Had yourself a pretty bad thirty minutes, didn’t you?”

“I—uh—yes, ma’am,” I said.

“Well, you asked for it. Tried to get you to level with me, didn’t she? I tried, didn’t I?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Well—” her eyes swept over me swiftly, “that little tussle doesn’t seem to have hurt you any. I was afraid there might be shooting if I busted in on it. Couldn’t let you get shot before I got you a pardon.”

“No, ma’am—
what?”
I said.

“Why not?” said Myrtle Briscoe. “I think the governor’s going to sign just about anything I lay in front of him.”

And she clumped out the door, slamming it behind her, and Madeline was in my arms.

T
hat, I believe, is about all.

I got my pardon. I got the job, which I still have, as investigator with the Department of Corrections. Madeline got her divorce, and we got married.

Doc got ninety-nine years for Eggleston’s murder, plus an additional thirty years—to run consecutively—for bribery and attempted fraud. Hardesty got a total of forty years.

That’s a lot of “gots,” and there are still more concerning Burkman and Flanders and the rest of Doc’s old gang. But I won’t go into those. I’ll only say that Doc doesn’t lack for friends, if they can be called that, there in Sandstone.

Lila…

Well, Lila did quite well for herself, everything considered.

She sold her life story, ghost-written, of course, to a newspaper syndicate. That got her a nice chunk of money and a great deal of publicity, very valuable as it turned out. The last I saw of her—Madeline and I—she was headed for Hollywood with a B-picture contract.

She stopped to say good-bye to us before she left. Afterwards, I caught Madeline looking at me thoughtfully.

“I’m wondering,” she said. “I’m wondering if I ever will know what went on between you and that dame.”

“What went on?” I said. “Surely, you don’t think I’d…do
that,
Mrs. Cosgrove!”

“Uh-hah. I’ll bet you wouldn’t!”

“Well,” I said, “I don’t know of anything I can say to convince you…”

“And you can’t think of anything to do either?”

“As a matter of fact,” I said, “I believe I can. You’ve given me an idea.”

It wasn’t a new idea, but it proved to be a very, very good one. Good enough to make Madeline forget all about Lila.

Good enough, period.

James Meyers Thompson was born in Anadarko, Oklahoma, in 1906. In all, Jim Thompson wrote twenty-nine novels and two screenplays (for the Stanley Kubrick films
The Killing
and
Paths of Glory
). Films based on his novels include
The Getaway, The Killer Inside Me, The Grifters,
and
After Dark, My Sweet.

In July 2012, Mulholland Books will publish Jim Thompson’s
The Criminal
. Following is an excerpt from the novel’s opening pages.

I
t had been a pretty good day in many ways, so I might have known it would turn out bad. If you’ve read any papers lately I guess you know that it did. It’s always that way with me, it seems like. I’ve never known it to fail. I’ll wake up feeling rested and be able to eat breakfast for a change, and maybe I’ll even get a seat on the 8:05 into the city. And it’ll go on like that all day—no trouble, everything rocking along fine. My kidneys won’t bother me. I won’t get those crazy headaches up over my eyes. Then, I’ll come home, and somehow or another, between the time I get there and the time I go to bed, something will happen to spoil it all. Always. Anyway, it seems like always. There’ll be a dun from the Kenton Hills Sewer District or a gopher will have eaten up what blamed little lawn we have left or Martha will break her glasses. Or something.

Take the night before last, for example. I’d had a pretty good day that day—as good as any day can be, now. Then, after dinner, I sit down to read the paper, and—bingo!—I hop right back up again. Martha’s glasses were in the chair, or, rather, what was left of ’em. Both lenses were broken.

“Oh, my goodness,” she said, fluttering around and picking up the pieces. “Now, how in the world did that happen?”

“How did it happen?” I said. “How did it
happen?
You leave your glasses in my chair, and then you wonder how it happens when they get broken.”

“I must have left them on the arm of the chair,” she said. “You must have brushed them into the seat when you sat down. Oh, well, I needed some new ones anyway.”

I looked at her, taking it all so calm and casual, and something seemed to snap inside my head. I wanted to hurt her, to hurt someone and she was the nearest thing at hand.

“So you needed some new ones,” I said. “That’s all you’ve got to say. You throw fifteen dollars down the drain, and it doesn’t make any difference to you, does it? You’ll never change, will you? If you weren’t so scatter-brained, if you’d kept an eye on Bob instead of letting him run wild and do as he pleased he wouldn’t have—”

Her face went white, then red. “And what about you? What kind of a father are you to—to—” Her hand went up to her mouth, pushing back the words. “D-Don’t,” she whispered. “I—I d-don’t need any glasses. I can’t read any more, anyway. I can’t—all I can think about is…Oh, Al!
Al!
”

I put my arms around her, and she tried to pull away—but not very hard—and then she buried her face against my shirtfront, and she cried and cried. I didn’t try to stop her. I wished I could have cried myself. I stood holding her, patting her on the head now and then; noticing how gray she had gotten. It was funny, strange I mean. You hear about someone turning gray almost overnight, and you think, oh, that’s a lot of nonsense. It couldn’t really happen, not to normal people anyway. And then it does happen, right to your own wife, and I don’t imagine they come more normal than Martha.

It’s like it is with Bob. With Bob’s trouble. You hear about some fifteen-year-old boy killing a neighbor’s girl—raping and strangling her, and you think, well, I’m pretty well off after all. My boy may be a little wild but…
but Bob was never really wild; he was just all boy, I guess,
just about average…
but my boy would never do a thing like that. That could never happen in our family. He—

Your wife couldn’t turn gray overnight, and your fifteen-year-old couldn’t do what that other fifteen-year-old did. The idea is so crazy that—well, you just laugh when you think about it. And then…

“Al,” Martha whispered. “Let’s move away from here!”

“You bet,” I said. “We’ll go to work on it tomorrow. We’ll move way off somewhere, clear to the other side of the country.”

I was just talking, of course, and she knew it. I couldn’t start in all over at my age, get a job that would support us. We don’t have any money to move on. I had to borrow against the house to pay that lawyer. All the equity we’ve got in it now you could stuff in your ear.

Anyway, moving wouldn’t do much good. Because it isn’t the other people so much, the way they talk and act and the way we imagine they talk and act: it’s not them so much as it is ourselves. Wondering about it, and not being sure. Sure like you’ve got to be about a thing like that.

“Al,” Martha whispered, “h-he—he didn’t do it, did he?”

“Of course, he didn’t,” I said. “It’s too ridiculous to think about.”

“I know he didn’t do it, Al!”

“I do, too. We both know it.”

“Why, he just couldn’t! I mean, why—why—how could he, Al?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I—it doesn’t matter. He didn’t, so there’s no sense wondering about it. We’ve got to stop it, Martha. We’ve got to stop wondering and talking and—and—”

“Of course, dear,” she said. “We won’t say another word. We both know he didn’t, that he couldn’t have. Why, my goodness, Al! How could our Bob…?”

“SHUT UP!” I said. “Stop it!”

It ended as it usually ends. We kept telling each other that he hadn’t done it, and it was crazy even to think he had. Finally, we went to bed, and all night long, whenever I woke up, I heard her mumbling and tossing. And in the morning I caught her looking at me worriedly, and she asked me if I’d slept well. So I guess I must have been doing some mumbling and tossing myself.

Well…

I guess there’s no right place to begin this. A thing like this, it probably starts a long way back, before you were ever married probably and ever had a son named Bob. And maybe you didn’t have too much to do with it yourself; you didn’t have too much control over it. You just rock along, doing the things you have to, and you get kind of startled sometimes when you stand off and look at yourself. You think, my God, that isn’t me. How did I ever get like that? But you go right ahead, startled or not, hating it or not, because you don’t actually have much to say about it. You’re not moving so much as you are being moved.

Maybe I’m making excuses, but what I’m trying to say is that it might have begun with another person. Or other people. My parents, say. Or their parents. Or people I’d never met in my life. It…I don’t know. I couldn’t say. There’s no way of telling, and one beginning place is probably as good as another. So maybe I’d better lead off with the start I had.

Maybe I’d better go back to
the
day it happened. The day that had been a pretty good one until it did happen. If I start right in with the beginning of the day and follow it on through, maybe…maybe I’ll spot something.

I do that down at the office sometimes, down at the Henley Terrazzo & Tile Company. I mean, the books will be off a few cents when I try to strike a balance, so I’ll take a new set of transcript sheets and recopy my figures, checking them off item by item. And sooner or later I’ll find the error. It’ll pop up at me. Providing, of course, that it’s in that day’s work.

Well, I’ve told you I’d had a good night’s sleep and a pretty good breakfast. Bob and I ate together
that
day, and I kind of joked with him a little, like I don’t often have the time nor the inclination for, and afterwards he walked part of the way to the station with me on his way to school.

It had been a long time since he’d done that. In fact, I couldn’t remember when the last time was he’d done it, It used to be, back when he was in the grades, we’d walk together almost every morning, It put him to school earlier than he had to be, but he insisted on doing it, He’d actually get upset if Martha let him sleep and I’d go off without him.

Well, though, as I say, that had been a couple years ago, Or even longer I guess. Back in those days, up until the time, say, he was about in the sixth grade, he not only walked with me in the morning but he’d be at the train to meet me in the evening. It seemed he’d rather be with me than he would kids his own age. Quite a few people commented on it. I remember Martha’s mother was visiting us one spring, and she couldn’t get over it. She said she’d never seen anyone that was such a Daddy’s boy.

A very fine woman, Martha’s mother. She passed on—let’s see—sixteen months ago, next June. No, fifteen months ago. The way I remember the date is that I had the undertaker spread his bill through twelve equal installments, and…But we don’t need to go into that. She was a very fine old lady, and I was glad to do what I could.

Well, as I was saying, that was the way Bob had
used
to be. Back during the war when there was more terrazzo and tile work than you could shake a stick at, and your only problem was priorities. I’ll tell you: things were a lot different in those days. I didn’t draw any more salary than I do now, but the bonuses almost doubled it. I didn’t work half so hard and I made almost twice as much as I do these days. If I wanted to take an afternoon off, I took it. Not very often, but Henley never let out a peep when I did.

One time I took a whole day off, a Friday. I had Martha and Bob meet me in town Thursday night, and we stayed the whole weekend—Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Three days and four nights. I got us a couple of connecting rooms at a pretty good hotel, but we weren’t in ’em much except to sleep. At least, Bob and I weren’t. Martha would say, “You men, I just can’t keep up with you.” So we’d leave her at the hotel to catch up on her rest, and we’d go out on the town by ourselves.

Saturday morning we went out by ourselves; we went out for breakfast together. I bet Bob that I could eat more hotcakes than he could, and we had three stacks apiece—a tie—before we called it quits. Nine hotcakes apiece, mind you, not to mention the butter and syrup. If I did that now, it would kill me.

After breakfast, we went to a penny arcade and I bought five dollars worth of change. It was noon before we’d spent it all, so we had a big feed at an Italian restaurant, and then we strolled around and finally wound up in a shooting gallery. I kind of went hog wild in there. Bob and I were shooting a contest with each other, and the first thing I knew I’d spent twenty dollars. It was quite a bit of money even for good times, and Bob was a little scared when I told him about it. “Gosh,” he said, sort of shakily, “I’ll bet Mom will be mad.”

“I’ll bet she won’t,” I said. “Not unless she’s a mind reader.”

He looked up at me, a trifle puzzled. And I nodded and gave him the wink. Then I grinned, and after a minute he grinned. And that was the end of the matter. I didn’t need to tell him to keep quiet about the money. He caught on right away. I maybe shouldn’t say it, but they didn’t make kids sharper than Bob.

Well, we had a fine time that weekend. Monday morning I took Bob and Martha to the station, and we had breakfast there before they caught their train. Martha asked me if I wasn’t afraid I’d be late for work.

“So I’ll be late,” I said. “What of it?”

“But won’t Mr. Henley say something?”

“I hope he does,” I said. “He gives me a little trouble, and I’ll tell him where to head in.”

Bob’s eyes got as big as saucers. He looked at me like I was John L. Sullivan, or someone like that.

I can’t put my finger on the exact time when he began to change, but it was some time after the war. It wasn’t much of a change at first—he’d just kind of avoid me, and not have much to say when I was around. And when I said something to him, he acted like I was picking on him. I couldn’t say the smallest word to him about why he wasn’t doing better in school, for Pete’s sake, or why he couldn’t comb his hair without being told sixteen times, without him getting sullen. Anything I said, it was that way.

He went on like that, getting a little more stubborn and mulish, it seemed, for every inch he grew, and then one day a couple years ago, just about the time he was thirteen and starting into high school, well…he changed completely. He really didn’t seem like Bob after that.

On that day that Bob seemed to change, I’d had a pretty rough time of it. You probably think there’s been plenty of building since the war ended, and there has been. But it’s mostly residential stuff, and the money just isn’t to be made in that kind of work. Oh, you make money, sure, but it’s nothing like it was during the war. Even the commercial stuff you get now is darned far cry from the government-contract jobs. You go to a man now and say, Sure, I’ll do such and such a job for you. Cost plus ten per cent. You say that to him, and then you’d better start running because he’s liable to throw something at you.

Well, so business hadn’t been anything like it was during the war—and it still isn’t, believe me, not in tile and terrazzo anyway—and getting along with Henley was like trying to get along with a bear with a toothache. He was after me every day about something. If he wasn’t riding me, he was watching me, looking for something to hop on me about. I’m not exaggerating. It was like that, and it still is.

I’d prepare the bid on a job, and possibly we’d be low by as little as four cents a square foot. Just barely low enough to get the job. But that wouldn’t be good enough for Henley, I’d lost the company three and nine-tenth cents per, to hear him tell it; if I’d been on the beam I’d have made our bid only a tenth of a cent low. Well, the next job, of course, I’d shave it too fine, and maybe we’d be a nickel high. And I guess you know how he’d take that. I’d lost him a nice contract: if I’d had any sense, I’d have made the bid low enough to cinch the job.

So I’d been getting pretty jumpy and nervous. Not eating or sleeping much, and living mostly on coffee. I was about fit to be tied (and I still am). When he wasn’t riding me, he was watching me, staring out into the outer office at the back of my neck. And I could just put up with it so long, and then my kidneys would start cutting up and I’d have to go back to the restroom. That’s the way it always affects me when I get jumpy and nervous. I know it’s just the opposite with some people—they get bound up, But, me, it gets my kidneys every time.

This day I’m telling you about, I’d been to the restroom three times in less than three hours. The third time I came back to my desk, Henley jerked his head at me. I went into his office, and maybe my knees weren’t knocking together but they sure felt like it.

“What’s the matter with you?” he said. Just like that.

“What do you mean, what’s the matter?” I said. Honestly, I didn’t know what to say, I was too rattled to think.