Wild Town (7 page)

The silence lasted for seeming hours. Then Ford cleared his throat, and his tone was casual again.

“Looks like you made quite a hit with Amy. Can’t say when I’ve seen her quite so taken with a fella. How’d you like her anyway?”

“I liked her fine,” Bugs said gruffly. “A lot more than I should, I guess.”

“Yeah?”

“I mean, well, I’m just getting a start here. Never really had anything in my life, and don’t know that I ever will have. And if she’s your fiancee…”

“Mmm? Well, yeah, I believe I did say that, didn’t I? But that’s kind of a loose expression out this a-way. Gal and a fella goes steady for years, it’s just kind of taken for granted that they’re engaged. Don’t really have to do nothin’ or say nothin’ about it themselves.”

“Well,” said Bugs. “I—uh—see.”

“Had an idea you didn’t like the way I talked to her tonight. Kind of got the impression you didn’t like it a-tall.”

“I didn’t! I thought it was a goddamned lousy thing to do!”

“Yeah? Uh-huh?”

“What do you mean, ‘yeah, uh-huh’?”

“I mean, you got some right not to like it? I mean, just what the hell is she to you for you to like or dislike it? Sure, you ain’t got nothing, but you’re still young and you’re a pretty fair figure of a man, and Amy ain’t the kind to count the money in your pocket. She was pretty taken with you; that’s all that counts with her. And you seemed to reciprocate the feeling. And remember, I ain’t standin’ in your way. Got too much pride to use my job in a personal matter, even if I did want to…So let’s have your answer. Just what the hell is she to you? Or maybe I should say, what’d you like to have her be to you?”

“Hell.” Bugs squirmed. “What’s this all about, anyway? I’m busy, and I hardly know the girl and—”

“You can be unbusy a minute longer. And maybe you know her too well. You feel like you know her too well, and you don’t like what you know.”

“For God’s sake, Ford! I told you that—”

“Why don’t you say it? Spit it out. Say that she might be all right for you to play around with, but she ain’t good enough for anything more.”

So all right,
Bugs thought savagely.
I do feel that way, kind of. And how can you blame me for that?

He didn’t say anything, however.

Although he might as well have.

Ford stared at him, lip curling, his face a mask of profane wonderment. “We’ll, I,” he said, incredulously, “I will be a son-of-a-bitch! Never let no one call me that in my life, but I’ll say it myself. I will be a dirty double-donged son-of-a-bitch!…A jailbird like you. A stupid, stubborn jerk that never did a damned thing right in his life, that’s fouled up everything, and you think…”

He turned slowly and walked away.

Scowling defensively, Bugs re-entered the hotel. So maybe he had botched up his whole life. Or, rather, since it wasn’t his fault, it had been botched up for him. That was why he had to be extra careful now. Because he wasn’t so young anymore, and just about one more wrong move would foul him up for good.

And just where—and this was what completely bewildered Bugs—where did Ford get off at lecturing another guy about Amy? He was no good, a crook and a grafter. She’d been a sweet clean girl, and he’s made her into something not so sweet and clean. And then, the low-down louse, he kidded her about it in front of a stranger! He was that kind of guy, he did that to her. And yet he had the gall to bawl out the aforesaid stranger for his entirely natural concern with what had happened before he came along!

Hell,
Bugs thought,
I didn’t say I held it against her, did I? Hell, she’s still going with him, isn’t she? Hell, I just met her, didn’t I? Hell…

Hell, hell, hell!

Bugs stood in a corner of the vaulted lobby, smoking a cigarette in short angry puffs. Nothing absently that Rosalie Vara had returned from her dinner—or wherever she had been—and was once again at work on the mezz’.

She saw him looking at her and flirted a hand at him. He grinned back weakly, and sauntered toward the elevators.

Well, nuts, he thought. He was getting all up in the air over nothing. Getting the cart a mile in front of the horse. This was a hell of a time to be thinking about Amy Standish, her or any other woman. To be thinking about anything except hanging onto his job, and staying out of trouble. And he wouldn’t have been if Ford hadn’t hailed him there in the coffee shop, and acted like the double-distilled son-of-a-bitch which he admitted being.

Well. Well, maybe it was all for the best. Maybe Ford had done him a favor. He hadn’t been afraid, exactly, but naturally he’d been pretty shaken up over what had happened to Dudley. And then Ford had latched onto him, diverting his mind from Dudley until it could accept his death without shock. Until he was prepared to face up to the death in front of Ford with no telltale nervousness.

Yeah, everything had worked out for the best. The means hadn’t been exactly pleasant, maybe, but the result had been perfect. Because he was safe, now. He’d been in a mess that might have meant curtains for him, but now he was safe.

He wondered why he felt so lousy.

He wondered why, meaning as well as he did, he was always getting into messes.

…Bugs was working as a guard in an aircraft plant when World War II broke out. Since the beginning of his working career, he had almost always landed in jobs as a night watchman or a guard or something of the kind. He wasn’t trained for a well-paying position—the kind a man might be proud to hold. And having a little authority, even at relatively low pay, helped to buck up his ego.

This particular job was somewhat better than average, and Bugs did his best to hold onto it. He did everything he was supposed to, nothing that he shouldn’t; sticking to the rule book right to the letter. And his best wasn’t good enough.

The chief engineer’s wife showed up at the plant one day. She had a pass, as was required, but she also had a sealed package. And Bugs, over her vehement protests, insisted on opening it. It contained a box of sanitary napkins.

She departed the plant in tears. About thirty minutes later—just as quickly as she could reach her husband by telephone and he could get in touch with the plant superintendent—Bugs departed with his final paycheck.

The loss of the job lost him his draft deferment. Bugs went into the Army where he shortly found himself an MP. He was patrolling the airplane hangars one evening when he discovered a man in a Russian officer’s uniform prowling amongst the planes. Accosted by Bugs, the man complimented him on his alertness, and displayed the credentials of an American general.

Well. As Bugs admitted at his court-martial, he recognized the credentials as genuine; he had even recognized the general. Still, the masquerade had been a damned stupid thing, a violation of regulations in itself. And he, Bugs, had been entirely within his rights in insisting that the general march ahead of him to a guard post where an officer could dispose of his case. The general had refused, profanely and violently. He had started to walk away from Bugs. Bugs told him to halt. When he kept on going, Bugs shot him in the hip.

The shooting cost him two years in the Army stockade. He was also sentenced to a dishonorable discharge, but a higher court toned that down to a discharge under honorable conditions, also remitting six months of his previously forfeited pay.

He was in San Diego, looking around and resting on the money when he met his wife-to-be.

It happened one Sunday, at the city’s justly famous zoo. Bugs was standing in front of the monkey cages, one of the crowd of people tossing peanuts through the bars and watching the animals’ antics. He was standing there gawking and grinning, and thinking he looked pretty nice in his new suit of clothes, when a monkey reached behind him suddenly, came up with a brimming handful of ordure, and flung it all over him.

Talk about messes. He looked like he’d just crawled through a sewer. And everyone was laughing at him, really knocking themselves out. And he didn’t know what the hell he was going to do; how he could get across town ten miles to his room where he could wash up and change clothes.

Then a hand touched his arm, closed over it gently, and he looked down into a face that wasn’t laughing, but only tender and sympathetic. And he realized later that a dame didn’t get a pan on her like that in less than forty years. But at the time, she looked like an angel to him.

She had a little apartment nearby. He was more than welcome to come there and get himself in order. Gratefully, he accepted the invitation.

He bathed and scrubbed himself, while she worked over his clothes in the kitchen. Then, with a sheet pulled around him, he sat down on the bed to wait for the return of the garments. She came in with them, finally, dressed in a robe. She started to hand them to him, and somehow accidentally-on-purpose her robe fell open. And apparently she’d had some laundry to do of her own, because she sure as hell wasn’t wearing any.

Naturally, she was thoroughly mortified. As she put it, she felt just like sinking through the floor. By the way of compromise, she sank down on the bed instead, where, needless to say, her nudity was promptly covered with more of the same.

She wept bitterly afterwards. Bugs almost made with the tears himself. It was her first experience with a man—possibly excepting the members of the Pacific Fleet and the local Marine contingent—and he was dismayed at having despoiled her.

They were married in Arizona the next day. It was the very least he could do—to make her an honorable woman.

Two weeks later, when he came down with practically every disease in the venereal category, he was still too unawakened to connect her with them, and was completely satisfied with her theory as to how they had been contracted.

Fortunately, for himself, at least, he had just taken a job where a physical examination was necessary. And with the ancientest of medical jokes, the doctor rid him of his childish naivete.

“A toilet stool, eh?” he said. “Do you sleep with a toilet stool?”

“Of course, I don’t.” Bugs frowned. “I sleep with my wife.”

“No one else? Don’t do any playing around? Well, then,” said the doctor. “Well, then, young man?” And he spread his hands significantly.

Bugs almost killed her. Except for the arrival of the police, he might have been beating on her yet.

Arrested and held for trial, he would give no reason for the assault. He had too much pride; he was too ashamed of being taken for a sucker.

He was sentenced to six months in the county jail, plus permanent banishment from the state. Released, he started drifting, arriving eventually in Texas.

In the mushrooming towns-become-cities, municipal employees were at a premium—particularly if they were young and able-bodied and had anything at all in the way of police experience. Bugs fitted those specifications. He also was an honorably discharged veteran. True, he had a bad record, but in those hectic days a man might work a very long time before his record caught up with him, if it ever did.

Bugs became a city police patrolman. After three months, during which there was an almost one hundred per cent turnover in the department’s personnel, he was promoted to plain clothes. It was in that job that he landed in his biggest and worst scrape.

One of the other dicks was a wild-eyed, constantly grinning boob with a penchant for practical jokes. He didn’t bother the other guys much, and so was fairly well-liked by them. But to Bugs, who had been fiendishly singled out as a born butt, he was nothing less than maddening.

He was going off watch one evening when the guy lurched through the door of the locker-room. He was more wild-eyed than usual; drunk apparently. Yanking out his gun, he announced that he had taken as much off of Bugs as he intended to, and that now he was going to kill him.

Murmuring protests, pulling long faces, the other dicks got out of the way. Among them was one, who, only a moment before, had asked to take a look at Bugs’s gun, with a view of making a swap.

Bugs spoke to him out of the corner of his mouth; begged him for God’s sake to return the weapon. The man didn’t seem to hear him. Sweating, he whispered a plea for someone to do something—to step in and stop this character. No one seemed to hear that entreaty either. Or, ostensibly, they were too shocked or frightened to heed it.

Bugs let out a roar of fear. Leaping sideways suddenly, he snatched back his borrowed gun, whirled and fired. He emptied the chamber. And at that distance, of course, he couldn’t miss.

The dick was dead before he hit the floor. To state what is probably obvious, he had only been playing another of his practical jokes, and the other dicks had all been in on it.

It had been a crazy trick to pull. In fact, as was established at the autopsy, the guy
was
crazy. His erratic behavior was due to a tumor of the brain, which, in another year or less, would certainly have killed him. So Bugs couldn’t really be blamed for what he had done. And with a different attitude on his part, the matter might have ended with a departmental investigation.

Unfortunately…

Well, you can probably guess what his attitude was; it was anything but proper to a situation where a man’s life had been lost.

He was goddamned glad he’d killed the son-of-a-bitch, he said. He should have done it long before. Given the opportunity, he’d do the same thing all over again.

He surlily repeated those statements at the inevitable trial. Those and others that were equally damning. He shouted them as he was hauled out of the courtroom, the recipient of the stiffest jolt that the law could give him. And now, tossing in his sleep…

I’m glad,
he told himself.
I’ve done nothing to be sorry about. He—they—she’s got no one to blame but herself. I’ve got principles, by God, and no one’s ever made me change ’em. And she—Christ, I wish I didn’t have. I wish—

He lurched and sat up in bed. It was eleven o’clock in the morning, a few minutes after eleven, and the phone was ringing.

He picked it up, spoke with drowsy grumpiness. “Yeah? ’S’McKenna.”

“This is Mike Hanlon, Bugs. Mr. Hanlon. I’d like to see you.”

“See me?” Bugs’s throat tightened unconsciously. “Uh, now, you mean?”

“Now,” said Hanlon. And hung up the receiver.