Wild Town (11 page)

T
he place was a few miles outside of Ragtown; there are places like it near almost every town and city. Areas densely overgown with trees, cluttered with shrubs and bushes, laced with a winding maze of footpaths and car tracks. They are isolated, yet easily accessible. They have various names, all carrying the same slyly lewd connotation.

…The two “girls”—women of about thirty—had draped their clothes over some convenient tree limbs. Now, stripped to their slips, they shivered in the chilly West Texas morning.

“Wonder what’s keeping those guys?” grumbled the girl called Peg. “Why the hell couldn’t they undress here, like we did?”

“Now, honey,” murmured her companion, Gladys. “Real swell fellas like that, you can’t ask a lot of questions. You don’t find guys every day that pop for twenty bucks.”

“Yeah. I guess…You s’pose our purses are all right in the car, Glad?”

“Why not? The fellas are lockin’ it up tight, aren’t they?”

“Well, I wish I’d brought my coat with me, anyhow. I paid five hundred bucks for that hunk of fur, and—”

“And what did I pay for mine, hon? Exactly the same, wasn’t it? We both started saving for ’em at the same time. Now, you know we wouldn’t want to drag those nice coats around these bushes.”

“But I’m cold, darn it! I’m absolutely freezing!”

“Well, now, you won’t be very long, hon. The fellas are bound to—”

The sudden roar of a motor drowned out her sentence. A lessening roar as a car was slammed into gear and driven away. The girls looked at each other dumbfounded. They broke into curses, scampered a few futile steps in pursuit. Then, weeping, they fell into one another’s arms.

Ed and Ted Gusick were stripping the purses as they drove. Slowing down, they tossed them into the bushes, then gathered speed again. And then, as they neared the highway, Ted suddenly slammed on the brakes.

A man had stumbled out of the underbrush, tumbled directly in the path of their car. He lurched to his feet again—a man in shape only—a ragged, bedraggled, stinking bundle of filth. Cursing frightfully, he wobbled toward them.

“Friggers! Caught you, didn’t I? Up’n the goddamned floor, an’ no friggin’ around about it!”

“Listen, Mr. Westbrook…” Ted and Ed eased out of the car, watching him cautiously. “It’s me—you know, Ted Gusick. And here’s Ed, right here with me. Now—”

“No ’scuses!” Westbrook bellowed. “Makes no difference who y’are. Either y’cut the stuff’r—I’ll show you, by God!”

He came at them in a rush. Ted tripped him nimbly. Ed caught him under the arms, and lowered him gently to the ground.

He began to cry, sobbing out curses as the tears streamed down his bristled, filth-smeared face. Ed looked worriedly at his brother.

“Jesus,” he whispered. “What are we gonna do with him, Ted?”

“Do with him? Why, we’re gonna take him with us, you jerk.”

“But—what then? I mean, what are we gonna
do?
”

Ted didn’t have the slightest idea. Being at a loss for one—and and in typical Gusick fashion—he responded with a kind of self-righteous abuse.

“I suppose you want to leave him here, you rotten son-of-a-bitch! Just walk off and leave a fine man like Mr. Westbrook. Well, I always thought you were pretty goddamned low-down, and now by God, I know it!”

He swung irritably, landing a painful punch in Ed’s ribs. Ed swung, with identical results. These formalities dispensed with, they loaded Westbrook into their car, made him peaceful with a gently expert tap on the button and drove off.

They lived in the old-family section of town, in an excellent apartment, which, before its transformation, had been the loft of the family barn. The building was on an alley, a good two hundred feet removed from the house. The lower floor was boarded up, and the only entrance to their apartment was from the alley. Briefly, they could just about do as they pleased, come and go as they pleased, without being heard or observed. And lovers of privacy that they were—for reasons which need not be gone into—they were delighted to pay the boom-town rental of three hundred dollars a month.

They got Westbrook up the stairs unseen and installed him in the master bedroom. They bathed him, fed him, waited on and catered to him; and they continued to do so from that day on.

They got him through the d.t.’s with drugs pilfered from the hotel doctor. They doled out drinks to him, trying to taper him off the binge. They were partially successful in this, getting him down to a mere few pints a day. But even this relatively small amount, combined with Westbrook’s totally hopeless outlook, was enough to keep him sodden. He had nothing to hang on to. Nothing to go forward or back to. So he succumbed to the booze, accepted its deadening and deadly embrace without resistance.

Ted and Ed pleaded with him. They declared—as they believed—that he was the best damned hotel man in the country; one of the few real hotel men left—and if he’d just pull himself together…

Things were going to pot at the Hanlon. A new manager had lasted just one day, and now old Mike was trying to swing the job himself, with the help of the chief clerk. And, brother, were they bitching up the joint! He’d be tickled to death to get Mr. Westbrook back, if he’d just get off the goddammed whiz. So—so how about it, huh, Mr. Westbrook. Get right off it, huh, sir, and everything’ll be swell.

Westbrook wept babyishly, charging them with prevarication and boobishness. Then, getting a grip on himself, he lashed them with ear-purpling profanity. He would do something, all right! He would keep them under the closest observation, see to it that they did not cut his throat and steal his clothes, as, indubitably, they planned on doing.

He would see to it that they conducted themselves properly while in his presence; that never in any way did they give any outward manifestation of their pimpish, thieving, shiftless, impertinent and generally bastardly souls. They would tell him no more of their goddamned lies about the hotel—and anything they said
would
be a goddamned lie. He had put up with them as long as he intended to, and from now on, by God, they would toe the mark, or he personally would kick the crap out of them.

“And I can do it, get me?”—this with a belligerently red-eyed glare. “You think I can’t, just give me a little more trouble.”

“Yes, sir. Certainly, sir, Mr. Westbrook.”

“All right, then. Open ’nother bottle, and be quick about it!”

They obeyed. They continued to. In their feudal minds, the fact that a liege-lord had lost his sanity did not lose him the right to reign. He was still the boss. He was authority. He was a symbol of something which, far more than the socially enlightened, the Ted and Ed Gusicks find necessary to existence.

During the day, they took turns about waiting on him. Before departing for work at night, they set out whiskey, food, and cigarettes, everything he might need or want, or think he needed or wanted. And never again did they mention the hotel in his presence. He had told them not to. Moreover, in his increasingly sodden state, it had become impossible to talk to him.

One night, or, rather, very early one morning, Westbrook awakened with a feeling of having been reborn. His head was entirely clear. There was none of the hideous shaking, the gut-wracking nausea, which normally accompanied his awakenings.

Actually, he was in a state of euphoria. Nature was giving him one last unhampered whirl at life before closing in for the kill. But the sense of optimism and well-being seemed entirely valid, and while it lasted he dumped every bottle of his liquor into the toilet.

He had scarcely done so when he was plunged back into the abyss: to a far deeper depth than he had previously penetrated. A convulsion wracked him, doubled him with terror and pain. Invisible hands gripped his head, squeezing tighter and tighter and still tighter, until his brain squirmed and screamed in agony.

He looked around wildly. He saw the empty bottles on the floor, and had no memory of how they had got there.

Ted and Ed, he thought. It was they who had done this to him. They’d been after him to stop drinking, and now—

“Kill ’em,” he mumbled fiercly. “Kill ’em, kill ’em, kill ’em. I—I got to have something. I—I GOT TO HAVE—”

Staggering into the kitchen, he pawed frantically through the cupboards. He went from room to room, jerking out drawers, knocking over furniture, upturning cushions and mattresses. In the bathroom medicine cabinet, he found a pin bottle of rubbing alcohol. He clutched it to his breast and staggered back into the kitchen.

He set a small pan on the work shelf. He held a stack of bread over it, started to filter the alcohol through the bread. And his hand jerked convulsively, crashing the bottle against the wall.

He screamed, sobbed, over the terrible loss. For a moment he was too dispirited and hopeless to go on. Then he jerked open the refrigerator, and began jerking out its contents.

There was nothing in it. Nothing, Westbrook thought angrily, but crap: food. The bastards! Oh, those fiendish, sneaky bastards! They’d loaded their refrigerator with eggs and butter and milk and cream, and steaks and roasts and—dozens of worthless items. And not a lousy, wonderful drop to drink.

“Kill ’em,” Westbrook babbled. “Kill ’em. If it’s the last thing I ever do. I’ll—I’ll—”

Back in the rear of the refrigerator, concealed until now by a bag of grapefruit, was a bottle. A jug-like, gift-type carafe filled with a chocolately liquid. It would be syrup, of course. They had guessed that he would be dying, by now, and had planned this ultimate and unbearable disappointment to shove him over the brink.

Westbrook thrust his head inside the refrigerator, scraping his ears in the process. Squinting, the print wavering and blurring before his eyes, he read the label on the bottle.

Creme de Cacao!
A full fifth—minus a sip or so—of seventy-proof liqueur!

Westbrook let out a low moan. He started to grab for it; then, remembering the horrible accident with alcohol, he held a pan against the shelf, and raked the bottle into it. He put the pan on the floor. He tilted the bottle on its side, and pulled the cork.

There was a gentle gurgle, a rich brown flow. Whimpering, Westbrook reached for a teacup. He wasn’t risking the loss of a drop of this.
They
might fool him once, by God, but they couldn’t do it twice. He’d get it all out into the pan, an—

The flow stopped. Something inside the bottle had lodged in its neck. Westbrook moaned piteously. Somehow, he managed to nip the obstruction between a trembling thumb and forefinger, and yanked it out.

The wonderful gurgling resumed. Westbrook tilted the bottle, cautiously assisting the flow. Finally, his patience exhausted, he snatched it up, shook out the few remaining drops and hurled it into the corner.

And then, at last, he drank.

He drank two full cups, one after the other. Cheeks puffed, eyes bulging, he shuddered violently. He sighed and leaned back against the refrigerator, breathing in long, deep, grateful breaths.

He got a cigarette lighted. Picking up the pan—and he could trust his hands now—he started to fill his cup again.

Something plopped into it. The object that had stopped up the neck of the bottle. Gingerly, he got it between two fingers, examined it frowning.

It wasn’t a cork, as he had thought. It was a small balloon, stuffed tightly with something, and its end closed with a rubber band.

A premonitious shiver ran through Westbrook. He wiped the thing off with his handkerchief, wiped his fingers clean, and ripped open the balloon.

The “stuffing” fell to the floor. It consisted of currency, a tightly rolled wad of five-hundred-dollar bills. He counted them, and a low yowl of mingled triumph and outrage spewed through his teeth.

Outrage, yes. For while he didn’t know how they’d latched onto this dough, he knew damned well where it had come from. Dudley had been short five grand and here
was
five grand. And if they hadn’t stolen it from him—the selfsame sum that he had pinched—who had they stolen it from? And if it wasn’t stolen—laughable thought!—if it wasn’t too hot to handle, why had they hidden it so carefully?

The questions were nonsensically elementary; their answers axiomatic to a man of Westbrook’s background. He thought of the terror and hopelessness he had lived in because of the theft, and his lips parted in another yowl.

“Now, I
am
going to do it,” he vowed grimly. “Now, I
will
kill them!”

There was a supply of clean shirts, underclothing and the like in his bedroom; and his suit, unworn since he had moved in here, was also cleaned and pressed. He bathed and shaved, dressed himself meticulously. He made and drank a pot of coffee, casually kicking the creme de cacao pan out of his way.

Alcohol. Why had he ever wanted the stuff? What could it give him that he didn’t have, or could easily get? Well, no matter. He didn’t want it now, and he had a strange conviction that he would never want it again.

He finished the coffee. Then he began prowling through the apartment; looking in closets and on shelves. Studying various maneuverable objects.

He took his time about it, and at last he found exactly what he was looking for: a heavy wooden rod, some three inches in circumference and approximately four feet long.

It was installed in a closet where it served as a clothes hanger rack. Ripping it out, he took a few practice swings with it, and grimly satisfied, returned to the living room.

This would do the trick, he thought. He wouldn’t quite kill those bastards, but he’d make them think they’d been killed. He’d—

“God!” he said suddenly. “God!”—he flung the pole from him. “What’s the matter with me? What’s been the matter with me?”

And when the Gusicks arrived from work, he only talked to them.

There was nothing funny about theft, he said. It was not amusing or shrewd or sharp, ever to inflict pain or loss upon another. And it was the job of everyone—not just the individual affected—to see that no one suffered preventable pain or loss. You had to do it. Otherwise you had no peace; you had constantly to keep your guard up. And when you wearied, as you inevitably must, you got it in the neck yourself.