Wild Town (14 page)

T
hey went to Bugs’s room. Ford settled himself into the one easy chair, lighted one of his thin black cigars, and spewed out a fragrant cloud of smoke. He fanned it with one hand, staring at Bugs with absent thoughtfulness. Bugs stared back at him stolidly.

There was something different about the deputy today, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Then Ford spoke again, and he realized what it was.

Ford’s drawl was gone; his errors and exaggerations of speech. He spoke as any literate person might have.

“I said you were in trouble, Bugs. That may have been putting it a little strong. I might be more accurate to say that you’re on the verge of trouble, but that you can avoid it. I can help you to.”

“I see.”

“I hope so, but I doubt it. Perhaps we’d better let that lie a moment, and go back to the beginning. Back to the day when I took you out of jail and got you your job here.” He took another puff from his cigar, tapped the ash into the wastebasket. “Incidentally, I gather that you like it here. You wouldn’t mind sticking around permanently.”

“That’s right.”

“I’d like to have you stick around.”

Bugs shrugged, waited silently. There was a faint flicker in Ford’s eyes, a hint of annoyance which might readily become something else. But he went on level-voiced.

“Well, as I said, perhaps we’d better go back to the beginning. I don’t like to. It’s not my way to do favors for people and then throw it up to them. Or even to let them know I’m doing them a favor. But in this case…You came here with nothing, Bugs. Nothing but a bad record. I got you out of jail. I staked you. I got you linked up with this job. I introduced you to—”

“Better stop there. Leave her out of it.”

“All right. We’ll stop with the other things I did. You were sore at the world, about as touchy as a man can get. So I tried not to make you feel that you were being favored. I did what I did in a way that you could accept, so that you could possibly feel that you were favoring me. I told you that this place needed a good two-fisted house dick. It would save me and my boys work if you’d take the job.”

He paused, puffing at his cigar again. Bugs yawned, making no very great effort to stifle it.

“Maybe you’d better get to the point,” he said. “You gave me the world with a ring around it. Now, you want something in return. All right, I don’t expect something for nothing. What is it you want.”

“Not as much as I gave, Bugs. Not nearly as much. I was established here; I had a lot to lose if I was wrong about you. And judging by your record, I could easily have been wrong. But I took you on trust. Now, I’d like some of that trust back.”

“That still doesn’t tell me anything. You still—”

“Doesn’t tell you anything! Now, goddammit—” Ford’s mouth snapped shut. After a moment he went on again. Drawling a little, gradually slipping back into his usual manner of speech. “Let’s get to that trouble we was talkin’ about. Cut around the frills and get right to the heart of it. You went to Dudley’s room for some reason. You scuffled with him, and he got knocked out the window. Now—”

“Uh-uh. I’ve got an alibi for the time of his death.”

“You have, huh? An’ what time would that be?”

“Well—uh—what I mean is,” Bugs said, “that I’ve got all my time covered. I went straight from my room to the elevator, and I didn’t go upstairs after that until…”

“You went straight from your room to the elevator, sure. An’ you sure went to a hell of a lot of trouble to be able to prove it. But you got no way of provin’ that you didn’t leave your room before that. Or”—Ford cocked an eyebrow at him—“have you? You prove it to me, if you can, an’ me, I’ll vamoose right out of here.”

“I don’t have to prove it.”

“I wouldn’t lay no bets on that. No, sir, I sure wouldn’t, and that’s a fact.”

“Now, look,” Bugs said doggedly. “Why tab me with this thing, anyway? The fact that there was a man in Dudley’s room—if there was one—doesn’t necessarily mean that it was me. You’ve got no—”

“Let’s talk about what it does necessarily mean. The guy didn’t break in. He didn’t sneak in, like with a passkey maybe. A sneak would’ve just copped and cleared out. He wouldn’t’ve been scufflin’ with Dudley, or—”

“He would if Dudley had caught him.”

“Which”—Ford winked—“Dudley was havin’ too much fun to do. Howsome-ever, suppose he did. The guy’d have no right to be there. No matter how no-account Dudley was, he’d’ve put up a racket about it, let out a yell or called for help. An’ we know he didn’t do that. Then there’s that gal in the bathroom—the one we both know was there. In a case like we’re supposin’ about, I don’t see her livin’ but a mite longer than Dudley did. Because this fella’d be a pro. He wouldn’t leave nothin’ behind that was worth takin’, or nothin’ that’d put the finger on him. So, he’d check that bathroom just as sure as God made green apples. An’ that’d been the end of the gal.”

Ford leaned back in his chair, crossed one booted foot over the other. Bugs glowered at him helplessly, wanting nothing so much as to smash his fist into the deputy’s bland, saturnine face.

“Ain’t hard to figure out at all, is it?” Ford said. “No, sir, they’s prob’ly plenty of four-year-old boys that could do it without turnin’ a hair. Dudley let this fella into his room. The guy was someone in authority, an’ he had to. Who had that much authority—enough to make a man open up his room late at night? Not more’n two people that I can think of. One of ’em was Westbrook, an’—”

“Forget him!” Bugs said curtly. “Westbrook couldn’t have had anything to do with it.”

Ford nodded. His tone decidedly less edged. “Glad you said that, Bugs. A man that’ll stick up for a friend when it hurts has got plenty to him. But o’ course you’re right. The first thing I done was to check on Westbrook, an’ I know he wouldn’t’ve been callin’ on Dudley. His hands were tied. He’d insisted that Dudley was absolutely okay, so he couldn’t…But they’s no use goin’ into that, is there? Or into the set-to of ours over in Westex.”

“What is there use in going into?”

“What happened, Bugs? Did Westbrook ask you to help him out with Dudley? Try to get the money back for him?”

“No! Well, all right, he did ask me. But I refused.”

“Uh-huh, sure. Just couldn’t take a chance on gettin’ into trouble.” Ford drew on his cigar, exhaled a thin stream of smoke. “And then you changed your mind. An’ this trouble you was afraid of happened.”

Bugs shrugged. Ford could talk, theorize, until he was blue in the face. But he couldn’t prove anything.

The deputy studied him narrow-eyed, spoke as though in rebuttal to a statement.

“Not yet,” he said. “But I ain’t tried real hard. Ain’t really put my mind to it. Ain’t decided whether I want to do any provin’. If I do…”

“Then you’ll have to do some proving against someone else. The woman who gave Dudley the chloral.”

“Why?”

“Why?” Bugs frowned. “Why, dammit, because you will! You can’t—couldn’t—”

“Why not? What’s to stop me?” Ford spread his hands. “Maybe there was a mistake about the chloral. Maybe the gal just saw you comin’ out of Dudley’s room, and wasn’t actually there herself.”

“But—but she was there! You’ve said so a dozen times!”

“Could be I was wrong. Might say somethin’ else the thirteenth time. Wouldn’t be too unreasonable, y’know. If she was willin’ to stand right up and be counted—to do her duty, irregardless, like an upstandin’ citizen should—why, a fella’d just about have to figure she was on the level. Yes, sir, it wouldn’t be no bother for him at all—even if it wasn’t sort o’ handy for him to figure that way.”

“And even if he wasn’t in a position where he could call his shots any way he wanted to.”

“Now, you’re gettin’ the idea,” Ford beamed. “Really smartenin’ up now. You keep on an’ you’ll be able to pour sand out of a boot without a book of directions.”

Then, he laughed pleasantly, infectiously, stroked his jaw with a slender-fingered hand.

“Now, listen to me, will you? Been carryin’ on that way so long that I can’t stop even when I want to. Just slide into it without thinkin’. But we all got our little peculiarities, usually got good reasons for ’em, too, the way I see it. And as long as a man don’t fault the other fella for his—”

“Look,” Bugs cut in. “If you’ve got something to say—”

“Sure. You’re tired, and I ain’t exactly the soothingest man in the world to talk to. So we’ll wind it up fast. I can’t see you as deliberately tyin’ into Dudley, not for money or anything else. Aside from that—and maybe I got kind of a funny outlook on these things—I figure there wasn’t nothing lost when he died. Just saved the law a job it’d have to do sooner or later. So you tell me it was an accident, and I’ll believe you. Won’t be nothin’ more said or done about it.”

“Yeah? Well, I’m not telling you that!”

“Well—” Ford hesitated, his lips pursed thoughtfully. “Well, okay. We’ll still skip it. I gave you a lot of trust in the beginning, and I’ll give you that much more. And, now, Bugs”—he lowered his voice, leaned forward in his chair—“I want a dividend on that trust. You know what’s building up here. You know why Mrs. Hanlon was so helpful in getting you a job; you’d just about have to by this time. All right, take it from there. What have you got to say about it?”

He leaned back in his chair again. Bugs squirmed fretfully. He was over a barrel. What was he supposed to say that would take him off of it?

“Listen,” he began. “What…I mean, dammit, what do you—”

“I can’t tell you that. If I had to, it wouldn’t mean anything. Wouldn’t know for sure whether it jibed with what you had in mind. And if it didn’t, I’d be behind the eight ball. I’d fluff somethin’ that just better not be fluffed.”

“But, hell…”

“I’m already way out on a limb, Bugs. A lot further than even a real trustin’ fella ought to go. I’ve saddled a hoss for you an’ given you a hand-up, and all I’m doin’ now is grippin’ the bridle. Just holdin’ a little in my finger tips, until I see which way you’re headin’.”

“And if it isn’t the way you’re heading, I get set down hard?”

“If you’re that dumb, yeah. Me, I got an awful low boilin’ point for dumbness. Riles me worse’n a cactus under a saddle blanket.”

“But what—”

But there was no use asking that again. Ford, in a way, occupied the same position Bugs was in.

Did he want Mike Hanlon killed?—Bugs’s cooperation in murdering the old man? Possibly, in fact, very probably, it would seem. But Ford couldn’t say so until he was sure of Bugs’s feelings.

Or did he want the opposite? To pin a rap of conspiracy of attempt to commit murder on Joyce Hanlon? That also was possible. But again Ford could not admit it without knowing Bugs’s sentiments. Bugs might tip off Joyce. Forewarned, she would hold her plans in abeyance, and Hanlon would never be safe.

“Well?” Ford said. “Well, Bugs?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking ’bout,” Bugs said. “I don’t know and I don’t want to know.”

Ford took the cigar from his mouth, studied the tip of it absently. He rolled it between his fingers, then let it drop into the wastebasket.

“So you don’t know,” he said. “Ain’t got the slightest idea of what I been talkin’ about. Could be that that’s an answer itself, which ain’t to say, of course, that I’m real fond of it.”

“Look, Ford,” Bugs said. “Honest to God, now, don’t you think you’re asking a hell of a lot?”

“Well, maybe,” Ford nodded judiciously. “Yes, sir, I could be. Wouldn’t be too much to ask of a man, but seein’ that you’re more in the nature of a man with a boy’s head…”

“Go on,” Bugs grunted. “You know I have to take it.”

“Ain’t it the truth? Yes, sir, it’s plain gospel an that’s a fact…”

Ford continued to talk. For a full five minutes, the bitter, biting drawl lashed Bugs unmercifully, leaving him sick and shaking with fear and fury. Then, at last, it was over, and the deputy stood up.

“Been meanin’ to tell you that for a long time,” he said mildly. “Just by way of bein’ helpful, y’ know. It ain’t got no direct bearin’ on the problem we been discussin’. About that now—that no-answer answer you gave me—I guess we’ll just have to wait an’ see. Or maybe it’d be better to say I’ll wait and see. I’ll do the waitin’ and seein’, and you can be doin’ some real hard hopin’.”

B
ugs ate dinner at Amy’s house that night. It was a simple but tasty meal of baked beans, salad and cornbread. But you couldn’t have proved it by him. As absorbed in worry as he was, he could have eaten sawdust and brickbats and never known the difference.

A full stomach stilled the worries to an extent. Replaced them with an uneasy sluggishness. He helped her wash and dry the dishes, and then they moved into the living-room. They talked, seated on the ancient horsehair sofa, with Bugs’s contributions to the conversation growing fewer and fewer, shorter and shorter. Finally, he lapsed into a complete and prolonged silence.

Amy nudged him. She got up suddenly, sat down on his knees, and kissed him on the mouth. Now, she said, would he wake up? Would he or not wake up? Bugs woke up. Even in his black mood, the treatment was effective. Amy allowed him to demonstrate that he was fully awake. Then, pulling away a little, she tilted his chin up with her hand.

“Mac…what’s bothering you? I’m sure something must be.”

“Naw,” Bugs shrugged. “Just dopey, is all. Didn’t sleep too good today.” Then he shifted his eyes, added casually, “What have I got to be bothered about?”

“I don’t know. Would you tell me if you were in—if you were having trouble of any kind?”

“Well, sure. Why not? If I thought you wanted to hear about it.”

“You wouldn’t be…you wouldn’t think that you couldn’t trust me?”

Bugs kissed her. He couldn’t or wouldn’t answer the question in his own mind, so he did it that way. Amy seemed satisfied, and dropped the subject.

But the following night, as he was leaving, she brought it up again.

“I’m not asking what the trouble is, Mac. Just if there is any.”

“Now, listen, Amy—”

“I’m sorry. I just thought that might be the reason, you know. Why you didn’t say anything to me about…anything. I mean, if you were in trouble you might feel that—Oh, just listen to me!” She laughed suddenly, with brittle shrillness. “Did you ever hear anyone so mixed-up in your life?”

“Amy…” Bugs began.

“No. No, please, Mac!” She stepped back through the door, leaving him on the porch. “I’m tired and its getting late, and—You run along, now, and I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

The door closed, the lock clicked, the hall light went off. Bugs turned uncertainly and headed for the hotel.

It was still short of ten-thirty when he reached the Hanlon. Plenty of time yet before he was due on the job. He parked his car at the side of the building and remained in it. Smoking and brooding. Watching the street ahead of him.

The more he thought about it, the more chagrined he became over his trip to Westex City. He’d really pinned a label on himself with that stunt. Tied a rope around his neck and handed the other end to Lou Ford. And, hell, even if he hadn’t run into Ford, or if Ford hadn’t been tailing him, the trip still would have been so much time wasted.

He couldn’t hang around the Westex general-delivery window. He couldn’t hang around indefinitely outside the building. Rather, he could, but what the hell could he expect it to make him? Because, naturally, as any damned fool should know, the blackmailer wasn’t going to go near the place. There’d be a third party, someone Bugs wouldn’t know or recognize. And why, in the name of God, he hadn’t seen that—!

Well—Bugs grudgingly excused himself—there’d been no apparent necessity for him to think of it. He’d been sure that the blackmailer was Rosalie Vara—equally confident that she was sufficiently naive to walk into his trap. He’d’ve known better, of course, if he’d known that the woman in question was a mickey artist. But he’d had no way of knowing that. So he’d done what he had, and it wasn’t particularly stupid under the circumstances. And, anyway, there was no use in beating himself over the head about it now.

The point was that the traditional trap for a blackmailer—the only one he could think of—would not work in this case. Not for a man who was on the wrong side of the fence himself and could get no aid from the other side. Somehow, he’d just have to figure out who she was—
if
it was a she. And he already knew that it wasn’t, that it couldn’t be, and he also knew that—

Savagely, Bugs hurled his cigarette out the window, severed the nagging circle of his thoughts.

Similarly, he refused to think about what he would do when, and if, he caught up with-him-her-it—whoever the blackmailer was. He’d do
something,
that was a cinch. Whatever was necessary. Couldn’t say what it would be until the time came.

A bellboy was crossing the intersection at the next corner. A slick-haired youth, with a pale phlegmatic face. A cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth, and he carried a canvas mailsack over his shoulder.

He came down the walk with the tiredly jaunty stride peculiar to bellboys. Nearing the side entrance, he took a long pull on the cigarette, flicked it into the street. And went through the double doors at what was practically a trot. Bugs grinned sourly to himself. Those damned bellboys; they worked
at
a hotel, rather than for it. The hotel was only one of numerous bosses, the people they waited on: the cranks and drunks, the grouches and snides, the rubes and the sharpies. And to survive they learned every trick in the book. They had to be pulling some kind of swiftie—no matter how small—or they just didn’t feel right.

This lad now, he’d probably dogged it all the way to the post office and back. But, returning, he went through the door like he was shot out of a gun.

Bugs smoked another cigarette. Then he got out of the car and moved slowly toward the side door. The mail the bellboy had brought would be the last one until tomorrow. It was a light mail, due to the lateness of the pick-up, so it should be all put up in the room-boxes by now. He could find out now whether—

He didn’t want to. If there was a letter, well, there’d be a letter. But there was no point in running to look for a headache.

He walked around to the front of the Hanlon and entered the coffee shop. He had coffee and some cherry pie à la mode, and went through the doors to the lobby.

Feet dragging unconsciously, he came down the marble checkerboard of its floor to the front office. He stopped parallel with the key rack, turned and looked.

There wasn’t any letter. Only another call-slip from Joyce Hanlon. He accepted it with a suppressed sigh of relief and began his tour of the corridors.

Probably, he decided, he ought to give Joyce a ring sometime soon. After all, she might want to talk to him about something other than what he had assumed she did. And, anyhow, there could be no harm in just talking. It could be, even, that he’d be doing himself a favor. Might find out something from her that would be useful to know. As, for example, just how things stood between her and Lou Ford.

Yeah, he guessed he’d better do it. Every reason why he should, and none—practically—why he shouldn’t.

By two in the morning, he had completed his rounds of the room floors. He had also worked up enough appetite to want a square meal. He got off the elevator and started for the coffee shop. And, then, as he was passing the front office—the key-rack section—he came to a dead stop.

He stared, incredulously.

He moved slowly up to the counter.

Leslie Eaton was gone, and Ted Gusick was tending desk. He reached the letter out of Bugs’s box and handed it to him. Bugs looked at the pencil-addressed envelope, at the faint Westex City postmark. He stood tapping it on the counter, dully. Wondering what—how—why—

Wondering.

There’d been no mail since that last one, the one that he’d seen the day bellboy bring in. If this letter had been in that mail, it should have been put in his box hours ago.

Slowly, Bugs raised his eyes, looked into the smooth poker-face of Ted Gusick.

“Something wrong, Mr. McKenna? Any little thing I can do for you?”

“What?” Bugs blinked. “Oh, no. No, everything’s swell. I was just wondering—uh—well, where Eaton was. Nothing that can’t wait, but—”

“Well, I’ve got three bells that can’t wait much longer. One of the parties has already called down a second time.”

“Uh-huh. Yeah, sure,” Bugs murmured vaguely.

“Understand there’s a new night engineer. Big muscle man, y’know. Maybe he’s got our blushing boy bent over a boiler.”

He laughed, winked. Then, misreading Bugs’s startled scowl, he retreated swiftly into his usual suavely reserved self. “Not a very good joke was it, Mr. McKenna, sir? Of course, I couldn’t really think that about a fine young man like Mr. Eaton.”

Think it? Hell, it was something you’d know if you knew anything at all! It stuck out all over the guy. And…and it must be the answer to the puzzle. It hadn’t been a woman in Dudley’s bathroom. Not a woman literally, but—

“Now, that I think of it,” Ted continued. “I believe you might find Mr. Eaton down in the valet shop. He had some charges to check there, and he probably stopped to get a free pants-press.”

“Pants…pressed?” Bugs said, not knowing what he said. Or that he said anything. “Pants pressed?”

“Excuse me—
ha, ha
—I honestly didn’t mean that as another joke, Mr. McKenna. But, yes, sir”—Ted nodded seriously. “The valet’s always glad to do those things if he isn’t busy, so Mr. Eaton could be getting his p—suit pressed.”

Bugs turned abruptly and walked away. In the alcove leading to the coffee shop, he paused and took the letter from his pocket.

He hadn’t really taken a good look at the first one, its envelope rather. Still, unnoticing he had noticed; certain things about it had registered on his subconscious. And repeated on this envelope, they soared to the surface of his mind, attained glaring significance.

He ran his fingers over the paper where the address was inscribed. He studied the almost indiscernible date of the postmark. Grimly, then, he went on into the coffee shop, returning the letter unopened to his pocket.

Never mind what the thing said. The guy who had said it—written it—was what he was interested in.

He sat down on a stool near one end of the horseshoe counter and gave his order to a waitress. Then, with a grunt of dismay, he hastily got up. “Just remembered a phone call I got to make. Hold that order a few minutes, will you?”

The girl smiled and said she would. Bugs laid his hat on his stool, squeezed through the service slot between counter and wall, and moved swiftly toward the rear of the coffee shop. Back of the coffee shop was the hotel’s main kitchen. Bugs entered it through another service slot and hurried down its vast, dimly lit length. It was not in use at this hour, since the dining-room, which it served, was closed. Bugs left it by a door at its far end and emerged onto the back landing.

The out-of-use service elevator was parked there. He entered it, cut off the lights, and piloted it down to the first basement. Quietly, he eased the door open, stood listening in the darkness.

The valet shop was about twenty feet to his right. Eaton’s voice drifted down the corridor to him:

“Oh, don’t be so nasty! I guess I had to check these charges, didn’t I?”

“Charges? Goddammit, you been here long enough to check Fort Knox!”

Eaton emitted a high-pitched giggle. Bugs squirmed nervously. As busy as the coffee shop was, time would go very quickly for that waitress. He could stay away twenty or thirty minutes and it would seem like only a “few” to her. Longer than that, however, he’d be putting a dangerous strain on his alibi. And at the rate this damned silly Eaton was stalling…!

“I AM going, darn it! I said I was, and I am. How many times do I have to tell you?”

“None, by God! Just show me! Just get the hell out, so I can get some work done!”

Eaton made a pouting sound. The gate to the railed-off valet shop clicked open; swung creaking, to and fro, as his footsteps came hurriedly down the corridor.

Bugs tensed. His hand shot out, suddenly, grasping Eaton, yanking him into the car, flinging him with breath-taking impact against its rear wall. Then, almost before the door had closed, he shot the elevator upward.