But until I heard from her I was imagining all sorts of things. I’d about halfway decided that she must be dead…
30
I used to know a drunk years ago, a booker at one of the film exchanges in the city. He was one of those God-awful, noisy, messy drunks; the worst of the worst kind. And do you know something? That guy couldn’t stand the sight of another drunk. It wasn’t any pretense. He actually hated ’em. He’d walk six blocks to keep from passing one on the street.
I was thinking about him, and wondering why I was thinking about him, as I turned into the lane toward home. Then, as I drove into the yard, another funny thing popped into my mind—the tag line on an old joke. It’s not the original cost but the upkeep.
There it is. Make anything you want to out of it.
After I’d shut off the motor I sat in the car for a moment, pulling myself together; thinking—trying to think—what a hell of a mess Carol had got me into by going to work for us. Then, I rubbed the gun in my pocket, wiped the sweat off my hand, and got out.
I went up the steps.
I crossed the porch and opened the door.
As far as I could see, there from the hall, everything was just like I had left it. The shades were drawn. The furnace was still ticking away, throwing out warm waves of heat. The lights were…
“Carol,” I called. “Carol!”
And every light in the place went out.
I stood where I was, paralyzed; too shocked to move. And the air from the furnace didn’t seem warm anymore. It got colder and colder. It brushed against my face like the draft from an icebox. Somehow I got my foot behind me and kicked the door shut. As an afterthought, I turned the key in the lock and put it in my pocket.
I called her one more time. “Carol!”
There wasn’t any answer.
It wasn’t the storm, then. She’d pulled the switch. She’d done it without even waiting to see what Web had wanted, or what I was going to do about it. And she’d been nagging me about not trusting her!
I was sore and relieved at the same time. It made things easier.
I started to strike a match, but caught myself. She’d see me first; and she hadn’t turned out those lights for the fun of it. She was sure I’d put her on the spot. Or, maybe, she’d guessed that I could never feel safe as long as she was alive. Anyway, she was playing for keeps.
I don’t know whether I’ve described the layout of our house or not. There’s a hall extending from the front door to the kitchen. On the left, as you go in, is the living-room. The dining-room is across from it, on the right.
I went down the hall on tiptoe to the living-room, and eased the drapes apart. My eyes were getting used to the dark, and I could see a little. Not much, but a little. The outlines of the furniture; shadowy blotches on the wall where pictures hung.
The living-room looked empty, and I decided it must be. The master light switch was in the kitchen. She hadn’t had time to move far from it.
I tried to figure out which way she’d go. Up the hall toward me, or through the door into the dining-room? Or would she still be there in the kitchen?
I started down the hall. And stopped.
A door had creaked. The door connecting the dining-room and kitchen. She was coming around that way. Getting behind me.
I pivoted and crept back to the dining-room. I slid through the portiers, holding my breath.
The door creaked again as it was opened wider. Now I could see a black oblong as it was opened all the way.
I could see a shadow, a crouched blur upon the black.
I touched the trigger of the automatic.
The explosion was almost deafening, but I heard her scamper back into the kitchen. I heard one of the chairs go over. I eased forward again, not seeing too well because of the flash of light from the shot. At the door into the kitchen I dropped down on my hands and knees and started to crawl across the threshold.
It was a minute or two before I saw her, her shadow against the far wall. I waited until I was sure, until I saw it edging toward the spot where the hall door would be. Then, slowly, I began rising to my feet.
I was too slow for her. In a split second the door banged open. Crashed shut.
I stood up, panting, sweat pouring from my face. I felt my way along the wall to the switch box.
The cover was open, as I’d known it would be, and the switch was pulled. I pushed it back into place, blinking my eyes as the lights went on. I locked the back door and put the key in my pocket. I waited, looking upward.
Listening.
At last I heard it. The squeak of a bedspring. I started to tiptoe out of the kitchen, then stopped again. She’d have to come out of her room. It wouldn’t look right to break the door down.
I began to whistle to myself, as I thought it over. And then I started to whistle louder, loud enough for her to hear me and just as if I didn’t have a care in the world.
I tramped up the stairs, and knocked on the door of her bedroom.
“Carol!” I called. “Are you asleep?”
There was no answer, but the bed creaked again. In my mind I could see her sitting there, huddled as far back as she could get. Staring at the door.
I let out an embarrassed laugh. “Did you hear all that racket I was making? The light switch dropped down and shut off the current. I thought there was a prowler in the house.” I laughed again. “Guess I’d be shooting yet if my gun hadn’t jammed.”
I could own a gun. She couldn’t be sure that I didn’t.
I heard—I thought I heard—a faint sigh of relief. A scared, doubtful sigh.
“Get dressed, Carol. We’ve got to get out of here. Right away, tonight.”
There wasn’t any kind of sound this time; nothing I could identify. But she seemed to be asking a question.
“Do you hear me, Carol?” I knocked again. “We’ve got to beat it. They’ve found out about the woman you hired. They haven’t got the straight of things, but they know enough. They’re going to open the grave in the morning. As soon as they find out it wasn’t Elizabeth, we’ll be sunk. They’ll run Elizabeth down, and she’ll squawk, to save her own neck. The whole thing will be pinned on us.” I banged harder on the door.
“Come on! We can be a long ways from here by daylight. Open the door and I’ll help you pack!”
She didn’t answer. It dawned on me that she probably couldn’t. She was too frightened, too scared of what her voice might tell me.
But she had got up. She was standing. And now she was coming to the door.
Afraid, yes. Scared as hell. But more scared not to.
I raised and leveled the gun. My hand was shaking, and I gripped my wrist with my other hand and steadied it.
The key grated and clicked in the lock. The doorknob turned.
Then the door flew open, and just as it did I squeezed the trigger.
There was one long, stuttering explosion. And then it was all over.
And through the smoke I saw Appleton grinning at me.
31
Thanks a lot. I think that establishes an intention to kill, even though you were shooting blanks.” His grin broadened, seeming to contract his eyes. “Not that we needed it after your interesting revelations. You’re a hard man, Joe. We thought you’d give the gal some kind of explanation before you started shooting.”
“I—I—” I said. “The sheriff gave me that gun. I—I thought she was going to kill me, and—”
“Oh, come now, Joe.” He shook his head. “Who do you think was playing that game of tag with you—trying to get you to open up? Why do you think Waters gave you a gun loaded with blanks? What do you think happened to your buddy, Chance?”
I swallowed. Hard. “You got—Hap?”
“Uh-huh. Caught him right in the act of slugging Jimmie Nedry. He was quite co-operative, but his information wasn’t very helpful. He put the finger on you, but it didn’t mean anything to us. Not any more than what Andy Taylor had to tell.”
“Cut i
t out!” I laughed in his face. I was caught, but that didn’t mean I was a sucker. “If Andy had told you anything—”
“Of course, he did, Joe. Think a minute. What could you possibly offer a man in Taylor’s position that would reimburse him for the risk of a long prison sentence? Don’t put yourself in his place. It doesn’t work. Taylor told us when you offered to cancel the lease on the Bower. Nedry told us about the stunt with the photoelectric cells; Nedry and Blair. But that still didn’t give us enough. You could have had a change of heart with Taylor. Nedry and Blair were sore at you.”
He paused, one eyebrow raised, and I nodded.
“Go on. Give it all to me.”
“You already know it, Joe. Most of it, anyway. I was sure that you’d loved your wife. I knew that if the fire had been set you couldn’t have done it since you were out of town. That gave us one, or, rather, two possibilities to work on. If a crime had been committed Carol was involved in it. And if you were really covering up for her—and we couldn’t be sure that you were—then you were in on it, too, and—”
His voice trailed off, and he paused again. And it seemed as if he was trying not to look at me.
“Maybe you’d better sit down, Joe.”
“What the hell for?” I said. “I can take it. I can hand it out and I can t-take it. You figured that we must have—must have brought in another woman. You made up that story about looking for one to see how I’d take it. That’s it, ain’t—isn’t it? There wasn’t any other woman, was there?”
“No, Joe, there wasn’t. When I first gave you the yarn I thought it had struck home. But later on, that night in my hotel room, I wasn’t sure. In fact, I’d have been willing to bet that you were on the level. If you hadn’t made that one-sided swap with Andy Taylor—”
“Jesus!” I laughed. “Jesus Christ! I gave you the cards myself. If I’d just sat tight you’d never have known about—that it wasn’t Elizabeth.”
He shook his head. “You don’t understand, Joe. Waters and Clay were your friends. They didn’t want to tell you something that might hurt your feelings. That was in the beginning. Later on, when this Nedry and Taylor business developed, they agreed to keep quiet. They were safe enough regardless of how the thing turned out. You couldn’t blame them for not mentioning a routine measure, particularly since I’d instigated it.”
“You’re talking a lot,” I said. “You’re talking a lot and you’re not s-saying—you’re not saying—”
“Better accept it, Joe. Face it and get it over with.”
“I—I don’t know what—”
“You must know. Otherwise we’d have arrested you right in the beginning. I don’t know why she did it. I don’t know why she came back here and walked into the trap she’d helped to set. That’s something for you to figure out if you haven’t already got it figured. All I can tell you is this, Joe. We identified the body days ago, and”—his voice dropped—“Carol came back from the city alone.”
His hand shot out as I staggered. I threw it off.
“Carol—Where is she?”
“Look on the bed, Joe.”
He stood aside.
I looked.
The haft of the scissors stood out from her breast like an unclasped pin. That was all I could see of her. The scissors, and her breast arched up to meet them.
“She left a note, Joe. A confession. She was going to take all the blame on herself. I put the screws on her, and she told me she’d talk to the county attorney. I let her come up here to get ready, and—”
He broke off, watching me.
“If she’d told me,” I said. “If she’d told me—”
“Yes, Joe? If she’d told you she’d killed the woman you loved?”
I looked from the bed to him. I looked back at the bed. I took a step forward.
“Would it, Joe? Would it have been all right?”
I didn’t answer him. I couldn’t. I didn’t know the answer until I reached the bed. And then I knew, but there weren’t any words left in me.
It wasn’t the way she looked, but the way I did. Because all I’d ever seen in her was myself, the little of myself that was pitying and compassionate and unselfish or whatever you want to call it. And, now, in the ending, even that little was gone. And all that was left was what I could see here, in her eyes. Dead eyes, turning in slightly.
I shivered and tried to look away.
I thought, They can’t hang me. I’m already dead. I’ve been dead a long, long time.
Glossary of Exhibitor Terms
B.O.: box office (receipts)
DARK: not in operation; a dark house
GRIND-HOUSE: a show which operates 24 hours daily
INDIE: an independent exhibitor or exchange
ONE-SHEET (THREE-SHEET etc.): posters. Largest dimension is the 24-billboard size.
PAPER: advertising matter
PRODUCT: pictures
SOUND HEADS: the part of the projector which picks up the sound from the film. See below.
SOUND TABLE: a now-obsolete device, similar to a phonograph, used in transcribing sound. Dialogue and musical accompaniment of early “talkies” were recorded on discs which were synchronized (perhaps!) with the film by the projectionist. An imperfect and expensive arrangement, it was supplanted by the recording of sound on the film proper and the use of sound heads.
About the Author
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.
…and The Kill-Off
In December 2011, Mulholland Books will publish Jim Thompson’s The Kill-Off. Following is an excerpt from the novel’s opening pages.
The Kill-Off
Kossmeyer
Mostly, she was a woman who loved scandal—and lived by it.
Luane Devore made a specialty of being impetuous, bold, headstrong and—she thought—sultry.
Mostly, though…It was Sunday, only two days after the season had opened, when Luane Devore telephoned. As usual, she sounded a little hysterical. As usual, she was confronted with a dire emergency which only I could handle. Significantly, however—or at least I thought it significant—she did not calm down when I told her to go to hell, and to stop acting like a damned fool.
“Please, Kossy,” she burbled. “You must come! It’s vitally important, darling. I can’t talk about it over the telephone, but—”
“Why the hell can’t you?” I cut in. “You talk about everything and everyone else over the phone. Now, lay off, Luane. I’m a lawyer, not a baby-sitter. I’m here on a vacation, and I’m not going to spend all my time listening to you moan and whine about a lot of imaginary problems.”
She wept audibly. I felt a very small twinge of conscience. The Devore estate didn’t amount to anything any more. It had been years since I’d gotten a nickel out of her. So…well, you see what I mean. When people don’t have anything—when they can’t do anything for you—you kind of have to go a little easy on ’em.
“Now, take it easy, honey,” I said. “Be a big girl for Kossy. The world ain’t going to come to an end if I don’t dash up there right now. It ain’t going to kill you, is it?”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, it is!” And then she hung up with a wild sob.
I hung up also. I came out of the bedroom, crossed the living room and returned to the kitchen. Rosa was at the stove, her back turned to me. She was talking, ostensibly mumbling to herself but actually addressing me. It is a habit of hers, one she has resorted to more and more frequently during the twenty-odd years of our marriage. I listened to the familiar words…bum…loafer…time-waster…thinks-nothing-of-his-wife-but…and for the first time in a long time I was affected by them. I began to get sore—angry and sad. And a little sick on the inside.
“So I’m sorry,” I said. “She’s a c
lient. She’s in trouble. I’ve got no choice but to see her.”
“A client, he says,” Rosa said. “So, of course, everything else he must drop. She is his only client, is she not? His first case?”
“With a good lawyer,” I said, “it is always the first case. Don’t make such a production out of it, dammit. I’ll be back in a little while.”
“In a little while, he says,” Rosa said. “In a little while, he was going to help with the unpacking. He was going to help clean up the cottage, and take his wife bathing and—”
“I will,” I said. “Goddammit, you want me to put it in writing?”
“Listen to him,” she said. “Listen to the great attorney curse at his wife. See how he acts, the great attorney, when it is his wife he deals with.”
“Listen to yourself,” I said. “See how you act.”
She turned around unwillingly. I stood up and put on a performance, watching her face slowly turn red then white. I am pretty good at such mimicry. Painfully good, you might say. I have a talent for it; and when a man is only five feet tall, when he has had no formal law education—damned little formal education of any kind—he leaves no talent undeveloped.
“This is you,” I said. “Mrs. Abie. Why don’t you go on TV? Go into vaudeville? They love those characters.”
“N-now—” she smiled weakly. “I guess I’m not that bad, Mister Smarty.”
“Mister Smarty,” I said. “Now, there’s a good line. You just keep it up, keep building on that stuff, and we’ll be all fixed up. We’ll be getting a nice offer for our property.”
“Maybe,” she snapped, “we’d better not wait for an offer. If you’re ashamed of your own wife, if you’re so worried about what your friends may think of me—”