Savage Night
Jim Thompson
Little, Brown and Company
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1
I’d caught a slight cold when I changed trains at Chicago; and three days in New York—three days of babes and booze while I waited to see The Man—hadn’t helped it any. I felt lousy by the time I arrived in Peardale. For the first time in years, there was a faint trace of blood in my spit.
I walked through the little Long Island Railway station, and stood looking up the main street of Peardale. It was about four blocks long, splitting the town into two ragged halves. It ended at the teachers’ college, a half-dozen red brick buildings scattered across a dozen acres or so of badly tended campus. The tallest business building was three stories. The residences looked pretty ratty.
I started coughing a little, and lighted a cigarette to quiet it. I wondered whether I could risk a few drinks to pull me out of my hangover. I needed them. I picked up my two suitcases and headed up the street.
It was probably partly due to my mood, but the farther I got into Peardale the less I liked it. The whole place had a kind of decayed, dying-on-the-vine appearance. There wasn’t any local industry apparently; just the farm trade. And you don’t have commuters in a town ninety-five miles from New York City. The teachers’ college doubtless helped things along a little, but I figured it was damned little. There was something sad about it, something that reminded me of bald-headed men who comb their side hair across the top.
I walked a couple blocks without sighting a bar, either on the main drag or the side streets. Sweating, trembling a little inside, I set the suitcase down and lighted another cigarette. I coughed some more. I cursed The Man to myself, calling him every kind of a son-of-a-bitch I could think of.
I’d have given everything I had just to be back at the filling station in Arizona.
But it couldn’t be that way. It was either me and The Man’s thirty grand, or no me, no nothing.
I’d stopped in front of a store, a shoe store, and as I straightened I caught a glimpse of myself in the window. I wasn’t much to look at. You could say I’d improved a hundred per cent in the last eight or nine years, and you wouldn’t be lying. But I still didn’t add up to much. It wasn’t that my kisser would stop clocks, understand, or anything like that. It was on account of my size. I looked like a boy trying to look like a man. I was just five feet tall.
I turned away from the window, then turned back again. I wasn’t supposed to have much dough, but I didn’t need to be rolling in it to wear good shoes. New shoes had always done something for me. They made me feel like something, even if I couldn’t look it. I went inside.
There was a little showcase full of socks and garters up near the front, and a chubby middle-aged guy, the proprietor, I guess, was bending over it reading a newspaper. He barely glanced up at me, then jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
“Right up the street there, sonny,” he said. “Those red brick buildings you see.”
“What?” I said. “I—”
“That’s right. You just go right on up there, and they’ll fix you up. Tell you what boarding house to go to and anything else you need to know.”
“Look,” I said. “I—”
“You do that, sonny.”
If there’s anything I don’t like to be called, it’s sonny. If there’s a goddamned thing in the world I don’t like to be called, it’s sonny. I swung the suitcases high as I could and let them drop. They came down with a jar that almost shook the glasses off his nose.
I walked back to the fitting chairs and sat down. He followed me, red-faced and hurt-looking, and sat down on the stool in front of me.
“You didn’t need to do that,” he said, reproachfully. “I’d watch that temper if I were you.”
He was right; I was going to have to watch it. “Sure,” I grinned. “It just kind of gets my goat to be called sonny. You probably feel the same way when people call you fatty.”
He started to scowl, then shifted it into a laugh. He wasn’t a bad guy, I guess. Just a nosy know-it-all small-towner. I asked for size five double-A elevators, and he began dragging the job out to get in as many questions as possible.
Was I going to attend the teachers’ college? Wasn’t I entering a little late in the term? Had I got myself a place to stay yet?
I said that I’d been delayed by sickness, and that I was going to stay at the J.C. Winroy residence.
“Jake Winroy’s!” He looked up sharply. “Why you don’t—why are you staying there?”
“Mainly because of the price,” I said. “It was the cheapest place for board and room the college had listed.”
“Uh-huh,” he nodded, “and do you know why it’s cheap, son—young man? Because there ain’t no one else that will stay there.”
I let my mouth drop open. I sat staring at him, worried-looking. “Gosh,” I said. “You don’t mean he’s that Winroy?”
“Yes, sir!” He bobbed his head triumphantly. “That’s just who he is, the very same! The man who handled the payoff for that big horse-betting ring.”
“Gosh,” I said again. “Why I thought he was in jail!”
He smiled at me pityingly. “You’re way behind the times, s—what’d you say your name was?”
“Bigelow. Carl Bigelow.”
“Well, you’re way behind on your news, Carl. Jake’s been out for—well—six-seven months now. Got pretty sick of jail, I reckon. Just couldn’t take it even if the big boys were paying him plenty to stay there and keep his mouth shut.”
I kept on looking worried and kind of scared.
“Understand, now, I’m not saying that you won’t be perfectly all right there at the Winroy place. They’ve got one other boarder—not a student, a fellow that works over to the bakery—and he seems to do all right. There hasn’t been a detective around the house in weeks.”
“Detectives!” I said.
“Sure. To keep Jake from being killed. Y’see, Carl”—he spelled it out for me, like someone talking to an idiot child—“Y’see Jake is the key witness in that big bookie case. He’s the only one who can put the finger on all them crooked politicians and judges and so on who were taking bribes. So when he agrees to turn state’s evidence and they let him out of jail, the cops are afraid he might get killed.”
“D-did—” My voice shook; talking with this clown was doing me a lot of good. It was all I could do to keep from laughing. “Did anyone ever try it?”
“Huh-uh…Stand up a minute, Carl. Feel okay? Well, let’s try the other shoe…Nope, no one ever tried it. And the more you think about it, the easier it is to see why. The public just ain’t much interested in seeing those bookies prosecuted, as things stand now. They can’t see why it’s so wrong to bet with a bookie when it’s all right to bet at the track. But taking bets is one thing, and murder is another. The public wouldn’t go for that, and o’course everyone’d know who was responsible. Them bookies would be out of business. There’d be such a stink the politicians would have to stage a cleanup, no matter how they hated to.”
I nodded. He’d hit the nail right on the head. Jake Winroy couldn’t
be murdered. At least he couldn’t be murdered in a way that looked like murder.
“What do you think will happen, then?” I said. “They’ll just let Ja—Mr. Winroy go ahead and testify?”
“Sure,” he snorted, “if he lives long enough. They’ll let him testify when the case comes to trial—forty or fifty years from now…Want to wear ’em?”
“Yeah. And just throw the old ones away,” I said.
“Yep, that’s the way it’s working out. Stalling. Getting the case postponed. They’ve already done it twice, and they’ll keep right on doing it. I’d be willing to bet a hundred dollars that the case never does get into court!”
He’d have lost his money. The trial was set for three months from now, and it wouldn’t be postponed.
“Well,” I said, “that’s the way it goes, I guess. I’m glad you think it’ll be all right for me to stay with the Winroys.”
“Sure,” he winked at me. “Might even have yourself a little fun. Mrs. Winroy is quite a stepper—not that I’m saying anything against her, understand.”
“Of course not,” I said. “Quite a—uh—stepper, huh?”
“Looks like she could be, anyways, if she had the chance. Jake married her after he left here and moved to New York—after he was riding high, wide and handsome. It must be quite a comedown for her, living like she has to now.”
I moved up to the front of the store with him to get my change.
I turned left at the first corner, and walked down an unpaved side street. There were no houses on it, only the rear end of the corner business building on one side of the alley, and a fenced in backyard on the other. The sidewalk was a narrow, rough-brick path, but it felt good under my feet. I felt caller, more on even terms with the world. The job didn’t look so lousy any more. I hadn’t wanted it and I still didn’t. But now it was mostly because of Jake.
The poor bastard was kind of like me. He hadn’t been anything, but he’d done his damnedest to be something. He’d pulled out of this hick town, and got himself a barber’s job in New York. It was the only work he knew—the only thing he knew anything about—so he’d done that. He’d got himself into exactly the right shop, one down around City Hall. He’d played up to exactly the right customers, laughing over their corny jokes, kissing their tails, making them trust him. When the smashup came, he hadn’t swung a razor in years and he was handling a million-dollar-a-month payoff.
The poor bastard, no looks, no education, no nothing—and he’d pulled himself up to the top. And now he was back on the bottom again. Running the one-chair barber shop he’d started with, trying to make a little dough out of the Winroy family residence that was too run-down to sell.
All the jack he’d made in the rackets was gone. The state had latched onto part of it and the federal government had taken another big bite, and lawyers had eaten up the rest. All he had was his wife, and the dope was that he couldn’t get a kind word out of her, let alone anything else.
I walked along thinking about him, feeling sorry for him; and I didn’t really notice the big black Cadillac pulled up at the side of the street nor the man sitting in it. I was just about to pass on by when I heard a, “Psst!” and I saw that it was Fruit Jar.
I dropped the suitcases, and stepped off the curb.
“You stupid pissant,” I said. “What’s the idea?”
“Temper.” He grinned at me, his eyes narrowing. “What’s your idea, sonny? Your train got in an hour ago.”
I shook my head, too sore to answer him. I knew The Man hadn’t put him on me. If The Man had been afraid of a runout, I wouldn’t have been here.
“Beat it,” I said. “Goddam you, if you don’t get out of town and stay out, I will.”
“Yeah? What do you think The Man will say about that?”
“You tell him,” I said. “Tell him you drove down here in a circus wagon and stopped me on the street.”
He wet his lips, uneasily. I lighted a cigarette, dropped the package into my pocket and brought my hand out. I slid it along the back of the seat.
“Nothing to get excited about,” he mumbled. “You’ll get into the city Saturday? The Man’ll be back, and—oof!”
“That’s a switchblade,” I said. “You’ve got about an eighth of an inch in your neck. Like to have a little more?”
“You crazy bas—oof!”
I laughed and let the knife drop down upon the seat.
“Take it with you,” I said. “I’ve been meaning to throw it away. And tell The Man I’ll look forward to seeing him.
He cursed me, ramming the car into gear. He took off so fast I had to jump back to keep from going with him.
Grinning, I went back to the walk.
I’d been waiting for an excuse to hand one to Fruit Jar. Right from the beginning, when he’d first made contact with me in Arizona, he’d been picking at me. I hadn’t done anything to him—but right away he was riding me, calling me kid, and sonny. I wondered what was behind it.
Fruit Jar needed dough like a boar hog needs tits. He’d dropped out of the bootleg racket before the war and gone into used cars. Now he was running lots in Brooklyn and Queens; he was making more money legit—if you can call used cars legit—than he’d ever made with the booze.
But if he hadn’t wanted to come in, why was he coming in so much farther than he had to? He hadn’t needed to come down here today. In fact, The Man wasn’t going to like it a bit. So…So?
I was still thinking when I reached the Winroy residence.
2
If you’ve been around the East much, you’ve seen a lot of houses like it. Two stories high but looking a lot taller because they’re so narrow in depth; steep-roofed with a chimney at each end and a couple of gabled attic windows about halfway down. You could gold-plate them and they’d look like hell, but they’re usually painted in colors that make them look twice as bad as they normally would. This one was a crappy green with puke-brown trimming.
I almost stopped feeling sorry for Winroy when I saw it. A guy who would live in a place like that had it coming to him. You know—maybe I’m a little nuts on the subject—you know, there’s just no sense to things like that. I’d bought a little shack in Arizona, but it sure didn’t stay a shack long. I painted it an ivory white with a blue trim, and I did the window frames with a bright red varnish.…Pretty? It was like one of those pictures you see on Christmas cards.
…I pushed the sagging gate open. I climbed the rickety steps to the porch, and rang the bell. I rang it a couple of times, listening to it ring inside, but there wasn’t any answer. I couldn’t hear anyone stirring around.
I turned and glanced around the bare yard—too goddamned lazy to plant a little grass. I looked at the paint-peeled fence with half the pickets knocked off. Then my eyes came up and I looked across the street, and I saw her.
I couldn’t let on, but I knew who she was. Even in a jersey and jeans, her hair pulled back in a horse’s tail. She was standing in the door of a little bar down the street, not sure whether I was worth bothering with.
I went back down the steps and through the gate, and she started hesitantly across the street.
“Yes?” she called, while she was still several steps away. “Can I help you?” She had one of those husky well-bred voices—voices that are trained to sound well bred. One look at that frame of hers, and you knew the kind of breeding she’d had: straight out of Beautyrest by box-springs. One look at her eyes, and you knew she could call you more dirty words than you’d find in a mile of privies.
“I’m looking for Mr. or Mrs. Winroy,” I said.
“Yes? I’m Mrs. Winroy.”
“How do you do?” I said. “I’m Carl Bigelow.”
“Yes?” That broad-A yes was getting on my nerves. “Should that mean something to me?”
“That depends,” I said, “on whether fifteen dollars a week means anything to you.”
“Fif—Oh, of course!” She laughed suddenly. “I’m terribly sorry, Car—Mr. Bigelow. Our hir
ed girl—our maid, that is—had to go home to her folks—a family crisis of some kind—and we were really expecting you last week and—and things have been in such a turmoil that—”
“Surely. Of course—” I cut her off. I hated to see anyone work so hard for a few bucks. “It’s my fault, entirely. Can I make up for it by buying you a drink?”
“Well, I was—” She hesitated, doubtfully, and I began to like her a little better. “If you’re sure you—”
“I can,” I said. “Today’s a celebration. Tomorrow I’ll start tightening up.”
“Well,” she said, “in that case—”
I bought her two drinks. Then, because I could see she wanted to ask for it, I gave her thirty dollars.
“Two weeks in advance,” I said. “Okay?”
“Oh, now,” she protested, huskily, that well-bred voice hitting on all cylinders. “That’s entirely unnecessary. After all—we—Mr. Winroy and I aren’t doing this for money. We felt it was more or less our duty, you know, living here in a college town to—”
“Let’s be friends,” I said.
“Friends? I’m afraid I don’t—”
“Sure. So we can relax. I hadn’t been in town more than fifteen minutes before I knew all about Mr. Winroy’s trouble.”
Her face had gotten a little stiff. “I wish you’d told me,” she said. “You must have thought I was a terrible fool to—”
“Will you,” I said, “relax?” And I gave her my best grin, big and boyish and appealing. “If you keep talking about being in turmoil and a terrible fool and all that stuff, you’ll get me dizzy. And I’m dizzy enough just looking at you.”
She laughed. She gave my hand a squeeze. “Listen to the man! Or did you mean that the right way?”
“You know how I meant it,” I said.
“I’ll bet I look a fright. Honest to Hannah, Carl, I—Oop, listen to me. Calling you Carl, already.”
“Everybody does,” I said. “I wouldn’t know how to take it if anyone called me mister.”