Wild Town (3 page)

“Just got here, did you?” he went on, subdued amusement in his voice. “Sure hope I didn’t keep you waitin’. Nothing I hate worse than a fella that keeps another fella waitin’ on him.”

“How about crooked cops?” said McKenna. “How do you feel about them?”

“Well…which kind you mean? The jailbird kind? The kind that ain’t smart enough to stay out of the pen?” Ford grinned at him, narrow-eyed. “Made a little check-back on you, McKenna. You got quite a record.”

“There’s nothing about grafting in it!”

“Well, now, don’t you feel bad about it,” Ford said soothingly. “A man can’t do everything, and you damned sure done just about everything else.”

“Look,” Bugs snarled. “What do you—”

“How do you like our fair city, McKenna? Reg’lar little jool of the prairie, ain’t it? A city of homes, churches and people. How’d you like to be one with our upstandin’, God-fearing citizenry, them homely souls that ain’t no more interested in a dollar than I am in my right leg?”

Bugs laughed in spite of himself. He remembered reluctantly that, however he might feel about Ford, he was indebted to him.

The deputy joined in his laughter. “Now, that’s better,” he said. “You got no use for me, maybe. I got none for you, maybe. And maybe we’d both feel different if we could see the other fellow’s side. But I reckon that would kind of put us out of step with the world, and it ain’t really necessary. We can still do business together.”

“What kind of business?”

“There’s a big hotel here in town—you saw it, I guess. They need a house dick. Pretty good payin’ job, and you get your meals and room along with it. I think I can land it for you.”

“Me? I could land a house dick’s job in a place like that?”

“You ain’t listening.” Ford said reprovingly. “I said I could land it for you. Owner’s wife is a good friend of mine. Sorry I can’t say the same for him.”

Bugs hesitated, chewing his lip. His head jerked in a curt negative. “I guess not. I guess I’d better not. I can’t get into any more trouble—I
can’t,
know what I mean? And if I was sneaked over on some guy, pushed down his throat—”

“You won’t be. Won’t be no deception, a-tall. Fact is, if I got him figured right, he’ll hire you because you have got a sorry record. He ain’t been exactly no angel himself, see? And he’ll think a guy that comes clean with him must be on the level.”

“But I wouldn’t be, is that it? That’s where you come in.”

“Do I?” Ford examined the tip of his cigar. “You know what Confucius say, McKenna? Man with bare ass always have big mouth.”

“There’s another one I like better,” Bugs said. “Many men drown in their own dung, but few die shouting for a doctor.”

“Hey, now!” Ford seemed honestly delighted. “That’s all right! But about this hotel job, I ain’t askin’ you to be anything
but
on the level. Ain’t askin’ you to be, don’t want you to be. The most way you can help me is just to do what you should do.”

“Yes?”

“I said so. This is a rough town and it’s a big place, and it gets a lot of people that ain’t exactly panty waists. A good tough house dick—and I know you ain’t no coward, whatever else you been—can save trouble for me.”

“Well,” Bugs hesitated troubledly. “It sounds all right. And Ford, by God, it has to be! If I got into just one more jam—”

“Sure,” Ford cut in soothingly, “you just can’t do it. A fella in your spot has to do everything he can to keep out of trouble, because he ain’t got too many chances left.”

“And you think I can handle the job, a guy that—that acts like I do? I don’t mean I don’t act all right, get me?” Bugs added hastily. “I give just as good as I get. But I won’t take any guff from anyone—and I don’t give a hoot in hell who they are either. And I won’t go around with a big possum grin on my face—”

“Yeah, sure, I understand,” Ford nodded. “You ain’t going to do no getting along with no one. It’s up to them to get along with you.”

“That’s not what I said! What I said was that—” Bugs scowled, then his face twisted into a sheepish grin. “I guess it did sound that way,” he said mildly. “I guess that’s probably the way it is.”

“Or been,” Ford corrected. “You live like a man should for a while, get yourself some reason for livin’, and you’ll feel a lot different. Well”—he got up from the desk—“guess we’re all set, huh? Let me run up and get my hat and coat, and we’ll be on our way.”

He left. Bugs got up and paced nervously around the room. As attractive as this set-up seemed, in some ways, he was worried about it. Suspicious of Ford. Ford’s clownish mannerisms were too exaggerated, no more than a mask for a coldly calculating and super-sharp mind. He wouldn’t go to these lengths simply to place an efficient house detective in the Hanlon Hotel.

Still—Bugs thought—how could he be so sure? He didn’t think like an ordinary man anymore; he’d reached the point where he was suspicious of everyone. Ford was on the take, of course, but you found graft just about everywhere. And aside from that, and his treatment of the girl, Amy…

Bugs frowned, remembering. Firmly, he removed her from his calculations about Ford. Maybe she was asking for that kind of treatment.
But she wasn’t, she couldn’t be!
At any rate, she was none of his business.

Bugs paused in front of the old fieldstone fireplace, studying the several pictures which stood propped on the mantel. There was one of a young boy—Ford, obviously—standing beside a collie dog. There was one of a spade-bearded, bespectacled man, and another of an exotic-looking, proud-eyed brunette in a high-necked shirtwaist. There was—the remaining picture had toppled over. Bugs picked it up, and stared into the face of the girl, Amy.

Her lips were parted slightly. Her eyes looked straight into his; smiling, dancing with happy expectancy. Pleased with herself and him, and delighted that life had brought two such nice people together.

And from right behind him, Ford coughed.

Bugs jumped. He dropped the picture back to the mantel. “Hope you don’t mind,” he mumbled. “I was just, uh—”

“Aw, now, sure not,” Ford drawled. “You don’t see a dawg like that very often. He was the first and last dawg I ever had. Just seemed like I couldn’t never find another one to measure up to him after he passed on.”

“I see. Uh—those are your parents?”

“Yep. Fine-looking woman, ain’t she? Traced her ancestry clear back to the Con-kee-stadors. Let’s see, now”—Ford waggled his cigar thoughtfully. “I guess it was right after that dawg picture was taken that she run off with a cattle buyer.”

Bugs didn’t know what to say to that. Nor to the deputy’s next statement that his mother was one helluva smart woman. “Didn’t try to do what she wasn’t made to.” But he felt that Ford had said a great deal to him.

“Now, that little gal there,” Ford went on. “That’s my fee-an-say, Amy Standish. Teaches school here in town. Probably do a lot better some place else, but she’s lived here all her life and her family before her for God knows how long. So it looks like I’m stuck with her.”

“You’re
stuck!
” Bugs turned on him. “I’d say you were damned lucky!”

“Well, now, I guess you would,” Ford nodded, “just seein’ her in that old picture. But she’s got fat as a hawg since it was taken.”

“Fat? Why, you’re—” Reddening, Bugs choked off the sentence.

Ford looked at him innocently. “Yeah? You was sayin’, McKenna?”

“Nothing. Are we going to stand here talking all day, or are we going to see about that job?”

“Just as soon as I make a phone call,” Ford said. “Want to do me a little favor while you’re waitin’? There’s a sign out there on the door—keep fogettin’ to take it down—an’ if you’ll get a screwdriver out of the—”

“Do it yourself!” Bugs grunted. “I’ll wait for you in the car.”

He slammed out of the house and climbed into the convertible. A couple of minutes later, Ford joined him. He had a fresh cigar in his mouth. He was wearing a coat that matched his blue serge trousers, and a tan ranch-style hat.

“Couldn’t reach Mrs. Hanlon at the hotel,” he announced, as he headed the car toward town. “Have to look around a little for her.”

“All right,” Bugs said.

“Now, I been thinkin’—got an idea I better fix you up with a gun for your job. Don’t figure you’ll have any call to use it, but sometimes the best way of not needin’ one is to have it.”

“Yeah?” Bugs said. “What about yourself?”

“Oh, well, me, now…” Ford paused to turn the car into the curb. “That’s a different situation. Me, I’m never around any action. Never run into nothing where a gun might be necessary.”

He had parked at the end of the old town’s main street, the beginning of the boom town’s chief thoroughfare. They walked to the end of it, then crossed in the deep reddish dust, and started back up the plank sidewalk on the other side.

Mammoth sixteen-wheeled trucks lumbered down the street toward the oilfields. The smell of white-corn whiskey drifted from doorways. There was an incessant tinkling of juke-boxes, a clang-clinking of slot machines, the rattle-and-smack of dice and the whirr-and-click of roulette wheels. The noise rose and fell, a chorus that faded with the passing of one doorway and picked up, in perfect tempo and tune, at the next.

There were no “women.” None, at least, who appeared to be anything but women (no quotes). So Ford apparently did draw the line somewhere. The men were young, not-so-young, but never old. Most of them wore hats spattered with drill-mud, and the “rattlesnake insurance” of laced eighteen-inch boots.

Ford paused at each establishment and glanced inside. Near the end of the second block, he looked over the swinging doors of a gambling house, and gave Bugs a nod of satisfaction.

“In here,” he said, taking a pair of black kid gloves from his pocket.

He began putting them on, smoothing them over his tapering, delicate-looking fingers. A man came hurrying through the swinging doors, a burly, pasty-faced man with a slit for a mouth and eyes that were like tiny black buttons.

“Well, Lou!” He smirked nervously. “Saw you lookin’ inside. Nothing wrong, is there?”

Ford didn’t answer him. He didn’t look up from pulling on his gloves.

“Lou. Be reasonable, huh, keed?” There was desperation in the guy’s voice. “I didn’t know she was in there. I swear I didn’t! I just this moment came back from eatin’, and I told those jerks I got working for me a thousand times not to let her—”

Bugs didn’t see the blow, or, rather, two blows, that Ford delivered. They were so unexpected and executed so swiftly that he saw little more than their results…The man bent double suddenly, gasping for breath, ropish food spouting from his mouth. The man spinning ludicrously, spin-staggering off of the curb and collapsing in the street.

Ford brushed his gloves, one against the palm of the other. He went through the twin swinging doors, and immediately two chairs crashed out through the windows.

Bugs blinked and shook his head. Customers were stampeding out the doorway, but he lunged through them and past them to the inside. Again, he could hardly believe what he saw.

Ford was strolling toward the rear of the room, leaving a shambles of broken furniture and fixtures behind him, adding to it with every step he took. He moved unhurriedly, effortlessly; he was completely unruffled and the cigar was still in his teeth. And yet he gave the impression of raging, barely controllable fury. It came from the very deliberation of his movements, perhaps: a feeling that he was building up, relishing and prolonging the savagery, forestalling the cataclysmic climax that would end his game.

A couple of the joint’s employees rushed him, one from each side. Ford rocked them with two simultaneous backhands, whipped his arms around their necks and crashed their heads together.

And he hardly seemed to break stride. He was moving on before they hit the floor, tipping his hat politely to a woman who stood pressed against the rear wall.

She was the last customer in the place, the only remaining person aside from Bugs and Ford. An ash-blonde, she had a kind of washed-out but interesting prettiness; full, high breasts, and a waist approximately half the circumference of her hips.

“Now, that was a hell of a thing to do!” she said angrily. “Honestly, Lou Ford! I—I—could just absolutely murder you!”

“Told you to keep out of these joints,” Ford said. “Told ’em to keep you out.”

“And just who are you to order me around? Where do you get off at telling me what to do with my own money?”

“But it ain’t your own,” Ford said gently. “Might not be none of your own either, if you got hard-pressed and had to start grabbin’. No, sir, sure might not be, and that’s a fact.”

The woman looked at him sulkily. “Well,” she said. “Well, anyway, you didn’t need to act like
this!
”

“No?” Ford shrugged. “Well, maybe not. But, look—I want you to meet a fella…Mrs. Hanlon, Mr. McKenna.”

Her eyes swept Bugs contemptuously, taking in the worn clothes, the run-down shoes, the tired haggard face. Then she reddened, for far from flinching, she found Bugs looking her over in exactly the same way; adding her up point by point, and arriving at an obviously unflattering total.

“Well!”
she said, unconsciously sucking in her breath. And then she smiled suddenly and extended her hand. “I’m very glad to meet you, Mr.—Mr. McKenna, is it?”

“Yeah. That’s right, Mrs.—Mrs. Hanlon?”

He grinned at her insolently. But Joyce Hanlon refused to be offended. She moved in on him, clinging to his hand, until her breasts were almost against his body. She looked up at him through silky eyelashes, spoke in the voice of a plaintive child.

“I’m sorry. Don’t be mad, hmmm? Pretty please? Pretty please with sugar on it?”

Bugs had no defense for that kind of stuff. He turned six different colors at once; mumbled desperately that s-sure, he wasn’t angry and he hoped she wasn’t and he was sorry, too, and—and so on, until he was sure he must sound like the world’s biggest horse’s ass.

At last Ford rescued him with the suggestion that they get out of the place. Go somewhere they could talk. They went to one of the old-town restaurants, with Joyce holding to Bugs’s arm. And strangely it didn’t fluster him much now. When she sat down in the booth opposite him and Ford, he missed the pressure on his biceps, the intimate, secretive probing of her fingers.