Read Online Wild Town by Jim Thompson - Free Book Online

the telephone. Chuckling softly, Ted flicked his cigarette out the window. And then, as his eyes followed its course to the bottom of the shaft, he emitted a startled curse.
    He sat staring downward for a moment. His stomach churning queasily, a faint chill gripping his hard wiry body. But he had seen suicides before—leapers, like this one. And Dudley, thief and chiseler that he was bound to be, was certainly no great loss to the world.
    Ted slid from the window sill and lighted another cigarette. He dropped it to the floor, emerged from behind the key rack, and joined Eaton in the room-desk cage. The clerk was still indignant from his talk with the ruddy-faced man. He told Ted about it, his voice cracking and squeaking, announcing his conviction that the gentleman was plain raving mad.
    Ted nodded soberly. “It’s this weather,” he said. “You take a night like this, if people got any mental weakness at all, they blow their lids like bedbugs.”
    Eaton giggled cautiously. “Oh, you! What’s so different about the weather tonight?”
    “You ain’t noticed?” Ted shook his head. “Well, I guess you wouldn’t. But if you were an old-time hotel man, you’d know this was nut weather. The kind of night when people go sailing out their windows like airplanes.”
    “Oh, sure!” Eaton giggled again. “Now, what are you up to, you crazy thing?”
    “No kid, kid. Why, I’ll lay you ten to one we have a suicide tonight.”
    Eaton laughed ecstatically. Ted took him by the elbow, led him to the air-well window and pointed.
    The clerk looked out. He fainted. Leaving him lying on the floor, Ted picked up the telephone.
    He called Westbrook’s room first. There was no answer, which was as he had expected, since, by this time of night, the manager would be pretty thoroughly anaesthetized with alcohol.
    Ted jiggled the receiver hook, and called Bugs McKenna.

6
    W hen Bugs thought about that night later, everything seemed to move in the hazy yet well-defined grooves of a dream. He had committed murder, yet he had not committed it. It was something of the moment, something that would have no meaning once the moment was gone. Similarly, he was in dire danger, yet none at all. The means for extricating himself were ridiculously obvious: as easily and immediately accessible as those in a clumsily constructed story.
    Even after Lou Ford came on the scene—entered the dream—there was no rift in the smooth haziness. Ford, in fact, proved its happy culmination…A suicide, huh? Well, now, wasn’t that somethin’! Must’ve been an awful nice fella too, y’know, gettin’ hisself all cleaned up before he did it…
    Ford wasn’t at all suspicious. He had no reason to be—and almost every reason not to be—and Bugs was sure that he wasn’t. Later, within a few brief days—But that was later.
    Taking things as they happened:
    Bugs stared at the still-fluttering curtains of the window, and a black and terrible sickness engulfed him. He had killed Dudley. For the second time in his life, he had killed a man. He hadn’t meant to; it was an accident. But he had done it, and for a moment he wanted to die himself.
    The moment passed. The blackness and the sickness went away. Fear gripped him, shook him back into his senses. Shattering his regrets before they were fully formed.
    Dudley was no good. Dudley had brought about his own death. He had betrayed Westbrook, a man who had befriended him, and indirectly the betrayal had cost him his life.
    As to what had happened to the money that Dudley had stolen, and which he apparently believed had been stolen from him, Bugs did no thinking at all about that. Not at the time, he didn’t. He simply got out of the room fast, as soon as he had ascertained that the hall was clear. He was out the door almost as soon as Dudley was out the window. Racing up the stairs. Bursting into his own room, and picking up the telephone. Speaking with a yawn in his voice:
    “McKenna. Guess I fell asleep