The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction (23 page)

The violent anger faded. Losing the money wouldn’t hurt Fran and the kids half as much as it would their losing me. “Okay,” I said. “But I think you’ve got the wrong guy. I’m broke. I deposited my money in the bank this noon.” It was a last desperate play. It didn’t work.

The elevator door opened and she whispered: “Be quiet, now.”

We got in the elevator. The operator hardly glanced at us. A guy and a gal, arm in arm, getting into an elevator. What was that to get excited about? The girl, undoubtedly, was registered here. So she was taking a friend to her room. It was early in the evening. What was wrong with that?

Neither of us spoke after she said, “Fourteen” to the operator.

I remembered, crazily, that the fourteenth floor in all hotels is really the thirteenth. It’s supposed to be less unlucky that way. It wasn’t for me.

We got out and she guided me to the left, down the corridor. I heard the elevator door slam shut behind us. There was no sound in the whole hotel. Even our footsteps were muffled on the carpeting. I began to get really scared. The hollow of my spine got wet with sweat and my shirt stuck back there. Perspiration trickled coldly down my ribs, too. I thought once again, desperately, of yanking away, making a break. But at the same instant I realized that the girl would be even less likely to hesitate about killing me up here, with no witnesses. No . . . My chance was gone. If there’d ever been any chance.

She stopped in front of 1409 and still holding that gun in my ribs, she crossed her other hand over to the right side pocket and extracted the hotel key. The door opened easily and she unhooked my arm, pulled the gun out from under her coat and shoved me inside. There was a short hallway and the room at the other end was lighted. The gun at my spine forced me along, into that room.

There was a man sitting there. I had never seen him before in my life. But he seemed to know me. He said: “Hello, Morgan.”

He was slouched in a green, leather-covered easy chair. A cigarette dangled from one of his slim, pale, long-fingered hands. Streamers of smoke went straight up. He was small and very thin, but not gangsterish-looking. Not in the movie tradition, anyhow. His hair was crew-cropped, a mousy brown color. His ears looked too large for his narrow, bony skull. He had level, gray, intelligent-looking eyes and they weren’t shifty at all. They held my gaze, almost amusedly. But his mouth was what told me I was in for a hard time. It was tiny and pursed tightly as though he was mad at somebody and all tense and strung-up, even though he was sitting there so at ease and relaxed.

Still looking at me, he said to the girl: “What the hell took you so long, Viv?”

She stood off to one side still holding the gun. “Broth
er!
” she said. “What a Sunday-school boy. I did everything. Everything but go over and sit on his lap. I would have done that, but that spaniel-faced old barkeep didn’t seem too crazy about what I was up to. Anyhow, I couldn’t get him to bite. He was running right out on me and I had to practically kidnap him, right in the lobby. And brother, don’t think that didn’t make me nervous!”

That was funny. I’d never even given a thought to the fact that she’d probably been just as scared as I was down there. I said, suddenly: “Look, what’s this all about? If you want my money, I’ll give it to you. You’d take it, anyhow. But, please take it easy. I – I’ve got a wife and kids.” My voice broke and I felt sick, ashamed, pleading, begging with these people. But I’d have gotten down on my knees to them, right then, if it would have helped me get out of there any faster.

“Money,” the man in the chair said. He laughed. It was a quick, sputtering sound. “Sure, we’ll take your money. Throw me your wallet.”

I reached inside my jacket pocket and took out the wallet, tossed it to him. “I’d like the wallet back.”

He took out the sheaf of bills, riffled through them. He tossed the wallet back to me. “Over a hundred bucks more,” he said to the girl, “Vivian, I’ve got the papers all ready. You keep that gun on him. But if there’s any trouble, watch what you’re doing. Don’t shoot me by mistake.”

He reached down to the armchair-side old-fashioned radio, and I saw that it was already lit up, turned on. He twisted the volume knob slowly and an orchestra playing a popular song grew louder and louder until it was almost deafening in the room. He said to Vivian:

“Now, if you have to shoot, it won’t be so noticeable. Nor when he hollers. I think he’ll holler real good.”

With the racket of the radio, I could only half hear what he said. But my mind filled in the rest of it. I was suddenly confused and I felt cold and ill the way you do when you’ve got a fever and you have to get up out of bed at night. I was weak as a child.

I tried to figure what this was all about but I couldn’t make it.

I looked toward the hotel room desk and saw that it was covered with papers. The man got up out of the chair. He said: “Vivian, get behind him with that shooter and ease him over to the desk.”

She jabbed the muzzle of the gun against my spine and I stepped toward the desk. “Morgan,” the man said. His voice got taut, his words clipped. “Morgan, I’m going to ask you to sign something. I hope you refuse. I hope you try to give us trouble. Because then we’ll have to make you sign it. And that’s what I’d like to have to do.”

I looked at him and he held his hand out toward me, his skinny, white, long-fingered hands. In the pinkish palms he held two rolls of nickels. He closed his fingers around them. His knuckles stood out sharply. With the weight of those nickels in them, those knuckles would make his fists like gnarled clubs. There was suddenly a roaring in my ears and my heart seemed to be up and choking in my throat. I hadn’t been in a fight, been hit by a fist, since I was a kid. And only twice, then. I’d always hated fist fights. I’d avoided them. It made me ill to hit somebody else and to feel another’s fist making that sickly smack noise against my own face was worse.

Turning away from him, I looked down at the top paper on the desk. It was a letter on Emcee Publishing Company letterhead stationery. My eyes seemed to ache and I had trouble reading. I kept wiping the flat of my hands up and down my trousers but they still stayed slick with sweat. The letter was dated today. It said:

To Whom It May Concern:

For the past year I have steadily and regularly been embezzling company funds. All told, I have taken nearly $50,000. This was done with the aid and connivance of Miss Elizabeth Tremayne, of the Business Department. How, will be obvious, Monday, when the books are examined.

The money has all been spent on gambling on horses and in bad stock market investments. I’d hoped to win or earn the money back and prevent eventual discovery, but this did not work out.

For all the trouble and disillusion this is going to cause, I am truly sorry.

I herewith, also append a list of the dozen or more different signatures I used on the company checks, to remove any doubt that I’ve been the culprit.

(Signed)

Under this was a list of signatures, names I didn’t even recognize. But as I looked at this letter, it flashed through my mind what this was all about. Emcee Publication’s fiscal year started on Monday. A complete auditing would be made. Whoever
had
been embezzling knew their time was up and they couldn’t avoid discovery. I was going to be the fall guy – in advance.

Something hit me in the cheek and for a moment I didn’t feel any pain. Only shock and a slight dizziness. But the blow whirled me around. Something hit me in the stomach. I bent way over, took a stumbling step forward, my legs apart, and almost fell. I’d never felt so sick to my stomach. Yet all I could do was make gagging sounds. I couldn’t seem to get any breath. As though from a great distance, down a long, wind-rushing tunnel I heard someone say: “Sign that letter.”

The sickness left. I straightened up. The girl behind me said: “Give him a chance, Smitty. Don’t bang up his face.”

I stood there sucking in breath, trying to focus my eyes. I leaned on the desk, with both hands, looked down at that letter. That letter! I couldn’t sign that, no matter what they did to me. I couldn’t take the rap for somebody else’s crookedness.

I thought of the whispering and sniggering there’d be at the Emcee offices, Monday, after news of that letter spread around . . . “That Kip Morgan,” they’d say. “Who’d ever have thought it? But they say those quiet guys are the ones you’ve got to watch out for. Listen, I’ll bet some dame got plenty of that dough, too!” . . . I could see the newspaper headlines, especially in the Wildwood Press:

LOCAL MAN CONFESSES
$50,000
THEFT
!

I thought of my neighbours, of my kids going to school and the other kids pointing at them, whispering. I knew how cruel kids could be about things like that.

I wouldn’t do it. To hell with them. I wasn’t going to sign it.

Smitty hit me again. His weighted, sharp-knuckled fist caught me in the kidney. I went twisting over to one side like a stagger-drunk. Pain ran all through me in little flashes of fire, then ran all together in a balled-up flame of aching agony all up my left side and back. I felt tears hot and blurry in my eyes, then running down my cheeks. I looked at Smitty. His wide-set gray eyes were crinkled at the corners as though he was grinning. But his little kewpie doll mouth stayed the same; it showed no expression.

“You’re a real hero, aren’t you?” he said. “That’s beautiful. I like heroes.”

He came toward me. And I suddenly didn’t care about the girl with the gun behind me. Let her shoot me. Let them kill me. At least the pain would be over. Then they could never make me sign that letter. I swung at him with every ounce of strength I had left. He picked the blow off with his left arm like a lovetap. He took hold of me with his left hand, by the shirt front. His right hand whip-snapped back and forth across my cheeks and mouth, stinging hard. I felt the salty blood in my mouth.

Then his balled, weighted fist hit me in the stomach again. I don’t remember falling. But I was on the floor, staring down at the green wall-to-wall rug. I saw Smitty’s feet in front of me. He wore patent leather shoes, like dancing pumps, with small black leather bows on them. Then his feet disappeared. There was pain – vast, searing pain all through my ribs as he kicked me.

I cursed. I called him every filthy word I’d ever heard. I was crying, sobbing with rage and pain. I said: “Why are you doing this to me? Why, why? I never did anything to you! Stop it! Please, please stop!”

“For a thousand bucks we’re doing it,” Smitty said. I could hear him quite plainly in the momentary lull between the end of a song on the radio and the commercial. “For a grand I’d kick hell out of my own mother. So it’s nothing personal, understand. But you’d better sign that letter.”

The radio music blasted out again. I felt somebody grab me under the arms, lift me. Somehow I got my feet together under me and stood. But not for long. My knees seemed to have no bones in them. I fell backward and sat down on the edge of the bed. I leaned over and put my face in my hands, then looked at the smear of blood on my fingers.

There was suddenly a terrible noise and excruciating pain in my ear. It wasn’t until later that I realized he’d slapped me over the ear with his cupped hand. For a moment, I couldn’t even hear the radio. I rocked in agony and blubbered. I called to Fran to help me. I kept calling her name. It didn’t do any good. Smitty kept slapping and cuffing me and when I’d fall over on my side onto the bed, his fist would wallop into my ribs or kidneys.

After a while there was just a void of pain. I got numb all over, didn’t think, didn’t react. And then I realized he wasn’t hitting me any more. I looked up through tear-fogged eyes at him and knew that as long as I didn’t react he’d ease up on me. At the same time, sharp thoughts seemed to flash suddenly through my brain. I felt filled with cunning. I told myself: “I can outsmart this guy. I can be crooked, too. I can double-deal
him!
Okay, I’ll sign their damned letter. I’ve been stupid. What difference does it make? This is only Friday night and I’ve got my office keys. I’ve got until Monday morning. I can prove my innocence. What good is that piece of paper? I can show my cuts and bruises, prove that I was forced to sign it. I’ll go right to the police and I’ll help them find out who it was really stole that money.

Leering at Smitty and Vivian, I got up from the bed. I reached out toward the desk. “All – all right,” I said. “I’ll sign.”

I started to walk toward the desk but my legs gave out. Smitty had to put his arm around me, hold me up until I got to the desk, could lean on it with one hand. I picked up the pen. I signed their confession for them. I had hardly put the pen down when Smitty hit me in the temple. There was an explosion of multicolored lights. There was darkness. Then blinding light again. On and off. On and off.

I wasn’t completely out. I was aware of being dragged along the floor by hands under my armpits. I could hear voices. I could hear that the radio had been turned off. But I couldn’t move. There was a tingling all through my arms and legs the same as you get when you lie on one arm and it goes numb. I heard Smitty swear. He said: “Shut the window again, Viv. We can’t do it, now. There’s a damn cop standing in that doorway right across the street.”

“So what?” she said. “He isn’t looking up here. We can get him dumped out and the cop won’t know anything about it until he hits the pavement. We’ll be gone by then.”

“Don’t be stupid. Suppose he
does
just happen to glance up while we’re easing him out the window. We’d never get out of the hotel.”

Oh, yes, I’d been very clever, very cunning, to sign that confession for them. So clever, so brilliant – so stupified with pain, I hadn’t realized they couldn’t let me live. I was going to be a “suicide”. That would tie in beautifully with the confession. How could they let me live to contest the thing?

Some of the numbness left my arms and legs. I realized I was huddled in a heap against the wall under the hotel-room window. I thought of the way it would look out that window, down fourteen – no thirteen – flights. I thought about air rushing past me, taking my breath away as I’d fall, wheeling, turning, over and over. I thought of the sound I’d make, hitting the pavement down there.