Nothing More than Murder by Jim Thompson Read Free Book Online Page B

sliding?”
    Before he could say what he was getting ready to—that I couldn’t fire him and that if Elizabeth paid him better dough he’d do a better job—I slapped him. I gave him the old cop trick. A slap for taking up my time, a slap for not answering questions, a slap because he couldn’t answer ’em, a slap because it hurt my hand, a slap because he was such a sickening-looking son of a bitch with the blood running out of him. And a dozen good hard ones on general principles.
    I shoved fifteen bucks at him, his week’s pay, told him to go out the exit and keep going, and tossed his coat and hat after him. That’s the last I saw of him from that day to this.
    When the box office closed and Elizabeth came up, I was still sore enough to tell her what I’d done. The details.
    “Do you think that was necessary, Joe?” Her eyebrows went up.
    “What the hell can he do?” I said. “He’s too scared to sue, and he doesn’t have any friends or family here.”
    “Joe,” she said. “Ah, Joe.”
    I drove her home and sat in the kitchen while she made coffee and sandwiches. She’d hardly spoken a word since we’d left the show, and she didn’t say much more until the food was ready. Then she sat down across from me, studying, her chin in her hand.
    “How much money have you, Joe?” she said at last.
    I told her I had a little over two grand, around twenty-one fifty.
    “Well, I haven’t any,” she said. “No more than my operating capital. On top of that I can’t go on much longer without at least a little new equipment, and on top of that there’s a fifteen-hundred-dollar past-due mortgage on this house.”
    “I’ll lend you the money,” I said. “You can have anything I’ve got. I’ll get you a decent projectionist, too.”
    “For fifteen a week, Joe?” She shook her head. “And I couldn’t take a loan from you. I’d never be able to pay it back.”
    “Well—” I hesitated.
    “I’m a good ten years older than you are, Joe.”
    “So what?” I said. “Look—are we talking about the same thing? Well, then put it this way. I’ll run your machines until we can train some local kid to do a halfway decent job. I’ll get a couple weeks’ vacation and do it. And you can have the money as a gift or you can take it as a loan. Hell, you can’t ever tell when your luck will change. But as far as—”
    “Joe, I don’t—”
    “—but I’m not buying any women,” I said. “Not you, anyhow.”
    She looked at me and her eyes kept getting bigger and blacker, and there were tears in them and yet there was a smile, too, a smile that was like nothing I’d ever seen before or ever got again—from her or anyone else.
    “You’re good, Joe,” she said. “I hope you’ll always hold on to that thought. You are good.”
    “Aw, hell,” I said. “You’ve got me mixed up with someone else. I’m just a bum.”
    She shook her head ever so little, and her eyes got deeper and blacker; and she took a deep breath like a swimmer going under water.
    “Isn’t it a pity, Joe, that you won’t buy me—when you’re the only person I could possibly sell to?”
    I’ve only got a little more to say about us, our marriage, and probably it isn’t necessary.
    What smells good in the store may stink in the stew pot. You can’t blame a train for running on tracks. Ten years is a hell of a long time.
    So, to get back to the present…

10
    W hen I went downstairs around ten the next morning, Elizabeth was in the living-room and old Andy Taylor was with her. I shook hands and asked Elizabeth why she hadn’t called me.
    “I wouldn’t let her,” said Andy. “Just stopped by for a little visit; nothing important. Have a good trip to the city?”
    “So-so,” I said.
    “How’d you hurt your hand?”
    “I cut it on a bottle I was opening,” I said. “It’s nothing serious.”
    He’s a sharp old buzzard. A buzzard is just what he looks like, now that I come to think of it. He’s got reddish-gray