The Kill-Off

The Kill-Off by Jim Thompson Read Free Book Online

Book: The Kill-Off by Jim Thompson Read Free Book Online
Authors: Jim Thompson
fraction as much, as it means to me. Not to Janie. Not to anyone.
    No one cares about the music.
    Except for me it would vanish, and there would be no more.
    Slowly, she unbuttoned her dress. Slowly, she pulled it down off one shoulder. I stared at her, grinning—wanting to yell and wanting to weep. And blackness swam up on me from the floor, dropped down over me from above.
    I came out of it.
    She was kneeling in front of me. My head was against her, and she was wet with my tears. And she was crying, and holding me.
    “Mister McGuire…W-what’s the matter, M-Mist—Oh, darling, baby, honey-lamb! What can I—”
    She brushed her lips against my forehead, stroked my hair, whispering:
    “Better now, sweetheart? Is Danny’s dearest honey-pie bet—”
    “You rotten, low-down little whore,” I said.
    Pete Pavlov was waiting at the station when we came in late Thursday night. The boys and Danny went on down to their cottages, and I went to his office with him.
    I like Pete. I like his bluntness, his going straight to the point of a matter. There is no compromise about him. He knows what he wants and he will take nothing else, and whether it suits anyone else makes not the damnedest bit of difference to him.
    He did not ask about Janie, nor the why of the new band. That was my business, and Pete minds his own business. He simply poured us a couple whopping drinks, tossed me a cigar and asked me if I knew where he could lay his hands on a fast ten or twenty thousand.
    I said I wished I did. He shrugged and said he didn’t really suppose I would, and just to forget he’d said anything. Then he said, “Excuse me, Mac”—Pete has always called me Mac—“Know I didn’t need to tell you to keep quiet.”
    “That’s okay,” I said. “Things pretty bad, Pete?”
    He said they were goddamned bad. So bad that he’d fire his hotels if he could collect on them. “Those goddamned insurance companies,” he said. “Y’know, I figure that’s why so many people get burned to death. Because the companies won’t pay off on empty buildings. Guess I should have fired mine while they were open, but I kind of hated to take a chance on roasting someone.”
    I laughed, and shook my head. I hardly knew what to say. I knew what I should say, but I wasn’t quite up to saying it, hard-pressed as I was.
    He went on to explain his situation. He’d never borrowed any money locally. He’d always done business on a cash basis. Then, when things began to tighten up, he’d gone to some New York factors; and now the interest was murdering him.
    “No usury laws when it comes to business loans, y’know. Did you know that? Well, that’s the way she stands. I don’t get up ten, twenty thousand, I’m just about going to be wiped out.” He took a chew of tobacco, grunted sardonically. “Own damned fault, I guess. Too goddamned stubborn. Should have unloaded when things first started slipping.”
    “You couldn’t have done it, Pete,” I said. “If you knew how to give up, you’d never have got to where you are.”
    He said he guessed that was so. Guessed he didn’t know how to lay down, and didn’t want to learn.
    “Pete,” I said. “Look. Your contract is with the agency, and I can’t cut the price. But I can rebate on it.”
    “Hell with you,” he said. “You ugly, ornery over-grown bastard.”
    He walked around the room, grunting that there were too damned many throats in need of cutting, without bleeding some dull-witted son-of-a-bitch like me who ought to have a guardian looking after him.
    “Nope,” he said, turning back around. “I ain’t that bad off. If I was, I just wouldn’t have signed up for you this year.”
    “Maybe you shouldn’t have,” I said. “And look, Pete. You can’t break that contract, but if I should refuse to play—”
    “Nope. No, now listen to me,” he said. “I wouldn’t do it, even if I didn’t like to listen to that damned pounding of yours. I got to keep the pavilion open.

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