Wild Town by Jim Thompson Page A

record caught up with him, if it ever did.
    Bugs became a city police patrolman. After three months, during which there was an almost one hundred per cent turnover in the department’s personnel, he was promoted to plain clothes. It was in that job that he landed in his biggest and worst scrape.
    One of the other dicks was a wild-eyed, constantly grinning boob with a penchant for practical jokes. He didn’t bother the other guys much, and so was fairly well-liked by them. But to Bugs, who had been fiendishly singled out as a born butt, he was nothing less than maddening.
    He was going off watch one evening when the guy lurched through the door of the locker-room. He was more wild-eyed than usual; drunk apparently. Yanking out his gun, he announced that he had taken as much off of Bugs as he intended to, and that now he was going to kill him.
    Murmuring protests, pulling long faces, the other dicks got out of the way. Among them was one, who, only a moment before, had asked to take a look at Bugs’s gun, with a view of making a swap.
    Bugs spoke to him out of the corner of his mouth; begged him for God’s sake to return the weapon. The man didn’t seem to hear him. Sweating, he whispered a plea for someone to do something—to step in and stop this character. No one seemed to hear that entreaty either. Or, ostensibly, they were too shocked or frightened to heed it.
    Bugs let out a roar of fear. Leaping sideways suddenly, he snatched back his borrowed gun, whirled and fired. He emptied the chamber. And at that distance, of course, he couldn’t miss.
    The dick was dead before he hit the floor. To state what is probably obvious, he had only been playing another of his practical jokes, and the other dicks had all been in on it.
    It had been a crazy trick to pull. In fact, as was established at the autopsy, the guy was crazy. His erratic behavior was due to a tumor of the brain, which, in another year or less, would certainly have killed him. So Bugs couldn’t really be blamed for what he had done. And with a different attitude on his part, the matter might have ended with a departmental investigation.
    Unfortunately…
    Well, you can probably guess what his attitude was; it was anything but proper to a situation where a man’s life had been lost.
    He was goddamned glad he’d killed the son-of-a-bitch, he said. He should have done it long before. Given the opportunity, he’d do the same thing all over again.
    He surlily repeated those statements at the inevitable trial. Those and others that were equally damning. He shouted them as he was hauled out of the courtroom, the recipient of the stiffest jolt that the law could give him. And now, tossing in his sleep…
    I’m glad, he told himself. I’ve done nothing to be sorry about. He—they—she’s got no one to blame but herself. I’ve got principles, by God, and no one’s ever made me change ’em. And she—Christ, I wish I didn’t have. I wish—
    He lurched and sat up in bed. It was eleven o’clock in the morning, a few minutes after eleven, and the phone was ringing.
    He picked it up, spoke with drowsy grumpiness. “Yeah? ’S’McKenna.”
    “This is Mike Hanlon, Bugs. Mr. Hanlon. I’d like to see you.”
    “See me?” Bugs’s throat tightened unconsciously. “Uh, now, you mean?”
    “Now,” said Hanlon. And hung up the receiver.

8
    I t was the second time, since the date of his employment, that Bugs had talked with Hanlon. The first occasion had been about ten days after he came to the hotel, when, at the old man’s request—or order—he had taken him along on his nightly tour of the building.
    Hanlon had had to be in his wheelchair, of course, and in place of the stairs they had moved from floor to floor in one of the out-of-use elevators. The cars were very simple to operate, Bugs learned. Hanlon had taught him all there was to know about it in a few minutes, also showing him how to open the elevator door from the outside.
    Thinking back on that