Wild Town by Jim Thompson Page B

evening, several incidents which had had no meaning for him at the time began to acquire significance.
    Bugs had unlocked the car—you did it by inserting a short rod through two holes in the door and bearing downward. He had started to wheel Hanlon into its darkened interior, and the old man had gripped the wheels of his chair, holding it immobile. If Bugs didn’t mind, he said wryly, he’d like the car’s lights turned on before entering it.
    Bugs turned them on. Studying him shrewdly, Hanlon had explained the reason for his request.
    “Like to make sure the car’s actually there, y’know. Can’t really tell without the lights on. Might not be anything but the empty shaft.”
    “But why wouldn’t it be there?” Bugs looked at him blankly. “If I left it with the door closed—”
    “Isn’t exactly hard to open, is it? Do it with practically anything strong enough to bear a little weight. Yeah”—Hanlon nodded slowly—“things like that have happened. A bellboy gets impatient and takes a floored car. Or a maintenance engineer thinks it’s been stalled, and takes it for a test trip. Or maybe it’s just a fluke; the thing slips on its cables. That’s happened, too, with cars that get a lot of heavy service. Anyway,” he concluded, “I don’t enter any elevators unless I’m sure there’s one to enter.”
    He had said, rather shyly, that there was a swell view from the roof, so Bugs had taken him up there. He had wheeled him up close to the parapet, and together, fourteen stories up, they had looked out over the twinkling, thundering, garishly-lit forest of derricks. The smell of crude oil was in the air; the smell of natural gas, fresh from its mile-deep storehouses; the smell of drilling mud, and salt water and sulphur.
    Hanlon sniffed the breeze hungrily. Wasn’t that something? he asked. Wasn’t that really something? Bugs said it smelled a lot like rotten eggs to him. The old man stiffened but ignored the comment.
    “That’s death out there, Bugs. All over out there. All dressed up, and with his pockets full of dollar bills…It’s the most dangerous business in the world, did you know that? Coal-mining, construction—they aren’t in it with the oil fields. Well, it’s not so bad now that the big companies have moved in, but the kind of operation I used to run, that the average wildcatter runs—God Almighty! Insurance costs you practically as much as your payroll…Yep, it’s death everywhere you turn, and Bugs, it never bothered me much. Not out there. I met the old boy day after day, and I didn’t like him naturally. But I wasn’t worried about him, I wasn’t afraid of him. Out there…”
    A gust of wind whipped across the roof. It snatched the robe from the old man’s knees, and Bugs grabbed at it, his arm striking against and rocking the chair. Instantly, he found himself looking down the barrel of a gun which the robe had concealed.
    “Hey!” he grunted, more surprised than alarmed. “What are you doing with that?”
    Hanlon hesitated; laughed apologetically. “You know, I’d forgot I had the thing with me? I was cleaning it today, and I must have shoved it in my pocket afterward. Didn’t discover it until now, just as that robe blew off, and when I made a grab for the robe…”
    He left the sentence unfinished. Bugs held out his hand. “Mind if I take a look at it?”
    “Why?”—sharply. “Why do you want to look at it?”
    Bugs was immediately haughty. “If you put it that way, I don’t want to. Forget I asked you.”
    Hanlon handed it to him, insisted that he look at it. But the gun was kind of a pet with him, apparently, for he kept his eyes on it every second. Bugs could understand his attitude—what he thought was his attitude. He liked a good gun himself. Somewhat mollified, he examined it and started to hand it back.
    “Carry it for me, Bugs. Keep it until we get back to the suite…”
    “That’s all right,” Bugs said, misunderstanding. “I just