Free Wild Town by Jim Thompson Page B

girl, and he’s made her into something not so sweet and clean. And then, the low-down louse, he kidded her about it in front of a stranger! He was that kind of guy, he did that to her. And yet he had the gall to bawl out the aforesaid stranger for his entirely natural concern with what had happened before he came along!
    Hell, Bugs thought, I didn’t say I held it against her, did I? Hell, she’s still going with him, isn’t she? Hell, I just met her, didn’t I? Hell…
    Hell, hell, hell!
    Bugs stood in a corner of the vaulted lobby, smoking a cigarette in short angry puffs. Nothing absently that Rosalie Vara had returned from her dinner—or wherever she had been—and was once again at work on the mezz’.
    She saw him looking at her and flirted a hand at him. He grinned back weakly, and sauntered toward the elevators.
    Well, nuts, he thought. He was getting all up in the air over nothing. Getting the cart a mile in front of the horse. This was a hell of a time to be thinking about Amy Standish, her or any other woman. To be thinking about anything except hanging onto his job, and staying out of trouble. And he wouldn’t have been if Ford hadn’t hailed him there in the coffee shop, and acted like the double-distilled son-of-a-bitch which he admitted being.
    Well. Well, maybe it was all for the best. Maybe Ford had done him a favor. He hadn’t been afraid, exactly, but naturally he’d been pretty shaken up over what had happened to Dudley. And then Ford had latched onto him, diverting his mind from Dudley until it could accept his death without shock. Until he was prepared to face up to the death in front of Ford with no telltale nervousness.
    Yeah, everything had worked out for the best. The means hadn’t been exactly pleasant, maybe, but the result had been perfect. Because he was safe, now. He’d been in a mess that might have meant curtains for him, but now he was safe.
    He wondered why he felt so lousy.
    He wondered why, meaning as well as he did, he was always getting into messes.

7
    …Bugs was working as a guard in an aircraft plant when World War II broke out. Since the beginning of his working career, he had almost always landed in jobs as a night watchman or a guard or something of the kind. He wasn’t trained for a well-paying position—the kind a man might be proud to hold. And having a little authority, even at relatively low pay, helped to buck up his ego.
    This particular job was somewhat better than average, and Bugs did his best to hold onto it. He did everything he was supposed to, nothing that he shouldn’t; sticking to the rule book right to the letter. And his best wasn’t good enough.
    The chief engineer’s wife showed up at the plant one day. She had a pass, as was required, but she also had a sealed package. And Bugs, over her vehement protests, insisted on opening it. It contained a box of sanitary napkins.
    She departed the plant in tears. About thirty minutes later—just as quickly as she could reach her husband by telephone and he could get in touch with the plant superintendent—Bugs departed with his final paycheck.
    The loss of the job lost him his draft deferment. Bugs went into the Army where he shortly found himself an MP. He was patrolling the airplane hangars one evening when he discovered a man in a Russian officer’s uniform prowling amongst the planes. Accosted by Bugs, the man complimented him on his alertness, and displayed the credentials of an American general.
    Well. As Bugs admitted at his court-martial, he recognized the credentials as genuine; he had even recognized the general. Still, the masquerade had been a damned stupid thing, a violation of regulations in itself. And he, Bugs, had been entirely within his rights in insisting that the general march ahead of him to a guard post where an officer could dispose of his case. The general had refused, profanely and violently. He had started to walk away from Bugs. Bugs told him to halt. When he kept on going,