Free The Kill-Off by Jim Thompson

something about the gas. “On the other hand, I got no real reason not to have no use for you. Nothing I can put my finger on. You’ve always been friendly and polite around me. I don’t know of no dirty deals you’ve pulled, unless’n it’s this stuff with Ralph, and I can’t really call that dirty, considering. Might’ve gone off sideways like that myself when I was your age.”
    “I knew you’d understand,” I said. “Mr. Pavlov, I—”
    “I was sayin’—” He cut me off curtly. “I got no reason to feel like I do, and reasons are all I go by. People don’t give me no trouble, I don’t give them any. I rock along with ’em as long as they rock with me. And whether I like ’em or not don’t figure in the matter. All right. I guess we understand each other. Now, I got to get busy.”
    He nodded curtly, and headed back toward his office.
    I moved toward the exit.
    Myra had come in while Pete and I were talking, and she called to me from the ticket booth. I looked her way blindly, my eyes stinging, misting. Not really hearing or seeing her. I went out without answering her, and sat down in my car.
    I got a cigarette lighted. I took a few deep puffs, forcing away my disgusting self-pity. Recovering some of my normal objectiveness.
    Pete detested me. It was fitting that he should—things being as they were. And I would not have had it any other way—things being as they were.
    But what a pity, what a goddamned pity that they were that way! And why couldn’t they have been another, the right and logical way?
    Why couldn’t my own dear father and mother, those encephalitic cretins, those gutless Jukesters, those lubricious lusus naturae—why couldn’t they have had Myra inflicted upon them? Why should Pete have to suffer such a drab, spiritless wretch as she? Why couldn’t they have had her, and why couldn’t he have had—
    Myra. A feeling of fury came over me every time I looked at her. I’d had some plans for her—vague but decidedly unpleasant—long before she came to the office that day a couple of months ago.
    Father was away on some calls. I glanced at the notes on her file card.
    This was her second trip. She was having menstrual difficulties—something that a good kick in the stomach or a dose of salts would have jarred her out of. But father, that wise and philanthropic Aesculapian, had set her up for a series of hormone shots.
    She said she was in a hurry, so I prepared to administer the medication.
    Yes, I do that: take care of routine patients. Rather, I did do it, until father became wary. I know a hell a lot more about medicine than he does. A hell of a lot more about everything than he does. In this case, for example, I knew that what Myra needed—deserved—was not hormone.
    I gave her a hypodermic. She “flashed”—to use the slang expression; barely made it to the sink before she started vomiting. I told her it was perfectly all right, and gave her another shot.
    Well, someone like that, someone with only part of a character, is made for the stuff. The stuff is made for them. She was hooked in less than a week. She doesn’t go to father any more, but she does come to me.
    I “treat” her now. I give her what she needs—and deserves. When I am ready to. And after certain ceremonies.
    Ten-thirty came. Not more than five minutes later, which was as fast as she could make it, she was running toward the car. Begging before she had the door open.
    I told her to shut up. I said that if she said one more word until I gave her permission, she would get nothing.
    I had her well trained. She subsided, mouth twisting, gulping down the whimpers that rose in her throat.
    I drove to a place about six miles up the beach—Happy Hollow, it is called, for reasons which you may guess. I suppose there is some such place in every community, dubbed with the same sly euphemism or a similar one.
    It—this place—was not a hollow; not wholly, at least. Most of its area was hill, wooded and