Роберт Беллем - Pulp Frictions

At last she stayed on the wire and he was able to give her the pitch. The result was anything but reassuring. She said she’d be seeing him — she’d be out just as fast as she could make it. And he could depend on it. But there was an ominous quality to her voice, a distinctly unwifely tone. Before he could say anything more, she slammed up the receiver for the third and last time.

Considerably disturbed, Mitch walked back across the dead and dying grass and entered the hotel. The manager-clerk’s eyes shied away from him. The elevator-bellboy was similarly furtive. Absorbed in his worry over Bette, Mitch didn’t notice. He got off at his floor and started down the hall, ducking around scaffolding, wending his way through a littered jungle of paint cans, plaster and wallpaper.

He came to the door of his room. He turned the knob, and entered.

And something crashed down on his head.

It was dark when Mitch regained consciousness. He sat up, massaging his aching head, staring dizzily at the shattered glass on the floor — the remains of a broken whiskey bottle. Then he remembered; realisation came to him. Ripping out a curse, he ran to the window.

The Cad was still there on the parking lot. Yes, and the keys were still in his pocket. Mitch whirled, ran through the bath and kicked open the door to the other room.

It was empty, in an immaculate order, sans Babe and sans baggage. There was nothing to indicate that it had ever been tenanted. Mitch tottered back into his own room, and there was a knock on the door and he flung it open.

A man walked in and closed it behind him. He looked at Mitch. He looked down at the broken bottle. He shook his head in mild disapproval.

‘So you are supposedly a sick man, Marty,’ he said gutturally. ‘So you have a great deal of money — my money. So drunk you should not get.’

‘H-huh? W-what?’ Mitch said. ‘Who the hell are you?’

‘So I am The Pig,’ the man said. ‘Who else?’

The name suited him. Place a pecan on top of a hen’s egg and you’ve got a good idea of his appearance. He was perhaps five feet tall and he probably weighed three hundred pounds. His arms were short almost to the point of deformity. He had a size six head and a size sixty waistline.

Mitch stared at him blankly, silently. The Pig apparently misunderstood his attitude.

‘So you are not sure of me,’ he said. ‘So I will take it from the top and give you proof. So you are The Man’s good and faithful servant through all his difficulties. So The Man passes the word that you are to pay me fifty thousand dollars for services rendered. So you are a very sick man anyway, and have little to lose if detected while on the errand—’

‘Wait a minute!’ Mitch said. ‘I... I’m not—’

‘So you are to transport the money in small traveller’s cheques. So you cannot be robbed. So they can be easily cashed without attracting unwanted attention. So you have had a day to cash them. So’ — The Pig concluded firmly — ‘you will give me the fifty thousand.’

Mitch’s mouth was very dry. Slowly, the various pieces of a puzzle were beginning to add up. And what they added up to was curtains — for him. He’d really stepped into something this time: a Grade A jam, an honest-to-hannah, double-distilled frammis. The Pig’s next words were proof of the fact.

‘So you know how I earned the fifty Gs, Marty. So you would not like me to give you a demonstration. It is better to die a natural death.’

‘N-now-now, listen!’ Mitch stammered. ‘You’ve got the wrong guy. I’m not Martin Lonsdale. I’m... I’m... Look, I’ll show you.’ He started to reach for his wallet. And groaned silently, remembering. He had thrown it away. There was a risk of being caught with two sets of identification, so—

‘So?’ The Pig said.

‘I! Look! Call this Man whoever he is. Let me talk to him. He can tell you I’m not—’

‘So,’ The Pig grunted, ‘who can call Alcatraz? So—’ he added, ‘I will have the money, Marty.’

‘I don’t have it! My wife — I mean the dame I registered in with — has it. She had the room next to mine, and—’

‘So, but no. So I checked the registry myself. So there has been no woman with you.’

‘I tell you there was! These people here — they’re hungry as hell, see, and she had plenty of dough to bribe them...’ He broke off, realising how true his words were. He resumed again, desperately: ‘Let me give you the whole pitch, tell you just what happened right from the beginning! I was trying to thumb a ride, see, and this big Cadillac stopped for me. And...’

Mitch told him the tale.

The Pig was completely unimpressed.

‘So that is a fifty-grand story? So a better one I could buy for a nickel.’

‘But it’s true! Would I make up a yam like that? Would I come here, knowing that you’d show up to collect?’

‘So people do stupid things.’ The Pig shrugged. ‘So, also, I am a day early.’

‘But, dammit! — ’ There was a discreet rap on the door. Then it opened and Bette came in.

This Bette was a honey, a little skimpy in the chin department, perhaps, but she had plenty everywhere else. A burlesque house strip-teaser, her mannerisms and dress sometimes caused her to be mistaken for a member of a far older profession.

Mitch greeted her with almost hysterical gladness. ‘Tell this guy, honey! For God’s sake, tell him who I am!’

‘Tell him...?’ Bette hesitated, her eyes flickering. ‘Why, you’re Martin Lonsdale, I guess. If this is your room. Didn’t you send for me to—’

‘N-nno!’ Mitch burbled. ‘Don’t do this to me, honey! Tell him who I really am. Please!—’

One of The Pig’s fat arms moved casually. The fist at the end of it smashed into Mitch’s face. It was like being slugged with a brick. Mitch stumbled and fell flat across the bed. Dully, as from a distance, he heard a murmur of conversation...

‘...had a date with him, a hundred-dollar date. And I came all the way out here from Los Angeles...’

‘So Marty has another date. So I will pay the hundred dollars myself...’

There was a crisp rustle, then a dulcet, ‘Oh, aren’t you nice!’ Then the door opened and closed, and Bette was gone. And The Pig slowly approached the bed. He had a hand in his pocket. There was a much bigger bulge in the pocket than a hand should make.

Mitch feigned unconsciousness until The Pig’s hand started coming out of his pocket. Then Mitch’s legs whipped up in a blur of motion. He went over backwards in a full somersault, landed on the other side of the bed, gripped and jerked it upward.

Speed simply wasn’t The Pig’s forte. He just wasn’t built for it. He tried to get out of the way, and succeeded only in tripping over his own feet. The bed came down on him, pinning him to the floor. Mitch sent him to sleep with a vicious kick in the head.

Mitch realised he had been moving in a blur. But now his mind was crystal clear, sharper than it ever had been.

Where was Babe? Simple. Since she couldn’t have ridden away from the place, she must have walked. And Mitch knew where she had walked to.

What to do with The Pig? Also simple. The materials for taking care of him were readily at hand.

Mitch turned on the water in the bathtub. He went out into the hall and returned with two sacks full of quick-drying plaster...

He left The Pig very well taken care of, sitting in plaster up to his chin. Then, guessing that it would be faster, he ran down the stairs and out to the Cadillac. Wheels spinning, he whipped it down the horseshoe driveway and out onto the highway.

He slowed down after a mile or two, peering off to his right at the weed-grown fields which lay opposite the ocean. Suddenly, he jerked the car onto the shoulder and braked it to a stop. He got out; his eyes narrowed with grim satisfaction.