Promised Land, from which this excerpt came, is the first book in which Hawk appears. As I was writing Promised Land, it was not my conscious intention to make him a recurring character. He seemed merely a suitable antagonist for Spenser when I began. It is one of the cliches of the word business to say that a character takes over an author, or in some way acts as if he (or she) had a life of his (or her — liberation do get clumsy) own. This is, of course, tripe. As I have better reason to know than anyone, Hawk is a figment of my imagination and has no existence outside of it. No character does; to believe otherwise is to believe in some sort of literary voodoo. What did happen, however, is that Hawk offered a lot of artistic opportunity.
Hawk is, and the racial pun is intended, the dark side of Spenser. He is what Spenser might have been had he grown up black in a white culture. The hero of books like mine is often outside of the culture. It could be argued, and I’d be willing to so argue, that the hero of most American books is poised, if not in opposition to the official culture, at least in counterbalance to it. If such a hero is non-white, his poise will be more radically asocial, because his exclusion will be more complete. While Spenser is both in and out of the culture, Hawk displays no such uncertainty. His presence in the books provides me an opportunity to examine some aspects of the American Myth, and to comment, sometimes directly, sometimes obliquely, on racism.
These things and several others occurred to me, not so much as I was writing Promised Land, but next time out, when I was working on The Judas Goat and had occasion to call Hawk back. I’m glad they did occur to me. Hawk in his containment and invulnerability adds substance and ulteriority to the work. Like Susan, his presence helps define Spenser and enlarge our ability to think about the issues Spenser engages. Like Susan, he is interesting in himself and interesting in the context he provides.
Jim Thompson
The Ripoff
“Thompson is my particular admiration among ‘original’ authors,” novelist R. V. Cassill has declared. “The Killer Inside Me (1952) is exactly what French enthusiasts for existential American violence were looking for in the works of Dashiell Hammett, Horace McCoy and Raymond Chandler. None of these men ever wrote a book within miles of Thompson’s.” Jim Thompson published twenty-nine novels between 1942 and 1973, all but one of which were paperback originals. His devout circle of admirers claim he wrote psychological thrillers unequaled in post-war American fiction.
Cassill has written that “Thompson at his best hits notes that are stunningly convincing. Not his materials, but the reckless play of his imagination in the moral debris gives one pause. In his hands the writing instrument sounds the trilling of genuine American demons.”
Thompson had revised the typescript for The Ripoff, but he died in 1977 before he could arrange publication. This installment is the first of four.
1
I didn’t hear her until she was actually inside the room, locking the door shut behind her. Because that kind of place, the better type of that kind of place — and this was the better type — has its tap roots in quiet. Anonymity. So whatever is required for it is provided: thick walls, thick rugs, well-oiled hardware. Whatever is required, but no more. No bath, only a sink firmly anchored to the wall. No easy I chairs, since you are not there to sit. No radio or television, since the most glorious of diversions is in yourself. Your two selves.
She was scowling agitatedly, literally dancing from foot to foot, as she flung off her clothes, tossing them onto the single wooden chair where mine were draped.
I laughed and sat up. “Have to pee?” I said. “Why do you always hold in until you’re about to wet your pants?”
“I don’t always! Just when I’m meeting you, and I don’t want to take time to — oops! Whoops! Help me, darn it!” she said, trying to boost herself up on the sink. “Hall-up!”
I helped her, holding her on her porcelain perch until she had finished. Then I carried her to the bed, and lowered her to it. Looked wonderingly at the tiny immensity, the breathtaking miracle of her body.
She wasn’t quite five feet tall. She weighed no more than ninety-five pounds, and I could almost encompass her waist with one hand. But somehow there was no skimpiness about her. Somehow her flesh flowed and curved and burgeoned. Extravagantly, deliciously lush.
“Manny,” I said softly, marveling. For as often as I had seen this miracle, it remained new to me. “Manuela Aloe.”
“Present,” she said. “Now, come to bed, you good-looking, darlin’ son-of-a-bitch.”
“You know something, Manny, my love? If I threw away your tits and your ass, God forbid, there wouldn’t be anything left.”
Her eyes flashed. Her hand darted and swung, slapping me smartly on the cheek.
“Don’t you talk that way to me! Not ever!”
“What the hell?” I said. “You talk pretty rough yourself.”
She didn’t say anything. Simply stared at me, her eyes steady and unblinking. Telling me, without telling me, that how she talked had no bearing on how I should talk.
I lay down with her, kissed her, and held the kiss. And suddenly her arms tightened convulsively, and I was drawn onto and into her. And then there was a fierce muted sobbing, a delirious exulting, a frantic hysterical whispering...
“Oh, you dirty darling bastard! You sweet son-of-a-bitch! You dearest preciousest mother-loving sugar-pie...”
Manny.
Manuela Aloe.
I wondered how I could love her so deeply, and be so much afraid of her. So downright terrified.
And I damned well knew why.
After a while, and after we had rested a while, she placed her hands against my chest and pushed me upward so that she could look into my face.
“That was good, Britt,” she said. “Really wonderful. I’ve never enjoyed anything so much.”
“Manny,” I said. “You have just said the finest, the most exciting thing a woman can say to a man.”
“I’ve never said it to anyone else. But, of course, there’s never been anyone else.”
“Except your husband, you mean.”
“I never said it to him. You don’t lie to people about things like this.”
I shifted my gaze, afraid of the guilt she might read in my eyes. She laughed softly, on a submerged note of teasing.
“It bothers you, doesn’t it, Britt? The fact that there was a man before you.”
“Don’t be silly. A girl like you would just about have to have other men in her life.”
“Not men. Only the one man, my husband.”
“Well, it doesn’t bother me. He doesn’t, I mean. Uh, just how did he die, anyway?”
“Suddenly,” she said. “Very suddenly. Let me up now, will you please?”
I helped her to use the sink, and then I used it. It couldn’t have taken more than a minute or two, but when I turned around she had finished dressing. I was startled, although I shouldn’t have been. She had the quick, sure movements characteristic of so many small women. Acting and reacting with lightning-like swiftness. Getting things done while I was still thinking about them.
“Running off mad?” I said, and then, comprehending, or thinking that I did, “Well, don’t fall in, honey. I’ve got some plans for you.”
She frowned at me reprovingly, and still playing it light, I said she couldn’t be going to take a bath. I’d swear she didn’t need a bath, and who would know better than I?