Thompson Murder at the Bijou

1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-0-9896714-3-9
Verlag: Chalk Line Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 238 Seiten

Murder at the Bijou (originally titled Nothing More Than Murder) is noir master Jim Thompson's dizzying tale of deception, adultery, revenge, arson, and cold-blooded murder in Smalltown, U.S.A., Thompson's favorite setting. In this novel, Thompson's first major success as a pulp fiction writer, Joe Wilmot, trying to go straight after a stretch in the pen, finds a movie house in a small crossroads that can use a helping hand and someone with half a brain for business. The theater's owner, Elizabeth, isn't the smartest operator around - or is she? Joe and the plain Jane Elizabeth decide maybe it would be better for business if they got married. Why not? And then Carol shows up, a bit stale in the eye candy department but ready and willing to serve - in every way. They've got insurance coverage on the movie house; their lives would all be better if the place maybe had an accident, a little fire. But things can go very wrong. And in Murder at the Bijou they do. Fans of Jim Thompson will recognize the terse dialogue, plot twists and double-crosses, and a belief that nothing in the world is good, all of which makes Stephen King say that Jim Thompson is 'My favorite crime novelist - often imitated but never duplicated.'

Autoren/Hrsg.

Thompson, Jim

Leseproben

Chapter 2 When Elizabeth and I were married there was another show in Stoneville. It wasn’t much of a house—five hundred chairs, and a couple of Powers projectors that should have been in a museum, and a wildcat sound system. But it was a show and it pulled a lot of business from us, particularly on Friday and Saturday, the horse-opera nights. Not only that, it almost doubled the price of the product we bought. In a town of seventy-five hundred people, you hadn’t ought to pay more than thirty or thirty-five bucks for the best feature out. And you don’t have to if you’ve got the only house. Where there’s more than one, well, brother, there’s a situation the boys on film row love. If you don’t want to buy from them, they’ll just take their product across the street. And the guy across the street will snap it up in the hopes of freezing you out and buying at his own price the next year. The fellow that owned the other house was named Bower. He’s not around any more; don’t know what ever did become of him. About the time his lease came up for renewal, I went to his landlord and offered to take over, paying all operating expenses and giving him fifty percent of the net. Of course he took me up. Bower couldn’t afford to make a proposition like that. Neither could I. I gave Bower a hundred and fifty dollars for his equipment, which was a good price even if he didn’t think so. Motion picture equipment is worth just about as much as the spot you have it in. It’s tricky stuff to move; it’s made to be put in a place and left there. Well, Bower had about the same amount of stinker product under contract that I had. Part of it he’d bought because he couldn’t help himself—we had block-booking in those days—and part because it would squeeze me. Ordinarily, if he played it at all, he’d have balanced it up with good strong shorts. But there was a lot of it he couldn’t have played on a triple bill with two strong supporting features. What I did was to take his stinkers and mine and shoot ’em into the house, one after another. And I picked out shorts that were companion pieces, if you know what I mean. Inside of two months the house wasn’t grossing five dollars a day. The landlord was—he still is, for that matter—old Andy Taylor. Andy got his start writing insurance around our neck of the woods almost fifty years ago, and now he owns about half the county in fee and has the rest under mortgage. You could hear him crying in the next county when he saw what he was up against. But there wasn’t a thing he could do. He had the choice of taking twenty-five a month or fifty percent of nothing, so you know what he took. I left the house standing dark, just like it is now. No one but a sucker would think of trying to open a third house under the circumstances, and he wouldn’t have anything to play in it if he did. I buy all the major studio product and everything that’s playable from the indies. Our house is on seven changes a week, and we actually change four or five times. The rest of the stuff we pay for and send back. Our film bill only runs about thirty percent more on the week than it used to, and our gross is about ninety percent more. Of course, we’ve got to pay rent on the other house, and the extra express and insurance charges plus paper—advertising matter—runs into dough. But we’ve done all right. Plenty all right. We’ve got the most modern, most completely equipped small-city house in the state, and there’s just one guy responsible. Me. I only book a month at a time. But booking with me for a month is equal to booking with the average exhibitor for three months; and the boys on the row don’t exactly throw rocks at me. I like to never have got away from the Playgrand exchange. The minute I stepped in the door they rushed me back to the manager’s office, and he just pushed his work aside and reached for the drinks. They had some shorts in that he wanted my opinion on, so after a while we went back into the screening-room, which is just like a little theater, and checked them over. They were good stuff, some of the brightest, snappiest shorts I’d seen in a long time. Even with all I had on my mind I enjoyed them. I’ve known the manager of Utopian since the days when he was on the road, and it was pretty hard to get away from there, too. And we got to talking baseball over at Colfax; and at Wolf I had to sit in on another screening and have another couple drinks. I almost didn’t book anything at Superior. They had a complete new setup from booker to manager, and none of them knew straight up. They didn’t even know who I was. I gave the booker three feature dates and five shorts, and I explained about six times that that was all I had open for the month. But he wouldn’t give up. He reached over and took my date book right out of my hands. “Why, here,” he said. “We’ve made a mistake, haven’t we? We’ve got an open date next Sunday.” “I’ve got something planned for that,” I said. “Now, let’s see,” he said. “What can we give you there? What do you say to—” “That date’s taken,” I said. “We’ll fix that, get the other pic set out for you. You don’t want an inferior picture in a Sunday spot when we can give you—” Well, I don’t mind seeing a man try to do his job, and all the row guys are pretty fast talkers. I’m a shade fast myself. I’ve never poked my tongue in my eyes, yet, though, and it’s not because I close them when I talk. I was about to tell him off in a nice way when the manager came out. He came up behind me and kind of worked his hand over my back like he was giving me a massage. “Getting along all right?” he said. “Everything going to suit you, Mr. Barclay?” I could feel myself turning red. “My name’s not Barclay,” I said. “Oh,” he said, stepping back a little, “I thought you were from Barclay Operating Company at—” “I’m Joe Wilmot,” I said. “I’ve operated Barclay for the past ten years. The property’s in my wife’s name. Okay?” He let out with a silly laugh, trying to pass it over, and made a grab for my hand. “Mighty glad you came in, Joe. Anything we can do here for you, just say the word.” “You can’t do a goddam thing for me,” I said. “I won’t pull out the dates I’ve given you because I’m in a hurry. But it’ll be a hell of a long time before I give you any more.” “Now, Joe. Let’s go back in the office and—” “Go to hell,” I said. He and the booker both followed me to the door. I slammed it in their faces. Every film row I’ve been around, there’s at least one place like Chance Independent Releases, and one guy like Happy Chance. Not exactly, but you know what I mean. They get ahold of maybe three or four features a year that you can throw in a middle-of-the-week spot, and a sex picture or two, and a few serials, and some stag-party shorts. They own the prints on the sex and stag stuff, and handle the other on commission for studios that don’t have their own exchanges. Hap seemed to get by better than some of them, but Hap would. I’ve known him for more than twelve years, since he was working the booth in a grind-house, and I was driving film truck. And if he ever missed skinning anyone, I don’t know when it was. He’d even skinned the Panzpalace chain; and when you skin a guy like Sol Panzer, who’s run a ninety-three-house string up from a nickelodeon, you’ve got to be good. I don’t know why I liked Hap. Maybe it was the attraction of opposites, as they say in books. “Glad you dropped in, laddie,” he said, after we’d sat down and the drinks were poured. “Been thinking about popping out to see you. How are things with the Barclay?” “What’s the use of kicking?” I said. “You wouldn’t believe me.” “No, seriously. You must be coining it. How many changes are you on, anyway?” I grinned at him over my glass. “All I need, Hap.” “Some chap was telling me the other day you were on more changes than any house in the state.” “I could be; I’ve got the product. I don’t often make more than four a week though.” “Playing shutout with the rest?” “That wouldn’t be legal,” I said. “They call that acting in restraint of trade.” “Uh-hah,” he drawled. “Certainly. I should know you wouldn’t be involved in anything like that.” “The town’s wide open to anyone that wants to come in,” I said. “I’ll run all the good pix in the Barclay and all the stinkers in the Bower, and split the rest with the competition.” “Uh-Hah!” Hap let out a chuckle. “What’s your house worth there, laddie, if you don’t mind my asking?” “Well, let’s see. Ten times the annual return—between seventy-five and a hundred grand.” “It wouldn’t possibly be worth a million, would...