by Ed Gorman
RIFF
I drunkenly piled up my motorcycle and woke up twelve hours later in a two bed hospital room. The guy next to me is somebody I sort of remember from high school seven, eight years ago. Sort of a wimpy guy as I recall but really rich. We start talking and he tears up. Seems this girl I definitely remembered (an imperious beauty who recognized the existence of only a few people, certainly not bums like me) married him for what he hoped was love. But five years into what was supposed to be bliss he finds out she’s got a boy friend on the side. Long story short, he’s in the hospital (and I mean really banged up) because two nights ago she accidentally ran over him down in their long long driveway. This is two a.m., when she does it, and she’s snockered. She claims she didn’t see him. He says the cops are suspicious, he says are private detectives worth a damn, he says I just can’t believe she’d actually do it on purpose. (As I recall, he agreed not to press charges if she granted him a divorce and asked for nothing.) That’s where one element of the story enters my mind. Cut to thirty-five years later and I’m recovering from cancer operation number two and I see this guy walking past my room who looks familiar. I shout hey and he comes back and turns out he’s this guy who always used to hang out in the clubs I did right before disco closed down all the blues clubs you used to find up and down the Mississippi. He’s going through a divorce because he can’t take his wife cheating on him anymore. And about an hour later my cousin shows up with this new (and hefty) biography of the great heroin-ruined jazz man Chet Baker. And somehow by nightfall I’ve got my tablet out and am scribbling fast, taking elements from the poor guy whose wife ran over him and the club guy I used to know—and all the material in the first sixty, seventy pages of Baker’s biography. I had no other way to write it so I did it in longhand.
YESTERDAY AND THE DAY BEFORE
A newspaper story inspired this. Extremely obese girl is taunted endlessly by her classmates year after year. One day in eighth grade she gets home early and kills herself. There was a kid named Ted McCord in Catholic school whom we picked on for no real reason. Three years we did this. Twenty years later the group of us who did it got together one drunken night and spent a good deal of the time talking about what terrible shits we’d been to him. It’s funny that of all our cruelties, which were considerable, we’d think of old Ted McCord when he met those punks of punks—us.
PARIAH
A what if story. Nothing much else to say.
MUSE
Not a jot of this story is true and yet it’s enormously autobiographical because everybody in it is somebody I knew well, skewed of course by my perception of them. I got quite a bit of mail on this one from writers, actors, dancers, musicians and painters. Most of us seem to have shared this experience of hanging out on the fringes, kind of semi-pro acting groups—bands—dance troupes—and then one day one of the group gets famous. We’ve also had the experience of hitting on the boss’ mistress which, as here, is a perilous adventure.
PRISONERS
In the neighborhood where I lived longest kids were always driving up state to see their fathers or brothers in prison. I was sitting in his kitchen while the protagonist of this story was helping his mother get the bag ready to take to the father (the scene in the story). And there ensued the argument between the drawn pale elegant young sister who was ashamed to go and the mother. I later visited a couple of my friends in prison and saw the scene I described of the waiting loved ones, especially the little kids, under the cold eyes of the guards.
THE END OF IT ALL
All the feelings here are mine but not a bit of it happened to me.
EYE OF THE BEHOLDER
My personal favorite of my private eye stories because it deals with a subject that’s long fascinated me, the effects of startling beauty on the young girls who possess it.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
With special thanks to Marty Greenberg, Janet Hutchings, Rich Chizmar, Maxim Jakubowski and Max Allan Collins for first publishing most of these stories.
“Famous Blue Raincoat” first appeared in Cemetery Dance, 1992 “Intent To Deceive” first appeared in Masques, 2006 “The Face” first appeared in Confederacy of the Dead, 1990 “The Long Silence After” first appeared in Dark at Heart, 1992 “Anna and The Snake People” first appeared in Malice Domestic, 1996 “Render Unto Caesar” first appeared in Pulphouse, 1991 “Stalker” first appeared in Stalkers, 1990 “The Right Thing” first appeared in Cemetery Dance, 1994 “Surrogate” first appeared in Murder is My Business, 1994 “Second Most Popular” first appeared in The Coe Review, 1994 “Bless Us O Lord” first appeared in Shivers, 1992 “Favor And The Princess” first appeared in Cemetery Dance, 1996 “The Moving Coffin” first appeared in More Phobias, 1989 “Riff “ first appeared in Postscripts #1, 2004 “Yesterday and The Day Before” first appeared in Crime Time, 1998 “Pariah” first appeared in A Day Which Will Live in Infamy, 2001 “Muse” first appeared in Murder and All That Jazz, 2004 “Prisoners” first appeared in New Crimes, 1990 “The End of It All” first appeared in Dark Love, 1997 “Eye of The Beholder” first appeared in Cemetery Dance, 1997
THE MOVING COFFIN
Copyright © 2007 by ED GORMAN
The right of Ed Gorman to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Originally published in printed book form by PS Publishing Ltd in May 2007. This electronic version published in February 2012 by PS by arrangement with the author. All rights reserved by the author.
FIRST EBOOK EDITION
ISBN 978-1-848632-40-0
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
PS Publishing Ltd
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http://www.pspublishing.co.uk
Contents
THE COLLECTED ED GORMAN
THE MOVING COFFIN
INTRODUCTION: A SHORT STORY ABOUT ED GORMAN
FAMOUS BLUE RAINCOAT
INTENT TO DECEIVE
THE FACE
THE LONG SILENCE AFTER
ANNA AND THE SNAKE PEOPLE
RENDER UNTO CAESAR
STALKER
THE RIGHT THING
SURROGATE
SECOND MOST POPULAR
BLESS US O LORD
FAVOR AND THE PRINCESS
THE MOVING COFFIN
RIFF
YESTERDAY AND THE DAY BEFORE
PARIAH
MUSE
PRISONERS
THE END OF IT ALL
EYE OF THE BEHOLDER
STORY NOTES
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
THE MOVING COFFIN