The Best American Noir of the Century

by James Ellroy

  "Winchester," he said now, meaning what the name of the town was. Five, six thousand people. We could find an empty house, stash the car in a garage, and just wait out the search. Wait till tomorrow afternoon—Sunday—when all the weekenders were driving back to Boston and New York and we'd be lost in the crowd.

  I could see the Lookout up ahead, not really a shape, mostly this blackness where the stars weren't. And then the guy on the floor in the back started to moan all of a sudden and just about give me a heart attack.

  "You. Shut up back there." I slapped the seat, and the guy in the back went quiet.

  What a night.

  We'd got to the drugstore fifteen minutes before it closed. Like you ought to do. 'Cause mosta the customers're gone and a lot've the clerks've left and people're tired, and when you push a Glock or Smitty into their faces, they'll do just about anything you ask.

  Except tonight.

  We had our masks down and walked in slow. Toth getting the manager out of his little office, a fat guy started crying and that made me mad, a grown man doing that. He kept a gun on the customers and the clerks, and I was telling the cashier, this kid, to open the tills and, Jesus, he had an attitude. Like he'd seen all of those Steven Seagal movies or something. A little kiss on the cheek with the Smitty and he changed his mind and started moving. Cussing me out, but he was moving. I was counting the bucks as we were going along from one till to the next, and sure enough, we were up to about three thousand when I heard this noise and turned around and what it was, Toth was knocking a rack of chips over. I mean, Jesus. He's getting Doritos!

  I look away from the kid for just a second, and what's he do? He pitches this bottle. Only not at me. Out the window. Bang, it breaks. There's no alarm I can hear, but half of them are silent anyway and I'm really pissed. I could've killed him. Right there. Only I didn't. Toth did.

  He shoots the kid, blam, blam, blam. And everybody else is scattering and he turns around and shoots another one of the clerks and a customer, just bang, not thinking or nothing. Just for no reason. Hit this girl clerk in the leg, but this guy, this customer, well, he was dead. You could see. And I'm going, What're you doing, what're you doing? And he's going, Shut up, shut up, shut up ... And we're like we're swearing at each other when we figured out we hadta get outa there.

  So we left. Only what happens is, there's a cop outside. That's why the kid threw the bottle. And he's outa his car. So we grab another customer, this guy by the door, and we use him like a shield and get outside. And there's the cop, he's holding his gun up, looking at the customer we've got, and the cop, he's saying, It's OK, it's OK, just take it easy.

  And I couldn't believe it, Toth shot him, too. I don't know whether he killed him, but there was blood so he wasn't wearing a vest it didn't look like, and I could've killed Toth there on the spot. Because why'd he do that? He didn't have to.

  We threw the guy, the customer, into the back seat and tied him up with tape. I kicked out the taillights and burned rubber outa there. We made it out of Liggett Falls.

  That was all just a half hour ago, but it seems like weeks.

  And now we were driving down this highway through a million pine trees. Heading right for the Lookout.

  Winchester was dark.

  I don't get why weekenders come to places like this. I mean, my old man took me hunting a long time ago. A couple of times, and I liked it. But coming to places like this just to look at leaves and buy furniture they call antiques but's really just busted-up crap... I don't know.

  We found a house a block off Main Street with a bunch of newspapers in front, and I pulled into the drive and put the Buick behind it just in time. Two state police cars went shooting by. They'd been behind us not more than a half mile, without the lightbars going. Only they hadn't seen us 'causa the broke taillights, and they went by in a flash and were gone, going into town.

  Toth got into the house, and he wasn't very clean about it, breaking a window in the back. It was a vacation place, pretty empty and the refrigerator shut off and the phone, too, which was a good sign—there wasn't anybody coming back soon. Also, it smelled pretty musty and had stacks of old books and magazines from the summer.

  We took the guy inside, and Toth started to take the hood off this guy's head and I said, "What the hell're you doing?"

  "He hasn't said anything. Maybe he can't breathe."

  This was a man talking who'd just laid a cap on three people back there, and he was worried about this guy breathing? Man. I just laughed. Disgusted, I mean. "Like maybe we don't want him to see us?" I said. "You think of that?" See, we weren't wearing our ski masks anymore.

  It's scary when you have to remind people of stuff like that. I was thinking Toth knew better. But you never know.

  I went to the window and saw another squad car go past. They were going slower now. They do that. After like the first shock, after the rush, they get smart and start cruising slow, really looking for what's funny—what's different, you know? That's why I didn't take the papers up from the front yard. Which would've been different from how the yard looked that morning. Cops really do that Columbo stuff. I could write a book about cops.

  "Why'd you do it?"

  It was the guy we took.

  "Why?" he whispered again.

  The customer. He had a low voice, and it sounded pretty calm, I mean considering. I'll tell you, the first time I was in a shootout I was totally freaked for a day afterwards. And I had a gun.

  I looked him over. He was wearing a plaid shirt and jeans. But he wasn't a local. I could tell because of the shoes. They were rich-boy shoes, the kind you see all the yuppies wear in TV shows about Connecticut. I couldn't see his face because of the mask, but I pretty much remembered it. He wasn't young. Maybe in his forties. Kind of wrinkled skin. And he was skinny, too. Skinnier'n me, and I'm one of those people can eat what I want and I don't get fat. I don't know why. It just works that way.

  "Quiet," I said. There was another car going by.

  He laughed. Soft. Like he was saying, What? So they can hear me all the way outside?

  Kind of laughing at me, you know? I didn't like that at all. And sure, I guess you couldn't hear anything out there, but I didn't like him giving me any crap so I said, "Just shut up. I don't want to hear your voice."

  He did for a minute and just sat back in the chair where Toth put him. But then he said again, "Why'd you shoot them? You didn't have to."

  "Quiet!"

  "Just tell me why."

  I took out my knife and snapped that sucker open, then threw it down so it stuck in a tabletop. Sort of a thunk sound. "You hear that? That was a eight-inch Buck knife. Carbon tempered. With a locking blade. It'd cut clean through a metal bolt. So you be quiet. Or I'll use it on you."

  And he gave this laugh again. Maybe. Or it was just a snort of air. But I was thinking it was a laugh. I wanted to ask him what he meant by that, but I didn't.

  "You got any money on you?" Toth asked, and took the wallet out of the guy's back pocket. "Lookit," Toth said, and pulled out what must've been five or six hundred. Man.

  Another squad car went past, moving slow. It had a spotlight and the cop turned it on the driveway, but he just kept going. I heard a siren across town. And another one, too. It was a weird feeling, knowing those people were out there looking for us.

  I took the wallet from Toth and went through it.

  Randall C. Weller Jr. He lived in Boston. A weekender. Just like I thought. He had a bunch of business cards that said he was vice president of this big computer company. One that was in the news, trying to take over IBM or something. All of a sudden I had this thought. We could hold him for ransom. I mean, why not? Make a half million. Maybe more.

  "My wife and kids'll be sick worrying," Weller said. It spooked me, hearing that. First, cause you don't expect somebody with a hood over his head to say anything. But mostly cause there I was, looking right at a picture in his wallet. And what was it of? His wife and kids.

  "I
ain't letting you go. Now, just shut up. I may need you."

  "Like a hostage, you mean? That's only in the movies. They'll shoot you when you walk out, and they'll shoot me, too, if they have to. That's the way they do it. Just give yourself up. At least you'll save your life."

  "Shut up!" I shouted.

  "Let me go and I'll tell them you treated me fine. That the shooting was a mistake. It wasn't your fault."

  I leaned forward and pushed the knife against his throat, not the blade cause that's real sharp, but the blunt edge, and I told him to be quiet.

  Another car went past, no light this time but it was going slower, and all of a sudden I got to thinking what if they do a door-to-door search?

  "Why did he do it? Why'd he kill them?"

  And funny, the way he said he made me feel a little better cause it was like he didn't blame me for it. I mean, it was Toth's fault. Not mine.

  Weller kept going. "I don't get it. That man by the counter? The tall one. He was just standing there. He didn't do anything. He just shot him down."

  But neither of us said nothing. Probably Toth because he didn't know why he'd shot them. And me because I didn't owe this guy any answers. I had him in my hand. Completely, and I had to let him know that. I didn't have to talk to him.

  But the guy, Weller, he didn't say anything else. And I got this weird sense. Like this pressure building up. You know, because nobody was answering his damn stupid question. I felt this urge to say something. Anything. And that was the last thing I wanted to do. So I said, "I'm gonna move the car into the garage." And I went outside to do it.

  I was a little spooked after the shootout. And I went through the garage pretty good. Just to make sure. But there wasn't nothing inside except tools and an old Snapper lawnmower. So I drove the Buick inside and closed the door. And went back into the house.

  And then I couldn't believe what happened. I mean, Jesus...

  When I walked into the living room, the first thing I heard was Toth saying, "No way, man. I'm not snitching on Jack Prescot."

  I just stood there. And you should've seen the look on his face. He knew he'd blown it big.

  Now this Weller guy knew my name.

  I didn't say anything. I didn't have to. Toth started talking real fast and nervous. "He said he'd pay me some big bucks to let him go." Trying to turn it around, make it Weller's fault. "I mean, I wasn't going to. I wasn't even thinking 'bout it, man. I told him forget it."

  "I figured that," I said. "So? What's that got to do with tellin' him my name?"

  "I don't know, man. He confused me. I wasn't thinking."

  I'll say he wasn't. He hadn't been thinking all night.

  I sighed to let him know I wasn't happy, but I just clapped him on the shoulder. "OK," I said. "S'been a long night. These things happen."

  "I'm sorry, man. Really."

  "Yeah. Maybe you better go spend the night in the garage or something. Or upstairs. I don't want to see you around for a while."

  "Sure."

  And the funny thing was, it was that Weller gave this little snicker or something. Like he knew what was coming. How'd he know that? I wondered.

  Toth went to pick up a couple of magazines and the knapsack with his gun in it and extra rounds.

  Normally, killing somebody with a knife is a hard thing to do. I say normally even though I've only done it one other time. But I remember it, and it was messy and hard work. But tonight, I don't know, I was all filled up with this ... feeling from the drugstore. Mad. I mean, really. Crazy, too, a little. And as soon as Toth turned his back, I went to work, and it wasn't three minutes later it was over. I drug his body behind the couch and then—why not—I pulled Weller's hood off. He already knew my name. He might as well see my face.

  He was a dead man. We both knew it.

  "You were thinking of holding me for ransom, right?"

  I stood at the window and looked out. Another cop car went past, and there were more flashing lights bouncing off the low clouds and off the face of the Lookout, right over our heads. Weller had a thin face and short hair, cut real neat. He looked like every ass-kissing business-man I'd ever met. His eyes were dark and calm, and it made me even madder he wasn't shook up looking at that big bloodstain on the rug and floor.

  "No," I told him.

  He looked at the pile of stuff I'd taken from his wallet and kept going like I hadn't said anything. "It won't work. A kidnapping. I don't have a lot of money, and if you saw my business card and're thinking I'm an executive at the company, they have about five hundred vice presidents. They won't pay diddly for me. And you see those kids in the picture? It was taken twelve years ago. They're both in college now."

  "Where," I asked, sneering. "Harvard?"

  "One's at Harvard," he said, like he was snapping at me. "And one's at Northwestern. So the house's mortgaged to the hilt. Besides, kidnapping somebody by yourself? No, you couldn't bring that off."

  He saw the way I looked at him, and he said, "I don't mean you personally. I mean somebody by himself. You'd need partners."

  And I figured he was right. The ransom thing was looking, I don't know, tricky.

  That silence again. Nobody saying nothing and it was like the room was filling up with cold water. I walked to the window and the floors creaked under my feet, and that only made things worse. I remember one time my dad said that a house had a voice of its own, and some houses were laughing houses and some were forlorn. Well, this was a forlorn house. Yeah, it was modern and clean and the National Geographics were all in order, but it was still forlorn.

  Just when I felt like shouting because of the tension, Weller said, "I don't want you to kill me."

  "Who said I was going to kill you?"

  He gave me this funny little smile. "I've been a salesman for twenty-five years. I've sold pets and Cadillacs and typesetters, and lately I've been selling mainframe computers. I know when I'm being handed a line. You're going to kill me. It was the first thing you thought of when you heard him" —nodding toward Toth—"say your name."

  I just laughed at him. "Well, that's a damn handy thing to be, sorta a walking lie detector," I said, and I was being sarcastic.

  But he just said, "Damn handy," like he was agreeing with me.

  "I don't want to kill you."

  "Oh, I know you don't want to. You didn't want your friend to kill anybody back there at the drugstore either. I could see that. But people got killed, and that ups the stakes. Right?"

  And those eyes of his, they just dug into me, and I couldn't say anything.

  "But," he said, "I'm going to talk you out of it."

  He sounded real certain and that made me feel better. 'Cause I'd rather kill a cocky son of a bitch than a pathetic one. And so I laughed. "Talk me out of it?"

  "I'm going to try."

  "Yeah? How you gonna do that?"

  Weller cleared his throat a little. "First, let's get everything on the table. I've seen your face, and I know your name. Jack Prescot. Right? You're, what? about five-nine, 150 pounds, black hair. So you've got to assume I can identify you. I'm not going to play any games and say I didn't see you clearly or hear who you were. Or anything like that. We all squared away on that, Jack?"

  I nodded, rolling my eyes like this was all a load of crap. But I gotta admit I was kinda curious what he had to say.

  "My promise," he said, "is that I won't turn you in. Not under any circumstances. The police'll never learn your name from me. Or your description. I'll never testify against you."

  Sounding honest as a priest. Real slick delivery. Well, he was a salesman, and I wasn't going to buy it. But he didn't know I was onto him. Let him give me his pitch, let him think I was going along. When it came down to it, after we'd got away and were somewhere in the woods upstate, I'd want him relaxed. Thinking he was going to get away. No screaming, no hassles. Just two fast cuts and that'd be it.

  "You understand what I'm saying?"

  I tried to look serious and said, "Sure. You'r
e thinking you can talk me out of killing you. Which I'm not inclined to do anyway. Kill you, I mean."

  And there was that weird little smile again.

  I said, "You think you can talk me out of it. You've got reasons?"

  "Oh, I've got reasons, you bet. One in particular. One that you can't argue with."

  "Yeah? What's that?"

  "I'll get to it in a minute. Let me tell you some of the practical reasons you should let me go. First, you think you've got to kill me because I know who you are, right? Well, how long you think your identity's going to be a secret? Your buddy shot a cop back there. I don't know police stuff except what I see in the movies. But they're going to be looking at tire tracks and witnesses who saw plates and makes of cars and gas stations you might've stopped at on the way here."

  He was just blowing smoke. The Buick was stolen. I mean, I'm not stupid.

  But he went on, looking at me real coy. "Even if your car was stolen, they're going to check down every lead. Every shoeprint around where you or your friend found it, talk to everybody in the area around the time it vanished."

  I kept smiling like it was nuts what he was saying. But this was true, shooting the cop part. You do that and you're in big trouble. Trouble that sticks with you. They don't stop looking till they find you.

  "And when they identify your buddy"—he nodded toward the couch where Toth's body was lying—"they're going to make some connection to you."

  "I don't know him that good. We just hung around together the past few months."

  Weller jumped on this. "Where? A bar? A restaurant? Anybody ever see you in public?"

  I got mad, and I shouted, "So? What're you saying? They gonna bust me anyway, then I'll just take you out with me. How's that for an argument?"

  Calm as could be he said, "I'm simply telling you that one of the reasons you want to kill me doesn't make sense. And think about this—the shooting at the drugstore? It wasn't premeditated. It was, what do they call it? Heat of passion. But you kill me, that'll be first degree. You'll get the death penalty when they find you."