Pittsburgh Noir
Page 20
She does? Okay, that proves my point. Everyone from there may know his name, or how famous he is, and they know he wrote a ton of books about Homewood, but few actually read him. Interesting.
I stopped using my fan. I was, you know, on alert, worried about her. Wanted to hear every sound. That’s why I heard all this horrible stuff last weekend.
No, he wasn’t there, thank God.
No, every other weekend.
Tell me about it.
The whole thing was so eerie because there were no voices. No arguing or screaming. There wasn’t any music, no Tupac, no Snoop, no Biggie, just hard tympanic thumps. The walls. Soles and heels rolled like thunder across my ceiling. In fact, that’s what woke me. Thought it was a storm. I lay there in the dark, Merce, and I hear knees and elbows splintering. You could hear the cracks and ghost strokes radiating back into the intermittent silence. You could hear furniture scraping across the floor. Something made of glass shattered, and pieces of it rattled and tumbled and skittered across the wood. Walls boomed; the whole frame shook and it was a good while before I picked up the phone.
Well, I don’t know, exactly, but I’m lying there and the phone’s, like, a fucking foot from my head, and I’m actually taking the time to think, He’s killing her up there.
I picked up the phone and the noise quit like someone’d thrown a mattress over it. Only thing I could hear was my ears and temples knocking. My blood rocked my whole body. I didn’t press a single button, not a nine or a one, and the thing began to bleat to be hung up, and it sounded like it was loud enough for him to hear it upstairs, so I hung it up, sat up, and listened. So, as my heart slowed, I could hear normally, more or less. Car engines, tires, woofers, tweeters. I heard drunken boys making like magpies as they walked past my window. One of them’s going, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it’s like he don’t even know when to stop and listen, so like I’m all up in his grille …” and as the boy’s voice fades, I hear in its place this low, steady, “Uh-uh-uh-uh,” and I mean it’s constant, but I can’t tell whether it’s a man or a woman. I can’t tell anything about it, but it goes on for a long, long, long, long time, and I’m pinned down there on my bed and pretty soon I tell myself they’re having sex, and I should mind my own business, and I got a right to be disgusted and pissed off and a right to some peace and quiet and sleep. I turn on the filter. I slept.
I’d have slept till noon or better if not for the smell of ammonia that socked me awake at about seven. No mystery as to why they use that stuff for smelling salts. I got up, stepped into my pants, walked the hallway from bedroom to kitchen. I stepped to the back window and gazed through the bars and dirty glass and down the fire escape. The ammonia drew tears from my eyes and I wiped them with my wrist. A nasty film ate at my throat. My feet didn’t quite touch the ground.
Down by the big blue dumpster, I saw this trim black boy of seventeen or so: trench coat, hoodie, Timberlands. The uniform, you dig?
He may or may not have been carrying, but who’s gonna ask? The suit makes the A-bomb. But other than the getup, there was nothing actually sinister about him—no shades or grim visage. All he did was nod at the cars that rolled by the dumpster like he was the town sheriff, and when people came by with their garbage, he smiled, nodded, said a couple words, even bowed a little, pointed nowhere in particular with his thumb. Every single person walked back home carrying their trash. No back talk, no heat, and no questions. I wasn’t a bit surprised, Merce, even though it was garbage day.
And I can’t say I was surprised by the first of three men carrying the black leaf bags down the fire escape. I already know because I’ve seen the movies, read the books. Ammonia tells you one thing, trench coats tell you the other, the only thing next is black garbage bags. But I don’t mean to sound blasé about it. I wasn’t. Not a bit. For every step the first guy took down the steps, I took a step away from the window. I realized that the sound I’d heard at the tail end of my night hadn’t been sex at all, and I guess I already knew that even then, before I flicked on the air filter. It was the sound of someone dying, of someone laboring with a handsaw over flesh and bone.
Uh-huh, backed up all the way till my ass met the little olive stove and amber-yellow fridge. Turned around and looked at them—clean, familiar acquaintances of mine. I grabbed the handle of the fridge, but didn’t pull it open. I looked at the stovetop, the teapot, the coffee maker and toaster, and for a couple seconds I couldn’t remember what they were called or what they were for. Turned back around in time to see the second bag make its unmistakably butcher-shop way down the fire escape. I got this galvanic zap on the back of my tongue. You know, like when you’re a kid and stupid enough to lick the anodes of a nine-volt battery. It was a kind of supercharged horror I could taste. My body, like, just dumped sweat—all at once, from every pore. I’m hot; I’m shivering. I crept back to the window as the third bag made its way down. The boy held the lid open, the guy tossed the bag in, and the boy lowered the lid. All of them stood next to the dumpster and smoked till the truck came, but I can’t remember whether they walked, drove, or flew away.
No, Merce. I did not call the cops.
Well now, see, that’s what I called to tell you. I’m not a bit surprised she’s paid her rent, because day before yesterday, she came to my place.
Yes, Tamara.
Of course I was stunned, man, are you kidding? I’d spent days feeling her ghost in my mouth. After showers, I sit on the edge of the tub and stare at my feet.
Yeah, my feet.
Talk about not eating. Talk about insomnia and silence and emptiness. I thought divorce was … I thought nothing could be worse than those days when I first moved into your place and ate cobwebs and pissed blood, and cried piss, and bayed like a hound every night Brian wasn’t under my roof.
And then one day she’s standing at my door as beautiful as a palm full of tea roses and asking me can she come in. I let her in. Says she’s been away for a while, and only back in town to get a few things. Told me the boyfriend had tried to break in a few days back, and she’d had to leave to find a new place. Said he was crazy, dealt drugs, killed people, feared nothing. She shook, she cried; her voice quavered just perfectly. She asked me for money for a bus back out of town and a hotel, till her new place was ready. Said she’d pay me back in a week, maybe two.
Of course I didn’t believe her.
Of course I gave her the money.
Three hundred bills, dude.
That’s why I called you, man.
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
K.C. CONSTANTINE has had seventeen novels published by four different publishers. Publishers, retailers, and reviewers persist in their opinion that these are “mysteries” because the main characters are mostly cops and sometimes one or two characters get arrested. He’s given up trying to tell them otherwise. He’s also had two stories published in anthologies edited by Otto Penzler. His story included here is his third and probably his last because stories are hard and the pay is bad.
CARLOS ANTONIO DELGADO earned his MFA from the University of Pittsburgh and won the 2008 Turow-Kinder Fiction Award for the first two chapters of his novella, The Voice and Arms of God. He has placed fiction in The Ankeny Briefcase and in Relief Journal’s first annual Best of Relief anthology. He lives and works in Los Angeles—at Biola University’s Torrey Honors Institute—but he misses his little brick house in the Morningside neighborhood of Pittsburgh.
REBECCA DRAKE’S debut thriller, Don’t Be Afraid, came out in September 2006 from Pinnacle. The Next Killing followed in September 2007 and was selected by four national book clubs including the Literary Guild. Her third novel, The Dead Place, came out in September 2008 and was an Independent Mystery Booksellers Association (IMBA) best seller. A former journalist and native New Yorker, Drake currently lives in Pittsburgh.
KATHLEEN GEORGE is a professor of theatre at the University of Pittsburgh. Her fourth novel, The Odds, was an Edgar Award finalist, and her previous work includes the no
vels Taken, Fallen, and Afterimage—all set in Pittsburgh and featuring Detective Richard Christie. She’s also written books about theatre, the most recent of which is Narrative and Drama, and she has directed many plays.
KATHRYN MILLER HAINES is the author of two World War II–set mystery series: the Rosie Winter series for HarperCollins, and a young adult series for Roaring Brook Press, the first of which, The Girl Is Murder, is due out in 2011. A Texas native, she transplanted to Pittsburgh in 1994 and instantly developed a love for french fries and cole slaw on her sandwiches. She has lived in the Wilkinsburg neighborhood for the past fourteen years.
TERRANCE HAYES is the 2010 recipient of the National Book Award in poetry. His most recent collection is Light-head. His other books are Wind in a Box, Muscular Music, and Hip Logic. His honors include four Best American Poetry selections, a Whiting Writers Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is a professor of creative writing at Carnegie Mellon University and lives in Pittsburgh.
AUBREY HIRSCH’S stories, essays, and poems have appeared in several magazines including Third Coast, Hobart, Vestal Review, and the Minnetonka Review. Recent honors include a special mention as a finalist in Glimmer Train’s Fiction Open and a nomination for a Pushcart Prize. She came to Pittsburgh for her MFA in creative writing and stayed for the bridges and cheese fries. She currently teaches creative writing in the MFA program at Chatham University.
PAUL LEE was born in Hollywood, California. He attended UC Berkeley as an undergrad and earned his MFA from the University of Pittsburgh while living in Bloomfield and Friendship and sometimes a couch in the South Side. Currently he lives in Queens and is working on a novel.
TOM LIPINSKI is a native of Pittsburgh and creator of the Carroll Dorsey mystery series. A Shamus Award winner, he has worked as a social worker, jail administrator, in auto repossessions, and as an insurance investigator. He holds an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh and a MA from Slippery Rock University, and is presently the chair of the English and theatre arts department at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania.
NANCY MARTIN is the author of forty-eight novels in the mystery, suspense, historical, and romance genres. Nominated for the Agatha Award for Best First Mystery of 2002, How to Murder a Millionaire won the RT award for Best First Mystery. With the 2009 publication of Our Lady of Immaculate Deception from Minotaur, she launched a new Pittsburgh-based mystery series featuring Roxy Abruzzo. Martin currently lives in Pittsburgh and is a founding member of Pennwriters.
HILARY MASTERS moved into Pittsburgh’s Mexican War Streets in 1984 when he joined the writing program at Carnegie Mellon University. His tenth novel, Post, will be published in 2011. In 2003 the American Academy of Arts and Letters granted his work its Award for Literature. Recently, the Independent Publishers Association awarded Masters its bronze medal for the literary short story.
REGINALD MCKNIGHT is the author of The Kind of Light That Shines on Texas, White Boys, Moustapha’s Eclipse, He Sleeps, and I Get on the Bus. His many awards include the PEN/ Hemingway Special Citation, a Pushcart Prize, an O. Henry Award, the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Excellence, a Whiting Writers’ Award, the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
STEWART O’NAN was born and raised and lives in Pittsburgh. His story collection, In the Walled City, received the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, and his first novel, Snow Angels, set in Butler, was recently made into a critically acclaimed film. Several of his dozen novels take place in Pittsburgh, including Everyday People (East Liberty) and the forthcoming Emily, Alone (Highland Park).
LILA SHAARA is the author of Every Secret Thing and The Fortune Teller’s Daughter. Trained as an anthropologist, she has held many jobs, including (in no particular order) disc jockey, radio talk show producer, secretary, bartender, waitress, “crew member” at a fast food chain, and high school teacher. Shaara teaches anthropology at a local university, and resides in Pittsburgh with her husband, two children, and many foundling pets.