Great Noir Fiction

by Ed Gorman (ed)

  With all her strength, Della drove the screwdriver up into the base of his skull. She thrust and twisted the tool until she felt her knuckles dig into his stiff hair. Vinh screamed, a high keening wail that cracked and shattered as blood spurted out of his nose and mouth, splattering against Della’s neck. The Vietnamese boy’s arms and legs tensed and then let go as his body vibrated spastically in some sort of fit.

  Della pushed him away from her and staggered to her feet. Her nose was full of the odor she remembered from the twins’ diaper pail.

  She knew she should retrieve the screwdriver, grasp the handle tightly and twist it loose from Vinh’s head. She couldn’t. All she could do at this point was simply turn and run. Run again. And hope the survivor of the four boys didn’t catch her.

  But Chuckie had the light, and Chuckie had the gun. She had a feeling Chuckie was in no mood to give up. Chuckie would find her. He would make her pay for the loss of his friends.

  But if she had to pay, Della thought, the price would be dear.

  Prices, she soon discovered, were subject to change without warning.

  With only one remaining pursuer, Della thought she ought to be able to get away. Maybe not easily, but now there was no crossfire of spying eyes, no ganging-up of assailants. There was just one boy left, even if he was a psychopath carrying a loaded pistol.

  Della was shaking. It was fatigue, she realized. The endless epinephrine rush of flight and fight. Probably, too, the letdown from just having killed two other human beings. She didn’t want to have to think about the momentary sight of blood flowing off the shining ends of the lug wrench, the sensation of how it felt when the slot-headed screwdriver drove up into Vinh’s brain. But she couldn’t order herself to forget these things. It was akin to someone telling her not, under any circumstances, to think about milking a purple cow.

  Della tried. No, she thought. Don’t think about it at all. She thought about dismembering the purple cow with a chainsaw. Then she heard Chuckie’s voice. The boy was still distant, obviously casting around virtually at random in the pine groves. Della stiffened.

  “They’re cute, Della-honey. I’ll give ’em that.” He giggled. “Terri and Tammi. God, didn’t you and your husband have any more imagination than that?”

  No, Della thought. We each had too much imagination. Tammi and Terri were simply the names we finally could agree on. The names of compromise.

  “You know something?” Chuckie raised his voice. “Now that I know where they live, I could drive over there in a while and say howdy. They wouldn’t know a thing about what was going on, about what happened to their mom while she was out at the mall.”

  Oh God! thought Della.

  “You want me to pass on any messages?”

  “You little bastard!” She cried it out without thinking. “Touchy, huh?” Chuckie slopped across the wet snow in her direction. “Come on out of the trees, Della-honey.”

  Della said nothing. She crouched behind a deadfall of brush and dead limbs. She was perfectly still.

  Chuckie stood equally still, not more than twenty feet away. He stared directly at her hiding place, as though he could see through the night and brush. “Listen,” he said. “This is getting real, you know, boring. ” He waited. “We could be out here all night, you know? All my buddies are gone now, and it’s thanks to you, lady. Who the hell you think you are, Clint Eastwood?” Della assumed that was a rhetorical question.

  Chuckie hawked deep in his throat and spat on the ground. He rubbed the base of his throat gingerly with a free hand. “You hurt me, Della-honey. I think you busted my collarbone.” He giggled. “But I don’t hold grudges. In fact—” He paused contemplatively. “Listen now, I’ve got an idea. You know about droogs? You know, like in that movie?”

  Clockwork Orange, she thought. Della didn’t respond.

  “Ending was stupid, but the start was pretty cool.” Chuckie’s personality seemed to have mutated into a manic stage. “Well, me droogs is all gone. I need a new gang, and you’re real good, Della-honey. I want you should join me.”

  “Give me a break,” said Della in the darkness.

  “No, really,” Chuckie said. “You’re a born killer. I can tell. You and me, we’d be perfect. We’ll blow this popsicle stand and have some real fun. Whaddaya say?”

  He’s serious, she thought. There was a ring of complete honesty in his voice. She floundered for some answer. “I’ve got kids,” she said.

  “We’ll take ’em along,” said Chuckie. “I like kids, always took care of my brothers and sisters.” He paused. “Listen, I’ll bet you’re on the outs with your old man.”

  Della said nothing. It would be like running away to be a pirate. Wouldn’t it?

  Chuckie hawked and spat again. “Yeah, I figured. When we pick up your kids, we can waste him. You like that? I can do it, or you can. Your choice.”

  You’re crazy, she thought. “I want to,” she found herself saying aloud.

  “So come out and we’ll talk about it.”

  “You’ll kill me.”

  “Hey,” he said, “I’ll kill you if you don’t come out. I got the light and the gun, remember? This way we can learn to trust each other right from the start. I won’t kill you. I won’t do nothing. Just talk.”

  “Okay.” Why not, she thought. Sooner or later, he’ll find his way in here and put the gun in my mouth and—Della stood up.—but maybe, just maybe—Agony lanced through her knees.

  Chuckie cocked his head, staring her way. “Leave the tools.”

  “I already did. The ones I didn’t use.”

  “Yeah,” said Chuckie. “The ones you used, you used real good.” He lowered the beam of the flashlight. “Here you go. I don’t want you stumbling and falling and maybe breaking your neck.”

  Della stepped around the deadfall and slowly walked toward him. His hands were at his sides. She couldn’t see if he was holding the gun. She stopped when she was a few feet away.

  “Hell of a night, huh?” said Chuckie. “It’ll be really good to go inside where it’s warm and get some coffee.” He held the flashlight so that the beam speared into the sky between them.

  Della could make out his thin, pain-pinched features. She imagined he could see hers. “I was only going out to the mall for a few things,” she said.

  Chuckie laughed. “Shit happens.”

  “What now?” Della said.

  “Time for the horror show.” His teeth showed ferally as his lips drew back in a smile. “Guess maybe I sort of fibbed.” He brought up his hand, glinting of metal.

  “That’s what I thought,” she said, feeling a cold and distant sense of loss. “Huey, there, going to help?” She nodded to a point past his shoulder.

  “Huey?” Chuckie looked puzzled just for a second as he glanced to the side. “Huey’s—”

  Della leapt with all the spring left in her legs. Her fingers closed around his wrist and the hand with the gun. “Christ!” Chuckie screamed, as her shoulder crashed against the spongy place where his broken collarbone pushed out against the skin.

  They tumbled on the December ground, Chuckie underneath,

  Della wrapping her legs around him as though pulling a lover tight. She burrowed her chin into the area of his collarbone and he screamed again. Kenneth had always joked about the sharpness of her chin.

  The gun went off. The flash was blinding, the report hurt her ears. Wet snow plumped down from the overhanging pine branches, a large chunk plopping into Chuckie’s wide-open mouth. He started to choke.

  Then the pistol was in Della’s hands. She pulled back from him, getting to her feet, back-pedaling furiously to get out of his reach. She stared down at him along the blued-steel barrel. The pirate captain struggled to his knees.

  “Back to the original deal,” he said. “Okay?”

  I wish, she almost said. Della pulled the trigger. Again. And again.

  “Where the hell have you been?” said Kenneth as she closed the front door behind her. “You’v
e been gone for close to three hours.” He inspected her more closely. “Della, honey, are you all right?”

  “Don’t call me that,” she said. “Please.” She had hoped she would look better, more normal. Unruffled. Once Della had pulled the Subaru up to the drive beside the house, she had spent several minutes using spit and Kleenex trying to fix her mascara. Such makeup as she’d had along was in her handbag, and she had no idea where that was. Probably the police had it; three cruisers with lights flashing had passed her, going the other way, as she was driving north of Southeast Plaza.

  “Your clothes.” Kenneth gestured. He stood where he was.

  Della looked down at herself. She’d tried to wash off the mud, using snow and a rag from the trunk. There was blood too, some of it Chuckie’s, the rest doubtless from Vinh and Tomas.

  “Honey, was there an accident?”

  She had looked at the driver’s side of the Subaru for a long minute after getting home. At least the car drove; it must just have been flooded before. But the insurance company wouldn’t be happy. The entire side would need a new paint job.

  “Sort of,” she said.

  “Are you hurt?”

  To top it all off, she had felt the slow stickiness between her legs as she’d come up the walk. Terrific. She could hardly wait for the cramps to intensify.

  “Hurt?” She shook her head. No. “How are the twins?”

  “Oh, they’re in bed. I checked a half hour ago. They’re asleep.”

  “Good.” Della heard sirens in the distance, getting louder, nearing the neighborhood. Probably the police had found her driver’s license in Chuckie’s pocket. She’d forgotten that.

  “So,” said Kenneth. It was obvious to Della that he didn’t know at this point whether to be angry, solicitous or funny. “What’d you bring me from the mall?”

  Della’s right hand was nestled in her jacket pocket. She felt the solid bulk, the cool grip of the pistol.

  Outside, the volume of sirens increased.

  She touched the trigger. She withdrew her hand from the pocket and aimed the pistol at Kenneth. He looked back at her strangely.

  The sirens went past. Through the window, Della caught a glimpse of a speeding ambulance. The sound Dopplered down to a silence as distant as the dream that flashed through her head.

  Della pulled the trigger and the click seemed to echo through the entire house.

  Shocked, Kenneth stared at the barrel of the gun, then up at her eyes.

  It was okay. She’d counted the shots. Just like in the movies.

  “I think,” Della said to her husband, “that we need to talk.”

  On the Sidewalk

  Bleeding

  Evan Hunter

  Evan Hunter is one of my favorite writers, and “On the Sidewalk Bleeding” is one of his best short stories. As Ed McBain, of course, Evan Hunter is one of the most influential and best-selling crime writers in the world. And he keeps on getting better; each 87th Precinct novel is richer, deeper, truer than the last. His novel, He Who Hesitates, should be required reading for anybody who ever tries to write fiction.

  First published in 1957.

  The boy lay bleeding in the rain. He was sixteen years old,and he wore a bright-purple silk jacket, and the lettering across the back of the jacket read The Royals. The boy’s name was Tony, and the name was delicately scripted in black thread on the front of the jacket, just over his heart.

  He had been stabbed ten minutes ago. The knife had entered just below his rib cage and been drawn across his body violently, tearing a wide gap in his flesh. He lay on the sidewalk, with the March rain drilling his jacket and drilling his body and washing away the blood which poured from his open wound. He had known excruciating pain when the knife had torn across his body, and then sudden, comparative relief when the blade was pulled away. He had heard the voice saying, “That’s for you, Royal!” and then the sound of footsteps hurrying into the rain, and then he had fallen to the sidewalk, clutching his stomach, trying to stop the flow of blood.

  He tried to yell for help, but he had no voice. He did not know why his voice had deserted him, or why the rain had become so suddenly fierce, or why there was an open hole in his body from which his life ran redly, steadily. It was 11:30 p.m., but he did not know the time. There was another thing he did not know.

  He did not know that he was dying. He did not know that unless a doctor stopped the flow of blood, he would be dead within a half hour. He lay on the sidewalk bleeding, and he thought only: That was a fierce rumble. They got me good that time, but he did not know he was dying. He would have been frightened had he known. But in his ignorance, he lay bleeding. He wished he could yell for help, but there was no voice in his throat. There was only the bubbling of blood from between his lips whenever he opened his mouth to speak. He lay silent in his pain, waiting, waiting for someone to find him.

  By midnight, if they did not stop the flow of blood, he would be dead.

  He could hear the sound of automobile tires hushed on the muzzle of rain-swept streets, far away at the other end of the long alley. He lay with his face pressed to the sidewalk, and he could see the splash of neon far away at the other end of the alley, tinting the pavement red and green, slickly brilliant in the rain.

  He wondered if Laura would be angry.

  He had left the jump to get a package of cigarettes. He had told her he would be back in a few minutes, and then he had gone downstairs and found the candy store closed. He knew that Alfredo’s on the next block would be open until at least two, and he had started through the alley, and that was when he’d been ambushed. He could hear the faint sound of music now, coming from what seemed a long, long way off, and he wondered if Laura was dancing, wondered if she had missed him yet. Maybe she thought he wasn’t coming back. Maybe she thought he’d cut out for good. Maybe she’d leave the jump and go home. He thought of her face, the brown eyes and the jet-black hair, and thinking of her he forgot his pain a little, forgot that blood was rushing from his body. Someday he would marry Laura. Someday he would marry her, and they would have a lot of kids, and then they would get out of the neighborhood. They would move to a clean project in the Bronx, or maybe they would move to Staten Island. When they were married. When they had kids. Someday.

  It was 11:35.

  He heard footsteps at the other end of the alley, and he lifted his cheek from the sidewalk and looked into the darkness, and tried to yell, but again there was only a soft hissing bubble of blood on his mouth. The man came down the alley. He had not seen Tony yet. He walked, and then stopped to lean against the brick of the building, and then walked again. He saw Tony and came toward him, and he stood over him for a long time, the minutes ticking, ticking, watching him and not speaking.

  Then he said, “Whussa matter, buddy-buddy?”

  Tony could not speak, and Tony could not move. He lifted his face slightly and looked up at the man, and in the rain-swept alley he smelled the sickening odor of alcohol, and then he realized the man was drunk. He did not feel any particular panic. He did not know he was dying, and so he felt only mild disappointment that the man who had found him was sauced up.

  The man was smiling.

  “You fall down, buddy-buddy?” he said. You ’sdrunk ezz I am, buddy-buddy? I feel sick. I really feel sick. Don’ go ’way. I’ll be ri’ back.”

  The man lurched away from Tony. He heard his footsteps, and then the sound of the man colliding with a garbage can, and some mild swearing, and then all was lost in the steady wash of the rain. He waited for the man to come back.

  It was 11:39.

  When the man returned, he squatted alongside Tony. He studied him with drunken dignity.

  “You gonna cash cold here,” he said. “Whussa matter? You like layin’ in the wet?”

  Tony could not answer. The man tried to focus his eyes on Tony’s face. The rain spattered around them.

  “You like a drink?”

  Tony shook his head.

  “You had
enough, huh?”

  Again Tony shook his head.

  “I gotta bottle. Here,” the man said. He pulled a pint bottle from his inside jacket pocket. He uncorked it and extended it to Tony. Tony tried to move, but pain wrenched him back flat against the sidewalk.

  “Take it,” the man said. He kept watching Tony. “Take it.” When Tony did not move, he said, “Whussa matter? You too good to drink wi’ me?” He kept watching him with the flat, blank eyes of a reptile. “Nev’ mind,” he said at last. “I’ll have one m’self.” He tilted the bottle to his lips, and then wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “You too young to be drinkin’, anyway. Should be ’shamed of yourself, drunk an’ layin’ down in a alley, all wet. Shame. Shame on you. I gotta good minda calla cop.”

  Tony nodded. Yes, yes, he tried to say. Call a cop. Go. Call one.

  “Oh, you don’ like that, huh?” the drunk said. “You don’ wanna cop to fine you all drunk an’ wet in a alley, huh? Okay, buddy-buddy. This time you get off easy. I’m a good Joe, tha’s why.” He got to his feet. “This time you lucky,” he said. He waved broadly at Tony, and then almost lost his footing. “S’long, buddy-buddy,” he said.

  Wait, Tony thought. Wait, please, I’m bleeding.

  “S’long,” the drunk said again. “I see you aroun’,” and then he staggered off up the alley, and Tony watched him go, watched the figure retreat until it passed into the world of red and green neon and automobile tires hushed on the rain-swept muzzle of the street at the end of the long alley far away.

  It was 11:41.

  He lay and thought, Laura, Laura. Are you dancing?

  The couple came into the alley at 11:43. They ran into the alley together, running from the rain, the boy holding the girl’s elbow, the girl spreading a newspaper over her head to protect her hair. Tony lay crumpled against the pavement, and he watched them run into the alley laughing, and then duck into the doorway not ten feet from him.

  “Man, what rain!” the boy said. “You could drown out there.”