Great Noir Fiction

by Ed Gorman (ed)

  Rabe could be funny, too. In fact, some of his toughest books have moments of off-the-wall humor that are doubly amusing because they’re so unexpected. And Murder Me for Nickels is a crazy-funny mystery with a first-person narrator, so different from The Box that you’d think a different man wrote it, but it’s equally fine in its own way.

  Peter Rabe’s writing career ended fifteen years ago, though the sad fact is that it was effectively over ten or twelve years before that. The fact that for thirty-five years now Rabe’s work has been shamefully neglected by readers and students of crime fiction is sadder still. And Peter Rabe’s death in 1990 is a tremendous loss to all of us who cared about the man and his work and to those readers who will come to know that work in the future.

  —Bill Crider

  Anatomy of a Killer

  Peter Rabe

  First published in 1960.

  Chapter 1

  When he was done in the room he stepped away quickly because the other man was falling his way. He moved fast and well and when he was out in the corridor he pulled the door shut behind him. Sam Jordan’s speed had nothing to do with haste but came from perfection.

  The door went so far and then held back with a slight give. It did not close. On the floor, between the door and the frame, was the arm.

  He relaxed immediately but his motion was interrupted because he had to turn toward the end of the hall. The old woman had not stepped all the way out of her room. She was stretching her neck past the door jamb and looking at him. “Did you hear a noise just now?”

  “Yes.” He walked toward her, which was natural, because the stair well was that way. “On the street,” he said. “One of those hotrods.”

  “Did you just come from Mister Vendo’s room?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was he in? I mean, I wonder if he heard it.”

  “Yes. He’s in, and he heard it.”

  Jordan walked by the old woman and started down the stairs. She shook her head and said, “That racket. They’re just like wild animals, the way they’re driving,” and went back into her room.

  He turned when her door shut and walked back down the hallway. This was necessary and therefore automatic. He did not feel like a wild animal. He did his job with all the job habits smooth. When he was back at the door he looked down at the arm, but then did nothing else. He stood with his hand on the door knob and did nothing.

  He stood still and looked down at the fingernails and thought they were changing color. And the sleeve was too long at the wrist. He was not worried about the job being done, because it was done and he knew it. He felt the muscles around the mouth and then the rest of the face, stiff like bone. He did not want to touch the arm.

  Somebody came up the stairs and whistled. Jordan listened to the steps and he listened to the melody After he had not looked at the arm for a while, he kicked at it and it flayed out of the way. He closed the door without slamming it and walked away. A few hours later he got on the night train for the nine-hour trip back to New York.

  There was a three-minute delay at the station, a matter of signals and switches. Jordan sat in a carriage close to the front and listened to the sharp knock of the diesels. There was a natural amount of caution and care in his manner of watching the platform, but for the rest he listened to the diesels. In a while the clacks all roared into each other and the train left.

  Jordan never slept on a train. He did not like his jaw to sag down without knowing that it happened or to wake with the sweat of sleep on his face. He sat and folded his arms, crossed his legs. But the tedium of the long ride did not come. He felt the thick odor of clothes and felt the dim light in the carriage like a film over everything, but the nine-hour dullness he wanted did not come. I’ve got to unwind, he thought. This is like the shakes. After all this time with all the habits always more sure and perfect, this.

  He sat still, so that nothing showed, but the irritation was eating at him. Everything should get better, doing it time after time, and not worse. Then it struck him that he had never before had to touch a man when the job was done. Naturally. Here was a good reason. He now knew this in his head but nothing else changed. The hook wasn’t out and the night-ride dullness did not come. He set his tie closer and then worried it down again. This changed nothing. He saw himself in the black window, his face black and white and much sharper than any live face so that he looked away as if shocked because he did not recognize what he saw. The shock now was that this had happened. The thing with the arm had happened and he had never known that there was such a problem. Like a change, he thought. A small step-by-step or a slip-by-slip change following along all the time I was going, following like a shadow behind me. But it does not have my shape. The shock of seeing my shadow that does not have my shape . . .

  He wiped his hands together but they were smooth and made no sound. He rubbed them on his pants, hard.

  It was so bad now, he went over everything, the job, the parts of it, but there was nothing. All smooth with habit, or blind with it, he thought. So much so that only the first time, far back, seemed clear and real. Or as if it had been the best.

  The small truck rode stiff on the springs and everything rattled. The older man drove and the younger one, behind in the dark, kept his hands tucked under his arms. The noise wouldn’t be this hard a sound, thought Jordan, if it were not so early in the morning and if it were not so cold.

  The truck turned through an empty crossing and went down an empty street.

  Gray is empty, thought Jordan. He was thin and pale and felt like it.

  “I’m coming up front,” he said. “The draft is cutting right through me back here.”

  “What about the antenna? I don’t want that antenna to be knocking around back there.”

  They had a spiky aerial lying in back and Jordan pushed it around, back and forth, so that it would lie steady without being held. The whitish aluminum felt glassy with cold. He crawled forward and sat next to the driver.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine. Just cold.”

  “You should have worn more under those overalls. What you wearing under those overalls?”

  “I’m dressed all right. I’m just cold.”

  “Jeesis Christ, Jordan, if you’re dressed right . . .”

  “My hands are cold. I can’t have them get too cold.”

  The driver didn’t say anything to that. He started to look at the younger man but didn’t turn his head all the way. He caught the white skin on Jordan’s nose and then looked straight ahead again. Why look at him?

  “I just hope that antenna’s all right back there. Is it jumping around there?”

  “It’s all right. The tool box is holding it.”

  “If that tool box starts moving though, I don’t want none of them things on the antenna to get bent.”

  “It’s all right.”

  The driver sucked on his teeth as if he were spitting inward. He looked straight and drove straight, sucking his teeth every so often. He would have liked it better if Jordan had talked back. But Jordan never did.

  In a while the driver said, “I hope your hands are warm. We’re here,” and he rolled to a stop.

  The driver got out toward the street and Jordan got out on the sidewalk. They closed their doors without slamming them, and Jordan looked down the length of the empty street, everything gray, except for the fire escapes which angled back and forth across the faces of all the apartment houses. The fire escapes were black and spidery, and the houses looked narrow and very busy with too many windows. But that didn’t give life to the view either. It just made it look messy.

  “You gonna give me a hand with this thing?” said the driver.

  He had the back open and was edging the aerial out. The only thing that doesn’t fit in all this, thought Jordan, is the sky. Everything’s gray and the sky is blue. It’s clean and far.

  “You gonna . . .”

  “You take the aerial,” said Jordan. “You carry it and whe
n you’ve got it out of the back, I take the tool box.”

  The driver didn’t answer and they did it that way. They went into the third house looking like they belonged. They went up all the stairs, and then up the ladder which went from the landing to the roof. The driver climbed up first while the younger one held the prop antenna for him. When the driver pushed the trap door open the wind caught it and slammed it back on the roof. Jordan held a dead cigarette in his teeth and bit hard on the filter.

  In a while the driver looked back through the sky door and said, “Okay down there?”

  “Yes.” Jordan looked up to where the driver’s head was against the sky. “Is it very windy?”

  “Some. Pass me up that aerial. But careful now, feller.”

  He got the aerial and then he helped lift the tool box through, because it was large and awkward. It was not very heavy.

  They crossed the roof, which was quite blowy, and the driver had to hold the aerial with both hands. They crossed from one roof to the next, stepping over the little walls which showed where the next building started. Then came the high one and they had to climb iron steps. A draft blew down at them and they could smell warm soot.

  When they were up on the building the wind leaped at them as if it had been waiting. All the aerials on the roof and the one which the driver was carrying were whistling a little. The roof looked like a set with a very strange forest, thin trees after something terrible had happened to them.

  “There’s too much wind,” said Jordan. “Christ, that wind.”

  The driver didn’t answer anything. They passed a pigeon coop which was built there on the roof, and now the driver let Jordan walk ahead of him. He saw him look at the pigeons. Jordan was moving his head back and forth. All the pigeons were bluish gray, except one, which was speckled. All the pigeons sat in neat, fluffy rows.

  Jordan walked to the parapet and the driver saw how the wind pulled the coveralls around his legs. The driver looked at that and the way Jordan humped over a little, holding the box, and he thought—this hotshot, this expert with specialties, he doesn’t look very impressive.

  Jordan looked back and told the driver to stand away from the pigeon coop; he did not want the animals to start fluttering around. They should stay as they were, in their rows.

  “I’m holding this aerial here and if I step over into the wind . . .”

  “Get away from those pigeons because I want them quiet.”

  The driver nodded. He watched Jordan kneel down by the parapet and said nothing. They feed ‘em raw meat and pepper, he thought to himself, and this is how they turn out. The raw meat is all those dames, all those dames, and the pepper’s the money. All that money. And this is how they turn out. Worried about pigeons.

  But the driver was just a driver and understood very little of Jordan’s work and what went into it.

  Jordan opened the tool box and took out three parts. He snapped the barrel into the stock and he clicked the scope on the top of the barrel. Then he cowered at the rim of the roof and looked down into the empty street.

  “Six forty-five,” said the driver. He stood back on the roof and could not see the street. “Should be about now,” he said.

  Jordan did not answer.

  “Anything yet?”

  “Watch the roof,” said Jordan. “Watch the roof and that door back there.”

  The driver did, but what he wanted to see was the street.

  “You know it’s that time now, and the only reason I’m talking—”

  “Shut up.”

  It was the first job but Jordan already knew it would be better alone. No one along from now on. It was the first job, but already very private.

  The driver heard the sound of a car and saw Jordan bunch and saw the rifle move up.

  “Boy . . .” said the driver.

  The wind leaned the aerial into his hand with a steady push and the aluminum felt glassy with cold. How does he do it, thought the driver. Hold still like that. I bet he was a monster when he was little. That’s how he does it . . .

  Jordan spat the cigarette out because the filter was coming apart in his mouth. And he could now get his head into a better position. He took a sighting, very fast, so the barrel wouldn’t stick over the roof too long.

  The cabby was getting out of his cab; he walked around the hood of the car, and went into the building.

  Jordan pulled the gun back.

  A good sighting. Fine scope. The double-winged door with the etched glass windows pointing up and the black line where the two wings of the door came together. The place that mattered. The hairline on the crack of the door.

  For the briefest moment he felt that he would go out of his mind if he had to wait one instant longer because never again would any of this be so simple. Sight, aim, squeeze, check. How those pigeons stink. And the wind raising hell with the aim. Too much distance. It would have been better if they had told him to make a close play of it, planning it so he would be the cabby. But the distance was good. Everything small like a picture inside a scope and not quite real. And you simply sight, aim . . .

  Sight now.

  But let the cabby get by, let the cabby get by, for Godsake not the cabby. I don’t know the cabby. Why squeeze on him . . . But the crappy thoughts that came. I don’t know the other man either . . . Good, good, good. Where in hell was . . . Sight, aim . . . blink. The eyeball coming to a point. Now . . ..

  Big fat crack in the door. Sight, aim, squeeze . . ..

  Big fat crack out of the rifle, and run.

  Not yet. Check it first.

  Big fat blob rolling down the steps. Check it with the scope.

  Tiny little hole in the forehead, and . . . gone. Making tendrils all over the forehead. And at this distance even the mess looks neat . . .

  “Jordan . . .”

  He looked back at the driver while he took the gun off the parapet. The driver stood in the wind and the antenna was weaving. He stands as if his pants were wet, thought Jordan.

  “Okay?” said the driver. “Okay?”

  “All done.”

  Click when the scope came off, click when the stock came off, other noises when the parts plunked into the box. That scope, he thought, won’t be worth a damn after this.

  Then they ran.

  Which was just something in the muscles. Jordan felt the rush nowhere else, no excitement, and he thought, what did I leave out—what else was there?

  When he ran past the pigeon coop the wildness stopped him. There were no more fluffy rows of pigeons, but now a mad and impotent beating around and a whirling around inside the wire-mesh coop and their eyes with the stiff bird stare, little bright stones which never moved with the whirl of fright around them. They beat and beat their wings with a whistling sound and with thuds when they hit.

  Godalmighty if that wire-mesh breaks . . .

  The driver was ahead and when he came to the end of the roof he looked back and saw Jordan standing.

  “Come on!”

  Sweat itched his skin on the outside and, looking back at Jordan, a sudden hate itched him on the inside. A little thing with a trigger, taking a minute, he thought, and this happens to him, the pale bastard. Standing there in a loving dream about pigeons, that they all should smash their heads on the wire, most likely. A little thing with a trigger and cracked crazy from it . . .

  “Jordan. Come on!”

  “Stop screaming,” said Jordan. He left the coop and they went as planned.

  “But if you’re gonna . . .”

  “Stop screaming. You feel the shakes coming on, hold them till later. Leave the antenna.”

  “I thought . . .”

  “Leave it!”

  The driver left it and turned to run.

  “Wipe it!”

  The driver wiped it. Then they left as planned.

  Later Jordan watched himself, waiting for the shakes to catch up. But they never came. It’s over, he thought, or it’s piling up. Later he thought of the street, roof, scope
-sight, everything. The shakes never came . . .

  He sat in his seat and sat in his seat and blinked his eyes often because he did not want to go to sleep. I never sleep in a train and the job isn’t over. When I get to New York it’s over. Like always. Then I sleep, look up Sandy? No, and why anyway . . . First I sleep, like always. It takes care of one or even two days. A big, thick sleep which always takes care of almost two days . . .

  Chapter 2

  The patrolman always stood at the bar where it curved close to the door. He could turn his head and see a lot of the street or could turn the other way and look at the barmaid. There wasn’t much to her or anything between them but the whole thing went with the uniform. The patrolman was young and got along well all around.

  The place was chrome and plastic, which was uptown style, and in the window sat a pot with geraniums, because the bar was a neighborhood bar. The patrolman looked out on the street from where he was standing and said, “Here comes Sandy.”

  The barmaid looked at her watch; it said three o’clock. Sandy always came at three o’clock. He came through the door when the barmaid finished putting his beer on the back table.

  Sandy was not blond. He had the name because it was simpler than his real one and sounded a little bit like it. The name was all right because it was friendly and quiet sounding. Sandy had very black hair and a very smooth chin. He wore a wide-shouldered overcoat of soft gray flannel. He wore this coat summer and winter. He had a hat on, dark blue, and he never took that off either.

  The patrolman said, “Hi, Sandy,” and Sandy said, “Hi, Bob.”

  “Hot even for August, isn’t it?” said the patrolman.