USA Noir - Best Of The Akashic Noir Series

by Johnny Temple (Editor)

  “Would that work?”

  “With luck,” he said, “we’ll never know. The Westies are mostly gone now, and the tenement apartments they lived in are all tarted up, with stockbrokers and lawyers renting them. Which are you?”

  “Me?”

  “A stockbroker or a lawyer?”

  She grinned. “Neither one, I’m afraid. I’m an actress.”

  “Even better.”

  “Which means I take a class twice a week,” she said, “and run around to open casting calls and auditions.”

  “And wait tables?”

  “I did some of that in the Cities. I suppose I’ll have to do it again here, when I start to run out of money.”

  “The Cities?”

  “The Twin Cities. Minneapolis and St. Paul.”

  They talked about where she was from, and along the way he told her his name was Jim. She was Jennifer, she told him. He related another story about the neighborhood—he was really a pretty good storyteller—and by then her Rob Roy was gone and so was his Jameson. “Let me get us another round,” he said, “and then why don’t we take our drinks to a table? We’ll be more comfortable, and it’ll be quieter.”

  * * *

  He was talking about the neighborhood.

  “Irish, of course,” he said, “but that was only part of it. You had blocks that were pretty much solid Italian, and there were Poles and other Eastern Europeans. A lot of French, too, working at the restaurants in the theater district. You had everything, really. The UN’s across town on the East River, but you had your own General Assembly here in the Kitchen. Fifty-seventh Street was a dividing line; north of that was San Juan Hill, and you had a lot of blacks living there. It was an interesting place to grow up, if you got to grow up, but no sweet young thing from Minnesota would want to move here.”

  She raised her eyebrows at sweet young thing, and he grinned at her. Then his eyes turned serious and he said, “I have a confession to make.”

  “Oh?”

  “I followed you in here.”

  “You mean you noticed me even before I ordered a Rob Roy?”

  “I saw you on the street. And for a moment I thought . . .”

  “What?”

  “Well, that you were on the street.”

  “I guess I was, if that’s where you saw me. I don’t . . . Oh, you thought—”

  “That you were a working girl. I wasn’t going to mention this, and I don’t want you to take it the wrong way . . .”

  What, she wondered, was the right way?

  “. . . because it’s not as though you looked the part, or were dressed like the girls you see out there. See, the neighborhood may be tarted up, but that doesn’t mean the tarts have disappeared.”

  “I’ve noticed.”

  “It was more the way you were walking,” he went on. “Not swinging your hips, not your walk, per se, but a feeling I got that you weren’t in a hurry to get anywhere, or even all that sure where you were going.”

  “I was thinking about stopping for a drink,” she said, “and not sure if I wanted to, or if I should go straight home.”

  “That would fit.”

  “And I’ve never been in here before, and wondered if it was decent.”

  “Well, it’s decent enough now. A few years ago it wouldn’t have been. And even now, a woman alone—”

  “I see.” She sipped her drink. “So you thought I might be a hooker, and that’s what brought you in here. Well, I hate to disappoint you—”

  “What brought me in here,” he said, “was the thought that you might be, and the hope that you weren’t.”

  “I’m not.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m an actress.”

  “And a good one, I’ll bet.”

  “I guess time will tell.”

  “It generally does,” he said. “Can I get you another one of those?”

  She shook her head. “Oh, I don’t think so,” she said. “I was only going to come in for one drink, and I wasn’t even sure I wanted to do that. And I’ve had two, and that’s really plenty.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m afraid so. It’s not just the alcohol, it’s the time. I have to get home.”

  “I’ll walk you.”

  “Oh, that’s not necessary.”

  “Yes, it is. Whether it’s Hell’s Kitchen or Clinton, it’s still necessary.”

  “Well . . .”

  “I insist. It’s safer around here than it used to be, but it’s a long way from Minnesota. And I suppose you get some unsavory characters in Minnesota, as far as that goes.”

  “Well, you’re right about that.” At the door she added, “I just don’t want you to think you have to walk me home because I’m a lady.”

  “I’m not walking you home because you’re a lady,” he said. “I’m walking you home because I’m a gentleman.”

  * * *

  The walk to her door was interesting. He had stories to tell about half the buildings they passed. There’d been a murder in this one, a notorious drunk in the next. And though some of the stories were unsettling, she felt completely secure walking at his side.

  At her door he said, “Any chance I could come up for a cup of coffee?”

  “I wish,” she said.

  “I see.”

  “I’ve got this roommate,” she said. “It’s impossible, it really is. My idea of success isn’t starring on Broadway, it’s making enough money to have a place of my own. There’s just no privacy when she’s home, and the damn girl is always home.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  She drew a breath. “Jim? Do you have a roommate?”

  * * *

  He didn’t, and if he had, the place would still have been spacious enough to afford privacy. A large living room, a big bedroom, a good-sized kitchen. Rent-controlled, he told her, or he could never have afforded it. He showed her all through the apartment before he took her in his arms and kissed her.

  “Maybe,” she said, when the embrace ended, “maybe we should have one more drink after all.”

  * * *

  She was dreaming, something confused and confusing, and then her eyes snapped open. For a moment she did not know where she was, and then she realized she was in New York, and realized the dream had been a recollection or reinvention of her childhood in Hawley.

  In New York, and in Jim’s apartment.

  And in his bed. She turned, saw him lying motionless beside her, and slipped out of bed, moving with instinctive caution. She walked quietly out of the bedroom, found the bathroom. She used the toilet, peeked behind the shower curtain. The tub was surprisingly clean for a bachelor’s apartment and looked inviting. She didn’t feel soiled, not exactly that, but something close. Stale, she decided. Stale, and very much in need of freshening.

  She ran the shower, adjusted the temperature, stepped under the spray.

  She hadn’t intended to stay over, had fallen asleep in spite of her intentions. Rohypnol, she thought. Roofies, the date-rape drug. Puts you to sleep, or the closest thing to it, and leaves you with no memory of what happened to you.

  Maybe that was it. Maybe she’d gotten a contact high.

  She stepped out of the tub, toweled herself dry, and returned to the bedroom for her clothes. He hadn’t moved in her absence and lay on his back beneath the covers.

  She got dressed, checked herself in the mirror, found her purse, put on lipstick but no other makeup, and was satisfied with the results. Then, after another reflexive glance at the bed, she began searching the apartment.

  His wallet, in the gray slacks he’d tossed over the back of a chair, held almost three hundred dollars in cash. She took that but left the credit cards and everything else. She found just over a thousand dollars in his sock drawer, and took it, but left the mayonnaise jar full of loose change. She checked the refrigerator, and the set of brushed-aluminum containers on the kitchen counter, but the fridge held only food and drink, and one container held tea bags whil
e the other two were empty.

  That was probably it, she decided. She could search more thoroughly, but she’d only be wasting her time.

  And she really ought to get out of here.

  But first she had to go back to the bedroom. Had to stand at the side of the bed and look down at him. Jim, he’d called himself. James John O’Rourke, according to the cards in his wallet. Forty-seven years old. Old enough to be her father, in point of fact, although the man in Hawley who’d sired her was his senior by eight or nine years.

  He hadn’t moved.

  Rohypnol, she thought. The love pill.

  “Maybe,” she had said, “we should have one more drink after all.”

  I’ll have what you’re having, she’d told him, and it was child’s play to add the drug to her own drink, then switch glasses with him. Her only concern after that had been that he might pass out before he got his clothes off, but no, they kissed and petted and found their way to his bed, and got out of their clothes and into each other’s arms, and it was all very nice, actually, until he yawned and his muscles went slack and he lay limp in her arms.

  She arranged him on his back and watched him sleep. Then she touched and stroked him, eliciting a response without waking the sleeping giant. Rohypnol, the wonder drug, facilitating date rape for either sex. She took him in her mouth, she mounted him, she rode him. Her orgasm was intense, and it was hers alone. He didn’t share it, and when she dismounted his penis softened and lay upon his thigh.

  * * *

  In Hawley her father took to coming into her room at night. “Jenny? Are you sleeping?” If she answered, he’d kiss her on the forehead and tell her to go back to sleep.

  Then half an hour later he’d come back. If she was asleep, if she didn’t hear him call her name, he’d slip into the bed with her. And touch her, and kiss her, and not on her forehead this time.

  She would wake up when this happened, but somehow knew to feign sleep. And he would do what he did.

  Before long she pretended to be asleep whenever he came into the room. She’d hear him ask if she was asleep, and she’d lie there silent and still, and he’d come into her bed. She liked it, she didn’t like it. She loved him, she hated him.

  Eventually they dropped the pretense. Eventually he taught her how to touch him, and how to use her mouth on him. Eventually, eventually, there was very little they didn’t do.

  * * *

  It took some work, but she got Jim hard again and made him come. He moaned audibly at the very end, then subsided into deep sleep almost immediately. She was exhausted, she felt as if she’d taken a drug herself, but she forced herself to go to the bathroom and look for some Listerine. She couldn’t find any, and wound up gargling with a mouthful of his Irish whiskey.

  She stopped in the kitchen, then returned to the bedroom. When she’d done what she needed to do, she decided it wouldn’t hurt to lie down beside him and close her eyes. Just for a minute . . .

  * * *

  And now it was morning, time for her to get out of there. She stood looking down at him, and for an instant she seemed to see his chest rise and fall with his slow even breathing, but that was just her mind playing a trick, because his chest was in fact quite motionless, and he wasn’t breathing at all. His breathing had stopped forever when she slid the kitchen knife between two of his ribs and into his heart.

  He’d died without a sound. La petite mort, the French called an orgasm. The little death. Well, the little death had drawn a moan from him, but the real thing turned out to be soundless. His breathing stopped, and never resumed.

  She laid a hand on his upper arm, and the coolness of his flesh struck her as a sign that he was at peace now. She thought, almost wistfully, how very serene he had become.

  In a sense, there’d been no need to kill the man. She could have robbed him just as effectively while he slept, and the drug would ensure that he wouldn’t wake up before she was out the door. She’d used the knife in response to an inner need, and the need had been an urgent one; satisfying it had shuttled her right off to sleep.

  She had never used a knife, or anything else, in Hawley. She’d considered it, and more than once. But in the end all she did was leave. No final scene, no note, nothing. Out the door and on the first Trailways bus out of there, and that was that.

  Maybe everything else would have been different if she’d left her father as peaceful as she was leaving James John O’Rourke. But had that ever been an option? Could she have done it, really?

  Probably not.

  * * *

  She let herself out of the apartment, drew the door shut, and made sure it locked behind her. The building was a walk-up, four apartments to the floor, and she walked down three flights and out the door without encountering anyone.

  Time to think about moving.

  Not that she’d established a pattern. The man last week, in the posh loft near the Javits Center, she had smothered to death. He’d been huge, and built like a wrestler, but the drug rendered him helpless, and all she’d had to do was hold the pillow over his face. He didn’t come close enough to consciousness to struggle. And the man before that, the advertising executive, had shown her why he’d feel safe in any neighborhood, gentrification or no. He kept a loaded handgun in the drawer of the bedside table, and if any burglar was unlucky enough to drop into his place, well—

  When she was through with him, she’d retrieved the gun, wrapped his hand around it, put the barrel in his mouth, and squeezed off a shot. They could call it a suicide, just as they could call the wrestler a heart attack, if they didn’t look too closely. Or they could call all three of them murders, without ever suspecting they were all the work of the same person.

  Still, it wouldn’t hurt her to move. Find another place to live before people started to notice her on the streets and in the bars. She liked it here, in Clinton, or Hell’s Kitchen, whatever you wanted to call it. It was a nice place to live, whatever it may have been in years past. But, as she and Jim had agreed, the whole of Manhattan was a nice place to live. There weren’t any bad neighborhoods left, not really.

  Wherever she went, she was pretty sure she’d feel safe.

  PHELAN’S FIRST CASE

  BY LISA SANDLIN

  Beaumont, Texas

  (Originally published in Lone Star Noir)

  Five past eight. Phelan sat tipped back in his desk chair, appreciating the power of the Beaumont Enterprise. They’d centered the ad announcing his new business, boxed it in black, and spelled his name right. The other ad in the classifieds had brought in two girls yesterday. He figured to choose the brunette with the coral nails and the middle-C voice. But just then he got a call from his old high school bud Joe Ford, now a parole officer, and Joe was hard-selling.

  “Typing, dictation, whatcha need? She learned it in the big house. Paid her debt to society. What say you talk to her?”

  “Find some other sucker. Since when are you Acme Employment?”

  “Since when are you a private eye?”

  “Since workers’ comp paid me enough bread to swing a lease.”

  “For a measly finger? Thought you liked the rigs.”

  “Still got nine fingers left. Aim to keep ’em.”

  “Just see this girl, Tommy. She knows her stuff.”

  “Why you pushing her?”

  “Hell, phones don’t answer themselves, do they?”

  “Didn’t they invent a machine that—”

  Joe blew scorn through the phone. “Communist rumor. Lemme send her over. She can get down there in two shakes.”

  “No.”

  “I’m gonna say this one time. Who had your back the night you stepped outside with Narlan Pugh and all his cousins stepped outside behind him?”

  “One time, shit. I heard it three. Time you realized gratitude comes to a natural end, same as a sack of donuts.”

  Joe bided.

  Phelan stewed.

  “Goddamnit, no promises.”

  “Naw! Course not.
Make it or break it on her own. Thanks for the chance, it’ll buck her up.”

  Phelan asked about the girl’s rap sheet but the dial tone was noncommittal.

  * * *

  Drumming his fingers, he glanced out his window toward the Mobil refinery’s methane flare, Beaumont’s own Star of Bethlehem. Far below ran a pewter channel of the Neches, sunlight coating the dimples of the water. Black-hulled tankers were anchored in the port, white topsides, striped flags riffling against the drift of spring clouds.

  Or that’s the view he’d have once his business took off—San Jacinto Building, seventh floor. Mahogany paneling, brass-trimmed elevator. Now he looked out on the New Rosemont, $1 and Up, where a ceiling fan once fell on the proprietress. The secretary’s office had a window too, where sunlight and humidity pried off the paint on the Rosemont’s fire escape.

  8:32. Footsteps were sounding on the stairs to his second-story walk-up.

  Wasn’t skipping up here, was she? Measured tread. The knock on the door lately lettered Thomas Phelan, Investigations wasn’t fast, wasn’t slow. Not loud, not soft.

  Phelan opened up. Well. Not a girl. Couple crows had stepped lightly at the corners of her eyes; a faint crease of bitter slanted from the left side of her barely tinted lips. Ash-brown hair, jaw-length, roomy white blouse, navy skirt. Jailhouse tan. Eyes gray-blue, a little clouded, distant, like a storm rolling in from out in the gulf. This one wouldn’t sit behind the desk blowing on her polish. The hand he was shaking had naked nails cut to the quick.

  “Tom Phelan.”

  “Delpha Wade.” Her voice was low and dry.

  Delpha Wade. His brain ratcheted a picture toward him but not far enough, like when a Mars bar gets hung up partway out the vending machine.

  They sat down in his office, him in a gimpy swivel behind a large metal desk, both included in the rent. Her in one of the proud new clients’ chairs, padded leather with regally tall backs.

  “Gotta be honest with you, Miss Wade. Think I already found a secretary.”