A Century of Noir

by Max Allan Collins

  She tried to shake her head again. She was biting her lip. “If only—” She couldn’t get it out. “If only—”

  “No, Wilma.” He spoke slowly and distinctly. “We won’t have any ifs or buts. A thing like this happens once in a lifetime. It’s more important than anything else. It’s—”

  He hadn’t heard the sound of the key turning in the lock. He hadn’t heard the door opening, the footsteps coming toward the kitchen. But now he saw her staring eyes focused on something behind his back. He turned very slowly and the first thing he saw was the gun.

  Then he was looking at the face of Dice Nolan.

  Nolan said very softly, “Keep talking.” His lips scarcely moved as he said it, and there was nothing at all in his eyes.

  The prison pallor seemed to harmonize with the granite hardness of his features. Except for a deep scar that twisted its way from one eyebrow to the other, he was a good-looking man with the accent on strength and virility. He was only five-nine and weighed around one-sixty, but somehow he looked very big standing there. Maybe it’s the gun, Childers thought in that first long moment. Maybe that’s what makes him look so big.

  But it wasn’t the gun. Nolan held it loosely and didn’t seem to attach much importance to it. Now he was looking at Wilma and his voice remained soft and relaxed as he said, “You fooled me, girl. You really fooled me.”

  “Maybe I fooled myself,” she said.

  “Could be,” Nolan murmured. He shifted his gaze to Childers. “Hey you, I told you to keep talking.”

  “I guess you heard enough,” Childers said. “Saying more would make no sense.”

  Nolan grinned with only one side of his mouth. “Yeah, I guess so.” Then suddenly the grin became a frown and he said, “You look sorta familiar. Don’t I know you from someplace?”

  “From Third and Patton,” Childers said. “From playing cops and bums when we were kids.”

  “And playing it for real when we grew up,” Nolan murmured, his eyes sparked with recognition. “You put the pinch on me so many times I lost count. I guess ten years in stir does something to the memory. But now I remember you, Childers. I damn well oughta remember you.”

  “You’re a bad boy, Dice. You were always a bad boy.”

  “And you?” Dice grinned again, his eyes flicking from Childers to Wilma and back to Childers. “You’re the goodie-goodie—the Boy Scout who always plays it clean and straight.”

  Suddenly he chuckled. “Goddam, I’m getting a kick out of this. What’re you gonna do when your wife finds out?”

  Childers didn’t reply. He wasn’t thinking of his wife, nor of Wilma, nor of anything except the fact that he was a Detective Lieutenant attached to Homicide and he’d finally found the man he’d been looking for.

  “Well? What about it?” Dice went on chuckling. “Tell me, Childers. How you gonna crawl outta this mess?”

  “Don’t let it worry you,” Childers murmured. “You better worry about your own troubles.”

  The chuckling stopped. Nolan’s eyes narrowed. The words seemed to drip from his lips. “Like what?”

  “Like skipping parole. Like carrying a deadly weapon.”

  Nolan didn’t say anything. He stood there waiting to hear more.

  Childers let him wait, stretching the quiet as though it was made of rubber. And then, letting it out very slowly, very quietly, “Another thing you did, Dice. You pulled a job on the waterfront three weeks ago. You heisted warehouse number four and got away with fifteen thousand dollars. You murdered a night-watchman and the other one is permanently blinded. And that does it for you, bad boy. That puts you where you belong. In the chair.”

  “You—” Nolan choked on it. “You can’t pin that rap on me. I didn’t do it.”

  Childers smiled patiently. “Don’t get excited, Dice. It won’t help you to get excited.”

  “Now listen—” The sweat broke out on Nolan’s face. “I swear to you, I didn’t do it. Whoever engineered that deal, they fixed it so the Law would figure it was me. When I read about it in the papers, I knew what the score was. I knew that sooner or later you’d be looking for me—”

  “It sounds weak, Dice. It’s gonna sound weaker in the courtroom.”

  Nolan’s features twisted and he snarled, “You don’t hafta tell me how weak it sounds. I wracked my brains, trying to find an alibi. But all I got was zero. I knew if I was taken in for grilling, I wouldn’t have a chance. That’s why I skipped parole. That’s why I’m carrying a rod. I ain’t gonna let them burn me for something I didn’t do.”

  Childers frowned slightly. For an instant he was almost ready to believe Nolan’s statement. There was something feverishly convincing in the ex-con’s voice and manner. But then, as he studied Nolan’s face, he saw that Nolan’s eyes were aimed at Wilma, and he thought, It’s not me he’s talking to, it’s her. He’s trying to sell her a bill of goods. He wants her to think he’s clean, so when he walks out of here she’ll be going along with him.

  And then he heard himself saying through clenched teeth, “She won’t buy it, Nolan. She knows you’re a crook and a killer and no matter how many lies you tell, you can’t make her think otherwise.”

  Nolan’s eyes remained focused on Wilma. His face was expressionless as he said, “You hear what the man says?”

  She didn’t reply. Childers looked at her and saw she was gazing at the wall behind Nolan’s head.

  “I’m telling you I’m innocent,” Nolan said to her. “Do you believe me?”

  She took a deep breath, and before she could say anything, Childers grabbed her wrist and said, “Please—don’t fall for his line, don’t let him play you for a sucker. You walk out of here with him and you’re ruined.”

  Her head turned slowly, her eyes were like blades cutting into Childers’ eyes. She said, “Let go of my wrist, you’re hurting me.”

  Childers winced as though she’d hit him in the face. He released his burning grip on her wrist. As his hand fell away, he was seized with a terrible fear that had no connection with Dice Nolan’s presence or the gun in Nolan’s hand. It was the fear of seeing her walking out of that room with Nolan and never coming back.

  His brain was staggered with the thought, and again he had the feeling of falling, of plunging downward through immeasurable space that took him away from the badge he wore, the desk he occupied at Homicide in City Hall, his job and his home and his family. Oh God, he said without sound, and as the plunge became swifter he made a frantic try to get a hold on himself, to stop the descent, to face this issue and see it for what it was.

  He’d fallen victim to a sudden blind infatuation, a maddened craving for this woman whom he’d never seen before today. And that didn’t make sense, it wasn’t normal behavior. It was a kind of lunacy and what he had to do here and now was—

  But he couldn’t do anything except stand there and stare at her, his eyes begging her not to leave him.

  And just then he heard Dice Nolan saying, “You coming with me, Wilma?”

  “Yes,” she said. She walked across the kitchen and stood at Nolan’s side.

  Nolan had the gun aiming at Childers’ chest. “Let’s do this nice and careful,” Nolan said. “Keep your hands down, copper. Turn around very slowly and lemme see the back of your head.”

  “Don’t hurt him,” Wilma said. “Please don’t hurt him.”

  “This won’t hurt much,” Nolan told her. “He’ll just have a headache tomorrow, that’s all.”

  “Please, Philip—”

  “I gotta do it this way,” Nolan said. “I gotta put him to sleep so we’ll have a chance to clear out of here.”

  “You might hit him too hard.” Her voice quivered. “I’m afraid you might kill him—”

  “No, that won’t happen,” Nolan assured her. “I’m an expert at this sort of thing. He won’t sleep for more than ten minutes. That’ll give us just enough time.”

  Childers had turned slowly so that now he stood with his back to them. He heard Nolan
coming toward him and his nerves stiffened as he visualized the butt of the revolver crashing down on his skull. But in that same instant of anticipating the blow he told himself that Nolan would be holding the barrel instead of the butt, Nolan’s finger would be away from the trigger.

  In the next instant, as Nolan came up close behind him, he ducked going sideways, then pivoted hard and saw the gun-butt flashing down and hitting empty air. He saw the dismay on Nolan’s face, and then, grinning at Nolan, he delivered a smashing right to the belly, a left hook to the side of the head, another right that came in short and caught Nolan on the jaw. Nolan sagged to the floor and the gun fell out of his hand.

  As Childers leaned over to reach for the gun, Nolan grunted and lunged with what remaining strength he had. His shoulder made contact with Childers’ ribs, and as they rolled over, Nolan’s hands made a grab for Childers’ throat. Childers raised his arm, hooked it, and bashed his elbow against Nolan’s mouth. Nolan fell back, going flat and sort of sliding across the kitchen floor.

  Childers came to his knees, and went crawling very fast, headed toward the gun. He picked it up and put his finger through the trigger-guard. As his finger came against the trigger with the weapon aiming at Nolan’s chest, a voice inside him said, Don’t—don’t—. But another voice broke through and told him, You want that woman and he’s in the way, you gotta get rid of him.

  Yet even as he agreed with the second voice, even as the rage and jealousy blotted out all normal thinking, he was trying not to pull the trigger. So that even when he did finally pull it, when he heard the shot and saw Nolan instantly dead with a bullet through the heart, he thought dazedly, I didn’t really mean to do that.

  He lifted himself to his feet. He stood there, looking down at the corpse on the floor.

  Then he heard Wilma saying, “Why did you kill him?”

  He wanted to look at her. But somehow he couldn’t. He forced the words through his lips, “You saw what happened. He was putting up a fight. I couldn’t take any chances.”

  “I don’t believe that,” she said. And then, her voice dull, “It’s too bad you didn’t understand.”

  He stared at her. “Understand what?”

  “When I agreed to go away with him—I was only pretending. It was the only way I could keep him from shooting you.”

  He felt a surge of elation. “You—you really mean that?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter now.” Her eyes were sad for a moment, and then the bitterness crept in as she pointed toward the parlor and said, “You’d better make a phone call, Lieutenant. Tell them you’ve found your man and you’ve saved the State the expense of a trial.”

  He moved mechanically, going past her and into the parlor. He picked up the phone and got the P.D. operator and said, “Get me Homicide—this is Childers.”

  The next voice on the wire was the Captain’s, and before Childers could start talking, he heard the Captain saying, “I’m glad you called in, Roy. You can stop looking for Dice Nolan. We got something here that proves he’s clean.”

  “Yeah?” Childers said. He wondered if it was his own voice, for it seemed to come from outside of himself.

  “We got the man who did it,” the Captain said. “Picked him up about an hour ago. We found him with the payroll money and the gun he used on those night-watchmen. He’s already signed a confession.”

  Childers closed his eyes. He didn’t say anything.

  The Captain went on, “I phoned you at your home and your wife said you were on your way down here. Say, how come it’s taking you so long?”

  “I got sidetracked,” Childers said. He spoke slowly. “I’m at the Lakeside Apartments, Captain. You better send some men up here. It’s Apartment nine-o-seven.”

  “A murder?”

  “You guessed it,” Childers said. “It’s a case of cold-blooded murder.”

  He hung up. In the corridor outside there was the sound of footsteps and voices and someone was shouting, “Is everything all right in there?” Another one called, “Was that a shot we heard?”

  Wilma was standing near the door leading to the corridor and he said to her, “Go out and tell them it was nothing. Tell them to go away. And keep the door closed. I don’t want anyone barging in here.”

  She went out into the corridor, closing the door behind her. Childers walked quickly to the door and turned the lock. Then he crossed to the nearest window and opened it wide. He climbed out and stood on the ledge and looked down at the street nine floors below.

  I’m sorry, he said to Louise and the children, I’m terribly sorry. And then, to the Captain, You’ll find the gun on the kitchen table. His fingerprints and my fingerprints and I’m sure you’ll believe her when she tells you how it happened, how someone who’s tried so hard to be clean can slip and fall and get himself all dirty.

  But as he stepped off the ledge and plunged through empty darkness, he began to feel clean again.

  MICKEY SPILLANE

  Back in the fifties, when Americans were exulting in winning the war and moving into houses their parents could never have afforded, Mickey Spillane (1918– ) took it upon himself to tell us that there was a darkness upon the land (see the opening page of One Lonely Night to see how well he describes this darkness) and that it had to be dealt with.

  While his critics savaged him for the violence in his books and for his angry anti-Communism, they seemed to overlook the fact that most of Spillane’s crime stories dealt with municipal corruption and thugs hired by quite respectable people. This was at a time when a record number of midsized cities were mobbed up. Only Spillane and a few others seemed concerned about this. His critics—who were sometimes embarrassingly overwrought—didn’t seem to care.

  Well, Spillane easily survived his critics (his most recent novel is Black Alley, 1996) and is acknowledged today as one of the true masters of the hard-boiled crime story. His groundbreaking Mike Hammer novels are now available in three-in-one editions for a whole new generation of readers to discover.

  Tomorrow I Die

  The noon train had pulled into Clarksdale at the hottest part of the day, an hour late. Twice a day that cross-country special stopped there for a thirty-minute layover giving the reporters a chance to photo and interview the celebs making the trip. The station even went so far as to set up a real deal for anybody who felt like stretching his legs. Local food and souvenirs.

  Trouble was, the heat. The passengers preferred the air conditioning to the shimmering blasts of sunlight that waited outside. So only three of us got off.

  One was met by a fat woman in a new Buick. The other guy and me headed straight across the street for the same thing . . . a fat draught beer.

  Both of us half ran across the intersection, made the door at the same time and helped the other one in. Then the cold hit you. So cold it hurt, but it was wonderful.

  At the bar the Sheriff smiled and asked, “Too hot for you gentlemen?”

  When the beer came, I let it all go down, tasting every swallow.

  My train buddy took longer and when I asked him to have one on me he shook his head sadly. “Thanks, but no go. The wife can’t stand my breath.” He threw a quarter on the bar and left.

  “A shame, the way women run men,” the Sheriff said.

  “Awful. That guy isn’t finished growing up.”

  “Well, that ain’t always the case.”

  Before I could answer a low, rich voice laughed, “You better say that, Dad.”

  The tan brought out the grey in her eyes. The sun had made her blonde and riding too much had made her belly flat. The swell of her thighs showed right through the skirt and melted into lush curves that the blouse couldn’t hide.

  “My daughter Carol,” the Sheriff said. “You look familiar, son.”

  “Rich Thurber,” I grinned.

  The dish frowned at me, then her face made up into a smile. “Certainly. Hollywood, post-war. One of the young up and comings. I remember you.”

 
“Thanks,” I said.

  “What happened?”

  I waved over my shoulder toward Hollywood. “The land of the gas pipe. All the good ones came home and replaced us. In simple, we had one thing in common. No talent.”

  The Sheriff fingered his hat back. Under it the hair was full and white. “Why do I know you? I never go to the movies, son.”

  Carol gave her pop an annoyed glance. “You didn’t have to. He used to be on all the magazine covers.” She smiled back at me. “You just don’t quite look like yourself.”

  I put the beer down. “Sugar, let me remind you painfully. The war ended ten years ago. I’m not the same boy anymore.”

  The laugh came out of her like music. She threw back her head and let it dance out lightly. “I was fifteen then. You were one of my many heroes.” She saw my face then and stopped the laugh. She looked at me through a woman’s eyes and said, “I mean for real. You came out of the war and all that. I had a small girl’s crush on you.”

  “I like big girls,” I said.

  “Uh-uh.” She lifted those eyes toward the top of my head. “That hat. Who’d ever wear a hat like that.”

  “Our Mayor,” her father answered.

  “Except the Mayor,” she answered.

  I reached up and took the kady off. “I always wanted one. My old man wore one and I thought he looked like a million. So I got one.” I put it back on, tapped it in place with a grin and finished my beer.

  I ordered a refill, downed it and had another. The bartender pushed it across pretty fast. He seemed a little too anxious and kept watching the clock. I had one more and it was the pay-off one.

  My stomach went into those warning motions and while there was still plenty of time to be casual about it, I walked off to the can in the back and tried to be quiet. I should have known better, but it was my own fault. The bartender came in and said, “Two minutes till train time, feller.”

  “. . . hell with it.”

  “Okay . . .”

  I was long past caring when the train left. I heard the whistle and the wheels and by the time I could face myself in the mirror again it was quiet outside with only the noise of the wind in the eaves. I went to the basin, doused my face with cold water and called myself some names.