A Century of Noir

by Max Allan Collins

  Crepe of red and white, the school colors, draped the ceiling; the stage was a cave of white light on which stood four balding fat guys with spit curls and shimmery gold lamé dinner jackets (could these be the illegitimate sons of Bill Haley?) playing guitars, drum, and saxophone; on the dance floor couples who’d lost hair, teeth, jaw lines, courage, and energy (everything, it seemed, but weight) danced to lame cover versions of “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do” and “Sheila,” “Runaround Sue” and “Running Scared” (tonight’s lead singer sensibly not even trying Roy Orbison’s beautiful falsetto) and then, while I got Karen and myself some no-alcohol punch, they broke into a medley of dance tunes—everything from “Locomotion” to “The Peppermint Twist”—and the place went a little crazy, and I went right along with it.

  “Come on,” I said.

  “Great.”

  We went out there and we burned ass. We’d both agreed not to dress up for the occasion so we were ready for this. I wore the Hawaiian shirt she found so despicable plus a blue blazer, white socks and cordovan penny-loafers. She wore a salmon-colored Merikani shirt belted at the waist and tan cotton fatigue pants and, sweet Christ, she was so adorable half the guys in the place did the kind of double-takes usually reserved for somebody outrageous or famous.

  Over the blasting music, I shouted, “Everybody’s watching you!”

  She shouted right back, “I know! Isn’t it wonderful?”

  The medley went twenty minutes and could easily have been confused with an aerobics session. By the end I was sopping and wishing I was carrying ten or fifteen pounds less and sometimes feeling guilty because I was having too much fun (I just hoped Donna, probably having too much fun, too, was feeling equally guilty), and then finally it ended and mate fell into the arms of mate, hanging on to stave off sheer collapse.

  Then the head Bill Haley clone said, “Okay, now we’re going to do a ballad medley,” so then we got everybody from Johnny Mathis to Connie Francis and we couldn’t resist that, so I moved her around the floor with clumsy pleasure and she moved me right back with equally clumsy pleasure. “You know something?” I said.

  “We’re both shitty dancers?”

  “Right.”

  But we kept on, of course, laughing and whirling a few times, and then coming tighter together and just holding each other silently for a time, two human beings getting older and scared about getting older, remembering some things and trying to forget others and trying to make sense of an existence that ultimately made sense to nobody, and then she said, “There’s one of them.”

  I didn’t have to ask her what “them” referred to. Until now she’d refused to identify any of the three people she’d sent the letters to.

  At first I didn’t recognize him. He had almost white hair and a tan so dark it looked fake. He wore a black dinner jacket with a lacy shirt and a black bow tie. He didn’t seem to have put on a pound in the quarter century since I’d last seen him.

  “Ted Forester?”

  “Forester,” she said. “He’s president of the same savings and loan his father was president of.”

  “Who are the other two?”

  “Why don’t we get some punch?”

  “The kiddie kind?”

  “You could really make me mad with all this lecturing about alcoholism.”

  “If you’re not really a lush then you won’t mind getting the kiddie kind.”

  “My friend, Sigmund Fraud.”

  We had a couple of pink punches and caught our respective breaths and squinted in the gloom at name tags to see who we were saying hello to and realized all the terrible things you realize at high school reunions, namely that people who thought they were better than you still think that way, and that all the sad little people you feared for—the ones with blackheads and low IQs and lame left legs and walleyes and lisps and every other sort of unfair infirmity people get stuck with—generally turned out to be deserving of your fear, for there was a sadness in their eyes tonight that spoke of failures of every sort, and you wanted to go up and say something to them (I wanted to go up to nervous Karl Carberry, who used to twitch—his whole body twitched—and throw my arm around him and tell him what a neat guy he was, tell him there was no reason whatsoever for his twitching, grant him peace and self-esteem and at least a modicum of hope; if he needed a woman, get him a woman, too), but of course you didn’t do that, you didn’t go up, you just made edgy jokes and nodded a lot and drifted on to the next piece of human carnage.

  “There’s number two,” Karen whispered.

  This one I remembered. And despised. The six-three blond movie-star looks had grown only slightly older. His blue dinner jacket just seemed to enhance his air of malicious superiority. Larry Price. His wife Sally was still perfect, too, though you could see in the lacquered blond hair and maybe a hint of face lift that she’d had to work at it a little harder. A year out of high school, at a bar that took teenage IDs checked by a guy who must have been legally blind, I’d gotten drunk and told Larry that he was essentially an asshole for beating up a friend of mine who hadn’t had a chance against him. I had the street boy’s secret belief that I could take anybody whose father was a surgeon and whose house included a swimming pool. I had hatred, bitterness, and rage going, right? Well, Larry and I went out into the parking lot, ringed by a lot of drunken spectators, and before I got off a single punch, Larry hit me with a shot that stood me straight up, giving him a great opportunity to hit me again. He hit me three times before I found his face and sent him a shot hard enough to push him back for a time. Before we could go at it again, the guy who checked IDs got himself between us. He was madder than either Larry or me. He ended the fight by taking us both by the ears (he must have trained with nuns) and dragging us out to the curb and telling neither of us to come back.

  “You remember the night you fought him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You could have taken him, Dwyer. Those three punches he got in were just lucky.”

  “Yeah, that was my impression, too. Lucky.”

  She laughed. “I was afraid he was going to kill you.”

  I was going to say something smart, but then a new group of people came up and we gushed through a little social dance of nostalgia and lies and self-justifications. We talked success (at high school reunions, everybody sounds like Amway representatives at a pep rally) and the old days (nobody seems to remember all the kids who got treated like shit for reasons they had no control over) and didn’t so-and-so look great (usually this meant they’d managed to keep their toupees on straight) and introducing new spouses (we all had to explain what happened to our original mates; I said mine had been eaten by alligators in the Amazon, but nobody seemed to find that especially believeable) and in the midst of all this, Karen tugged my sleeve and said, “There’s the third one.”

  Him I recognized, too. David Haskins. He didn’t look any happier than he ever had. Parent trouble was always the explanation you got for his grief back in high school. His parents had been rich, truly so, his father an importer of some kind, and their arguments so violent that they were as eagerly discussed as who was or who was not pregnant. Apparently David’s parents weren’t getting along any better today because although the features of his face were open and friendly enough, there was still the sense of some terrible secret stooping his shoulders and keeping his smiles to furtive wretched imitations. He was a paunchy balding little man who might have been a church usher with a sour stomach.

  “The Duke of Earl” started up then and there was no way we were going to let that pass so we got out on the floor; but by now, of course, we both watched the three people she’d sent letters to. Her instructions had been to meet the anonymous letter writer at nine-thirty at Pierce Point. If they were going to be there on time, they’d be leaving soon.

  “You think they’re going to go?”

  “I doubt it, Karen.”

  “You still don’t believe that’s what I heard them say that night?”

 
“It was a long time ago and you were drunk.”

  “It’s a good thing I like you because otherwise you’d be a distinct pain in the ass.”

  Which is when I saw all three of them go stand under one of the glowing red EXIT signs and open a fire door that led to the parking lot.

  “They’re going!” she said.

  “Maybe they’re just having a cigarette.”

  “You know better, Dwyer. You know better.”

  Her car was in the lot on the opposite side of the gym.

  “Well, it’s worth a drive even if they don’t show up. Pierce Point should be nice tonight.”

  She squeezed against me and said, “Thanks, Dwyer. Really.”

  So we went and got her Volvo and went out to Pierce Point where twenty-five years ago a shy kid named Michael Brandon had fallen or been pushed to his death.

  Apparently we were about to find out which.

  The river road wound along a high wall of clay cliffs on the left and a wide expanse of water on the right. The spring night was impossibly beautiful, one of those moments so rich with sweet odor and even sweeter sight you wanted to take your clothes off and run around in some kind of crazed animal circles out of sheer joy.

  “You still like jazz,” she said, nodding to the radio.

  “I hope you didn’t mind my turning the station.”

  “I’m kind of into Country.”

  “I didn’t get the impression you were listening.”

  She looked over at me. “Actually, I wasn’t. I was thinking about you sending me all those AA pamphlets.”

  “It was arrogant and presumptous and I apologize.”

  “No, it wasn’t. It was sweet and I appreciate it.”

  The rest of the ride, I leaned my head back and smelled flowers and grass and river water and watched moonglow through the elms and oaks and birches of this new spring. There was a Dakota Staton song, “Street of Dreams,” and I wondered as always where she was and what she was doing, she’d been so fine, maybe the most underappreciated jazz singer of the entire fifties.

  Then we were going up a long, twisting gravel road. We pulled up next to a big park pavillion and got out and stood in the wet grass, and she came over and slid her arm around my waist and sort of hugged me in a half-serious way. “This is all probably crazy, isn’t it?”

  I sort of hugged her back in a half-serious way. “Yeah, but it’s a nice night for a walk so what the hell.”

  “You ready?”

  “Yep.”

  “Let’s go then.”

  So we went up the hill to the Point itself, and first we looked out at the far side of the river where white birches glowed in the gloom and where beyond you could see the horseshoe shape of the city lights. Then we looked down, straight down the drop of two hundred feet, to the road where Michael Brandon had died.

  When I heard the car starting up the road to the east, I said, “Let’s get in those bushes over there.”

  A thick line of shrubs and second-growth timber would give us a place to hide, to watch them.

  By the time we were in place, ducked down behind a wide elm and a mulberry bush, a new yellow Mercedes sedan swung into sight and stopped several yards from the edge of the Point.

  A car radio played loud in the night. A Top 40 song. Three men got out. Dignified Forester, matinee-idol Price, anxiety-tight Haskins.

  Forester leaned back into the car and snapped the radio off. But he left the headlights on. Forester and Price each had cans of beer. Haskins bit his nails.

  They looked around in the gloom. The headlights made the darkness beyond seem much darker and the grass in its illumination much greener. Price said harshly, “I told you this was just some goddamn prank. Nobody knows squat.”

  “He’s right, he’s probably right,” Haskins said to Forester. Obviously he was hoping that was the case.

  Forester said, “If somebody didn’t know something, we would never have gotten those letters.”

  She moved then and I hadn’t expected her to move at all. I’d been under the impression we would just sit there and listen and let them ramble and maybe in so doing reveal something useful.

  But she had other ideas.

  She pushed through the undergrowth and stumbled a little and got to her feet again and then walked right up to them.

  “Karen!” Haskins said.

  “So you did kill Michael,” she said.

  Price moved toward her abruptly, his hand raised. He was drunk and apparently hitting women was something he did without much trouble.

  Then I stepped out from our hiding place and said, “Put your hand down, Price.”

  Forester said, “Dwyer.”

  “So,” Price said, lowering his hand, “I was right, wasn’t I?” He was speaking to Forester.

  Forester shook his silver head. He seemed genuinely saddened. “Yes, Price, for once your cynicism is justified.”

  Price said, “Well, you two aren’t getting a goddamned penny, do you know that?”

  He lunged toward me, still a bully. But I was ready for him, wanted it. I also had the advantage of being sober. When he was two steps away, I hit him just once and very hard in his solar plexus. He backed away, eyes startled, and then he turned abruptly away.

  We all stood looking at one another, pretending not to hear the sounds of violent vomiting on the other side of the splendid new Mercedes.

  Forester said, “When I saw you there, Karen, I wondered if you could do it alone.”

  “Do what?”

  “What?” Forester said. “What? Let’s at least stop the games. You two want money.”

  “Christ,” I said to Karen, who looked perplexed, “they think we’re trying to shake them down.”

  “Shake them down?”

  “Blackmail them.”

  “Exactly,” Forester said.

  Price had come back around. He was wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. In his other hand he carried a silver-plated .45, the sort of weapon professional gamblers favor.

  Haskins said, “Larry, Jesus, what is that?”

  “What does it look like?”

  “Larry, that’s how people get killed.” Haskins sounded like Price’s mother.

  Price’s eyes were on me. “Yeah, it would be terrible if Dwyer here got killed, wouldn’t it?” He waved the gun at me. I didn’t really think he’d shoot, but I sure was afraid he’d trip and the damn thing would go off accidentally. “You’ve been waiting since senior year to do that to me, haven’t you, Dwyer?”

  I shrugged. “I guess so, yeah.”

  “Well, why don’t I give Forester here the gun and then you and I can try it again.”

  “Fine with me.”

  He handed Forester the .45. Forester took it all right, but what he did was toss it somewhere into the gloom surrounding the car. “Larry, if you don’t straighten up here, I’ll fight you myself. Do you understand me?” Forester had a certain dignity and when he spoke, his voice carried an easy authority. “There will be no more fighting, do you both understand that?”

  “I agree with Ted,” Karen said.

  Forester, like a teacher tired of naughty children, decided to get on with the real business. “You wrote those letters, Dwyer?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No. Karen wrote them.”

  A curious glance was exchanged by Forester and Karen. “I guess I should have known that,” Forester said.

  “Jesus, Ted,” Karen said, “I’m not trying to blackmail you, no matter what you think.”

  “Then just what exactly are you trying to do?”

  She shook her lovely little head. I sensed she regretted ever writing the letters, stirring it all up again. “I just want the truth to come out about what really happened to Michael Brandon that night.”

  “The truth,” Price said. “Isn’t that goddamn touching?”

  “Shut up, Larry,” Haskins said.

  Forester said, “You know what happened to Michael Brando
n?”

  “I’ve got a good idea,” Karen said. “I overheard you three talking at a party one night.”

  “What did we say?”

  “What?”

  “What did you overhear us say?”

  Karen said, “You said that you hoped nobody looked into what really happened to Michael that night.”

  A smile touched Forester’s lips. “So on that basis you concluded that we murdered him?”

  “There wasn’t much else to conclude.”

  Price said, weaving still, leaning on the fender for support, “I don’t goddamn believe this.”

  Forester nodded to me. “Dwyer, I’d like to have a talk with Price and Haskins here, if you don’t mind. Just a few minutes.” He pointed to the darkness beyond the car. “We’ll walk over there. You know we won’t try to get away because you’ll have our car. All right?”

  I looked at Karen.

  She shrugged.

  They left, back into the gloom, voices receding and fading into the sounds of crickets and a barn owl and a distant roaring train.

  “You think they’re up to something?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  We stood with our shoes getting soaked and looked at the green green grass in the headlights.

  “What do you think they’re doing?” Karen asked.

  “Deciding what they want to tell us.”

  “You’re used to this kind of thing, aren’t you?”

  “I guess.”

  “It’s sort of sad, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. It is.”

  “Except for you getting the chance to punch out Larry Price after all these years.”

  “Christ, you really think I’m that petty?”

  “I know you are. I know you are.”

  Then we both turned to look back to where they were. There’d been a cry and Forester shouted, “You hit him again, Larry, and I’ll break your goddamn jaw.” They were arguing about something and it had turned vicious.

  I leaned back against the car. She leaned back against me. “You think we’ll ever go to bed?”

  “I’d sure like to, Karen, but I can’t.”

  “Donna?”

  “Yeah. I’m really trying to learn how to be faithful.”