Manhattan Noir 2

by Lawrence Block

  He was moving toward her, not lurching at all. In seconds he was beside her, grabbing the phone from her hand, slamming it back into its cradle. She took a step, a prelude to running from him, but his hands were already around her throat. “I’m going to kill you!” he blared, perhaps unnecessarily, as his thumbs began compressing her larynx. “Choke to death? You want to see choke to death? I’ll give you choke to death!” He thought of her vicious “Mr. Hyena Breath” and he bellowed, “Choke to death, fatso!”

  The doorbell rang, but naturally in the heat of the moment neither Bob nor Chrissie heard it. He was too intent on strangling her and she was engaged, unsuccessfully, in trying to knee him in the testicles. Then she attempted something she must have seen on a self-defense segment of Oprah, putting her thumbs into his eyeballs, but he simply stretched out his arms further and continued to snuff out his wife’s life.

  “Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday to you …” Chrissie and Bob stared, huge-eyed, at each other. Two voices moved from the front door toward the kitchen. His thumbs lost their strength and his hands fell to his sides. Chrissie took a step back and massaged her throat. Bob comforted the lump on his head with gentle pats. “Happy birthday, dear Dad …” Only one voice on the Dad, Jordana’s, and a moment later, she and her boyfriend Clark entered the kitchen, holding hands.

  “Oh my God,” Jordana said, shaking her head so her long, dark blond hair fanned out prettily. Clark, his shirt open at the collar to afford a view of a triangle of hair of the sort found on black poodles, put his arm around her. She was gazing at the table and chairs and not at her parents. “What happened?”

  “There was something slippery on the floor,” said Chrissie, “and Daddy got up for a second and—” Somehow she got out a giggle and in her squealiest voice went on: “—he started to slip and I ran over to catch him and—”

  “We kind of knocked over the chair and then Mom landed on the table and most of the stuff went flying off.”

  “Well,” Jordana said, “I’m glad everybody’s okay. Because here—” She rooted inside her pocketbook which, to Bob, looked like a tan leather laundry bag. He swallowed. His throat hurt. “—is your birthday gift. From both of us.”

  Together, they handed him a wrapped gift … a book. People always got him books. He tore off the paper and, sure enough, it was that new book about the lives of ordinary Afghans in Kandahar province. He’d read half the review and decided that was more than enough, but now he’d have to read it and enthuse. His head hurt and he wanted to vomit. “Do you know, I’ve been dying to read this. The review was terrific. Thank you. Great gift.”

  “And we have one other gift for you.” He glanced at Chrissie for a second. She was rubbing her fingers gently over her throat. She looked him straight in the eye and he turned back to his daughter. “Actually, this is a gift for both of you. I guess you can call it a gift.”

  “I hope you’ll call it a gift,” Clark added. As always, Bob had to strain to hear what he was saying. Nobody else seemed to have that problem, but Clark spoke in some decibel range that was beyond Bob’s ability to decipher clearly. “It’s a gift to me.”

  “We’re engaged!” Jordana announced.

  Chrissie squealed with joy and ran over to embrace them. Now he had to go and kiss Jordana and offer Clark a manly handshake. Maybe grasp his shoulder too as they shook. That would show warmth, but kept Bob from actually having to give him a hug.

  “This is the happiest news ever!” Chrissie declared.

  As he took the three steps to them, he noticed the rest of the steak had bled all over the tile. Well, if you like gorillas, Clark was all right, and he was certifiably smart. Harvard undergrad and law school, yet egalitarian enough to get engaged to a girl from Swarthmore and NYU Law School.

  The happiest news ever. Except now Bob could not kill his wife in cold blood, or indeed in any other fashion. They had a wedding to plan. Then James would be graduating. Then—who knew?—grandchildren. There was so much the Geissendorfers had to look forward to.

  ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

  GEOFFREY BARTHOLOMEW has tended bar at McSorley’s Old Ale House in Manhattan since 1972, when East 7th Street still resembled the setting of a noir novel. Upon publication, his 2001 volume The McSorley Poems became the best-selling poetry title at St. Mark’s Bookshop in Manhattan, and it still enjoys robust sales from behind the bar at McSorley’s. He is currently working on a memoir and a second volume of McSorley’s poems.

  LAWRENCE BLOCK was born in Buffalo, New York, and first came to Manhattan with his father. In a whirlwind weekend they stayed at the Commodore Hotel, saw Where’s Charlie? on Broadway, went up to the top of the Empire State Building, and rode the Third Avenue El down to the Bowery. The year was 1948, and the future author, ten years old at the time, never got over it. He returned eight years later, and has lived in the borough ever since, but for brief sojourns in Ohio, Florida, and Brooklyn. The editor of Manhattan Noir and winner of many writing awards, he is nevertheless thrilled to share space in an anthology with Edith Wharton, Irwin Shaw, Stephen Crane, and Damon Runyon. His mother would be so proud …

  JEROME CHARYN’S novel The Green Lantern was nominated for a PEN/Faulkner Award. His most recent novel, Johnny One-Eye, is about a double agent during the American Revolution. He lives in New York and Paris, where he teaches film theory at the American University. He has written ten novels about Isaac Sidel, the first four of which are being turned into graphic novels.

  STEPHEN CRANE, born on November 1, 1871 in Newark, New Jersey, was a journalist, poet, and author. His first novel, Maggie, A Girl of the Streets: A Story of New York (1893) was self-published and unsuccessful. Crane attended the College of Liberal Arts at Syracuse University, after which he moved to the Bowery district in New York where he wrote sketches and short stories for newspapers. Crane became ill and died at the age of twenty-eight on June 5, 1900. His other works include The Black Riders and Other Lines (1895), “The Little Regiment” (1896), “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky” (1897), The Third Violet (1897), “The Blue Hotel” (1898), “War Is Kind” (1899), The Monster and Other Stories (1899), and Active Service (1899).

  HORACE GREGORY was a poet and critic, born on April 10, 1898 in Milwaukee, and died on March 11, 1982. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1923 and was a professor of English at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. In 1965 he won the Bollingen Prize for Poetry for lifetime achievement. His works include Chelsea Rooming House (1930), Pilgrim of the Apocalypse (1933), Poems, 1930-1940 (1941), and Dorothy Richardson: An Adventure in Self-Discovery (1967).

  O. HENRY was a reporter, columnist, and great American short story writer whose works explored the daily lives of the people of New York City. Born William Sydney Porter in Greensboro, North Carolina, O. Henry moved to New York City after serving three years in a penitentiary in Columbus, Ohio for embezzlement. He was released in 1901 and changed his name to O. Henry. He wrote for the New York World as well as other magazines. His works include Cabbages and Kings (1904), “The Last Leaf” (1907), The Heart of the West (1907), and “The Ransom of Red Chief” (1910).

  CLARK HOWARD is an Edgar Award winner (and eight-time finalist) and has also won the Derringer and five Ellery Queen Readers Awards. Although he has written novels and true crime books, the short story has always been his favorite form. He has two short story collections and has been included in dozens of anthologies since 1975.

  SUSAN ISAACS has been called “Jane Austen with a schmear” (Washington Post) and a “witty, wry observer of the contemporary scene” (New York Times). She is chairman of the board of the literary organization Poets & Writers, a past president of Mystery Writers of America, and is a member of PEN, the National Book Critics Circle, the Authors Guild, and the International Association of Crime Writers. Although her work includes film (Compromising Positions, Hello Again) and nonfiction (Brave Dames and Wimpettes: What Women Are Really Doing on Page and Screen), she’s happiest working alone, writing nov
els. For more information, visit www.susanisaacs.com.

  BARRY N. MALZBERG, one of science fiction’s most prolific writers, has written over seventy-five novels in the field, as well as novels of suspense, crime fiction, and dark humor, both under his own name and under a number of pseudonyms. He has also written over four hundred short stories, in similarly varied fields. As an editor, he was in charge of Amazing Stories, Fantastic, and other magazines, and has produced a number of anthologies. A winner of the John W. Campbell Award and the Locus Award, he has been nominated several times for the Hugo and Nebula Awards, and was the Shubert Foundation Playwriting Fellow at Syracuse University.

  JERROLD MUNDIS is a novelist and nonfiction writer who came out of the Midwest to Manhattan as a young man and has lived there on-and-off (mostly on) for more than forty-five years. His best-known novels are Gerhardt’s Children and The Dogs. He enjoys Central Park and dogs and other elements that appear in his story in this volume. He has two grown sons, currently lives in Manhattan, and is generally in good spirits.

  JOYCE CAROL OATES is a recipient of the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. Author of numerous works including the national best sellers We Were the Mulvaneys, Blonde, and The Falls, which won the 2005 Prix Femina, Oates is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.

  EDGAR ALLAN POE, arguably one of the greatest American poets, was born on January 15, 1809 in Boston. Poe was orphaned at the age of two after both of his parents died and was adopted by John Allan. Poe’s first book, Tamerlane and Other Poems was published in 1827. Nine years later, he and his family moved to New York. “The Raven” was published in 1845 in the New York Evening Mirror, and became his most famous poem. Poe died on October 7, 1849 and was inducted into the United States Hall of Fame in New York in 1910. His other works include The Raven and Other Poems (1845), The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe (1850), The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838), and Tales by Edgar A. Poe (1845).

  IRWIN SHAW, born in the Bronx, New York in 1913 to Jewish immigrants from Russia, was a playwright, screenwriter, and author. His parents moved the family to Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn and changed their name from Shamforoff to Shaw. Irwin Shaw attended Brooklyn College and wrote for the school newspaper. He graduated with a B.A. in 1934, and by age twenty-one was producing scripts for radio shows. He also wrote for magazines such as the New Yorker and Esquire. His works include the play Bury the Dead (1936), the short stories “The Sailor off the Bremen” (1939) and “Welcome to the City” (1942), and the film I Want You (1951).

  DONALD E. WESTLAKE has written over eighty novels under his own name and pseudonyms, including Richard Stark. He is a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America, a three-time Edgar Award winner, and an Academy Award nominee for his screenplay of The Grifters. Westlake was born in Brooklyn in 1933, grew up in Albany, attended the State University of New York from which he received an Honorary Doctorate in 1996, and served in the U.S. Air Force.

  EDITH WHARTON was born in New York during the “Old New York” era, when women were socially prepared for only marriage. She became one of America’s greatest writers and published over forty books in her lifetime. She was the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (in 1920 for her novel The Age of Innocence), an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Yale Academy, and full membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her works include Greater Inclination (1899), The Valley of Decision (1902), The House of Mirth (1905), and The Custom of the Country (1913).

  CORNELL WOOLRICH, born on December 4, 1903 in New York City, is known by many as the father of noir fiction. His first novel, Cover Charge (1926), was written while he attended Columbia University. He wrote suspense stories for the magazines Argosy, Black Mask, and Thrilling Mystery, and his story “Rear Window” (1954) was the basis for Alfred Hitchcock’s film by the same name. His novels include Children of the Ritz (1927), The Time of Her Life (1931), The Bride Wore Black (1940), I Married a Dead Man (1948), Hotel Room (1958), and The Doom Stone (1960).