Collected Stories

by Lewis Shiner

  I charged up to the door, then hesitated. There was no more gunfire so I opened the door and went in.

  Inside was a single long room. I ducked out of the lighted doorway and waited for someone to shoot me. Finally my eyes adjusted and the feeling of vulnerability began to pass. I could see bare walls and a long, empty wooden floor. There was an interruption in the middle of it, and as I got closer I could make out the body of the Chicano who had called me. He was leaking blood onto the shiny waxed woodwork. He wouldn’t be needing his hundred dollars.

  Something moved in the shadows. I looked around for cover, but there wasn’t any. A silhouette detached itself and moved toward me with familiar grace. In one hand was a pistol, and I could practically see smoke leaking out of the barrel.

  “Hello, Liz,” I said.

  At first I thought she was drugged, but then I decided it was just detachment, almost shock—a withdrawal from the harsh fact of death. Her face was slack, and what might have otherwise passed for beauty seemed coarse. She was wearing old jeans and a dirty tee-shirt, and probably had been for a while. She half turned from me in the dim light and raised one arm in a vague gesture of despair. It was the one with the gun in it, held by the tips of her fingers like an ashtray. I took it away from her and put it in my pocket. It was a .38 Police Special; the barrel was warm and stank of cordite.

  “Did you shoot him, Liz?” It was a stupid question, I suppose, but I had to ask it.

  “Hello, Danny,” she said dreamily.

  “Answer me, Liz. Did you shoot him?”

  “What are you doing here, Danny? You shouldn’t have come. It’s dangerous here.” I might have been talking in Siamese, or not at all.

  I left her and bent over the body. He was face down, so I didn’t have to look at the messy side, where the bullet had come out. I fished the wallet out of his back pocket and pawed through the cards. The first one said his name was Carlos Quintana. The second one said that he was a police officer for the City of Austin.

  I tucked the rest of the cards away, wiped the wallet, and stuck it back in the pocket. “I’m over my head, Liz. I can’t cover this up. It’s murder now, and everything’s different. I have to call the police.”

  She pirouetted slowly away from me. I didn’t know what else to do. I started for the door.

  Police Sgt. Brady stepped into my path and the refracted sunlight glinted off his gun. “You don’t need to call the cops, Sloane. The cops are here.”

  “Where did you come from?” I asked.

  “Side door. I heard the shot and came to check it out. Now let’s have that gun out of your pocket. Set it on the floor real nice and kick it away.” I did so. “Fine. You want to tell me why you shot him? If it was to clear your girlfriend, you just made a big mistake. They’re not going to get anything on Liz.” Something about the way he wasn’t really looking at her seemed odd, but it was a fleeting thought and was soon gone. “Okay, outside. We’re taking your car.”

  That was the last straw. It was bad enough having the police show up without being called. When things stopped making sense altogether, it was time for me to get out. I started slowly for the front door, and Brady made the mistake of letting Liz get between us. It was all I needed. I hit the door hard and slammed it behind me. I heard a slug tear through the wood as I started running.

  My mind was working as soon as I hit the pavement. So far there was one solid piece of evidence in the whole case. It was at Liz’s house. Brady had said they weren’t going to get anything on Liz. That suddenly made the evidence more important than I’d thought. But I didn’t have time for the possibilities. Unless I got there first it wasn’t going to make any difference.

  I was into the trees before he got the door open and his sights on me. I think I heard him yell “halt” but I could have been wrong. Another bullet ripped open a tree to the left of me and I dodged for deeper cover. He was clearly shooting to kill; at least I knew I’d done the right thing to get away. That left me with the one small problem of staying alive to explain it.

  My keys were already out, and I didn’t shut the car door until I was rolling. I figured I had no more than a couple of minutes’ head start, and I needed every bit of it. I didn’t have the time or concentration for any complicated thinking, I worked at keeping the car on the road and nothing else. Liz’s house was only a few blocks away, and I could hear a siren not far behind me. My old Mustang was taking the curves well, but they could probably follow me just from the noise of the tires.

  I swerved left to avoid a bicycle and screamed to a stop in front of the duplex. Cathy’s car was in the driveway. I took the walk at a hard run and slammed both fists into the door. Cathy finally opened it, looking mildly annoyed, but I didn’t give her a chance to say anything.

  My breath was coming hard and I had to fight to make sense. “The cop that was here this morning,” I gasped, “Brady—you’d seen him before, hadn’t you?”

  She got a trapped look in her eyes and didn’t answer.

  “You’d seen him all the time, hadn’t you? Hadn’t you?” I must have been yelling because she burst into tears.

  “I can’t! I can’t tell you!” She might as well have just said yes.

  “Get out of the house, fast,” I said. “There’s about to be a lot of trouble. Go to a neighbor, call the police, and then stay there.” I must have hit some sort of parental tone that got through to her. She left the house without a word.

  I could hear the siren again, not far off. Brady had known, obviously, where I was going. I didn’t worry about the mess this time, but threw shredded Kleenex in a pile on the floor. My hand closed on stiff paper and pulled it into the light.

  Brady was too late. I’d seen the rubber stamp on the front of the envelope.

  It said PROPERTY OF AUSTIN POLICE DEPARTMENT.

  I must have expected it, but my mind had shut out the consequences. Now that it was in front of me, everything snapped into place. I’d been on the heels of the police all day, and everywhere I went people were shifty-eyed and evasive, afraid to talk and ready to lash out at anything.

  There was a noise outside. I stuffed the envelope down the back of my pants and tucked my shirt in over it. I threw the speaker and Kleenex in the trash and pretended to still be searching when Brady came in with Dawson behind him. I looked down the dark tunnel of Brady’s gun again, with no more corners left to turn.

  “Where is it?” Brady demanded, gesturing with the gun barrel. There was a smooth place on the gun sight that I had seen before.

  I suddenly realized that my chances were about slim and none. All my clever detective work had just earned me a metal tag around the toe. If I had a chance at all, it hung on the fact that Brady had been alone when he’d found me with Liz. If he’d ditched his partner it could mean that Dawson didn’t know the score. If I was right, I had to make Dawson want to keep me alive. It didn’t sound like much of a chance at all.

  “Shoot me, Brady,” I said. “It’s the only way. Otherwise I’m going to talk.”

  I’d cut it fine, and for a moment I thought I’d gone too far. Then he added things up and his eyes shifted, just barely, toward Dawson. He was going to try to talk his way out of it.

  “Stop trying to scare me,” he said. “It’s harder than you think.”

  “Maybe not. I’ve got three things to say, and I don’t think you’ll like any of them.”

  “Go ahead.” This time it was Dawson talking. He was suddenly interested.

  I had to buy time. If I sprang the envelope right off, I wouldn’t live to see the reaction. “The first is not so much in itself. It’s just funny. Funny that there should be so much activity today when there was a big bust last night. People getting shot, and shot at. It almost seems like the big dope racket wasn’t cleaned up at all. Maybe it just changed hands.”

  “Feelings aren’t worth a damn,” Brady said.

  Dawson said: “Lets hear the other two.”

  “Number two. I don’t think Dawson c
an give you an alibi for the half hour or so before Carlos was shot. I think you were in the house the whole time. I think you left Dawson cooling his heels down the block, and only went back to him because you needed a car to chase me. I think it was your gun that killed Carlos. I think you pulled the trigger.”

  “You’re crazy.” His voice wasn’t as steady as it should have been. A drop of sweat started at the edge of his curly hairline. “This gun hasn’t been fired in days.”

  “That’s not your gun. It’s Carlos’. I saw him with it this morning when you sent him to search my place. Just before you decided he wasn’t worth the risk and put the word out on him.

  “You didn’t think you’d have to kill him yourself, but when he showed up at Liz’s hideout, you lost your head a little. It was a smart idea to change guns with him, but you won’t get away with it. The ballistics people have samples from your gun downtown, and they’ll connect you up with the killing sooner or later. Unless you pull a fix.”

  “So we got our guns mixed up,” Brady snarled. “Why should I kill my own man?”

  “Because he knew too much about the setup. He knew you’d staged the whole bust just to take over the organization. You were the man at the top that tipped off the police-tipped off yourself! Carlos was the only one who knew you in both roles, on both sides of the fence, because he was working both sides too. Carlos—and Liz.”

  Now I had scared him. He looked more like a fighter than ever, but this time he was on the way down. The sneer was gone off his face and instead I saw what Carlos couldn’t have seen before he died. There was nothing human in his look. It was not a happy sight to end your life with.

  “Number three,” I said. My mouth was dry and it was hard to talk. I’d come to the place where I was probably going to get shot. “Dawson, there’s an envelope under my shirt. I want you to come get it out.”

  Brady’s jaw went white. “It’s a trick.” He seemed to be talking through clenched teeth. It was obvious he was afraid, why couldn’t Dawson see it? What was he waiting for? “It’s a trick, goddammit. Stay away from him, Dawson!”

  We might have stood there all afternoon, but Brady’s hand started shaking. He used his left hand to steady it, and the gesture must have touched nerve in Dawson.

  It happened in a blur. Dawson reached for his holster, but he moved too fast. Brady swung on him, startled, and I could see the pistol rising to cover him. I could see Brady’s finger on the trigger, and I could see the finger start to tighten, and then I moved.

  I kicked as hard as I could and Brady’s gun roared angrily at the ceiling. Then I was on top of him. I hit him twice before I knew what I was doing or where the impulse had even come from. I might have kept on, but the feel of cold metal in my neck made me stop.

  “Get up,” Dawson said. “That’s enough.”

  “Not yet.” I was breathing hard and my hands were like ice. I didn’t care about guns anymore. “Shoot if you want.” Brady had a dull look in his eyes, but he was conscious. I grabbed the edges of his shirt and held them tight. “I want to know why,” I said to him. “I want to know why Liz was going to take the rap for you.”

  He choked on his laugh. “They couldn’t have made it stick. A paraffin test would clear her and give the trail time to get cold. And once they found out the murder was a frame-up they’d believe the drugs were too. They only had Carlos’ word, and he’s dead.”

  He still hadn’t told me why, but by then I already knew. Sometimes it takes me a long time to see the most obvious things. Carlos had tried to tell me, and it was on Brady’s face every time he’d looked at her.

  I stood up and let Dawson put me against a wall and search me. When he got to the envelope, his eyes narrowed and he looked at me as if he was almost sorry to have to go through with the rest of it. He read me my rights, slapped the bracelets on, and took me outside.

  Liz was handcuffed to the back seat of the prowl car. They put me in next to her. I couldn’t think of anything to say. I could have asked her what she saw in a man like Brady, what he gave her that I couldn’t, bur that was all high school stuff. I was too old and had seen too much of it before.

  “So Cathy spilled it all,” Liz said bitterly. “I should have known I couldn’t trust her.” It was a childish remark and it brought me back to reality. I thought of Cathy and her despairing refusal to talk.

  “No, I said. “It wasn’t Cathy.”

  Another carload of cops pulled up and a moment later they came out of the house with Brady in tow. He was in handcuffs, too.

  “I suppose you hate me now,” Liz said. “I guess I can’t blame you.”

  “Shut up,” I said. “Just shut up. Please.”

  Dawson started the car and we pulled away from the curb. It was over for me, but a long night still lay ahead. I wondered if Pete was going to be able to get me out of this one.

  The sky overhead was the color of watery mud. It stared back at me in shifting silence and refused to rain.

  Scales

  There’s a standard rat behavior they call the Coolidge Effect. Back when I was a psych major, before I met Richard, before we got married, long before I had Emily, I worked in the lab 15 hours a week. I cleaned rat cages and typed data into the computer. The Coolidge Effect was one of those experiments that everybody had heard of but nobody had actually performed.

  It seems if you put a new female in a male’s cage, they mate a few times and go on with their business. If you keep replacing the female, though, it’s a different story. The male will literally screw himself to death.

  Someone supposedly told all this to Mrs. Calvin Coolidge. She said, “Sounds just like my husband.”

  It started in June, a few days after Emily’s first birthday. I remember it was a Sunday night; Richard had to teach in the morning. I woke up to Richard moaning. It was a kind of humming sound, up and down the scale. It was a noise he made during sex.

  I sat up in bed. As usual all the blankets were piled on my side. Richard was naked under a single sheet, despite the air conditioning. We’d fought about something that afternoon. I was still angry enough that I could find satisfaction in watching his nightmare.

  He moved his hips up and down. I could see the little tent his penis made in the sheet. Clearly he was not squirming from fear. Just as I realized what was happening he arched his back and the sheet turned translucent. I’d never watched it before, not clinically like that. It wasn’t especially interesting and certainly not erotic. All I could think of was the mess. I could smell it now, like water left standing in an orange juice jar.

  I lay down, facing away from him. The bed jolted as he woke up. “Jesus,” he whispered. I pretended to be asleep while he mopped up the bed with some kleenex. In a minute or two he was asleep again.

  I got up to check on Emily. She was face down in her crib, arms and legs stretched out like a tiny pink bearskin rug. I touched her hair, bent over to smell her neck. One tiny, perfect hand clutched at the blanket under her.

  “You missed it, Tater,” I whispered. “You could have seen what you’ve got to look forward to.”

  I might have forgotten about it if Sally Keeler hadn’t called that Friday. Her husband had the office next to Richard’s in the English department.

  “Listen,” Sally said. “It’s probably nothing at all.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I thought somebody should let you know.”

  “Know what?”

  “Has Richard been, I don’t know, acting a little weird lately?”

  For some reason I remembered his wet dream. “What do you mean weird?”

  Sally sighed dramatically. “It’s just something Tony said last night. Now Ann, I know you and Richard are having a few problems—that’s okay, you don’t have to say anything—and I thought, well, a real friend would come to you with this.”

  Sally was not a friend. Sally was someone who had been over to dinner two or three times. I hadn’t realized my marital problems were such common knowledge. �
�Sally, will you get to the point?”

  “Richard’s been talking to Tony about this new grad student. She’s supposed to be from Israel or something.”

  “So?”

  “So Richard was apparently just drooling over this girl. That doesn’t sound like him. I mean Richard doesn’t even flirt.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Well, no. Tony asked him what was the big deal and Richard said, ‘Tony, you wouldn’t believe it. You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.’ Those are like his exact words.”

  “Does this mystery woman have a name?”

  “Lili, I think he said it was.”

  I tried to picture Richard, with his thinning hair and stubby little mustache, with his glasses and pot belly, sweeping some foreign sexpot off her feet.

  Sally said, “It may not be anything at all.”

  One new associate professorship would open up next year. Richard and Tony were both in the running. Richard was generally thought to have the edge. “I’m sure you’re right,” I said. “I’m sure it’s nothing at all.”

  “Hey, I wouldn’t want to cause any problems.”

  “No,” I said, “I’m sure you wouldn’t.”

  The next Wednesday Richard called to say he’d be home late. There was a visiting poet on campus for a reading. I looked it up in the paper. The reading was scheduled for eight.

  At eight-thirty I put Emily in the station wagon and we drove over to the Fine Arts Center. We didn’t find his car.

  “Well, Tater,” I said. “What do you think? Do we go across Central and check the hot sheet motels?”

  She stared at me with huge, colorless eyes.

  “You’re right,” I said. “We have too much pride for that. We’ll just go home.”

  There was a cookout that weekend at Dr. Taylor’s. He was department chairman largely on the strength of having edited a Major American Writer in his youth. Now he had a drinking problem. His wife had learned that having parties at home meant keeping him off the roads.