James Ellroy - The Best American Noir of the Century

“How you feel?” he asked.

I wasn’t going to give too much away. No, sir. But I couldn’t help saying, “I thought I was gone then. But you did right by me.”

“And you did right, too, Jack.” And then he said, “Pour us another round.”

I filled the glasses to the top. We tapped ‘em.

“Here’s to you, Jack. And to faith.”

“To faith.”

I tossed back the whiskey, and when I lowered my head, sniffing air through my nose to clear my head, well, that was when he got me. Right in the face.

He was good, that son of a bitch. Tossed the glass low so that even when I ducked, automatically, the booze caught me in the eyes, and man, that stung like nobody’s business. I couldn’t believe it. I was howling in pain and going for the knife. But it was too late. He had it all planned out, exactly what I was going to do. How I was gonna move. He brought his knee up into my chin and knocked a couple of teeth out, and I went over onto my back before I could get the knife out my pocket. Then he dropped down on my belly with his knee —I remembered I’d never bothered to tape his feet up again — and he knocked the wind out, and there I was lying, like I was paralyzed, trying to breathe and all. Only I couldn’t. And the pain was incredible, but what was worse was the feeling that he didn’t trust me.

I was whispering, “No, no, no. I was going to, man. You don’t understand. I was going to let you go.”

I couldn’t see nothing and couldn’t really hear nothing either, my ears were roaring so much. I was gasping, “You don’t understand you don’t understand.”

Man, the pain was so bad. So bad …

Weller must’ve got the tape off his hands, chewed through it, I guess, ‘cause he was rolling me over. I felt him tape my hands together, then grab me and drag me over to a chair, tape my feet to the legs. He got some water and threw it in my face to wash the whiskey out of my eyes.

He sat down in a chair in front of me. And he just stared at me for a long time while I caught my breath. He picked up his glass, poured more scotch. I shied away, thinking he was going to throw it in my face again, but he just sat there, sipping it and staring at me.

“You…I was going to let you go. I was.”

“I know,” he said. Still calm.

“You know?”

“I could see it in your face. I’ve been a salesman for twenty-five years, remember? I know when I’ve closed a deal.”

I’m a pretty strong guy, specially when I’m mad, and I tried real hard to break through that tape but there was no doing it. “Goddamn you!” I shouted. “You said you weren’t going to turn me in. You, all your goddamn talk about faith…”

“Shhhh,” Weller whispered. And he sat back, crossing his legs. Easy as could be. Looking me up and down. “That fellow your friend shot back at the drugstore. The customer at the counter?”

I nodded slowly.

“He was my friend. It’s his place my wife and I are staying at this weekend. With all our kids.”

I just stared at him. His friend? What was he saying?

“I didn’t know—”

“Be quiet,” he said, real soft. “I’ve known him for years. Gerry was one of my best friends.”

“I didn’t want nobody to die. I —”

“But somebody did die. And it was your fault.”

“Toth…”

He whispered, “It was your fault.”

“All right, you tricked me. Call the cops. Get it over with, you goddamn liar.”

“You really don’t understand, do you?” He shook his head. Why was he so calm? His hands weren’t shaking. He wasn’t looking around, nervous and all. Nothing like that. He said, “If I’d wanted to turn you in, I would just’ve flagged down that squad car a few minutes ago. But I said I wouldn’t do that. And I won’t. I gave you my word I wouldn’t tell the cops a thing about you. And I won’t.”

“Then what do you want?” I shouted. “Tell me.” Trying to bust through that tape. And as he unfolded my Buck knife with a click, I was thinking of something I told him.

Oh man, no …Oh, no.

“Yeah, being blind, I guess. That’d be the worst thing I could think of.”

“What’re you going to do?”

“What’m I going to do, Jack?” Weller said. He cut the last bit of tape off his wrists with the Buck, then looked up at me. “Well, I’ll tell you. I spent a good bit of time tonight proving to you that you shouldn’t kill me. And now…”

“What, man? What?”

“Now I’m going to spend a good bit of time proving to you that you should’ve.”

Then, real slow, Weller finished his scotch and stood up. And he walked toward me, that weird little smile on his face.

Lawrence Block (1938-) was born and raised in Buffalo, New York. After attending Antioch College in Ohio, he moved to New York City, working as an editor at the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, then at Whitman Publishing Company. His career as a professional writer began early, with his first story, “You Can’t Lose,” being published in 1957, when he was nineteen, and his first novel, Death Pulls a Double Cross, in 1961, when he was twenty-three. As prolific as he is talented and versatile, he can be ranked with such contemporaries as Evan Hunter (Ed McBain) and Donald E. Westlake in all three categories. They all reached the hundred-book mark, under their own names and numerous pseudonyms; Block’s pen names include Chip Harrison, Jill Emerson, and Paul Kavanagh. His bibliography illustrates his versatility: his finest work, the hard-boiled mysteries featuring Matthew Scudder; the much softer and funnier series about a bookstore-owner-cum-burglar, Bernie Rhodenbarr; espionage stories (as Kavanagh); outlandish humor in the Evan Tanner thrillers; soft-core erotica (as Emerson); fantasy (Ariel, 1980); and nonfiction books about the writing craft. His excellence as a writer has resulted in numerous honors, including eleven Edgar Allan Poe Award nominations. He has won the Edgar four times: once for Best Novel,-A Dance at the Slaughterhouse (1992), and three times for Best Short Story, the only writer to win three times in that category. In 1994 he was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, for lifetime achievement.

“Like a Bone in the Throat” was first published in the anthology Murder for Revenge (New York: Delacorte, 1998). While it is surely the most noir of his stories (can you imagine a darker one?), readers should also seek “By Dawn’s Early Light,” which won the Edgar in 1985 and is one of the modern classics of the mystery genre. It was written specifically for the first Private Eye Writers of America anthology, The Eyes Have It (New York: Mysterious Press, 1984), but first appeared two months earlier in the August 1984 issue of Playboy.

Throughout the trial Paul Dandridge did the same thing every day. He wore a suit and tie, and he occupied a seat toward the front of the courtroom, and his eyes, time and time again, returned to the man who had killed his sister.

He was never called upon to testify. The facts were virtually undisputed, the evidence overwhelming. The defendant, William Charles Croydon, had abducted Dandridge’s sister at knifepoint as she walked from the college library to her off-campus apartment. He had taken her to an isolated and rather primitive cabin in the woods, where he had subjected her to repeated sexual assaults over a period of three days, at the conclusion of which he had caused her death-by manual strangulation.

Croydon took the stand in his own defence. He was a handsome young man who’d spent his thirtieth birthday in a jail cell awaiting trial, and his preppy good looks had already brought him letters and photographs and even a few marriage proposals from women of all ages. (Paul Dandridge was twenty-seven at the time. His sister, Karen, had been twenty when she died. The trial ended just weeks before her twenty-first birthday.)