James Ellroy - The Best American Noir of the Century

It had been a relatively simple matter, after all. He wadded the gloves into a ball and tossed them out the car window. They could not be traced to him. There was nothing to tie him to the murder but the fact that he and Frances were married. Back at the Eldorado, he parked the coupe in the same space it had occupied before and glanced at his watch before switching off the lights. It was eleven minutes past one. He was four minutes ahead of schedule.

He expended them by walking to the corner and peering around it cautiously. The doorman and Jackson were deep in some discussion. Satisfied that he had not been missed, he entered the side door.

Telling Evelyn would take some doing. She would be horrified at first, but she was quick-witted enough to realize that no other course had been open to him. It didn’t matter now. All that mattered was that the thing was done.

His throat and mouth were normal again. In the bright light of the cage he could see no bloodstains on his suit. He had been fortunate. He was whistling softly, almost cheerfully, as he inserted his key in the door.

The radio was still playing softly. A bottle of his best scotch beside her, Frances was sitting in one of Evelyn’s easy chairs. “I knew you’d come here first,” she said. “What’s a matter? Was your plane late?”

He stared at her open-mouthed, screams he was unable to utter tearing at his throat.

“You poor damn fool,” his wife continued. “Why didn’t you let me meet her? Why didn’t you make me realize what a swell kid she really was? Why didn’t you tell me that the boys wanted to run you for senator? You should have known me better, John. You’re my man. You always will be. No tramp was goin’ to take you from me. But a sweet kid like that is another matter.” She fluffed at her frowsy hair. “I feel kind of honored like.”

Sorrel managed to gasp one word, “Evelyn …”

Frances nipped at the scotch. “Oh, you didn’t know. Well, she showed at the house this morning and gave me a song and dance about being a maid out of work, her with fingernails that long.” She laughed, shortly “So I hired her and I pumped her. She’s probably goin’ through all my things right now, spyin’ on me.” Frances picked an oblong scrap of yellow paper from the table. “She never even got a chance to see her telegram because I copped her key from her purse and come over here shortly after I got the telegram that you sent me. Mine was all right. But after I read this one I kinda wondered.” She read it aloud: “‘Sweetheart. Be in your apartment at twelve tonight. Don’t leave it for any reason. And don’t let anyone in but me. This is important, more important than you realize.’”

His voice sounding strange to himself, Sorrel asked, “You — knew?”

Frances Sorrel smiled thinly. “I know you,” she admitted. “But don’t worry. Think nothing of it. As long as your plane was late, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

Dorothy B(elle) Hughes (1904-1993). Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Hughes received her journalism degree from the University of Missouri and did postgraduate work at the University of New Mexico and Columbia University. She worked as a journalist in Missouri, New York, and New Mexico before becoming a mystery writer.

This underappreciated author is historically important as being the first female to fall squarely in the hard-boiled school. She wrote eleven novels in the 1940s, beginning with The So Blue Marble (1940) and including The Cross-Eyed Bear (1940), The Bamboo Blonde (1941), The Fallen Sparrow (1942), Ride the Pink Horse (1946), and In a Lonely Place (1947), the latter three all made into successful films noir. The Fallen Sparrow was filmed by RKO in 1943 and starred John Garfield and Maureen O’Hara; Ride the Pink Horse (Universal, 1947) starred Robert Montgomery and Thomas Gomez; In a Lonely Place (Columbia, 1950) was a vehicle for Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame, and Martha Stewart, and was directed by Nicholas Ray. This classic film noir portrays an alcoholic screenwriter who is prone to violent outbursts and is accused of murdering a hatcheck girl. He is given an alibi by his attractive blond neighbor, who soon becomes fearful that he really did commit the crime, and that she might be next. In the book, the writer is, in fact, a psychopathic killer, but the director found it too dark and softened the plot.

At the height of her powers and success, Hughes largely quit writing due to domestic responsibilities. She reviewed mysteries for many years, winning an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for her critical acumen in 1951; in 1978 the organization named her a Grand Master for lifetime achievement.

“The Homecoming” was first published in Murder Cavalcade, the first Mystery Writers of America anthology (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1946).

It was a dark night, a small-wind night, the night on which evil things could happen, might happen. He didn’t feel uneasy walking the two dark blocks from the streetcar to her house. The reason he kept peering over his shoulder was because he heard things behind him, things like the rustle of an ancient bombazine skirt, like footsteps trying to walk without sound, things like crawling and scuttling and pawing. The things you’d hear in a too-old forest place, not on the concrete pavement of a city street. He had to look behind him to know that the sounds were the ordinary sounds of a city street in the autumn. Browned leaves shriveled and fallen, blown in small whirlpools by the small wind. Warped elm boughs scraping together in lonely nakedness. The sounds you’d expect on a night in autumn when the grotesquerie of shadows was commonplace. Elm fingers beckoning, leaves drifting to earth, shadows on an empty street. The little moans of the wind quivering his own flung shadow, and his own steps solid in the night, moving to her house.

He’d be there. The hero. Korea Jim. He’d be there a long time, since supper. She’d have asked him to supper because this was her folks’ night out. Her folks always went out Thursday nights, ladies’ night at the club. Cards and bingo and dancing and eats and they wouldn’t get home till after one o’clock at least.

She’d say it cute, “Come over for supper Thursday. I’m a terrible cook. All I can fix is pancakes.” And you’d know there was nothing you’d rather eat Thursday night than her pancakes. Better than thick steak, better than chicken and dumplings, better than turkey and all the fixings would be pancakes on Thursday night. She’d say it coaxing, “If you don’t come I’ll be here all by myself. The family always goes out on Thursday night.” And even if there weren’t going to be pancakes with sorghum or real maple syrup, your choice, your chest would swell until it was tight enough to bust, wanting to protect her from a lonely night at home with the folks out.

She was such a little thing. Not tall enough to reach the second shelf in the kitchen without standing on tiptoes. Not even in her pencil-point heels was she high enough to reach his chin. She was little and soft as fur and her hair was like yellow silk. She was always fooling you with her hair. You’d get used to the memory of her looking like a kid sister with her hair down her back, maybe curled a little, and the next time she’d have it pinned on top of her head like she was playing grownup. Or she’d have it curled up short or once or twice in two stiff pigtails with ribbon bows like a real kid. Wondering about her hair he forgot for a moment the dark and the wind and the things crawling in his mind and heart; he quickened his steps to cover the blocks to her house.