James Ellroy - The Best American Noir of the Century

“Stop here,” Freddy said.

The taxi came to a stop. They got out and he paid the driver. The driver gave him a queer look and said, “You sure picked a lonely spot.”

Freddy looked at the cabman. He didn’t say anything.

The driver said, “You’re at least three miles off the highway. It’s gonna be a problem getting a ride home.”

“Is it your problem?” Freddy asked gently.

“Well, no—”

“Then don’t worry about it,” Freddy said. He smiled amiably. The driver threw a glance at the blonde, smiled, and told himself that the man might have the right idea, after all. With an item like that, any man would want complete privacy. He thought of the bony, bucktoothed woman who waited for him at home, crinkled his face in a distasteful grimace, put the car in gear, and drove away.

“Ain’t it nice?” Pearl said. “Ain’t it wonderful?”

They were walking through a glade where the moonlight showed the autumn colors of fallen leaves. The night air was fragrant with the blended aromas of wildflowers. He had his arm around her shoulder and was leading her toward a narrow lane sloping downward through the trees.

She laughed lightly, happily. “It’s like as if you know the place. As if you’ve been here before.”

“No,” he said. “I’ve never been here before.”

There was the tinkling sound of a nearby brook. A bird chirped in the bushes. Another bird sang a tender reply. “Listen,” Pearl murmured. “Listen to them.”

He listened to the singing of the birds. Now he was guiding Pearl down along the slope and seeing the way it leveled at the bottom and then went up again on all sides. It was a tiny valley down there with the brook running along the edge. He told himself it would happen when they reached the bottom.

He heard Pearl saying, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could stay here?”

He looked at her. “Stay here?”

“Yes,” she said. “If we could live here for the rest of our lives. Just be here, away from everything —”

“We’d get lonesome.”

“No we wouldn’t,” she said. “We’d always have company. I’d have you and you’d have me.”

They were nearing the bottom of the slope. It was sort of steep now and they had to move slowly. All at once she stumbled and pitched forward and he caught her before she could fall on her face. He steadied her, smiled at her, and said, “OK?”

She nodded. She stood very close to him and gazed into his eyes and said, “You wouldn’t let me fall, would you?”

The smile faded. He stared past her. “Not if I could help it.”

“I know,” she said. “You don’t have to tell me.”

He went on staring past her. “Tell you what?”

“The situation.” She spoke softly, almost in a whisper. “I got it figured, Freddy. It’s so easy to figure.”

He wanted to close his eyes; he didn’t know why he wanted to close his eyes.

He heard her saying, “I know why you packed me in tonight. Orders from Herman.”

“That’s right.” He said it automatically, as though the mention of the name was the shifting of a gear.

“And another thing,” she said. “I know why you brought me here.” There was a pause, and then, very softly, “Herman.” He nodded.

She started to cry. It was quiet weeping and contained no fear, no hysteria. It was the weeping of farewell. She was crying because she was sad. Then, very slowly, she took the few remaining steps going down to the bottom of the slope. He stood there and watched her face as she turned to look up at him.

He walked down to where she stood, smiling at her and trying to pretend his hand was not on the switchblade in his pocket. He tried to make himself believe he wasn’t going to do it, but he knew that wasn’t true. He’d been slated for this job. The combine had him listed as a top-rated operator, one of the best in the business. He’d expended a lot of effort to attain that reputation, to be known as the grade-A expert who’d never muffed an assignment.

He begged himself to stop. He couldn’t stop. The knife was open in his hand and his arm flashed out and sideways with the blade sliding in neatly and precisely, cutting the flesh of her throat. She went down very slowly, tried to cough, made a few gurgling sounds, and then rolled over on her back and died looking up at him.

For a long time he stared at her face. There was no expression on her features now. At first he didn’t feel anything, and then he realized she was dead, and he had killed her.

He tried to tell himself there was nothing else he could have done, but even though that was true it didn’t do any good. He took his glance away from her face and looked down at the white-gold watch to check the hour and the minute, automatically. But somehow the dial was blurred, as though the hands were spinning like tiny propellers. He had the weird feeling that the watch was showing time traveling backward, so that he found himself checking it in terms of years and decades. He went all the way back to the day when he was eleven years old and they took him to reform school.

In reform school he was taught a lot of things. The thing he learned best was the way to use a knife. The knife became his profession. But somewhere along the line he caught onto the idea of holding a daytime job to cover his nighttime activities. He worked in stockrooms and he did some window cleaning and drove a truck for a fruit dealer. And finally he became an elevator operator and that was the job he liked best. He’d never realized why he liked it so much but he realized now. He knew that the elevator was nothing more than a moving cell, and that the only place for him was a cell. The passengers were just a lot of friendly visitors walking in and out, saying “Good morning, Freddy,” and “Good night, Freddy,” and they were such nice people. Just the thought of them brought a tender smile to his lips.

Then he realized he was smiling down at her. He sensed a faint glow coming from somewhere, lighting her face. For an instant he had no idea what it was. Then he realized it came from the sky. It was the first signal of approaching sunrise.

The white-gold watch showed five fifty-three. Freddy Lamb told himself to get moving. For some reason he couldn’t move. He was looking down at the dead girl. His hand was still clenched about the switchblade, and as he tried to relax it he almost dropped the knife. He looked down at it.

The combine was a cell, too, he told himself. The combine was an elevator from which he could never escape. It was going steadily downward and there were no stops until the end. There was no way to get out.

Herman had made him kill the girl. Herman would make him do other things. And there was no getting away from that. If he killed Herman there would be someone else.

The elevator was carrying Freddy steadily downward. Already, he had left Pearl somewhere far above him. He realized it all at once, and an unreasonable terror filled him.

Freddy looked at the white-gold watch again. A minute had passed and he knew suddenly that he was slated to do a job on someone in exactly three minutes now. The minutes passed and he stood there alone.

At precisely five fifty-seven he said goodbye to his profession and plunged the blade into his heart.

Gil(bert) Brewer (1922-1983) was born in Canandaigua, New York. While he was serving in the Army during World War II, his family moved to Florida; he joined them after his discharge. He decided to become a writer like his father when he was nine years old, dropping out of school to work at various blue-collar jobs while practicing his craft. Although his bibliography shows numerous sales to pulps such as Zeppelin Stories in 1929 and to various detective magazines between 1931 and 1934, they are obviously inaccurate. His first book, 13 French Street, was published in 1951 — the first of his twenty-three novels to be issued in that decade — the same year in which he sold what is probably his first published short story, “With This Gun,” to Detective Tales. He published nearly one hundred stories in all, mostly under his own name, but also under the pseudonyms Eric Fitzgerald and Bailey Morgan. He also ghostwrote novels for Ellery Queen, Hal Ellson, Al Conroy, and five novels for an Israeli soldier named Harry Arvay.