Max Collins - Kill Your Darlings

“Let me put it this way: Gorman went to the trouble of having his angels publicly assault us. Not that anyone in Chicago seemed to take notice, but still.”

“Your point being?”

“Look. I’m not saying Gorman isn’t capable of doing that just out of spite. That fallen angel of his did make sure I took a good shot in the gut, you know, to even the score.”

She thought that over. “But he also told you to get out of town.”

“ That’s my point. He did everything but put me on a stagecoach.”

“But, why?”

“Elementary, my dear Wickman. I’m looking into Roscoe Kane’s untimely demise. The local authorities have written Kane off as an accidental death. My poking around might be enough to get the matter reopened, if I’m stubborn and noisy enough about it. And Gorman knows me to be both plenty stubborn and just a little bit noisy.”

She was very, very pale; and, while it was barely perceptible, shaking some. “And you think Gregg is capable of…?”

“Murder? Who knows what evil lurks?”

“How can you be so flip about it?”

“About murder? Death? Ah, shucks, ma’am. Trouble is my business. I go around on the prowl for homicide, just so I can put it all down on paper and make a bundle. I’m looking for another movie-of-the-week out of this one.”

She studied me.

“This flipness,” she said. “You’re masking how you really feel, aren’t you? Roscoe Kane’s death is a real blow to you, isn’t it….”

I got up. I went over and pushed on my cassette player. Bobby Darin started singing “Beyond the Sea.” I loved that song, but these days it made me melancholy. Ever since Darin died, that song always got me to thinking in metaphorical terms. Somewhere-beyond the sea … I looked out the window down at Michigan Avenue and the adjacent park; I could see it all very well, but the street lights made it seem unreal, artificial. Street sounds floated up, seeming muffled and clear at the same time. Underwater sounds.

Without looking back at her, I said, “The hell of it is, if I do figure out what happened to Roscoe, and who did it… and why … he’ll still be dead. And someday so will I, and someday so will you. So what’s the point? What’s the goddamn fucking point?”

I felt her hand on my arm; cool.

I hadn’t even heard her get out of bed, let alone cross the room to me. I looked back at her. She didn’t have the pink Norma Kamali top on anymore.

“Who says there has to be any point?” she asked.

I looked at her breasts. Or, as Gat might say, her perfect B cups were like two generous scoops of vanilla ice cream, each topped with a cherry.

“If there’s no point,” I said, with an involuntary smile, “then don’t point those things at me.”

“ ’Cause they might be loaded, Gat?” she asked, smiling wryly (#569) and then tumbled into my arms.

She looked at me with a face so pretty it made my teeth hurt. She said, “Why don’t you forget this stupid mess and just enjoy the ’con and my company and then go home? You can spend the better part of the next two days in bed with me.”

“I’ve had worse offers.”

“Have you had better?”

Not ever. She was sweeter than Gat Garson’s silly ice-cream metaphor. She was a tonic for all that ailed me. She was a hundred pounds or so of affection with shimmering brown hair and shimmering brown eyes and holding her in my arms made me not give a goddamn whether there was any point to life or death, or infinity either, for that matter.

“Isn’t this when they smoke in books?” she asked. She was sitting up in bed, with both pillows behind her, sheet and blankets around her waist. The ice-cream scoops were tilting up; it’d be years before they started to melt.

“It sure is. Only I don’t smoke.”

“Neither do I.”

“Then let’s not.”

“Okay.”

“Besides,” I said, “we don’t want to indulge in too many cliches. We’ve just had the obligatory sex scene. And we’ve already had the ritual violence.”

Curiosity tinged her wry smile. “What d’you mean, ‘ritual violence’?”

“Gorman’s business associates running that tough-guy number. It was right on cue. You have to have a little action, in a private eye yarn.”

“Is that what this is?”

Outside the window, a siren-ambulance, probably-split the night open.

“That seems to be what I’m trying to make it,” I said. “If I were writing this, I’d be tempted to leave out the sex scene, and the ritual violence, too. They might play okay, but they’ve been done to death. So I’d probably cut ’em. Kill your darlings, y’know.”

“What?”

I grinned at her. “You never heard that old bromide? The editor of Noir? Shame on ya. That’s the mystery writers’ code.”

“Kill your darlings?”

“Sure. It’s just a way of saying to a writer: cut your work, ruthlessly; edit it, unsparingly. Get rid of the self-indulgent crap. I first heard that vivid little piece of advice from Roscoe Kane when he was showing me where to cut my first novel.”

She cocked her head, a good-natured, puzzled expression on her face. “I’m still not sure I get it….”

I leaned on one elbow, gestured with my other hand, pretending to be smart. “Y’see, often the things writers get the biggest charge out of in their own stories-a mixed metaphor here, a purple phrase there, even a complete scene full of snappy but pointless patter-are exactly what ought to be slashed the hell outta there. Of course, if I cut all the self-indulgences out of my novels, they’d be short stories. Still, like the old mystery writer says, kill your darlings-only the Roscoe Kane Murder Case is so full of self-indulgences on my part, I’m starting to think the whole damn thing might be invalid.”

“Don’t be silly, Mal….”

I stole one of the pillows out from behind her so I could sit up in bed comfortably, too. Postcoital chivalry may not be dead, but it clearly isn’t feeling well.

I said, “It’s like Sardini, and even Gorman, said: I’ve read too many mysteries. And maybe written too many, too.”

She studied me.

I said, “I’d appreciate it if you’d violently disagree with that last point.”

Little smile. “Consider yourself violently disagreed with.”

“Thanks. Coming from the heart as that did, it means a lot. Anyway, maybe I should throw in the towel on this one.”

“Like Roscoe Kane’s killer did.”

“Huh?”

She poked at my chest with a tapered finger. “He threw the towel in, remember? Actually, plural, towels. In the hamper. Sopped up the water with ’em after drowning Kane… remember? Your theory?”

I got out of bed and walked over to the window again; Darin was singing “Artificial Flowers,” a satirically upbeat song about a little girl who freezes to death selling flowers on a street corner.

“That’s just what I mean, Kathy,” I said, looking down at the unreal street. “That’s so damn lame. That’s mystery-novel evidence, not real-life evidence. No, I should try to accept the possibility… the likelihood… that Roscoe really did die an accidental death. I’m deluding myself into thinking he was murdered, because in a way, it’s keeping him alive for me.”

This time I heard her crossing the room behind me, as she said, “How so, Mal?”

I turned and looked at her; the only light in the room came from the window behind us and the shadows and dim lighting gave her lithe little body that same glow of unreality as the street below.

“Don’t you get it?” I asked her. “As long as I’m playing Gat Garson, trying to sort out Roscoe’s death, then Roscoe’s still with us, in a way… till his ‘murder’ is solved, his life remains unresolved. His story unfinished. Which may be how I want it.”