Роберт Беллем - Pulp Frictions

So I sat there day after day watching Walter Harrison fall helplessly in love with a woman he hadn’t met yet. He fell in love with the way she waved until each movement of her hand seemed to be for him alone. He fell in love with the luxuriant beauty of her body, letting his eyes follow her as she walked to the water from the house, aching to be close to her. She would turn sometimes and see us watching, and wave.

At night he would stand by the window, not hearing what I said because he was watching her windows, hoping for just one glimpse of her, and often I would hear him repeating her name slowly, letting it roll off his tongue like a precious thing.

It couldn’t go on that way. I knew it and he knew it. She had just come up from the beach and the water glistened on her skin. She laughed at something the woman who was with her said and shook her head back so that her hair flowed down her back.

Walter shouted and waved and she laughed again, waving back. The wind brought her voice to him and Walter stood there, his breath hot in my face. ‘Look here, Duncan, I’m going over to meet her. I can’t stand this waiting. Good Lord, what does a guy have to go through to meet a woman?’

‘You’ve never had any trouble before, have you?’

‘Never like this!’ he said. ‘Usually they’re dropping at my feet. I haven’t changed, have I? There’s nothing repulsive about me, is there?’

I wanted to tell the truth, but I laughed instead.

‘You’re the same as ever. It wouldn’t surprise me if she was dying to meet you, too. I can tell you this... she’s never been outside as much as since you’ve been here.’

His eyes lit up boyishly. ‘Really, Dune. Do you think so?’

‘I think so. I can assure you of this, too. If she does seem to like you, it’s certainly for yourself alone.’

As crudely as the barb was placed, it went home. Walter never so much as glanced at me. He was lost in thought for a long time, then: ‘I’m going over there now, Duncan. I’m crazy about that girl. By God, I’ll marry her if it’s the last thing I do.’

‘Don’t spoil it, Walter. Tomorrow, I promise you, I’ll go over with you.’

His eagerness was pathetic. I don’t think he slept a wink that night. Long before breakfast he was waiting for me on the veranda. We ate in silence, each minute an eternity for him. He turned repeatedly to look over the hedge and I caught a flash of worry when she didn’t appear.

Tight little lines had appeared at the corner of his eyes and he said, ‘Where is she, Dune? She should be there by now, shouldn’t she?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It does seem strange. Just a moment.’ I rang the bell on the table and my housekeeper came to the door. ‘Have you seen the Vaughns, Martha?’ I asked her.

She nodded sagely. ‘Oh, yes sir. They left very early this morning to go back to the city.’

Walter turned to me. ‘Hell!’

‘Well, she’ll be back,’ I assured him.

‘Damn it, Dune, that isn’t the point!’ He stood up and threw his napkin on the seat. ‘Can’t you realise that I’m in love with the girl? I can’t wait for her to get back!’

His face flushed with frustration. There was no anger, only the crazy hunger for the woman. I held back my smile. It happened. It happened the way I planned for it to happen. Walter Harrison had fallen so deeply in love, so truly in love that he couldn’t control himself. I might have felt sorry for him at that moment if I hadn’t asked him, ‘Walter, as I told you I know very little about her. Supposing she is already married?’

He answered my question with a nasty grimace. ‘Then she’ll get a divorce if I have to break the guy in pieces. I’ll break anything that stands in my way, Duncan. I’m going to have her if it’s the last thing I do!’

He stalked off to his room. Later I heard the car roar down the road.

I went back to New York and was there a week when my contacts told me of Walter’s fruitless search. He used every means at his disposal, but he couldn’t locate the girl. I gave him seven days, exactly seven days. You see, that seventh day was the anniversary of the date I introduced him to Adrianne. I’ll never forget it. Wherever Walter is now, neither will he.

When I called him I was amazed at the change in his voice. He sounded weak and lost. We exchanged the usual formalities; then I said, ‘Walter, have you found Evelyn yet?’

He took a long time to answer. ‘No, she’s disappeared completely.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that,’ I said.

He didn’t get it at first. It was almost too much to hope for. ‘You... mean you know where she is?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Where? Please, Dune... where is she?’ In a split second he became a vital being again. He was bursting with life and energy, demanding that I tell him.

I laughed and told him to let me get a word in and I would. The silence was ominous then. ‘She’s not very far from here, Walter, in a small hotel right off Fifth Avenue.’ I gave him the address and had hardly finished when I heard his phone slam against the desk. He was in such a hurry he hadn’t bothered to hang up...’

Duncan stopped and drained his glass, then stared at it remorsefully. The inspector coughed lightly to attract his attention, his curiosity prompting him to speak.

‘Then he found her?’ he asked eagerly.

‘Oh, yes, he found her. He burst right in over all protests, expecting to sweep her off her feet.’

This time the inspector fidgeted nervously. ‘Well, go on.’

Duncan motioned for the waiter and lifted a fresh glass in a toast. The inspector did the same. Duncan smiled gently. ‘When she saw him she laughed and waved. Walter Harrison died an hour later... from a window in the same hotel.’

It was too much for the inspector, He leaned forward in his chair, his forehead knotted in a frown. ‘But what happened? Who was she? Damn it all, Duncan...’

Duncan took a deep breath, then gulped the drink down.

‘Evelyn Vaughn was a helpless imbecile,’ he said. ‘She had the beauty of a goddess and the mentality of a two-year-old. They kept her well tended and dressed so she wouldn’t be an object of curiosity. But the only habit she ever learned was to wave bye-bye...’

The famous 87th Precinct which is ostensibly located on the island of Isola — although no one is in any doubt that it is a thinly disguised representation of teeming Manhattan in New York City — was evolved during the last years of the pulp era and is the setting for one of the best-known police procedural series in the world. The starkly realistic stories are all about terror and brutality at street level, yet are frequently relieved by a vein of slapstick comedy that makes them unique in crime fiction. The various characters of the Precinct, particularly tough Detective Steve Carella, the giant Detective Cotton Hawes and the unredeemed braggart Detective Andy Parker, have become household names thanks to the continuing series of books, plus half a dozen movies and television series, which started in 1956 with the novels Cop Hater and The Mugger. The saga developed from crime and detective stories that the author had been writing ever since the early Fifties, and followed hard on the heels of the huge success of The Blackboard Jungle (1954), a novel of violence and racial tension in New York schools which has become a classic and was made into the first movie in which the teenage craze of Rock ’n ’ Roll was featured. The riots perpetrated by young audiences in New York and London cinemas when the picture was first screened only added to the book’s legendary status.

Ed McBain (1926-) is the pen-name of Evan Hunter who was born in New York and as a youngster and then a teacher in the city saw crime at first hand, especially the street gangs, drug pushers and petty criminals who would become the focus of his early stories for hardboiled magazines such as Adventure, Manhunt and Bloodhound. His affection for pulp fiction was clearly evident in one series he wrote under the name of Curt Cannon, with titles such as I Like ’em Tough (1958) and I’m Cannon — for Hire (1959). Told in the first person, these hardboiled cases were all about a tough former private eye who lived in the Bowery and described himself as a derelict. Readers soon realised that here was a man with whom even the toughest of the other hardboiled dicks might find it hard to work, given to making statements such as ‘I drink twenty-five hours out of twenty-four ’ and ‘I sleep on park benches when I don’t have the money for a bed’. The characters who work in the 87th Precinct may be a shade more sociable than Cannon, but certainly every bit as tough. Detective Sergeant Mike Jonas, the narrator of ‘Accident Report ’ (from Manhunt, 1953), is a hard-nosed cop who tackles one of the most emotive cases any policeman can be faced with — the brutal killing of another member of the force.