Роберт Беллем - Pulp Frictions

‘Yes... well, okay, if you say so. Well look, Sam, I can’t sell cars if I haven’t got them... You just do your best, that’s all. Okay, fine.’ He hung up without saying goodbye, got out of his chair and walked over to us.

‘Can I help you gentlemen?’

‘Yes,’ Andy said. ‘We’re interested in a car. Are you the owner of this place?’

‘I am.’

‘With whom are we doing business?’

‘Fred Whitaker,’ he said. ‘Did you have any particular car in mind?’

‘Yes. The black Buick on the floor.’

‘A beautiful car,’ Whitaker said, smiling.

‘The one with the smashed grille and headlight,’ I added.

The smile froze on his face, and he went white. ‘Wh... what?’

‘Did you smash that car up?’

Whitaker swallowed hard. ‘No... no. One of my mechanics did it.’

‘Who?’

‘I’ve... I’ve fired him. He...’

‘We can check this, Whitaker.’

‘Are... are you policemen?’

‘We are. Come on, let’s have it all. We’ve got a girl to identify you.’

Whitaker’s face crumbled. ‘I... I guess that’s best, isn’t it?’

‘It’s best,’ Andy said.

‘I didn’t mean to run him down. But the girl screamed, you know, and I thought he’d heard it. He stuck up his hand, and I... I got scared, I suppose, and there was no one around, so I... I knocked him... I knocked him down. Is he all right? I mean...’

‘He’s dead,’ I said.

‘Dead?’ Whitaker’s eyes went wide. ‘Dead...’

‘Was it you who smashed that picket fence?’ Andy asked.

Whitaker was still dazed.

‘Wh... what?’ he said, very slowly after a pause.

‘The picket fence. On Barnes.’

‘Oh. Yes, yes. That was afterwards. I was still scared. I... I made a wrong turn, and I saw a police car, and I wanted to get away fast. I... I backed into the fence.’

‘Why’d you bother that little girl, Whitaker?’

He collapsed into a chair. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t know.’

‘You’re in a jam,’ Andy said. ‘You’d better come along with us.’

‘Yes, yes.’ He stood up, took his hat from a rack in the corner, and then started for the door. At the door he stopped and said, ‘I’d better tell my mechanics. I’d better tell them I’ll be gone for the day.’

I looked at Whitaker, and I thought of Benson. My eyes met Andy’s, and I put it into words for both of us.

‘You’ll be gone a lot longer than that, Whitaker.’

Some of the toughest cops in contemporary fiction are to be found in the hardboiled novels of Elmore Leonard, who has been keeping the old tradition alive for the last two decades as well as attracting an ever-increasing readership with each new book. His heroes are men like Ray Cruz, in the violent story City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit (1981), who takes the law into his own hands to bring the killer of a judge to justice; Bryan Hurd, who pits his wits against a demented Florida millionaire in Split Images (1983); Vincent Mora and his doomed love affair with a prostitute who is murdered in Glitz (1985); and Marshal Raylan Givens, the lawman with a penchant for cowboy boots and shooting first, who features in both Pronto (1993) and Riding the Rap (1995). Their antagonists are equally colourful street people, whose violent ways and profane language Elmore Leonard captures brilliantly — characters such as the sleazy robbers Ernest ‘Stick’ Stickley and Frank J. Ryan in Swag (1976); the ex-informer Ed Rosen, on the run from three hitmen, in The Hunted (1978); Chilli Palmer, the loan shark who dreams of being a film mogul in Get Shorty (1990) and Bobby ‘The Pruner’ Deogracias, one-time bounty hunter, part-time gardener and full-time psycho who features in Riding the Rap and was described by the Daily Telegraph reviewer as being ‘as nasty as anything Leonard has dreamed up’. Of all these people, Stephen Amidon added in the Sunday Times, ‘The hoods, low-lifes and con artists who populate Elmore Leonard’s world are as American as apple pie.’ Elmore Leonard (1925-), recently described by Time Out as ‘the king of crime fiction who has elevated pulp to an art form with his hard-boiled thrillers’, was a copywriter and then advertising agency executive before becoming an author in the Fifties. His early work was almost entirely Westerns, highlighted by 3.10 to Yuma, which in 1957 was made into a classic film with Van Heflin and Glenn Ford. Although his books sold well enough on both sides of the Atlantic, it was when he switched to crime novels that he became a cult figure. Leonard, who is known to his friends as ‘Dutch often sets stories in Detroit where he lives and has every opportunity to study the idiom and mannerisms of the local minor league gangsters, petty thieves and hustlers. It is they who turn up, suitably disguised, as the weird characters in his books to confront the equally unforgettable cops, in exploits which blend violence and riotous humour in a unique way. ‘Freaky Deaky’ (written in 1988) is also set in Detroit, where cop Chris Mankowski finds himself on the trail of a group of small-time criminals who have become terrorists and are on a bombing spree across the city.

Chris Mankowski’s last day on the job, two in the afternoon, two hours to go, he got a call to dispose of a bomb.

What happened, a guy by the name of Booker, a 25-year-old superdude twice-convicted felon, was in his Jacuzzi when the phone rang. He yelled for his bodyguard Juicy Mouth to take it. ‘Hey, Juicy?’ His bodyguard, his driver and his houseman were around somewhere. ‘Will somebody get the phone?’ The phone kept ringing. The phone must have rung 15 times before Booker got out of the Jacuzzi, put on his green satin robe that matched the emerald pinned to his left earlobe and picked up the phone. Booker said: ‘Who’s this?’ A woman’s voice said, ‘You sitting down?’ The phone was on a table next to a green leather wingback chair. Booker loved green. He said, ‘Baby, is that you?’ It sounded like his woman, Moselle. Her voice said, ‘Are you sitting down? You have to be sitting down for when I tell you something.’ Booker said, ‘Baby, you sound different. What’s wrong?’ He sat down in the green leather chair, frowning, working his butt around to get comfortable. The woman’s voice said, ‘Are you sitting down?’ Booker said, ‘I am. I have sat the fuck down. Now you gonna talk to me, what?’ Moselle’s voice said, ‘I’m supposed to tell you that when you get up, honey, what’s left of your ass is gonna go clear through the ceiling.’

When Chris got there a uniform let him in. There were 13th Precinct cars and a Tactical station wagon parked in front of the house. The uniform told Chris that Booker had called 911. They radioed him here and when he saw who it was he called Narcotics and they jumped at it, a chance to go through the man’s house wide open with their dog.

A guy from Narcotics who looked like a young vagrant told Chris that Booker was a success story: had come up through the street-dealing organisations, Young Boys Incorporated and Pony Down, and was now on about the third level from the top. Look around, guy 25 living in a home on Boston Boulevard, a mansion, originally owned by one of Detroit’s automotive pioneers. The guy from Narcotics didn’t remember which one. Look how Booker had fucked up the house, painted all that fine old oak panelling puke green. He asked Chris how come he was alone.

Chris said most of the squad was out on a run, picking up illegal fireworks, but there was another guy coming, Jerry Baker. Chris said, ‘You know what today is?’ And waited for the guy from Narcotics to say no, what? ‘It’s my last day on the Bomb Squad. Next week I get transferred out.’ He waited again.