Эд Горман - Hard-Boiled - An Anthology of American Crime Stories

“Just unlatch the fucking door or I start shooting.”

“My God, mister, I don’t know what this could be about. I really don’t.”

But she unlatched the door and he went inside.

He closed and locked both doors behind him.

He turned around and looked at the small living room she stood in. The first thing he noticed was that she had not one but two velvet paintings of Jesus above the worn and frayed couch. There was a 17-inch color TV set playing a late movie with Sandra Dee. There was a pressed wood coffee table with only three legs, a stack of paperback books substituting for the missing leg.

She sat on the couch.

He pointed the gun at her.

She said, sounding exhausted now, “You look crazy, mister. I can’t help but tell you the truth. You really look crazy.”

And now he had some idea of how much weight she’d lost. Maybe forty, fifty pounds. And her facial skin was pulled drum-tight over her cheekbones. And her pallor was gray.

There was a bad odor in the place, too, and he didn’t have to ask what it was.

“You fucking bitch,” he said, waving the gun at her. She’d been right. He heard his words. He was crazy.

She looked up at him from sad and weary eyes. “I’m so tired, mister, just from walking over to the door that I can’t— What do you want anyway?”

“You know this is pretty goddamn funny.”

“What is?”

He started pacing. For a time he didn’t talk. Just paced. She watched him. The floorboards creaked as he walked over them.

“You destroy me and you don’t even remember who I am? That’s pretty goddamned good.”

And then she said, seeming to know everything suddenly, “Oh, shit, mister. Now I know why you come here. And all I can say is I’m sorry.”

He turned on her, seized with his fury. “I’ve got a wife and two children. I’ve got a good business. I’m not gay or some junkie or—”

She said, and now her breathing was ragged, and she looked suddenly spent: “How long have you known?”

But he didn’t want to answer questions.

He wanted to shake the gun in her face, the gun that signified how trapped and outraged he felt.

And so he shook it. He went right up to her and shook it in her face and said, “You fucking bitch, couldn’t you have had yourself checked out before you went on the streets?”

Because that was how it had happened. Him visiting Chicago for an insurance convention. Some executive friend of his from Milwaukee who really liked slumming bringing him down here for a little “black poontang” and—

And a week ago his family doctor, just as incredulous as he was, told him. “David, Jesus Christ, these tests can be wrong sometimes but right now it looks as if—”

Only once in eighteen years of marriage had he been unfaithful.

In Chicago.

Insurance convention.

Black woman.

And now he stood above her. “I can’t tell you how badly I want to blow your fucking head off, you bitch.”

She looked up at him and said, “Maybe you’d be doing me a favor. I got maybe six months to go myself, mister, and this is some hard way to die, let me tell you.” Again she sounded completely spent.

“The worst thing is, I may have infected my wife.”

“I know,” she said. “My old man left me when he found out. But it’s probably too late for him, too.”

“You fucking bitch!” he said, no longer able to control himself.

He brought the gun down hard across her jaw.

Almost immediately she started sobbing.

And then he couldn’t hit her anymore.

He heard in her tears the inevitable tears of his wife and children when they found out.

And he couldn’t hit her at all anymore.

She just sat there and sobbed, her whole body trembling, weaker with each moment.

He said, “I’m sorry.”

She just kept crying.

He started pacing again.

“I can’t believe this. I keep thinking that there’s no way I could—”

He shook his head and looked over at her. She was daubing at her nose with an aqua piece of Kleenex.

“Do you get help?”

She nodded. She wouldn’t look at him anymore. “The welfare folks. They send out people.”

“I’m sorry I was so angry.”

“I know.”

“And I’m sorry I hit you.”

“I know that too.”

“I’m just so fucking scared and so fucking angry.”

Now she looked at him again. “The anger goes after awhile. You get too tired to be angry anymore.”

“I don’t know how I’m going to tell my wife.”

“You’ll do it, mister. That’s the only thing I figured out about this thing. You do what you’ve got to do. You really do.”

He dumped the gun in the pocket of his respectable topcoat. And then he took out his wallet and flicked off a hundred dollars in twenties.

“You really must be crazy, mister,” she said. “Leavin’ me money like that.”

“Yes,” he said. “I really must be crazy.”

She started crying again.

He closed the doors quietly behind him. Even halfway down the walk, even in the fog and even in the rain, he could still hear her crying.

There was a three o’clock flight to Baltimore. He wasn’t sure he had nerve enough to tell her yet but he knew he would have to. He owed her so much; he certainly owed her the truth.

He walked faster now, and soon he disappeared completely inside the fog. He was just footsteps now; footsteps.

Alexander, David: “Mama’s Boy” by David Alexander was first published in Manhunt, May 1955. Copyright © 1955 by Flying Eagle Publications, Inc. Copyright renewed by David Alexander in 1983. Reprinted by permission of Russell & Volkening as agents for the author.

Appel, Benjamin: “Dock Walloper” by Benjamin Appel is from Dock Walloper published by Lion Books in 1953. Copyright 1953 by Benjamin Appel. Copyright renewed 1981 by Sophie M. Appel. Reprinted by permission of the Estate of Benjamin Appel.

Block, Lawrence: “Batman’s Helpers” by Lawrence Block was first published in Playboy. Copyright © 1990 by Lawrence Block. Reprinted by permission of Knox Burger Associates, Ltd.

Brackett, Leigh: “So Pale, So Cold, So Fair” by Leigh Brackett was first published in Argosy in 1957. Reprinted by permission of Spectrum Literary Agency on behalf of the Estate of Leigh Brackett Hamilton.

Brewer, Gil: “Home” by Gil Brewer was first published in Accused, March 1956. Copyright © 1956 by Atlantis Publishing Co., Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agents, Scott Meredith Literary Agency, L.P., 845 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10022.

Burnett, W. R.: “Round Trip” by W. R. Burnett was first published in Harper’s Magazine in 1929. Copyright 1929 Harper & Brothers. Reprinted by permission of H. N. Swanson, Inc., on behalf of Whitney L. Burnett, executrix of the Estate of W. R. Burnett.

Cain, James M.: “Brush Fire” by James M. Cain was first published in Liberty, December 15, 1936, issue. Copyright 1936 by MacFadden Publications, Inc. Copyright renewed 1963 by James M. Cain. Reprinted by permission of Harold Ober Associates, Inc.

Cain, Paul: “Trouble-Chaser” by Paul Cain (Peter Ruric) was first published in Black Mask, issue 17, no. 2 (April 1934), 60–71. Copyright © 1934 by Pro-Distributors Publishing Company, Inc. Copyright renewed © 1962 by Popular Publications, Inc. Assigned to Keith Alan Deutsch and reprinted by special arrangement with Keith Alan Deutsch, proprietor and conservator of the respective copyrights and successor-in-interest to Popular Publications, Inc. Black Mask and the distinctive logotype © 1994 by Keith Alan Deutsch.

Chandler, Raymond: “I’ll Be Waiting” by Raymond Chandler was first published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1939. Copyright © 1939 by The Saturday Evening Post. Copyright © Philip Marlowe B.V. Reprinted by permission of Ed Victor Ltd. Literary Agency.