Modern Masters of Noir

by Ed Gorman (ed)

  “I’ve got an idea,” Joanne said. “The owners’ll be back from vacation Monday. First thing Tuesday morning, I’ll get hold of them and explain about you and the other tenant that jerk hassled. Maybe the owners can find grounds to evict the son of a bitch, okay?”

  Lisa thanked her and then kept the phone pressed to her ear long after Joanne had set down the receiver. She listened to the indecipherable whispers of the dead line, then the click and dial tone. Finally she hung up and sat there, not moving and blindly staring at the knotted fiber wall-hanging her friends at home had given her.

  She realized she was tired, very tired. Stress. She had read articles about it. It was not a condition she was accustomed to in her old home. It did not please her.

  In bed, she felt the cold desolation of being alone and lonely in a strange place. The feeling hadn’t changed in all these weeks. She reminded herself she would keep trying.

  After a long time, and not until she heard the telltale sounds of Roger Cross returning from the laundry room and closing his door, Lisa fell asleep.

  She dreamed of traps.

  In the morning, she woke tense, the muscles in her shoulders tight and sore. She awoke listening, straining to hear sounds from the upstairs apartment. She heard nothing other than the occasional traffic outside and the slight hum of the clock by the bed.

  Lisa lay awake for an hour before uncurling and getting out of bed. There was still nothing to hear from upstairs. Finally she put on her robe and gloves and went into the living room, hoping for sun-warmth from the east windows. It was another cloudy day.

  She almost missed the scrap of paper that had been slipped beneath her front door. Lisa gingerly picked the thing up and examined it curiously. It was a heart cut from a doubled sheet of red construction paper. The heart bore the inscription in wide, ink-marker slashes: “R. C. + L. P.” She set the thing down on the coffee table and stared at it a while. Then she crumpled the Valentine into a ball and dropped it into the kitchen trash sack.

  Lisa returned to the front door, opened the spy panel and looked out. Nobody. She opened the door a crack. No one lurked outside on the landing. She quietly and quickly descended the flight to the foyer. No one confronted her when she claimed her Sunday paper from the skiff of snow sifted on the front step. Roger didn’t ambush her when she returned to her own door. The building was still and quiet, just as it had been every other Sunday Lisa had lived there.

  The telephone rang as she closed the door. Lisa picked up the receiver and heard Roger’s voice say, “Listen, Lisa, please don’t hang up yet, okay?”

  This confused her. She hesitated.

  “Did you get what I left you?”

  “The heart?” she said, still feeling she was lagging.

  “I know you must have found it—the Valentine. I didn’t want to knock and wake you up.”

  She wasn’t sure of an appropriate response. “Thank you.”

  “I’m really sorry about yesterday. Sometimes I get into moods, you know? I guess I was sort of on the rag.” He chuckled.

  Lisa didn’t answer.

  “Did you like the Valentine?”

  “It’s—early, isn’t it?”

  There was an odd tone in his voice. “You’re worth anticipating, Lisa.”

  “I’m going to go now,” she said.

  “Don’t you dare,” he said quietly. “I need to talk to you. I want to see you.”

  This was more than enough. “Goodbye.” She set the phone down.

  Lisa fixed a light breakfast—her ordinarily healthy appetite was diminished—and read the newspaper while she ate. She discovered she was reading the same headline paragraph over and over. She flipped to the comics section.

  The phone rang. This time she let it ring half a dozen times before answering.

  Roger. His voice was coldly furious. “Don’t you ever hang up on me, Lisa. I can’t stand that.”

  “Listen to me,” she said. “Don’t bother—”

  “Never do that!”

  “—me again,” she finished. “Just. Go. Away.”

  There was a long silence. Then it sounded like he was crying.

  Lisa set the receiver down. She realized she was gripping the hand-piece as though it was a club. She willed her fingers to relax.

  She paced the perimeter of the living room until she decided there were more productive outlets for her nervous energy. For part of the afternoon, she scrubbed out the kitchen and bathroom. By sundown, she’d begun to relax. Roger was apparently not home. Either he impossibly wasn’t moving so much as an inch, or he’d gone out before she had awakened. The hardwood floor didn’t squeak up there. No sounds filtered down from the bedroom. The stereo was mute.

  When the telephone rang, Lisa stared at the set as though it were a curled viper. She allowed it to ring twenty times before answering. It could be an emergency. It could be Joanne or someone else. She picked up the receiver and said, “Hello?” Nothing. “Hello,” she said again. Someone was there. She could hear him breathing. Then the other receiver clicked into its cradle. In a few seconds more, Lisa heard the hum of the dial tone.

  Roger Cross was a new listing in directory assistance. Lisa dialed the number the computer voice intoned. When she held the receiver away from her ear, she could hear the telephone ring upstairs. No one answered.

  By early evening, Lisa found she was ravenous. She fixed herself a splendid supper of very rare steak and ate every morsel. She wondered if Roger were in some suburban singles bar picking up easier prey. While washing the day’s dishes, she began to contemplate the unpleasant possibility of having to move to another neighborhood. It wasn’t fair. She wouldn’t go. She liked this apartment.

  The phone rang. Lisa ignored it. Ten minutes later, it rang again. And ten minutes after that. Finally, she picked up the receiver with a curt “What.”

  “Hey, don’t bite my head off.” It was Joanne. The manager hadn’t seen Roger all day either. She was calling to check on Lisa. Lisa told her about Roger’s harassment.

  “You could try calling Mountain Bell.”

  “Maybe I will,” said Lisa.

  “Listen, the offer’s still open if you want to stay over here.”

  Lisa felt stubborn. Territorial. “No,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “Hang in there and I’ll talk to the owners on Tuesday,” said Joanne.

  Lisa thanked her and hung up.

  By eight o’clock, Lisa was again immersed in comfortable cleaning routines. She swept all the floors. Then she gave the shower curtain a scrub-down. She dusted the shelves in the walk-in closet and put down Contac paper. Finally she returned to the bathroom and considered running a hot bath. It occurred to her she was out of clean towels. In fact, she was out of everything clean.

  It sank home that she didn’t really have anything clean and neat to wear in the morning. Lisa knew it would be an error to appear at interviews in limp Western shirts and grubby blue-jeans. She had one good wash-and-wear outfit. Her first interview was at nine; that meant she would have to catch the bus before eight. Something had to be done about the laundry tonight. Since coming to the city, she’d been called too clean, too neat. She couldn’t help it.

  Lisa didn’t relish the idea of taking her dirty clothes and soap and bleach into that very cold night and descending to the laundry room next door, but there seemed to be no alternatives. Lisa cocked her head and glanced at the ceiling. She still had not heard a sound from upstairs. Maybe Roger had got lucky at some bar and no longer concerned himself with her. Perhaps he had drunk too much and fallen in front of a speeding truck. That thought was not without a tinge of hope.

  It wasn’t getting any earlier. She would need a full night’s sleep.

  Lisa stuffed everything she would need into the plastic laundry basket and unlocked her rear door. The back staircase was dimly lit by exit signs on each landing. The light cast her shadow weakly in front of her on the yellowed walls.

  She counted. Seven steps down to t
he landing. Turn a blind corner to the left. Seven more steps to the first floor. Before opening the outer door, she belatedly fumbled for her keys. They were in her hip pocket.

  The night was just as cold as she had anticipated. She felt the goose flesh form. The fine hairs rose on the back of her neck. The cracked concrete slab sidewalk extended the length of the apartment building. Lisa walked toward the alley, her stride faltering for a moment when she noticed the door of the garage across the alley hanging open. She thought she saw something move within the deeper darkness of the interior. She heard nothing. Probably just imagination. Probably.

  She followed a branching path to the right, around a pair of blighted and dying elms. Now she was at the rear of the house where her managers lived. The building was an elaborate Victorian which had been converted into apartments sometime in the ‘fifties. The original brickwork was plastered over and painted green. All the windows in the rear of the house were dark.

  The long, straight flight of cement steps led to the basement and the laundry room. One, two . . . She realized she was counting the steps under her breath . . . five, six . . . The temperature dropped perceptibly as she descended . . . ten. A level space and then a door. The sign tacked on the outside read: LAUNDRY EQUIPMENT AND PIPES WILL FREEZE IF DOOR REMAINS OPEN.

  Lisa pushed the door open. The wood had swelled and the bottom scraped the cement floor. The hall was not illuminated, but she could see light glowing from within the laundry room, ahead and to her left. The hallway was long and dusty. She scented the odor of must and mildew. Eventually the passageway ended in darkness, where Lisa knew were locked storage rooms and a barricaded staircase leading up to the rest of the house.

  Her steps echoed slightly as she hefted the basket and started toward the laundry room. She felt, rather than heard, the door swing shut behind her. She didn’t turn and look. Don’t get paranoid, she thought.

  Inside the laundry room, she set the basket down beside the more reputable-looking of the washers. The place smelled of neglect and decay. Lisa had the exaggerated feeling that even clean clothes could get dirty instantly just by being brought into this room. The brick walls showed through the crumbling plaster. The ceiling was a maze of haphazard exposed piping and conduits, ribbed from above by skeletal strips of lath.

  She had loaded the washer and was adding the bleach when she heard the outside door scrape open distantly. She smelled the citrus cologne.

  Lisa heard footsteps advance down the corridor toward the doorway of the laundry room. There was no place she could go, so she set down the bottle of bleach and waited.

  Roger filled the doorway, grinning as happily as ever. “Hi there, L. P.,” he said. “I waited a long time for you. It’s cold out here.” He rubbed his hands briskly. “It gets lonely in the dark.”

  “What do you want?” Lisa said.

  “To get to know you.” His voice warmed like syrup heating on the kitchen range. “I like hair that dark and sleek. I love green eyes. Too bad you don’t have more on top—” His gaze flickered to her chest. “—but no one can have everything.”

  She stood still, hands at her sides.

  “Nice night for finishing chores.” Roger glanced at the washer. “You might want to take those clothes out of the machine.”

  “Why?” she said.

  “Just spread ‘em out on the floor. I think you’ll be a lot more comfortable.” He made fists of his hands, then unclenched them.

  “I don’t think so,” Lisa said.

  “Oh? Why not?” Roger’s teeth shone dully in the forty-watt glow. They looked as yellowed as old ivory.

  “My family taught us to fight if we were in a corner.” The words came out quietly, calmly.

  “Well, I think your family is stupid.” Spreading his arms slightly, Roger started forward. He hesitated when Lisa didn’t retreat into one of the corners. Then he edged off to her right. Lisa finally reacted, moving away, but still facing him, following the contour of the wall. She was slightly closer now to the door.

  “Keep going,” he said.

  She looked back at him uncertainly.

  “It’s no accident you’re by the door,” he said. “I’m fast. Very fast. You won’t make it to the stairs.”

  “I’m not going to run,” said Lisa.

  “Oh yeah? Why not?” Roger stared at her, apparently bewildered.

  “All I wanted to do was live here peacefully,” said Lisa. She sighed. “But you had to push.” She held up her hands, palms out. Worn leather shone. “You think I’m weird. A fruitcake, right? Well, I am weird. But I’m not like you.” She slowly began to peel off her gloves.

  His eyes stayed fixed on hers. Lisa smiled sadly at him. She felt her muzzle unhinge slightly, the jaw sliding forward. Her gloves dropped to the floor, a sound as muffled as the snow that had fallen that morning. She knew he was looking at the teeth. He should have looked at her hands. Her claws.

  When she returned to her apartment with her laundry, she bathed herself, and then went into the bathroom to stare at her own face in the mirror. Sunlight through the leafy canopy dappled patterns on her flanks. She examined the openings in her fingertips where the claws could fully extend. “Mama,” she whispered. “I don’t like it here.”

  But she would persevere. She knew that. She would make a life for herself.

  Lisa listened to the distant sirens, the drone of an airplane, a sharp noise that might have been either a backfire or a gunshot. The city disturbed her. She wished she felt safe.

  In the Fast Lane

  by Thomas F. Monteleone

  Thomas Monteleone’s dark humor gives most of his stories a hardhoiled authenticity. He is not especially enamored of the human animal, and he can’t seem to keep that fact a secret. Like Ed Bryant, he started out in science fiction but found his true voice, I think, in horror. He is the dark bard of the horny urban male and is sensible enough to know that such a lifestyle carries its own doom.

  First published in 1981.

  Another one was coming up behind him—the one, he knew, to finally get him.

  Looking in the rear-view mirror, John Sheridan watched the headlights of the car approach his position on the Interstate. There were no other cars in sight. Even though he was doing sixty-five—the most he dared in drizzling rain and ghost-tread tires which should have been replaced months ago—the lights were gaining on him. Homing in like a missile or a sparrow-hawk.

  He white-knuckled the steering wheel with both hands as the dark, rain-flecked vehicle pulled abreast of him in the left lane. It seemed to hang motionless for a moment, keeping pace with John. Sensing its dark presence, he wanted to turn, to look at it, but could not. It was as though his neck had become paralyzed. He tensed for the killing blow . . .

  Now!

  But suddenly the other car was moving off, punching a hole in the misty rain, marking its path with a smear of red taillight.

  John sagged behind the wheel, and was suddenly aware of his pulse thudding behind his ears, his breath rasping in and out, between clenched teeth. The whole fear-fantasy of someone creeping up on you on the highway and blowing you away was not an isolated nightmare. John had mentioned it to strangers in bars over lonely beers, and many had admitted to the same crazy fear. A couple of the weirder-looking guys had even said they imagined themselves, at different times, as both victim and predator. John knew what they meant—he’d imagined it too. Even though sometimes he thought he might be going goddamned crazy.

  A lot of road-time could make you like that.

  The wispy rain appeared to be easing off, and he angrily cut off the windshield wipers as he remembered the gun. The panic had throttled him, choked off all clear thinking, and he had forgotten he now carried something for the predatory sedan if it ever caught up with him—and he had a praeternatural feeling that it would eventually catch up with him.

  But there was no sense in punishing himself. He would simply be ready the next time. The highway ahead and behind him was empty and da
rk, like the flat and wetly shining hide of giant eel. John found it comforting. He licked his lips, reached for a cigarette, lighted it.

  Once again, death had slipped up beside him, but had passed him by. He felt the terror slip away from him as he accelerated and pushed towards Woodbridge and home. It was past four a.m. and he was glad the road was clear, even if just for the moment. He sometimes wondered how long he could hang on, being on the road so much. All this driving was making him more than a little crazy.

  But like they said: if you want to make a lot of money, and you can’t be a doctor or a dentist, then be a salesman.

  And John was a hell of a salesman, that was for certain. At thirty-six, he was easily the best pipe-hawker Bendler & Krauch Plumbing Supply ever had. John’s territory comprised of Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, and he’d posted more plumbing fixture accounts with more clients in that territory than any other sales-route in the country.

  His secret was simple: stay on the road. The more you travelled and talked to possible clients, the more you sold. Of course the guys in the office with families just couldn’t stay out on the road for two, three weeks at a time the way John did. But what did he care if he didn’t see his tacky little apartment in Suburban Virginia? He had nobody in his life, parents both dead, and not even a pet to worry about. Besides, if he kept it up at his present pace, by the end of the year he would have earned more than a hundred and fifty grand. Not bad for a guy with a degree in Cultural Anthropology.

  The thought of the annual income made him smile, despite his nervousness. He took a final drag off the Marlboro and pushed it out the window into the slipstream. In doing so, he glimpsed a flash of light in the side-view mirror.

  Even though the roads were still slick-lethal, he pushed down on the accelerator and his Chrysler New Yorker surged forward. Despite this, the headlights grew larger and more distinct, filling the rear-view mirror. The oncoming vehicle slipped out into the left lane of the Interstate, getting ready to pull alongside.