Modern Masters of Noir

by Ed Gorman (ed)

  His hands grew moist, his heartbeat jumped up towards the fibrillation end of the scale. The glare of the other car’s lights filled the rear-view mirror, a white, cool explosion of light reflected into John’s face.

  This was the one. The marrow in his bones sang out with conviction.

  The other car’s tires were keening in the rain, whirling at high-speed, sucking up the wet asphalt, almost hydro-planing. It became a roar, a scream in his left ear as he heard it, pulling abreast of him. His New Yorker was starting to drift back and forth across the right lane, losing traction, and still he pushed his speed higher.

  But the other car continued to accelerate, gaining, overtaking him in the night, wanting only to keep pace for a single, final instant.

  No!

  The single word bounced around in an empty room in his mind. The car was in the blind spot of his side-mirror. In another moment it would be next to him.

  John Sheridan knew that he must turn his head to the left. Maybe then it would be all right . . . ?

  The idea that looking at the other car, actually looking into its dark glass, might end the craziness was appealing to him. For months now, he had been too terrified to even think of it, but suddenly, it seemed like the only solution.

  To look over and see a normal human being would be all the proof, all the cure, he would require.

  And so, as the dark shape pulled abreast of him, seeming to hang motionless for an instant, he recalled how all the craziness had started. John turned to regard the vehicle in the fast lane . . .

  . . . He had been driving back from a 10-day selling spree through Western Maryland. The hour was late and the traffic on Interstate 270 heading south from Frederick was practically non existent. He had purchased the New Yorker, and despite his endless smoking the “new” smell of the interior had not yet worn away. The in-dash stereo was blowing some electronic music by a Japanese guy named Kitaro, and John was leaning back, enjoying the powerful, gliding ride of the big Chrysler as he cruised the fast lane.

  As he cleared a slight rise in the highway he was abruptly aware of a vehicle ahead on his right in the slower lane. Squinting out into the night, he could see a big, heavy car—a shapeless hulk, slicing through the darkness. John pushed down on the accelerator, moved to slip past the other vehicle. But as he pulled alongside, the other driver jammed on his brakes, slipped back in behind him in a crazy, erratic piece of driving. John thought nothing of this as he returned his gaze to the road ahead. And then the other car was pulling out on the left, jumping onto the shoulder and moving abreast of him.

  As this happened, John felt the eyes of something staring at him. The skin on the back of his neck seemed to ripple as a coldness entered him. It was a very bad feeling—the empty bore of unknown eyes looking at you, through you.

  The other car was still there, pacing him along the shoulder like a predatory beast. Without thinking, John looked over and saw that the other car’s window was down, and that out of the darkness within, there came a black cylinder, pointed at him.

  In that instant, he recognized it as the business-end of a gun barrel. It seemed to grow larger in his mind’s eye—until it was like staring down the mouth of a bottomless well.

  He may have screamed at that point, he could not remember, but suddenly the New Yorker was swerving sharply to the left. His tires definitely screamed and the heavy sedan lurched dangerously close to the car on the left, which had also swerved to avoid him. As John fought with the wheel to gain control, the other car accelerated and raced ahead into the darkness.

  He was left breathless as his body thumped with the shock of adrenaline which now ebbed out of his bloodstream. The crazy bastard had tried to kill him!

  He couldn’t believe it even as he watched the other car’s taillights dwindle to tiny red specks on the horizon ahead. And yet it was true. John didn’t know what to do first. Should he chase the guy down? Stop and call the police?

  He realized that he hadn’t caught a license number. In fact, had not even seen the guy’s face—the end of the gun had seemed so big to obscure all else. The thought of pursuing the other car was not appealing. He didn’t want to think about what he might do if he actually caught up with him. Better to just get it together, pull off at the next exit where there might be a phone, and report the incident to the State Police.

  He drove on for another few minutes, gathering his thoughts and his composure. No other cars passed him. It was very late and few vehicles were still out on a week-night. In the distance, on the shoulder of the Interstate, he could see the blood-red glow of taillights.

  Cautiously, he eased off on the gas and approached the other car. As he drew closer, he could see from the configuration of the lights that this vehicle had not been the one which had attacked him. This car was sluiced off the road at a bad angle, had cleared the shoulder, and was tilted up onto a grassy bank.

  An accident, maybe. He pulled in behind the other car and stopped, studying it for a moment in the wash of his headlights. He couldn’t see anyone in the car, and he wondered if they had left the car to go for help. A crazy thing to do, especially if they had left all their lights on.

  Leaving his own lights on, John left the car and walked slowly to the derelict. For some reason, he felt defenseless and naked in the cold play of his own headlights. With each step forward, he felt worse about the entire scene. Something was wrong here. The feeling hung over everything like a foul odor; you couldn’t miss it. And as John approached the driver’s side, he saw the bullet-hole in the side window, and the fear-thought not allowed now capered madly through his mind.

  Through the fractured glass, he could see a body, a formless shape lying on the front seat. Fighting back the panic, he reached for the door handle and depressed the latch.

  He didn’t want to see what awaited him, but he had no choice. As the door swung open, he heard a woman’s voice moaning in pain, trying to speak.

  When he leaned in to pull her up into his arms, he saw that she was a young woman in her twenties. He could also see the blood on her cheeks, and the hole in her skull where her eye had been. (He would later learn from the doctors that the bullet had entered her left eye, and in one of those crazy, life-saving quirks of fate, had exited through the sinus cavity under her right eye without damaging the brain.) The visual effect was so unnerving, so unreal, she looked like she wore a cheap mask.

  He carried the victim to his car, and drove her to the nearest hospital where they saved her life, but not her eye. Her description of her attacker was as vague and yet as similar as John’s, and he knew that the bastard would not be found, would not be caught.

  And that meant that he was still out there somewhere, running the highways, ready to try again. As time passed, the incident did not grow less vivid in his mind, but more so. When he could sleep, his dreams were filled with visions of the dark sedan. When awake, he could not get the single obsessive thought from mind—that the driver would eventually find him, and complete the job unfinished . . .

  . . . John Sheridan peered through the dark glass of the other car, and for an instant saw his own reflection, which masked the face of the driver. But that no longer mattered.

  It was him, he could feel a reptilian chill in his certainty. And this time, there would be no panic. This time John was prepared, and in a long-planned maneuver, he jammed on his brakes for an instant. The effect was startling as the car on the left seemed to hurtle forward.

  Cutting the wheel hard, John slipped in behind the predator, tail-gating him crazily. The driver of the other car seemed confused with the sudden turn of events. John kept his New Yorker close behind the sedan as it weaved from side to side in the fast lane. Reaching beneath the driver’s seat, John pulled out the .38 calibre special he had purchased in the sporting goods store in Springfield.

  Now the sonofabitch would know what it felt like . . . He cut the wheel to the left and slipped his heavy car onto the shoulder, to the left of the fast lane. His worn tires
whistled and

  scritched as they purchased on the loose gravel, but he accelerated anyway. A touch of his finger lowered his right window and the howling dampness of the night leaped in.

  Lurching crazily, the New Yorker raced along the shoulder, gaining on the dark sedan, pulling alongside with an inexorable movement. The other car could not escape now. Looking over, John picked up the gun and sighted along its short length. The car in the fast lane was drifting into view through the open passenger’s window.

  The night rushed by, the windstream ripping and tearing at him. His forward speed was close to ninety as he kept the pace, and suddenly he was abreast of the predator. Forgetting about the road ahead, he looked to the right, aimed the gun.

  Through the dark glass, he could see the vague shape of a face in profile, looking straight ahead. As the two cars plunged into the night, side by side, he waited and watched until the face turned to look at him. He wanted the bastard to stare down the bottomless well of the gun barrel. And then, as if on cue, the other driver turned—

  —and John Sheridan faced himself.

  It was a single slice of time, a solitary instant which exploded like a photographic flash in his mind. Impossibly, John stared at his other self, his doppleganger in the other car. And in that strobe light of recognition, he felt the acid burn of deja vu as the other car swerved dangerously close to him.

  Things happened quickly then. He grabbed the wheel tightly, crushed down the accelerator, and jumped back into the fast lane as he tore quickly away from the other car. He was confused now, but he kept thinking about how easy it would have been to have pulled the trigger.

  He continued at high speed until he advanced upon another car in the right lane. It was a woman, alone, looking straight ahead. Slowing, he pulled alongside, raised the gun, and waited for her to turn her face . . . so he could look her in the eye.

  The Perfect Crime

  by Max Allan Collins

  Max Allan Collins Nate Heller novels get mentioned right after his work on the Dick Tracy comic strip. Should be the other way around, the Hellers being the definitive historical detective novels of my generation. But I’d like to say a few fond words for his other two series characters, Mallory and Quarry, both of whom have appeared in a number of short but powerful novels that display Collins talent as a social critic and adventure writer. Look them up.

  First published in 1988.

  She was the first movie star I ever worked for, but I wasn’t much impressed. If I were that easily impressed, I’d have been impressed by Hollywood itself. And having seen the way Hollywood portrayed my profession on the so-called silver screen, I wasn’t much impressed with Hollywood.

  On the other hand, Dolores Dodd was the most beautiful woman who ever wanted to hire my services, and that did impress me. Enough so that when she called me, that October, and asked me to drive out to her “sidewalk cafe” nestled under the Palisades in Montemar Vista, I went, wondering if she would be as pretty in the flesh as she was on celluloid.

  I’d driven out Pacific Coast Highway that same morning, a clear cool morning with a blue sky lording it over a vast sparkling sea. Pelicans were playing tag with the breaking surf, flying just under the curl of the white-lipped waves. Yachts, like a child’s toy boats, floated out there just between me and the horizon. I felt like I could reach out for one, pluck and examine it, sniff it maybe, like King Kong checking out Fay Wray’s lingerie.

  “Dolores Dodd’s Sidewalk Cafe,” as a billboard on the hillside behind it so labeled the place, was a sprawling two-story hacienda affair, as big as a beached luxury liner. Over its central, largest-of-many archways, a third-story tower rose like a stubby lighthouse. There weren’t many cars here—it was approaching ten a.m., too early for the luncheon crowd and even I didn’t drink cocktails this early in the day. Not and tell, anyway.

  She was waiting in the otherwise unpopulated cocktail lounge, where massive wooden beams in a traditional Spanish mode fought the chromium-and-leather furnishings and the chrome-and-glass-brick bar and came out a draw. She was a big blonde woman with more curves than the highway out front and just the right number of hills and valleys. Wearing a clingy summery white dress, she was seated on one of the bar stools, with her bare legs crossed; they weren’t the best-looking legs on the planet, necessarily. I just couldn’t prove otherwise. That good a detective I’m not.

  “Peter Mallory?” she asked, and her smile dimpled her cheeks in a manner that made her whole heart-shaped face smile, and the world smile as well, including me. She didn’t move off the stool, just extended her hand in a manner that was at once casual and regal.

  I took the hand, not knowing whether to kiss it, shake it, or press it into a book like a corsage I wanted to keep. I looked at her feeling vaguely embarrassed; she was so pretty you didn’t know where to Took next, and felt like there was maybe something wrong with looking anywhere. But I couldn’t help myself.

  She had pale, creamy skin and her hair was almost white blonde. They called her the ice-cream blonde, in the press. I could see why.

  Then I got around to her eyes. They were blue of course, cornflower blue; and big and sporting long lashes, the real McCoy, not your dimestore variety. But they were also the saddest eyes I’d ever looked into. The smile froze on my face like I was looking at Medusa, not a twenty-nine-year-old former sixth-grade teacher from Massachusetts who won a talent search.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked. Then she patted the stool next to her.

  I sat and said, “Nothing’s wrong. I never had a movie star for a client before.”

  “I see. You came recommended highly.”

  “Oh?”

  Her voice had a low, throaty quality that wasn’t forced or affected; she was what Mae West would’ve been if Mae West wasn’t a parody. “A friend of mine in the D.A.‘s office downtown. He said you got fired for being too honest.”

  “Actually, I like to think I quit. And I don’t like to think I’m too honest.”

  “Oh?”

  “Just honest enough.”

  She smiled at that, very broadly, showing off teeth whiter than cameras can record. “Might I get you a drink, Mr. Mallory?”

  “It’s a little early.”

  “I know it is. Might I get you a drink?”

  “Sure.”

  “Anything special?”

  “Anything that doesn’t have a little paper umbrella in it is fine by me.”

  She fixed me up with a rye, and had the same herself. I liked that in a woman.

  “Have you heard of Lucky Luciano?” she asked, returning to her bar stool.

  “Heard of him,” I said. “Haven’t met him.”

  “What do you know about him?”

  I shrugged. “Big-time gangster from back East. Runs casinos all over southern California. More every day.”

  She flicked the air with a long red fingernail, like she was shooing away a bug. “Well, perhaps you’ve noticed the tower above my restaurant.”

  “Sure.”

  “I live on the second floor, but the tower above is fairly spacious.”

  “Big enough for a casino, you mean.”

  “That’s right,” she said, nodding. “I was approached by Luciano, more than once. I turned him away, more than once. After all, with my location, and my clientèle, a casino could make a killing.”

  “You’re doing well enough legally. Why bother with ill?”

  “I agree. And if I were to get into any legal problems, that would mean a scandal, and Hollywood doesn’t need another scandal. Busby Berkley’s trial is coming up soon, you know.”

  The noted director and choreographer, creator of so many frothy fantasies, was up on the drunk-driving homicide of three pedestrians, not far from this cafe.

  “But now,” she said, her bee-stung lips drawn nervously tight, “I’ve begun to receive threatening notes.”

  “From Luciano, specifically?”

  “No. They’re extortion notes, actually. Asking
me to pay off Artie Lewis. You know, the bandleader?”

  “Why him?”

  “He’s in Luciano’s pocket. Gambling markers. And I used to go with Artie. He lives in San Francisco, now.”

  “I see. Well, have you talked to the cops?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want to get Artie in trouble.”

  “Have you talked to Artie?”

  “Yes—he claims he knows nothing about this. He doesn’t want my money. He doesn’t even want me back—he’s got a new girl”

  I’d like to see the girl that could make you forget Dolores Dodd.

  “So,” I said, “you want me to investigate. Can I see the extortion notes?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her white blonde curls like the mop of the gods, “that’s not it. I burned those notes. For Artie’s sake.”

  “Well, for Pete’s sake,” I said, “where do I come in?”

  “I think I’m being followed. I’d like a bodyguard.”

  I resisted looking her over wolfishly and making a wisecrack. She was a nice woman, and the fact that hers was the sort of a body a private eye would pay to guard didn’t seem worth mentioning. My fee did.

  “Twenty-five a day and expenses,” I said.

  “Fine,” she said. “And you can have any meals you like right here at the Cafe. Drinks, too. Run a tab and I’ll pick it up.”

  “Swell,” I grinned. “I was wondering if I’d ever run into a fringe benefit in this racket.”

  “You can be my chauffeur.”

  “Well . . .”

  “You have a problem with that, Mr. Mallory?”

  “I have a private investigator’s license, and a license to carry a gun. But I don’t have a chauffeur’s license.”

  “I think a driver’s license will suffice.” Her bee-stung lips were poised in a kiss of amusement. “What’s the real problem, Mallory?”

  “I’m not wearing a uniform. I’m strictly plainclothes.”

  She smiled tightly, wryly amused, saying, “All right, hang onto your dignity . . . but you have to let me pay the freight on a couple of new suits for you. I’ll throw ‘em in on the deal.”