Modern Masters of Noir

by Ed Gorman (ed)

  Once again Jackie’s refuge lay in trying to turn my words against me. “People confess because they’re afraid, right?”

  “That’s a very rough generalization.”

  “Why don’t you admit that you had to make a full report every night to your wife because you were afraid of her?”

  “Because it wouldn’t be true.”

  “There’s the mind’s subconscious defenses speaking,” Jackie scoffed. “You’re the one who needs the truth serum, Doctor. Maybe you’d find out things. Like maybe these meditation periods that I’ve been butting into are really celebrations that your wife is dead, and now you’re free.”

  “Free to do what?” I inquired wearily. My headaches were beginning earlier these days.

  “Free to hire that bosomy brunette, for one thing. Your wife wouldn’t have let you play games like that in her day, would she?” It struck me that even Jackie’s grins and grimaces were becoming more depraved as time went by. “I study people, too, Doctor. I know what goes on.”

  Linda. Jackie’s thoughts revolved more and more about Linda these days. His growing interest in my young receptionist seemed to me like an ominous line on a fever chart, climbing steadily upward.

  At first, there had been only veiled remarks which led to more open discussion, no matter how I attempted to discourage the subject. Then began the letters—long pencil-scrawled communications addressed to her, warped forms of ordinary love letters that were born in indecency and grew into obscenity. But none of them was mailed or delivered to her; each was handed over to me first and was added to Jackie’s dossier, which by now was rather extensive. Furthermore, Jackie made no effort to approach Linda personally, perhaps because I warned him severely against any such attempt.

  I also warned Linda, but more obliquely. I mentioned that there seemed to be a rash of prowlers molesting women these days, adding lightly, “But I don’t imagine your Ed leaves you by yourself very much, Linda.”

  She laughed. “I’ll say not. Ed’s home every evening. I keep telling him I didn’t get married to be alone.”

  I was relieved. With her husband to protect her at home and with me to keep a sharp eye on her during office hours, I didn’t believe that Linda was in any particular danger even if Jackie should prove to be a violent case. I was still convinced that he was an hysterical fantast, a half personality living in a dream world of juvenile aspirations and compulsive lies.

  Then, for a time, we seemed to make real progress. Jackie reverted to his earlier desire to be helped. Although he sat puzzled and uncommunicative, he listened attentively to me. He continued to make his sweeping resolutions for better behavior but now he apparently kept most of them. He confessed to prowling aimlessly through the city streets at night but without the accompanying acts of petty vandalism. He admitted that he still experienced the same wild urges but now he took a morose pride in standing up to them. Most significant of all, he didn’t speak of Linda as frequently, and he wrote no more erotic letters.

  For the first time I began to believe that the battle had turned, that Jackie was going to come home to himself.

  One Thursday afternoon he appeared in a highly agitated state. For a full half hour he sat fidgeting in the big leather chair, saying nothing, not looking at me. All at once he blurted, “Worthless little tramp—she deserves anything that happens to her!”

  I knew instinctively whom he meant but I had to be sure. “Linda?”

  “Oh, I see things. Last night, through her window, she and that stupid ape she’s married to. Kissing and hugging and fooling around—not even decent enough to pull down the blinds.”

  “Jackie, you promised—”

  “It makes you sick.” His hands were clenched together in fury. “Her trotting around in just her slip and that moron grinning at her while all the time it should have been me in there.” He added incongruously, “They had steak for dinner, too.”

  I listened despondently as Jackie raged on, describing in painful detail the actions of Linda and her husband. He had spent the entire evening crouched on the fire escape outside their apartment, watching and listening. Finally I interrupted him.

  He didn’t act as if he heard me. “Her slip, it had a lace heart over the left breast. The prettiest thing you ever saw—so pretty it made you want to tear it.”

  “Jackie, listen to me! This has got to stop!”

  He looked sly. “I didn’t do anything. Why are you getting so excited?”

  I said angrily, “What you did do was bad enough!” I had to make an effort to calm myself. “You’re intelligent, Jackie—you know yourself where this sort of behavior is leading you. I’ve believed that, between the two of us, we could solve your problems. But any future actions of this sort and I’ll be forced to get outside help.”

  He rose and came to stand over me, eyeing me oddly. “But, I don’t think you really want to cure me, Doctor. I think you rather enjoy me.”

  Then he left.

  I spent the rest of his consultation hour staring at the telephone, wondering again if I should call the police and put an end to the whole business. But I couldn’t bring myself to lift the receiver. One more conference, I decided; then I’ll know for sure. And I was absolutely certain, without reason, that Jackie would return.

  He came back on schedule the following Thursday, his manner serenely confident. I was concealing my own nervousness. I said, “Jackie, have you been thinking about our previous conversation?”

  He smiled as he walked around my desk to stand over me again. “Oh, yes.”

  “Then I gather that you’ve come to some decision.”

  “Yes, I’ve finally made up my mind. I’m going to reform—right afterward.”

  “Afterward?” It hurt my neck to look up at him. “After what?”

  “After I take care of Linda. That’s what I’ve needed all along to get the evil out of my system. Then I’ll be able to be good forever and ever.” His voice rang with relief and boyish exuberance. “It’s such a simple cure.”

  I could scarcely believe I’d heard his fantastic suggestion. “Jackie,” I whispered, “this is all wrong. How can you even think of—”

  “Just this one last bad thing,” he announced. A trace of saliva gleamed at one corner of his mouth. “Then everything will be finished. You know I have to do it, Doctor. So you call her in here and let me get it over with.” He began to unbutton his shirt.

  “No!” I said. “This has gone far enough! Sit down and make yourself think how impossible this is!”

  “But it’ll be so easy. I’m stronger than you are. And we’re all alone here.”

  That much was true. At this moment Jackie was the master. But I made a last plea. “Jackie, at least think what you’re doing to yourself! Think of the consequences! Think what they’ll do to you!”

  “I’ve got to find peace,” he said solemnly. “They’ll understand that when I tell them. Now let’s see—where did we put that ice pick?”

  I found myself unable to move. Through a faint haze I watched him pull open the filing cabinet drawer and rummage for the ice pick. I understood exactly what he intended to do, but I was powerless to interfere. As in a nightmare, I seemed to have no conscious will of my own. Jackie dominated everything. I saw him push the buzzer to summon Linda and I waited for the terrible act that was to come.

  The door opened and she appeared, a smiling healthy picture of normality in her white uniform. “Yes, Doctor?”

  “Come all the way in,” Jackie said huskily. “I’ve been waiting a long time.”

  She took a step forward, then her eyes widened incredulously as Jackie prowled toward her. “What’s the matter?” she asked, backing away. “What are you doing with that ice pick?”

  She screamed as Jackie sprang at her, hugged her close, then began tearing at the open throat of her uniform. She was stronger than Jackie had expected—she was fighting for her life. She got hold of his right wrist and with both hands held the sharp spike away from her breast whi
le Jackie’s free hand pounded her face and clawed at her dress. And through it all I remained paralyzed with horror, watching the brutal assault.

  Linda, writhing to escape, slipped and sprawled to the floor at Jackie’s feet. Jackie bared his teeth in a wild outburst of triumph. He raised the ice pick for the final blow. Linda shrieked for mercy, calling his name.

  But it was not Jackie’s name she called. It was my name.

  “Doctor Conover!” she screamed. “For God’s sake, don’t kill me!”

  Abruptly the piercing headache clamped down on me again and I was no longer a spectator to attempted murder. I was the attacker. I stared down in horror at the ice pick in my hand, at Linda huddled at my feet. Not Jackie Newman but Dr. John Kermit Conover.

  I was Jackie.

  No wonder that I had been so completely absorbed in his “case,” since it was my own. Linda, screaming my name, had broken through the barrier of my lifelong repressions and I could see the terrible significance of the identity I had invented, the “new man” I longed to be.

  Jackie—everything I never was. Now I could look back on my empty life—the vise of early marriage at college, the seven years of medical training under the spur of Helen’s ambition. Not even Jackie, the amoral dream figure of myself, had been willing to speak of those seven years. “He” had not been afraid of the truth. I hated Helen. I was glad she was dead. But she died too late for me to change my life and enjoy my new freedom.

  Standing there, shaking with the pain of revelation, I wasn’t aware that Linda had scrambled away. She came back quickly with half a dozen men from the surrounding offices. They approached me cautiously but they had nothing to fear. I dropped the ice pick and fell to my knees before them.

  And now I sit here in a strange locked room, awaiting the tenth—or is it the hundredth?—visit by a trio of men who will question me about the rift in my personality. I know all the words. Hysterical fantasy . . . self-suggestion. . . sustained emotional conflict . . . It doesn’t matter. Jackie will never return.

  And neither will I.

  Pretty Boy

  by Billie Sue Mosiman

  Billie Sue Mosiman is one of dark suspense’s new lights. Her work is fierce, unique, and powerful as you will see here.

  First published in 1991.

  I knew I never should have gotten involved with a pretty boy. Grandma married a pretty boy much to her distress. He was vain, she said years after his death. So vain about his clothes and his tortoise shell comb set, so vain, she said in her creaky old woman’s voice, that when he came down with pneumonia he wouldn’t let her call a doctor for it was improper anyone should see him disheveled and incontinent in the cherry four-poster bed. Being pretty, Grandma concluded, had killed my grandfather before his time.

  But I didn’t think about these admonitions when I met Bobby Tremain. There are some experiences in life that defy common sense and the validity of good advice.

  It was the winter of 1967 and I had come to Louisville by way of Atlanta where no one wanted to hire a nineteen-year-old college dropout. They didn’t much want to hire me in Louisville either so I took a job selling candy behind the counter at Stewart’s Department Store. The boyfriend who had come to Atlanta to drive me to Louisville, where he attended television repair school, worked in the mail room of Stewart’s. I figured he could stand it, I could stand it.

  It was Christmas season and he was busy wrapping gifts and mailing them worldwide. I was busy eating all the chocolates I could stuff into my mouth when the other sales girls weren’t looking. Swiping candy kept my appetite abated and stretched my paycheck considerably.

  I was content with my job until Christmas Eve. Customers flocked to the counters ordering last minute gifts of filberts, pounds of pistachios wrapped in red foil, boxes of fancy mints and divinity and bridge mix chocolates. I hadn’t a moment to filch a lemon drop, my feet hurt, it had begun to snow hard and my walk home to an apartment on Chestnut Street promised to be a miserable cold one. As if all this were not punishment enough for my sins of minor theft, Jerry, the boyfriend working in the mail room, wandered up to the counter during this mad rush and handed me a small black felt ring box.

  “Marry me,” he said.

  “Just that. No preamble, no romance, just “marry me.”

  “I’m busy, Jerry. Please.”

  “Open it. This isn’t a joke, I promise.”

  “Miss, could you wait on me? I’d like two pounds of walnut fudge and a pound and a half of the pecan. Could you wrap it?”

  I gave the fudge-hog in the mink a look insuring she wait another minute. Beyond that and I’d hear from her was the look she returned. After all it was Christmas and her time was more valuable than mine.

  “I can’t accept it. You know that, Jerry.” I pushed the little box back across the shiny glass counter top. “I’m busy, I have to.”

  While weighing and wrapping the fudge I glanced twice at where Jerry stood with his hands hanging at his sides staring at the jewel box. I hadn’t meant to be so cold about it, but what did he expect? He knew I didn’t love him; I didn’t love anyone. Besides, he was a year younger than me and his parents would kill him if he got married. Just because I let him drive me from Atlanta to Louisville didn’t mean we should spend our lives together. What was wrong with his head?

  The day after Christmas I began looking for another job. Stewart’s was too far to walk and too close to Jerry. Across the street from my apartment house stood Louisville General Hospital. The building was a solid piece of craftsmanship, the best looking architecture within four blocks. My apartment house, a sleaze bag resort for the poor and semi-stupid nineteen-year-old like myself, was a red brick dwarf compared to the soaring many-storied structure of Louisville General. If I found a job at the hospital I could come home for lunch, save a dollar or two. That was my main interest, saving money. I had big plans Jerry knew nothing about. I was headed for the golden West, for San Francisco and the famed Haight-Ashbury district where flower children danced through one long carnival night. But I could never get there if I didn’t save traveling money and a stake to sustain me when I arrived.

  My first interview with the personnel director of Louisville General went poorly.

  “How old are you?” he asked, looking over the rims of his glasses. He had to be forty if he was a day. I could usually charm old farts.

  “Nineteen.”

  “Where are your parents, your family?”

  “They live in upstate New York.”

  “Why don’t you live in upstate New York then?”

  “Why should I? I’m nineteen.”

  “Hmmm.” He pondered this winsome bit of logic a moment. “Aren’t you afraid to live on your own?”

  “No.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Across the street. I have an apartment. I could be here anytime you needed me. It’s quite convenient.”

  He pushed the glasses up his nose and sniffed as if he could actually smell the stained linoleum covering of the apartment lobby floor, the dust coating the plastic plants, the mustiness of the worn red diamond-patterned hall runners. “Don’t you think that’s a dangerous place for a young girl to live alone?”

  “It’s fine. It’s cheap. No one bothers me. I play gin rummy with a couple down the hall.”

  “Umm hmmm. And what do you know about hospital work?”

  I sat forward and put forth my most earnest face. “I don’t know anything, but I’m willing to learn. I thought I’d do well in the admitting department. I can type and file and do anything I’m trained to do. I know I don’t have work experience, but I’m quick; I catch on fast.” I paused when I saw a ghost of a smile creeping onto his lips. He was not taking me seriously and that was unfair. “Best of all,” I concluded, “I live right across the street and I can come work anytime you need me.”

  I thought I’d convinced him despite the smug little smile, but finally he shook his head and said, “You shouldn’t be in this city alone
, a girl as young as you. You’ve no experience . . .”

  I stood, realizing I had been dismissed. But I had not given up. I knew what I wanted—out of the candy department and away from Jerry’s lovesick gaze—and I was determined to have this job. The director was vastly underestimating my ability to suffer patronizing attitudes. I could take it until the cows came home if that’s what he wanted. He had not seen the last of me.

  I waited two days. In preparation I quit my job at Stewart’s much to Jerry’s chagrin. (“What are you doing? How can you leave me this way?”) I camped in the secretary’s office until she let me see the personnel director a second time.

  “You again.”

  “Oh yes. I’m free now. I quit my job and I can start here anytime you like.”

  He sighed, propped his glasses higher on the bridge of his nose. “Young lady . . .”

  “I know I don’t have any qualifications, but you won’t find a more eager and able learner. I’ve had two years of college; I know how to learn.”

  “We really don’t . . .”

  “I’ll take the scummiest job you have open. If you want, I’ll make beds, scrub floors, clean toilets, anything. You have to give me a chance. And I live right across the street, I can . . .”

  “Come anytime we call. Yes, you’ve mentioned that.”

  I smiled. I was earnest and young and winning. How could I miss? Still it took two more trips into the director’s office to convince him he couldn’t do without my services in Louisville General. I imagine I simply wore the man down, but that is youth’s prerogative. Older people cannot fly in the face of unabashed enthusiasm and energy. It tires them.

  I had not been working in the admitting department two weeks before I met the pretty boy. The admitting supervisor had me going into the wards to verify insurance information. Most of the patients had no insurance to verify. Seven out of every eight hour stint I spent interviewing welfare mothers with new babies. I don’t know why the hospital thought these women had changed their ways, succumbed to middle-class values, and carried hospitalization now when most of them had been in these wards delivering babies only the year before. But I was not to question procedure. I was to ask my silly questions about income and insurance and write down the answers.