by James Ellroy
Marvin bent toward the floor, twisting away from him, sliding his hands toward the darkness below the stove. He couldn't tell what Marvin was doing, so he squinted, then moved closer. When Marvin began to stand he jumped back, but Marvin wasn't attacking, Marvin was holding a baby, not a book, holding a baby by the throat.
"OK, pal," Marvin said through his grin. "Now, you want to see this kid die before your eyes, you just keep hold of that gun. You want to see it breathe some more, you drop it."
He froze, his eyes on Marvin's fingers, which inched further around the baby's neck and began to squeeze.
The baby gurgled, gasped, twitched, was silent. Its face reddened; its eyes bulged. The tendons in Marvin's hand stretched taut. Between grimy gritted teeth, Marvin wheezed in rapid streams of glee.
He dropped his gun. Marvin told Iris to pick it up. She did, and exchanged the gun for the child. Her eyes lapped Marvin's face, as though to renew its acquaintance. Abruptly, she turned and ran around the curtain and disappeared.
"Well, now." Marvin's words slid easily. "Looks like the worm has turned, Detective. What's your name, anyhow?"
"Tanner."
"Well, Tanner, your ass is mine. No more John Wayne stunts for you. You can kiss this world goodbye."
Marvin fished in the pocket of his jeans, then drew out a small spiral notebook and flashed it. "It's all in here, Tanner. Where they came from; where they went. Now watch."
Gun in one hand, notebook in the other, Marvin went to the wood stove and flipped open the heavy door. The fire made shadows dance.
"Don't."
"Watch, bastard."
Marvin tossed the notebook into the glowing coals, fished in the box beside the stove for a stick of kindling, then tossed it in after the notebook and closed the iron door. "Bye-bye babies." Marvin's laugh was quick and cruel. "Now turn around. We're going out back."
He did as he was told, walking toward the door, hearing only a silent shuffle at his back. As he passed her he glanced at Iris. She hugged the baby Marvin had threatened, crying, not looking at him. "Remember the one in my car," he said to her. She nodded silently, then turned away.
Marvin prodded him in the back and he moved to the door. Hand on the knob, he paused, hoping for a magical deliverance, but none came. Marvin prodded him again and he moved outside, onto the porch, then into the yard. "Around back," Marvin ordered. "Get in the bus."
He staggered, tripping over weeds, stumbling over rocks, until he reached the rusting bus. The moon and stars had disappeared; the night was black and still but for the whistling wind, clearly Marvin's ally. The nanny goat laughed at them, then trotted out of reach. He glanced back at Marvin. In one hand was a pistol, in the other a blanket. "Go on in. Just pry the door open."
He fit his finger between the rubber edges of the bus door and opened it. The first step was higher than he thought, and he tripped and almost fell. "Watch it. I almost blasted you right then."
He couldn't suppress a giggle. For reasons of his own, Marvin matched his laugh. "Head on back, Tanner. Pretend you're on a field trip to the zoo."
He walked down the aisle between the broken seats, smelling rot and rust and the lingering scent of skunk. "Why here?" he asked as he reached the rear.
"Because you'll keep in here just fine till I get time to dig a hole out back and open that emergency door and dump you in. Plus it's quiet. I figure with the bus and the blanket no one will hear a thing. Sit."
He sat. Marvin draped the blanket across the arm that held the gun, then extended the shrouded weapon toward his chest. He had no doubt that Marvin would shoot without a thought or fear. "Any last words, Tanner? Any parting thoughts?"
"Just that you forgot something."
"What?"
"You left the door open."
Marvin glanced quickly toward the door in the front of the bus. He dove for Marvin's legs, sweeping at the gun with his left hand as he did so, hoping to dislodge it into the folds of the blanket where it would lie useless and unattainable.
"Cocksucker."
Marvin wrested the gun from his grasp and raised it high, tossing off the blanket in the process. He twisted frantically to protect against the blow he knew was coming, but Marvin was too heavy and strong, retained the upper hand by kneeling on his chest. The revolver glinted in the darkness, a missile poised to descend.
Sound split the air, a piercing scream of agony from the cabin or somewhere near it. "What the hell?" Marvin swore, started to retreat, then almost thoughtlessly clubbed him with the gun, once, then again. After a flash of pain a broad black creature held him down for a length of time he couldn't calculate.
When he was aware again he was alone in the bus, lying in the aisle. His head felt crushed to pulp. He put a hand to his temple and felt blood. Midst throbbing pain he struggled to his feet and made his way outside and stood leaning against the bus while the night air struggled to clear his head.
He took a step, staggered, took another and gained an equilibrium, then lost it and sat down. Back on his feet, he trudged toward the porch and opened the door. Behind him, the nanny laughed again.
The cabin was dark, the only light the faint flicker from the stove behind the curtain. He walked carefully, trying to avoid the litter on the floor, the shapes in the room. Halfway to the back his foot struck something soft. As he bent to shove it out of his way it made a human sound. He knelt, saw that it was Iris, then found a lamp and turned it on.
She was crumpled, faced own, in the center of the room, arms and legs folded under her, her body curled to avoid assault. He knelt again, heard her groan once more, and saw that what he'd thought was a piece of skirt was in fact a pool of blood and what he'd thought was shadow was a broad wet trail of the selfsame substance leading toward the rear of the cabin.
He ran his hands down her body, feeling for wounds. Finding none, he rolled Iris to her side, then to her back. Blood bubbled from a point beneath her sternum. Her eyelids fluttered, open, closed, then open again. "He shot me," she said. "It hurt so bad I couldn't stop crying so he shot me."
"I know. Don't try to talk."
"Did he shoot the babies, too? I thought I heard ..."
"I don't know."
"Would you look? Please?"
He nodded, stood up, fought a siege of vertigo, then went behind the curtain, then returned to Iris. "They're all right."
She tried to smile her thanks. "Something scared him off. I think some people were walking by outside and heard the shot and went for help. I heard them yelling."
"Where would he go, Iris?"
"Up in the woods. On his dirt bike. He knows lots of people up there. They grow dope, live off the land. The cops'll never find him." Iris moaned again. "I'm dying, aren't I?"
"I don't know. Is there a phone here?"
She shook her head. "Down at the end of the street. By the market."
"I'm going down and call an ambulance. And the cops. How long ago did Marvin leave?"
She closed her eyes. "I blacked out. Oh, God. It's real bad now, Mr. Tanner. Real bad."
"I know, Iris. You hang on. I'll be back in a second. Try to hold this in place." He took out his handkerchief and folded it into a square and placed it on her wound. "Press as hard as you can." He took her left hand and placed it on the compress, then stood up.
"Wait. I have to..."
He spoke above her words. "You have to get to a hospital. I'll be back in a minute and we can talk some more."
"But..."
"Hang on."
He ran from the cabin and down the drive, spotted the lights of the convenience market down the street and ran to the phone booth and placed his calls. The police said they'd already been notified and a car was on the way. The ambulance said it would be six minutes. As fast as he could he ran back to the cabin, hoping it would be fast enough.
Iris had moved. Her body was straightened, her right arm out-stretched toward the door, the gesture of a supplicant. The sleeve of her blouse was tattered, bur
ned to a ragged edge above her elbow. Below the sleeve her arm was red in spots, blistered in others, dappled like burned food. The hand at its end was charred and curled into a crusty fist that was dusted with gray ash. Within the fingers was an object, blackened, burned, and treasured.
He pried it from her grasp. The cover was burned away, and the edges of the pages were curled and singed, but they remained decipherable, the written scrawl preserved. The list of names and places was organized to match the gaily painted boxes in the back. Carson City. Boise. Grant's Pass. San Bernardino. Modesto. On and on, a gazetteer of crime.
"I saved it," Iris mumbled. "I saved it for my babies."
He raised her head to his lap and held it till she died. Then he went to his car and retrieved his B Box baby and placed her in her appointed crib. For the first time since he'd known her the baby made only happy sounds, an irony that was lost on the five dead children at her flank and on the just dead woman who had feared it all.
A TICKET OUT
1987: Brendan Dubois
BRENDAN DUBOIS (1959–) was born in New Hampshire and has lived there his entire life. A former newspaper reporter, he has written a variety of novels and has been a prolific short story writer, with more than one hundred published stories to his credit.
His mystery novels, set around the New Hampshire seacoast, often feature Lewis Cole, a magazine writer who was once a research analyst for the Department of Defense. The first book in the series is Dead Sand (1994), followed by Black Tide (1995), Shattered Shell (1999), Killer Waves (2002), Buried Dreams (2004), and Primary Storm (2006). He has had even greater success with international thrillers, notably Resurrection Day (1999), an alternative-history novel set in 1972, a decade after the Cuban missile crisis had provoked an atomic war between the Soviet Union and the United States. It received the Sidewise Award for Best Alternative History Novel at the World Science Fiction Convention. Other thrillers include Twilight (2007), about the aftermath of a successful terrorist attack on the U.S.; Final Winter (2006), a nail biter about a planned terrorist attack on the U.S.; Betrayed (2003), which delves into the real-life mystery of the two thousand servicemen missing in action during the Vietnam War; and Six Days (2001), about a plot to overthrow the U.S. government. His short stories have received numerous awards, including two Shamus Awards from the Private Eye Writers of America. "The Dark Snow" was selected for The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century.
"A Ticket Out" was first published in the January 1987 issue of Ellery Queens Mystery Magazine.
***
THEN THERE ARE the nights when I can't sleep, when the blankets seem wrapped around me too tight, when the room is so stuffy that I imagine the air is full of dust and age, and when my wife Carol's sighs and breathing are enough to make me tremble with tension. On these nights I slip out of bed and put on my heavy flannel bathrobe, and in bare feet I pad down the hallway—past the twins' bedroom—and go downstairs to the kitchen. I'm smart enough to know that drinking at night will eventually cause problems, but I ignore what my doctor tells me and I mix a ginger and Jameson's in a tall glass and go to the living room and look out the large bay window at the stars and the woods and the hills. Remembering what we had planned, what we had stolen, the blood that had been spilled, the tears and the anguish, I sip at my drink and think, well, it wasn't what we wanted to do. We weren't stealing for drugs or clothes or to impress the chunky, giggly girls Brad and I went to high school with. We were stealing for a ticket, for a way out. In the end, only one of us got out. That thought doesn't help me sleep at all.
It began on an August day in 1976, about a month before Brad Leary and I were going in as seniors to our high school. That summer we worked at one of the shoe mills in Boston Falls, keeping a tradition going in each of our families. Brad's father worked in one of the stitching rooms at Devon Shoe, while my dad and two older brothers worked on the other side of the Squamscott River at Parker Shoe. My dad was an assistant bookkeeper, which meant he wore a shirt and tie and earned fifty cents more an hour than the "blue-collar boys" that worked among the grinding and dirty machinery.
Brad and I worked in the packing room, piling up cardboard boxes of shoes and dodging the kicks and punches from the older men who thought we were moving too slow or too sloppily. We usually got off at three, and after buying a couple of cans of 7-Up or Coke and a bag of Humpty Dumpty potato chips we hiked away from the mills up Mast Road to the top of Cavalry Hill, which looked over the valley where Boston Falls was nestled. Well, maybe nestled's too nice a word. It was more tumbled in than nestled in.
On that day, we both wore the standard uniform of the summer, dark green T-shirts, blue jeans, and sneakers. We were on an exposed part of the hill, past the town cemetery, looking down at the dirty red-brick mill buildings with the tiny windows that rose straight up from both sides of the Squamscott River. Steam and smoke fumes boiled away from tall brick stacks, and neither of us really had gotten used to the pungent, oily smell that seemed to stay right in the back of the throat. The old-timers never mind the smell. They sniff and say, "Aah," and say, "Boys, that's the smell of money." We weren't so dumb that we didn't know if Devon Shoe and Parker Shoe and the lumberyard shut down, Boston Falls would crumple away like a fall leaf in November.
But Brad never liked the smell.
"God" he said, popping open his can of soda. "It seems worse today."
"Wind's out of the south," I replied. "Can't be helped."
Our bikes were on their sides in the tall grass. There was a low buzz of insects and Brad took a long swallow from his soda, water beading up on the side of the can. It was a hot day. Brad's long hair was combed over to one side in a long swoop, and I was jealous of him because my dad made me keep my hair about two inches long, with no sideburns. But then again, Brad wore thick glasses and my vision was perfect.
"Brad"' I said, "we're in trouble."
He tossed his empty soda can over his shoulder. "How are you doing?"
"With the sixty from last week, I got four hundred and twelve."
"Idiot. You should have four hundred and fifteen like me. Where's the other three?"
"I had to buy a dress shirt for Aunt Sara's funeral last week. I tore my last good one in June and Mom's been bugging me."
"Mothers." Brad hunched forward and rested his chin on his knee.
"State says we need at least a thousand for the first year."
"Yeah."
"And we can't get part-time jobs this winter, there won't be any around"
"Yeah."
"So what do we do?"
"I'm thinking. Shut up, will you?"
I let it slide, knowing what he was thinking. We were both six hundred dollars' short for the first-year tuition at the state college. My dad had made some brave noises about helping out when the time came, but six months ago my oldest brother Tom had wrapped his '68 Chevy around a telephone pole and now he was wired up to a bed in a hospital in Hanover and my parents' bank account was shrinking every month. But at least my father had offered to help. Brad's father usually came home drunk from the mill every night, sour-mad and spoiling for a fight. I'd slept over Brad's house only once, when we were both fourteen and had just become friends. It was a Friday night, and by midnight Brad's father and mother were screaming and swinging at each other with kitchen knives. Brad and I snuck out to the backyard with our blankets and pillows and we never talked about it again. But one day Brad came to school with his face lumpy and swollen from bruises, and I knew he must have told his father he wanted to go to college.
"Monroe," he said, finally speaking up.
"Go ahead."
"We're special people, aren't we?"
"Hunh?"
"I mean, compared to the rest of the kids at school, we're special, right? Who's at the top of the class? You and me, right?"
"Right."
"So we're special, we're better than they are."
"Oh, c'mon—"
"Face it, Monroe. Just sit there and
face it, will you? That's all I ask right now. Just face it."
Well, he was somewhat right, but then you have to understand our regional high school, Squamscott High. Kids from Boston Falls, Machias, and Albion go there, and those other towns are no better off than ours. And in our state there's little aid for schools, so the towns have to pay the salaries and supplies. Which means a school building with crumbling plaster ceilings. Which means history books that talk about the promise of the Kennedy administration and science books that predict man will go into space one day. Which means teachers like Mr. Hensely, who stumbles into his afternoon history classes, his breath reeking of mouthwash, and Miss Tierney, the English teacher, not long out of college, who also works Saturday and Sunday mornings as a waitress at Mona's Diner on Front Street.
"All right, Brad," I said. "I guess we're special. We study hard and get good marks. We like books and we want to go places."
"But we're trapped here, Monroe," he said. "All we got here is Boston Falls, the Mohawk Cinema, Main Street—and the Wentworth Shopping Plaza ten miles away. And a lot of brick and smoke and trees and hills. Here, straight As and straight Fs will get you the same thing."
"I know. The lumberyard or Parker or Devon Shoe."
"Or maybe a store or a gas station. We're too smart for that, damn it."
"And we're too broke for college."
"That we are," he said, resting his head on his knees. "That we are."
He remained silent for a while, a trait of Brad's. We'd been friends since freshman year, when we were the only two students who were interested in joining the debate team—which lasted a week because no one else wanted to join. We shared a love of books and a desire to go to college, but no matter how many hours we spent together, there was always a dark bit of Brad I could never reach or understand. It wasn't something dramatic or apparent, just small things. Like his bedroom. Mine had the usual posters of cars and rocket ships and warplanes, but his had only one picture—a framed photograph of Joseph Stalin. I was pretty sure no one else in Brad's family recognized the picture—I got the feeling he told his father the man had been a famous scientist. When I asked Brad why Stalin of all people, he said, "The man had drive, Monroe. He grew up in a peasant society and grabbed his ticket. Look where it took him."
