A Century of Noir

by Max Allan Collins

  Beside Carol the old man who had seen too much of life stood with his bony hands shoved under his belt and shook his head in pity at what was going on. He was neither afraid nor expectant. Death had passed him up too many times for him to be afraid of it when it came for certain. For some reason he was feeling sorry for the killer. There was abject pity in his face for the goon boy with the all-gone eyes and the two rods in his fists.

  My straw hat was on the floor beside me and very slowly the killer snaked it back with his foot until he had it in front of him, then even slower still, stood on it.

  There was something nasty and ominous in the act, in the sound of it. One old-fashioned straw kady mashed to nothing. Then the killer grinned at me and cocked the hammers on the two rods. I was to be the first.

  I could tell that he didn’t know why I was grinning too.

  Outside was the Jeep and without too much trouble I could reach the border. It would be close, but I could still do it. If I stayed, the cops or papers would make me for sure and if they dusted for prints it would all come out in the wash.

  Someday it was going to happen, but when it did it wouldn’t be where Carol was. She could have her dream and I’d have mine and maybe she’d never find out.

  Life, I thought.

  The killer grinned again and brought the guns up and I knew that in the back the old man was waiting to see if he was right.

  The grin got real wide, then stopped altogether and tried to see why I was grinning even bigger.

  He didn’t know why. He couldn’t tell.

  When I pulled the little .32 from the sleeve holster he knew, but by then it was too late and the Jeep and the border were outside and he was dying in a slow puddle of red on the floor.

  The old man laughed because he knew he had been right.

  I was a killer too!

  DONALD E. WESTLAKE

  What can one say about Donald E. Westlake (1933– ) that hasn’t been said 2,761 times before?

  Yes, he virtually created the comic-caper novel. Yes, he has taken the crime novel into startling new directions, particularly with his recent novel The Ax, one of the most memorable and disturbing novels of the past twenty-five years. And yes, he wrote the Academy Award–nominated screenplay for the Jim Thompson adaptation The Grifters.

  In the late sixties and early seventies, he wrote five novels about a disgraced cop named Mitch Tucker. The series never got its due. The books portray their particular era—the time of flower power as seen through middle-aged eyes—with precision and insight. Thankfully, they are being brought back, in hardcover, and are no less powerful than when they were written.

  Then there’s the Parker novels he writes as Richard Stark. Parker is a thief, a pro, and an unrepentant one. Two or three excellent films—including the original Point Blank—were made from the Parker novels. And after an absence of many years, he’s back, Westlake as Stark giving us three fine new novels about Parker.

  As one critic recently noted, Westlake is most likely the best crime fiction writer of his generation. Hard to argue with that.

  Never Shake a Family Tree

  Actually, I have never been so shocked in all my born days, and I am seventy-three my last birthday and eleven times a grandmother and twice a great-grandmother. But never in all my born days did I see the like, and that’s the truth.

  Actually, it all began with my interest in genealogy, which I got from Mrs. Ernestine Simpson, a lady I met at Bay Arbor, in Florida, when I went there three summers ago. I certainly didn’t like Florida—far too expensive, if you ask me, and far too bright, and with just too many mosquitoes and other insects to be believed—but I wouldn’t say the trip was a total loss, since it did interest me in genealogical research, which is certainly a wonderful hobby, as well as being very valuable, what with one thing and another.

  Actually, my genealogical researches had been valuable in more ways than one, since they have also been instrumental in my meeting some very pleasant ladies and gentlemen, although some of them only by postal, and of course it was through this hobby that I met Mr. Gerald Fowlkes in the first place.

  But I’m getting far ahead of my story, and ought to begin at the beginning, except that I’m blessed if I know where the beginning actually is. In one way of looking at things, the beginning is my introduction to genealogy through Mrs. Ernestine Simpson, who has since passed on, but in another way the beginning is really almost two hundred years ago, and in still another way the story doesn’t really begin until the first time I came across the name of Euphemia Barber.

  Well. Actually, I suppose, I really ought to begin by explaining just what genealogical research is. It is the study of one’s family tree. One checks marriage and birth and death records, searches old family Bibles and talks to various members of one’s family, and one gradually builds up a family tree, showing who fathered whom and what year, and when so-and-so died, and so on. It’s really a fascinating work, and there are any number of amateur genealogical societies throughout the country, and when one has one’s family tree built up for as far as one wants—seven generations, or nine generations, or however long one wants—then it is possible to write this all up in a folder and bequeath it to the local library, and then there is a record of one’s family for all time to come, and I for one think that’s important and valuable to have even if my youngest boy Tom does laugh at it and say it’s just a silly hobby. Well, it isn’t a silly hobby. After all, I found evidence of murder that way, didn’t I?

  So, actually, I suppose the whole thing really begins when I first came across the name of Euphemia Barber. Euphemia Barber was John Anderson’s second wife. John Anderson was born in Goochland County, Virginia, in 1754. He married Ethel Rita Mary Rayborn in 1777, just around the time of the Revolution, and they had seven children, which wasn’t at all strange for that time, though large families have, I notice, gone out of style today, and I for one think it’s a shame.

  At any rate, it was John and Ethel Anderson’s third child, a girl named Prudence, who is in my direct line on my mother’s father’s side, so of course I had them in my family tree. But then, in going through Appomattox County records—Goochland County being now a part of Appomattox, and no longer a separate county of its own—I came across the name of Euphemia Barber. It seems that Ethel Anderson died in 1793, in giving birth to her eighth child—who also died—and three years later, 1796, John Anderson remarried, this time marrying a widow named Euphemia Barber. At that time, he was forty-two years of age, and her age was given as thirty-nine.

  Of course, Euphemia Barber was not at all in my direct line, being John Anderson’s second wife, but I was interested to some extent in her pedigree as well, wanting to add her parents’ names and her place of birth to my family chart, and also because there were some Barbers fairly distantly related on my father’s mother’s side, and I was wondering if this Euphemia might be kin to them. But the records were very incomplete, and all I could learn was that Euphemia Barber was not a native of Virginia, and had apparently only been in the area for a year or two when she had married John Anderson. Shortly after John’s death in 1798, two years after their marriage, she had sold the Anderson farm, which was apparently a somewhat prosperous location, and had moved away again. So that I had neither birth nor death records on her, nor any record of her first husband, whose last name had apparently been Barber, but only the one lone record of her marriage to my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather on my mother’s father’s side.

  Actually, there was no reason for me to pursue the question further, since Euphemia Barber wasn’t in my direct line anyway, but I had worked diligently and, I think, well, on my family tree, and had it almost complete back nine generations, and there was really very little left to do with it, so I was glad to do some tracking down.

  Which is why I included Euphemia Barber in my next entry in the Genealogical Exchange. Now, I suppose I ought to explain what the Genealogical Exchange is. There are any number of people throughout
the country who are amateur genealogists, concerned primarily with their own family trees, but of course family trees do interlock, and any one of these people is liable to know about just the one record which has been eluding some other searcher for months. And so there are magazines devoted to the exchanging of some information, for nominal fees. In the last few years, I had picked up all sorts of valuable leads in this way. And so my entry in the summer issue of the Genealogical Exchange read:

  BUCKLEY, Mrs. Henrietta Rhodes, 119A Newbury St., Boston, Mass. Xch data on Rhodes, Anderson, Richards, Pryor, Marshall, Lord. Want any info Euphemia Barber, m. John Anderson, Va. 1796.

  Well. The Genealogical Exchange had been helpful to me in the past, but I never received anywhere near the response caused by Euphemia Barber. And the first response of all came from Mr. Gerald Fowlkes.

  It was a scant two days after I received my own copy of the summer issue of the Exchange. I was still poring over it myself, looking for people who might be linked to various branches of my family tree, when the telephone rang. Actually, I suppose I was somewhat irked at being taken from my studies, and perhaps I sounded a bit impatient when I answered.

  If so, the gentleman at the other end gave no sign of it. His voice was most pleasant, quite deep and masculine, and he said, “May I speak, please, with Mrs. Henrietta Buckley?”

  “This is Mrs. Buckley,” I told him.

  “Ah,” he said. “Forgive my telephoning, please, Mrs. Buckley. We have never met. But I noticed your entry in the current issue of the Genealogical Exchange—”

  “Oh?”

  I was immediately excited, all thought of impatience gone. This was surely the fastest reply I’d ever had to date!

  “Yes,” he said. “I noticed the reference to Euphemia Barber. I do believe that may be the Euphemia Stover who married Jason Barber in Savannah, Georgia, in 1791. Jason Barber is in my direct line, on my mother’s side. Jason and Euphemia had only the one child, Abner, and I am descended from him.”

  “Well,” I said. “You certainly do seem to have complete information.”

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “My own family chart is almost complete. For twelve generations, that is. I’m not sure whether I’ll try to go back farther than that or not. The English records before 1600 are so incomplete, you know.”

  “Yes, of course,” I said. I was, I admit, taken aback. Twelve generations! Surely that was the most ambitious family tree I had ever heard of, though I had read sometimes of people who had carried particular branches back as many as fifteen generations. But to actually be speaking to a person who had traced his entire family back twelve generations!

  “Perhaps,” he said, “it would be possible for us to meet, and I could give you the information I have on Euphemia Barber. There are also some Marshalls in one branch of my family; perhaps I can be of help to you there, as well.” He laughed, a deep and pleasant sound, which reminded me of my late husband, Edward, when he was most particularly pleased. “And, of course,” he said, “there is always the chance that you may have some information on the Marshalls which can help me.”

  “I think that would be very nice,” I said, and so I invited him to come to the apartment the very next afternoon.

  At one point the next day, perhaps half an hour before Gerald Fowlkes was to arrive, I stopped my fluttering around to take stock of myself and to realize that if ever there were an indication of second childhood taking over, my thoughts and actions preparatory to Mr. Fowlkes’ arrival were certainly it. I had been rushing hither and thither, dusting, rearranging, polishing, pausing incessantly to look in the mirror and touch my hair with fluttering fingers, all as though I were a flighty teenager before her very first date. “Henrietta,” I told myself sharply, “you are seventy-three years old, and all that nonsense is well behind you now. Eleven times a grandmother, and just look at how you carry on!”

  But poor Edward had been dead and gone these past nine years, my brothers and sisters were all in their graves, and as for my children, all but Tom, the youngest, were thousands of miles away, living their own lives—as of course they should—and only occasionally remembering to write a duty letter to Mother. And I am much too aware of the dangers of the clinging mother to force my presence too often upon Tom and his family. So I am very much alone, except of course for my friends in the various church activities and for those I have met, albeit only by postal, through my genealogical research.

  So it was pleasant to be visited by a charming gentleman caller, and particularly so when that gentleman shared my own particular interests.

  And Mr. Gerald Fowlkes, on his arrival, was surely no disappointment. He looked to be no more than fifty-five years of age, though he swore to sixty-two, and had a fine shock of gray hair above a strong and kindly face. He dressed very well, with that combination of expense and breeding so little found these days, when the well-bred seem invariably to be poor and the well-to-do seem invariably to be horribly plebeian. His manner was refined and gentlemanly, what we used to call courtly, and he had some very nice things to say about the appearance of my living room.

  Actually, I make no unusual claims as a housekeeper. Living alone, and with quite a comfortable income having been left me by Edward, it is no problem at all to choose tasteful furnishings and keep them neat. (Besides, I had scrubbed the apartment from top to bottom in preparation for Mr. Fowlkes’ visit.)

  He had brought his pedigree along, and what a really beautiful job he had done. Pedigree charts, photostats of all sorts of records, a running history typed very neatly on bond paper and inserted in a looseleaf notebook—all in all, the kind of careful, planned, well-thought-out perfection so unsuccessfully striven for by all amateur genealogists.

  From Mr. Fowlkes, I got the missing information on Euphemia Barber. She was born in 1765, in Salem, Massachusetts, the fourth child of seven born to John and Alicia Stover. She married Jason Barber in Savannah in 1791. Jason, a well-to-do merchant, passed on in 1794, shortly after the birth of their first child, Abner. Abner was brought up by his paternal grandparents, and Euphemia moved away from Savannah. As I already knew, she had then gone to Virginia, where she had married John Anderson. After that, Mr. Fowlkes had no record of her, until her death in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1852. She was buried as Euphemia Stover Barber, apparently not having used the Anderson name after John Anderson’s death.

  This done, we went on to compare family histories and discover an Alan Marshall of Liverpool, England, around 1680, common to both trees. I was able to give Mr. Fowlkes Alan Marshall’s birth date. And then the specific purpose of our meeting was finished. I offered tea and cakes, it then being four-thirty in the afternoon, and Mr. Fowlkes graciously accepted my offering.

  And so began the strangest three months of my entire life. Before leaving, Mr. Fowlkes asked me to accompany him to a concert on Friday evening, and I very readily agreed. Then, and afterward, he was a perfect gentleman.

  It didn’t take me long to realize that I was being courted. Actually, I couldn’t believe it at first. After all, at my age! But I myself did know some very nice couples who had married late in life—a widow and a widower, both lonely, sharing interests, and deciding to lighten their remaining years together—and looked at in that light it wasn’t at all as ridiculous as it might appear at first.

  Actually, I had expected my son Tom to laugh at the idea, and to dislike Mr. Fowlkes instantly upon meeting him. I suppose various fictional works that I have read had given me this expectation. So I was most pleasantly surprised when Tom and Mr. Fowlkes got along famously together from their very first meeting, and even more surprised when Tom came to me and told me Mr. Fowlkes had asked him if he would have any objection to his, Mr. Fowlkes’, asking for my hand in matrimony. Tom said he had no objection at all, but actually thought it a wonderful idea, for he knew that both Mr. Fowlkes and myself were rather lonely, with nothing but our genealogical hobbies to occupy our minds.

  As to Mr. Fowlkes’ background, he very early gave
me his entire history. He came from a fairly well-to-do family in upstate New York, and was himself now retired from his business, which had seen a stock brokerage in Albany. He was a widower these last six years, and his first marriage had not been blessed with any children, so that he was completely alone in the world.

  The next three months were certainly active ones. Mr. Fowlkes—Gerald—squired me everywhere, to concerts and to museums and even, after we had come to know one another well enough, to the theater. He was at all times most polite and thoughtful, and there was scarcely a day went by but what we were together.

  During this entire time, of course, my own genealogical researches came to an absolute standstill. I was much too busy, and my mind was much too full of Gerald, for me to concern myself with family members who were long since gone to their rewards. Promising leads from the Genealogical Exchange were not followed up, for I didn’t write a single letter. And though I did receive many in the Exchange, they all went unopened into a cubbyhole in my desk. And so the matter stayed, while the courtship progressed.

  After three months, Gerald at last proposed. “I am not a young man, Henrietta,” he said. “Nor a particularly handsome man”—though he most certainly was very handsome, indeed—“nor even a very rich man, although I do have sufficient for my declining years. And I have little to offer you, Henrietta, save my own self, whatever poor companionship I can give you, and the assurance that I will be ever at your side.”

  What a beautiful proposal! After being nine years a widow, and never expecting even in fanciful daydreams to be once more a wife, what a beautiful proposal and from what a charming gentleman!

  I agreed at once, of course, and telephoned Tom the good news that very minute. Tom and his wife, Estelle, had a dinner party for us, and then we made our plans. We would be married three weeks hence. A short time? Yes, of course, it was, but there was really no reason to wait. And we would honeymoon in Washington, D.C., where my oldest boy, Roger, has quite a responsible position with the State Department. After which, we would return to Boston and take up our residence in a lovely old home on Beacon Hill, which was then for sale and which we would jointly purchase.