He started down the street, not knowing where he was going, not seeing anything but the wet dark world.
He no longer feared the sound and shadow behind him.
There was no terror as bad as the hurt in his head and his heart.
As he moved on without direction he saw through the mist the pinprick of green in the night. He knew then where he was going, where he must go. The tears ran down his cheeks into his mouth. They tasted like blood.
<
* * * *
1952
HOWARD BROWNE
* * *
MAN IN THE DARK
Howard Browne (1908-1999) was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and from 1929 worked for more than a dozen years in various jobs, many of them in department stores, before becoming a full-time writer and editor. Beginning in 1942, he worked for nearly fifteen years as the editor of several Ziff-Davis science-fiction magazines (a genre he actively disliked, preferring mysteries), including Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures. During this time, he wrote numerous stories for pulp magazines, as well as several novels under the pseudonym John Evans, most successfully the somewhat controversial series about Chicago private detective Paul Pine. The Pine novels were probably closer in style to Raymond Chandler than any other writer (with the exception of the early Lew Archer novels by Ross Macdonald) of his time. Halo in Blood (1946) was the first; Halo for Satan (1948) is about a manuscript purportedly written by Jesus Christ; Halo in Brass (1949) deals with the then-unmentionable subject of lesbianism; and The Taste of Ashes (1957) was published under his own name and is among the earliest works of fiction to deal with child molestation.
Browne went to Hollywood in 1956 and wrote more than 100 episodes of numerous television series, including Playhouse 90, Maverick, Ben Casey, The Virginian, and Columbo. He also wrote numerous screenplays, notably Portrait of a Mobster (1961) with Vic Morrow playing Dutch Schultz, The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (1967) with George Segal and Jason Robards, and Capone (1975), with Ben Gazzara.
In 1952, while Browne was editor of Fantastic, he called his friend Roy Huggins (creator of such famous television series as Maverick, 77 Sunset Strip, and The Fugitive) and asked him if he could write a detective story with fantasy elements in it. Huggins agreed, but when the time came to turn to it, he was too busy writing a screenplay to do the story. Since Browne already had the cover of the fall issue of the magazine ready to go, with Huggins’s name on it, he wrote “Man in the Dark” himself, under the “pseudonym” of Roy Huggins.
~ * ~
I
S
he called me at four-ten. “Hi, Poopsie.”
I scowled at her picture in the leather frame on my desk. “For Christ’s sake, Donna, will you lay off that ‘Poopsie’ stuff? It’s bad enough in the bedroom, but this is over the phone and in broad daylight.”
She laughed. “It kind of slipped out. You know I’d never say it where anyone else could hear. Would I, Poopsie?”
“What’s all that noise?”
“The man’s here fixing the vacuum. Hey, we eating home tonight, or out? Or are you in another deadline dilemma?”
“No dilemma. Might as well —”
“Can’t hear you, Clay.”
I could hardly hear her. I raised my voice. “Tell the guy to turn that goddamn thing off. I started to say we might as well eat out and then take in that picture at the Paramount. Okay?”
“All right. What time’ll you get home?”
“Hour — hour’n a half.”
The vacuum cleaner buzz died out just as she said, “Bye now,” and the two words sounded loud and unnatural. I put back the receiver and took off my hat and sat down behind the desk. We were doing a radio adaptation of Echo of a Scream that coming Saturday and I was just back from a very unsatisfactory rehearsal. When things don’t go right, it’s the producer who gets it in the neck, and mine was still sensitive from the previous week. I kept a small office in a building at Las Palmas and Yucca, instead of using the room allotted me at NBS. Some producers do that, since you can accomplish a lot more without a secretary breathing down your neck and the actors dropping in for gin rummy or a recital of their love life.
The telephone rang. A man’s voice, deep and solemn, said, “Is this Hillside 7-8691?”
“That’s right,” I said.
“Like to speak to Mr. Clay Kane.”
“I’m Clay Kane. Who’s this?”
“The name’s Lindstrom, Mr. Kane. Sergeant Lindstrom, out of the sheriff’s office, Hollywood substation.”
“What’s on your mind, Sergeant?”
“We got a car here, Mr. Kane,” the deep slow voice went on. “Dark blue ‘51 Chevrolet, two-door, license 2W78-40. Registered to Mrs. Donna Kane, 7722 Fountain Avenue, Los Angeles.”
I could feel my forehead wrinkling into a scowl. “That’s my wife’s car. What do you mean: you ‘got’ it?”
“Well, now, I’m afraid I got some bad news for you, Mr. Kane.” The voice went from solemn to grave. “Seems your wife’s car went off the road up near the Stone Canyon Reservoir. I don’t know if you know it or not, but there’s some pretty bad hills up —”
“I know the section,” I said. “Who was in the car?”
“... Just your wife, Mr. Kane.”
My reaction was a mixture of annoyance and mild anger. “Not my wife, Sergeant. I spoke to her on the phone not five minutes ago. She’s at home. Either somebody stole the car or, more likely, she loaned it to one of her friends. How bad is it?”
There was a pause at the other end. When the voice spoke again, the solemnity was still there, but now a vague thread of suspicion was running through it.
“The car burned, Mr. Kane. The driver was still in it.”
“That’s terrible,” I said. “When did it happen?”
“We don’t know exactly That’s pretty deserted country. Another car went by after it happened, spotted the wreck, and called us. We figure it happened around two-thirty.”
“Not my wife,” I said again. “You want to call her, she can tell you who borrowed the car. Unless, like I say, somebody swiped it. You mean you found no identification at all?”
“... Hold on a minute, Mr. Kane.”
There followed the indistinct mumble you get when a hand is held over the receiver at the other end of the wire. I waited, doodling on a scratch pad, wondering vaguely if my car insurance would cover this kind of situation. Donna had never loaned the car before, at least not to my knowledge.
The sergeant came back. “Hate to trouble you, Mr. Kane, but I expect you better get out here. You got transportation, or would you want one of our men to pick you up?”
This would just about kill our plans for the evening. I tried reasoning with him. “Look here, Officer, I don’t want to sound cold-blooded about this, but what can I do out there? If the car was stolen, there’s nothing I can tell you. If Mrs. Kane let somebody use it, she can tell you who it was over the phone. Far as the car’s concerned, my insurance company’ll take care of that.”
The deep slow voice turned a little hard. “Afraid it’s not that simple. We’re going to have to insist on this, Mr. Kane. Take Stone Canyon until you come to Fontenelle Way, half a mile or so south of Mulholland Drive. The accident happened about halfway between those two points. I’ll have one of the boys keep an eye out for you. Shouldn’t take you more’n an hour at the most.”
I gave it another try. “You must’ve found some identification, Sergeant. Something that —”
He cut in sharply. “Yeah, we found something. Your wife’s handbag. Maybe she loaned it along with the car.”
A dry click meant I was alone on the wire. I hung up slowly and sat there staring at the wall calendar. That handbag bothered me. If Donna had loaned the Chevy to someone, she wouldn’t have gone off and left the bag. And if she’d left it on the seat while visiting or shopping, she would have discovered the theft of the car and told me long before this.
There was one su
re way of bypassing all this guesswork. I picked up the receiver again and dialed the apartment.
After the twelfth ring I broke the connection. Southern California in August is as warm as anybody would want, but I was beginning to get chilly along the backbone. She could be at the corner grocery or at the Feldmans’ across the hall, but I would have liked it a lot better if she had been in the apartment and answered my call.
It seemed I had a trip ahead of me. Stone Canyon Road came in between Beverly Glen Boulevard and Sepulveda, north of Sunset. That was out past Beverly Hills, and the whole district was made up of hills and canyons, with widely scattered homes clinging to the slopes. A car could go off almost any one of the twisting roads through there and not be noticed for a lot longer than two hours. It was the right place for privacy, if privacy was what you were looking for.
The thing to do, I decided, was to stop at the apartment first. It was on the way, so I wouldn’t lose much time, and I could take Donna along with me. Getting an explanation direct from her ought to satisfy the cops, and we could still get in a couple of drinks and a fast dinner, and make that premiere.
I covered the typewriter, put on my hat, locked up, and went down to the parking lot. It was a little past four-twenty.
~ * ~
II
It was a five-minute trip to the apartment building where Donna and I had been living since our marriage seven months before. I waited while a fat woman in red slacks and a purple and burnt-orange blouse pulled a yellow Buick away from the curb, banging a fender or two in the process, then parked and got out onto the walk.
It had started to cool off a little, the way it does in this part of the country along toward late afternoon. A slow breeze rustled the dusty fronds of palm trees lining the parkways along Fountain Avenue. A thin pattern of traffic moved past, and the few pedestrians in sight had the look of belonging there.
I crossed to the building entrance and went in. The small foyer was deserted and the mailbox for 2c, our apartment, was empty. I unlocked the inner door and climbed the carpeted stairs to the second floor and walked slowly down the dimly lighted corridor.
Strains of a radio newscast filtered through the closed door of the apartment across from 2c. Ruth Feldman was home. She might have word, if I needed it. I hoped I wouldn’t need it. There was the faint scent of jasmine on the air.
I unlocked the door to my apartment and went in and said, loudly: “Hey, Donna. It’s your ever-lovin’.”
All that came back was silence. Quite a lot of it. I closed the door and leaned against it and heard my heart thumping away. The white metal Venetian blinds at the living room windows overlooking the street were lowered but not turned, and there was a pattern of sunlight on the maroon carpeting. Our tank-type vacuum cleaner was on the floor in front of the fireplace, its hose tracing a lazy’s along the rug like a gray python, the cord plugged into a wall socket.
The silence was beginning to rub against my nerves. I went into the bedroom. The blind was closed and I switched on one of the red-shaded lamps on Donna’s dressing table. Nobody there. The double bed was made up, with her blue silk robe across the foot and her slippers with the powder blue pompons under the trailing edge of the pale yellow spread.
My face in the vanity’s triple mirrors had that strained look. I turned off the light and walked out of there and on into the bathroom, then the kitchen and breakfast nook. I knew all the time Donna wouldn’t be in any of them; I had known it from the moment that first wave of silence answered me.
But I looked anyway...
She might have left a note for me, I thought. I returned to the bedroom and looked on the nightstand next to the telephone. No note. Just the day’s mail: two bills, unopened; a business envelope from my agent, unopened, and a letter from Donna’s mother out in Omaha, opened and thrust carelessly back into the envelope.
The mail’s being there added up to one thing at least: Donna had been in the apartment after three o’clock that afternoon. What with all this economy wave at the post offices around the country, we were getting one delivery a day and that not before the middle of the afternoon. The phone call, the vacuum sweeper, the mail on the nightstand: they were enough to prove that my wife was around somewhere. Out for a lipstick, more than likely, or a carton of Fatimas, or to get a bet down on a horse.
I left the apartment and crossed the hall and rang the bell to 2d. The news clicked off in the middle of the days baseball scores and after a moment the door opened and Ruth Feldman was standing there.
“Oh. Clay.” She was a black-haired little thing, with not enough color from being indoors too much, and a pair of brown eyes that, in a prettier face, would have made her something to moon over on long winter evenings. “I thought it was too early for Ralph; he won’t be home for two hours yet.”
“I’m looking for Donna,” I said. “You seen her?”
She leaned negligently against the door edge and moved her lashes at me. The blouse she was wearing was cut much too low. “No-o-o. Not since this morning anyway. She came in about eleven for coffee and a cigarette. Stayed maybe half an hour, I guess it was.”
“Did she say anything about her plans for the day? You know: whether she was going to see anybody special, something like that?”
She lifted a shoulder. “Hunh-uh. She did say something about her agent wanting her to have lunch with this producer — what’s his name? — who does the Snow Soap television show. They’re casting for a new musical and she thinks that’s why this lunch. But I suppose you know about that. You like to come in for a drink?”
I told her no and thanked her and she pouted her lips at me. I could come in early any afternoon and drink her liquor and give her a roll in the hay, no questions asked, no obligations and no recriminations. Not just because it was me, either. It was there for anyone who was friendly, no stranger, and had clean fingernails. You find at least one like her in any apartment house, where the husband falls asleep on the couch every night over a newspaper or the television set.
I asked her to keep an eye out for Donna and tell her I had to run out to Stone Canyon on some urgent and unexpected business and that I’d call in the first chance I got. She gave me a big smile and an up-from-under stare and closed the door very gently.
I lit a cigarette and went back to the apartment to leave a note for Donna next to the telephone. Then I took a last look around and walked down one flight to the street, got into the car, and headed for Stone Canyon.
~ * ~
III
It was a quarter past five by the time I got out there. There was an especially nasty curve in the road just to the north of Yestone, and off on the left shoulder where the bend was sharpest, three department cars were drawn up in a bunch. A uniformed man was taking a smoke behind the wheel of the lead car; he looked up sharply as I made a U-turn and stopped behind the last car.
By the time I had cut off the motor and opened the door, he was standing there scowling at me. “Where d’ya think you’re goin’, Mac?”
“Sergeant Lindstrom telephoned me,” I said, getting out onto the sparse sun-baked growth they call grass in California.
He ran the ball of a thumb lightly along one cheek and eyed me stonily from under the stiffbrim of his campaign hat. “Your name Kane?”
“That’s it.”
He took the thumb off his face and used it to point. “Down there. They’re waitin’ for you. Better take a deep breath, Mac. You won’t like what they show you.”
I didn’t say anything. I went past him and on around the department car. The ground fell away in what almost amounted to a forty-five-degree slope, and a hundred yards down the slope was level ground. Down there a knot of men were standing near the scorched ruins of what had been an automobile. It could have been Donnas Chevy or it could have been any other light job. From its condition and across the distance I couldn’t tell.
It took some time and a good deal of care for me to work my way to the valley floor without breaking my neck
. There were patches of scarred earth spaced out in a reasonably straight line all the way down the incline where the car had hit and bounced and hit again, over and over. Splinters of broken glass lay scattered about, and about halfway along was a twisted bumper and a section of grillwork. There was a good deal of brush around and it came in handy for hanging on while I found footholds. It was a tough place to get down, but the car at the bottom hadn’t had any trouble making it.
A tall, slender, quiet-faced man in gray slacks and a matching sports shirt buttoned at the neck but without a tie was waiting for me. He nodded briefly and looked at me out of light blue eyes under thick dark brows.
“Are you Clay Kane?” It was a soft, pleasant voice, not a cop’s voice at all.
The Best American Noir of the Century Page 13
