The Best American Noir of the Century

by Otto Penzler (ed)

  All this time they had been happy. Until now. Somebody’d got wind of the beauty of the island and Latimer had shown up to do his story. Under conditions imposed by Nolan — no pictures of either himself or Helen. He had allowed one fuzzy negative of them standing against a blossoming hibiscus near the house, at twilight — that was all.

  Wandering through the house, trying not to think of what they were doing now, he found himself in Latimer’s room. The unmade bed, the photographic equipment, the typewriter set up on the table.

  Beside the machine was a typewritten letter.

  Nolan turned away. But something drew him over to the table. Pure curiosity in this man Latimer. He stood there, staring down at the obviously unfinished letter. An addressed envelope lay beside it. There was a half-completed sentence on the sheet in the typewriter, numbered Page 2.

  The letter was addressed to the editor of the magazine where Latimer worked.

  Nolan began reading, at first leisurely, then feverishly.

  Dear Bart:

  Really have this thing wrapped up, but I’m staying on a while longer, just to settle a few things in my own mind and maybe I’ll come up with a bunch of pix and a yarn that’ll knock your head off... sure beautiful scenery on the island…house is a regular bamboo and cypress mansion…unhealthy, Bart, really sick…he watches her like a hawk. He’s ripped with jealousy and it would be laughable, except that they’re both so very old. He must be in his eighties, but she’s a bit harder to read. I did a lousy thing. I confronted her with it. You would have, too. She’s so obviously just enduring everything for his sake. Humoring him. My God, think of it! All these years he’s kept her out here, away from everybody, imprisoned. It’s pure hell. She as much as admitted it. I’m staying on, just to see if I can’t work it somehow. Get her back to civilization, if only for a vacation, Bart. She deserves it. You should hear her ask how things are out there — it would break your damned heart...

  There was more, and Nolan read all of it through twice. For a moment longer he stood there, seeing everything clearly for the first time in nearly a half century.

  Then he walked through the house to his study, opened the desk drawer, took out the .45 automatic. He sat down in his chair by the desk, put the muzzle of the gun into his mouth, and pulled the trigger.

  <>

  * * * *

  1956

  EVAN HUNTER

  * * *

  THE LAST SPIN

  Evan Hunter (1926-2005) was born Salvatore A. Lombino, legally changing his name in 1952. He was admitted to New York’s Cooper Union after winning a scholarship to the Art Students League, then served in the Navy during World War II; he graduated from Hunter College after his return from the Pacific theater. He had begun writing stories while based on a destroyer, then wrote numerous short stories and several novels in the years after the war. After several unsuccessful adult and children’s books, he published The Blackboard Jungle in 1954, which was an instant success, filmed the following year and starring Glenn Ford, Anne Francis, and Sidney Poitier. In 1956 he created the Ed McBain byline, which became more famous than his own, as he wrote the iconic Eighty-seventh Precinct series, in which the members of an entire squad room, rather than a single police officer, serve as the hero. Fifty-four novels succeeded Cop Hater, the first book in the series. Under the McBain name, he also produced thirteen novels about Matthew Hope, a Florida lawyer, and several standalone mysteries. Hunter also wrote under the pseudonyms Richard Marston, Hunt Collins, Ezra Hannon, Curt Cannon, and John Abbott, producing more than one hundred books. Other films made from his works include Strangers When We Meet (i960), High and Low (1962), Last Summer (1969), Fuzz (1972), Blood Relatives (1977), and The Chisholms (1979). He also wrote the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963).

  The Blackboard Jungle was the first significant book to deal with juvenile delinquents and gang violence in New York, and many of Hunter’s early short stories, collected in Learning to Kill (2006), deal with these subjects, often in a sympathetic manner.

  “The Last Spin” was first published in the September 1956 issue of Manhunt; it was collected in Hunter’s The Jungle Kids the same year.

  ~ * ~

  T

  he boy sitting opposite him was his enemy.

  The boy sitting opposite him was called Tigo, and he wore a green silk jacket with an orange stripe on each sleeve. The jacket told Dave that Tigo was his enemy. The jacket shrieked ‘Enemy, enemy!’

  ‘This is a good piece,’ Tigo said, indicating the gun on the table. ‘This runs you close to forty-five bucks, you try to buy it in a store.’

  The gun on the table was a Smith & Wesson .38 Police Special.

  It rested exactly in the centre of the table, its sawed-off two-inch barrel abruptly terminating the otherwise lethal grace of the weapon. There was a checked walnut stock on the gun, and the gun was finished in a flat blue. Alongside the gun were three .38 Special cartridges.

  Dave looked at the gun disinterestedly. He was nervous and apprehensive, but he kept tight control of his face. He could not show Tigo what he was feeling. Tigo was the enemy, and so he presented a mask to the enemy, cocking one eyebrow and saying, ‘I seen pieces before. There’s nothing special about this one.’

  ‘Except what we got to do with it,’ Tigo said. Tigo was studying him with large brown eyes. The eyes were moist-looking. He was not a bad-looking kid, Tigo, with thick black hair and maybe a nose that was too long, but his mouth and chin were good. You could usually tell a cat by his mouth and his chin. Tigo would not turkey out of this particular rumble. Of that, Dave was sure.

  ‘Why don’t we start?’ Dave asked. He wet his lips and looked across at Tigo.

  ‘You understand,’ Tigo said. ‘I got no bad blood for you.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘This is what the club said. This is how the club said we should settle it. Without a big street diddlebop, you dig? But I want you to know I don’t know you from a hole in the wall—except you wear a blue and gold jacket.’

  ‘And you wear a green and orange one,’ Dave said, ‘and that’s enough for me.’

  “Sure, but what I was trying to say ...”

  ‘We going to sit and talk all night, or we going to get this thing rolling?’ Dave asked.

  ‘What I’m trying to say,’ Tigo went on, ‘is that I just happened to be picked for this, you know? Like to settle this thing that’s between the two clubs. I mean, you got to admit your boys shouldn’t have come in our territory last night.’

  ‘I got to admit nothing,’ Dave said flatly.

  ‘Well, anyway, they shot at the candy store. That wasn’t right. There’s supposed to be a truce on.’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ Dave said.

  ‘So like . . . like this is the way we agreed to settle it. I mean, one of us and . . . and one of you. Fair and square. Without any street boppin’, and without any Law trouble.’

  ‘Let’s get on with it,’ Dave said.

  ‘I’m trying to say, I never even seen you on the street before this. So this ain’t nothin’ personal with me. Which­ever way it turns out, like ...”

  ‘I never seen you neither,’ Dave said.

  Tigo stared at him for a long time. ‘That’s ‘cause you’re new around here. Where you from originally?’

  ‘My people come down from the Bronx.’

  ‘You got a big family?’

  ‘A sister and two brothers, that’s all.’

  ‘Yeah, I only got a sister,’ Tigo shrugged. ‘Well.’ He sighed. ‘So.’ He sighed again. ‘Let’s make it, huh?’

  ‘I’m waitin’,’ Dave said.

  Tigo picked up the gun, and then he took one of the cartridges from the table top. He broke open the gun, slid the cartridge into the cylinder, and then snapped the gun shut and twirled the cylinder. ‘Round and round she goes,’ he said, ‘and where she stops, nobody knows. There’s six chambers in the cylinder, and only one cartridge. That makes the odds five
-to-one that the cartridge’ll be in firing position when the cylinder stops twirling. You dig?’

  ‘I dig.’

  ‘I’ll go first,’ Tigo said.

  Dave looked at him suspiciously. ‘Why?’

  ‘You want to go first?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I’m giving you a break.’ Tigo grinned. ‘I may blow my head off first time out.’

  ‘Why you giving me a break?’ Dave asked.

  Tigo shrugged. ‘What’s the hell’s the difference?’ He gave the cylinder a fast twirl.

  ‘The Russians invented this, huh?’ Dave asked.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I always said they was crazy bastards.’

  ‘Yeah, I always ...’ Tigo stopped talking. The cylinder was still now. He took a deep breath, put the barrel of the .38 to his temple, and then squeezed the trigger.

  The firing pin clicked on an empty chamber.

  ‘Well, that was easy, wasn’t it?’ he asked. He shoved the gun across the table. ‘Your turn, Dave.’

  Dave reached for the gun. It was cold in the basement room, but he was sweating now. He pulled the gun toward him, then left it on the table while he dried his palms on his trousers. He picked up the gun then and stared at it.

  ‘It’s a nifty piece.’ Tigo said. ‘I like a good piece.’

  ‘Yeah, I do too,’ Dave said. ‘You can tell a good piece just by the way it feels in your hand.’

  Tigo looked surprised. ‘I mentioned that to one of the guys yesterday, and he thought I was nuts.’

  ‘Lots of guys don’t know about pieces,’ Dave said, shrugging.

  ‘I was thinking,’ Tigo said, ‘when I get old enough, I’ll join the Army, you know? I’d like to work around pieces.’

  ‘I thought of that, too. I’d join now, only my old lady won’t give me permission. She’s got to sign if I join now.’

  ‘Yeah, they’re all the same,’ Tigo said, smiling. ‘Your old lady born here or the island?’

  ‘The island,’ Dave said.

  ‘Yeah, well, you know they got these old-fashioned ideas.’

  ‘I better spin,’ Dave said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Tigo agreed.

  Dave slapped the cylinder with his left hand. The cylinder whirled, whirled and then stopped. Slowly, Dave put the gun to his head. He wanted to close his eyes, but he didn’t dare. Tigo, the enemy, was watching him. He returned Tigo’s stare, and then he squeezed the trigger.

  His heart skipped a beat, and then over the roar of his blood he heard the empty click. Hastily, he put the gun down on the table.

  ‘Makes you sweat, don’t it?’ Tigo said.

  Dave nodded, saying nothing. He watched Tigo. Tigo was looking at the gun.

  ‘Me now, huh?’ he said. He took a deep breath, then picked up the .38.

  He shrugged. ‘Well.’ He twirled the cylinder, waited for it to stop, and then put the gun to his head.

  ‘Bang!’ he said, and then he squeezed the trigger. Again, the firing pin clicked on an empty chamber. Tigo let out his breath and put the gun down.

  ‘I thought I was dead that time,’ he said.

  ‘I could hear the harps,’ Dave said.

  ‘This is a good way to lose weight, you know that?’ He laughed nervously, and then his laugh became honest when he saw that Dave was laughing with him. ‘Ain’t it the truth? You could lose ten pounds this way.’

  ‘My old lady’s like a house,’ Dave said laughing. ‘She ought to try this kind of a diet.’ He laughed at his own humour, pleased when Tigo joined him.

  ‘That’s the trouble,’ Tigo said. ‘You see a nice deb in the street, you think it’s crazy, you know? Then they get to be our people’s age, and they turn to fat.’ He shook his head.

  ‘You got a chick?’ Dave asked.

  ‘Yeah, I got one.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Aw, you don’t know her.’

  ‘Maybe I do,’ Dave said.

  ‘Her name is Juana.’ Tigo watched him. ‘She’s about five-two, got these brown eyes . . .’

  ‘I think I know her,’ Dave said. He nodded. ‘Yeah, I think I know her.’

  ‘She’s nice, ain’t she?’ Tigo asked. He leaned forward, as if Dave’s answer was of great importance to him.

  ‘Yeah, she’s nice,’ Dave said.

  ‘The guys rib me about her. You know, all they’re after — well, you know—they don’t understand some­thing like Juana.’

  ‘I got a chick, too,’ Dave said.

  ‘Yeah? Hey, maybe sometime we could . . .’ Tigo cut himself short. He looked down at the gun, and his sud­den enthusiasm seemed to ebb completely. ‘It’s your turn,’ he said.

  ‘Here goes nothing,’ Dave said. He twirled the cylin­der, sucked in his breath, and then fired.

  The empty click was loud in the stillness of the room.

  ‘Man!’ Dave said.

  ‘We’re pretty lucky, you know?’ Tigo said.

  ‘So far.’

  ‘We better lower the odds. The boys won’t like it if we . . .’ He stopped himself again, and then reached for one of the cartridges on the table. He broke open the gun again, and slipped the second cartridge into the cylinder. ‘Now we got two cartridges in here,’ he said. ‘Two cartridges, six chambers. That’s four-to-two. Divide it, and you get two-to-one.’ He paused. ‘You game?’

  ‘That’s . . . that’s what we’re here for, ain’t it?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Okay then.’

  ‘Gone,’ Tigo said, nodding his head. ‘You got courage, Dave.’

  ‘You’re the one needs the courage,’ Dave said gently. ‘It’s your spin.’

  Tigo lifted the gun. Idly, he began spinning the cylinder.

  ‘You live on the next block, don’t you?’ Dave asked.

  ‘Yeah.’ Tigo kept slapping the cylinder. It spun with a gently whirring sound.

  ‘That’s how come we never crossed paths, I guess. Also I’m new on the scene.’

  ‘Yeah, well you know, you get hooked up with one club, that’s the way it is.’

  ‘You like the guys on your club?’ Dave asked, wondering why he was asking such a stupid question, listening to the whirring of the cylinder at the same time.

  ‘They’re okay.’ Tigo shrugged. ‘None of them really send me, but that’s the club on my block, so what’re you gonna do, huh?’ His hand left the cylinder. It stopped spinning. He put the gun to his head.

  ‘Wait!’ Dave said.

  Tigo looked puzzled. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing. I just wanted to say ... I mean . . .’ Dave frowned. ‘I don’t dig too many of the guys on my club, cither.’

  Tigo nodded. For a moment, their eyes locked. Then Tigo shrugged, and fired.

  The empty click filled the basement room.

  ‘Phew,’ Tigo said.

  ‘Man, you can say that again.’

  Tigo slid the gun across the table.

  Dave hesitated an instant. He did not want to pick up the gun. He felt sure that this time the firing pin would strike the percussion cap of one of the cartridges. He was sure that this time he would shoot himself.

  ‘Sometimes I think I’m turkey,’ he said to Tigo, surprised that his thoughts had found voice.

  ‘I feel that way sometimes, too,’ Tigo said.

  ‘I never told that to nobody,’ Dave said. ‘The guys on my club would laugh at me, I ever told them that.’

  ‘Some things you got to keep to yourself. There ain’t nobody you can trust in this world.’

  ‘There should be somebody you can trust,’ Dave said. ‘Hell, you can’t tell nothing to your people. They don’t understand.’

  Tigo laughed. ‘That’s an old story. But that’s the way things are. What’re you gonna do?’

  ‘Yeah. Still, sometimes I think I’m turkey.’

  ‘Sure, sure,’ Tigo said. ‘It ain’t only that, though. Like sometimes . . . well, don’t you wonder what you’re doing stomping
some guy in the street? Like. . . you know what I mean? Like. . . who’s the guy to you? What you got to beat him up for? ‘Cause he messed with somebody else’s girl?’ Tigo shook his head. ‘It gets complicated sometimes.’

  ‘Yeah, but ...” Dave frowned again. ‘You got to stick with the club. Don’t you?’