Modern Masters of Noir Read online

  “You weren’t so bad.”

  “I’m glad we got married,” I said. “And I’m glad we stayed together. And that you were here for me to come home to.”

  She started to cry. I held her until she stopped. Then, her face to my chest, she said, “At the hospital, waiting, I realized for the first time what it would mean for me to lose you. I thought we’d stopped loving each other a long time ago. I know you’ve had other women. For that matter, I’ve had lovers from time to time. I don’t know if you knew that.”

  “It’s not important.”

  “No,” she said, “it’s not important. I’m glad we got married, darling. And I’m glad you’re going to be all right.”

  Monty said, “You had everybody worried there, kid. But what do you think you’re doing down here? You’re supposed to be home in bed.”

  “I’m supposed to get exercise. Besides, if I don’t come down here how do I know you won’t steal the firm into bankruptcy?”

  My tone was light, but he flushed deeply. “You just hit a nerve,” he said.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “When they were busy cutting the bullet out of you, all I could think was you’d die thinking I was a thief.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He lowered his eyes. “I was borrowing partnership funds,” he said. “I was in a bind because of my own stupidity and I didn’t want to admit it to you, so I dipped into the till. It was a temporary thing, a case of the shorts. I got everything straightened out before that clown took a shot at you. They know who it was yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “The night before you were shot, I stayed late and covered things. I wasn’t going to say anything, and then I wondered if you’d been suspicious, and I decided I’d tell you about it first thing in the morning. Then it looked as though I wasn’t going to get the chance. You didn’t suspect anything?”

  “I thought our cash position was light. But after all these years I certainly wasn’t afraid of you stealing from me.”

  “All those years,” he echoed, and I was seeing the picture of my life again. All the work Monty and I had put in side by side. The laughs we’d shared, the bad times we’d survived.

  We looked at each other, and a great deal of feeling passed between us. Then he drew a breath and clapped me on the shoulder. “Well, that’s enough about old times,” he said gruffly. “Somebody’s got to do a little work around here.”

  “I’m glad you’re here,” Peg said. “I couldn’t even go to the hospital. All I could do was call every hour and ask anonymously for a report on your condition. Critical condition, that’s what they said. Over and over.”

  “It must have been rough.”

  “It did something to me and for me,” she said. “It made me realize that I’ve cheated myself out of a life. And I was the one who did it. You didn’t do it to me.”

  “I told you I’d leave Julia.”

  “Oh, that was just a game we both played. I never really expected you to leave her. No, it’s been my fault, dear. I settled into a nice secure life. But when you were on the critical list I decided my life was on the critical list, too, and that it was time I took some responsibility for it.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning it’s good you came over tonight and not this afternoon, because you wouldn’t have found me at home. I’ve got a job. It’s not much, but it’s enough to pay the rent. You see, I’ve decided it’s time I started paying my own rent. In the fall I’ll start night classes at the university.”

  “I see.”

  “You’re not angry?”

  “Angry? I’m happy for you.”

  “I don’t regret what we’ve been to each other. I was a lost little girl with a screwed-up life and you made me feel loved and cared for. But I’m a big girl now. I’ll still see you, if you want to see me, but from here on in I pay my own way.”

  “No more checks?”

  “No more checks. I mean it.”

  I remembered some of our times together, seeing them as I had seen them in the picture of my life. I was filled with desire. I went and took her in my arms.

  She said, “But is it safe? Won’t it be dangerous for you?”

  “The doctor said it’ll do me good.”

  Her eyes sparkled. “Well, if it’s just what the doctor ordered—” And she led me to the bedroom.

  Afterward I wished I could have died in Peg’s bed. Almost immediately I realized that would have been bad for her and bad for Julia.

  Anyway, I hadn’t yet done what I’d come back to do.

  Later, while Julia slept, I lay awake in the darkness. I thought, this is crazy. I’m no detective. I’m a businessman. I died and you won’t let me stay dead. Why can’t I be dead?

  I got out of bed, went downstairs and laid out the cards for a game of solitaire. I toasted a slice of bread and made myself a cup of tea.

  I won the game of solitaire. It was a hard variety, one I could normally win once in fifty or a hundred times.

  I thought, it’s not Julia, it’s not Monty, it’s not Peg. All of them have love for me.

  I felt good about that.

  But who killed me? Who was left of my list?

  I didn’t feel good about that.

  The following morning I was finishing my breakfast when Mark rang the bell. Julia went to the door and let him in. He came into the kitchen and got himself a cup of coffee from the pot on the stove.

  “I was at the hospital,” he said. “Night and day, but they wouldn’t let any of us see you. I was there.”

  “Your mother told me.”

  “Then I had to leave town the day before yesterday and I just got back this morning. I had to meet with some men.” A smile flickered on his face. He looked just like his mother when he smiled.

  “I’ve got the financing,” he said. “I’m in business.”

  “That’s wonderful.”

  “I know you wanted me to follow in your footsteps, Dad. But I couldn’t be happy having my future handed to me that way. I wanted to make it on my own.”

  “You’re my son. I was the same myself.”

  “When I asked you for a loan—”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” I said, remembering the scene as I’d witnessed it in the picture of my life. “I resented your independence and I envied your youth. I was wrong to turn you down.”

  “You were right to turn me down.” That smile again, just like his mother. “I wanted to make it on my own, and then I turned around and asked for help from you. I’m just glad you knew better than to give me what I was weak enough to ask for. I realized that almost immediately, but I was too proud to say anything, and then some madman shot you and—well, I’m glad everything turned out all right, Dad.”

  “Yes,” I said. “So am I.”

  Not Mark, then.

  Not Debbie either. I always knew that, and knew it with utter certainty when she cried out “Oh, Daddy!” and rushed to me and threw herself into my arms. “I’m so glad,” she kept saying. “I was so worried.”

  “Calm down,” I told her. “I don’t want my grandchild born with a nervous condition.”

  “Don’t worry about your grandchild. You’re grandchild’s going to be just fine.”

  “And how about my daughter?”

  “Your daughter’s just fine. Do you want to know something? These past few days, wow, I’ve really learned a lot during these past few days.”

  “So have I.”

  “How close I am to you, for one thing. Waiting at the hospital, there was a time when I thought, God, he’s gone. I just had this feeling. And then I shook my head and said, no, it was nonsense, you were all right. And you know what they told us afterward? Your heart stopped during the operation, and it must have happened right when I got that feeling. I knew, and then I knew again when it resumed beating.”

  When I looked at my son I saw his mother’s smile. When I looked at Debbie I saw myself.

>   “And another thing I learned, and that’s how much people need each other. People were so good to us! So many people called me, asked about you. Even Philip called, can you imagine? He just wanted to let me know that I should call on him if there was anything he could do.”

  “What could he possibly do?”

  “I have no idea. It was funny hearing from him, though. I hadn’t heard his voice since we were living together. But it was nice of him to call, wasn’t it?”

  I nodded. “It must have made you wonder what might have been.”

  “What it made me wonder was how I ever thought Philip and I were made for each other. Scott was with me every minute, you know, except when he went down to give blood for you—”

  “He gave blood for me?”

  “Didn’t mother tell you? You and Scott are the same blood type. It’s one of the rarer types and you both have it. Maybe that’s why I fell in love with him.”

  “Not a bad reason.”

  “He was with me all the time, you know, and by the time you were out of danger I began to realize how close Scott and I have grown, how much I love him. And then when I heard Philip’s voice I thought what kid stuff that relationship of ours had been. I know you never approved.”

  “It wasn’t my business to approve or disapprove.”

  “Maybe not. But I know you approve of Scott, and that’s important to me.”

  I went home.

  I thought, what do you want from me? It’s not my son-in-law. You don’t try to kill a man and then donate blood for a transfusion. Nobody would do a thing like that.

  The person I cut off at the traffic circle? But that was insane. And how would I know him anyway? I wouldn’t know where to start looking for him.

  Some other enemy? But I had no enemies.

  Julia said, “The doctor called again. He still doesn’t see how you could check yourself out of the hospital. But he called to say he wants to schedule you for surgery.”

  Not yet, I told her. Not until I’m ready.

  “When will you be ready?”

  When I feel right about it, I told her.

  She called him back, relayed the message. “He’s very nice,” she reported. “He says any delay is hazardous, so you should let him schedule as soon as you possibly can. If you have something to attend to he says he can understand that, but try not to let it drag on too long.”

  I was glad he was a sympathetic and understanding man, and that she liked him. He might be a comfort to her later when she needed someone around to lean on. Something clicked.

  I called Debbie.

  “Just the one telephone call,” she said, puzzled. “He said he knew you never liked him but he always respected you and he knew what an influence you were in my life. And that I should feel free to call on him if I needed someone to turn to. It was nice of him, that’s what I told myself at the time, but there was something creepy about the conversation.” And what had she told him?

  “That it was nice to hear from him, and that, you know, my husband and I would be fine. Sort of stressing that I was married, but in a nice way. Why?”

  The police were very dubious. Ancient history, they said. The boy had lived with my daughter a while ago, parted amicably, never made any trouble. Had he ever threatened me? Had we ever fought?

  He’s the one, I said. Watch him, I said. Keep an eye on him.

  So they assigned men to watch Philip, and on the fourth day the surveillance paid off. They caught him tucking a bomb beneath the hood of a car. The car belonged to my son-in-law, Scott.

  “He thought you were standing between them. When she said she was happily married, well, he shifted his sights to the husband.”

  There had always been something about Philip that I had not liked. Something creepy, as Debbie put it. Perhaps he’ll get treatment now. In any event, he’ll be unable to harm anyone.

  Is that why I was permitted to return? So that I could prevent Philip from harming Scott?

  Perhaps that was the purpose. The conversations with Julia, with Monty, with Peg, with Mark and Debbie, those were fringe benefits.

  Or perhaps it was the other way around.

  All right.

  They’ve prepared me for surgery. The doctor, understanding as ever, called again. This time I let him schedule me, and I came here and let them prepare me. And I’ve prepared myself.

  All right.

  I’m ready now.

  Miranda

  by John D. MacDonald

  John D. MacDonald was the best crime writer of his generation. While he ultimately got his due, many of his early paperback original novels got overlooked in the process. Look up April Evil and One Monday We Killed Them All and Soft Touch.

  First published in 1950.

  They put a plate in the back of my head and silver pins in the right thighbone. The arms were in traction longer than the legs. The eye, of course, was something they couldn’t fix.

  It was a big, busy place they had there. The way I had come in, I guess, was a sort of challenge to the doctors. A post-graduate course. See, gentlemen, this thing is alive—indubitably alive. Watch, now. We will paste it back together the way God made it. Or almost as good.

  My friends came—for a while. For a few months. I wasn’t too cordial. I didn’t need them. It was the same thing every time. How terrible to be all strung with wires and weights! Aren’t you going mad from boredom, George?

  I wasn’t going mad from boredom. I learned how to keep my face from laughing, how to laugh on the inside. As if I was sitting back there in my mind, hugging myself, shrieking with laughter, rocking from side to side, laughing and laughing. But nothing but silence on the outside. The faraway dignity of the very sick.

  They brought me in and I was dead. That is, for all practical purposes. The heart had no right to keep beating.

  But you see, I knew. When you know a thing like that, you can’t die. When you know a thing like that, it is unfinished business.

  Poor George. Poor old George.

  And me all the time laughing away. It was a joke that I could understand, but nobody else would. The joke goes like this. I’ll tell you and you can laugh with me too. We’ll rock and giggle together. Once upon a time there was a good-natured, broad-shouldered slob named George A. Corliss who lived in an eleven-thousand-dollar frame house in an orderly little suburban community called Joanna Center. He lived at 88 April Lane. He made a hundred and thirty-eight fifty each and every week in a New York publishing house, carried a little more insurance than he should have, loved his dainty, fragile-boned, gray-eyed, silver-blond little wife named Connie very much indeed. In fact this slob had his happiest moments when Connie would give him a speculative look and tell him that he really did look a little like Van Johnson. This George Corliss, he made replicas of early American furniture in a basement workshop, bought a new Plymouth every time he had the old one about paid for, conscientiously read “good books” while commuting, and often brooded about the childlessness of the Corliss household, a thorn in his side.

  He drove too fast, smoked too much, knocked off too many cocktails. In all respects a very average guy. But what George didn’t know was that Connie, the little silver-blond wife, feeling the thirties coming on, had acquired an itch for a Latin-type twenty-two-year-old kid, a gas pumper at the local lubritorium, a pinch-waisted kid with melting eyes, muscles, and a fast line of chatter. Since the kid obviously could not support Connie in the style to which George had gradually accustomed her, nothing seemed simpler than to find some nice safe way of knocking George off and glomming onto the fifty-six thousand bucks his demise would bring in.

  So one day when George had told Connie in advance that he had to take a run up to a mountain town called Crane, New York, to dicker with a recalcitrant author, Connie took the Plymouth to the garage and the kid, Louie Palmer by name, did a judicious job of diddling with the tie-rod ends with the idea of their parting when a turn was taken at high speed.

  So I took a turn at high s
peed. Rather, I tried to take it. The steering wheel went loose and gummy in my hands. They killed me, all right. They killed George, the slob, all right.

  Funny, how it was. Take the moment the car started rolling. I had maybe one second of consciousness left. And in that second a lot of little things added up. I’d had the steering checked in town that week. Connie always buying gas in one-dollar quantities. The funny way she’d said goodbye. At the last minute I wanted her to come along. She was emphatic about saying no. And there was the time I found the initialed cigarette case on the car floor. She took it and I forgot it until I saw that Louie Palmer using it. Then he got all red and bothered and said it had slipped out of his pocket while he was checking the car, maybe when he reached in to yank the gimmick that releases the hood.

  And before things went out for me, in a blinding whiteness that reached across the world, I said to myself, almost calmly, “George, you’re not going to let this kill you.”

  But it did kill the George I was talking to. The man who came out of the coma eight days later wasn’t the old furniture builder, huckster, and loving husband.

  No, he was the new George. The boy who could lie there and laugh inside at his joke. They tried to kill him and they did. And now he was going to kill them. Murder by a corpse. There’s something you can get your teeth into and laugh at. But don’t let it move the face muscles. It might pull out some of the deep stitches.

  “You’re the luckiest man in the world,” the young doctor said. Young, with a nose like a bird’s beak and no more hair than a stone.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “I would have bet ten thousand to one against you.”

  “Good thing you didn’t.” I wanted him to go away. I wanted to think about Connie and Louie and just how I would do it to them.

  He fingered the wasted arm muscles. “Doing those exercises?”

  “Every day, Doc.” I liked to see him wince when I called him Doc.

  He clucked and muttered and prodded. “I warned you that you might not ever be able to walk again, the way those nerves were pinched. But the nurse told me you took a few steps today. I don’t understand it.”