A selection from No Time Like Now, a story included in my short story collection Slow Machine and Other Tales of Suspense and Danger, now available at Amazon Kindle Books.
NO TIME LIKE NOW
"Another day. Another dozen floors swept," Carter said, covering his mouth with his hand, as if stifling a yawn. Although he hoped he sounded tired to Luisa, his heart raced with anticipation.
Luisa laughed while she took away his empty coffee cup to the sink behind the counter. "That's what you do now? Sweep floors?"
She remembered him. Why else had she said "now", as if she had known what his job used to be? He struggled to conceal the excitement in his voice as he spoke. "I guess you could say I'm a janitor, but that's pushing it. Really, I just sweep floors."
She laughed as she rinsed out the cup and set it in the sink. "Well, we all do what we have to do." She placed a rag under the tap, ran some water on it and then wiped the counter. "Will that be all for tonight?"
He looked up at the clock beside the door. Not long until curfew. He would have to move fast.
"I guess so. Could I have the bill please?"
"Sure."
He wanted to look at her again, but he was afraid she would think he was staring. Instead, he glanced again at the clock, clenching and opening his fists as he watched the second hand sweep around.
All the better that he couldn't look at her. Take a moment to think over what he had seen. She'd aged for sure, the wrinkles about her eyes, the slight plumpness of her face, her friendly but tired voice all betrayed the passage of time, but her long dark hair had the same luster, her brown eyes the same flash of passion.
He chanced another glance as she wrote up the bill at the cash register. There was something about how she wore her starched and austere waitress uniform of plain slacks and cotton blouse that made it sexy, even if it fully complied with the Guardians' Moral Code. Just the same way the Luisa he had known long ago would have worn it.
As she returned to give him his bill, she smiled. "There you go,"
"Thanks."
She walked away and he pulled out his pen from the pocket of his faded and frayed windbreaker, something he once would have been embarrassed to have been seen wearing. But now...
Choking back the fear that made his throat burn and his hand tremble, he scribbled on the back of the bill his address and the brief note that he had memorized, the small but important message he had wanted to give to her ever since he'd first seen her at the coffee shop weeks before.
He pulled some coins from his pocket. Enough for the bill and a good tip.
He left the money and the bill on the counter.
As he rose from his stool and went to the front door of the coffee shop, he looked over his shoulder and saw her slipping the bill into her pocket.
"We'll talk about Gold Castle!" she called to him.
Silently he nodded and passed through the door into the quiet night. The street lights dimmed once, twice and then regained their previous brightness. The Guardians' way of warning that eleven o'clock curfew was only forty five minutes away.
Gold Castle. He couldn't believe his luck. She really did remember him.
*
Carter returned to his bachelor apartment only blocks from the coffee shop. He stood at the door, switched on the single bare overhead light bulb and looked around.
He preferred to think of his place as the very definition of simplicity. It was the only way he had of dignifying the drabness of his surroundings.
His apartment was sparsely furnished. An alcove in a corner was equipped with an old stove. The center of the room featured a table, a chair, a sofa that doubled as his bed, a chest of drawers, and a clock radio on the table. A narrow hallway led to a cramped washroom. Before the washroom was a modest closet. A small window framed by dusty venetian blinds provided a meager view of the street two floors below.
He thought it might be a good idea to liven the place up just a little for Luisa's arrival.
He opened the closet door and after pulling aside the shirts crammed along the rack, he pressed his hand against the wall. He pulled at a chunk of plaster until it gave away, exposing a patch of brick wall behind. He grabbed one of the bricks, until an opening came into view. From this he gingerly removed a bundle wrapped in cloth. He set this down on the floor and slowly unwound the cloth until he saw the compact digital camera he had bought the other day from some shopkeeper up the road. The guy claimed to have kept it from the days before the Guardians, but Carter wasn't so sure.
Underneath the camera was the picture, clipped out long ago from some forgotten magazine. He unfolded it. His nose crinkled as a slight odor of dust and age wafted from the faded and tattered paper, but he smiled with pride as his eager eyes took in the image on the paper.
Bold yellow letters at the top of the page screamed GOLD CASTLE BEER - GOLDEN FLAVOR.
Underneath the headline, two women in bikinis reclined on a beach, basking in the glow of a golden sunset. A bottle of Gold Castle loomed on the twilit horizon.
His smile faded. Better not to leave the picture and the camera out. He should wait until he had talked to her first and made sure of a few things. After all, as everyone knew, possession of a photograph, not to mention a camera, was a criminal offense.
He wrapped the camera and picture again in the cloth and returned the bundle to the hiding place, replacing the brick and the chunk of plaster to their former positions. He hurried over to the window and pulled aside the blind, just in time to see the street lights blink five times.
Only five minutes to curfew.
He looked along the lonely street that stretched before the apartment in a faded ribbon of cracked asphalt. Cars had vanished, and pedestrians knew better than to be out so close to curfew. Except one. Yes, someone was walking, almost running up the broken sidewalk. As the figure drew closer, Carter recognized it.
Luisa.
He clenched his hands into tight, sweaty fists and he took several deep breaths as he walked to the door, standing before it, awaiting her arrival. Was she really Luisa, the model from long ago, or was she an agent from the Guardians sent to destroy him?
Best not to think about it. Best...
A knock at the door.
He unchained it and threw it open.
Luisa stood in his doorway.
"Hello, Mark," she said, her voice barely a whisper. Her breath came in short gasps. She must've ran up the steps to the apartment.
"Welcome," Carter answered, his voice almost choking in his throat.
She remembered his name. His real name.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Hard Case Crime Uncovers Final James M. Cain Novel
Hard Case Crime has announced that it has secured the rights to The Cocktail Waitress, the final and long-lost novel by hard boiled luminary James M. Cain, the scribe behind The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity. The novel tells the story of a woman whose first husband died suspiciously and who is now being pursued by two new suitors, each of whom has something she wants. Hard Case reports that the novel is "gritty, steamy and suspenseful" and "worthy of the legacy of this great author." Definitely sounds like one worth checking out once it hits the stores.
Already out is Getting Off, the first hardcover release by Hard Case, a Lawrence Block thriller about a woman methodically bumping off her ex boyfriends one by one. In the stores soon is The Consummata, an incomplete Mickey Spillane novel that has been finished by Max Allan Collins. Spillane gave Collins his blessing for the project before he passed away. Also on the way is The Comedy is Finished, an unpublished novel about the kidnapping of a TV comedy show host. Apparently, Westlake shelved the novel back in the 80s because of its similarities to the Martin Scorsese cult classic, The King of Comedy, but Hard Case reports that the novel is quite different from the Scorsese movie and worthy of Westlake's reputation. This is one I'm very curious to check out.
It's great to see Hard Case back in business again and I will review these and other new Hard Case releases once I am able to obtain them.
Already out is Getting Off, the first hardcover release by Hard Case, a Lawrence Block thriller about a woman methodically bumping off her ex boyfriends one by one. In the stores soon is The Consummata, an incomplete Mickey Spillane novel that has been finished by Max Allan Collins. Spillane gave Collins his blessing for the project before he passed away. Also on the way is The Comedy is Finished, an unpublished novel about the kidnapping of a TV comedy show host. Apparently, Westlake shelved the novel back in the 80s because of its similarities to the Martin Scorsese cult classic, The King of Comedy, but Hard Case reports that the novel is quite different from the Scorsese movie and worthy of Westlake's reputation. This is one I'm very curious to check out.
It's great to see Hard Case back in business again and I will review these and other new Hard Case releases once I am able to obtain them.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Gil Brewer's The Vengeful Virgin
Doom. You recognize Doom easily. It's a feeling and a taste and it's black, and it's very heavy. It comes down over your head, and wraps tentacles around you, and sinks long dirty fingernails into your heart. It had a stink like burning garbage. Doom.
Gil Brewer ' The Vengeful Virgin
A terrible atmosphere of dread and inevitable disaster hangs over The Vengeful Virgin, a noir classic by the brilliant 1950s hardboiled author Gil Brewer and re-published by Hard Case Crime in 2007. The plot is routine enough. Jack, a working stiff in a nowhere gig running a penny ante TV repair shop, goes out on a routine job to install some TVs and an intercom system at the home of a sharp tongued and mean-spirited - but incredibly wealthy - invalid. The invalid is being cared for by his eighteen-year-old stepdaughter, Shirley Angela.
Jack is all eyes for Shirley, a hot red head in a tight sweater and skirt that just barely conceal her shapely body. The TV and intercom are soon installed, but Jack has fallen in lust with Shirley and soon they are making volcanic sex just out of sight and earshot of her stepfather.
She began to groan and moan, writhing wildly. She was a tiger. She tore at my belt, then began tearing at her clothes, her hair swinging across her face. She yanked her sweater up to her neck and I got as crazy as she was. Those toreador pants of hers were as thin as silk and as tight as skin. They wouldn't come off.
"Rip 'em!"
I ripped...She dropped to the floor, dragging me with her. I knew I would never get enough of her. She was straight from hell.
Shirley has torn open the floodgates of Jack's thwarted dreams. Shirley, frustrated from having to spend so much of her life caring for an ailing but heartless old man, sees Jack as a way out of the prison that has become her life. They hatch a plot to kill the old man and take his wealth, only his death would be made to look like an accident.
This book has an inexplicable, almost hypnotic power about it. The plot is routine enough. The wages of sin is death and the road to hell imagery are driven home with sledgehammer subtlety. But what makes this book is the power of Brewer's descriptions - and the horrible power of his heroine Shirley Angela. She is almost a mythic force of nature - a deadly hybrid of Lady Macbeth with a barely legal Lolita. She is also the bearer of the wicked vagina dentata:She showed me her teeth, glowing and white and maybe even predatory, between her red lips.
The two evil-starred lovers follow through on their plot. The old man dies horribly of course, and of course the plot blows up in their faces. Jack goes on the run with Shirley and heads straight to hell - a damnation of his own making.
I'd like to say more about this book, yet saying too much would give a lot of the fun away. If you're curious about noir fiction and wondering where to start, this would be a perfect book to begin with.
Gil Brewer ' The Vengeful Virgin
A terrible atmosphere of dread and inevitable disaster hangs over The Vengeful Virgin, a noir classic by the brilliant 1950s hardboiled author Gil Brewer and re-published by Hard Case Crime in 2007. The plot is routine enough. Jack, a working stiff in a nowhere gig running a penny ante TV repair shop, goes out on a routine job to install some TVs and an intercom system at the home of a sharp tongued and mean-spirited - but incredibly wealthy - invalid. The invalid is being cared for by his eighteen-year-old stepdaughter, Shirley Angela.
Jack is all eyes for Shirley, a hot red head in a tight sweater and skirt that just barely conceal her shapely body. The TV and intercom are soon installed, but Jack has fallen in lust with Shirley and soon they are making volcanic sex just out of sight and earshot of her stepfather.
She began to groan and moan, writhing wildly. She was a tiger. She tore at my belt, then began tearing at her clothes, her hair swinging across her face. She yanked her sweater up to her neck and I got as crazy as she was. Those toreador pants of hers were as thin as silk and as tight as skin. They wouldn't come off.
"Rip 'em!"
I ripped...She dropped to the floor, dragging me with her. I knew I would never get enough of her. She was straight from hell.
Shirley has torn open the floodgates of Jack's thwarted dreams. Shirley, frustrated from having to spend so much of her life caring for an ailing but heartless old man, sees Jack as a way out of the prison that has become her life. They hatch a plot to kill the old man and take his wealth, only his death would be made to look like an accident.
This book has an inexplicable, almost hypnotic power about it. The plot is routine enough. The wages of sin is death and the road to hell imagery are driven home with sledgehammer subtlety. But what makes this book is the power of Brewer's descriptions - and the horrible power of his heroine Shirley Angela. She is almost a mythic force of nature - a deadly hybrid of Lady Macbeth with a barely legal Lolita. She is also the bearer of the wicked vagina dentata:She showed me her teeth, glowing and white and maybe even predatory, between her red lips.
The two evil-starred lovers follow through on their plot. The old man dies horribly of course, and of course the plot blows up in their faces. Jack goes on the run with Shirley and heads straight to hell - a damnation of his own making.
I'd like to say more about this book, yet saying too much would give a lot of the fun away. If you're curious about noir fiction and wondering where to start, this would be a perfect book to begin with.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Excerpt From A Prison for Identities
A selection from A Prison for Identities, the opening story in my e-book, Slow Machine and Other Tales of Suspense and Danger. Get it now at the Amazon Kindle Store!
A PRISON FOR IDENTITIES
“Damn you, Gem, I’ve come here three straight nights to meet you and you never showed up. You let me down, girl.”
Ed was angry and he wanted Gem to know it. He slouched in his chair in the bank office tower food court. From his side of the table, Gem looked like she didn’t care, brushing back her long dark hair and smiling that funny smile of hers that seemed, in spite of its brightness, to say “go to hell.” She sat upright in her chair, her partially unbuttoned blouse displaying her ample cleavage that looked as inviting as ever. He knew, though, not to look, not tonight.
“I had other things on the go, Ed.”
“Like?”
“My mother. Remember? She had a heart attack a few months ago and I have to look after her. I’m all she’s got. She’s hit a rough spot and I had to stay with her in case she needed to go to the hospital. And I told you if I couldn’t make it the first night you should keep coming back here every night during the week ‘till I showed up. That’s what I did, right? I’m here now.”
Ed shook his head and glanced at the store across the concourse from them. A neon sign announced in stylized letters that the place was called Dawn Star. It looked like it sold art work, and damn crazy-looking stuff it was, too. What were those things in the front window? Little statues? His stomach tightened with disgust, mixed with hunger. When did he last eat? Almost a day ago?
“You know Gem, look at that stupid store over there.”
Her big brown eyes narrowed. “What about it? What’s that gotta do with us?”
He nodded at the display in the store’s front window. “Plenty. It’s for people who want to waste money on stupid things. Look at those weird statues in the window. They look like little men, little three-foot high men, and they got no faces. Just blank stone. And the paintings on the walls. Just squares and rectangles, some of them black or white or orange or whatever. I mean, what’s it gotta do with anything? It’s like you. You always gotta go on about things that aren’t important.”
“You mean my mother isn’t important, Ed?”
He shrugged. “I dunno. You pushed me out a few weeks now and I need some help, you know, some support. I can’t even count on you anymore Can’t count on anybody.”
She frowned and her voice went down a few notches. He knew he was getting to her.
“You can’t count on me? What about you, Ed? You don’t have a cell phone and that flophouse you’re staying at doesn’t even have a phone number. How am I supposed to stay in touch with you?”
He smirked. “Who’s staying at a flop house? I’m at a hotel. The Bosley Arms..”
She threw up her arms in frustration. “I know, I know. Five-star all the way. Gold plated cockroaches in the bathtub.”
He snickered and when Gem spoke again, her voice was almost girlish, at least for her, like she was trying to flirt. “Look, I still care about you. I just want you to clean up a bit. Lose some of those friends of yours. Like Billy. I can’t believe you’ve wasted the last five years working as a bouncer in that pig’s bodyrub parlors. I thought you had an honest job as a janitor. Sure, that’s not great, but at least it’s honest. Then I found out the cops caught you in that raid and I had to come down to the division house to get you. I finally find out what you really do for a living. You lie to me about how you earn your money and then you wonder why I kick you out.”
Ed grinned. “Hey, those places were licensed adult entertainment establishments.”
Carmen slapped the table in anger. “It’s not funny. Who knows what could happen to you, hanging around with that damn Billy and his whores. You’re lucky the cops let you go. You could’ve been charged, then where would you be? I wonder if Billy would really help you out. That guy treats you like you’re his servant or something. Have you told him you’re not working in his toilets any more?”
He kept grinning. It was good to have her all keyed up. “Working on it.”
Her eyes flashed poison darts at him. “Stop working on it and start doing it, okay? Talk to him. Maybe after that I can take you back. I can’t have you working with him anymore.”
He fell silent. She was right, sort of. That was the worst thing about Gem. Just when you really wanted to unload on her, she’d say something that hit bang on target and you couldn’t talk back to her. Better to change the subject. Talk about that weird noise that was getting on his nerves, scraping away at his razor thin hold on sanity like a saw-toothed edge.
As he spoke, his voice was thick with fatigue. “What the hell is that noise? Seems like it’s coming from the ceiling?”
She did a double take and glanced across at Dawn Star. “No, it’s coming from that store. It’s like weird violin music, but it’s just a drone. Why would anybody listen to that?
He looked through the front window. A man in a navy blue suit with silver hair, wearing wire glasses and a blonde woman in slacks and a jacket were talking and gesturing at each other. Every few moments they discretely peeked at him. He looked back them as he spoke. “It just opened too. When I first got here Monday it was empty space. The last few days they’ve been putting all that stuff in there, I guess.”
Gem twitched her eyebrow, motioning for him to stop looking at the two people. “I don’t like them, Ed. They keep looking at us, like they’re trying to listen to us.”
He frowned. “You don’t suppose…”
Gem stiffened. She was all business now. “I don’t suppose anything. Let’s just make this short and sweet. Take care of yourself and make sure you talk to Billy, ASAP, all right? Take this. It’s all I got until the bank pays me Thursday. Should help you keep your penthouse suite.”
Gem’s soft hand took his and something rough brushed against his palm. Money? Whatever it was, he clasped it tight in his fist.
She leaned forward and pecked him on the cheek.
“I love you.”
“I love you too, honeybabe.”
She and then choked back a sob as her eyes glistened. That really got her. “You know I hate that name.”
“No you don’t. Not as much as Gemini, the name your folks gave you.”
She laughed. “Well, they were in a commune somewhere up north in the early Seventies. People gave their kids stupid names back then. At least they didn’t call me Sky or Water.”
“Yeah, that’s true. And when you changed your name, you just shortened it to Gem. That’s a nice name.”
The tears were running down her cheeks now. She could barely get the words out. “I’ve really got to go.”
Ed raised his hand in silent farewell as she rose from the table and strode away, head held high, her long, athletic legs carrying her proudly down the concourse. In moments she was gone, the only evidence of her presence a ghostly breath of her perfume in his nostrils.
Ed sat alone in the food court, his head bowed, staring at what Gem had given to him: a crumpled fifty dollar bill. As he stuffed it in his pocket, he blinked repeatedly. He was wavering on the edge of sleep. Or, was he asleep already?
His eyes popped open again and he shuddered at the memory of some dream about a woman’s voice singing about the end of everything. The lights were still on Dawn Star, but those two people had vanished, as had that awful droning. For some reason, the sliding glass door at the store’s entrance had been left open a crack. Ed wondered why that was, but he didn’t want to investigate. He just wanted to get out of here. This place was just a drag.
From somewhere overhead, the sultry recorded voice of some woman singer wailed away. Wasn’t it the voice he’d just heard in his dream? The voice sighed lonely and sad, offering love and comfort to the food court’s shadows and empty chairs.
He rose to his tired feet. How long had he slept there? Minutes? Hours? Too late now. Better just to leave, get moving and get over to Billy tonight. Yes, Gem was right. Have it out with him tonight.
He walked down the concourse, toward the subway entrance. He kept walking, shoving one foot in front of the other, going through the motions, making the moves. Tonight, he would confront Billy. Go up to Eglinton station, to that stupid bar where Billy always hung out and demand to know who the hell was he to expect Ed to slave for him.
His stomach ached like someone had punched him in the gut. Nerves probably. His body was pumping adrenaline, pumping fear. Bile burned at the back of his throat. He made for the men’s room on the left, just a few paces from the subway entrance.
The restroom’s white tiled walls and gleaming mirrors and faucets shone with reflected light from globe-shaped bulbs in the ceiling. More music whispered from a hidden speaker, another woman’s caressing voice promising eternal love, if only you would run away with her.
A faint smell gripped his nostrils. Disinfectant. Stale urine.
He found a stall and locked himself inside. A wave of sleepiness mixed with nausea washed over him. He slumped against the door, his face buried in his hands. Should he be sick or pass out? When was the last time he’d been so tired? Stop thinking about that. Gem’s right. Pull yourself together. Get on the subway and go to Eglinton and tell that bastard Billy off…
What was that? Sounded like a door opening and some footsteps.
Somebody had come in to the washroom. Better to sit tight until the guy was gone.
He pressed himself up against the stall partition. Was that a pair of black leather business shoes outside of the door?
The door rattled. The guy was trying to get in. Who the hell was it?
He tensed and ran a nervous hand into his back pocket. Nothing there but his key chain. Gemma had taken his key to her apartment. All that was left was the useless metal hoop the key once had been attached to. Well, if it came to a fight, he might be able to do some scratching and poking with the hoop before he went down.
The guy shook the door again and pounded his fist.
“Get out of there! I know you’re there, so just get the hell out!”
In a flash, the door flew open and Ed’s eyes caught a blur of a familiar face. The silver-haired man in the suit from that art store!
He grabbed Ed and dragged him out of the stall and shoved him face down to the floor. A nose full of disinfectant and cold tile and then those nice classy, black leather business shoes went to work on him, kicking his ribs, his back…
A pair of hands grabbed his hair. A laser jolt of agony shot down his spine and his eyes exploded with stars…
A PRISON FOR IDENTITIES
“Damn you, Gem, I’ve come here three straight nights to meet you and you never showed up. You let me down, girl.”
Ed was angry and he wanted Gem to know it. He slouched in his chair in the bank office tower food court. From his side of the table, Gem looked like she didn’t care, brushing back her long dark hair and smiling that funny smile of hers that seemed, in spite of its brightness, to say “go to hell.” She sat upright in her chair, her partially unbuttoned blouse displaying her ample cleavage that looked as inviting as ever. He knew, though, not to look, not tonight.
“I had other things on the go, Ed.”
“Like?”
“My mother. Remember? She had a heart attack a few months ago and I have to look after her. I’m all she’s got. She’s hit a rough spot and I had to stay with her in case she needed to go to the hospital. And I told you if I couldn’t make it the first night you should keep coming back here every night during the week ‘till I showed up. That’s what I did, right? I’m here now.”
Ed shook his head and glanced at the store across the concourse from them. A neon sign announced in stylized letters that the place was called Dawn Star. It looked like it sold art work, and damn crazy-looking stuff it was, too. What were those things in the front window? Little statues? His stomach tightened with disgust, mixed with hunger. When did he last eat? Almost a day ago?
“You know Gem, look at that stupid store over there.”
Her big brown eyes narrowed. “What about it? What’s that gotta do with us?”
He nodded at the display in the store’s front window. “Plenty. It’s for people who want to waste money on stupid things. Look at those weird statues in the window. They look like little men, little three-foot high men, and they got no faces. Just blank stone. And the paintings on the walls. Just squares and rectangles, some of them black or white or orange or whatever. I mean, what’s it gotta do with anything? It’s like you. You always gotta go on about things that aren’t important.”
“You mean my mother isn’t important, Ed?”
He shrugged. “I dunno. You pushed me out a few weeks now and I need some help, you know, some support. I can’t even count on you anymore Can’t count on anybody.”
She frowned and her voice went down a few notches. He knew he was getting to her.
“You can’t count on me? What about you, Ed? You don’t have a cell phone and that flophouse you’re staying at doesn’t even have a phone number. How am I supposed to stay in touch with you?”
He smirked. “Who’s staying at a flop house? I’m at a hotel. The Bosley Arms..”
She threw up her arms in frustration. “I know, I know. Five-star all the way. Gold plated cockroaches in the bathtub.”
He snickered and when Gem spoke again, her voice was almost girlish, at least for her, like she was trying to flirt. “Look, I still care about you. I just want you to clean up a bit. Lose some of those friends of yours. Like Billy. I can’t believe you’ve wasted the last five years working as a bouncer in that pig’s bodyrub parlors. I thought you had an honest job as a janitor. Sure, that’s not great, but at least it’s honest. Then I found out the cops caught you in that raid and I had to come down to the division house to get you. I finally find out what you really do for a living. You lie to me about how you earn your money and then you wonder why I kick you out.”
Ed grinned. “Hey, those places were licensed adult entertainment establishments.”
Carmen slapped the table in anger. “It’s not funny. Who knows what could happen to you, hanging around with that damn Billy and his whores. You’re lucky the cops let you go. You could’ve been charged, then where would you be? I wonder if Billy would really help you out. That guy treats you like you’re his servant or something. Have you told him you’re not working in his toilets any more?”
He kept grinning. It was good to have her all keyed up. “Working on it.”
Her eyes flashed poison darts at him. “Stop working on it and start doing it, okay? Talk to him. Maybe after that I can take you back. I can’t have you working with him anymore.”
He fell silent. She was right, sort of. That was the worst thing about Gem. Just when you really wanted to unload on her, she’d say something that hit bang on target and you couldn’t talk back to her. Better to change the subject. Talk about that weird noise that was getting on his nerves, scraping away at his razor thin hold on sanity like a saw-toothed edge.
As he spoke, his voice was thick with fatigue. “What the hell is that noise? Seems like it’s coming from the ceiling?”
She did a double take and glanced across at Dawn Star. “No, it’s coming from that store. It’s like weird violin music, but it’s just a drone. Why would anybody listen to that?
He looked through the front window. A man in a navy blue suit with silver hair, wearing wire glasses and a blonde woman in slacks and a jacket were talking and gesturing at each other. Every few moments they discretely peeked at him. He looked back them as he spoke. “It just opened too. When I first got here Monday it was empty space. The last few days they’ve been putting all that stuff in there, I guess.”
Gem twitched her eyebrow, motioning for him to stop looking at the two people. “I don’t like them, Ed. They keep looking at us, like they’re trying to listen to us.”
He frowned. “You don’t suppose…”
Gem stiffened. She was all business now. “I don’t suppose anything. Let’s just make this short and sweet. Take care of yourself and make sure you talk to Billy, ASAP, all right? Take this. It’s all I got until the bank pays me Thursday. Should help you keep your penthouse suite.”
Gem’s soft hand took his and something rough brushed against his palm. Money? Whatever it was, he clasped it tight in his fist.
She leaned forward and pecked him on the cheek.
“I love you.”
“I love you too, honeybabe.”
She and then choked back a sob as her eyes glistened. That really got her. “You know I hate that name.”
“No you don’t. Not as much as Gemini, the name your folks gave you.”
She laughed. “Well, they were in a commune somewhere up north in the early Seventies. People gave their kids stupid names back then. At least they didn’t call me Sky or Water.”
“Yeah, that’s true. And when you changed your name, you just shortened it to Gem. That’s a nice name.”
The tears were running down her cheeks now. She could barely get the words out. “I’ve really got to go.”
Ed raised his hand in silent farewell as she rose from the table and strode away, head held high, her long, athletic legs carrying her proudly down the concourse. In moments she was gone, the only evidence of her presence a ghostly breath of her perfume in his nostrils.
Ed sat alone in the food court, his head bowed, staring at what Gem had given to him: a crumpled fifty dollar bill. As he stuffed it in his pocket, he blinked repeatedly. He was wavering on the edge of sleep. Or, was he asleep already?
His eyes popped open again and he shuddered at the memory of some dream about a woman’s voice singing about the end of everything. The lights were still on Dawn Star, but those two people had vanished, as had that awful droning. For some reason, the sliding glass door at the store’s entrance had been left open a crack. Ed wondered why that was, but he didn’t want to investigate. He just wanted to get out of here. This place was just a drag.
From somewhere overhead, the sultry recorded voice of some woman singer wailed away. Wasn’t it the voice he’d just heard in his dream? The voice sighed lonely and sad, offering love and comfort to the food court’s shadows and empty chairs.
He rose to his tired feet. How long had he slept there? Minutes? Hours? Too late now. Better just to leave, get moving and get over to Billy tonight. Yes, Gem was right. Have it out with him tonight.
He walked down the concourse, toward the subway entrance. He kept walking, shoving one foot in front of the other, going through the motions, making the moves. Tonight, he would confront Billy. Go up to Eglinton station, to that stupid bar where Billy always hung out and demand to know who the hell was he to expect Ed to slave for him.
His stomach ached like someone had punched him in the gut. Nerves probably. His body was pumping adrenaline, pumping fear. Bile burned at the back of his throat. He made for the men’s room on the left, just a few paces from the subway entrance.
The restroom’s white tiled walls and gleaming mirrors and faucets shone with reflected light from globe-shaped bulbs in the ceiling. More music whispered from a hidden speaker, another woman’s caressing voice promising eternal love, if only you would run away with her.
A faint smell gripped his nostrils. Disinfectant. Stale urine.
He found a stall and locked himself inside. A wave of sleepiness mixed with nausea washed over him. He slumped against the door, his face buried in his hands. Should he be sick or pass out? When was the last time he’d been so tired? Stop thinking about that. Gem’s right. Pull yourself together. Get on the subway and go to Eglinton and tell that bastard Billy off…
What was that? Sounded like a door opening and some footsteps.
Somebody had come in to the washroom. Better to sit tight until the guy was gone.
He pressed himself up against the stall partition. Was that a pair of black leather business shoes outside of the door?
The door rattled. The guy was trying to get in. Who the hell was it?
He tensed and ran a nervous hand into his back pocket. Nothing there but his key chain. Gemma had taken his key to her apartment. All that was left was the useless metal hoop the key once had been attached to. Well, if it came to a fight, he might be able to do some scratching and poking with the hoop before he went down.
The guy shook the door again and pounded his fist.
“Get out of there! I know you’re there, so just get the hell out!”
In a flash, the door flew open and Ed’s eyes caught a blur of a familiar face. The silver-haired man in the suit from that art store!
He grabbed Ed and dragged him out of the stall and shoved him face down to the floor. A nose full of disinfectant and cold tile and then those nice classy, black leather business shoes went to work on him, kicking his ribs, his back…
A pair of hands grabbed his hair. A laser jolt of agony shot down his spine and his eyes exploded with stars…
Saturday, September 3, 2011
Georges Simenon and Henning Mankell
US mystery writer Hilary Waugh, whose late 1940s novel Last Seen Wearing is often cited as the original police procedural, once wrote, "If you have something to say, don't write a mystery."
I think that's a pretty strict definition of what constitutes suitable subject matter for a mystery novel: Mystery and nothing but a mystery. Nothing that will unhinge the careful, haiku like precision and compactness of the mystery novel's construction.
I don't know how true that statement is. Two authors who are regarded as masters of the mystery novel, Georges Simenon and Henning Mankell, often bring a sense of social and even political observation to their brilliantly crafted mystery tales. There are certainly more things said and statements made in their books than are dreamed of in Waugh's purist dictum and yet, they are great mystery writers whose novels are bench marks of the genre.
It could be argued that these writers aren't, strictly speaking, hardboiled either. I would take issue with that too. If hardboiled fiction can be defined as an action, suspense or mystery story that takes a cold-eyed, unflinching, yet still compassionate view of the more unpleasant and sordid aspects of existence, then both of these authors could still be considered hardboiled.
Georges Simenon was, of course, the legendary author of the Maigret mystery novels, s series that spanned more than thirty years and almost two hundred novels. He also pioneered the romain dur or "hard novel" genre of unsparingly realistic and candid suspense stories. I've read two Maigret novels so far, as well as six of the hard novels, and I was impressed with how well crafted all of these books were. Even the Maigret novels were fine pieces of work, not at all hack entertainments tossed off as contractual obligations.
A Maigret novel I've read lately is Maigret at the Coroner's, a 1949 book that sees the Parisian police detective in a classic fish out of water scenario: he is visiting the US on a police exchange junket and is a guest of the FBI and other US law enforcement agencies. At the outset of the book, Maigret is in a Tucson Arizona courtroom, observing a coroner's inquest into the death of a young woman whose decapitated body was found on a lonely stretch of railroad track. She had been partying with four young men and died after being hit by a train.
Maigret is bewildered by the line of questioning taken by the coroner and other investigators at the inquest. Questions he thinks should be asked are completely ignored. He is mystified by the differences in American and French police procedure.
As the novel unfolds, Maigret follows the inquest and makes some informal investigations of his own. He meets the victim's brother and talks to the police investigating the case. He wanders about Tucson and marvels at how clean and comfortable the people's lives are. They live in beautiful, tidy homes and have all the consumer goods they could want, yet, something is wrong.
Maigret learns the city is dotted with plush social clubs stratified by income and profession. He contrasts this with the constant swilling of liquor at cheap bars to assuage the pain of living in a society of enforced cheerfulness and Babbitt-like pep and zip. He visits pool halls and arcades decorated with pictures of nude pinup girls and is bewildered to find at the same time a constant Puritanical dread and contempt for prostitution and sex outside of marriage. As Maigret observes drily to himself, "They have everything", yet they also seem to have nothing at all.
This is, of course, as Hilary Waugh would have undoubtedly reminded us, a mystery novel and Maigret stays on the case and eventually finds out whodunit. Yet, along the way, fascinating sociological observations and comments are made which make the book richer and more memorable, which make it much more than a facile copy and paste genre workout.
Henning Mankell is the Swedish mystery author who created the Kurt Wallander series of police procedural novels. Recently, I read The Pyramid, a collection of short stories and novellas detailing the early years of Wallander as a police detective, first in the Swedish city of Malmo, and later on in Ystad, the setting of all the later Kurt Wallander novels, from Faceless Killers onward.
The story that captured my attention the most was "The Death of the Photographer", in which Wallander investigates, well, the murder of a photographer in his shop late at night. While searching for clues in the shop, Wallander happens upon an album containing pictures of politicians and celebrities, which the photographer had, pre-Photoshop and computer photo manipulation software, had distorted into horrible, grotesque parodies of themselves. Wallander, who once had had his picture taken by the photographer, is chilled to find in the album a newspaper picture of himself twisted and distorted into a gargoyle-like caricature.
Wallander is horrified and puzzled by what he had found. The photographer had always struck him as a pleasant enough man, perhaps plain and banal, yet still a good person. During his investigations, Wallander meets the man's widow and learns that the man was anything but caring or kind. He was a harsh authoritarian who strictly limited how she could lead her life.
He learns more details about the photographer's secret past, but these are best left for you to learn of when you read the story.
I was struck by how Mankell picked up on the idea of photo manipulation as a symbol for the photographer's private kinks and cruelty. The story is set and I think was written in the early nineties, just before the Internet and photo manipulation software became, for better or worse, so ubiquitous. Now, anyone can be like the photographer and post online distorted pictures representing their whims, their resentments, their lusts. Everywhere the Web is littered with fake porn pictures of celebrities or even everyday people for everyone to see.
"The Death of the Photographer" is a eerily prescient and troubling story which diagnoses a social phenomenon which is now all too visible, and all too common.
I think that's a pretty strict definition of what constitutes suitable subject matter for a mystery novel: Mystery and nothing but a mystery. Nothing that will unhinge the careful, haiku like precision and compactness of the mystery novel's construction.
I don't know how true that statement is. Two authors who are regarded as masters of the mystery novel, Georges Simenon and Henning Mankell, often bring a sense of social and even political observation to their brilliantly crafted mystery tales. There are certainly more things said and statements made in their books than are dreamed of in Waugh's purist dictum and yet, they are great mystery writers whose novels are bench marks of the genre.
It could be argued that these writers aren't, strictly speaking, hardboiled either. I would take issue with that too. If hardboiled fiction can be defined as an action, suspense or mystery story that takes a cold-eyed, unflinching, yet still compassionate view of the more unpleasant and sordid aspects of existence, then both of these authors could still be considered hardboiled.
Georges Simenon was, of course, the legendary author of the Maigret mystery novels, s series that spanned more than thirty years and almost two hundred novels. He also pioneered the romain dur or "hard novel" genre of unsparingly realistic and candid suspense stories. I've read two Maigret novels so far, as well as six of the hard novels, and I was impressed with how well crafted all of these books were. Even the Maigret novels were fine pieces of work, not at all hack entertainments tossed off as contractual obligations.
A Maigret novel I've read lately is Maigret at the Coroner's, a 1949 book that sees the Parisian police detective in a classic fish out of water scenario: he is visiting the US on a police exchange junket and is a guest of the FBI and other US law enforcement agencies. At the outset of the book, Maigret is in a Tucson Arizona courtroom, observing a coroner's inquest into the death of a young woman whose decapitated body was found on a lonely stretch of railroad track. She had been partying with four young men and died after being hit by a train.
Maigret is bewildered by the line of questioning taken by the coroner and other investigators at the inquest. Questions he thinks should be asked are completely ignored. He is mystified by the differences in American and French police procedure.
As the novel unfolds, Maigret follows the inquest and makes some informal investigations of his own. He meets the victim's brother and talks to the police investigating the case. He wanders about Tucson and marvels at how clean and comfortable the people's lives are. They live in beautiful, tidy homes and have all the consumer goods they could want, yet, something is wrong.
Maigret learns the city is dotted with plush social clubs stratified by income and profession. He contrasts this with the constant swilling of liquor at cheap bars to assuage the pain of living in a society of enforced cheerfulness and Babbitt-like pep and zip. He visits pool halls and arcades decorated with pictures of nude pinup girls and is bewildered to find at the same time a constant Puritanical dread and contempt for prostitution and sex outside of marriage. As Maigret observes drily to himself, "They have everything", yet they also seem to have nothing at all.
This is, of course, as Hilary Waugh would have undoubtedly reminded us, a mystery novel and Maigret stays on the case and eventually finds out whodunit. Yet, along the way, fascinating sociological observations and comments are made which make the book richer and more memorable, which make it much more than a facile copy and paste genre workout.
Henning Mankell is the Swedish mystery author who created the Kurt Wallander series of police procedural novels. Recently, I read The Pyramid, a collection of short stories and novellas detailing the early years of Wallander as a police detective, first in the Swedish city of Malmo, and later on in Ystad, the setting of all the later Kurt Wallander novels, from Faceless Killers onward.
The story that captured my attention the most was "The Death of the Photographer", in which Wallander investigates, well, the murder of a photographer in his shop late at night. While searching for clues in the shop, Wallander happens upon an album containing pictures of politicians and celebrities, which the photographer had, pre-Photoshop and computer photo manipulation software, had distorted into horrible, grotesque parodies of themselves. Wallander, who once had had his picture taken by the photographer, is chilled to find in the album a newspaper picture of himself twisted and distorted into a gargoyle-like caricature.
Wallander is horrified and puzzled by what he had found. The photographer had always struck him as a pleasant enough man, perhaps plain and banal, yet still a good person. During his investigations, Wallander meets the man's widow and learns that the man was anything but caring or kind. He was a harsh authoritarian who strictly limited how she could lead her life.
He learns more details about the photographer's secret past, but these are best left for you to learn of when you read the story.
I was struck by how Mankell picked up on the idea of photo manipulation as a symbol for the photographer's private kinks and cruelty. The story is set and I think was written in the early nineties, just before the Internet and photo manipulation software became, for better or worse, so ubiquitous. Now, anyone can be like the photographer and post online distorted pictures representing their whims, their resentments, their lusts. Everywhere the Web is littered with fake porn pictures of celebrities or even everyday people for everyone to see.
"The Death of the Photographer" is a eerily prescient and troubling story which diagnoses a social phenomenon which is now all too visible, and all too common.
Friday, September 2, 2011
Harry Whittington: King of the Pulps
Another forgotten hardboiled crime fiction genre master is Harry Whittington. He was a pioneer of the paperback novel, with over seventy titles written under the Whittington brand, and under numerous pseudonyms as well. During his prime in the 1950s, he turned out as many as seven novels in one year, earning him the sobriquet "King of the Pulps".
Don't let the prodigious output deceive you. This was no wordsmith turned word grinder. Whittington's books are highly regarded for their careful characterization, ingenious plotting and careful attention to setting.
Web of Murder, a Whittington novel I recently finished, lives up to the author's reputation.
Brower is a hotshot lawyer who is having an affair with Laura, his assistant whose reserved manner conceals a firecracker eroticism that Brower is helpless to resist, or so he has convinced himself.
One problem, though: Brower is married, unhappily, perhaps, but still married to Cora, a woman he thinks he has grown tired of.
What to do? This being the grey zone of hardboiled noir fiction, a murder plot is in the offing and Brower, putting his brilliant legal mind to work, hatches one he thinks is unbeatable.
To conceal his lust for Laura, he makes it grossly obvious to the nosey Parkers of Summit, the Zenith-like city which he calls home, that he is seeing and probably bedding Victoria Haines, a politically-minded socialite whose upscale connections could coincidentally help him land a judgeship if he plays his marked cards right. Yet, too bad for our ambitious counsel, he loathes Victoria because of her oily, perfume soaked imitation of charm and class - his "love" scenes with Victoria almost evoke the dreaded concept of vagina dentata in their revulsion. He stokes the fires just the same, and soon, things are in place for Brower to strangle Cora as she sleeps and then drive her corpse to a forsaken field in Kansas, where he abandons both corpse and car. He assumes the long arm of the law, confused by the mysterious origins of the body, as well as the car's stolen licence plates, will never reach Summit.
Meanwhile, as the plot grinds into motion, Brower's mistress Laura is away in Florida posing as Cora and filing for a quickie divorce and posting a letter supposedly penned by Cora saying she is running away to South America, thus allowing Brower and Laura to live together lustily ever after.
Got that? It doesn't matter really. The breathless pace at which the tale unfolds, the delusional self-assurance with which Brower convinces himself that the plot will work, as well as his memorable asides - "You'll never be so lonely as on a highway driving with a corpse on the back seat" - help to smooth over some of the story's more outrageous aspects.
Besides, Brower's web of murder soon entangles him. He regrets killing Cora and remembers her with bitter nostalgia. His loathing for Victoria grows, he learns that Laura has been up to some especially dirty tricks of her own and a self-righteous local cop with a bad case of tabloid op-ed page morality is on his case, convinced that Brower is up to no good.
Web of Murder is an entertaining, well-written story that makes me want to find more Whittington. Unfortunately, only about seven of his novels are still widely available. Perhaps more will eventually surface in the cyberpulp world of e-books.
Don't let the prodigious output deceive you. This was no wordsmith turned word grinder. Whittington's books are highly regarded for their careful characterization, ingenious plotting and careful attention to setting.
Web of Murder, a Whittington novel I recently finished, lives up to the author's reputation.
Brower is a hotshot lawyer who is having an affair with Laura, his assistant whose reserved manner conceals a firecracker eroticism that Brower is helpless to resist, or so he has convinced himself.
One problem, though: Brower is married, unhappily, perhaps, but still married to Cora, a woman he thinks he has grown tired of.
What to do? This being the grey zone of hardboiled noir fiction, a murder plot is in the offing and Brower, putting his brilliant legal mind to work, hatches one he thinks is unbeatable.
To conceal his lust for Laura, he makes it grossly obvious to the nosey Parkers of Summit, the Zenith-like city which he calls home, that he is seeing and probably bedding Victoria Haines, a politically-minded socialite whose upscale connections could coincidentally help him land a judgeship if he plays his marked cards right. Yet, too bad for our ambitious counsel, he loathes Victoria because of her oily, perfume soaked imitation of charm and class - his "love" scenes with Victoria almost evoke the dreaded concept of vagina dentata in their revulsion. He stokes the fires just the same, and soon, things are in place for Brower to strangle Cora as she sleeps and then drive her corpse to a forsaken field in Kansas, where he abandons both corpse and car. He assumes the long arm of the law, confused by the mysterious origins of the body, as well as the car's stolen licence plates, will never reach Summit.
Meanwhile, as the plot grinds into motion, Brower's mistress Laura is away in Florida posing as Cora and filing for a quickie divorce and posting a letter supposedly penned by Cora saying she is running away to South America, thus allowing Brower and Laura to live together lustily ever after.
Got that? It doesn't matter really. The breathless pace at which the tale unfolds, the delusional self-assurance with which Brower convinces himself that the plot will work, as well as his memorable asides - "You'll never be so lonely as on a highway driving with a corpse on the back seat" - help to smooth over some of the story's more outrageous aspects.
Besides, Brower's web of murder soon entangles him. He regrets killing Cora and remembers her with bitter nostalgia. His loathing for Victoria grows, he learns that Laura has been up to some especially dirty tricks of her own and a self-righteous local cop with a bad case of tabloid op-ed page morality is on his case, convinced that Brower is up to no good.
Web of Murder is an entertaining, well-written story that makes me want to find more Whittington. Unfortunately, only about seven of his novels are still widely available. Perhaps more will eventually surface in the cyberpulp world of e-books.
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