Masters of Noir: Volume One Read online

  "I warned you,” I shouted. “One more word ... “ I cut myself short and yelled, “Hey, what the hell ... hey, cut it out! Let go that gun!"

  "You lousy filthy scum,” Linda shrieked.

  "Don't! Don't! For God's sake ... “

  I pointed the .45 over my head and fired two quick shots, the thunder echoing among the rocks like the dying beat of a horse's hooves. I screamed as loud as I could, and then I dropped my voice into a trailing moan. I clamped my jaws shut then and allowed silence to cover the land.

  It was quiet for a long time.

  Linda and I crouched down behind the rocks, waiting, looking at each other, the sweat pouring from our bodies. There was still no sound from the other side of the flatland, and I began to doubt the effectiveness of our plan.

  And then, softly, in a whisper that reached across the pebble-strewn clearing and climbed the rock barrier, Carrera called, “Linda?"

  I put my finger to my lips.

  "Linda?” he called again.

  I nodded this time, and she answered, “It's all right, Jose. It's all right."

  Carrera was quiet again, and I could picture him behind his rock barrier, his ears strained, his fat face flushed.

  "The American?” he called.

  "He is dead,” Linda answered.

  "Tell him to come over,” I prompted.

  She hesitated for a moment and then said, “Come over, Jose. Come."

  I waited, my chest heaving, the .45 heavy in my hand.

  "Throw out the American's gun,” Carrera said. His voice was cold and calculating. He wasn't buying it. He suspected a trick, and he wanted to make sure I wasn't forcing his woman to play along with me. I bit my lip and stared at the .45.

  "Give me the gun,” Linda whispered.

  "What for? What good would that ... “

  "I'll stand up. When he sees me with the gun, he will no longer suspect. Give it to me."

  "Throw out the gun, Linda,” Carrera called again.

  "Quick,” she said, “give me the gun."

  I hesitated for a moment, and then I passed the gun to her, holding it by the barrel, fitting the stock into her fingers.

  She took the gun gently, and then pointed it at my belly. A small smile tilted the corners of her mouth as she stood up. My eyes popped wide in astonishment.

  "It's all right now, Jose,” she said. “I've got his gun."

  "Bueno," Carrera said, and I could hear the smile in his voice. I'd been suckered, taken like a schoolboy, hook, line, and sinker.

  I slammed my right fist into the palm of my left hand.

  "So that's the way it is,” I said.

  "That's the way it is, senor," she answered. The gun didn't waver. It kept pointing at my belt buckle.

  "And it's senor now,” I added. “Last night, it was Jeff."

  "Last night was last night,” she said. “Now is now."

  Across the clearing, I could hear Carrera scraping his feet against the rocks as he clambered to a standing position. Linda's eyes flicked briefly to the right as she heard the sound, too, and then snapped back.

  I studied the gun in her hand, and I listened to the noises Carrera was making as he started across the clearing. I wondered whether I should pull the old “Get-her-Joe!” dodge, or the equally familiar “Who's- that- behind-you?” routine.

  I decided against both. Linda was no dummy, and she could hear Carrera coming as well as I could. If anyone were behind her, Carrera would see him. And besides, she knew damn well there was no one but the three of us in those lonely hills. No, it had to be something else.

  And it had to be soon.

  Carrera was a fat man, but he was covering ground. I glanced over at him, watching him waddle slowly across the long, pebble-strewn flatland. He was bigger than I'd imagined he was, with a flat nose and beady black eyes that squatted like olives on either side of it. He kept coming, with still a hell of a lot of ground to cover, but plodding steadily away at it. Once he got to me, it was goodbye MacCauley, goodbye ten thousand bucks, goodbye world. And I never liked saying goodbye.

  I started my play then. I began to sweat because I knew what it meant. Nothing had ever meant so much, and so it had to be good. It had to be damned good.

  "I'm surprised, Linda,” I told her. I kept my voice low, a bare whisper that only she could hear. From the corner of my eye, I watched Carrera's progress.

  "You should learn to expect surprises, senor," she answered.

  "I thought it meant a little more than ... “ I stopped short and shook my head.

  She was interested. I could see the way her brows pulled together slightly, a small V appearing between them.

  "Never mind,” I finished. “We'll just forget it."

  "What is there to forget?” she asked. She wanted me to go on. She tried to keep her voice light, but there was something behind her question, an uncertain probing. Carrera was halfway across the clearing now. I saw the .45 in his pudgy fist and I began to sweat more heavily. I had to hurry.

  "There's you to forget,” I said. “You, Linda. You and last night. That's a lot of forgetting to do before I die."

  "Stop it,” she said softly.

  "And the promise,” I went on. “That'll be the hardest to forget. The promise, Linda, You and me ... and ten thousand bucks. You and me, Linda ... “

  "Stop it!"

  "You and me without Carrera. Don't you see, Linda?” I pleaded. “Can't you understand what I'm telling you. Isn't it all over my face? What do I have to do to make you ... “

  "Jeff, no,” she said. “No, please.” She shook her head as if trying to clear it.

  I took a step closer to her. Carrera was no more than fifty feet away now. I could feel the sun on my shoulders and head, could hear the steady crunch of Carrera's feet against the pebbles.

  "Look at him, Linda,” I said, my voice a husky whisper. “Take a look at the fat slobbering pig you're doing this for."

  "Don't ... “ she said. She kept shaking her head and I could see her eyes beginning to glaze over.

  "Take a look! Look at him, go ahead. There's your boyfriend! There's Carrera!"

  "He's not my boyfriend,” she said, anguish in her throat.

  "Your boyfriend,” I repeated. “Carrera, fat ... “

  "My husband,” she said. “My husband, Jeff, my husband."

  He was almost on us. I could see his features plainly, could see the sweat dripping off his forehead. I took another step towards Linda.

  "Leave him,” I whispered urgently. “Leave him, darling. Leave him, leave him."

  She hesitated for a moment, and I saw her lower lip tremble. “Jeff, I ... I ... “

  She lowered the .45 for an instant, and that was when I sprang. I didn't bother with preliminaries. I brought back my fist as I leaped and uncocked it as the .45 went off like a skyrocket. I smelled the acrid odor of cordite in my nostrils, and then I felt my fist slam against her jaw. She was screaming when it caught her, but she stopped instantly, crumpling against the ground like a dirty shirt.

  Carrera was running now. I couldn't see him as I stooped to pick up the .45, but a man his size couldn't run on pebbles without all Mexico hearing it. I scrambled to my feet, lifting my head over the outcropping.

  He fired the minute my head showed, his bullets chipping off rock that scattered like shrapnel, ripping into my face. I covered my eyes with one hand and began firing blindly.

  Carrera stopped shooting as soon as I cut loose. I uncovered my face, then, and got him in my sights. He wasn't hard to hit. Something that big never is. I fired two shots that sprouted into big red blossoms across the white cotton shirt he wore. He clutched at the blossoms as if he wanted to pick them for a bouquet, and then he changed his mind and fell flat on his face. The ground seemed to tremble a little—and then it was quiet.

  I looked over my shoulder at Linda. She was still sprawled out on the ground, her hair spread out like spilled blackstrap under her head. I climbed over the rocks and walked to where Car
rera was decorating the landscape. I rolled him over and unfastened the money belt. Carefully, slowly, I counted the money. It was all there, ten thousand bucks worth. Carrera's eyes stared up at it, still greedy, but they weren't seeing anything any more. I picked up his .45 and tucked it in my waistband. Overhead, like black thunderclouds, the vultures were already beginning their slow spiral. Carrera would be a feast, all right, a real fat feast.

  I walked back to the rocks, my .45 cocked in my right hand.

  She was just sitting up when I got there. Her knees were raised, and the skirt was pulled back over them, showing the cool whiteness of her thighs. She brushed a black lock of hair away from her face, looking up at me with wide brown eyes.

  Her voice caught in her throat. “Carrera?” she asked.

  "He's dead,” I said.

  "Oh.” The word died almost before it found voice. She stared at the ground for a moment, and then lifted her head again. “Then ... then it's all right ... you and me ... we ... “

  I shook my head slowly.

  A puzzled look crept into her eyes. She looked at me with confusion all over her face, and the lip began trembling again.

  "No, baby,” I said.

  "But ... “

  "No,” I repeated.

  "But, you said ... “

  I turned my back on her and started walking down the twisting path, anxious to cover the long distance to the Olds.

  "Jeff!” she cried.

  I kept walking. Over my shoulder, I said, “You're Carrera's woman, baby. Remember? Go back to him."

  I heard the sob that escaped her lips, but I didn't look back. I kept walking, the sun still high, the sky a bright blue except where the vultures hung against it like hungry black dots.

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  BUTCHER by RICHARD S. PRATHER

  If you've been around Los Angeles much, you know that desolate, unlighted strip of highway, Chavez Ravine Road, that stretches from Adobe Street to Elysian Park. It's solitary and lonely enough in the daytime.

  Wednesday night about eight P.M. I swung off Adobe Street, headed for Hollywood and home. Things had been slow for over a week at the office of Sheldon Scott, Investigations, so I'd closed up early and spent the afternoon jawing with the guys at City Hall, then stopped off on Adobe for a beer. I was about half a mile down Chavez Ravine Road when I saw the dog.

  It was a big, mangy-looking mongrel sniffing a dirty white blob at the road's edge. In my headlights the blob looked like something wrapped in newspaper, part of the paper darkly stained.

  I kept on, angling toward Sunset, but that brown-stained paper stuck in my mind. It was a sort of creepy night to begin with; thick clouds were massed overhead blotting out the moon and stars, though it hadn't yet started to rain. Thunder rumbled softly far away and the air was heavy, damp.

  When I hit Sunset, the sight and sound of all the cars, instead of making me forget that thing I'd seen, brought it even more clearly into my mind. I turned around and drove back. The dog ran a few steps away and squatted close to the ground when I parked. Leaving the Cad's headlights on I walked to the newspaper-wrapped bundle, looked at the mud smears on it—and at another brown stain. Then I gripped a corner of the paper and unwrapped it from the thing inside.

  I didn't know what it was at first. But two minutes later, using the phone in a nearby house, I was talking to my good friend, Phil Samson, Captain of Central Homicide. “Sam, this is Shell. Get somebody out here on Chavez Ravine Road. I think I've found a—a leg."

  "Oh, my Christ,” he said. “Another one."

  "Yeah.” This was number three. Three murders, parts of three dismembered bodies—three that we knew about. Sam was swearing. I told him where I was and hung up.

  There were two others with me in room 42 at City Hall. Samson, a big pink-faced guy with a jaw like a boulder and a black unlighted cigar clamped in his strong teeth; and bald, brush-browed Louis from the Vice Squad. This was in Homicide's lap, but the Vice Squad is interested in murders that show the work of a twisted mind.

  We'd been kicking the case around and anyone eavesdropping would have thought there was a little respect for the dead here. They'd have been wrong. In any large police headquarters death becomes, finally, so common that it's treated more casually, more flippantly, than by most people, and here in L.A. Homicide the boys had got to calling this particular killer The Butcher.

  Louis, the Vice Squad Lieutenant, poured more coffee into my paper cup and I said to him, “Lou, you're the psychologist. What the hell kind of guy would cut them up?"

  He raised a shaggy eyebrow and patted his bald skull. “Two kinds. The practical guy, because it's easier to get rid of an arm or leg than a body; and the nut. The nut likes it, gets a charge. This one's a nut."

  "Why not practical?"

  "Because the same guy did it. Three times is getting goddamned unpractical. At least it looks like the same guy, right, Sam?"

  Samson bit into his black cigar. “So far. They're still working on it.” He grabbed his phone and growled into it for a minute, then hung up. He looked at me. “Young girl again, about eighteen, five-two, hundred-ten pounds, blonde. Jesus.” He banged a big horny fist against his desk top and said, “All that they give me from a leg. Why in hell can't they look in a test tube and come up with her name and who killed her?” He swore. “Same guy. This one had been frozen, too. Cut up while she was frozen stiff."

  Louis perched on Sam's desk and leaned toward me. “Add that in, Shell, if you want to know what kind of guy. We get the dregs, chum. And the hell of it is you can't tell it by looking at them. Take a number from one to two million, and that's our boy. Could be you, me, even Harrington Harrington the Fourth. And it always gets worse, like a bug multiplying in the blood. First maybe a pin to stick a woman with, then a rape, then you find a leg.” He shrugged. “They run amuck, but they look O.K.; they run amuck in their minds."

  The conversation drifted to the Black Dahlia; to Albert Fish, who killed a little girl, cut her up, and ate her flesh—cooked with carrots and onions and bacon; to some of the things that never hit print and that are difficult to believe even though you know they've happened. When the morning watch came on at midnight I left, and drove home on brightly-lit Sunset.

  In the morning, I couldn't get the murder out of my thoughts. I'd dreamed a crawly cold-sweat dream, and awakened with the picture of that severed limb in my mind. Ex-Marine, long-time detective, I'd seen worse things, especially in the war; but even the mass insanity of war didn't seem quite so personal or frightening as a guy who would kill a kid, freeze her, and cut her up.

  Just before nine A.M., when I was getting ready to leave for my office, Samson phoned. Some more of the girl had been found. “Thought you'd want to know, Shell,” he said. “Rolled prints off the hand and made identification. Judith Geer."

  "Oh, no, Sam. Not one of those sweet little gals."

  "Yeah. Sister listed this Judith with Missing Persons two days ago. Thought maybe she'd been hurt, hit by a car or something."

  I told him to hang on a minute while I lit a cigarette. The identification had rocked me. I know both of the gals he was talking about. Judith Geer—the dead one—and Norma Geer, her sister, worked at a Carpenter's Drive-In where I'd had innumerable hamburgers and beers, and kidded with both girls a lot; they had shared an apartment on Melrose.

  I thought about Judy, little and cute and blonde as sunshine, trotting out to my car and laughing with me over nonsense, and I thought of that ugly unreal thing I'd found last night. I said, “Sam, are you sure? It doesn't seem possible—"

  "Hell, yes, we're sure. Look, you knew them pretty well, didn't you?"

  "Just to yak with. I know their names, and they know mine, and we had a lot of laughs. That's about all. Jesus, Sam, what kind of a sonofabitch would ... “ I let it die.

  He said, “If you know the sister well enough to drop in later you might pick up something we haven't got. You know, you're unofficial, no uniform."


  "Yeah. I'm hamburger with onions and two beers. Sure, Sam."

  "We want this one, Shell, the worst way. The guy must be clear off now, gone, nuts; Christ knows what he'll do next."

  "Uh-huh. You get anything, give me a buzz. I'll see you later."

  Nothing happened at the office except the phone rang once. It was a gal with a thready voice asking that I please hurry to her address because tiny saucer-shaped men were on her roof, screeching down the chimney at her. I told her to call 2680 at City Hall: the police psycho detail; they got calls like that every day.

  It wasn't funny. When I hung up a shiver ran over my spine again, and I swore, phoned Norma's place on Melrose. Norma said she was glad I'd called and, sure, come on over; she could use some company. She could use a few laughs, she said. She was trying to sound adult, brittle, not frightened. But she was seventeen, and she couldn't quite pull it off.

  There weren't any laughs. Norma was scared, shocked; all through with crying for now, and white-faced scared. Tall and slim and blue-eyed, she sat with her legs curled under her in an easy chair. I could tell she was thinking that it might have been her instead of her sister, that maybe it might still be.

  I tried to convince Norma that whoever had killed Judy would certainly stay clear of her, and I really opened my mouth and put my foot in it. I'd been thinking about the talk at Homicide last night, and for a moment I must have forgotten who I was talking to.

  I said, “Hell, doll, we were talking about The Butcher last night, and it's not ... “

  Norma straightened up in her chair, rigid. I could have yanked out my tongue; she might not even know how Judy had been mutilated.

  I started to apologize for my choice of words, but Norma interrupted, “It's all right, Shell. It just shocked me when you said butcher, because it made me think of Mr. Hecker."

  "Who?"

  "Mr. Hecker. He's our ... butcher, where we get our meat."

  "This Hecker,” I said slowly, “you know him very well?"

  "Just from the market. Oh, he tried to date ... both of us, but naturally we wouldn't have anything to do with him."