The Oxford Book of American Det (80 page)

“Ma,” I said, “I’m—oh, I don’t know what I am. I’m sorry, Ma.” She nodded. “I know, I know—Peter, it’s not good to hate. It’s not good, being suspicious. Is it because of Gina? Because you’ve waited so long? You think I’ve been happy about that? Peter—“

“What’s the good of talking?” I asked her. “It’s a rat race, Ma.” I got up, too, and went out.

It was cooler now. I could see Gina, in her kitchen, helping her mother with the dishes.

I went over to Fourteenth Street, to Barney’s.

I only had two bucks on me, but my credit was good. I drank a lot of whiskey, and it didn’t do any good at all. I wasn’t happy now, or mad—just sour, dead, empty.

The lights were out at Sanchez’s. There was a light on in our house, though, and a prowl car in front. I hurried up the walk.

There was a cop there. Ma was sitting in the big chair, and crying. Manny was sitting on the davenport, looking mad.

The cop had a book in his hand, a bank book. He turned as I came in. He sniffed, and looked at me suspiciously.

“What’s the matter?” I said. Sick, I was now, and mad.

“You the brother?”

“That’s right. What’s the matter?”

“Found this little book in a home that was robbed tonight. It’s a bankbook showing a total deposit of eleven hundred dollars, made out to your brother.”

“Eleven hundred dollars?” I stared at Manny. “You—“

“It’s mine, but I lost it, Pete. I lost it over two weeks ago.”

“Eleven hundred dollars,” I said, and took a step his way.

“Peter—“ Mama said. Her voice was deep and she glared at me. “This is the time, Peter. Now, I’ll know if you’re a brother.”

Manuel, Manuel... I fought the whiskey and the hate in me. What a baby he’d been.

What a smart, quick, smiling baby. I took a deep breath and faced away from him. I faced the cop.

“He says he lost it. Two weeks ago, he says.”

“And reported the loss?”

“The very next day,” Manny said. “You could check that at the bank. You want to see the new one they gave me?”

The cop shook his head. “You’ve got a ‘36 Ford, a convertible with a cut-down, solid top?”

“Every other rod in town’s a ‘36 with solid top. That’s the best model to cut down.”

“Maybe. I think you ought to come down anyway. Just a few questions, you know, like where you were tonight.”

Well, a test. I turned around and said, “I’ll go along, Manny. Don’t let him scare you.”

“I’m not scared, I’m mad,” Manny said. “I’m so mad I’m not scared to admit where I was tonight, though you won’t like it, Pete. I was at Gilmore Stadium, driving the Art Willis Special. I won the feature in it. There must have been a couple thousand watching me.”

“You, in a race car?” I said. “Manny, baby, you’re just a—“

“Pete, I won. I win a lot of races. You should read the sports pages, Pete, not the front pages; you’d learn an awful lot.”

Now I saw, and took a deep breath. “And the eleven hundred?”

“Was for you. A truck for you, I was saving for. So you could be in business for yourself, and wouldn’t have to punch the clock. Ma knew I was driving, but we were scared to tell you, the way you’ve been.”

“Sounds very fine,” the cop said, “but I’m afraid it would sound better if the lieutenant heard it.”

“Beat it,” I said. “Go someplace and blow your whistle. You’re not taking my brother anywhere.”

“Peter—“ Mama said.

The phone rang.

“That would be for me,” the cop said, and went over to pick up the phone.

“Right,” he said, and “Oh—I see. Admitted it? Let’s see, that would be next door.

Makes sense, all right. Sure, I’ll run over and talk to his folks.” He hung up, and faced us. He didn’t look comfortable. “A—a Christy Sanchez admitted finding that bankbook, and admitted being a member of the gang that robbed that house. Said he left it behind on purpose. Had some kind of grudge against your brother.” He looked at me. “That would be you.”

I didn’t say anything.

He shook his head. “I don’t know what’s the matter with these kids.”

“Christy hasn’t a father,” I said. “When you’re ready to go down with the Sanchezes, I’d like to go along, officer.”

“All right. I’ll drop back.” He went out.

“Manny,” I said. “Oh, Manny, baby.”

“It’s all right, Pete,” he said. “You work hard, and it’s been rough. But for gosh sakes, don’t—ah, Pete.”

But I couldn’t help it. I was crying. And Pete was crying and Ma too. It was wonderful.

ANTHONY BOUCHER (1911-1968)

It may be said that in detective fiction, Anthony Boucher is an exception to the old rule

‘Them that can, do; them that can’t, teach.’ As the most influential critic of popular literature of his time, Boucher taught readers of the
New York Times Book Review, the
New York Herald Tribune Book Review,
and the
San Francisco Chronicle
what it takes to make a good detective novel. He also wrote seven of them himself.

The son of two physicians, Boucher was born in California as William Anthony Parker White. He graduated
Phi Beta Kappa
from the University of Southern California, where he spent much of his free time acting, directing, and writing drama. After earning a Master of Arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley, he began an unsuccessful career as a playwright. After he failed to sell two plays, he began writing detective novels, using the Anthony Boucher pen name because he still regarded himself as a playwright. As Boucher, he created the red-haired private eye Fergus O’Breen and Lieutenant A. Jackson of the Los Angeles Police Department’s homicide division as series characters. He used another pen name, H. H. Holmes, for his two novels featuring Sister Ursula, a devout nun and clever sleuth who aids in the cases of LAPD homicide lieutenant Terence Marshall. He also penned radio scripts and wrote and edited science fiction.

In terms of plotting, character development, and social comment, Boucher’s mystery writing was not exceptional for the time. Plots tend to centre on puzzles, and solutions depend on deductions drawn from plenty of well-placed clues. Boucher’s fiction is most notable for the wit and literary allusions that enrich his books and short stories.

While Boucher’s fiction was well received, critics agree that his major contribution was his literary criticism. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of Boucher’s serious reviewing in the
New York Times
of a genre previously disdained as mere entertainment or trashy fiction. His excellent taste and judgment as a critic were reinforced by his editing of texts and anthologies in the field. He won the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar award three times for his critical work. That organisation’s annual convention was eventually named for him: the ‘”Bouchercon’ now attracts more than a thousand mystery fans, writers, editors, collectors, and hangers-on each year. Its international importance is underlined by the fact that the twenty-sixth Bouchercon, in 1995, was the second to be held in England.

Crime Must Have a Stop
features Nick Noble, one of Boucher’s best-developed characters. Noble is an alcoholic former cop who solves crimes while drinking cheap wine and making allusions to Sherlock Holmes, Shakespeare, and Christopher Marlowe in a Mexican-style bar in Los Angeles.

Crime Must Have a Stop

The third set of flashbulbs exploded and the actress relaxed and pulled down her skirt.

Lieutenant MacDonald continued to stare somewhat foolishly at the silver trophy in his hands.

“Well?” the actress grinned. “How does it feel to be the recipient of the Real Detective Award for the Real Detective of the Year?”

“Thirstifying,” said MacDonald honestly.

The actress nodded. “Well spoken, my fine ferreting friend. I always feel a spot of alcohol is indicated after cheesecake myself. Where are we going?” MacDonald still contemplated the trophy. It had been exciting, very exciting, to be chosen by the top fact-crime radio program for its annual award; but he’d been feeling uneasy ever since the announcement. Despite the extraordinary record of solved cases that had made him the bright young star of the Los Angeles Police Department, he felt like an impostor.

“Mind a ride downtown?” he asked. “We’re going to deliver this trophy to the man it really belongs to.”

The actress raised her unplucked brows as they turned east on Sunset. “I’ve worked in Hollywood for three years,” she said, “and I’ve never known whether Sunset Boulevard ran beyond Gower. They tell me there’s a city called Los Angeles down this way. That where we’re going?”

“Uh huh. And you’re going to meet the damnedest man in that city of the damned...” And MacDonald began the story.

He began with his own first case—the case that started with his finding a dead priest and ended with his shooting one of his fellow lieutenants. He explained where he had found the solution of that case, and where he had found the solution for which he had just been awarded the trophy.

“You weren’t giving awards back in the early thirties,” he said. “But there was a man in the department then who topped anybody you’ve honoured. He had a mind... it’s hard to describe: a mind of mathematical precision, with a screwball offbeat quality—a mind that could see the shape of things, grasp the inherent pattern—“

“Like a good director,” the actress put in.

“Something,” MacDonald admitted. “Then there came that political scandal—maybe you’ve heard echoes—and the big shake-up. There was a captain who knew what wires to pull, and there was a lieutenant who took the rap. The lieutenant was our boy.

He had a wife then and she needed an operation. The pay checks stopped coming and she didn’t get it...”

The actress’s lively face grew grave as she followed the relentless story of the disintegration of greatness: the brilliant young detective, stripped at once of career and wife, slipping, skidding, until there was nothing left but the comfort of cheap sherry and the occasional quickening of the mind when it was confronted with a problem...

MacDonald pulled up in front of the Chula Negra. He peered in, caught sight of Mama Gonzales’ third daughter Rosario, and beckoned her to the door. “You got any marches on your juke box?” he asked, handing her a nickel.

So it was to the strains of the Mexican national hymn that the Real Detective Award trophy entered the little Mexican restaurant. Lieutenant MacDonald bore it proudly aloft and the actress followed him, confused and vaguely delighted.

Mexicanos al grito de guerra...

MacDonald halted in front of the fourth booth on the left, with the certainty of finding its sharp-nosed white-skinned inhabitant. He placed the trophy on the table, flourished his hand and proclaimed, “To the Real Detective of the Year!” The actress placed one foot on the bench and lifted her skirt over her knee. “That makes it an official award,” she grinned.

...al sonoro rugir del candn boompty boomp!

Nick Noble’s pale blue eyes surveyed the symbolic silver figure of Justice Triumphant Over Wrongdoing. “If it was only a cup...” he sighed, and downed his water glass of sherry.

That was the start of an evening memorable in many ways. It was MacDonald’s first non-professional visit to the Chula Negra; and he was amazed to realise that Nick Noble could drop cryptic comments on the theatre of twenty years ago which fascinated the actress as much as his comments on crime had stimulated the lieutenant.

He was further amazed to realise the warmth and vitality of the girl beside him, whom he had at first regarded solely as the inevitable wench demanded by cameramen.

They fitted together somehow, her bubbling eagerness and Noble’s weary terseness.

They belonged together because they were the same thing underneath, the same piercing through of conventional acceptance, straight to reality. MacDonald was growing more and more aware of the girl, more and more aware of the peculiarity of a man’s being single in his thirties, when the episode began which was to make the evening completely memorable.

It started unspectacularly enough, with a voice calling, “Hi, Don!” The voice was high-pitched, but firmly male—a tenor with baritone quality. The man was slight but firmly built, dressed in the standard mismatched uniform of middle-bracket Hollywood, and MacDonald was certain he’d never seen him before. But even as the man seized his hand, as the actress looked up curiously and Nick Noble finished his latest sherry, MacDonald began thinking back. Far back, obviously. Anyone who called him Don dated from college days at USC. Now he was Mac or Lieutenant or Loot. A faint but ghastly picture flitted across his mind, of something called an Apolliad, an evening of students’ creative contributions to the higher literature. There must be some reason why he was thinking of that—there must, in fact, have been some reason why he had attended it...

“Steve Harnett!” he cried. “You old son of a—“ He broke off, glancing sideways at the actress.

“I’ve heard the word,” she said dryly. “I just didn’t think men ever greeted each other that way outside of bad plays and Rotary Club meetings.”

“It’s grand to see you, Don,” Harnett was saying. “I kept reading about you in the papers and saying I’ve got to look you up and then... well, you know how it is.”

“Don’t I,” MacDonald confessed. “I read about you too. I’ll go you one better: I even listen to
Pursuit,
just to see how far away from real murder you can get.”

“Oh! Do you write
Pursuit?”
Only half of the girl’s breathlessness was good technique.

“I should’ve warned you.” MacDonald looked rueful. “She’s a radio actress.”

“And therefore should know by now that a writer’s introduction to the producer is the kiss of death. Still you might as well introduce us.”

“Sure... Good Lord! Do you realise that in all the hullabaloo of those publicity photographs I never did catch your name?”

“Lynn Dvorak,” said Nick Noble quietly.

“Don’t tell - me that’s a deduction!”

“Asked her. While you were greeting your friend.”

MacDonald grinned. “If all your rabbits-out-of-sherry-bottles were as simple as that—

“

“They are,” said Noble. “To me.” His washed-out blue eyes glazed over oddly as he contemplated the actress and the radio writer.