The Best American Noir of the Century

We were still crawling at maybe ten miles per hour when he pulled the headlights on.

That’s when we saw him, silver of eye, dark of hair, crouching in the middle of the alley waiting for us. He was a good fifty yards ahead of us, but we were still within range.

There was no place we could turn around.

He fired.

This bullet shattered whatever had been left untouched of the windshield. Neil slammed on the brakes.

Then he fired a second time.

By now, both Neil and I were screaming and cursing again.

A third bullet.

“Run him over!” I yelled, ducking behind the dashboard.

“What?” Neil yelled back.

“Floor it!”

He floored it. He wasn’t even sitting up straight. We might have gone careening into one of the garages or Dumpsters. But somehow the Buick stayed in the alley. And very soon it was traveling eighty-five miles per hour. I watched the speedometer peg it.

More shots, a lot of them now, side windows shattering, bullets ripping into fender and hood and top.

I didn’t see us hit him, but I felt us hit him, the car traveling that fast, the creep so intent on killing us he hadn’t bothered to get out of the way in time.

The front of the car picked him up and hurled him into a garage near the head of the alley.

We both sat up, watched as his entire body was broken against the edge of the garage, and he then fell smashed and unmoving to the grass.

“Kill the lights,” I said.

“What?”

“Kill the lights, and let’s go look at him.”

Neil punched off the headlights.

We left the car and ran over to him.

A white rib stuck bloody and brazen from his side. Blood poured from his ears, nose, mouth. One leg had been crushed and also showed white bone. His arms had been broken, too.

I played my flashlight beam over him.

He was dead, all right.

“Looks like we can save our money,” I said. “It’s all over now.”

“I want to get the hell out of here.”

“Yeah,” I said. “So do I.”

We got the hell out of there.

7

A month later, just as you could smell autumn on the summer winds, Jan and I celebrated our twelfth wedding anniversary. We drove up to Lake Geneva, in Wisconsin, and stayed at a very nice hotel and rented a Chris-Craft for a couple of days. This was the first time I’d been able to relax since the thing with the burglar had started.

One night when Jan was asleep, I went up on the deck of the boat and just watched the stars. I used to read a lot of Edgar Rice Burroughs when I was a boy. I always remembered how John Carter felt — that the stars had a very special destiny for him and would someday summon him to that destiny. My destiny, I decided that night there on the deck, was to be a good family man, a good stockbroker, and a good neighbor. The bad things were all behind me now. I imagined Neil was feeling pretty much the same way. Hot bitter July seemed a long way behind us now. Fall was coming, bringing with it football and Thanksgiving and Christmas. July would recede even more with snow on the ground.

The funny thing was, I didn’t see Neil much anymore. It was as if the sight of each other brought back a lot of bad memories. It was a mutual feeling, too. I didn’t want to see him any more than he wanted to see me. Our wives thought this was pretty strange. They’d meet at the supermarket or shopping center and wonder why “the boys” didn’t get together anymore. Neil’s wife, Sarah, kept inviting us over to “sit around the pool and watch Neil pretend he knows how to swim.” September was summer hot. The pool was still the centerpiece of their life.

Not that I made any new friends. The notion of a midweek poker game had lost all its appeal. There was work and my family and little else.

Then, one sunny Indian-summer afternoon, Neil called and said, “Maybe we should get together again.”

“Maybe.”

“Its over, Aaron. It really is.”

“I know.”

“Will you at least think about it?”

I felt embarrassed. “Oh, hell, Neil. Is that swimming pool of yours open Saturday afternoon?”

“As a matter of fact, it is. And as a matter of fact, Sarah and the girls are going to be gone to a fashion show at the club.”

“Perfect. We’ll have a couple of beers.”

“You know how to swim?”

“No,” I said, laughing. “And from what Sarah says, you don’t either.”

* * *

I got there about three, pulled into the drive, walked to the back where the gate in the wooden fence led to the swimming pool. It was eighty degrees, and even from here I could smell the chlorine.

I opened the gate and went inside and saw him right away. The funny thing was, I didn’t have much of a reaction at all. I just watched him. He was floating. Face-down. He looked pale in his red trunks. This, like the others, would be judged an accidental death. Of that I had no doubt at all.

I used the cellular phone in my car to call 911.

I didn’t want Sarah and the girls coming back to see an ambulance and police cars in the drive and them not knowing what was going on.

I called the club and had her paged.

I told her what I’d found. I let her cry. I didn’t know what to say. I never do.