“I disappear in about five minutes.” Lenny looked at her. “You coming?”
She thought about it. “I can’t come, no,” she said finally. “I have a child.”
“We take her,” Lenny offered.
She shook her head, no. The room was going dark at the edges, she noticed. Like a field of blue asters, perhaps. Or ice when the sun strikes it. And how curious the blue becomes when clouds cross the sun, when the blue becomes broken, tawdry.
“I had plans for you. I was going to introduce you to some people. I should of met you fifteen years ago. I could have retired. Get me some ice,” Lenny said. “Let’s have a drink.”
“We’re in AA. Are you crazy?” She was annoyed.
“I need a drink. I need a fix. I need an automatic weapon. I need a plane,” he said. He looked past her to the den. Maria was watching television and wrapping Christmas presents.
“You need a drink, too,” Lenny said. “Don’t even think about it. The phone. You’re an accessory after the fact. You can go to jail. What about your kid then?”
They were standing in her living room. There was a noble pine tree near the fireplace. There were wrapped boxes beneath the branches. Maria asked in Spanish if she needed anything. She said not at the moment. Two glasses with ice, that was all.
“Have a drink,” Lenny said. “You can always go back to the meetings. They take you back. They don’t mind. I do it all the time. All over the world. I been doing it for ten years.”
“I didn’t know that,” she said. It was almost impossible to talk. It occurred to her that her sanity was becoming intermittent, like a sudden stretch of intact road in an abandoned region. Or radio music, blatant after months of static.
“Give me the bottle. I’ll pour you one. Don’t look like that. You look like you’re going down for the count. Here.” Lenny handed the glass to her. She could smell the vodka. “Open your mouth, goddamn it.”
She opened her mouth. She took a sip. Then she lit a cigarette.
“Wash the glass when I leave,” Lenny said. “They can’t prove shit. You don’t know me. You were never anywhere. Nothing happened. You listening? You don’t look like you’re listening. You look like you’re on tilt. Come on, baby. Listen to Daddy. That’s good. Take another sip.”
She took another sip. Lenny was standing near the door. “You’re getting off easy, you know that? I ran out of time. I had plans for you,” he was saying.
He was opening the door. “Some ride, huh? Did Daddy do like he said? Get you to the other side? You catch a glimpse? See what’s there? I think you’re starting to see. Can’t say Lenny lied to you, right?”
She took another sip. “Right,” she agreed. When this glass was finished she would pour another. When the bottle was empty, she would buy another.
Lenny closed the door. The night stayed outside. She was surprised. She opened her mouth but no sound came out. Instead, blue things flew in, pieces of glass or tin, or necklaces of blue diamonds, perhaps. The air was the blue of a pool when there are shadows, when clouds cross the turquoise surface, when you suspect something contagious is leaking, something camouflaged and disrupted. There is only this infected blue enormity elongating defiantly. The blue that knows you and where you live and it’s never going to forget.
Editor’s Acknowledgments
In pulling together the table of contents for this anthology, I read hundreds of short stories that steeped me in the richness, diversity, breadth, and depth of classic short fiction about Los Angeles. In addition to my own research, I avidly sought out opinions from others.
So thanks to everyone who recommended authors or stories for me to read. I truly appreciate your enthusiastic suggestions, even if your favorite didn’t make it into this volume.
A tip of the fedora to Steven Cooper for John Fante, Tom Nolan for Ross Macdonald, Margaret Millar, and Leigh Brackett, Francis M. Nevins and Jim Pascoe for Cornell Woolrich, Judith Freeman for Raymond Chandler, Bill Pronzini for Erle Stanley Gardner, Kenny Turan for Paul Cain, Rodger Jacobs for Charles Bukowski, Robert Bloch, and Richard Matheson, Naomi Hirahara and Greg Robinson for Hisaye Yamamoto, Michael Nava for Joseph Hansen and for his own brilliant short story “Street People,” which unfortunately proved too long for this collection. Thanks also to Gary Phillips and Emory Holmes II for ongoing discussions but especially for Donald Goines, Wanda Coleman, Iceberg Slim, and Budd Schulberg’s collection From the Ashes, Voices of Watts, Richard Yarborough for answering my questions about Players Magazine (I still think that would make a good thesis for someone), Paula Woods for Roland S. Jefferson, and thanks to Stephen Sohn, Daniel A. Olivas, Susan Baker Sotelo, and Sarah Cortez.
And lastly, thanks to the hard-working librarians at the Glendale and Los Angeles public libraries who helped me track down some of the more obscure and out-of-print titles. They are the true private eyes of the literary world.
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
LEIGH BRACKETT (1915–1978) was born in Los Angeles. Although best known for her fantasy and science fiction, she also wrote mystery novels and Hollywood screenplays. Her first novel, No Good from a Corpse, published in 1944, was a hard-boiled mystery in the tradition of Raymond Chandler and led to her cowriting the scripts for The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye (both based on Chandler novels). Shortly before her death, she wrote the screenplay (with additional revisions made by Lawrence Kasdan and Geroge Lucas) for The Empire Strikes Back, which won a Hugo Award in 1981.
KATE BRAVERMAN is the author of Lithium for Medea, Palm Latitudes, and two other novels that define the sordid pseudo-tropics of Los Angeles. She is also a poet and essayist, but is best known for her short stories, described as the “gold standard” for contemporary female fiction. All the rumors are true.
JAMES M. CAIN (1892–1977) was born in Annapolis, Maryland, and served in World War I. After a stint as the managing editor at the New Yorker, he moved to Hollywood in the 1930s. His first novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice, a crime-fiction classic, was said by Albert Camus to have inspired him to write The Stranger, and has been adapted into several films. Double Indemnity and Mildred Pierce are among his other classic novels that inspired classic films. In 1970, the Mystery Writers of America named Cain a Grand Master.
PAUL CAIN (1902–1966) is the pseudonym of George Carol Sims, who authored a series of hard-boiled detective novelettes for the pulp magazine Black Mask beginning in 1932. The son of a police detective, Cain was born in Des Moines, Iowa, and moved to Southern California in 1918. He eventually scripted nine films for major studios under the pen name Peter Ruric, including The Black Cat in 1934. His increasing problems with alcoholism killed off his pulp career by 1936, and his Hollywood career ended in 1944. Sims spent much of the late 1940s and ’50s in Europe. He attempted a Hollywood comeback in 1959, but found his reputation kept studio doors closed to him. Cain contracted cancer and died in a cheap apartment in Hollywood in the summer of 1966.
JAMES ELLROY was born in Los Angeles in 1948. His L.A. Quartet novels—The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz—were international best sellers. His novel American Tabloid was a Time magazine Best Fiction Book of 1995; his memoir, My Dark Places, was a Time Best Book of the Year and a New York Times Notable Book for 1996. His novel The Cold Six Thousand was a New York Times Notable Book and a Los Angeles Times Best Book for 2001. Ellroy lives in Los Angeles.