She opened her eyes in the car, going back, and smiled up at the blood-caked face bending over her. “It was so cold in there and dark, and I couldn’t breathe any more. It was just a dream, wasn’t it, Danny? Just a dream and I’m awake now?”
“It was just a dream,” Officer 4432 said, holding his wife close in his arms.
Afterword to “Blue Is for Bravery”
“Blue Is for Bravery” (Detective Fiction Weekly, February 27, 1937), which had been submitted as “The Police Are Always With Us,” is rather short and almost plotless but full of action and desperate urgency and with a viewpoint rare indeed for Woolrich. As Danny goes berserk and careens across the nightscape in a race against time and death, for once our reaction to a Noir Cop is undivided and we are completely and uncritically behind torture, mayhem and whatever else is done by a protagonist with a badge.
You Bet Your Life
He was a wise guy. He’d had one Collins too many, but even without that he still would have been a wise guy. He had too much money, that was the whole trouble with him. No, that wasn’t it either; he had an offensive way of showing he had too much money. Get the difference? Always knew everything. That type. Ready to bet any amount on anything, at the drop of a hat. On whether the next pretty girl to come down the street would be a blonde or a brunette. On which of two given lumps of sugar would attract a fly first.
Money talks, they say. His always drowned out the other fellow’s argument. He’d put up stakes he knew the other fellow couldn’t afford, most of the time. Leaving him a choice of backing down or being taken for a thorough cleaning. His money had a habit of putting the other fellow in the wrong either way; making a liar out of him or showing him up for a welsher. I’m convinced he would have caught cold without a big fat overstuffed wallet for a chest-protector. He was always making round trips in and out of his pocket, with a flourish and a hard slap down and a challenging bellow. And the way he hounded them afterwards until he’d collected what was coming to him, you’d think he really needed the money. He was the one usually on the collecting end too, poetic justice to the contrary. He didn’t have a real gambler’s instincts. Apart from a few side-bets of the type I’ve mentioned above, he almost always picked a sure thing. Not much of a sport, when it came right down to it. The dislike, the spark of animosity his overbearing ways always aroused, was what got his bets taken up for him more often than not. Case of the poor slobs cutting their noses to spite their faces, just because they hated his insides so. He steered clear of professionals, seldom bet on sporting events. If I hadn’t known he’d been born wealthy; was lousy with money — and lousy without it too — I would have suspected him of making a nice living out of this nasty little pastime of his. But there wasn’t even that excuse for it. And vet he put the screws on worse than a loan shark, using a man’s reputation and self-respect among his friends as a bludgeon to make them pay through the nose.
There was a story around town, never substantiated, that he was indirectly to blame for one high-strung young chap putting an end to himself, to forestall discovery of a defalcation that had been the result of his topheavy “obligation” to this Fredericks. I wouldn’t have put it past him.
I’m one of those lucky people that nothing ever happens to; that are always the bystander. I was the bystander that night that this happened, at the 22 Club, too. Fredericks had never tackled me. Maybe he sensed a detached amusement that baffled him. He could have waved that famous wallet in front of my nose till it wore out and it wouldn’t have done him any good. He knew enough not to try it.
I came into the 22 with Trainor, and we saw Fredericks there swilling Collinses. He came over to our table, and there was a minimum of conversation for a while. I wanted to walk out again, but he was between the two of us and I couldn’t get Trainor’s eye.
The radio over the bar was giving dramatized news events, and the highlight of them was the description of the capture of a long-wanted murderer, cornered at last after being hunted high and low for months. The case, which we all remembered well, was finally closed.
The commentator was good, played it up for all it was worth. It got you. You couldn’t hear a sound in the place until he’d finished. Then we all took a deep breath together.
“There, but for the grace of God,” Fredericks remarked drily, “go you or I or any one of us.”
Trainor gave him a look. “Thanks for the compliment, but I don’t class myself as a potential murderer. Nor does Evans here, I’m sure.”
“Everyone is,” Fredericks said loftily. “Every man you see standing around you in this bar is. It’s the commonest impulse there is, we all have it. It’s latent in all of us, every man-jack. All it’s waiting for is a strong enough motive to come to the surface and — bang!” He drained his glass, started to warm up. “Why, I can pick any two men at random, outside on the street, who have nothing against each other, who’ve never even seen each other before; you give them a powerful enough motive, and one’ll turn into a potential murderer, the other his potential victim, right before your eyes!”
He was feeling his drinks, I guess. He wasn’t showing them, but he must have been feeling them, or he’d never have said a thing like that.
I tried to catch Trainor’s eye, via the bar mirror, to pull him out of it. But his dislike was already showing in his face. He was past the extrication stage.
“You’re crazy,” he said, with white showing around his mouth. “Normal people aren’t murderers, and you can’t make them into murderers, I don’t care what motive, what provocation, you give them! Understand me, I’m talking about cold-blooded, premeditated murderers now, like this beauty we were just hearing about. What the law recognizes as intentional premeditated murder. Crimes of passion, committed in the heat of the moment, aren’t on the carpet right now. What it takes to perpetrate a premeditated murder is a diseased mind. That’s what this guy they just caught had; that’s what every murderer always has. That’s why normal people cannot be made into murderers. I don’t care what motive you give them. Your two hypothetical men on the street, who have nothing against each other, don’t even know each other, would knock your theory into a cocked hat!”
I spoke for the first time. “Let’s change the subject,” I suggested mildly. “Murder is nothing to talk about on a lovely evening like this.”
They neither of them paid any attention. There was a current of antagonism flowing between them that wouldn’t let either one back down.
Fredericks fumbled in his inner pocket. I knew what was coming next. I’d seen the gesture often enough before to know it by heart. I tried to hold his arm down, and he shook my hand off.
Out came the well known wallet with the gold clips on each corner; down it whipped on top of the bar. People looked over at us. Fredericks said, “I’ll bet you a thousand dollars right now any two men picked at random on the street outside can be turned into potential murderer and potential victim, by me, right while you’re looking on! I’ll let you do the selecting, and I’ll let you name the time-limit. And I’ll give you any odds you want on it.”
I knew Trainor’s financial position. I gave him the eye across the back of Fredericks’ neck. “Hundred-to-one shot, ten bucks,” I suggested flippantly, trying to keep the thing theoretical.
Maybe Fredericks knew Trainor’s financial position too. “I don’t make ten-dollar bets,” he said nastily. “What are you trying to do, find an easy out for him? People that haven’t the courage to back up their conviction shouldn’t be so quick to air their opinions. I’ll give him two-to-one, his thousand against two of mine. Well, how about it?” he sneered. “Are you in — or have you suddenly decided that maybe you agree with me after all?”