Dark Whispers & Other Stories

Dark Whispers

When I was young I read all the juvenile delinquent novels I could find. I admired especially — and still do — THE AMBOY DUKES by Irving Shulmar — and virtually all of Hal Elson’s novels. Later, Harlan Ellison brought his own particular anger and fire to the form and produced what is for me his best true novel, Rumble, a book that holds up well today. I always regretted that I never got to do a juvenile delinquent tale. Today’s gangs are so far removed from my experience that I wouldn’t even consider writing about them. But when I was invited by my good friend Richard Chizmar to be in one of his anthologies, I decided to write the sort of Manhunt piece Ed McBain collected in his book THE JUNGLE KIDS, a story equal parts fury and melancholy, a McBain specialty.

The store had one of those bells that tinkled when you walked in. It also had one of those owners who never looked happy to see teenagers, especially unfamiliar teenagers.

Gabe Malley came in, nodded, and started looking around. The place intimidated him. It was big and sunny and obviously everything sold here was expensive. It was unlike the dingy shops in Gabe’s neighborhood.

“Help you?” the man said. He was short and bald and wore the sort of apron a shoe repairman might. He also wore a red necktie which told you instantly that he wasn’t just some employee. He was the owner.

“Just looking, I guess.”

“For anything in particular?”

Gabe shrugged. “TV set, I guess.”

The man looked Gabe over. Gabe was a tall, lean kid with brown hair, neat if a little long, and an appealing but not handsome face. He had dark, sad eyes and the few girls at school who paid him much attention always wondered what had put the sadness there. “Your parents send you or something?”

“Uh, yeah. My Dad.” Of course, Gabe’s Dad had been dead the past four years.

The man eased up a little. He took a roll of Turns from somewhere in his apron and flicked one into his mouth with his thumb.

“TV set for your bedroom or something like that?” the man said.

“Uh, yeah. For my bedroom. Kind of a birthday present.” For his bedroom, right. Mom slept in the only bedroom, he always slept on the fold-out couch in the living room.

“How old you going to be?”

“Fifteen.” Gabe shrugged, as if turning fifteen was not exactly a major accomplishment. Of course it would have been for his sister Karen. She hadn’t made fifteen at all.

“Got a daughter your age,” the man said. There was warmth in his voice now. Gabe felt bad about lying to the guy.

The front door bell rang again. A middle-aged couple came in. “We’re looking for a home entertainment center — TV, stereo, tape deck, everything,” the woman said. She sounded excited.

“Be with you in a minute, kid,” the store owner said, and turned his complete attention to the couple.

For the next ten minutes, Gabe looked around. The store was laid out in three sections: TVs, stereo and tape gear, and home video equipment.

Gabe spent most of the time examining the TVs. Or pretending to. He was really checking out the home video stuff but he didn’t want the owner to notice this.

Not that the owner was paying any attention. He was practically going down on the middle-aged couple. They had made him positively ecstatic — positively keening — by asking him about the most expensive Zenith home entertainment center the man had ever put on the floor.

Gabe took this opportunity to wander into the rear of the store. Beyond a partition, he saw a small office-like area with two desks and phones; a work bench with three picture tubes on it and the smell of burning solder in the air; and the alarm system. Over the past two weeks — ever since he’d decided what he was going to do — he’d studied the various kinds of alarm systems he’d found out about at the public library. The most modem kind was the digital key pad system which would be, in the parlance of computer hacks, difficult to “defeat.” In fact, a downright bitch. Then there were the two dominant older systems that were still much in use today, the door switcher mechanisms which were deceptively easy to “defeat” but which a guy could screw up and get himself busted over. And the photo cell mechanisms. Glancing around the rear area, he checked first at the back door. And saw what he was looking for. The TV store was secured by a photo cell system.

His work done back here, he wandered up front again. The store owner was now downright evangelical about the pluses of the Zenith home entertainment center. If Christ were alive today, this was no doubt the one He’d choose for His own condo.

Gabe didn’t notice the camera till last. It was partially hidden, for one thing, behind a much larger and more formidable camera, one that looked as if it would do everything except maybe wash your car for you.

The little black camera, the tiny one that looked as if it would sit comfortably right in Gabe’s hand, was exactly what he’d been hunting for.

Not that he made a move toward it.

Not that he even let his eyes linger very long on it.

For now, it was enough to know that he’d found what he was looking for. And that it was sitting right there.

Waiting for him.

He walked to the front of the shop. Only when he put his hand on the doorknob did the owner seem to notice that Gabe was leaving. “Didn’t find anything, huh?”

Gabe shrugged. “Maybe I’ll stop back.”

“Sure, kid,” the owner said. He winked at Gabe. “You have a happy birthday.”

Then he was caught up again in the ecstasy of selling the big Zenith rig.

On the bus home, Gabe stared out the window as the good neighborhoods of venerable brick apartment buildings and fashionable glass-and-steel high rises gave way to his own neighborhood, the drab and crumbling inner city outpost that was the last bastion against the onslaught of not only blacks, but now Vietnamese and Central American refugees as well. Most the cars parked along the curb resembled hulking animals dying out rusty deaths. Most of the old people and junkies and winos and garden variety crazies shambling along the streets also resembled dying animals. This was his neighborhood. His mom was up to three deadbolts on the apartment door at night and she kept talking about getting a gun. Ever since Karen had died, his mom had become a trembling old lady.

When he stepped off the bus, he caught a glimpse of the silver Mercedes just darting down an alley.

Gabe checked his watch. Almost five.

The silver Mercedes would just now be starting its nightly rounds.

The bastard.

“Honey?”

“Uh-huh.” Gabe knew what was going to come next: You mind if I don’t feel like cooking tonight, if I just heat like a TV-dinner in the microwave?

“You mind if I don’t feel like cooking tonight, if I just heat like a TV-dinner in the microwave?”

“That’s fine, Ma.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

She stuck her head out of the bathroom. White vampire toothpaste foamed around her mouth. She was in her white slip. She was very pretty in a fragile way. She was only thirty-four. She should date. Gabe always told her that, how the neighborhood kids always told him what a fox he had for an old lady, and what a waste it was that she didn’t date. She always said she’d think about it.

“You sure?” she said again with the toothpaste foaming around her mouth.

He smiled at her. She was cute just the way Karen had been cute.

He thought of the silver Mercedes again.

The bastard.

He did his homework. That was one thing about Gabe. He was determined to someday get out of this neighborhood. Karen had always been so proud of him. She didn’t care that some of her friends thought her little brother was kind of a geek, so lonely and unto himself and always poring over science fiction paperbacks and being real tongue-tied and embarrassed whenever they teased him about taking them out and things like that. When he was nine, he’d told her that he would someday be a writer and make a lot of money like Stephen King and then he’d buy Mom and her this huge big mansion to live in. They’d have a swimming pool and neat cars and Karen would no longer be ashamed to have her friends over. Even by neighborhood standards, their apartment was a pit.

He did his homework.

He sat in the living room with the TV on low playing some old black and white sitcom, and studying about how General Lee in the Civil War had marched 10,000 of his men across the Potomac River, and how the average age of the soldiers had been twelve and how most of them had to fight without shoes or blankets to keep them warm at night, and how many of them died from disease and starvation rather than wounds.

He tried to imagine what it would be like to be a twelve-year-old soldier, fighting and dying.

At first, it was unimaginable, almost a silly concept when you thought about it.

But then he thought of the silver Mercedes.

Maybe being a twelve-year-old soldier was hard to imagine.

But being a fifteen-year-old soldier wasn’t.

In the bathroom, he washed up and put on clean clothes — a black shirt and jeans — and then he went into his mother’s room.

She whimpered. Every night. That was the only word for it. Whimpering. Ever since Karen had died. She dragged through her waitress job every day and then came home and was in bed within an hour or so. Sleeping. Whimpering.

Now she lay somewhere between sleep and waking, some troubled purgatory in which her loss of Karen was worse than ever.

Over and over she said Karen’s name, dark whispers in the dark room that smelled of cheap perfume and cigarette smoke.

He went over to her and sat on the edge of the bed and took her hand and held it.

The older he got, the more she was his daughter than his mother.

He leaned over and kissed her damp forehead. She stirred slightly, starting to come awake and then falling with a childlike sigh deeper into sleep once more.

No point in waking her.

He let himself out, leaving a vague note about where he was going, careful to lock the front door behind him.

Ghosts and phantoms rode the city bus, the urban old and the urban poor with night jobs and desperate meaningless errands. In the weary yellow bus light, eye sockets were blank and reaching hands seemed to be bone with no flesh, and mouths that yawned emitted screams that only other ghosts and phantoms could hear, like those whistles only dogs are attuned to. If you looked closely at the faces of the passengers, you could see evidence of diseases, leprosy perhaps. Or so it seemed to Gabe.

The driver listened to a scratchy portable radio that bass-thumped rock and roll on a golden oldie station. He had Elvis Presley sideburns so no wonder he didn’t want to hear Heart or Prince or any of the singers Gabe liked.

Gabe got off a block from the TV store where he’d been this afternoon.

Five minutes later, he was in the alley behind the TV shop, using a burglary tool he’d fashioned himself in shop at school.

Seven minutes later, he opened the back door. The stench of burning solder was still in the air.

Moonlight through the front window created deep shadows.

He stood in the doorframe. He would not move inside yet. He had to defeat the photo cell system.

He located the transmitter and then the receiver. Both were hung at angles on opposite walls. A stupid thief would barge right in, walk straight through the invisible beam, and have the police nailing his ass to the wall inside of ten minutes.

Gabe, who was not really a thief, let alone a stupid one, got down on his hands and knees and crawled under the angle of the invisible beam. Because the beam was so narrow, he didn’t have to dog-walk far.

Then he stood up and walked without any sense of panic to the front of the store, plucked the small hand-held camera from its display shelf, and then got down on his hands and knees to crawl back under the beam once more.

Gabe was the only passenger. He sat far in the back. A fat woman with her hat at a cute angle drove the bus. He’d noticed that she’d had a small flower tattoo on the top of her right hand. As he was dropping his tokens in the coinbox, she’d given the camera a long, curious stare.

Now, as Gabe sat in the back of the bus, he felt the powerful bus engine throb beneath him. The whole floor vibrated with its power. The air smelled of diesel fuel. For some reason, it was a smell Gabe actually sort of liked.

The driver let him off on a busy street corner. Two apartment buildings shot straight up into the black night. At their front doors limos and Porsches dropped off people who appeared to be, in equal parts, elegant and impatient. They flung greetings to their respective black doormen — who were all got up in what looked to be light opera military costumes — and then they flung themselves inside the bright fortresses of their apartment buildings. You could see them waiting for an elevator in the brilliant interior light. They looked like beautiful creatures in display windows.

Gabe went in back of the first apartment building to an oak tree that sat next to the long row of dumpsters. On the June air, the smell of garbage was sweet and sour simultaneously.

Clutching his camera, Gabe shot up the tree with the skill of a gymnast. He went all the way to the top. By the time he reached the leafy branch that angled out over the alley, his face and arm pits were sticky with sweat.

He crawled out on the branch and sat there for a few minutes, letting his sweat dry in the breeze, and watching the fifth floor condo window directly across from him.

He had come here every night for the past three nights. To this tree. Out on this branch. Waiting for the night he’d have the camera and could get the videotape he needed.

They did the same thing every night. And in the same way. Gabe considered this kind of weird, actually. Why would a man have a mistress if sex was going to get just as predictable as it presumably was with his wife?

There they were now, in the window.

Same old stuff.

Sleek gray-haired guy stripped down to red bikini briefs, bit of a pot jiggling as he crossed the room.

Voluptuous — maybe too voluptuous — bottle blonde also stripped down to matching red bikini briefs, wonderful sumptuous breasts swaying slightly as she walked over to him.

All this seen through sheer curtains. The same kind of gauzy look skin magazines liked to use with their nude layouts.

The guy and woman came together with porno film urgency.

And then, a few minutes later, it was over.

The guy was hardly a great lover.

Gabe shut off the camera and started down the tree. Getting down was always spookier than getting up. He had this fear of getting entangled and pitching over backward. Broken back. Crippled for life. That kind of thing.

He got down with no problem.

The underground parking garage was next. Going down the tunnel leading to the garage, the temperature felt as if it had dropped ten degrees.

He smelled car oil and dead exhaust fumes and gasoline. All these odors coming from a variety of new cars that ran to Lincolns and BMWs.

He had no trouble finding the silver Mercedes sedan. He got a wide shot first, so you could easily identify the garage itself. Then he got a close-up of the car, including the personalized plate that read: SEXY. That was obviously how the guy saw himself. Sexy.

What a fucking ego.

One last thing to do now. Go around to the front of the building and get a nice shot of the lobby area with the name of the building clear across the top of the frame.

When Gabe whipped out the camera from behind his back, the doorman gave him this funny look and actually started lunging toward him. That’s why Gabe had saved this for last. Because he knew he’d probably have to haul ass.

He got the shot he wanted and started running down the street, the doorman shouting after him.

Gabe caught the last bus of the night. After making its last stop, this bus would go to the city barns where it would be cleaned up and gassed up for the next day.

This time Gabe sat up front. This time the driver was a skinny woman instead of a fat one.

“Nice camera,” she said. “I’ve got a granddaughter now so I’m savin’ up for one of those. A lot less hassle than film.”

“Yeah,” Gabe said. “Yeah.”

When he got off the bus, she said to him, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” She smiled. “With the camera, I mean.”

Knowing what she wanted, he smiled right back at her.

Gabe finished up near midnight, the manilla envelope neatly addressed, the videotape tucked safely inside. He put three strips of tape around the envelope for extra safety.

He sat and stared at it.

God, was the guy in the silver Mercedes going to be pissed when his wife told him what she’d received in the mail. After Karen died from the cocaine she’d taken, all Gabe could think to do was find the guy who’d sold it to her. That’s how he’d learned about Morrow, the man in the silver Mercedes. That’s how Morrow could afford such a car. Preying on teenagers like Karen.

He tried not to think of how she’d looked there at the last, the eyes glazed, the spittle silver on her small pink mouth, her body jerking almost angrily. In terror, he’d called an ambulance but by the time it arrived, it was too late. Karen lay in his arms jerking and crying and clinging to him even though her eyes seemed not to recognize him at all. Then she was very still and he knew she was dead and then he could not cry at all. He was just cold and empty and the siren came loud and close, and in the bedroom his mother began sobbing. She did not quit sobbing for long days afterward.

Gabe’s first thought had been to kill Morrow. But he knew he’d get caught. Somehow, someway, he’d screw up and get caught. And then what would happen to Mom? She had nobody except Gabe.

So Gabe started asking more questions about Morrow. What kind of guy was he? What did he do for kicks? And eventually he found out what a real shrew of a wife the guy had and the mistress Morrow kept in this condo.

Thanks to the videotape Gabe had taken tonight, the wife was about to find out about the mistress. All about the mistress.

He heard the whimpering, then.

The mewling sounds his mother made in her lonely, desperate sleep.

Gabe got up and went into her room and sat on the edge of the bed and held her hand tenderly and looked down on her sleeping.

He wiped away the sweat from her forehead.

He listened to her dark whispers in the dark room.

Karen. Karen. Karen.

It was true, he thought, and for some reason now he felt very lonely: she wasn’t as much his mother any more as she was his daughter.

He kissed her on the forehead and went back to the living room.

He sat up till dawn drinking coffee and then he took the package to the mailbox.