The Best American Noir of the Century

1945 DAY KEENE NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT

If there were any letters of fire on Assistant State’s Attorney Brad Sorrel’s broad and distinguished brow, they were invisible to his fellow passengers in the lighted cabin of the Washington-Chicago plane, as it circled the Cicero Airport at fifteen minutes to midnight. The stewardess, appraising his broad shoulders, graying temples, and hearty laughter, considered the woman to whom he was returning very fortunate indeed. His seat mate had found him intelligent and sympathetic.

At no time during the flight, or during the hours preceding it, had there been anything in Sorrel’s voice or demeanor to which anyone could point and say, “I knew it at the time. He was nervous. He couldn’t concentrate. His conversation was forced. He talked and acted like a man about to kill his wife.”

It was no sudden decision on Sorrel’s part. He had considered killing Frances, often; only a firm respect for the law that he himself represented had deterred him. He had, in the name of the state, asked for, and been given, the lives of too many men to be careless with his own. Intolerable as his marital situation had become, it was preferable to facing a jury whom he had lost the right to challenge.

The no smoking and please fasten your seat belt panels over the door of the pilot’s compartment blinked on. The lights of the field rushed up to meet the plane.

This is it, Sorrel thought. In twenty minutes, thirty at the most, Frances will be dead. Poor soul.

His seat mate wound up the telling of the involved argument and verbal slug-fest in which he had just engaged with the Office of Price Administration. Sorrel gave him one-half of his mind, sympathizing hugely, assuring him he had been right, that it couldn’t last forever, and agreeing that it seemed that private business was headed for a boom.

The other half of his mind considered the thing that he had to do. It would not be pleasant. In his search for a solution to his problem, he had inspected, weighed, and judged the none-too-many means by which murder could be done. The alleged clever methods — accidental death, suicide, death by misadventure — he had rejected almost immediately. They left too many loopholes for failure; few of them ever succeeded. There was a reason. No matter how brilliant a killer might be, he was seldom, if ever, a match for the combined technical, executive, and judicial branches of the law.

Crime detection, trial, and judgment had become akin to an exact science.

The art of killing, the three Ms, means, method, motive, had changed little in the known history of man. To take a life, one still had to shoot, knife, drown, strike, strangle, or poison the party of the unwanted part. And, as with most basic refinements to the art of living, the first known method of murder used — that of striking the party to be removed with whatever object came first to hand —was still the most difficult of detection, providing of course that the party who did the striking could maintain a reasonable plea of being elsewhere at the time.

It was, after mature consideration, that method that Sorrel had chosen. He had even chosen his weapon, one of the heavy cut-glass candlesticks that stood on Frances’s dressing table.

“Murphy. J. P. Murphy is the name,” his seat mate identified himself. He shook Sorrel’s hand vigorously. “It’s been a pleasure to meet you, Prosecutor. And if you decide to enter the senatorial race, as I’ve seen hinted at in the papers, you can count on my vote as certain.”

Sorrel’s hearty laugh filled the plane. “Thanks. I’ll remember that, Murphy.”

His only luggage was his briefcase. The stewardess insisted on getting it down from the rack for him. He tucked a forbidden bill in the breast pocket of her uniform. “Nice trip.” He smiled. “And thanks.”

“Thank you, Mr. Sorrel!” She beamed. One met such few really nice men. Most tipping hands brushed or hovered, seeking a partial return on their investment.

Sorrel stood in the open door of the plane a moment, sniffing the night air. The fine weather was still holding. It was neither too hot nor too cold.

He descended the steps and lifted a hand in greeting to the pilot as he passed the nose of the plane. He did so habitually on his not-infrequent trips. There must be no departure from the norm, no errors of omission or commission, no nervously spilled milk in which the bacteria of suspicion might breed.

He, John Sorrel, assistant state’s attorney, was returning from Washington with nothing on his mind but the successful conclusion of the business that had taken him there. He wasn’t nervous. He felt fine. He assured himself that he did.

In the doorway of the terminal, Murphy touched his arm. “I’m taking a cab to the Loop. If you’d like to share it, Sorrel…”

“Thanks, no,” Sorrel said. “My car should be waiting.” He managed to edge his words with the proper amount of innuendo without being vulgar. “You see, I — well, I’m not going directly home.”

The other man winked. “I — see.”

They parted after shaking hands again. He was, Sorrel realized, running the risk of being slightly too clever. But the more people who knew, or who thought they knew, that he had gone directly from the plane to Evelyn’s apartment, the stronger would be his alibi.

He had never kept their affair a secret. He doubted that any prosecutor, judge, or jury —if it should come to that —would question so embarrassing an alibi as a husbands being forced to admit that, while his wife had been killed, he had been with another woman, railing against the deceased because she had refused to divorce him.

Despite the lateness of the hour, the terminal was crowded. He saw three or four men whom he knew and nodded cordially to as he passed through the terminal.

Jackson was waiting behind the wheel of a department car. Sorrel tossed his case into the back seat and slid in beside him. “So you got my wire.”

“And why not?” Jackson asked. “You wanna go home, the office, or …” He left the question open.

Sorrel sighed. “Home, I suppose. But let’s drop by the Eldorado first.”

“I figured that,” Jackson said.

Sorrel rode, the night wind cool cn his cheeks, eager to be done with what he had to do, wishing that Frances had been reasonable. If she had been, if she had been willing to divorce him, none of this would have to be.

In front of the building he told Jackson, “I won’t be long, I think.”

Jackson fished in his vest pocket for a toothpick, found one. “Take your time.”

He meant it. He liked Sorrel. He liked Evelyn, too. For all of her good looks, she was a lady. Frances Sorrel wasn’t, what with her calling a spade a dirty shovel and her drinking and her fighting — she was no wife for a man who soon might be a senator. Although, at that, he reflected, he had heard someone say that she had worked like a dog for the money that had put Sorrel through law school, and she had always sworn she hadn’t started to drink and chase until he had gone lace curtain Irish on her.

Under the marquee of the building, the colored doorman grinned whitely at Sorrel. “Glad to see you back, Mr. Smith. Been missin’ you for a week now.”

Sorrel creased a five-dollar bill and slipped it into his hand. “I’ve been in Washington saving the nation.”

The doorman chuckled, hugely amused. “He say he been in Washington savin’ the nation,” he confided to Jackson.

Jackson continued to pick at his teeth. “Yair.”

Inside the lobby, Sorrel paused briefly, suddenly short of breath. This was murder. He, John Sorrel, an assistant states attorney who would have been state’s attorney had it not been for his wife, and who was being considered by the party as a senatorial candidate, was proposing to steal into his own home by stealth and remove the sole obstacle who stood in the path of his political success.

That angle would not enter the case, however. It would not be considered a motive. None of the powers-that-were had ever mentioned Frances. But, he knew, there was the feminine vote to consider. And what with things as they were, the party couldn’t afford to take a chance. Frances’s scenes were too well known. She drank; she cursed; she was unfaithful. Not that he had ever been so fortunate as to obtain proof that would stand in a court of law.

He closed his eyes and saw his wife as he had seen her, fat, slovenly dressed, her face puffed with drink, during the last public scene that she had made. That had been in the lobby of the Chalmers House, before a delighted ring of onlookers.

“Sure I’m drunk. An’ I’m a tramp,” she had taunted while he had tried vainly to hush her. “An’ don’t you tell me to shut up. Wash a hell. I’m human. The trouble with you is that you’ve got too big for your bed. You’re one of them whitened sepelcurs like Father Ryan wash always talking about.” She had turned to the crowd, her voice suddenly gin-throaty, maudlin tears spilling down her cheeks. “I’m not good enough for him anymore. Me, who put him through school, who loved him when he didn’t have a dime.” She had attempted to embrace him. “Cansha understand? I still love you, Johnny.” The tears had dried as abruptly as they had come. “An’ I’ll shee you in hell before I’ll let some painted young tart make a bigger fool of you than you are. Now go ahead an’ hit me. I dare you to, you blankety blankety blank.”

Sorrel opened his eyes, his moment of weakness gone. There was only the one thing to do. But at least in one respect she was wrong. He was very human. He wanted to feel Evelyn’s arms soft and cool around his neck, hear her assure him again that someday everything would be all right, if only they were patient.

His jaw muscles tightening, he opened the door of the self-service elevator and punched the twelfth-floor button. He was finished with being patient. He had been patient for ten years. It was not his fault, it was her own fault, that Frances had not grown with him. One thing he knew, he could no longer stand the sight or sound or touch of her.

Tonight must end it.

In front of Evelyn’s door he slipped his key from his pocket, paused at the realization that if he saw her now he would make her a party to his crime. More, she would attempt to dissuade him. It was best that she know nothing about it, until the affair was over.

Light streamed out from under her door. Her radio was playing softly. He could hear the sound of movement, a drawer being opened and closed. It was enough to know that she was home, that she had received his wire and was waiting. Good girl. Evelyn was a brick. Whatever happened, he could count on her.

He descended to the second floor, left the elevator and walked down the service stairs and out of the side door. The coupe was parked where he had left it. His one fear had been that he might find it stripped.

The motor started easily. He glanced at his watch in the dash light. Five of the thirty minutes that he had allotted himself were gone. Driving at forty miles an hour, the three miles he had to travel would take him two minutes each way. It was fifteen minutes of one. Allow even six more minutes for mishaps and he still had plenty of time to do what he had to do and be back in Evelyn’s apartment within a half hour from the time that he had left Jackson. At one-fifteen he would phone down to the doorman and ask him to have Jackson bring up his briefcase and the bottle of rye it contained.

He had no fear that Frances would not be at home. His telegram had stated that his plane was arriving at midnight. Clinging to the tattered remnants of their marriage, she always made it a practice to be home and more or less sober whenever he returned.

“You’ll never catch me that way,” she had told him once. “I’m a good wife to you, Johnny, see? And I’m willing to be a better one if you would only let me. Why can’t we start all over?”

There were a dozen answers to that one, the best of which was Evelyn. The two women had never met. Frances knew that she existed, that was all. That was enough.

As he slowed for the intersection at Sixty-third Street, Sorrel smiled wryly at a suggestion that Evelyn, intrigued by the fact that they had never met, had made.

“We know she’s not true to you, Johnny,” she had pointed out. “She has no right to point a finger. She doesn’t know me. So why can’t I strike up a drinking acquaintance with her, or take a job as her maid, or something, and get some concrete proof that would stand up in a divorce court?”

Sorrel had refused to hear of it. Frances was shrewd. A scene between the two was unthinkable. Frances fought as they fought in back of the yards, where both of them had been born — for keeps. Then, too, a sense of guilt had assailed him. His own hands were not clean. He, and he alone, was responsible for Frances’s infidelities. She was merely reaching out for the love that he denied her. He had told Evelyn at the time that whatever was done, he would do. He was keeping his word now.

There were few cars on Sixty-third Street. There were none on the darker residential street onto which he turned. He drove for another quarter mile and parked a half a block and across the street from his home.

There were lights in both the kitchen and in Frances’s bedroom. The shades of the bedroom were drawn, but, as he watched, a vague figure crossed the room, too far back of the shade to seem more than a passing shadow.

His eyes felt suddenly hot and strained. His throat contracted. His mouth was dry. His hands felt cold and clammy on the wheel. He sat a moment longer, wondering at himself, revolted by the thing he had come to do. This was murder. This was what other men had done for reasons no better than his own, and he, in his smug superiority, safe in the law’s ivory tower, had thundered against them and denounced them as cool-blooded conniving scoundrels.

He stepped from the car with an effort and crossed the street. He had come a long way in his climb up — he intended to go still further. With Frances dead and Evelyn beside him, there was no goal to which he might not aspire.

He stopped under a spreading elm tree in the yard and cursed his shaking hands. There was no reason to be afraid. The law would never touch him. He had planned too well. There would be no insurance angle. Frances had none. His only gain would be peace of mind and that wasn’t considered a motive for murder. A few of the boys in his own office might suspect him but no one would be able to prove a thing.

Frances’s failings were well known. She had come home drunk. She had left the door unlocked. A night prowler had entered and killed her. No one would be more surprised and shocked than he when he returned with Jackson an hour from now and found her — dead.

He slipped his key in the front door. The inner bolt was shot and it refused to open. He considered ringing the bell and killing her in the hall. He decided to stay, as far as possible, with his original plan. There was no convenient weapon in the hall. A single scream would shatter the stillness of the sleeping street. What he had to do must be done in silence.

The back door leading into the kitchen was open but the screen door was locked. He slipped on a pair of gloves and fumbled in one corner of the porch where he had remembered seeing a rusty ice pick. His luck was holding. The pick was there. He probed it through the screen and lifted the hood from its eyes.

The door open, he waited, listening, hearing nothing. There was a half-emptied bottle of milk, a clouded glass, and the remains of a peanut butter sandwich on the kitchen table.

Frances, he decided, was playing the sober and repentant wife this time.

Believe me, John. I love you. I’ll stop drinking. I’ll do anything you say. You’re all that matters to me. Why can’t we start all over?

He had heard it so many times that he could play the record by heart. He noted that the kitchen shade was up. Anyone entering the kitchen would be visible from the darkened windows of the house next door. Sweat beading on his forehead, he slipped in a hand before him and snapped the switch, thankful that he had noticed the shade in time. It was the little things of murder that sent men to the chair.

The darkness magnified his strain. His mouth grew even drier. He heard, or thought he heard, the pounding of his heart. He had to force himself to cross the kitchen, feeling his way along the wall to the rear stairs.

Now he could hear sounds in the bedroom. She seemed to be opening and closing drawers, probably in search of one of the bottles she was always hiding from herself.

He crossed the dark hall toward the closed bedroom door and his weight caused a board to creak. The light in the bedroom went out and the door opened. They stood only feet apart in the black hallway, aware of each other but unable to see.

The blood, Sorrel thought suddenly. It will splatter. I’ll be covered with blood. Damn it! Why didn’t I think of that!

Then he realized he still was clutching the rusted ice pick in his hand. It was as good a weapon as any, better than most. Murder Incorporated had used them as the chief tool of their trade. An ice pick had been used in the case of the State versus Manny Capper. The sweat on his brow turned cold. Manny had gone to the chair.

Galvanized by his own terror, crying out hoarsely, Sorrel sprang forward. His groping hand felt teeth in time to clamp his palm over the welling scream. It died stillborn as he plunged the pick in his hand repeatedly into the yielding flesh. The body he held ceased squirming and sagged limply. He allowed it to fall to the floor, relieved to be rid of it.

The ice pick fell from his nerveless hand. He tried to fumble a match from his pocket and could not. His hands were shaking too badly. Afraid of the dark, afraid of the woman whom he had killed, he squatted beside the body and felt for a pulse with the back of his wrist, where flesh gaped between glove and coat cuff. There was no pulse. It was over, done with, finis. He was free.

He crept back down the stairs and out through the kitchen to the porch. Then he remembered the pick. It would have no fingerprints on it. He considered returning for it and his stomach rebelled.

So there were no fingerprints on the death weapon. So what? Most house prowlers with the sense of gnats wore gloves. It was nothing for him to worry over.

He walked silently, unseen, back to his car and examined his gloves in the dash light. One was slightly splattered with blood but there seemed to be none on the cuffs of his suit. All that remained to be done was to rid himself of the gloves.

It was over, done. He was free. There was nothing to stop him now, nothing to stop the boys from running him for whatever office they pleased. Frances had made her last scene. He was young, under forty. His new life was just beginning.

As he drove, the horror of the thing that he had been forced to do left him. He wanted to sing, to yell, to shout to the stars that he was free. He contented himself with a grin.

It had been a relatively simple matter, after all. He wadded the gloves into a ball and tossed them out the car window. They could not be traced to him. There was nothing to tie him to the murder but the fact that he and Frances were married. Back at the Eldorado, he parked the coupe in the same space it had occupied before and glanced at his watch before switching off the lights. It was eleven minutes past one. He was four minutes ahead of schedule.

He expended them by walking to the corner and peering around it cautiously. The doorman and Jackson were deep in some discussion. Satisfied that he had not been missed, he entered the side door.

Telling Evelyn would take some doing. She would be horrified at first, but she was quick-witted enough to realize that no other course had been open to him. It didn’t matter now. All that mattered was that the thing was done.

His throat and mouth were normal again. In the bright light of the cage he could see no bloodstains on his suit. He had been fortunate. He was whistling softly, almost cheerfully, as he inserted his key in the door.

The radio was still playing softly. A bottle of his best scotch beside her, Frances was sitting in one of Evelyn’s easy chairs. “I knew you’d come here first,” she said. “What’s a matter? Was your plane late?”

He stared at her open-mouthed, screams he was unable to utter tearing at his throat.

“You poor damn fool,” his wife continued. “Why didn’t you let me meet her? Why didn’t you make me realize what a swell kid she really was? Why didn’t you tell me that the boys wanted to run you for senator? You should have known me better, John. You’re my man. You always will be. No tramp was goin’ to take you from me. But a sweet kid like that is another matter.” She fluffed at her frowsy hair. “I feel kind of honored like.”

Sorrel managed to gasp one word, “Evelyn …”

Frances nipped at the scotch. “Oh, you didn’t know. Well, she showed at the house this morning and gave me a song and dance about being a maid out of work, her with fingernails that long.” She laughed, shortly “So I hired her and I pumped her. She’s probably goin’ through all my things right now, spyin’ on me.” Frances picked an oblong scrap of yellow paper from the table. “She never even got a chance to see her telegram because I copped her key from her purse and come over here shortly after I got the telegram that you sent me. Mine was all right. But after I read this one I kinda wondered.” She read it aloud: “‘Sweetheart. Be in your apartment at twelve tonight. Don’t leave it for any reason. And don’t let anyone in but me. This is important, more important than you realize.’”

His voice sounding strange to himself, Sorrel asked, “You — knew?”

Frances Sorrel smiled thinly. “I know you,” she admitted. “But don’t worry. Think nothing of it. As long as your plane was late, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”