Why Me? by Donald E. Westlake (Mysterious Press 1983)

 

The back room at the O.J. looked like one of those paintings from the Russian Revolution—the storming of the Winter Palace—or, perhaps more appropriately, from the Revolution of the French: a Jacobin trial during the Terror. The place had never been so crowded, so smoky, so hot, so full of strife and contention. Tiny Bulcher and three assistant judges sat together on one side of the round card table, facing the door, with several other tough guys ranged behind them, on their feet, leaning against the stacked liquor cartons. A few more savage-looking types lurked to both sides. A couple of chairs had been left empty near the door, facing Tiny and the rest across the green felt table. Harsh illumination from the single hanging bare bulb with its tin reflector in the middle of the room washed out all subtlety of color, reducing the scene to the work of a genre painter with a poor palette, or perhaps a German silent film about Chicago gangsters. Menace and pitiless self-interest glinted on the planes of every face, the slouch of every shoulder, the bend of every knee, the sharpness of every eye, the slant of every smoldering cigarette. Everybody smoked, everybody  breathed, and—because it was hot in here—everybody sweated. Also, when there was no one being interviewed everybody talked at once, except when Tiny Bulcher wanted to make a general point, at which time he would thump the table with fist and forearm, bellow, “Shadap!” and insert a sentence into the resulting silence.

He Done Her Wrong by Stuart M. Kaminsky (Mysterious Press 1983)

“A few members of the staff now believe that the constant reign of terror to your anatomy is causing a building up of resistance by your body. Not that you are immune to damage but that your body has somehow said, ‘What the hell, I can take anything.’ Your skull no longer deserves the anatomical right to be referred to as a skull. We are not quite sure what to call it.”

I tried to sit up and made it to one elbow. I was in a hospital gown.

“The closest thing I have seen to what we are laughingly calling your cranium belonged to a punch-drunk fighter named Ramirez who, when his career was finished, made an occasional fifty cents by battering down doors with his head. Mr. Ramirez was incapable of coherent speech by that time and seemed to think he was a robot. Are you following the allegorical level of my tale, Mr. Peters?”

“If I continue to get hit in the head, my brain will turn to Junket pudding,” I said.

“Your brain is almost certainly pudding by now,” said Dr. Melanks. “I simply want you to sign it over to me on your death. I am sixty-seven and suffering from arthritis, a weak heart, mild sclerosis, and a very poor hereditary profile, but I should outlive you by a comfortable margin.”

The People of Providence: A Housing Estate and Some of Its Inhabitants by Tony Parker (Picador 1983)

A fair-haired young woman in a gaberdine mackintosh crossing the pedestrian shopping precinct in Robins Walk stopped with a polite smile.

— Sorry love but if it’s insurance we’ve got more than enough thanks.

A book? About Providence Estate? Go on, you’re joking! Really? Blimey, that’ll be a job! I must read it, when’s it coming out? Oh I’ll not be here by then I shouldn’t think. Mm? Well, if I could think of one word to tell someone what a place is like. ..

‘Mixed’? Well yes, that’s one word for it, I think that’s about right that is, ‘mixed’. ‘Mixed’ — how do I think he meant? Well you know . . . I mean, there’s all sorts of people here all together, isn't there? I should think that’s what he meant. You’ve got people who do what you might call hard physical sort of jobs, those that work in the docks or on the building sites — the what do you call them, ‘manual workers’ is it? Then you’ve got the people who work in offices and banks and shops and that. Then there’s those who're the sort of posh ones, posh jobs like lawyers, there’s quite a few of that sort lives around here, it's surprising. And teachers — and old people — and families — people living on their own — and kids, a big lot of kids. Happy people and sad people and odd people and peculiar people — a big sort of mixture, so that’s absolutely the right word for it that is, yes . . . ‘mixed’.

An elderly man with the collar of his overcoat turned up, coming out of the library, two books by Hammond Innes under his arm.

— It would be extraordinarily difficult for me to try and summarize a place such as Providence Estate in a hundred or a thousand words, so it would be totally impossible to do it in one.

Certainly if somebody has already said to you ‘mixed’ I would say that was an appropriate word, certainly. I couldn’t say precisely what they might have meant, but I should have thought a moment’s glance round would have made it clear because it is instantly visible, isn’t it, how mixed it is?

You have the group of tower blocks over there, then those long six-storey things, I think they call them linear’ blocks over there; then in that direction there are those small maisonette-type low buildings of flats. And if you go through that way you come to the old houses that have been refurbished; and beyond those, ones that aren’t going to be done up and are scheduled for demolition, though heaven knows when they’re going to get on with it. And the prefabs of course, scattered around here and there. . . . So I’d say yes, high-rise towers, long blocks, modern small flats, old places done up, others dilapidated . . . a large ’mixed’ area very obviously, no one could quarrel with the word. And not at all unpleasing to the eye; all in all, not at all.

You’re welcome sir, good afternoon.

Twelve perhaps thirteen years old, the small boy in a royal blue blazer and grey flannels with a too-small cap on his head and a satchel over his shoulder looked thoughtfully into the distance.

— ‘Mixed’? What did they mean, ‘mixed’ how, what sort of way? Did they mean the people or the buildings or what? Funny word to use about the estate isn’t it, really; could mean all sorts of things couldn’t it, to different people? ‘Mixed’. Mm, yeh. . . .

He went on staring into the distance. After a while he began slowly nodding his head.

— Yeh, well, if you come to think of it, that’s quite a good word. I mean like where we are now, standing on the footpath in the middle of the grass . . . you see over there’s the towers, back that way there’s the flats, then there’s the shops and Robins Walk. So you could say if you wanted to that over there where the buildings are, that’s like town, and here where we are, with the grass and the trees, this is like country isn’t it? I mean if you don’t look that way you can’t see buildings and if you don’t listen too hard you can’t hear traffic. So it’s all like a mixture between town and country, right? Not built over everywhere, but not like out in a wood or something either. ‘Mixed' is a very good word, I’d say that was about right yeh.

Auf Wiedershen, Pet by Fred Taylor (Sphere Books 1983)

Oz's '68 Zephyr had looked pretty down even before the three of them left Newcastle. By the time they reached the queue of traffic at the Dutch border, it was at the stage of needing terminal care. Not that Oz would admit anything that didn't suit whatever his momentary view of reality demanded.

'Afraid we're losin' Radio One,' he muttered darkly, fiddling with the car's studio. The material the knobs were made of looked suspiciously like bakelite.

Dennis grunted, took a drag on his newly-lit duty-free. 'We never had it in this wreck.'

'Canny car, this kid,' said Oz for the dozenth time.

There was no answer to that, or leastways none that didn't stray into the realms of fantasy or insult. Dennis's square, well-fleshed face creased into a frown. He decided to change the subject.

'Here,' he said. 'Why've you got a Sunderland sticker on the back? I never knew you supported them.'

'I don't. Bloke I bought it off did.' Oz stared down at the radio, gave it a final thump and treated his mates to a gap-toothed grin. 'I was goin' to scrape it off, but I was afraid I'd lose the bumper . . .' 

LaBrava by Elmore Leonard (Arbor House 1983)

He told her Aperture magazine had contacted him about doing a book. Call it South Beach. Get all the old people, the art deco look. He was working on it now. No, he was thinking about it more than he was working on it. He wanted to do it. He wouldn't mind having a coffee-table book on his coffee table. It seemed strange though--ask thirty or forty dollars for a book full of pictures of people who'd never see it, never be able to afford it.

"At the gallery they sip wine and look at my pictures. They say things like, 'I see his approach to art as retaliation, a frontal attack against the assumptions of a technological society.'

"They say, 'His work is a compendium of humanity's defeat at the hands of venture capital.'

"They say, 'It's obvious he sees his work as an exorcism, his forty days in the desert.' Or, another one, 'They're self-portraits. He sees himself as dispossessed, unassimilated.'

"The review in the paper said, 'The aesthetic sub-text of his work is the systematic exposure of artistic pretension.' I thought I was just taking pictures."

Jean Shaw said, "Simplicity. It is what it is." Then paused. "And what it isn't, too. Is that what you're saying?"

He didn't want her to try so hard. "I heard one guy at the gallery--it was his wife or somebody who said I was dispossessed, unassimilated, and the guy said, 'I think he takes pictures to make a buck, and anything else is fringe.' I would've kissed the guy, but it might've ruined his perspective."

The Papers Of Tony Veitch by William McIlvanney (Pantheon Books 1983)

'Oh,' John Rhodes said. 'And Panda Paterson.’

‘Correct, John. Your memory's good.‘ Panda said.

He extended his hand to shake and John Rhodes punched him in the mouth. It was a short punch, very quick and very measured, costing John nothing, the punch of a man in training, emerging from reflexes so honed they seemed to contain a homing device. It was only after it had landed you realised it had been thrown. lt imparted awe to some of the others. as if thought was fait accompli.

The effect was reminiscent of the moment in a Hollywood musical when the mundane breaks into a Busby Berkeley routine. Suddenly, Panda Paterson was dancing. He moved dramatically onto the small slippereened square of dance floor and did an intricate backstep. Then, extending his improvisation into what could have been called ‘The Novice Skater‘ . he went down with his arms waving and slid sitting until the carpet jarred him backwards and his head hit a radiator like a duff note on a xylophone.

‘That's the price of a pint in “The Crib”,' John Rhodes said.

There was blood coming out of Panda's mouth. He eased himself off as if to get up and then settled back. touching his mouth gently.

'Ye've made a wise decision,' John Rhodes said, watching him refuse to get up. 'You're right. Ah've got a good memory. Ah don't know where you've been lately. Watchin' cowboy pictures? Well, it's different here. Whoever's been kiddin' you on ye were hard, Ah'm here tae tell ye Ah've known you a long time. You were rubbish then an' ye're rubbish now. Frightenin' wee boys! Try that again an' Ah'll shove the pint-dish up yer arse. One wi' a handle.'

If you could have bottled the atmosphere, it would have made Molotov cocktails. Practised in survival, Macey was analysing the ingredients.

John Rhodes stood very still, having made his declaration. What was most frightening about him was the realisation that what had happened was an act of measured containment for him, had merely put him in the notion for the real thing. He wasn't just a user of violence, he truly loved it. It was where he happened most fully, a thrilling edge. Like a poet who has had a go at the epic, he no longer indulged himself in the doggerel of casual fights but when, as now, the situation seemed big enough, his resistance was very low.

The others, like Panda Paterson, were imitating furniture. This wasn't really about them. Even Panda had been incidental, no more that the paper on which John had neatly imprinted his message. The message was addressed to Cam Colvin.

Malvinas Requiem by Rodolfo Fogwill (Serpent's Tail 1983)

Garcia had brought the newspaper photos showing the two sets of officers having tea together. The Brits had given him a bundle of photos of Argie officers who had surrendered taking tea with the naval captains from the British fleet. On the reverse were written the names of the Argentine officers, and of the place where each had surrendered.
'Chuck the lot of them!' said Viterbo. He was insistent. The Brits had asked the dillos to hand them out in the Quartermaster's, to hasten the surrender.
'Let's throw them away! No surrender! Let them kill each other, so they all fuck off and leave us in peace. We'll chuck the photos away and tell them they were distributed.'
So the dillos burnt them in the stove. There were lots of photos, the bundle was as big as a large ammunition box. It burnt slowly, giving off an acrid smoke, which made their eyes smart and their throats sore.

Forty Days of Tucker J. by Robert Leeson (Fontana Lions 1983)

Tucker walked outside. Paddy was still there.

Hello, Peter, then. I see you've joined the toiling masses.'

'Wish I had, Paddy. Are you out of work, then?'

Paddy smiled: 'No, I'm not. I'm doing this for a friend. Just to give a hand, like.'

Tucker took a leaflet and walked away reading it.

'Fight for the Right to Work' said the leaflet.

They must be joking.