A Fatal Glass of Beer by Stuart M. Kaminsky (Mysterious Press 1997)

 

Pleasure to meet you,” Fields said.

“I’ll write to my husband and tell him I met you,” she said. “He thinks you’re funny.”

“Armstrong takes Beau Jack, ten bucks straight up,” I reminded her.

Violet nodded solemnly; Fields and I left.

“Note,” he said as we closed the door and stood on the railed landing of the sixth floor of the Faraday Building, “she said her husband likes me. It has been a source of irritation that women, as a gender, are not particularly responsive to my wit. They prefer a popinjay ballet dancer like Chaplin to honest misogyny.”

“Hard to understand,” I said, remembering that my former wife, Anne, had refused to see Fields movies with me, claiming that they made no sense, weren’t amusing, were nasty to women and small children. I had agreed with her, but I still thought he was funny.

The Wishbones by Tom Perrotta (Harper Perennial 1997)

“This must be a tough time for you,” Stan observed.

“How so?”

“You know.” He pulled the cummerbund out from under his jacket and laid it on the steps. “This thing with Phil. It must have been awful for you.”

Walter worked his cigarette like a baby sucking a bottle. “Phil was an old man. Everybody's got to go sometime.”

“Still, watching a friend die in front of you like that …”

“We had our differences,” Walter said curtly.

“What kind of differences?”

“Creative.” Walter ejected the cigarette from between his lips. It landed on the sidewalk in a small shower of sparks. “I thought the band was starting to get a little stale.”

“How long were you together?”

“Too fucking long. Thirty-three years I took orders from that sonofabitch. I finally feel like I can breathe again.”

Stan didn't bother to pretend he was shocked. He'd been a musician long enough to know how it could come to this. There “were nights when he'd lain awake writing Artie's obituary in loving detail, nights when he'd imagined committing murder.

Nazis in the Metro by Didier Daeninckx (Melville International Crime 1997)

Alaric unzipped the front pocket of his overalls and dug out a Gauloise Light from a dented packet.

—Isn’t it obvious? I’m out of here.

He offered Gabriel a cigarette.

—Thanks, but I haven’t quit quitting ... You’re really leaving? Closing up shop? Is business that bad?

Smoke streamed from his nostrils in two jets that merged into one.

—You kidding? I’ve got a list of orders as long as a day without bread ... No, the new owner’s kicking me out. There’s no romance in table legs anymore. He wants to gut the place and turn it into a gallery-cafe ...

—Another cafe! Well, we don’t have to worry about dying of hunger in this neighborhood anymore ... And where will you go? Back to Brittany?

Alaric nearly choked.

—Brittany, me? Never! I don’t even go there for vacation! I need streets, bars, cars, subways! The older generations might’ve had a hard time adapting, but I’m completely at home ...

Gabriel leaned his long frame against the wall.

—Of course, it’s been a long time ... The Alaric name has been on this shack forever ...

—You can say that again! Now we’re out on the street... It was my great-grandfather who came here first, from Finistere-Nord, at the end of the last century ... The recruiters arrived and sent whole villages into exile, giving advances to parents and wives ... Reimbursable from the first year’s pay. It was a little like Citroen and Bouygues with the Moroccans and the Turks ... But with us it was for the first Delaunay-Belleville cars. The plant was in Saint-Denis, not far from Briche. Steel frames, spoked wheels, wood interiors, all-leather upholstery ... They needed the best craftsmen in the country, and they went looking for them in Brittany and Auvergne ... I never had the chance to know my great-grandfather, but my grandfather lived basically the same shitty life as he did ... At first he didn’t speak a word of French, and on Saturday nights, after their shifts, Parisian workers would unwind by chasing down “foreigners” ... Because they spoke Meteque, because they were unmarried, because they didn’t eat the food everyone else ate. He was systematically beat up ... And you know what the bastards called those raids?

-No.

With an expert flick, Alaric propelled his cigarette butt into the clear waters of the gutter.

—Bretonnades! Can you imagine? Forty years before the ratonnades* against the Arabs ... It’s only proof that nothing ever changes: we just get used to it...

—And where will you go?

—When they ruin the provinces for you and then kick you out of the city, what’s left?

Gabriel Lecouvreur’s eyebrows rearranged themselves into a circumflex.

—I don’t know ...

—It’s obvious: the outskirts ... They’re sticking me with three thousand square meters in Montreuil, along the highway. It’s called Mosinor ... Twelve stories surrounded by a truck route. Three-quarters of the building is occupied by sweatshops, and the courtyard is used as a parking lot for those green dumpsters from the Department of Household Waste! It’s a dream come true!

—You do make it sound appealing ... You should reinvent yourself as a real-estate agent. Is there anywhere to get a drink, at least?

—Oh sure, these are civilized people, after all: they just opened a Burger King on the ground floor ... I’m going to have to get used to soft drinks ...

Footnote:

* The term ratonnade, deriving from “raton” (rat), a racial slur, referred originally to acts of violence in France against people of North African descent during the years of the French-Algerian war (1954-1962). By extension, the term has been used since then to refer to other racially motivated acts of violence.

The Fuck-Up by Arthur Nersesian (MTV Pocket Books 1997)

Perhaps the price of comfort is that life passes more rapidly. But for anyone who has lived in uneasiness, even for a short, memorable duration, it’s a trade-off that will gladly be made. When I was in my teens, I made an appraisal of how comfortable my life could turn out when I became the age I am now. Because of a mechanical failure, the prediction was inexact. Things reversed. I ended up living somewhere I once avoided, with a woman whom I genuinely once disliked.

Recently we celebrated our seventh anniversary together with a decent dinner and a not dreadful film. I got out of work early that evening and took the F train to Forty-second Street. I crossed Fifth Avenue toward the Main Branch of the Public Library, but paused in the middle of the crosswalk. It was filling up with the evening rush hour crowd: men in trench coats, secretaries in tennis shoes, cabs in the crosswalk, cars honking, leviathan buses zooming inches, braking, zooming again, and bike messengers slicing through it all. The last time I was in that spot, seven years ago, there wasn’t a person in sight.

Seven years ago that day, as dawn rose, I remember standing in roughly the same spot watching as the traffic signals hanging over each intersection slowly turned yellow then red. Cars zoomed forward, headlights still on, staying ahead of the changing lights; at dusk they could make it all the way down without a single red light.

At rush hour, the entire avenue was gridlocked. But I could still faintly make out the small white crown of the Washington Square Arch at the very end. The anniversary of my relationship coincided with that dawning, and although that morning marked something that eluded celebration, it couldn’t be forgotten either.

Something honked at me, so I crossed the street, reboarded the packed F train, and returned to Brooklyn for the anniversary dinner.

Go Not Gently by Cath Staincliffe (Robinson 1997)

On our journey to the Infirmary I told Agnes about the business and family links between the three doctors.  ‘Mr Simcock is on the board of directors there and Mrs Goulden is the Managing Director so that could be one reason why we saw Dr Goulden at the hospital – he’s got business connections with Simcock.’

Silence. ‘Agnes?’

‘Let me get this right. Mr Simcock is on the board of the company?’

‘Yes.’

‘And Dr Montgomery?’

‘Yes. And what’s more, Mrs Goulden, who works there, is actually the sister of Dr Montgomery too. It’s very incestuous.’

‘I don’t like it,’ she said sharply.

‘It stinks,’ I agreed, ‘and there are too many coincidences flying around. All these people have been involved in Lily’s treatment – is that just because it’s a specialised area? Is it just nepotism, the old boy network, or is there something else going on?’ I was speculating aloud.

Agnes shook her head.

‘You’d think one well-paid job would satisfy,’ she remarked, ‘with all this unemployment.’

‘It might be greedy but it’s not illegal,’ I pointed out. ‘Besides, they’re directors of the business – they employ people to work there.’

‘And money makes money. Always has done. What about them?’ She pointed towards a cluster of youths who were gathered outside a local off-licence. ‘Nothing, no hope. Even in the thirties there was hope, the belief that things could change. Now…all this talk about moral standards and the fabric of society. A return to Victorian values. Huh,’ she snorted, ‘Victorian values were savage, smothered in hypocrisy.’

I was fazed at her outburst and I’d no idea what had set her off. I said nothing. We arrived at the hospital.

Musclebound by Liza Cody (The Mysterious Press 1997)

I was going to have it out with the driver of the Carlton. I was going to pick him up by the armpits and say, "Oy, pus-bottom, watch where you're going." But by the time I got up off the floor and kicked the chain for tripping me up, I saw the driver wasn't in the Carlton no more. He'd gone inside the booth, and he'd left the driver's door open and his motor running. Which is exactly the same as saying, "C'Mon, Eva, here's a nice red Carlton all warm and ready to take you home."

So I said, "Ta, very much. Sorry I called you a pus-bottom." I jumped in and shoved the stick in first.

At the same time, the driver struck his head out of the booth and shouted something. I didn't catch the exact words because I was too busy revving up and moving out. But what happened next was very weird. As I swung past the booth, the passenger door slammed shut. I hadn't noticed a passenger. And then another man, who I hadn't seen before, walked out from the booth and pointed a stick at me.

I thought. "Why's that dink pointing a stick at me?" And I'd hardly finished thinking that when the passenger-side window shattered. Kerash-kerunch. Glass everywhere. I was so startled I nearly whacked into one of the petrol pumps.

I went nought to sixty, out of the forecourt, right under the nose of a Safeway truck. I was sweating but, do you know, I was half a mile up the road before I realised what shattered the windows.

The dink wasn't pointing a stick at me. He was pointing a sawn-off shotgun. The windows didn't shatter. The dink shot them out.

Can you believe that? Some bastard shot at me. Me. Just for borrowing a Carlton. Who the hell'd do a thing like that?

If he didn't want his motor borrowed, why didn't he just remove the keys like a sensible person?

Shit. He could of killed me. Fancy that. Ex-Wrestler Shot. What a headline that'd make.

Big Girls Don't Cry by Fay Weldon (Atlantic Monthly Press 1997)

Slap, slap, slurp: a hollow, juicy sound. Stephanie's pasting up posters on the dark green wall of a Victorian urinal. The year's 1971. This urinal still stands there at the bottom of Carnaby Street, alongside Liberty's of London. See it now, as then. Stephanie is clearly not an expert at what's called posting bills. Paste dribbles down all over the place: they go up crooked, they overlap. But up they go. The legend Bill Posters Will Be Prosecuted gets obscured, as another poster slips and slides.

'Poor Bill Posters,' says Layla.

Stephanie doesn't get the joke. This is her life problem. Her life asset is her beauty. In 1971, she is twenty-five; she has perfect features, a lanky body, abundant blonde straight hair, and rather large hands and feet. Layla is twenty-six, shorter, plumper, funnier: she has curly dark hair. One side of Layla's face does not line up with the other, so she is called sexy and attractive, but seldom beautiful. Layla does not regard this as a life problem. She has too much to think about.

The posters declare over and over, A Woman Needs a Man like a Fish Needs a Bicycle. People stare a moment and pass on. The message makes no sense. Obviously women need men. Everyone needs men. Masculinity is all. Armies need men, and government and business and technology and high finance. And teaching and medicine and adventuring and fashion. And all the serious arts. Offices, except for the typing pool, which is female, need men. It's homes which need women, except for the lawn which is male. Women are for sex, motherhood and domesticity. Men are for status and action. Outside the home is high status, inside the home is low status. In popular myth men make decisions, women try on hats. The world is all id and precious little anima. Layla and Stephie, friends, mean to change all this. A Woman Needs a Man like a Fish Needs a Bicycle. Ho, ho, ho. Everyone knows women compete for male attention; isn't this how the problem of female bitchery arises? Catty? Felines are nothing compared with women. Perhaps this puzzle poster is advertising something?

Killing the Lawyers by Reginald Hill (Harper Collins 1997)

"I know the Spartans, that's my old club, have been using the track evenings for training to help it settle. Plus there's the workmen putting finishing touches. Plus people using other bits of the Plezz could easily stroll in here. Shouldn't you concentrate on who's got access to the spare keys? Can't be too many of them."

Oh dear, thought Joe. Like a good princess, she wasn't going to be shy about telling the help what they ought to be working at.

He said, "Got your key handy?"

She passed it over. Joe moved along the wall of metal lockers. They came in blocks of eight. Zak's was second from the left. He counted two in the next block and inserted the key. The door opened. He did the same with the next block.

This way the manufacturers only need eight variations on locks and keys instead of an infinity," he explained.

"But it's lousy security!" she protested angrily.

"Saves rate payers money," said Joe with civic sternness. "As for security, your crook's got to work it out first."

"You worked it out," she said not un admiringly

That's my job," he said modestly, not thinking it worthwhile to reveal that the lockers at Robco 

Engineering where he'd worked nearly twenty years had suffered from the same deficiency which he'd worked out after ten.

Gone Fishin' by Walter Mosley (Tandem Library 1997)

A lot of people might not like how I acted with that white woman. They might ask: Why didn’t he get mad? or Why would Mouse be breaking his butt to get money out of a poor farmer when this rich white lady would be so much of a better target?

Mouse was just doing what came natural to him. But there’s a reason I wasn’t angry then, why I’m still not angry and why the people of Pariah didn’t rise up and kill that woman: It’s what I call the ‘Sacred Cow Thinking.’

Miss Dixon lived alone out in a colored community that hated her because she owned everything, even the roads they walked on. But Miss Dixon, and every other white person, was, to that colored community, like the cow is to those Hindus over in India. They’d all starve to death, let their children starve, before they’d slaughter a sacred cow. Miss Dixon was our sacred cow. She had money and land and she could read and go to fine events at the governor’s house. But most of all she was white and being white was like another step to heaven...

Killing her would have been worse than killing our own children; killing her, or even thinking of it, would be like killing the only dream we had.

The House of Sleep by Jonathan Coe (Penguin Books 1997)

. . . He leaned closer to Terry and confided: 'I'm down to four hours, you know.'

'Four hours?'

'Four hours a night. I've kept it up for the last week.'

'But that can't be good for you, surely. No wonder you look so tired.'

'I don't care. My target's three, and I'm going to get there. It's a struggle for some of us, you know. We don't all have your gifts. That's why I envy you so much. That's why I'm determined to discover your secret.'

Terry took a modest sip from his glass. 'Why despise it, anyway? I don't understand.'

'I'll tell you why: because the sleeper is helpless; powerless. Sleep puts even the strongest people at the mercy of the weakest and most feeble. Can you imagine what it must be like for a woman of Mrs Thatcher's fibre, her moral character, to be obliged to prostrate herself every day in that posture of abject submission? The brain disabled, the muscles inert and flaccid? It must be insupportable.'

'I hadn't thought of it like that before,' said Terry. 'Sleep as the great leveller.'

'Exactly. That's exactly what it is: the great leveller. Like fucking socialism.' The wine, Terry noticed, was starting to make Dr Dudden turn sour, and a burst of guttural laughter from Dr Madison's end of the table was enough to attract a poisonous look in her direction. 'Listen to that loud-mouthed witch,' he muttered. 'Huddled with her female cronies at the other end of the room. Have you not noticed, Terry, how this table tends to divide up on the basis of gender? That's her doing.'

Sacred by Dennis Lehane (Avon Books 1997)

Four years ago, after a particularly lucrative case involving insurance fraud and white-collar extortion, I went to Europe for two weeks. And what struck me most at the time was how many of the small villages I visited - in Ireland and Italy and Spain - resembled Boston's North End.

The North End was where each successive wave of immigrants had left the boat and dropped their bags. So the Jewish and then the Irish and finally the Italians had called this area home and given it the distinctly European character it retains today. The streets are cobblestone, narrow, and curve hard around and over and through each other in a neighborhood so small in physical area that in some cities it would barely constitute a block. But packed in here tight were legions of red and yellow brick rowhouses, former tenements co-opted and restored, and the odd cast-iron or granite warehouse, all fighting for space and getting really weird on top where extra stories were added after "up" became the only option. So clapboard and brick rise up from what were once mansard roofs, and laundry still stretches between opposite fire escapes and wrought-iron patios, and "yard" is an even more alien concept than "parking space."

The Wishbones by Tom Perrotta (Berkley Books 1997)

Stan popped the trunk and handed Dave the bass drum, open side up like a big round box. In the natural light, his eye looked worse than before, not so much black as a repulsive amalgam of green and purple.
"Jesus," said Dave. "Where'd you get that shiner?"

Stan reached into the well and pulled out the pillow he used to muffle vibration inside the bass drum. The pillow was an eyesore, shapeless and sweat-stained, a sack of old feathers and bad dreams. The least he could've done was hide it in a pillowcase.

"You really want to know?"

"I'm not sure."

Stan stuffed the pillow into the drum.

"Walter," he said. "The piano player in Phil Hart's band."

"The old guy with the shakes?"

Stan nodded. In spite of everything, he seemed amused.

"I've been hanging out with him the past couple of weeks. He's a great guy."

"So why'd he slug you?"

Stan grabbed a foot pedal from the trunk and set it down on top of the pillow.

"We had one too many. I said some things I shouldn't have."

"Like what?"

Stan's tongue made a thoughtful tour of his month, poking at one cheek, then the other. His expression remained inscrutable behind the glasses.

"Well, for one thing, I said Thelonious Monk could suck my dick."

Dave couldn't help laughing. "He hit you because of that?"

"That was part of it," Stan looked up at the sky. "Then I said something about Brubeck. That was when he popped me."

"What'd you say?"

"I can't repeat it. It's too disgusting."

"Come on," said Dave.

Stan blew a weary raspberry and shook his head.

"I'm serious," he said. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

King Suckerman by George P. Pelecanos (A Dell Book 1997)

"Cooper watched him walk - strut, really - toward the cinder-block bunker. The kid's left hand was cupped at his side, and he kind of swung it on the down-step. As the kid passed below the light of the floodlamp, Cooper could see the four-inch heels in the boy's stacks. Those platforms, the Afro, and the kid's street-nigger strut: a white-boy, wanna-be-a-black-boy cracker. He had the walk down, a little too much with the hand action for Cooper's taste, but not bad. And the kid was cooler than a motherfucker, too, the way he went straight through the door without knocking, not even looking around before he did. Cooper wondered, What's going to happen next?"

Black And Blue by Ian Rankin (St Martins Paperbacks 1997)

"Somehow, fuelled by sheer terror, Allan Mitchison got to his feet, still tied to the chair. The kitchen window was in front of him. It had been boarded up, but the boards had been torn away. The frame was still there, but only fragments of the actual window panes remained. The two men were busy with their tools. He stumbled between them and out of the window.
"They didn't wait to watch him fall. They just gathered up the tools, folded the plastic sheet into an untidy bundle, put everything back in the Adidas bag, and zipped it shut."