|
d7ddba0
|
By firelight he read the book he had gotten on his one trip to New York. It was called The Moonstone, written by someone named Wilkie Collins. The pretty girl behind the counter had recommended it to the cowboy as an exciting story. Disappointed the first time he'd cracked it open, over time he had become interested in the characters and the story, finding something beautiful in the language used, which had thrown him harder than a bronc at..
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
b68317d
|
We sat next to each other. The sound of the locomotive and the smell of the sea drifted in through the open window. It did not go unnoticed by either of us that we were alone and without recent memory. It created an intimacy that drew us close in our shared dilemma.
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
82bbccf
|
I'd landed in Los Angeles after the war, and spent the past three years working as a private detective; mostly dodging trouble while trying to help this mug or that one get out of a jam of his own making. I wasn't against helping out the so-called fairer sex, but in the line I'd chosen, and in the town I'd picked, more often than not dames were the trouble.
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
f177af0
|
It's difficult to explain, but Henry and my aunts were cut from the same cloth. In some small way, having this time with Henry, before I became a woman always looking over her shoulder, was almost like saying goodbye to Aunt Betty and Aunt Gertie.
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
67e07db
|
Fate had somehow conspired against me, giving me a life of its choosing rather than my own. No one would really miss me if I were gone. I would slowly fade into the memories of a few, then melt away into nothingness, just like the snowman below. Faint echoes of Christmas music from the ice rink making its way upward in the cold swirling wind added to my melancholy. I was alive but not really living, stuck in a life which only took and never..
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
c95d696
|
There was something different about Andy, though. He wasn't so much soft, as just sensitive. He felt things and dwelled on them and then he couldn't get the images out of his head.
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
acc9e0b
|
Sonny had to get rid of her once he found out, of course, but by then he'd already begun to grow weary of her. She was one of those save-the-trees, stop-global-warming, Che-is-cool-and-so-is-Obama kind of nitwits liberal universities churn out like chocolate kisses at a Hershey plant nowadays.
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
8df467c
|
Death, especially murder, was always an abstract when you had no connection with the victim, thought Karen. Now that there was a connection, however tenuous, the Strangler had suddenly become real, a haunting figure in the dark, waiting to choke the life out of a total stranger with a scarf.
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
9aea34d
|
What a magnificent girl. She is spring, in all its glory." He shook his head. "I have seen and done so much, my friend, I wonder if I will ever experience spring again. Perhaps I am too far into autumn and only winter remains for me."
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
9db7ce6
|
Nobody talks about the corrupt American police, though, do they? They only talk about the corrupt Columbian and Mexican law enforcement unable to stop it. There is plenty of corruption, sure, but that's not why it can't be stopped. We both know that. It can't be stopped because, like I said, no one has the guts to do what's necessary to stop it. It's Apocalypse Now.
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
c0d5255
|
We're certainly glad to have you aboard. You're the top man in your field. I can think of no better case to start you on than that of Laura Blake. If one didn't know that she was completely delusional, it would be easy to get caught up in her web. She appears completely rational
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
4ee262c
|
Jerry and I stood outside Woolworth listening to young, bundled-up Christmas carolers down the street. They were going from store to store sharing the spirit of the season. On top of the Woolworth Co. building, a lighted Christmas tree stood tall and beautiful. A light dusting of snow lined the sidewalks and busy streets as people rushed happily about doing their Christmas shopping. Jerry and I had only hours ago been married, so for us the..
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
90d4254
|
I could not imagine a divine hand was involved, but perhaps Frank Lassiter had done enough evil that I was just the instrument being used to give him a shove off this mortal coil -- because he wasn't shuffling off fast enough on his own.
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
aadf47d
|
Lamont Chandler." Her face, especially those lovely eyes, filled with amusement. She whispered, "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?" I laughed and she couldn't help but join me. There was something restful and pure in her laughter, like a Christmas carol. "My grandfather used to work at a radio station where they broadcast The Shadow," I explained. "He'd take my dad when he was a kid. Dad even met Bill Johnstone once. Anyway, m..
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
314649f
|
That's the way it is in Miami. There are good guys and bad guys and sometimes the twain do meet.
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
5ef065a
|
They have public service announcements about cancer, heart disease, every malady imaginable. But no one ever warns you about the world's greatest killer -- Hope.
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
3bf20a4
|
For the lonely and unloved, there is no greater friend than the night, and the anonymity it offers.
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
a1f0767
|
And that's why I fell in love with you so quickly. Your heart was the one I'd always been looking for. It's almost instinctive, loving you. As though I was born to.
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
bbdb29b
|
Tommy Dorsey's Opus One, had Moonlight Cocktails with Glenn Miller and his band, took a Sentimental Journey with Les Brown and Doris Day, and finally boarded a Slow Boat to China with Kay Kyser, Harry Rabbit and Gloria Wood. By the time a nostalgic two-hour-long segment replaying old radio shows like Suspense and Jack Benny, Dangerous Assignment and Rocky Jordan finished, I was feeling better.
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
09db8ca
|
A man's nothing in this cockeyed world but his word, especially a guy like me, with no job and no prospects. I was a hitchhiker who'd thumbed his last ride. But I had to keep my word to Kathy, even if I had to fry for it.
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
0e01dc3
|
You see, here's my problem. You got a look. I saw that look on a lot of guys during the war. A lot of 'em had trouble after they came back. But they weren't killers, not this kind anyway. So, I'll listen, and then I'll tell you whether I'll do it or not.
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
ae151a0
|
I was an okay looking guy when I cleaned up, but I hadn't shaved in a couple of days, and my clothes were strictly bargain basement -- Salvation Army hand-me-downs. She was either the nicest girl in the entire world, or the loopiest
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
b56c5cf
|
Having a gun nearby is something I'd got used to during the war, and I couldn't break the habit. I'd heard from a guy I'd served with who lived in Los Angeles now, that Audie Murphy slept with one under his pillow. I didn't have as many medals for my trouble as Audie had, but I slept with mine, too.
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
7f00935
|
It took a second to register, but even a schmuck like me sees a paper once in a while.
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
cbedc92
|
So you say. I gotta say, you've got a better imagination than most of the low-lifes who come through here. Too bad you didn't get to Hollywood and put some of it on paper.
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
5260b67
|
Oh, right, just stroll on down to the car lot, big as you please. What'll I say I'm doing? He knows I can't afford a car." Karen started laughing again as she answered. "You could tell him you've lost all your marbles and thought you saw one roll that way."
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
d67f385
|
I wasn't sure when you'd be in so I thought you wouldn't mind me waiting here." I had the feeling he knew exactly when I was going to arrive. That he knew a lot of things he wasn't ever going to tell me." --
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
f886bd4
|
When someone dies without ever having experienced the joy of it, never really had someone love them in their heart, it leaves...well an ache, an echo if you will. It's a void of regret and sadness that doesn't die with them. Because of that, they can't cross over. They would never be truly happy in heaven. They would be waiting forever for someone who would never come, because no one would die who ever adored them.
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
451f918
|
It was wonderful strolling hand-in-hand in an unfamiliar city, in a country that wasn't ours. Even if that city was Sydney. It lent us a special kind of privacy only those who have travelled understand. You are anonymous. A voyeur. It grants a certain freedom, and presents possibilities one would not imagine among those with whom they are tethered to by birth and nationality. It is like being in costume at a masquerade ball where no one wil..
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
ddd1c85
|
but what the mind understands and what the heart believes are not always in sync.
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
495e257
|
I pulled out some folded-over pictures of US Presidents. I knew how to talk to bellboys.
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
5eda0e1
|
Even if we ran into Charlie Chan he'd only smile and give us some proverb.
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
30c5886
|
She ran her finger along the smooth book cover affectionately, finding comfort in the beautiful words she knew were within. She was privy to love's secrets, and its depth and breadth in a way so few in this life could fathom. She knew these things because she was truly alone in the world, and only those forced to live without love completely understood that a life without love is a life not truly lived.
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
479e166
|
We lived --or rather had lived --in a society which had come to view the father as almost superfluous. But people of common sense knew better.
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
f4e227b
|
As Jones was leaving, he turned back and commented, "Maybe now you won't write the cops so dumb on your next show." He winked as he shut the door, having the last word after saving our skins."
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
fb6e969
|
When she smiled she got these wonderful little crinkles at the corners of her mouth, and there were faint traces of lines at the corners of her pretty eyes. They were beauty lines, the kind a woman starts to get when there's more to her than just being a girl. She made me think of the French Riviera, even though I'd never been to the French Riviera. At the edge of her laughter I could almost hear Mancini's Latin Snowfall playing.
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
8f5f3a0
|
Mary was stretched out on the lounge by the pool reading Agatha Christie's new book, Dumb Witness, which a friend had sent her from England. I was reading Erich Maria Remarque's sadly beautiful, Three Comrades. MGM had purchased it and were making a film adaptation starring Margaret Sullavan, who I happened to adore. We'd be here all week so I'd also brought Erle Stanley Gardner's new Perry Mason novel, The Case of the Dangerous Dowager.
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
b6ab9df
|
A doll! I smiled. Maybe someone else would have thought him crude, but I saw beneath his rough exterior. He was sweet. And he'd called me a doll, like in the pulp magazines.
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
651b0e6
|
What I remembered best, however, was a darkly sensual Ecuadorian girl as tender, hungry and insatiable as any I'd ever encountered. She was engaged to one of the Ecuadorian airport personnel but from the moment our eyes met as she lay in a hammock at a barbecue thrown to help everyone get acquainted, we knew we were going to be lovers. Even though her boyfriend was there that day, we found a way to get close.
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
8a9be3b
|
Perhaps I was in that season of winter in which all writers experience at some point. Did I still believe or didn't I? I had once, long ago. But years pass, seasons change, and hope and faith sometimes drift about in a chilly wind when love is something that only happens to other people.
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
1e570ba
|
It was the question I kept coming back to, the one I couldn't answer. I had begun to believe again in the miracles about which I wrote, but now that faith had been shaken. Was God asking if I still believed?
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
3bdc371
|
The late afternoon sky over Paris imparted a softer glow to the city, hinting in a lover's whisper to be patient with her, because the romantic heaven of Paris by night was only a few hours away, and would be worth the wait.
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
7fe0f0c
|
I didn't see how it could be anything bad, because that wasn't the way God worked, or at least the way I'd always believed he worked. I had gotten something back today that I'd all but lost, and by the time I'd wound my way to the farmhouse, I'd decided to hang onto it as tight as I could.
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |
|
5f93b5a
|
I couldn't think of any reason except the truth, which would only make him yell, or worse, laugh at me. It was humiliating, because he was right. It was silly, after all, losing myself in some pulp romance. Life wasn't like that, not really. It was just that I needed a small break from my life sometimes. But how could I tell Robert that, and hurt his feelings?
|
|
|
Bobby Underwood |