The Best American Noir of the Century

the minute, automatically. But somehow the dial was blurred, as though the hands were spinning like tiny propellers. He had the weird feeling that the watch was showing time traveling backward, so that he found himself checking it in terms of years and decades. He went all the way back to the day when he was eleven years old and they took him to reform school.

In reform school he was taught a lot of things. The thing he learned best was the way to use a knife. The knife became his profession. But somewhere along the line he caught onto the idea of holding a daytime job to cover his nighttime activities. He worked in stockrooms and he did some window cleaning and drove a truck for a fruit dealer. And finally he became an elevator operator and that was the job he liked best. He’d never realized why he liked it so much but he realized now. He knew that the elevator was nothing more than a moving cell, and that the only place for him was a cell. The passengers were just a lot of friendly visitors walking in and out, saying “Good morning, Freddy,” and “Good night, Freddy,” and they were such nice people. Just the thought of them brought a tender smile to his lips.

Then he realized he was smiling down at her. He sensed a faint glow coming from somewhere, lighting her face. For an instant he had no idea what it was. Then he realized it came from the sky. It was the first signal of approaching sunrise.

The white-gold watch showed five fifty-three. Freddy Lamb told himself to get moving. For some reason he couldn’t move. He was looking down at the dead girl. His hand was still clenched about the switchblade, and as he tried to relax it he almost dropped the knife. He looked down at it.

The combine was a cell, too, he told himself. The combine was an elevator from which he could never escape. It was going steadily downward and there were no stops until the end. There was no way to get out.

Herman had made him kill the girl. Herman would make him do other things. And there was no getting away from that. If he killed Herman there would be someone else.

The elevator was carrying Freddy steadily downward. Already, he had left Pearl somewhere far above him. He realized it all at once, and an unreasonable terror filled him.

Freddy looked at the white-gold watch again. A minute had passed and he knew suddenly that he was slated to do a job on someone in exactly three minutes now. The minutes passed and he stood there alone.

At precisely five fifty-seven he said goodbye to his profession and plunged the blade into his heart.

1956 GIL BREWSTER THE GESTURE

Gil(bert) Brewer (1922-1983) was born in Canandaigua, New York. While he was serving in the Army during World War II, his family moved to Florida; he joined them after his discharge. He decided to become a writer like his father when he was nine years old, dropping out of school to work at various blue-collar jobs while practicing his craft. Although his bibliography shows numerous sales to pulps such as Zeppelin Stories in 1929 and to various detective magazines between 1931 and 1934, they are obviously inaccurate. His first book, 13 French Street, was published in 1951 — the first of his twenty-three novels to be issued in that decade — the same year in which he sold what is probably his first published short story, “With This Gun,” to Detective Tales. He published nearly one hundred stories in all, mostly under his own name, but also under the pseudonyms Eric Fitzgerald and Bailey Morgan. He also ghostwrote novels for Ellery Queen, Hal Ellson, Al Conroy, and five novels for an Israeli soldier named Harry Arvay.

Early in his career, Brewer came to the attention of Joseph T. Shaw, who became his agent. The famous editor of Black Mask saw in Brewer a special talent and thought he could rival the biggest names, but Shaw died of a heart attack in 1952, soon after their association began. Thereafter Brewer cranked out paperback originals at a prodigious rate, often completing a book in a week or less. They are generally dark stories, compared by the editor Anthony Boucher to the work of James M. Cain and Jim Thompson, mostly about ordinary men led down the road to ruin by unscrupulous women. His best-selling book, The Red Scarf (1958), one of two hardcover books he published, sold more than a million copies. After the 1950s, however, his output diminished, both quantitatively and qualitatively, largely due to alcoholism and serious injuries sustained in a car crash — a good career that, with better advice and a little more luck, could have been a great one.

“The Gesture” was originally published in the March 1956 issue of The Saint Mystery Magazine.

Nolan placed both hands on the railing of the veranda, and unconsciously squeezed the wood until the muscles in his arms corded and ached. He looked down, across the immaculately trimmed green lawn, past the palms and the Australian pines, to the beach, gleaming whitely under the late-morning sun.

The Gulf was crisply green today, and calm, broken only by the happy frolicking of the man and woman — laughing, swimming. His wife, Helen, and Latimer, the photographer from the magazine in New York, down to do a picture story of the island.

Nolan turned his gaze away, lifted his hands, and stared at his palms. His hands were trembling and his thin cotton shirt was soaked with perspiration.

He couldn’t stand it. He left the veranda and walked swiftly into the sprawling living room of his home. He paced back and forth for a moment, his feet whispering on the grass rug. Then he stood quietly in the center of the room, trying to think. For two weeks it had been going on. At first he’d thought he would last. Now he knew it no longer mattered, about lasting.

He would have to do something. He strode rapidly across the room into his study, opened the top drawer of his desk, and looked down at the .45 automatic. He slammed the drawer shut, whirled, and went back into the living room.

Why had he ever allowed the man entrance to the island?

Oh, he knew why, well enough. Because Helen had wanted it. And now he couldn’t order Latimer away. It would be as good as telling Helen the reason. She knew how much he loved her; why did she act this way? Why did she torture him? She must realize, after all these years, that he couldn’t stand another man even looking at her beauty.

Why did she think they lived here — severed from all mainland life?

He stiffened, making an effort to wipe away the frown on his face. He reached for his handkerchief and swabbed at the perspiration on his arms and forehead. They were coming, laughing and talking, up across the lawn.

Quickly, he selected a magazine from the rack and settled into a wicker chair with his back to the front entrance. He flipped the periodical open and was engrossed in a month-old mystery story when they stomped loudly across the veranda.

Every step was a kind of unbearable thunder to Nolan. He was reaching such a pitch of helpless irritability that he nearly screamed.

“Darling!” Helen called. “Where are you — oh, there!”

She stepped toward him, her bare feet softly thumping the grass rug. He half-glanced up at her. She was coffee-brown, her eyes excited and happier than he’d seen them in a long time. She wore one of the violent-lined red, yellow, and green cloth swimming suits that she’d designed for herself.

He abruptly realized how meager the suit was and his neck burned. He had contrived to have her make the suit with the least expenditure of material. It was his pleasure to look at her.

But not now — not with Latimer here!

“What have you been doing?” she asked.

He started to reply, looking across at Latimer standing at the entranceway, but she rippled on. “You really should have come swimming with us, dear. It was wonderful this morning.” She reached out and tousled his hair. “You haven’t been near the water in days.”