"One, Two, Three" by Paul Cain

From: The Black Lizard Big Book of the Pulps, ed. Otto Penzler. Vintage Crime / Black Lizard, 2007.

The unnamed gambler who narrates this story is after a con man named Healey, and with good reason. Healey plays cards but is no good at it, and he has a lot of money. The narrator plays well and wants to relieve him of some.

After cooling his heels in Los Angeles waiting for his mark to show up, the narrator gets a tip he's hiding out in Caliente, Nevada, and he wastes no time getting up there. Pretty soon he and Healey are drinking together, and Healey eventually asks him for a lift to L.A. Unfortunately Healey gets cold feet, as in laid-out-on-a-slab cold, and his money takes a trip of its own. The narrator doesn't like that so much.

He returns to L.A. and starts hunting around, and before long he discovers two other chislers trying to horn in on the action. The three of them do their best to beat each other to the punch, but unbeknownst to them, there's someone else out there ready to knock them all on the head.

"One, Two, Three" is told in Cain's trademark deadpan style, but unlike many of his other stories, there's nothing grim about it. In fact it's blackly humorous and the ending is outright funny. I read Cain's collection Seven Slayers, in which this story apparently appeared, several years ago, but for whatever reason had absolutely no memory of it, even after rereading it in Otto Penzler's mammoth love letter to the pulps.

I was reminded of Cain today when I read the news that one of Cain's stories that had never been reprinted was available. Take a look here for more details. (via Spinetingler)

"Red Wind", by Raymond Chandler

From: The Black Lizard Big Book of the Pulps, ed. Otto Penzler. Vintage Crime / Black Lizard, 2007.

Philip Marlowe was sitting in a bar across the street from his apartment building, having a beer and listening to the hot Santa Ana wind beating against the windows, when a small snappily-dressed man comes in. "Seen a lady in here, buddy?" asks the man. "Tall, pretty, in a print bolero jacket over a blue crepe silk dress?"

At which point the drunk at the end of the bar rouses himself and plugs the little guy twice through the heart. "So long ,Waldo," he says. Then he's gone.

It's hours before the cops are done with Marlowe. Finally they cut him loose and he heads for home. And when the apartment house elevator reaches his floor, the doors slide open to reveal a beautiful woman in a print bolero jacket over a blue crepe silk dress.

In my opinion, "Red Wind" is the finest of Chandler's short stories, the one most similar to the style he used in his novels. Published only a year before The Big Sleep came out, it has the romanticism, the languid style, the same stock characters, and the same yearning for some sort of honest human contact.

I first read this story when I was only 19, and at the time I didn't understand the ending. Only when I reread it a couple of years later did I fully grasp why Marlowe did what he did. I have to guess that "Red Wind" was influenced by Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness. At the end of that book, the narrator (also named Marlowe) has a choice to make, and like Chandler's Marlowe, he chooses humanity over the truth.