The hardest part of all was getting the knife back into the woman’s fingers...
Suddenly he was trembling, cold sweat pouring from his face as he remembered them dying, remembered the way in which they had all died. It seemed easy at the time, but now the truth was catching up to him.
He shivered, forced his back stiff, bit down on his lip. He thought, “Why should I feel sorry for them?” For thirty-eight years he had been forced to watch Dolan and Lettoli and Huegens and the others, watch them ride over the bodies of the people of this city, unable to touch them, forced even to hold their car doors for them. Until Ellie died the captain had swallowed the hate he felt for himself because of them, accepted the dirt that they threw at him even as he turned down their money. He was Mr. Clean of the department, the one incorruptible cop — the one who turned his back and washed his hands of the affair, refusing to be involved.
Maybe, he thought, maybe he should have quit the job right at the beginning, even though he would never have met Ellie...
But he hung on, tried to do his best within the strictures placed on him by the men who really ran the city. He started the list early, though, even before he knew Ellie. It began with a dozen names, and over the years there had been many additions and deletions, until tonight only the nine men had remained.
Now they were all dead.
The captain’s pipe was out. He flicked the wheel once more, but he did not relight it. Instead, he got up and went into the kitchen, bent to blow out the pilot lights on the gas stove, then turned all the burners on full. Then he went back to the living room, sat down in his chair again, thinking of California...
But there was nothing for him there. He had lost touch with his sister years ago, except for the Christmas cards that Ellie sent with both of their names on them. His sister had sent him one from California this year, but he had not bothered to send one back.
Everything he wanted was in the past, everything he needed to do finished. He looked at the lighter in one hand, placed his pipe back in his mouth now, sucking on the cold bowl.
The smell of gas was very strong now.
He spun the wheel of the lighter, over and over, watching the dance of the beautiful flames...
James M. Reasoner
(b. 1953)
With the demise of Manhunt in the late 1960s, the only consistent magazine market for short noir fiction over the next fifteen years was Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine. Founded by pulp maven Leo Margulies, and edited for twenty years by his wife, Cylvia Kleinman, and then by Sam Merwin, Jr., and Charles E. Fritch, MSMM often was a showcase for hard-boiled tales by established writers of the period. But the magazine also published new writers whose careers subsequently blossomed in the fields of suspense and horror fiction, including George Chesbro, Margaret Maron, Joe R. Lansdale, Gary Brandner, Robert J. Randisi, Richard Laymon, and James M. Reasoner.
Reasoner, a Texan, published his first story in MSMM in 1976, following up with some seventy-five others in the mystery-detective genre. His only crime novel, Texas Wind (1980), which features a Fort Worth private eye named Cody, is considered a minor paperback classic by those fortunate enough to have found a copy. Only a small number were published, and just a fraction of those were distributed to retail outlets. Under pseudonyms, Reasoner has also produced dozens of Western novels and historical sagas, alone and in collaboration with his wife, award-winning novelist L. J. Washburn.
“Graveyard Shift,” which was published in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine in November 1978 under the name M. R. James, is one of the first stories to address the ultramodern issues of the convenience store as a target for small-time armed robbers bent on a quick score, and the many kinds of violence that stem from such an establishment’s vulnerability. Like James Hannah’s “Junior Jackson’s Parable,” it is a trenchant parable for our time.
B. P.
Graveyard Shift
(1978)
Graveyard shifts are all alike. I know too well the emotions that fill the long nights: boredom and fear. Boredom because nothing different ever happens, fear that sometime it might.
Convenience stores are all alike, too. Boxy little buildings filled with junk food and a few staples like bread and milk. The prices are too high, but where else can you buy things after midnight?
The little KwikStop store wasn’t the first one in which I had worked. I’ve been traveling the country, trying to see some of that I haven’t seen, now that I’m a widower and don’t have any reason to stay in one place. The convenience stores always need help, and I have experience. Getting a job is no problem.
Neither is the fact that I’m usually assigned the all-night shift. It gives me the days free to do anything I want.
You see the same type of customers, no matter where the store is. Before midnight, you get teenagers buying cokes and college kids buying beer and potato chips. A lot of young couples come in to buy milk and diapers. Sometimes you get a drunk who wants to buy beer after hours. Sometimes they get nasty when you refuse.
And sometimes you get one like the man who stepped in earlier tonight. That’s where the fear comes in.
He was thin and had a pinched, beard-stubbled face, with too-wide eyes that never stopped moving. His clothes were shabby and his hands were pushed deep in the pockets of his windbreaker. I knew the type right away.
I’ve been working in the little stores long enough that attempted robberies are nothing new to me. Most stores have a policy about robberies that emphasizes cooperation and observation. They tell the clerks to do whatever the robber says. It’s supposed to be safer that way.
But as I looked at this guy, I felt an ache in my belly and the palms of my hands began to sweat. This might be one of those times. The hammer of my pulse began to accelerate.
The man picked up a sack of Fritos and came toward the cash register. His other hand was still in his pocket.
The doors opened and two men and a young boy came in, heading for the soft drink case.
The man in the windbreaker looked hard at the newcomers and then dropped a quarter and a penny on the counter to pay for the Fritos. I rang up the sale and began to breathe again as he pushed through the doors on his way out.
It wasn’t long afterward that George and Eddie pulled up in their patrol car and came inside for coffee, like they do every night.
“Hello, fellas,” I said. “You should have been here a little earlier.”
George poured himself a cup of the always-ready coffee and asked, “What happened, Frank?”
“Maybe I’m being paranoid, but there was a guy in here I think was going to rob the place. Some customers came in and he changed his mind.”
“Did he pull a gun on you?”
“No, I didn’t see a gun. It was just a gut feeling. Like I said, maybe I’m paranoid.”
“Gut feelings are the best ones,” Eddie said. “What did he look like?”
“Thin, maybe one-forty or fifty, about five-nine, sandy hair, probably about thirty years old. He was wearing blue jeans and a brown wind-breaker.”