Chicago Noir

by Joe Meno

  “Yes, Red?”

  “Trombone. Why don’t you take up trombone? You could learn it fast, and you don’t need finger action to play trombone.”

  Slowly I shook my head. I didn’t try to explain. It was something you couldn’t explain, anyway. It wasn’t only the physical ability to play an instrument that was gone. It was more than that.

  I looked at my hands once more and then I put them carefully away in my pockets where I wouldn’t have to look at them.

  I looked up at the interne’s face again. There was a look on it that I recognized and remembered—the look I’d seen on thousands of young faces across footlights—hero worship. Out of the past it came to me, that look.

  He could still look at me that way, even after—

  “Red,” I asked him, “don’t you think I’m insane?”

  “Of course not, Mr. Marlin. I don’t think you were ever—” He bogged down on that.

  I needled him. Maybe it was cruel, but it was crueler to me. I said, “You don’t think I was ever crazy? You think I was sane when I tried to kill my wife?”

  “Well—it was just temporary. You had a breakdown. You’d been working too hard—twenty hours a day, about. You were near the top with your band. Me, Mr. Marlin, I think you were at the top. You had it on all of them, only most of the public hadn’t found out yet. They would have, if—”

  “If I hadn’t slipped a cog,” I said. I thought, what a way to express going crazy, trying to kill your wife, trying to kill yourself, and losing your memory.

  Red looked at his wrist watch, then pulled up a chair and sat down facing me. He talked fast.

  “We haven’t got too long, Mr. Marlin,” he said. “And I want you to pass those doctors and get out of here. You’ll be all right once you get out of this joint. Your memory will come back, a little at a time—when you’re in the right surroundings.”

  I shrugged. It didn’t seem to matter much. I said, “Okay, brief me. It didn’t work last time, but—I’ll try.”

  “You’re Johnny Marlin,” he said. “The Johnny Marlin. You play a mean clarinet, but that’s sideline. You’re the best alto sax in the business, I think. You were fourth in the Down Beat poll a year ago, but—”

  I interrupted him. “You mean I did play clarinet and sax. Not anymore, Red. Can’t you get that through your head?” I hadn’t meant to sound so rough about it, but my voice got out of control.

  Red didn’t seem to hear me. His eyes went to his wrist watch again and then came back to me. He started talking again.

  “We got ten minutes, maybe. I wish I knew what you remember and what you don’t about all I’ve been telling you the last month. What’s your right name—I mean, before you took a professional name?”

  “John Dettman,” I said. “Born June 1, 1920, on the wrong side of the tracks. Orphaned at five. Released from orphanage at sixteen. Worked as bus boy in Cleveland and saved up enough money to buy a clarinet, and took lessons. Bought a sax a year later, and got my first job with a band at eighteen.”

  “What band?”

  “Heinie Wills’s—local band in Cleveland, playing at Danceland there. Played third alto awhile, then first alto. Next worked for a six-man combo called—what was it, Red? I don’t remember.”

  “The Basin Streeters, Mr. Marlin. Look, do you really remember any of this, or is it just from what I’ve told you?”

  “Mostly from what you’ve told me, Red. Sometimes I get kind of vague pictures, but it’s pretty foggy. Let’s get on with it. So the Basin Streeters did a lot of traveling for a while and I left them in Chi for my first stretch with a name band—look, I think I’ve got that list of bands pretty well memorized. There isn’t much time. Let’s skip it.

  “I joined the army in ’42—I’d have been twenty-two then. A year at Fort Billings, and then England. Kayoed by a bomb in London before I ever got to pull a trigger except on rifle range. A month in a hospital there, shipped back, six months in a mental hospital here, and let out on a PN.” He knew as well as I did what PN meant, but I translated it for us. “Psycho-neurotic. Nuts. Crazy.”

  He opened his mouth to argue the point, and then decided there wasn’t time.

  “So I’d saved my money,” I said, “before and during the army, and I started my own band. That would have been—late ’44?”

  Red nodded. “Remember the list of places you’ve played, the names of your sidemen, what I told you about them?”

  “Pretty well,” I said. There wouldn’t be time to go into that, anyway. I said, “And early in ’47, while I was still getting started, I got married. To Kathy Courteen. The Kathy Courteen, who owns a slice of Chicago, who’s got more money than sense. She must have, if she married me. We were married June 10, 1947. Why did she marry me, Red?”

  “Why shouldn’t she?” he said. “You’re Johnny Marlin!”

  The funny part of it is he wasn’t kidding. I could tell by his voice he meant it. He thought being Johnny Marlin had really been something. I looked down at my hands. They’d got loose out of my pockets again.

  I think I knew, suddenly, why I wanted to get out of this gilt-lined nuthouse that was costing Kathy Courteen—Kathy Marlin, I mean—the price of a fur coat every week to keep me in. It wasn’t because I wanted out, really. It was because I wanted to get away from the hero worship of this redheaded kid who’d gone nuts about Johnny Marlin’s band, and Johnny Marlin’s saxophone.

  “Have you ever seen Kathy, Red?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I’ve seen pictures of her, newspaper pictures of her. She’s beautiful.”

  “Even with a scar across her throat?” I asked.

  His eyes avoided mine. They went to his watch again, and he stood up quickly. “We’d better get down there,” he said.

  He went to the knobless door, opened it with a key, and politely held it open for me to precede him out into the hallway.

  That look in his eyes made me feel foolish, as always. I don’t know how he did it, but Red always managed to look up at me, from a height a good three inches taller than mine.

  Then, side by side, we went down the great stairway of that lush, plush madhouse that had once been a million-dollar mansion and was now a million-dollar sanitarium with more employees than inmates.

  We went into the office and the gray-haired nurse behind the desk nodded and said, “They’re ready for you.”

  “Luck, Mr. Marlin,” Red said. “I’m pulling for you.”

  So I went through the door. There were three of them, as last time.

  “Sit down please, Mr. Marlin,” Dr. Glasspiegel, the head one, said.

  They sat each at one side of the square table, leaving the fourth side and the fourth chair for me. I slid into it. I put my hands in my pockets again. I knew if I looked at them or thought about them, I might say something foolish, and then I’d be here awhile again.

  Then they were asking me questions, taking turns at it. Some about my past—and Red’s coaching had been good. Once or twice, but not often, I had to stall and admit my memory was hazy on a point or two. And some of the questions were about the present, and they were easy. I mean, it was easy to see what answers they wanted to those questions, and to give them.

  But it had been like this the last time, I remembered, over a month ago. And I’d missed somewhere. They hadn’t let me go. Maybe, I thought, because they got too much money out of keeping me here. I didn’t really think that. These men were the best in their profession.

  There was a lull in the questioning. They seemed to be waiting for something. For what? I wondered, and it came to me that the last interview had been like this too.

  The door behind me opened quietly, but I heard it. And I remembered—that had happened last time too. Just as they told me I could go back to my room and they’d talk it over, someone else had come in. I’d passed him as I’d left the room.

  And, suddenly, I knew what I’d missed up on. It had been someone I’d been supposed to recognize, and I hadn’t. And he
re was the same test again. Before I turned, I tried to remember what Red had told me about people I’d known—but there was so little physical description to it. It seemed hopeless.

  “You may return to your room now, Mr. Marlin,” Dr. Glasspiegel was saying. “We—ah—wish to discuss your case.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and stood up.

  I saw that he’d taken off his shell-rimmed glasses and was tapping them nervously on the back of his hand, which lay on the table before him. I thought, okay, so now I know the catch and next time I’ll make the grade. I’ll have Red get me pictures of my band and other bands I’ve played with and as many newspaper pictures as he can find of people I knew.

  I turned. The man in the doorway, standing there as though waiting for me to leave, was short and fat. There was a tense look in his face, even though his eyes were avoiding mine. He was looking past me, at the doctors. I tried to think fast. Who did I know that was short and—

  I took a chance. I’d had a trumpet player named Tubby Hayes.

  “Tubby!” I said.

  And hit the jackpot. His face lighted up like a neon sign and he grinned a yard wide and stuck out his hand.

  “Johnny! Johnny, it’s good to see you.” He was making like a pump handle with my arm.

  “Tubby Hayes!” I said, to let them know I knew his last name too. “Don’t tell me you’re nuts too. That why you’re here?”

  He laughed nervously. “I came to get you, Johnny. That is, uh, if—” He looked past me.

  Dr. Glasspiegel was clearing his throat. He and the other doctors were standing now.

  “Yes,” he said, “I believe it will be all right for Mr. Marlin to leave.”

  He put his hand on my shoulder. They were all standing about me now.

  “Your reactions are normal, Mr. Marlin,” he said. “Your memory is still a bit impaired but—ah—it will improve gradually. More rapidly, I believe, amid familiar surroundings than here. You—ah—have plans?”

  “No,” I said frankly.

  “Don’t overwork again. Take things easy for a while. And . . .”

  There was a lot more advice. And then signing things, and getting ready. It was almost an hour before we got into a cab, Tubby and I.

  He gave the address, and I recognized it. The Carleton. That was where I’d lived, that last year. Where Kathy still lived.

  “How’s Kathy?” I asked.

  “Fine, Johnny. I guess she is. I mean—”

  “You mean what?”

  He looked a bit embarrassed. “Well—I mean I haven’t seen her. She never liked us boys, Johnny. You know that. But she was square with us. You know we decided we couldn’t hold together without you, Johnny, and might as well break up. Well, she paid us what we had coming—the three weeks you were on the cuff, I mean—and doubled it, a three-weeks’ bonus to tide us over.”

  “The boys doing okay, Tubby?”

  “Yep, Johnny. All of them. Well—except Harry. He kind of got lost in the snow if you know what I mean.”

  “That’s tough,” I said, and didn’t elaborate. I didn’t know whether I was supposed to know that Harry had been taking cocaine or not. And there had been two Harrys with the band, at that.

  So the band was busted up. In a way I was glad. If someone had taken over and held it together maybe there’d have been an argument about trying to get me to come back.

  “A month ago, Tubby,” I said, “they examined me at the sanitarium, and I flunked. I think it was because I didn’t recognize somebody. Was it you? Were you there then?”

  “You walked right by me, through the door, Johnny. You never saw me.”

  “You were there—for that purpose? Both times?”

  “Yes, Johnny. That Doc Glasspiegel suggested it. He got to know me, and to think of me, I guess, because I dropped around so often to ask about you. Why wouldn’t they let me see you?”

  “Rules,” I said. “That’s Glasspiegel’s system, part of it. Complete isolation during the period of cure. I haven’t even seen Kathy.”

  “No!” said Tubby. “They told me you couldn’t have visitors, but I didn’t know it went that far.” He sighed. “She sure must be head over heels for you, Johnny. What I hear, she’s carried the torch.”

  “God knows why,” I said. “After I cut—”

  “Shut up,” Tubby said sharply. “You aren’t to think or talk about that. Glasspiegel told me that while you were getting ready.”

  “Okay,” I said. It didn’t matter. “Does Kathy know we’re coming?”

  “We? I’m not going in, Johnny. I’m just riding to the door with you. No, she doesn’t know. You asked the doc not to tell her, didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t want a reception. I just want to walk in quietly. Sure, I asked the doctor, but I thought maybe he’d warn her anyway. So she could hide the knives.”

  “Now, Johnny—”

  “Okay,” I said.

  I looked out of the window of the cab. I knew where we were and just how far from the Carleton. Funny, my topography hadn’t gone the way the rest of my memory had. I still knew the streets and their names, even though I couldn’t recognize my best friend or my wife. The mind is a funny thing, I thought.

  “One worry you won’t have,” Tubby Hayes said. “That lush brother of hers, Myron Courteen, the one that was always in your hair.”

  The redheaded interne had mentioned that Kathy had a brother. Apparently I wasn’t supposed to like him.

  So I said, “Did someone drop him down a well?”

  “Headed west. He’s a Los Angeles playboy now. Guess he finally quarreled with Kathy and she settled an allowance on him and let him go.”

  We were getting close to the Carleton—only a half-dozen blocks to go—and suddenly I realized there was a lot that I didn’t know, and should know.

  “Let’s have a drink, Tubby,” I said. “I—I’m not quite ready to go home yet.”

  “Sure, Johnny,” he said, and then spoke to the cab driver.

  We swung in to the curb in front of a swanky neon-plated tavern. It didn’t look familiar, like the rest of the street did. Tubby saw me looking.

  “Yeah, it’s new,” he said. “Been here only a few months.”

  We went in and sat at a dimly lighted bar. Tubby ordered two Scotch-and-sodas—without asking me, so I guess that’s what I used to drink. I didn’t remember. Anyway, it tasted all right, and I hadn’t had a drink for eleven months, so even the first sip of it hit me a little.

  And when I’d drunk it all, it tasted better than all right. I looked at myself in the blue mirror back of the bar. I thought, there’s always this. I can always drink myself to death—on Kathy’s money. I knew I didn’t have any myself because Tubby had said I was three weeks on the cuff with the band.

  We ordered a second round and I asked Tubby, “How come this Myron hasn’t money of his own, if he’s Kathy’s brother?” He looked at me strangely. I’d been doing all right up to now. I said, “Yeah, there are things I’m still hazy about.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Well, that one’s easy. Myron is worse than a black sheep for the Courteens. He’s a no-good louse and an all-around stinker. He was disinherited, and Kathy got it all. But she takes care of him.”

  He took a sip of his drink and put it down again. “You know, Johnny,” he said, “none of us liked Kathy much because she was against you having the band and wanted you to herself. But we were wrong about her. She’s swell. The way she sticks to her menfolk no matter what they do. Even Myron.”

  “Even me,” I said.

  “Well—she saved your life, Johnny. With blood—” He stopped abruptly. “Forget it, Johnny.”

  I finished my second drink. I said, “I’ll tell you the truth, Tubby. I can’t forget it—because I don’t remember it. But I’ve got to know, before I face her. What did happen that night?”

  “Johnny, I—”

  “Tell me,” I said. “Straight.”

  He sighed. “Okay, Johnny. You’d been working c
lose to twenty-four hours a day trying to put us over, and we’d tried to get you to slow down and so did Kathy.”

  “Skip the build-up.”

  “That night, after we played at the hotel, we rehearsed some new stuff. You acted funny then, Johnny. You forgot stuff, and you had a headache. We made you go home early, in spite of yourself. And when you got home—well, you slipped a cog, Johnny. You picked a quarrel with your wife—I don’t know what you accused her of. And you went nuts. You got your razor—you always used to shave with a straight edge—and, well, you tried to kill her. And then yourself.”

  “You’re skipping the details,” I said. “How did she save my life?”

  “Well, Johnny, you hadn’t killed her like you thought. The cut went deep on one side of her throat but—she must have been pulling away—it went light across the center and didn’t get the jugular or anything. But there was a lot of blood and she fainted, and you thought she was dead, I guess, and slashed your own wrists. But she came to, and found you bleeding to death fast. Bleeding like she was, she got tourniquets on both your arms and held ’em and kept yelling until one of the servants woke up and got the Carleton house doctor. That’s all, Johnny.”

  “It’s enough, isn’t it?” I thought awhile and then I added, “Thanks, Tubby. Look, you run along and leave me. I want to think it out and sweat it out alone, and then I’ll walk the rest of the way. Okay?”

  “Okay, Johnny,” he said. “You’ll call me up soon?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Thanks for everything.”

  “You’ll be all right, Johnny?”

  “Sure. I’m all right.”

  After he left I ordered another drink. My third, and it would have to be my last, because I was really feeling them. I didn’t want to go home drunk to face Kathy.

  I sat there, sipping it slowly, looking at myself in that blue mirror back of the bar. I wasn’t a bad-looking guy, in a blue mirror. Only I should be dead instead of sitting there. I should have died that night eleven months ago. I’d tried to die.

  I was almost alone at the bar. There was one couple drinking martinis at the far end of it. The girl was a blonde who looked like a chorus girl. I wondered idly if Kathy was a blonde. I hadn’t thought to ask anyone. If Kathy walked in here now, I thought, I wouldn’t know her.