Chicago Noir

by Joe Meno

  ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

  Nelson Algren (1909–1981) was the author of five major novels, two short fiction collections, a book-length poem, and several collections of reportage. Algren’s powerful voice rose from the urban wilderness of postwar Chicago, to which he returned again and again in his work. He was the recipient of the first National Book Award for fiction and was lauded by Hemingway as “one of the two best authors in America.”

  Sherwood Anderson (1876–1941) was an American novelist and short story writer. Born and raised in Ohio, he moved to Chicago in 1912 to become a writer after suffering a nervous breakdown. His best-known work is Winesburg, Ohio (1919), a collection of short stories based in the small farm town where he grew up. He was a great influence on the generation of American writers who came after him, especially William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway.

  Fredric Brown (1906–1972) is probably the only writer to have achieved equally great prominence in two distinct genres: science fiction and the mystery. Winner of the Edgar Award for Best First Novel (The Fabulous Clipjoint), his mysteries are all still in print over four decades after his death and his 1949 science fiction novel What Mad Universe is regarded as a classic. His short stories are often reprinted and several of his novels have been adapted for film.

  Sandra Cisneros is the author of the novels The House on Mango Street and Caramelo; the short story collection Woman Hollering Creek; and the poetry collections My Wicked Wicked Ways and Loose Woman. Her most recent books are Bravo Bruno!, a children’s book, and Have You Seen Marie?, an illustrated book for adults. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a MacArthur, and is the founder of the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Foundation.

  Max Allan Collins is the author of the Shamus Award–winning Nathan Heller historical thrillers and the graphic novel Road to Perdition, the basis for the Academy Award–winning film. His innovative 1970s series, Quarry, has been revived by Hard Case Crime and he is developing novels from unfinished Mickey Spillane manuscripts. Collins wrote and directed the Lifetime movie Mommy and the documentary Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane.

  Stuart Dybek is the author of three books of fiction: I Sailed with Magellan, The Coast of Chicago, and Childhood and Other Neighborhoods. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper’s, the Atlantic, Tin House, and many other magazines. Among Dybek’s numerous honors are a PEN/Malamud Award, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and several O. Henry Prizes. He is currently a Distinguished Writer in Residence at Northwestern University.

  Barry Gifford is the author of more than forty published works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. He has been the recipient of awards from PEN, the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Library Association, the Writers Guild of America, and the Christopher Isherwood Foundation. His novel Wild at Heart: The Story of Sailor and Lula was made into a major motion picture which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

  Libby Fischer Hellmann left a career in broadcast news in Washington, DC, and moved to Chicago thirty-five years ago, where she, naturally, began to write gritty crime fiction. Eleven published novels and twenty short stories later, she claims they’ll take her out of the Windy City feetfirst. She has been nominated for many awards in the mystery writing community and has even won a few.

  Patricia Highsmith (1921–1995) was the author of more than twenty novels, including Strangers on a Train, The Price of Salt, and The Talented Mr. Ripley, as well as numerous short stories.

  Hugh Holton (1946–2001) was a thirty-year veteran and commander of the Chicago Police Department. He served as the Midwest chapter president of the Mystery Writers of America and wrote several best-selling novels, including Time of the Assassins, The Left Hand of God, Violent Crimes, and Windy City. At the time of his death, Hugh Holton was the highest-ranking active police officer writing novels in America.

  Stuart M. Kaminsky (1934–2009) was a Chicago-born crime fiction writer of over sixty novels, as well as story collections and nonfiction works. He is best known for three long-running series of mystery novels. His novels have earned seven Edgar Award nominations, and his Inspector Rostnikov novel A Cold Red Sunrise won the Edgar Award in 1989. He was a film professor at Northwestern University for sixteen years.

  Harry Stephen Keeler (1890–1967) was the author of more than seventy mystery novels known for their highly intricate “webwork” plots. He was born and spent most of his life in Chicago, the setting for many of his books. Among his works are The Skull of the Waltzing Clown (1935), The Case of the Barking Clock (1947), and The Mystery of the Fiddling Cracksman (1934).

  Joe Meno (editor) is a fiction writer and playwright who lives in Chicago. He is the winner of the Nelson Algren Literary Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Great Lakes Book Award, and a finalist for the Story Prize. He is the author of six novels including the best sellers Hairstyles of the Damned and The Boy Detective Fails, and his latest, Marvel and a Wonder. He is a professor in the Department of Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago.

  Sara Paretsky revolutionized the mystery world in 1982 when she introduced her detective V.I. Warshawski in Indemnity Only. Since then, her New York Times best-selling novels have been published in thirty countries. In 1986 she created Sisters in Crime, a worldwide organization to support women crime writers, which earned her Ms. magazine’s 1987 Woman of the Year award. Her many accolades also include the 2011 Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award for lifetime achievement.

  Percy Spurlark Parker was born and raised in Chicago. He became a published author in April 1972 when Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine published his story entitled “Block Party.” He has served as Midwest chapter president of the Mystery Writers of America, and has been a member of the Private Eye Writers of America since its inception.

  Richard Wright (1908–1960) was born in Mississippi and moved to Chicago in 1927, where he worked at a post office and studied the works of other writers. His writing is widely believed to have helped change race relations in the United States in the mid-twentieth century. He is best known for his memoir Black Boy (1945) and his novel Native Son (1940).

  BONUS MATERIAL

  Bonus Story: "Like a Rocket with a Beat" by Joe Meno, from Chicago Noir

  Excerpt from USA Noir: Best of the Akashic Noir Series

  Also available in the Akashic Noir Series

  Akashic Noir Series Awards & Recognition

  LIKE A ROCKET WITH A BEAT

  BY JOE MENO

  Lawrence & Broadway

  High black cat is the worst kind of luck. It’s the luck of knowing your ghostly number is up. It’s the luck of the zero, the no one. It’s the record that automatically plays whenever the radio comes on. Like Donna Lee with the trumpet blaring.

  “Shirley stole this record too,” Seamus cursed. “She took this one.”

  He’d borrowed a coupe and the night was warm so we were out driving. At the time, he was up to number nine. Mister Ten might go walking by anytime. “Pull over,” he said suddenly. I slowed the automobile down, figuring it quick.

  At the corner of Broadway and Lawrence, there was Cannonball Adams, the piano player, with a girl, standing unsuspecting. He was telling her the ideas he had about her—her legs and hair, the way she looked like a movie star in the lights of the evening. She was buying it because she wasn’t his wife. The girl was on the corner listening to the music Cannonball was whispering and he began leaning in at her with his enormous hands, and it was then that Seamus opened the passenger side door.

  In a flash, Seamus was at the corner and had already slugged the fellah in the back of the neck. Seamus gave him two chops to the head and a shot to the kidney and then one more to the crown, which laid him out pretty well. Seamus hadn’t fought in the ring in years but he could still move like lightning. Then the heartbreak. Seamus raised his foot up.

  “No, no, not my hands, not my hands,” Cannonball pleaded, and he had hands unlike any other man, three times the size of most men’s, they were the hands of a monster re
ally. Seamus snarled and stomped down hard with his size-elevens on the sap’s fingers, a step on the right, then the left, then back and forth, then again. The girl didn’t like the idea. She swung her purse at the side of Seamus’s head. It only made him madder. He turned and grabbed the purse from her hand, then turned again. He came shuffling back to the automobile but he was slow now and sad. He closed the automobile door and I took off quick like that.

  It was quiet for a while. The ghost of a small black cat cut across the snow, from one corner into a dark alley, its shadow stretching thin and long. That cat, and me seeing it, was just about the worst thing that could happen at that moment. I swore to myself. We went on driving and I looked at Seamus, and what he placed between him and me on the front seat made my eyes ache, but badly. It was the girl’s white purse: small, square-shaped, etc., etc. He had taken the girl’s purse for some reason.

  “How come?” I asked, and he looked down, embarrassed, then turned his head and started to open the purse, sad that the whole thing had ever happened maybe.

  “He was number ten,” he said.

  “How come the purse then?”

  “I don’t know,” he frowned, out of breath. “You want it?”

  “No,” I replied. “It’s bad luck. I won’t touch it.”

  “That settles it,” he said, “I don’t want to think about Shirley again,” and even as he was talking, I was sure neither of us was having it. Cannonball Adams was number ten, the tenth fellah to have fooled around with Shirley. Somewhere out there, I was sure, was number eleven.

  I glanced over at Seamus’s big red face. He looked like he had lost the big fight. His left eye was twitching. He shrugged his thick shoulders then emptied the rest of the tiny purse in his lap. Inside there was a handkerchief and a makeup kit. A pair of fake eyelashes fell on out next. They landed right beside me, just like that, almost blinking. I didn’t say a word. I just stared at them. They were thick and black and tired and lovely. He tipped the purse over and what came out next was like a song where the lady singing mentions your name, but directly, something like, “I’m in love with a boy who makes my heart spin/I’m in love with a boy, a boy named Jim. ”

  It was a white business card that fell out, with a picture of a blue genie coming up from a lamp. I picked it up and saw that, on the other side of the card, it read:

  THE BEARER OF THIS CARD IS HEREBY

  GRANTED THREE WISHES

  It was those moments, those strange moments where I caught the lines no one else seemed to be hearing, those strange moments like the one I was having, that made me want to go into a church again so badly.

  “What’s it say?” Seamus asked.

  “It says I got three wishes.”

  “Three wishes? What for?”

  “For finding it. Sure,” I said, “three wishes? That’s easy.”

  “Sure.”

  “For my first one: huh. Well. Well, I wish I could sleep more soundly.”

  “How’s that?” Seamus asked.

  “I’m up all night. I hear things. I get afraid. I get afraid ghosts are sitting in my parlor, you know. I’m counting sheep until daybreak.”

  “A grown man like you?” He smiled. “You oughta be ashamed.”

  “Sure I am. Ever since I was a kid, though. I get in bed and that’s all I think about. Ghosts.”

  “You’re gonna throw away a perfectly good wish on nonsense like that?” Seamus grunted. “Really. You oughta be ashamed. Why don’t you use it on something you need? Something you always wanted, maybe.”

  I looked down at my sad Stacy Adams with the hole in the toe and said, “O-key, then, I take it back. For my first wish, a new pair of shoes.”

  “You’re gonna waste ’em on a pair of shoes?” Seamus moaned. “That’s terrible.”

  “That’s what I need.”

  “That’s terrible,” he repeated.

  “O-key, then you can have the next one.”

  “O-key,” he said, and I should have seen it coming, down the block, right up the street. “O-key. I wish I knew where Shirley was right now.” He whispered it and I nodded, without a word, letting that one pass as quickly as I could.

  “O-key, for my last one …” I said. “Huh, I dunno. Maybe I’ll keep it for a while.”

  “That’s smart,” he said, but even as he went on talking, I was already thinking. I held the card in my hand and thought of my Slingerland traps, the greatest drum set I had ever had, pearl finish with red sparkles, my kit which was now sitting in the front window of a pawn shop on Ashland, and the thought was this: “I wish I don’t end up a two-bit just like everybody.”

  2

  It was our job to drive around. Seamus had been hired to collect certain things from certain people and he would give me a cut of his pay for me to drive, because although he could set a fellah twice his size down on his back, he couldn’t keep his hands still on the wheel. It was a decent enough job but nothing I was too proud of. Seamus would borrow a car from his employer and then we’d drive around all night. It was always easier at night and the music they played on the radio was always a lot luckier.

  In the soft gray silence of morning, after we drove around, searching for certain people on street corners, in bars, in the arms of girls they did not trust, I’d mope back to the apartment to try and sleep. It would be too quiet. At one time a lady with a pet canary had lived in the apartment beneath me and they sang along together, every morning, the lady being lonely, wishing for some man to do her duet with maybe. Then the little orange canary got out of its cage, crawled in a hole, and got caught in the wall. For a while, very, very late at night, the lady would sing and it would sing back from behind the plaster. But then it was quiet and not even “Body and Soul” would help locate where the bird had vanished. The lady moved out finally. There were still white sheets all over the furniture and it made me wonder if, like the rest of the town, she had given up on something.

  I’d come home alone, lock the apartment door, and switch on the light. If I looked in the hallway mirror I might see a ghost. My uncle, who was a night watchman, taught me how to spot them. There was a ghost of a bootlegger who would appear in my bedroom late at night, dressed in a borrowed white sheet with two black holes for eyes. You could try and convince him he didn’t belong there, but it was impossible. The only way to get rid of him was to switch on the radio and slowly turn the dial until there was a song he recognized and somehow it would remind him that he had died. It was a shame. Here I was, a grown man, superstitious and afraid of the dark, and being afraid of the dark is what got me into the kind of trouble I was always in.

  3

  Like the way it usually went, Seamus came by the next night and asked me to help him put the fix on Mr. Number Eleven. He was all busted up about it. He was stuttering and wringing his hands nervously. I locked the apartment door and took my glasses off because I was not about to go through breaking them again, and he said, “All you got to do is drive me, Jim,” and so I put my glasses back on my face.

  The elevator arrived and we stepped inside. The two old black cleaning ladies were already there. They had boxes and bags of garbage and old clothes and were whispering to each other. One of them was saying, “It’s not like they didn’t try to help him. He just went off on his own. He couldn’t get it off his back, that stuff. He moved in with that white girl and he couldn’t be good, and just like that she stabbed him to death. That girl, that girl’s gonna reap what she sows. I told her. She needs the cure. The only thing gonna save her now is Jesus. But she’s not interested. She won’t hear it. She ain’t never gonna be happy until she lets herself be saved. I know it. I’ve had my share of it. Hardening your heart like that. I don’t know what you call it, but it sure ain’t living. That boy’s dead two days now, stabbed. My man’s been gone for ten and it hurts like yesterday.” The lady looked me over and smiled and said, “What size are you?” and I said, “Size?” and she said, “What are you? About a nine?” and out of one of the boxes
came a pair of black shoes. They belonged to whoever had been stabbed, and even in the shaky light of the elevator I could tell that they would fit fine.

  4

  The fix was going to be put on a fink named Langley. He had a horse face and played the trumpet around town with Davey Trotter, the clarinetist and arranger. Apparently, Langley had also slept with Seamus’s wife and now, including Cannonball Adams, the count was up to eleven. Most of them were musicians, stage actors, or semi-pro fighters, one was even a southern jockey. The wife had a hot spot for anyone whose name was in lights. It seemed to me that if Seamus found out about one more, just one more, it might end in someone’s murder maybe.

  When we got out of my building, I saw that it was snowing again. Also, there was an automobile sitting there waiting. This was a surprise because, like I said, Seamus did not own an automobile. For a second I wondered if it was stolen or borrowed, and then he said, “You drive, all right? I can’t. My hands are too shaky.”

  “Whose automobile is this one?” I asked.

  “I found it,” he replied, and I nodded and he gave me the keys and I started it up. It was a late-model Chevy Coupe, maybe ’55, ’56, and it looked like it had been black once but now it was dull brown and green and a junkyard. It was an eyesore, only being a few years old, which must have meant something. Seamus got in the passenger side and lit up a square and his left eye started to twitch a little. I took it as bad luck immediately.