by David Mamet
“How did she do it, with a throw-down gun?”
“Mike,” she said, “poor black boys? Ain’t got no money for a throw-down gun. Follow me: White boy was trine to rape her? She stuck her hat pin in his heart.”
“What about if she wasn’t wearing a hat?”
“Well, then, there you are . . . ,” Peekaboo said.
The telephone was silent. The last expected customers had gone upstairs, the cold weather bid against the chance of a late-night walk-in. Peekaboo told Marcus to “start putting it away,” and he left the kitchen. Mike stood, looking out the frosted window.
“Down south, Texas, down to Shreveport,” Peekaboo said, “lots of them, Creoles, seem to me, mixture, Spanish and the French. And Negro. You’d think, some of ’em, passing, but I never saw them. Too proud, God bless ’em, to pass. And they could, you know? But they set themselves, or kept themselves, off, so’s you could tell. Not by they skin, which sometimes you could, nor either by their clothing, if you look at it, for, most the time, they was just well dressed, but, if you looked hard, you know, and sizing them up, you’d see they was better dressed, better looking, better figure, the men and the girls, than if they was white.
“Because they were proud; and I don’t blame ’em. One I know. White man, insulted him? Called the white man out. White man said, ‘I don’t fight no nigger,’ which was certainly convenient. The Creole? Caught him in the street, whipped him worse than you would a dog. White man, whimpering. In the dirt. I got to think: that was the best revenge. And that wu’nt eaten cold, and you know it’s true.
“Étouffée, now, got to be hot. You could woof it down, you come in, bucket of beer, and so on, but it should be hot. I knew them could cook it, most of them, light you up hot as you could wish, spicy? That’s what cools you off, a hot day.
“S’inn on the balcony, ices? As they say, you on the right road, but you going the wrong way.”
“Mint julep,” Mike suggested.
“Alright,” Peekaboo said. “But, the worth of that, of course, the bourbon, help you sweat it out. As, look here: the heat, you know, is what keeps us alive; filled with all these degraded notions, finally, come down to philosophy. Poor Creoles, if you understand, far superior to white or black, these grandees, something, brought down by the knowledge. Like here, you see, peddling one race to the other, black girl, slave to the white man, white man, slave to his dick, you know otherwise tell me. All about heat.”
She reached behind her, to the rolltop desk, she took a package of cigarettes and shook one out, lit it, and put the burnt match in the ashtray.
There were five black imitation-leather ledger books, with red imitation-leather corners. Next to them were several rough-sharpened lead pencils, their edges squared by a knife. The knife lay next to them. It was a small office knife. On the celluloid handle was printed Brandt’s Restaurant Supply, 221 South Dearborn. Call Dearborn Five, 113.
Peekaboo exhaled the cigarette smoke. She sighed, and turned back to the rotogravure section of the American, rolled into a cylinder and stuck into a pigeonhole of the desk. She removed it, and it opened to the fashion page. It showed two stylized line drawings, a man and a woman, dressed for spring.
“. . . And they killed that poor black girl,” Mike said softly.
Peekaboo looked up from the fashion section. Then she looked down.
“Overcoats getting longer this year,” she said.
Chapter 33
Mike walked into the City Room. Parlow was back in their corner, feet up on the desk, reading a proof. Mike stood over the desk, still in his hat and coat.
“Says here, ‘Sir William Frederick, assistant British consul, to visit fair city,’” Parlow said.
“How can you read that shit?” Mike said.
“It cheers me.”
“Where did you get those fucking boots?” Mike said.
“I bought them,” Parlow said. “From a bootery in London, much as anyone would.”
“I need a drink,” Mike said.
Parlow removed a half-pint bottle from his overcoat pocket.
“. . . Where also, I purchased this overcoat, Harris Tweed, hand-woven by the poor but honest ‘hand weavers,’ of Ireland, or wherever ‘Harris’ had elected to light.”
Mike shook a cigarette out of the pack, lit it, inhaled, and shook his head.
“What is it?” Parlow said.
The Woman’s Department of the Tribune sat in the northwest corner of the City Room. It housed the desk of the sob sister, generically called “Ask Miss Fisk,” who also doubled as the gossip editor, and the layout tables for “Styles and Fashions.”
Mike came through the door of the Woman’s Department. The young man who, that year, was Ask Miss Fisk, looked up from his typewriter.
“What’s a raglan sleeve?” Mike said.
“It’s a sleeve cut on the bias,” the young man said. He demonstrated by slashing the edge of his hand diagonally across his shoulder.
“It was named for Lord Raglan, who, in the Crimean War, lost his arm. It, generally . . .” But Mike was involved with the bound copies of Fashion Annual shelved on the wall. He opened them, one after the other, to Men’s Outerwear, and placed them, open, on the layout table.
“Why do you ask?” Miss Fisk said.
“They wear them here?” Mike said.
“Yes,” the young man said. “They’re coming back.” Mike, shaking his head, paged through the volume for 1926.
“What?” Mike said.
“They were adopted, as a novelty, some years after the War.”
“. . . By the veterans?” Mike said.
“No, not at all,” the young man said. “No. Generally by the rich. After the War, who would have seen them in their travels.”
“Would see them where?” Mike said.
“In England, in Scotland.”
Mike showed a line drawing to Miss Fisk. It showed a fashionable man, in an ankle-length overcoat. Mike pointed to the shoulders.
“Raglan sleeves,” Miss Fisk agreed.
“Cashmere, camel, vicuna . . . ?”
“Vicuña,” Miss Fisk said. “It’s an expensive—”
“No no no,” Mike said, “this was cheaper. It was rougher.”
“What? Where?” the young man said. “Yes, they were adopted for the drape, the fabric, coming from the collar, fell—”
“He came through the door, yeah, no,” Mike said. “These, these these, fit like a box. The fabric . . . It looked like? The fella on the Front? You sleep in the coat, a year, nothing else has that look. It was rough. The fabric. But, but, it was worn out in the weather, fella, sweated into it, slept in it. Heavy material.”
Mike stared at the line cuts of the fashionable coats, and shook his head.
“Who did?” Miss Fisk said.
“And the collars are wrong.” Mike pointed to the book. “It was like, a farmer—not a farmer, a . . . He wore it like a work coat.” He stopped.
“What?” young man said.
“It was his only coat. It could have been his father’s coat,” Mike said. “It was made, it wasn’t ‘fashionable,’ it was made. For a man who’d only have the one coat. To last him. And the collar was rounder.”
“What do you mean?” the young man said.
Mike took a sheet of paper and drew the coat and the collar. “You know,” Mike said, “how the fella looks? When he comes in? His clothes look like that, and you know how they smell, from the rain. He’s been out in the wind.
“And you know,” Mike said, “their hands. And the look, when he’s been out there?”
Miss Fisk looked at the line drawing. “Like a worker,” he said. “Some Englishman, a casual worker, or . . .”
“That’s what it was, that’s what it was,” Mike said, “that they’d been soldiers . . .”
“Or an Irishman,” Miss Fisk said.
“What?” Mike said.
In the Newspaper Morgue Mike sat over a book, with Parlow, at the desk. The girl fr
om the Morgue, who insisted on calling her department “Research,” had brought the new book, and left with the old. The new book, which was Jane’s Small Arms of the World, edition of 1919, had been opened at random, and Mike was slowly paging through it.
Parlow looked over Mike’s shoulder. “‘European handguns of the Great War,’” he read. “What did you carry?”
The pages held schematic drawings of handguns, and their specifications. Mike leafed quickly through the section on automatics.
“What did you carry . . . ?” Parlow said.
“Please be quiet,” Mike said.
“I never learned the trick,” Parlow said, “I—”
Mike turned back several pages and pointed. “This,” he said. “Seven point six five, Fabrique Nationale, semiautomatic . . .” Mike turned quickly through the chapter.
“I’m still reading,” Parlow said.
“There’s nothing to know,” Mike said. “It was a thirty-two-caliber short—my gun.”
“What was it good for?” Parlow said.
“You crashed, you used it, to put the plane out of its misery.”
“What a romantic life,” Parlow said. Mike turned through the pages showing the Colt and Smith & Wesson revolvers. “Smith & Wesson, and Colt,” Parlow said, “are not European, as every schoolgirl knows.”
“Shut up,” Mike said.
“Crouch is looking for you,” Parlow said. “What’s that?”
Mike had stopped and was looking down at a line drawing of ungainly revolvers.
“The Webleys,” Mike said, “were used, if you must, by the British, to whom we gave or sold them; and by the French, who, having forsworn the sword, required some arm of honor, to surrender to the accommodating German.”
“Ah,” Parlow said.
Mike continued through the subsection “Revolvers, British.” He stopped.
Parlow read, “‘Webley revolver, point four five five.’” He looked at Mike.
“It was something like this,” Mike said.
“British,” Parlow said. “But you said the caliber was forty-five. Forty-five. Which even I realize is different from four five five.”
“That’s right.”
“So why are we looking at this gun?” Parlow said.
Mike took the lead slug from his pocket.
“This’s the bullet that they shot the black girl with,” he said. “Measures out at four five five.”
“And what did they kill your girl with?” Parlow said. He pointed at the book.
“No,” Mike said. “No. It was like this . . . Something like this.” He shook his head. “It was, it had a shorter barrel, almost no barrel at all. The . . . the, it was a vicious . . .”
“Would the Americans bring one back, as a souvenir of war?”
“Very good,” Mike said. “I . . . Of course it’s possible, but it’s unlikely.”
“Why?” Parlow said.
“Because of the ammunition. Four five five. I’ve never heard of it being sold here.”
“. . . But—”
“Yes, someone might have brought one back as a souvenir of war, or as a paperweight”—he nodded toward Parlow, in compliment to Parlow’s noncombatant status—“but any, saving your presence, who would prize a war trophy would, likely, prefer something of the forces with whom we were at war.
“But it was like this gun,” Mike said. “It was like this.”
“. . . But the caliber of the bullet was wrong . . . ,” Parlow said.
“What the hell do you know about it?” Mike said.
“‘Fucking noncombatant’?” Parlow suggested.
“No, no, I’m asking you,” Mike said.
“Well, you could amend your tone,” Parlow said, “after all.”
Parlow took his pipe from one jacket pocket, and his tobacco pouch from the other. “Many fine people have never shot someone,” he said. “. . . Or been shot. Jesus Christ, I’m just a fellow, alright? And your friend. You want to put that in the balance, for the love of . . .”
Mike took his pipe and snapped it apart at the stem.
“Why don’t you straighten up,” Parlow said, “and kick that shit.”
“And why don’t you buy a new pipe?” he said.
“. . . Alright,” Parlow said softly.
“. . . You understand?”
“Sure,” Parlow said.
“What can I do to make amends?” Mike said.
“Buy me a new pipe,” Parlow said.
There were the places one reserved for special meditation. In grief, in love, in the life crises or change, Chicagoans always went to the Lake. The bar, and not the cemetery, was the place for grief, the club or bordello for comfort or its counterfeit. And most men had a special place, held in reserve, for the practice of actual deep cogitation. Mike’s was the Mallers Café.
The cafeteria was on the second floor of the Mallers Building, twenty feet from the platform of the El trains. The platform had been built as part of the boondoggle of the Elevated project. The dodge was the encirclement of the downtown business district by an elevated rapid transit system.
It was sold to the voters as an aid to their retail shopping, and was financed by huge bribes, given by the merchants to the City Council. The City Council took the money and donated the right-of-way, in perpetuity, to their choice of street traction companies. The fortunate companies were chosen according to the decimal system, and the City Council got rich by robbing both Peter and Paul.
The stop across from the café had its own second-floor connection to the great emporium of Marshall Field. His son had been killed in a shootout at the Everleigh Club. Mike, as a good Chicagoan, cherished the chicanery of the street traction business, the City Council, and the whorehouse shooting and the subsequent attempts at cover-up.
The trains came by every minute or so, and no one noticed them. The clientele was generally on a time clock, wolfing down the “coffee and,” midmorning, or the quickest lunch, before heading back to work.
The building was Chicago’s Jewelry Exchange. Every floor held several jewelers, appraisers, vendors of fixings, gold or silver dealers, rare coin operations, and engravers. Most in the cafeteria were these small-business owners or the employees. Time spent in the café was time in which they would not be making money. So they ate quickly and silently, the American-born—the minority—nosed into the sports section, the immigrants reading the editorials.
Mike sat over a third cup of coffee. “Yeah,” he thought, “look at it: that one’s got a heavy date tonight, this guy’s screwing his secretary, what’s he worried about, did she miss a month? That fellow’s a carthorse, working himself to death, most of the day, the underlying thought: ‘For what?’ Here’s a fellow with ambition, well, he’s young enough. There’s a guy, what is he doing? Plotting. He’s plotting. I’d bet on him, not even knowing the deal: he’s a thug.”
The coffee had gotten cold. Mike, reluctantly, rose to leave. He paid at the counter, walked out. On the stairs, he reached for his cigarettes, and found the pack empty.
The El clattered overhead, up Wabash Avenue. Mike stood on the east side of the street, thought, “Wabash is always in shadow, but you never notice it. Why don’t we notice it? Because in summer it’s a bit of a break from the heat; in winter, the El tracks protect it, just a touch, from the snow; and finally, because it’s alive, and interesting.” There were clerks and shopgirls, most of them hurrying, as the stores were, in the main, beyond their pocketbooks. There were professional men, doctors and lawyers, businessmen going to lunch, or the club; there were the shoppers, most of them men, leaving the women to the great emporia one block west, on State Street.
The loudspeaker outside Lyon & Healy music blared “The Sheik of Araby.” Two young boys listening sang the antiphonal responses.
I’m the Sheik of Araby . . .
“. . . without no clothes on.”
Your love belongs to meee . . .
“. . . without no clothes on.”
&nbs
p; At night when you’re asleep . . .
The boys straightened up and began to walk slowly away; some yards behind them walked the uniformed cop whose notice they’d seen they’d attracted.
“Yes,” Mike thought, “some bogus excuse from school. But you know it won’t stretch that far. Good for you.”
The cop stopped, content that the boys had moved on.
“Yeah, it’s a great show,” Mike thought.
Mike strolled south, and found himself outside the window of Ivan Reisz, Tobacconists, 1885.
The store smelled delightfully of pipe tobacco and Havana cigars. The owner was a white-haired German. Before the War he had sported a Kaiser Wilhelm mustache. Mike had been in France during the transformation, and the old man was now clean-shaven and, to Mike’s eye, looked naked. He stood at the pipe counter, polishing a beautiful meerschaum. He put on his customers face, and half-nodded at Mike.
“A pack of Camels,” Mike said. “And I need to buy a pipe.”
The owner reached behind him for the cigarettes. “One moment,” he said, and walked to the back of the store. Mike looked down at the various pipes under the counter glass. The owner returned with the cigarettes.
“Let me see that one, please,” Mike said, and pointed.
“Is it for you?” the owner said.
“No,” Mike said. “It’s for a friend.”
“He likes this style?”
“Yeah, that’s the one he smokes.”
The owner lifted out the pipe and handed it to Mike. “A bulldog,” he said. He waved his hand over the pipes display. “We have the bulldog bent, the straight, which is this one . . .”
“No,” Mike said. “This’ll do it.”
The man nodded. He took the pipe, and hunted in the counter below for the box.
The salesman put the pipe into its box. The box was marked Alfred Dunhill: Bulldog. Mike declined the offer of gift wrapping, of pipe cleaners, of tobacco. He paid for the pipe and his cigarettes and left the store.
“Yeah, I made a fool of myself with that idiot from New York,” he thought. “And Parlow. I’m losing my mind.”
