Chicago Noir

by Neal Pollack

  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.

  Seamus had a thick red scar over his left eye from the time when he was eleven and got cut by his older brother in a fight over a purse the both of them had stolen. It was when he was still just a kid and stole ladies' purses, not for the money, he just went through them to look at their makeup and nylons and handkerchiefs and everything. That cut-up eye seemed like it belonged right on Seamus's face. He went through life squinting as hard as he could, smiling a quiet, cock-eyed smile to himself. Because of the cut and the row with his brother, though, he learned to fight. Truly, he was the squarest, most honest person I knew, him being a kind of two-bit hustler too, I guess.

  He was younger than me, somewhere in his late twenties, a big Irish kind of pug. He had very short blond hair and a thick neck. He'd been a middleweight fighter for a while and hadn't made much of a name for himself. His wife had thought he was going to be famous, and spent all the dough like he already was. So he went out and did a stupid thing. He got arrested knocking over a liquor store with his bare hands, and because he didn't have any priors and hadn't been carrying a weapon, he made parole pretty quick. But the dame hadn't waited, in any sense of the word. She headed out to Hollywood to be discovered as an actress. She was gone before Seamus came home.

  "How'd you hear about this fellah Langley?" I asked him.

  "Clovis told me. He said Langley was bragging about it the other night. He said the guy said, 'You know that hasbeen pug that hangs around the Back Room? Well, his wife has a soft spot for horn players.' He said some other lousy things I don't want to repeat."

  "Do we go by his place?" I asked him.

  "No, Clovis says this fellah owes him some money. He's setting it up."

  "So that's Clovis's angle," I said. "He still owes me a double sawbuck himself."

  "They're going to be at the Back Room. That's where Clovis said to meet him."

  I said o-key and turned the radio on. "Now's the Time" by the greatest, Miles Davis, blared to life. I snapped my fingers, taking it as a good sign. In a moment, the song was over and "Salt Peanuts" rolled on. Then, an old Duke Ellington tune, "Mood Indigo."

  "The radio is good luck today," I said. "One good old good one after another." I glanced over at Seamus and he was somewhere else. He was staring straight ahead and tightening his hands. He had the blank look of revenge on his face. It was there in the sad resignation of his small eyes. It looked like he had just found out his wife had left him again. It was still snowing as I took the next left and headed toward the other side of town, away from the bright lights.

  5

  The record playing was "Swanee River," another old one, when we came in. Clovis sat at a table alone in the back, drinking. He looked sharp, like always: wide-shouldered and black, his skin the color of some distant world, the soft face and round cheeks that gave away his good nature. He saw us and then nodded his head and we watched his eyes move to the left where Langley was slowdancing with a tall female patron. Langley had his horse face buried in the dame's soft blond hair and seemed to be very occupied with it: like a blue jay of happiness, him with his eyes closed, getting dreamy, petting the girl's hair, sighing softly. For a moment, I felt sad having to interrupt him. It didn't seem right separating a fellah like that from the one thing that might make him happy. But C
lovis finished his drink and stood up very carefully, backing away from the table. And then, just like that, he winked.

  "Is it you that's been saying those things about my wife, Langley?" Seamus shouted. "Is it you that's been saying she's got a soft spot for horn players?"

  The blond girl got the idea and cleared out quick. Langley looked at Seamus, sized him up, then glanced over at Clovis and frowned. In a flash, he made a reach for a highball glass and tossed it toward our heads, then ducked for the side door.

  Clovis sighed and shook his head. "A couple of amateurs, you two," he said.

  "I'll get the automobile," I whispered, and headed around front.

  I started the automobile up and Clovis climbed in the passenger seat beside me. "Don't say it. I know I owe you twenty, Jim," he said. "Next week."

  "You've been saying that for three weeks," I mumbled, and threw the gear into drive. The coupe took off like a rocket. We spun around the corner, sliding in the snow. I turned down the alley and saw Langley doing his best to pull himself over a barbed-wire fence. He was about seven feet off the ground and all knees and elbows.

  "There stands our man," Clovis said.

  I always liked Clovis, not so much because he was someone I felt I could trust, but because he was someone I admired for his reputation of being a ladies' man. He had one of those tiny elegant mustaches, a thin line just above his lips, and smooth-looking hair with just the right amount of relaxer. Also, most of the time he was holding some pills, black beauties, west coasters, bennies, some kind, and he always knew a few good-looking white girls who thought he was an amateur photographer. He'd take pictures of them. They were what I might call forbidden pictures. He had this portable Polaroid and a whole collection of close-ups of white girls undressing. He would show you them if you asked, and usually I was very interested. He might have been one of the best coronet players that ever lived, the way he played so slow and sad, if he sat still long enough to listen to himself, but that was a no go. He would sit in sessions around town but, for the most part, if a dame wasn't involved, he had no interest in being still that long.

  "Now what?" I asked, and it was at that moment, Seamus came around the corner.

  "Now you turn your head, Jimmy, because this is not gonna be pretty," Clovis said with a grin.

  "Please, no!" Langley shouted, and it became apparent he was no longer climbing. He was stuck at the top, his pants leg snarled by a ring of barbed wire. Seamus saw this and moved down the alley, slower now, taking his time. He took off his hat and his coat and rolled up his shirt sleeves very carefully.

  "Please, please, let me get down first!" Langley shouted. "To be fair about it."

  Seamus went up and grabbed the fence in both his big hands and gave it a shake. It was like making a wish with a dime, easy. Just like that, Langley fell on his back right at Seamus's feet.

  Then, "Please, wait, wait a minute … she … she didn't mean anything," Langley muttered, and in my mind I imagined a big red dictionary which opened to a page that read:

  she didn't mean anythingshe did not meen 'en-e-thin

  slang phrase 1: at this moment, exactly the wrong thing to say.

  I put the automobile in park and turned the radio up, and this radio was sending me secret messages of good luck again because it was Gerry Mulligan's big sax trembling. I looked away as Seamus swung his hand back and snap ! Langley, the poor fellah, couldn't have done a thing to avoid it coming. Seamus hit him a square one in mouth and I saw Langley fly forward, his hands dropping to his sides, and then I couldn't see what was happening because they were on the ground, in front of the automobile. Seamus was very quiet about it all and I saw him swing again. Some blood specked along the snow.

  Langley was yelling, "She didn't mean anything! She didn't mean anything!" and each time he said it, Seamus lunged forward. "Please, my, my teeth," and Langley being a trumpet player must have registered with big Seamus finally. He stood up and took a step back and his foot went right into the sap's teeth.

  "Yikes," Clovis mumbled, and Seamus was putting his coat and hat back on, frowning.

  In a moment, Clovis climbed out then and dug the wallet from the back of poor Langley's pants. He robbed the poor sap and I hadn't thought he was going to do that. He got back in the coupe and threw Langley's wallet down in the front seat and took out the fellah's cash, then slipped me a twenty. I said, "No dice, Clovis," and handed it back, but quickly.

  We were driving away and I was beginning to think I'd never ever be lucky again because I was just another two-bit among two-bits and there was nothing but scientific evidence of bad luck all around me. "High black cat," I said, keeping my fingers crossed to ward it off. "High black cat."

  6

  We went by the pawnshop on Ashland after that because I wanted to see my traps. They'd been sitting in the window a week before and now they weren't and I wondered who the heck had bought them and what madman was playing them right now. We were standing outside the Friendly Pawn— Clovis, Seamus, and me—and my traps, the greatest drums in the world, were gone.

  7

  We cruised downtown next. Clovis had two joints and we smoked one up at Harbor Point where Randolph rises above the rest of the city. Up there stand three or four high-class apartment buildings that stare out over the entire lakefront. I let the radio play and it was an old Count Basie side on then, "Dark Rapture," and I was getting stoned. Then Seamus sat up quick and said, "I'm going to go try and call my wife," and he hopped out of the automobile and was gone just like that. It was his trademark disappearing act. You might be at a nightclub or in a taxi, and he'd mumble something about calling his wife and then disappear, but there'd always be enough money in the spot where he had been sitting to cover his tab.

  "He's got a screw loose, that one," I said.

  "Too many uppercuts to the head," Clovis said. He searched around and lit the second joint. I laid back and I kept thinking about those Slingerland traps and who was playing them, and just then I realized it. Christ Jesus, I was late again.

  We hit the Blue Note after that because I was supposed to sub for a trap player. When I showed up they said I had fouled up and the band had to call someone else and the baritone player said some comment like, "Jimmy Rabbit? I thought he was dead. Whiz-bang, baby, maybe you'd be better off if you did," and I said, "Fuck you, my man," and he said, "No, fuck you, my man," and because of that situation, I lost about thirty bucks.

  At the last minute, the alto reed player, a kid named Bobby Lincoln, a white kid who was straight as an ace on the alto sax, said he'd rather have me playing than the fellah they had called in. The fellah they called in looked like his mother had just dropped him off, and the way he was sweating and shaking, his face white as a ghost and him being black to boot, was a bad sign for everybody. By then it was 10:00 and they were scheduled to start on the hour and so it was on. I got up behind this very slick set of white Pearls and let them all have it. The first song I played was for the baritone player and it was a slow Earl "Fatha" Hines tune and I held it all in, right on time, waiting for my chance, etc., etc. The second song came and I was on and it was for the organ man who had said what he had said to me, and it was "Now's the Time" by Charlie Parker and my drums were saying, "You can fuck off, my man, you fucking wannabe, dig this show I'm laying down and I know it's good because it's making your ten-cent organ solo sound like a million bucks. "

  Later, the band, a five-piece with an alto and a baritone, said they needed a steady drummer and asked if I was interested and I said sure. Then they gave me my cut, which was only five bucks, and I said, "Excuse me, what is this all about?" and they go on to tell me the drinks are not free, and like a fool, I said, "Then you can count me out," and heck, I had needed that job and I needed that money, but badly. Then Clovis came up and said we should split and I said sure and he said promptly and I said what's the hurry and he said, "Cannonball Adams just walked in," and like Clovis said, there he was.

  Cannonball was white, mu
scular, with soft brown hair that was deftly parted, even with both his hands broken. It was a cinch his wife had combed his hair for him. He marched directly up to Clovis and I at the bar. He was in a soft tweed coat, both his hands in oversized white casts, his lip split and one eye still red and puffy.

  "Well, gentlemen, I just came here to tell you a certain associate of mine is looking for you," and I couldn't think who that might be, so I said, "So why is this fellah looking for me?"

  "He is representing me," Cannonball grinned. He was knocking his casts against his pocket, trying to pull out a cigarette. I shook my head and obliged him.

  "So, he's representing you?" I repeated as I lit the smoke for him. "So?"

  "My associate says he can't make any money off me because I can't play the piano. I can't play the piano because you and your pug Irish friend broke my hands. I owed this associate a sum, so now my associate is looking for you two to collect what I owe."

  "I bet," I said.

  "My associate is to come by here right before midnight," Cannonball grinned, and the clock above the rows of glass and liquor shouted out five to twelve and I had to think, was I a real posy in bloom? Yes. And my luck was only getting worse; worse, joe, worse. Like magic, it had become morning. We found Seamus near his apartment on the corner of Broadway and Wilson. From down the block, I could see he was standing out front in the snow, smoking, and his big, misshapen nose was mashed and bleeding. He was holding his ear, which was swollen as big as a stone, and for some reason, standing there in the snow, he was smiling.

  "What happened to you now?" I asked. "Number Twelve?"

  "Nope. I ran into Cannonball's associates. They took what they think I owed them."