by Steve Paul
This collection is comprised of works of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors’ imaginations. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published by Akashic Books
©2012 Akashic Books
Series concept by Tim McLoughlin and Johnny Temple
Kansas City map by Aaron Petrovich
Cover photo courtesy of the Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, Missouri
eISBN: 978-1-61775-1448
Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-61775-128-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012939264
All rights reserved
First printing
Akashic Books
PO Box 1456
New York, NY 10009
[email protected]
www.akashicbooks.com
Table of Contents
Cover page
Title page
Copyright page
Map
Introduction
PART I: HEARTLAND
MISSING GENE
BY J. MALCOLM GARCIA
Troost Lake
CAT IN A BOX
BY KEVIN PRUFER
Country Club Plaza
MISSION HILLS CONFIDENTIAL
BY GRACE SUH
Mission Hills
COME MURDER ME NEXT, BABE
BY DANIEL WOODRELL
12th Street
THE SOFTEST CRIME
BY MATTHEW ECK
41st and Walnut
YOU SHOULDN’T BE HERE
BY PHILIP STEPHENS
Midtown
PART TWO: CRAZY LITTLE WOMEN
THE INCIDENT
BY CATHERINE BROWDER
Northeast
THE GOOD NEIGHBOR
BY LINDA RODRIGUEZ
South Troost
THELMA AND LAVERNE
BY JOHN LUTZ
West 8th Street
LIGHTBULB
BY NANCY PICKARD
The Paseo
PART III: SMOKE & MIRRORS
YESTERDAYS
BY ANDRÉS RODRÍGUEZ
Milton’s Tap Room
LAST NIGHT AT THE RIALTO
BY MITCH BRIAN
The Celluloid City
CHARLIE PRICE’S LAST SUPPER
BY NADIA PFLAUM
18th and Vine
THE PENDERGAST MUSKET
BY PHONG NGUYEN
West Bottoms
About the Contributors
Also in the Akashic Noir Series
Bonus Materials
Twin Cities Noir: Sneak Peek
“The Guy” by Pete Hautman
About Akashic Books
Introduction
Papa’s Blues
It was winter when a young newspaper reporter, recently back from the war in Europe, holed up in a rooming house in Michigan and turned his mind back to Kansas City.
He churned out a story of the kind he hoped one of the magazines would want. There was a murder. There was a mild-mannered newspaper man named Punk Alford. And there was an anguished, effete suspect who stroked a sword’s edge as if it were … well, you know.
Whether the budding author mailed that early effort to the Saturday Evening Post or any other magazine is unknown. But the story was never published, so Ernest Hemingway’s future reputation was spared embarrassment and his apprenticeship in writing continued a few more years.
Hemingway, of course, later penned some of the great noir ur-tales of the 1920s and ‘30s, notably “The Killers” and To Have and Have Not. Lesser known among Hemingway’s fictional record are murky-toned stories such as “A Pursuit Race,” about a wigged-out heroin addict, and “God Rest You Merry Gentlemen,” featuring a castration, both of which share two significant things with the unpublished Punk Alford story—namely, an origin and a setting in Kansas City.
Hemingway was eighteen years old in October 1917 when he arrived in Kansas City from a Chicago suburb to become a reporter at the Kansas City Star. For the next six and a half months, before he decamped to join the ambulance service in Italy, Hemingway discovered, while chasing ambulance surgeons and cops, what we still know: the streets of Kansas City are paved with dark tales aplenty.
Kansas City is a crossroads. East meets West and North meets South here. Since its settlement in the first half of the nineteenth century, Kansas City has represented a place of opportunity, optimism, and ornery behavior. It outfitted travelers and dreamers on the Santa Fe, California, and Oregon trails. It grew on cattle, grain, and lumber. It nurtured Jesse James, jazz, and gin-slinging scoundrels.
When I put out the call for contributions to this collection, I imagined we’d produce tributaries to a fictional stream that extends from nineteenth-century cowboy novels, through Hemingway’s brand of gritty tales, and to the contemporary, unsparing visions of his successors. (For a taste of period Kansas City pulp at its peak, try finding—it’s not easy—a copy of Tuck’s Girl, a paperback novel published in 1952 by another onetime Kansas City Star reporter, Marcel Wallenstein.) I deliberately failed to define “noir” to prospective contributors. As previous anthologies in this series have shown quite effectively, the term represents a big tent. So here you will indeed find serial killers, moral turpitude, and police detectives at work. But you are just as likely to encounter quieter tales of inner turmoil, troubled reflection, and anxiety. The heart in stress can lead people to unpredictable and midnight-blue places.
In “Cat in a Box,” Kevin Prufer’s veteran detective/protagonist is on the trail of a killer while his own body threatens to change the course of his life and career.
In Nancy Pickard’s “Lightbulb,” a woman climbs deep into regret and guilt over an old memory. Pickard’s story also negotiates the long shadow of Kansas City’s racial divide, as does Linda Rodriguez’s tale of a widower trying to maintain his life’s order in a time of upheaval and collision.
Some stories within evoke real places and people, though just a reminder—this is a collection of fiction, not history. In “Come Murder Me Next, Babe,” Daniel Woodrell, master of Missouri noir, imagines a femme fatale who may resonate with Kansas City readers of a certain age. And in setting “Yesterdays” in Milton’s Tap Room, Andrés Rodríguez imagines an alternate history for the much beloved bootlegger, bar owner, and friend to jazz, who died in 1983. (Milton’s, a noirish bar if there ever was one, I add with great affection, also shows up as a touchstone in Philip Stephens’s troubling and trenchant Midtown tale, “You Shouldn’t Be Here.”)
By contrast, Nadia Pflaum invents a barbecue legacy that may or may not sound like a real Kansas City institution. (We repeat: any resemblance to real people …) And Phong Nguyen steps into that nineteenth-century dime-novel current to imagine an episode from the earlier days of political machinist Jim Pendergast and his famous Climax Saloon.
Some stories take liberties with geography and specific places, which, of course, is the prerogative of fiction writers. Local readers can make their own gotcha lists, though I trust they will do so with a smile and nonetheless recognize their city’s pulse reverberating in these pages.
First-time visitors to Kansas City usually note with surprise the greenery and the winding, hilly topography of our sprawling, two-state metropolitan area. Yet even the City Beautiful foliage and suburban finery can hide crime and lives of moral weakness, as Grace Suh displays in “Mission Hills Confidential.”
Tourists and locals alike love their sports here, their slow-smoked ribs, their shopping, and the gab that goes on at neighborhood bars. Walking on the wild side is a long tradition here too, evidence of the full range of Kansas City’s human condition. Our lineup of fine writers expl
ores that condition in numerous and compelling ways. Through wintry chill. Through moonlit mystery. And often, befitting our literary and musical heritage, through singing the blues.
Steve Paul
Kansas City
June 2012
PART I
HEARTLAND
MISSING GENE
BY J. MALCOLM GARCIA
Troost Lake
Evening
Fran’s at night school studying for her associate’s degree. I don’t feel like watching TV so I get out the knife one of the interpreters gave me in Kandahar and start throwing it at the wall. He said he got it off the body of a bad guy who blew himself up laying an IED in the road, but I think he stole it off one of our guys, because it’s a Gerber and it doesn’t look like it was in any explosion. The terp could throw it and stick it every time. I’m not that good, but I throw it at the wall anyway. I can do it for hours.
I was a contractor over in Kandahar. Electrician. Worked there for twelve months. When my year was up, I flew home to Kansas City and took up with Fran and a couple of months later moved in with her. Mr. Fix It, the soldiers called me. Did some plumbing too. A little out of my league, but at two hundred tax-free grand a year I was more than willing to say I could do anything. I got used to the noise: mortars, sniper fire, return fire, .50-calibers, AKs, generators grinding all night, guys living on top of each other telling dead baby and fag jokes. Awful quiet now that I’m back. Behind Fran’s house, I hear buses turn off Prospect and onto 39th Street, drone past and slice into the night until I don’t hear anything again. The knife helps. I like the steady repetition of tossing it. The precision of it. Like fly fishing. Gene understood. He fought in Korea.
The trick with the knife, I told Gene, is you got to establish a rhythm. You do that and the silence becomes part of the flow and the plink the knife makes when it enters the wall interrupts the silence, and the small suck sound it makes when you pull it out, and then the silence again until you throw it, again and again.
Right, Gene said.
Next day
This is the third week I haven’t seen Gene at Mike’s Place. Out of all the regulars, he’s the only one missing.
Melissa isn’t here but we all know where she is. A public defender, Melissa has a court case this afternoon. I overheard her tell Lyle yesterday she would be working late. And Lyle? He may have a job painting or installing a countertop or a new floor or fixing someone’s shitter. What I’m saying is, Lyle’s around. He’s a handyman. He’ll be in later, as will his buddy Tim.
Bill’s here. He’s retired from working construction and basically sits at the bar all day drinking up his disability. And Mike, of course. It’s his bar. The floor dips and the stools wobble, all of them, and the top of the pool table’s got a big slash in it and someone walked off with the cue ball, but it’s a good place—cheap, and it’s only a couple of blocks from Fran’s.
Then there’s Gene. Or was. He drove off is how I look at it. Flew the coop, as they say. Well, that’s it. I’m leaving too. Montana is what I’m thinking. I’ve been considering a move for a while. I mentioned Montana to Gene. He thought it was a good idea.
Wide open, no people, he said.
Absolutely, I said.
I’ll tell Fran tonight.
Evening
What’s on at seven?
Golden Girls reruns.
Oh.
You’ve had beer.
I was at Mike’s.
Well, you missed my mother.
Oh … yeah?
Yeah. It’s all right. I wasn’t expecting her.
Fran’s mother does that; drops by without calling. She’s divorced and bored. Good thing Fran was here instead of me. Her mother nags me when Fran’s not around. She knows I’m not going out on many jobs. I’ve told her we’re okay. I earned a bundle in Afghanistan. She thinks I should have stayed another year and made even more.
I’m going to Montana.
Montana?
Yeah.
When?
I don’t know.
Oh.
I play solitaire, spreading the cards across the blanket of our bed. I tell Fran not to move her legs beneath the blankets and disturb the cards but she does anyway.
Why Montana?
It’s wide open.
Fran doesn’t look up from her book, The General and the Spy. A man on the cover wears an open red tunic and some tight-ass white pants a real guy’d never wear. His skin’s the color of a dirty penny and he has no hair on his chest. A woman’s got her hands on his stomach, ready to rip into those pants I bet.
Fran folds the corner of a page, closes the book, and wipes tears from her eyes.
Nobody cries over those kinds of books, I tell her.
Montana?
I’m thinking about it. Gene’s missing.
Who?
A guy I know.
Fran goes, Let’s change the channel. Then let’s talk.
Go ahead. Change it.
I changed it last time.
What do you want to watch? I ask.
I don’t know.
She picks up her book and puts it down again. We stare at the TV, the remote between us.
Next day
Bill sits beside me at Mike’s, buys me a beer. Crass old fucker Bill. Bald as a post and bug-eyed. He’s always hunched over and rocks back and forth and makes these sick jokes about his neck being so long he can lick his balls like a dog. Deaf as Stevie Wonder is blind.
Hey, Bill, Tim says.
What you say? Bill asks.
Fuck you, Bill, Tim says.
What you say?
Tim laughs. Laughs loud and talks loud like we’re all deaf as Bill. He sits at the end of the bar where Gene always stood, wipes his hands on his sweatshirt and jeans. Tim works in a warehouse in the West Bottoms. Refrigeration parts. Something like that. Comes in grimed in grease and oil. Starts at five in the morning and works all the time, weekends too. With jobs the way they are, is he going to say no when his boss offers him extra hours? I don’t think so. Not with paying out child support to his ex.
His money being so tight is why he killed his dog’s puppies. At least that’s how he explains it. The dog, a brown and white mix between this and that, had a litter of seven. He put six of them in a pillow case and dropped them in Troost Lake. Then he shot the dog. Easier than getting her fixed. I stopped sitting next to Tim when I heard about the puppies.
Every time I think of them, I’m reminded of these Afghan laborers in Kandahar. One afternoon they found some puppies when they were collecting trash. A trash fire was burning and they threw the puppies into the fire. You want to hear some screaming, listen to puppies being barbecued. I hear them now. I ball up my fist and right hook my temple once, twice, three times, waiting for what I call relief pain to wrap my skull and take their shrieks out of my head. Tim and Bill look at me. I open my fist.
Fucking mosquito, I say and smack the side of my face again.
Big-ass mosquito, Tim says, still looking at me.
It’s strange seeing him in Gene’s spot at the end of the bar. Gene never sat, just stood. No matter how cold, he always wore shorts, a T-shirt, and a windbreaker. Brown shoes and white socks. Legs skinny and pale as a featherless chicken. Wore a cap that had the dates of the Korean War sewn in it. He told me that Kansas City winters didn’t compare to a winter in Korea.
I saw frozen bodies stacked like cord wood covered with ice, Gene said. Some of them I put there.
It got cold in Afghanistan too, I said.
I remember one time when this truck driver got to Kandahar in December. Brand new. Just off the bus. He was so wet behind the ears I had to tell him where the chow hall was. He kept rubbing his hands together and I pointed out the PX where he could buy some gloves. He went on his first convoy an hour later. This guy, he got in his rig, took off, but realized he was in the wrong convoy. He turned back to the base and approached the gate fast because he was out in no man’s land by himself. Y
ou didn’t approach the gate fast. You didn’t do that. But he was scared. Some Australians shot him five times with a .50 cal. I mean, he was obliterated. They had to check his DNA to figure out who he was. Less than two hours after I showed him the chow hall, I saw them put his body pieces in bags.
Evening
Fran tells me what I’m planning is called a geographic. Moving to get a new start somewhere else in the mistaken belief you’ll leave your bad habits behind is how she puts it. She studied psychology last fall and thinks she can pick apart my mind now.
I mean it. I’m gone, I say.
She goes, When you decide to do it, just go. Don’t bother telling me because I’m not going with you. Men have left me before. I survived. I’ll survive you. Leave before I come home. Make it easy on us both.
I will, I say. I can do that.
Okay, she goes, okay.
Next day
Just me in here this afternoon.
What’s the latest on Gene? I ask Mike.
Haven’t heard a thing, he says.
Mike has owned Mike’s for ten years. He was in a band, got married, and had a kid. In other words, time to get a real job. So he bought the bar and named it after himself. He’s divorced now, sees the kid every two weeks, plays gigs occasionally, and runs this place. Says if he ever sells it, the buyer will have to keep the name. Years from now nobody will know who the hell Mike was but his name will be here. A piece of himself nobody will know and can’t shake off. That’s one way to make an impression.
I first came to Mike’s by chance. I used to drink at another bar on the Paseo but one night it was packed. After Kandahar, I couldn’t handle crowds, so I left. On my way home, I stopped at Mike’s. Some lights on but barely anyone in it. I had a few beers and came back the next night. Two nights in a row and Mike figured he had himself a new regular. He bought me a beer and said his name was Mike. We shook hands. Sealed the deal, as they say.
I met Fran here. She was shooting pool by herself. Bent over the table, her ass jutted high and round against her jeans, and any man with a nut sack would have known that if she looked that nice from behind she’d be more than tolerable face-to-face. And, if she wasn’t, so what with an ass like that. But she was fine all the way around.
