Hard City
Page 1
HARD
CITY
by Clark Howard
Also by Clark Howard
The Arm
A Movement Toward Eden
The Doomsday Squad
Last Contract
Siberia 10
The Killings
Summit Kill
Mark the Sparrow
The Hunters
The Last Great Death Stunt
Six Against the Rock
The Wardens
Zebra
Traces of Mercury
American Saturday
Brothers in Blood
Dirt Rich
Quick Silver
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Author's Note
Publishing Information
For the next generation
Robert Clark Howard
Scott Ryan Howard
Kyle Steven Howard
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
Hard City is a book that I did not want to write.
Because much of it is based on my life as a wayward boy on the mean streets of Chicago's lower West Side, a life frequently fueled by truancy, petty thievery, gang membership, and other disreputable behavior, I had, as a respectable adult, left those bleak days far behind and buried them deep in my memory. The things I had done back then, the life I had experienced, as well as vivid recollections of my mother's drug addiction and my father's incarceration in federal prison and subsequent disappearance, had all melded together into some dark recess of my mind and, I thought, been locked away forever.
But my beloved wife, Judith Mary Howard, and my longtime mentor and editor, Joyce Engelson, both of whom knew entirely what my background had been, began suggesting, then encouraging, finally nagging me into considering it as a project. Despite knowing all the details of my ignominious past, they were nevertheless convinced that I should preserve it in book form not only for the enlightenment of my three sons, but also my grandchildren, and future generations as well.
I held out for several years, pleading other projects to which I gave priority, but eventually capitulated to these two most important women in my life and began to dredge up all those old memories I thought I had locked away forever.
Hard City is the most difficult book I have ever written. But in the end, I am glad that I wrote it. What I am today as a writer is a result, in part, of what I was as a boy, and it no longer has to be buried deep in my mind. Those old memories have now been shared with everyone.
I no longer have any dark secrets.
Clark Howard
March 30, 2011
Palm Springs, California
1
Richie stared at his mother. His twelve-year-old eyes had seen a lot, but never anything like this.
His mother was on her knees, alternately clawing the wall with her fingernails and pounding the wall with her forehead. Several of her fingernails had torn and were bleeding. An ugly spot on her forehead was beginning to darken. Richie’s throat constricted and he fought back tears.
“Don’t,” Richie pleaded. “Stop it now. Please.”
From behind, Richie clutched his mother’s wrists and held her back from the wall. It was not difficult; as thin and undernourished as he was, Richie was stronger than the skeleton his mother had become. Richie tried not to grip her arms too tightly; he was afraid her skin, which looked like old paper, might crack if he did. Slowly pulling her away from the wall, Richie drew the frantic woman to her feet and walked her toward the apartment’s tiny bedroom. She turned an anguished face toward him.
“Richie, get me something. Please get me something . . . .”
The only color in her face, Richie saw, was the almost artificial looking dark circles under her eyes; the rest of her face was that same fragile papery tone, the shade of dying skin or proud flesh. Even her lips looked that way. Under her chin some of the flesh hung down to her neck, and on each of her upper arms it draped down in little folds. Her breath was putrid from several rotten teeth that she had not yet pulled out. Patches of hair were gone from her head, and what was left had creeping streaks of gray in it. She looked much older than her thirty-four years.
In the little bedroom, Richie guided her onto a creaky, unmade bed. “Lie down and rest,” he said.
“Richie, get me something, please,” she begged again.
“Okay, I’ll get you something,” he said.
Richie hurried to the side of the other room that was the kitchenette. Turning a porcelain knob on the stove, he lit a stick match and touched the flame to one of the grease-caked burners. Removing the top from a chipped, dented percolator, he poured its old, dried coffee grounds into a little brown-stained sink and pulled back the chintz curtain of a cupboard for the coffee. Twisting the lid off the can, he saw with despair that there were only a few grains left.
“Richie . . . ,” his mother called agonizingly from the bedroom.
Desperately Richie turned to the sink and began to scoop the used coffee grounds back into the percolator. At least it’ll be hot, he thought. The stark little apartment was like an icebox. Every few minutes he could hear the sound of some tenant pounding the radiator pipes with a skillet or hammer to get the landlord to fire up the furnace a little—all the while knowing that he would just continue to dole out coal like the miser he was, keeping his own apartment warm with an electric heater.
While Richie was filling the percolator with water, the grease around the gas burner caught fire and he quickly had to find a towel to beat out the flame. He knew better than to throw water on it. He had done that once at the age of ten, in another little apartment; the liquefied hot grease had splattered on his arms. An old woman in an adjoining apartment had put ointment on his burns and told him philosophically, “Poor people learn hard lessons.”
As Richie relighted the burner, after wiping off the grease, he heard his mother again.
“Richieee . . . !”
He put the percolator on the burner and hurried to her. “I’m making you some coffee—”
“Richie, I don’t need coffee!” Forcing her head up a few inches, she looked fiercely at him. “You get me something—right now!”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t have any money.”
The fi
erce eyes turned angry. “Goddamn you, why not?” she demanded, outraged at this new particular of her torment.
“You took it the other day, Mother—”
“That is a dirty lie! I never did!” Paper-gray lips peeled back over the rotting teeth. “You’re a dirty liar, just like your lying father! Get out of my sight! Get out!”
Richie went back into the kitchenette and stood staring at the percolator, waiting for it to bubble, thinking about his father. It was the same thought he always had: Where are you? Where—are—you!
From the bedroom he heard a thudding sound being repeated like a slow knock at a door. Going back there again, he saw his mother once more on her knees, clawing and pounding her forehead against the wall.
Shaking his head, Richie returned to the stove and turned off the burner. Coffee, even if it had been fresh, wasn’t going to help. What his mother needed was the kind of help he could not give.
He hesitated, fearful, then made up his mind. Beginning to cry, Richie went over to his folding cot. From under it he pulled a cardboard box that held his few extra clothes. There wasn’t much to take, he thought, wiping away the first tears, but he knew he’d better take what he had. Removing the thin case from his lumpy pillow, he stuffed into it the few things from the box, all of them pitifully threadbare, some even ragged. Crying harder, his nose beginning to run, he pulled out a loose baseboard and retrieved a tobacco can from which he removed a few coins, less than a dollar’s worth. Pocketing the money, he quickly put on his jacket and cap; sobbing, he tried to ignore the thudding sound coming from the bedroom. But it was like a jackhammer in his head. Twisting the top of the pillowcase tight, he put it under one arm and quickly left the apartment.
As Richie hurried along Damen Avenue, the relentless Chicago wind whipped its January cold against his legs and chest and tear-streaked face. It was past mid-afternoon, the day already beginning to wane toward its early darkness. Shoulders hunched and chin to chest, Richie headed purposefully toward Jackson Boulevard. There, on the corner, he got into a freestanding glass-and-wood telephone booth and quickly closed its folding door against the wind. Immediately it was as if he had entered a tomb: quiet, still, suspended.
Unzipping his worn but greatly treasured Buck Jones billfold, Richie rummaged in its secret compartment until he found the scrap of paper with the telephone number. Lifting the receiver, he deposited a nickel and waited. Presently the operator said, “Number, please.”
“State five-oh-oh-oh,” Richie said.
“State five thousand. One moment, please.”
After two rings, he heard, “Afternoon, County Welfare.”
“Is Miss Menefee there?” Richie asked.
A click and another ring, then: “Grace Menefee.”
“This is Richie. You gotta help me.”
“Richie? Richie who?” It was too sudden for her. But then she remembered. “Oh, Richie! My god, where are you? I looked for you and your mother for a month!”
“My mother’s on dope again,” he said. “Heroin this time. She’s clawing the walls. We don’t have nothing to eat, no money, I’ve got holes in my shoes . . . .” He bit down on his chapped lower lip to keep from crying aloud.
“Where is your mother, Richie?” the welfare worker asked.
“I want to know first what will happen to her if I tell you,” Richie hedged. His young mind was in turmoil about a long-ago pact he had made with his father. “She’s not a strong person, but we’ll take care of her, won’t we boy?” his father had asked, man-to-man, and Richie had proudly said yes.
But his father was not there anymore. It wasn’t we anymore.
“If your mother is addicted to heroin,” Miss Menefee said, “she’ll probably be sent to Lexington.”
“What’s Lexington?” Richie asked suspiciously.
“It’s a federal public health hospital where they cure addicts.”
Richie felt his throat constrict as he worked to hold back the tears. Strangers, he thought self-accusingly, she’ll be with strangers. “What kind of place is it?” he demanded. Starting to cry again, he covered the phone’s mouthpiece with one hand so Miss Menefee would not hear him.
“It’s a very nice place,” Miss Menefee, sensing his dilemma, assured him. “It’s a hospital, not a jail; they treat people there, they don’t punish them. It’s down south in Kentucky.”
“Down south?” Richie said, feeling a spark of relief from the terrible guilt of what he was doing. “Down where it’s warm?”
“Yes, where it’s warm.” Miss Menefee’s words hung in the air, tentatively. She wanted to project as positive an attitude as possible for the obviously troubled boy, yet she refused to lie to him. She was too fond of him to lie to him. “I’m sure it’s warmer than it is here,” she amended.
The telephone booth, which for a couple of minutes had seemed like a refuge from the windswept sidewalk on which it stood, was becoming a refrigerator. With a finger poking through a hole in his woolen gloves, Richie wiped tears from both cheeks and thought about Lexington. If it was even a little warmer than that lousy building where people constantly banged pipes pleading for heat, it would be better for her. And if they could cure her—
“It’s 1923 Adams Street,” he said quickly, before he could change his mind. “Third floor in the back.”
“I’ll get some help and be right there," Miss Menefee said. “You wait there with your mother.”
“I’m not waiting nowhere," Richie told her emphatically. “I’m going to find my dad.”
“Richie, for God’s sake, are you starting that again?” There was an irritated impatience in her tone that she worked to control. “If your mother couldn’t find him, the welfare department couldn’t find him, and the federal parole authorities couldn’t find him, you certainly can’t. He’s gone, Richie—for good.” When Richie remained silent, not arguing, a sudden fear seized Grace Menefee. She had dealt with Richie before; she knew how headstrong he was. Keeping her voice as calm as she could, she said, “Anyway, we’ll talk about it when I get there.”
“I won’t be there,” Richie said. “You just take care of my mother. I’ll take care of myself.”
“Richie, you are twelve years old; you cannot survive alone in this city.”
“I’ll survive.”
“You don’t even know if your father is in Chicago—”
“I’ll find him.”
Miss Menefee’s tone became authoritative; it was the only way she could keep the panic out of her voice. “The juvenile officers will catch you, Richie,” she warned. “When that happens, it won’t be foster homes anymore, it’ll be the state reformatory.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Richie said.
“Don’t pull your John Garfield act with me, Richie.”
“I’m not pulling nothing. You just make sure my mother’s okay.”
The welfare worker’s voice lost all emotion except desperation. “Richie, please,” she implored, “wait until I get there.”
Richie was silent for a long, woeful moment. Tears veined the dry skin of his cheeks, his legs seemed to turn warmly weak, his bowels threatened. It would be so simple, but the boy could not lie to the woman any more easily than she could lie to him. At the same time, he was determined not to allow her to change his mind about what he had decided to do. He had to find his father. It was, he felt deep in the core of his young self, the only way he and his mother could ever escape the dreadful, harsh level of life to which they had descended. To Richie, his father was salvation. The only salvation.
“Richie, wait for me,” Miss Menefee pleaded.
“No.”
Richie hung up.
Holding the pillowcase securely under one arm again, he pulled open the telephone booth and stepped into the great cavernous concrete valley that was Chicago. It was almost dark now; streetlights and headlights had been turned on. For a moment Richie merely stood on the sidewalk, staring at nothing, in limbo, suspended by a frightening realization.
Walking away from the booth, he began to shiver, not from the cold but from the sobs that began again. At the first alley he came to, he turned in and began to run.
2
Richie looked over at the man behind the bowling alley counter. “Mister, can I get a job setting pins?”
The man was not much taller than Richie. He had silky red hair and beady eyes set close together. “You’re too young,” he said, giving Richie only a cursory glance. He turned to sell a customer a package of Chesterfields. “Twenty-one cents.”
The customer paid him, said, “Thanks, Red,” and walked away. “I'm fourteen, mister,” Richie said.
The man named Red gave him a slightly longer look. “You’re not fourteen. You’re probably twelve.”
“I’m really thirteen,” Richie lied again. “Could you give me a job setting pins? Please.”
A tall, stoop-shouldered man in a sagging, shapeless overcoat came up to the counter. His nose was very red and his eyes were watery. “Where you got me, Red?” he asked.
“Nine and ten,” Red replied, making a notation on his pinboy list. His beady eyes seemed to move closer together as he frowned at the man. “You sure you can work?”
“I’m okay. Got a bad cold.”
“You got the Seagram’s flu,” Red said. He pointed a threatening finger. “I don’t want no drinking in the pits, Pete.”
Red and Richie both watched as Pete shuffled down the walkway along the wall that led back to the pits. “I’ve got a full crew, kid,” Red said then, capping his fountain pen and clipping it on one pocket of a beautifully laundered white shirt. Red was dapper: knit tie with a Windsor knot, cuff links, tie clip. The way my dad used to dress, Richie remembered, staring at Red. The dapper little man saw that he was still there. “You’re too young to set pins,” he said. “Come back in a couple of years.”
Richie picked up his pillowcase and wandered around the bowling alley. It was a large place, sixteen lanes on each of two floors, with a bubbling fountain inside the entrance, a coffee shop, bar, checkroom, men’s and ladies’ rooms on each floor. Richie had been there before, with his mother and one of her boyfriends. Cascade Bowling Lanes, it was called. Hoping to get a job, Richie had also come there tonight because he had remembered it as big enough maybe to have someplace where he could sleep: a corner under the stairs where the light did not reach, or a broom closet or something. Richie had experience finding places to sleep; he had run away from five consecutive foster homes in which Miss Menefee had placed him. As Richie wandered around the second floor, he got a glance inside the ladies’ lounge and saw that it had a divan. Maybe he could spend the night there.