Chicago Noir [Anthology]

“Let’s make this quick, Gerry,” Kimball said. “I’m kind of busy.”

“Oh yeah, oh yeah,” Genuine said. “You have a lady up there? Jennifer?”

“No, man.” Kimball said. “Just

stuff. It’s late.”

“I know. I know. This is the case.”

Kimball pegged Gerry at about his own age, forty, and wherever he was from originally his accent didn'’t sound foreign, exactly. His English was occasionally quirky but always understandable, even in his present state, and his dialect sounded more like a nasally amalgam of Chicagoese and urban slang than it did Middle-Eastern or Russian. His body rigid, Gerry continued to hop like he was underdressed for the cold. But the night air couldn'’t have been much below seventy.

Kimball pushed aside the padlocked iron cage that stretched across the door to his shop and unlocked two deadbolts and then waved Genuine Gerry inside. Gerry rubbed his hands together and blew on them. “It’s right here,” Kimball said, walking quickly back to his workbench. He lifted the set by the handle and held it out, but Gerry was looking away, his eyes scanning the broken merchandise.

The indoor fluorescent lights were off, but plastic knobs and chrome trim twinkled in streetlight leaking between the iron bars on the window. Hundreds of small appliances lined every wall in the narrow shop. Some were awaiting repair. The ones that had been wiped clean and polished and dusted with compressed air sat near the front of the shop in anticipation of their owners. Many were shells, partially hollow, which Kimball had cannibalized for parts.

Gerry counted the shelves with his finger, one, two, three, four, five, six, all the way up to the ceiling. “You got any of those flat screens in here? Whatyacallem? Plasma TVs?”

“Not today,” Kimball said, still holding the television in his outstretched arm. “Sometimes, though. Most of them are under warranty. Repaired by the manufacturer. Occasionally I get one of, uh, dubious origin that needs to be fixed.”

“Dubious?”

“Well, I don’t know for sure, of course, but when a plasma comes in here I usually suspect it’s been stolen.”

“Uh-huh. And whaddya do?”

“I fix it. It’s none of my business where it came from.”

Gerry began walking the perimeter of the dark shop, examining each television, radio, toaster oven, and computer. He didn'’t look ready to leave. Kimball leaned impatiently on his left hip. Of course, if he didn'’t hate confrontation so much he would have told Gerry months ago to find a new place to stash his crappy little TV. The secret to a solitary existence is to never make waves. Entanglements are just like they sound, ways in which you and other people are hopelessly entwined. Kimball reached up on a shelf and turned one of several in a row of police scanners to low volume.

—Go ahead.

—We’re at the CITGO at [unintelligible]. We have an individual refusing to leave. It’s going to be a black male [unintelligible].

“Most of the stuff I get nowadays is old,” Kimball explained. “Stuff with sentimental value, or obsoletes the Compaqs and the Sonys and the RCAs no longer make. Big console sets. Lots of record players. Tape machines. That kind of thing.”

Gerry turned to face him. “I need money.”

“What?”

“Hundred-fifty dollars. I don’t give him, he cracks me up.”

“Who?”

“The man. The man in the green car.”

Kimball had no idea what Gerry was talking about, but he assumed the man in the green car was a drug dealer. What else could he be? On the other hand, what dealer would give a guy like Genuine a line of credit?

“I’m sorry, Gerry. I don’t have any money.” He was still holding the television, waiting for Genuine to take it.

“Maybe I take something from here,” Gerry said. “Something worth hundred-fifty.”

“No. No. No.” Kimball walked toward Gerry and tried to force him, again, to take back his own set. “These things belong to my customers.” Gerry was still studying the merchandise. “Come on,” Kimball said. “You have to get back to work. Back to the club.”

“This is why it’s a good idea, Kimmy,” Gerry said. “These things, they don’t belong to you. I take them, you tell the owner it was stolen. Oops.”

“No. Come on. Leave.” He put his hand lightly on Gerry’s arm and tried to guide him toward the door.

Genuine Gerry spun away from Kimball and when he regained his balance, his right hand was holding a pistol, pointed away, toward the wall.

“What the hell, Gerry?”

“You let me take something. I take something or I shoot it, your choice. You ever fix television full of bullets?”

—Can I get a description? Suspect will try to blend in here.

—White T-shirt. Long black jean shorts. Short afro.

“Genuine, come on. Put the gun away.”

Gerry was leaning over a set of twin turntables Kimball had already repaired and tagged for pickup. “What are these?”

“Turntables,” Kimball said. “Record players. You know, for a DJ.” He made a noise in the back of his throat like a scratching record.

“I should take.”

“No. No, you can’t, Gerry.”

Genuine took one step back, turned his head away, shut his eyes tight, and fired a bullet into the machine.

“Gerry! Shit!”

“I told you. You let me take or I destroy. Either way you lose.”

“No. No. No. Look, settle down.” Kimball studied the situation nervously. Gerry seemed terrified of his own pistol and he held it away from his body the way you would a snake or a lit match. “Gerry, you have things you can sell.” Kimball held up the set. “You have a television. Obviously, you have a gun.”

Genuine shook his head. “Television is crap. Gun is not mine.” He waved at an old Waring blender on the counter. “What is this worth?”

“Not a hundred and fifty bucks.”

With a sharp, stabbing motion, Gerry shot the blender twice at short range. The bullet pierced the glass pitcher and ricocheted off the concrete floor with a ping. Kimball ducked and covered his head, although if the bullet had been coming for him his evasive action would have been far too late. This had to stop.

He took a step forward. Gerry, his back turned, was looking for his next mechanical victim. Kimball put an arm around his shoulder. Gerry twitched but didn'’t move away. Kimball reached slowly for the gun. Genuine began to weep. He surrendered the pistol and put his hands to his eyes. “Please,”

Genuine sobbed. “Ple-ee-ease just give me money.”

“Gerry, no.”

Genuine turned to Kimball. His eyes appeared full of hatred. Because he had seen Gerry crying? Because Kimball had taken the gun? Between tears Genuine yelled, “You goddamn wop! You fecking dago!”

Kimball blinked at him. Wop? Dago? These were slurs from another era. Right street, wrong decade. And Kimball was a mutt bred from many ethnicities, Scotch-Irish, German, even a family rumor that would have made him one-sixteenth Sioux Indian and, if proven true, eligible for a low-interest business loan. But he wasn'’t Italian at all. Genuine Gerry didn'’t know the first thing about him and for some reason that made Kimball angry.

“Relax, Gerry.”

“Give me the money!” Gerry had squared himself with Kimball and was waving his taut arms beside his head. Now that he no longer had the unfamiliar pistol in his hand, he seemed less scared and more agitated. Quietly, Kimball recognized the irony in Gerry’s demands, which had become more confident and assertive now that Kimball had the gun. He also recognized the upside-down logic of his own fear, which had likewise and just as oddly become more intense.

“You’re not gong to shoot me,” Genuine said spitefully. “I know you. You’re not going to shoot me.” After one failed attempt, he lifted himself up on a gray, pain'ted workbench and sat there, feet dangling. His tone was mocking. “Come on, Kimmy. Just a few bucks. A loan. It is nothing. Hundred bucks and I leave. No money, maybe I stay.”