Chicago Noir [Anthology]

As he circled his room in a daze, it came to him. He heard it. Clearly. Cunning would join him. It was like an angel’s voice telling him what needed to be done. Then he knew. There would be only one way out.

He left his room on Friday at 7:30 p.m. He kept his head down and looked at no one. He moved quickly through the streets. He thought he heard a group of kids laughing at him on a street corner as he passed. He looked back and saw that a boy was telling a joke. But how did he know it was not a joke about Alex Pinto? It could be. He was the laughing stock of Humboldt Park. The stupid old man who boxed bums.

He went to Brick’s Gym and avoided the few fighters left working out. He looked around and then pulled out a long, thin metal locksmith tool from his gym bag. He picked the lock to Mr. Rico’s office. He knew Rico was gone for hours now and he didn'’t carry that gun on him. He closed the door and walked into the dark office and grabbed the revolver that was in the top drawer. He left the gym quietly.

When he got to the smoker, he went to a dark corner and put the gun inside his boxing glove. He moved closer to the crowd and sat on a milk crate and waited to be called into the ring. He kept his head down. Not from shame. That had left. No, he was hot. Red hot. He kept his head down. He didn'’t want anyone to see his smile.

This night he was going against a forty-five-year-old named Welch. But Welch would get off easy. He stood in his corner with his head down. As Paco got in the ring to announce the fight, Pinto threw off his boxing gloves and put the gun to Paco’s head.

Pinto yelled, “All right, you bunch of parasites. You punks! You think I am some kind of joke? Everyone out of here. Now!”

No one in the crowd moved. They stared at Pinto and a few made moves to grab their chairs.

Pinto cocked the revolver. “Paco, I will put this bullet in your stupid head now if you don’t tell them to leave. You heard that gun cock. Right? That means you got a second or two to live.”

“You dead, homes.”

Pinto pushed the gun into his temple. Paco shook and said in a whisper, “All right. All right! It was just a joke. Don’t shoot.”

“Then tell them to leave. Loud.”

Paco called out, “All right! Listen up! Get out of here. Listen to this crazy old fuck. It’s cool. Go home. I'’ll handle him. Get goin’.”

The crowd started to move to the exit. A man pointed at him. Some grumbled. Alex yelled, “Call 911! Tell them the boxer, Alex Pinto, has a gun to this punk’s head because Alex Pinto came to claim back his dignity which this pato tried to rob.”

The gym emptied as Pinto pushed Paco away and aimed the gun at his chest.

“You think you can make a fool of me. Rob me of my good name. Make fun of me. Treat me like a bum. Strip me of my humanity. You think that is funny? Make fun of who I once was?”

Paco backed away in the ring with a weak smile and his hands up, “Hey, pops, what’s your beef. I paid you for the fights. What’s your problem?”

“My problem is I saw those videos you’re selling. Bum Boxing. You played me for a fool. Made me a joke in my own neighborhood. Like my whole life was all a big joke to you. I ain’t a bum.”

Paco smiled and said, “Well, you ain’t a boxer no more either, pops.”

Pinto smiled back. Took a slow breath. Aimed the gun at Paco’s kneecap and pulled the trigger.

Paco fell to the ground with a scream.

“Well, at least I was once a boxer. I once fought for a title. What have you ever done? Look at you. Your life is over before it began. And what did you do? Make fun of people. Sell drugs. Ruin others.”

Paco kneeled on the canvas. He held his shattered knee and squirmed with pain. “Come on, papi. Don’t kill me. I won’t tell anyone.”

Pinto stood over him. He gave him a small smile. “You want mercy, boy?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“It was just a joke. I paid you. I'’ll get rid of them all. No more videos of you. All gone. It will be forgotten. No one will remember.”

Pinto held the gun up and said, “Too late. When you were in diapers, I was out here on these streets trying to do what was right. Well, you know what? I’m tired of doin’ what’s right.”

Pinto aimed the gun and shot Paco once in the head. Paco fell back, his torso leaning on the ropes. His eyes were still open. Pinto threw the gun on Paco’s lap.

He stayed, dancing around the ring, throwing punches, seeing Bob Foster in front of him, surprised at the fury that came out of the gloves of a young Alex Pinto.

Pinto thought that he looked like a good contender against Foster. He heard the sirens down Cicero Avenue and he went to his corner to wait for the bell to ring for the next round.

PURE PRODUCTS

BY DANIEL BUCKMAN

Roscoe & Claremont

The rain streamed off the porch roof and the black sheets dissolved Chicago and they thought themselves behind a waterfall. Mike put his hand on Susan’s cheek, her hair windblown against his knuckles. She held her breath and they bit each other’s lips. After twelve years, it was what they did to make things feel new. And the rain kept coming, beating the leaves from the maples and the elms, turning the gutters into rivulets floating Starbucks pastry bags.

They went upstairs to lie down and the rain fell harder with the late darkness. He held his wife against him, her back warm and damp. She felt the rain through the screen, more than he did, and pushed into his chest until he moved. There had been long days of rain and they never knew the rain from the sky. If the sunlight came, it showed hard before the dusk, and made the streets steam. But there were two weeks before they would talk about the wet summer, a month before the rains ruined July with low, gray skies.

Mike Spence had told Susan he was going to be a cop over delivered Thai food. His academy class was starting in three months down on Monroe by Rico’s, where they once drank vodka martinis, singing Dean Martin songs with a bartender friendly over past tips, and watching the fallouts from the police trainee runs spit and hold their sides. Who the hell could they chase, he’d laughed. No soldier would lower himself to be a cop. Now he was thirty-five, a veteran, and he hadn'’t won a thing. I wrote a book about me, he thought. Winners and losers. That was the risk.

“This is nothing,” his wife said.

“I start in ninety days.”

“I don’t think it’s what you want.”

She sat up and drew the bedsheet around her breasts and pointed in his face. He looked out the window. A writer, he was thinking. Just because that idea moved him didn'’t mean it was moving. He felt crazy sometimes, even undone, like he’d been climbing hard but the ladder was up against the wrong wall. In the early darkness, her eyes searched his face.

“Why do you still get this way?” she said.

“I’m no one way anymore,” he answered.

“You get these ideas,” she said, “but life isn’t a story. You were just talking about going to Iraq with Quakers. Last year, you were going to backpack through Cambodia. You always attach yourself to something that is not your own.”

He looked at her and then at himself in the wall mirror. Her biceps were bruised from wrestling with autistic boys in her special education class. In grocery stores, people eyed her arms and stared at him while she scanned cat food and mangos through the self-checkout. A dyke is going to hit you someday, she’d laugh. Just leave you for dead.

“You’re not a character,” she said.

“You don’t know,” he said.

“I know you’re not a character.”

Mike knew his wife saw a bloated cop parked in the wagon outside a 7-Eleven while his partner got a coffee and eyed the Indian girl’s breasts. Pooja, she’d be thinking. My husband’s partner will be eyeing Pooja.