Chicago Noir [Anthology]

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 slow-dancing 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 Clovis 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.