Luciano Guerriero - Chicago Noir

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 has been 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.

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 slowdancing 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.

“There stands our man,” Clovis said.

I always liked Clovis, not so much because he was someone I felt I could trust, but because he was someone I admired for his reputation of being a ladies’ man. He had one of those tiny elegant mustaches, a thin line just above his lips, and smooth-looking hair with just the right amount of relaxer. Also, most of the time he was holding some pills, black beauties, west coasters, bennies, some kind, and he always knew a few good-looking white girls who thought he was an amateur photographer. He’d take pictures of them. They were what I might call forbidden pictures . He had this portable Polaroid and a whole collection of close-ups of white girls undressing. He would show you them if you asked, and usually I was very interested. He might have been one of the best coronet players that ever lived, the way he played so slow and sad, if he sat still long enough to listen to himself, but that was a no go. He would sit in sessions around town but, for the most part, if a dame wasn’t involved, he had no interest in being still that long.

“Now what?” I asked, and it was at that moment, Seamus came around the corner.

“Now you turn your head, Jimmy, because this is not gonna be pretty,” Clovis said with a grin.

“Please, no!” Langley shouted, and it became apparent he was no longer climbing. He was stuck at the top, his pants leg snarled by a ring of barbed wire. Seamus saw this and moved down the alley, slower now, taking his time. He took off his hat and his coat and rolled up his shirt sleeves very carefully.

“Please, please, let me get down first!” Langley shouted. “To be fair about it.”

Seamus went up and grabbed the fence in both his big hands and gave it a shake. It was like making a wish with a dime, easy. Just like that, Langley fell on his back right at Seamus’s feet.

Then, “Please, wait, wait a minute... she... she didn’t mean anything,” Langley muttered, and in my mind I imagined a big red dictionary which opened to a page that read:

she didn’t mean anything\she did not meen ‘en-e-thin\

slang phrase 1: at this moment, exactly the wrong thing to say.

I put the automobile in park and turned the radio up, and this radio was sending me secret messages of good luck again because it was Gerry Mulligan’s big sax trembling. I looked away as Seamus swung his hand back and snap! Langley, the poor fellah, couldn’t have done a thing to avoid it coming. Seamus hit him a square one in mouth and I saw Langley fly forward, his hands dropping to his sides, and then I couldn’t see what was happening because they were on the ground, in front of the automobile. Seamus was very quiet about it all and I saw him swing again. Some blood specked along the snow.