Luciano Guerriero - Chicago Noir

Langley was yelling, “She didn’t mean anything! She didn’t mean anything!” and each time he said it, Seamus lunged forward. “Please, my, my teeth,” and Langley being a trumpet player must have registered with big Seamus finally. He stood up and took a step back and his foot went right into the sap’s teeth.

“Yikes,” Clovis mumbled, and Seamus was putting his coat and hat back on, frowning.

In a moment, Clovis climbed out then and dug the wallet from the back of poor Langley’s pants. He robbed the poor sap and I hadn’t thought he was going to do that. He got back in the coupe and threw Langley’s wallet down in the front seat and took out the fellah’s cash, then slipped me a twenty. I said, “No dice, Clovis,” and handed it back, but quickly.

We were driving away and I was beginning to think I’d never ever be lucky again because I was just another two-bit among two-bits and there was nothing but scientific evidence of bad luck all around me. “High black cat,” I said, keeping my fingers crossed to ward it off. “High black cat.”

We went by the pawnshop on Ashland after that because I wanted to see my traps. They’d been sitting in the window a week before and now they weren’t and I wondered who the heck had bought them and what madman was playing them right now. We were standing outside the Friendly Pawn — Clovis, Seamus, and me — and my traps, the greatest drums in the world, were gone.

We cruised downtown next. Clovis had two joints and we smoked one up at Harbor Point where Randolph rises above the rest of the city. Up there stand three or four high-class apartment buildings that stare out over the entire lakefront. I let the radio play and it was an old Count Basie side on then, “Dark Rapture,” and I was getting stoned. Then Seamus sat up quick and said, “I’m going to go try and call my wife,” and he hopped out of the automobile and was gone just like that. It was his trademark disappearing act. You might be at a nightclub or in a taxi, and he’d mumble something about calling his wife and then disappear, but there’d always be enough money in the spot where he had been sitting to cover his tab.

“He’s got a screw loose, that one,” I said.

“Too many uppercuts to the head,” Clovis said. He searched around and lit the second joint. I laid back and I kept thinking about those Slingerland traps and who was playing them, and just then I realized it. Christ Jesus, I was late again.

We hit the Blue Note after that because I was supposed to sub for a trap player. When I showed up they said I had fouled up and the band had to call someone else and the baritone player said some comment like, “Jimmy Rabbit? I thought he was dead. Whiz-bang, baby, maybe you’d be better off if you did,” and I said, “Fuck you, my man,” and he said, “No, fuck you, my man,” and because of that situation, I lost about thirty bucks.

At the last minute, the alto reed player, a kid named Bobby Lincoln, a white kid who was straight as an ace on the alto sax, said he’d rather have me playing than the fellah they had called in. The fellah they called in looked like his mother had just dropped him off, and the way he was sweating and shaking, his face white as a ghost and him being black to boot, was a bad sign for everybody. By then it was 10:00 and they were scheduled to start on the hour and so it was on. I got up behind this very slick set of white Pearls and let them all have it. The first song I played was for the baritone player and it was a slow Earl “Fatha” Hines tune and I held it all in, right on time, waiting for my chance, etc., etc. The second song came and I was on and it was for the organ man who had said what he had said to me, and it was “Now’s the Time” by Charlie Parker and my drums were saying, “You can fuck off, my man, you fucking wannabe, dig this show I’m laying down and I know it’s good because it’s making your ten-cent organ solo sound like a million bucks.”

Later, the band, a five-piece with an alto and a baritone, said they needed a steady drummer and asked if I was interested and I said sure. Then they gave me my cut, which was only five bucks, and I said, “Excuse me, what is this all about?” and they go on to tell me the drinks are not free, and like a fool, I said, “Then you can count me out,” and heck, I had needed that job and I needed that money, but badly. Then Clovis came up and said we should split and I said sure and he said promptly and I said what’s the hurry and he said, “Cannonball Adams just walked in,” and like Clovis said, there he was.

Cannonball was white, muscular, with soft brown hair that was deftly parted, even with both his hands broken. It was a cinch his wife had combed his hair for him. He marched directly up to Clovis and I at the bar. He was in a soft tweed coat, both his hands in oversized white casts, his lip split and one eye still red and puffy.

“Well, gentlemen, I just came here to tell you a certain associate of mine is looking for you,” and I couldn’t think who that might be, so I said, “So why is this fellah looking for me?”

“He is representing me,” Cannonball grinned. He was knocking his casts against his pocket, trying to pull out a cigarette. I shook my head and obliged him.

“So, he’s representing you?” I repeated as I lit the smoke for him. “So?”

“My associate says he can’t make any money off me because I can’t play the piano. I can’t play the piano because you and your pug Irish friend broke my hands. I owed this associate a sum, so now my associate is looking for you two to collect what I owe.”

“I bet,” I said.

“My associate is to come by here right before midnight,” Cannonball grinned, and the clock above the rows of glass and liquor shouted out five to twelve and I had to think, was I a real posy in bloom? Yes. And my luck was only getting worse; worse, joe, worse.

Like magic, it had become morning. We found Seamus near his apartment on the corner of Broadway and Wilson. From down the block, I could see he was standing out front in the snow, smoking, and his big, misshapen nose was mashed and bleeding. He was holding his ear, which was swollen as big as a stone, and for some reason, standing there in the snow, he was smiling.

“What happened to you now?” I asked. “Number Twelve?”

“Nope. I ran into Cannonball’s associates. They took what they think I owed them.”

“How much was that?”

“My wristwatch and my wedding ring.”

“That was it?”

“Yep. They’re strictly small-time. I think one of them is going to have to learn to breathe through his ears from now on, but they got what they wanted.”

“Is that why you’re smiling?”

“Nope. I got a telegram from Shirley. She’s moving back to town, she says.”

I shrugged my shoulders, not knowing what to think.

“I just sent her one back. I told her, in my book she’s still o-key.”

I nodded. I thought my good friend here might be truly crazy.

“I got something else,” he said.

It was in the back of the trunk of some automobile down the street, a white Ford, another one he had borrowed or stolen. Cold and desperate, we all stood around behind it and watched as Seamus inserted the key and the rear panel sprang up.

It almost made me cry, what I saw. There, beside a spare tire and a soft blue blanket, was a single red sparkle drum, just one, a floor tom, with its silvery legs and all.

I didn’t know what to say.

“It was all I could afford,” he whispered, “the one. I was gonna try and buy one at a time, but they sold the rest before I came back.” I shook his hand and smiled, glad like usual, that he was my friend.