Tom Piccirilli: Fuckin' Lie Down Already

© 2003

I’ve only met Piccirilli in the flesh on one occasion, which we’ll get to and deal with in a minute. We were introduced, digitally, by Don Eduardo Gorman, head of the Cedar Rapids combine and much-loved padrone to a whole pack of upstart noir scribes, all of us dreaming about the good old days when Dick Carroll would cut you a check on the strength of a sample chapter and an outline full of automats and small town banks and a dark haired woman who held your doom somewhere beneath her gauzy babydoll.

Within the first couple of e-mails, I knew that Pic and I were long lost tribesmen. My first clue was his easy comprehension of mildly obscure pop references. We were raised on the same gutter cuisine – had mooned over the same forgotten songs, movies, TV shows and, of course, most of all, books. The guy couldn’t be stumped. I’d close out a missive with some throwaway query regarding the whereabouts of Zooey Hall. Pic’d retort – He’s still on Bomano, pining for Tiffany Bolling. I’d sign off with a line from an obscure Thin Lizzy tune; he’d counter with one from Sweet. I’d recount the joys of finding my first Silverberg paperback in a spin rack at the corner Rexall; he’d reminisce about his initial encounter with a Matheson or Philip K. Dick collection. Stuff like that.

So a few years back, we both end up in Los Angeles at the same time and conspire to get together for dinner. He was meeting people about a possible film deal – I can’t recall which book was under option. (And at this point I want to publicly confer to Pic the right to add footnotes to correct the historical record.) I was there for much less romantic and profitable reasons, on which I will not dwell beyond mentioning that they involved attorneys and depositions and the kind of bad blood that can turn the marrow forever septic.

I was bunking at the airport Hilton, honestly, swear to God, under an assumed name. Not to worry – all this was a while ago and much of this particular hash has been settled. Pic and I arranged to meet and he picked me up in a rented navy blue Crown Victoria, a cushy tank for off-duty cops and old-time leg-breakers, which, I know, is often one in the same. I was impressed and as I hopped into shotgun position and extended a hand to shake, I felt an easy camaraderie, as if we’d known each other since Sharon Stone was a virgin.

For two guys who belonged to the Church of the Gold Medal Paperback, there was little question as to where we’d dine that night. Pic jumped onto the 405 headed north and made his way, like a native, to 6667 Hollywood Boulevard and the Musso & Frank Grill.

Now, for the average tourist, Musso & Frank is a shrine that glows with the light of old Hollywood. Chaplain and Bogart and Douglas Fairbanks all hung out there. For the tourist with a literary bent, this is where Fitzgerald and Faulkner and Dorothy Parker all got hammered when in the city of angels. For the hardboiled junkie, this is, according to legend, where Raymond Chandler scribbled bits of The Big Sleep. But for two shmucks who’d give a year off the back-end of their lives for a mint copy of Black Wings Has My Angel, this old-time chop house was only the place where Jim Thompson spent many a long and boozy afternoon brooding over lost children, lost fathers, lost opportunities.

We settled ourselves into one of those red leather booths and made introductory small talk as we studied our menus and wondered silently if our particular table was where Thompson – allegedly, allegedly – had been screwed badly on the South of Heaven film deal by a slick young actor-turned-producer.

A side note: I once heard a writer-friend tell of attending a reading by a revered novelist. Throughout the event, the revered novelist sipped at a glass of water and, upon finishing the reading, left the glass on the podium, where, when the crowd thinned out, the writer claimed the glass and swilled the remaining fluid. This friend told me: I knew there was nothing in the water that made him a great writer, but I figured, just in case…

I am not too proud to admit that, in this same spirit, I ordered the zucchini Florentine that night at Musso & Frank. In fact, I don’t much like zucchini, but I had read, in Robert Polito’s wonderful biography of the writer, that Thompson often would select the zucchini Florentine when dining at M &F, and so, when the waiter arrived, that’s what I requested. Along with a bourbon. Which did and did not have much to do with Thompson. Piccirilli ordered a sirloin and what sounded like a nice Cabernet. And it was only after the waiter had left that Pic reminded me: Thompson also favored the pot roast special.

Anyway, at some point early in what proved to be a long evening, our discussion of Thompson segued into a discussion of David Goodis. Goodis is, I learned that night, Pic’s favorite noir scribe. Whether or not Goodis ever dined at Musso & Frank, I don’t know. I can’t even determine if Goodis ever met Thompson. Because, unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a lot known – or at least written – about the novelist from Philadelphia. Pic and I had both been through Jim Sallis’ fine essay a dozen times or more. But in the end, our sense of the man derived from the haunted, anguished vibe that emanated from his books. As if, in simply holding Down There or Nightfall in your hands, you got a tactile education in the many agonizing ways that one’s life can detonate in an instant.

What I recall Pic saying about Goodis that night was, “He goes to his dark places more often and more honestly than anybody else, I think. He was fucked up worse than the other GM writers… which is why I love him.”

That comment told me a lot about Piccirilli as both writer and man. It said that he knew where stories come from and that he understood what was at stake every time he cobbled words into myth. And it said that he realized the depths of the connections that can be made between writer and reader.

Near the end of the evening, but sometime before my last bourbon, we decided, suddenly and enthusiastically, to light out on a quest. Initially, the object of the quest was to discover the identity of Goodis’ mysterious and, by most accounts, tormenting wife, known only as “Elaine” – a primary source, it seemed to both of us, of much of his anguished vision. (I’m betting that Goodis knew – and found a perverse irony in the fact – that the name “Elaine” is derived from the Old French for “light.”)

But by the time the check came, the quest had evolved, thankfully and somewhat more rationally, into a desire to light a votive candle in memory of poor old David Goodis and the noir world he bequeathed to us. Somehow, it didn’t seem such an odd idea at the time – two erstwhile Catholics lighting a candle for our lost Jewish idol.

Now, I’m a little bleary on the details of what happened next, but I know that it involved some bad directions from a surly 7-Eleven clerk and a series of wrong turns that put us, eventually, somewhere in East L.A. Which was where we spotted St. Lucy’s. (I had hoped to find a St. Elaine’s, but Pic suggested this would be a long shot at best.)

It was a little mission-style church on a busy street full of clubs that were spilling music and light out onto the sidewalks. Unable to find a parking spot, Pic dropped me off and began to circle around the block. I made my way inside and found a classic alcove in the nave, filled with a black, wrought-iron table upon which rested, in tiers, dozens, perhaps hundreds, of flickering candles, all of them set in small, red glass holders. That the church was wide open and deserted at this hour did not at all surprise or concern me at the time. And as I selected a taper and ignited it, I felt as if I were inside a noir novel, some old, battered paperback from my childhood Rexall. As if I were moving through the penultimate chapter of a book, bringing my mind into line with my fate just before the bottom fell out of the world.