Chicago Noir

by Joe Meno

  The blonde down there picked up some change off the bar and walked over to the jukebox. She put in a coin and punched some buttons, and then swayed her hips back to the bar. The jukebox started playing and it was an old record and a good one—the Harry James version of the “Memphis Blues.” Blue and brassy stuff from the days back before Harry went commercial.

  I sat there listening, and feeling like the devil. I thought, I’ve got to get over it. Every time I hear stuff like that I can’t go on wanting to kill myself just because I can’t play anymore. I’m not the only guy in the world who can’t play music. And the others get by.

  My hands were lying on the bar in front of me and I tried them again, while I listened, and they wouldn’t work. They wouldn’t ever work again. My thumbs were okay, but the four fingers on each hand opened and closed together and not separately, as though they were webbed together.

  Maybe the Scotch was making me feel better, but—maybe, I decided—maybe it wouldn’t be too bad—

  Then the Harry James ended and another record slid onto the turntable and started, and it was going to be blue too. “Mood Indigo.” I recognized the opening bar of the introduction. I wondered idly if all the records were blues, chosen to match the blue back-bar mirrors.

  Deep blue stuff, anyway, and well handled and arranged, whoever was doing it. A few Scotches and a blue mood, and that “Mood Indigo” can take hold of your insides and wring them. And this waxing of it was solid, pretty solid. The brasses tossed it to the reeds and then the piano took it for a moment, backed by wire-brush stuff on the skins, and modulated it into a higher key and built it up and you knew something was coming.

  And then something came, and it was an alto sax, a sax with a tone like blue velvet, swinging high, wide and off the beat, and tossing in little arabesques of counterpoint so casually that it never seemed to leave the melody to do it. An alto sax riding high and riding hot, pouring notes like molten gold.

  I unwound my fingers from around the Scotch-and-soda glass and got up and walked across the room to the jukebox. I knew already but I looked. The record playing was number 9, and number 9 was “Mood Indigo”—Johnny Marlin.

  For a black second I felt that I had to stop it, that I had to smash my fist through the glass and jerk the tone arm off the record. I had to because it was doing things to me. That sound out of the past was making me remember, and I knew suddenly that the only way I could keep on wanting to live at all was not to remember.

  Maybe I would have smashed the glass. I don’t know. But instead I saw the cord and plug where the jukebox plugged into the wall outlet beside it. I jerked on the cord and the box went dark and silent. Then I walked out into the dusk, with the three of them staring at me—the blonde and her escort and the bartender.

  The bartender called out, “Hey!” but didn’t go on with it when I went on out without turning. I saw them in the mirror on the inside of the door as I opened it, a frozen tableau that slid sidewise off the mirror as the door swung open.

  I must have walked the six blocks to the Carleton, through the gathering twilight. I crossed the wide mahogany-paneled lobby to the elevator. The uniformed operator looked familiar to me—more familiar than Tubby had. At least there was an impression that I’d seen him before.

  “Good evening, Mr. Marlin,” he said, and didn’t ask me what floor I wanted. But his voice sounded strange, tense, and he waited a moment, stuck his head out of the elevator and looked around before he closed the door. I got the impression that he was hoping for another passenger, that he hated to shut himself and me in that tiny closed room.

  But no one else came into the lobby and he slid the door shut and moved the handle. The building slid downward past us and came to rest at the eleventh floor. I stepped out into another mahogany-paneled hall and the elevator door slid shut behind me.

  It was a short hallway, on this floor, with only four doors leading to what must be quite large suites. I knew which door was mine—or I should say Kathy’s. My money never paid for a suite like that.

  It wasn’t Kathy who opened the door. I knew that because it was a girl wearing a maid’s uniform. And she must, I thought, be new. She looked at me blankly.

  “Mrs. Marlin in?” I asked.

  “No, sir. She’ll be back soon, sir.”

  I went on in. “I’ll wait,” I said. I followed her until she opened the door of a room that looked like a library.

  “In here, please,” she said. “And may I have your name?”

  “Marlin,” I said, as I walked past her. “Johnny Marlin.”

  She caught her breath a little, audibly. Then she said, “Yes, sir,” and hurried away.

  Her heels didn’t click on the thick carpeting of the hall, but I could tell she was hurrying. Hurrying away from a homicidal maniac, back to the farthest reaches of the apartment, probably to the protective company of a cook who would keep a cleaver handy, once she heard the news that the mad master of the manse was back. And likely there’d be new servants, if any, tomorrow.

  I walked up and down awhile, and then decided I wanted to go to my room. I thought, if I don’t think about it I can go there. My subconscious will know the way. And it worked; I went to my room.

  I sat on the edge of the bed awhile, with my head in my hands, wondering why I’d come here. Then I looked around. It was a big room, paneled like the rest of the joint, beautifully and tastefully furnished. Little Johnny Dettman of the Cleveland slums had come a long way to have a room like that, all to himself. There was a Capehart radio-phonograph across the room from me, and a big cabinet of albums. Most of the pictures on the walls were framed photographs of bands. In a silver frame on the dresser was the picture of a woman.

  That would be Kathy, of course. I crossed over and looked at it. She was beautiful, all right, a big-eyed brunette with pouting, kissable lips. And the fog was getting thinner. I almost knew and remembered her.

  I looked a long time at that photograph, and then I put it down and went to the closet door. I opened it and there were a lot of suits in that closet, and a lot of pairs of shoes and a choice of hats. I remembered: John Dettman had worn a sweater to high school one year because he didn’t have a suit coat.

  But there was something missing in that closet. The instrument cases. On the floor, there at the right, should have been two combination cases for sax and clarinet. Inside them should have been two gold-plated alto saxes and two sleek black Selmer clarinets. At the back of the closet should have been a bigger case that held a baritone sax I sometimes fooled around with at home.

  They were all gone, and I was grateful to Kathy for that. She must have understood how it would make me feel to have them around.

  I closed the door gently and opened the door next to it, the bathroom. I went in and stood looking at myself in the mirror over the wash bowl. It wasn’t a blue mirror. I studied my face, and it was an ordinary face. There wasn’t any reason in that mirror why anyone should love me the way my wife must. I wasn’t tall and I wasn’t handsome. I was just a mug who had played a lot of sax—once.

  The mirror was the door of a built-in medicine cabinet sunk into the tile wall and I opened it. Yes, all my toilet stuff was neatly laid out on the shelves of the cabinet, as though I’d never been away, or as though I’d been expected back daily. Even—and I almost took a step backwards—both of my straight razors—the kind of a razor a barber uses—lay there on the bottom shelf beside the shaving mug and brush.

  Was Kathy crazy to leave them there, after what I’d used such a thing for? Had it even been one of these very razors? I could, of course, have had three of them, but—no, I remembered, there were only two, a matched pair.

  In the sanitarium I’d used an electric razor, naturally. All of them there did, even ones there for less deadly reasons than mine. And I was going to keep on using one. I’d take these and drop them down the incinerator, right now. If my wife was foolhardy enough to leave those things in a madman’s room, I wasn’t. How could I be sure I’d n
ever go off the beam again?

  My hand shook a little as I picked them up and closed the mirrored door. I’d take them right now and get rid of them. I went out of the bathroom and was crossing my own room, out in the middle of it, when there was a soft tap on the door—the connecting door from Kathy’s room. “Johnny—” her voice said.

  I thrust the razors out of sight into my coat pocket, and answered—I don’t remember exactly what. My heart seemed to be in my throat, blocking my voice. And the door opened and Kathy came in—came in like the wind in a headlong rush that brought her into my arms. And with her face buried in my shoulder.

  “Johnny, Johnny,” she was saying, “I’m so glad you’re back.”

  Then we kissed, and it lasted a long time, that kiss. But it didn’t do anything to me. If I’d been in love with Kathy once, I’d have to start all over again, now. Oh, it was nice kissing her, as it would be nice kissing any beautiful woman. It wouldn’t be hard to fall again. But so much easier and better, I thought, if I could push away all of the fog, if I could remember.

  “I’m glad to be back, Kathy,” I said.

  Her arms tightened about me, almost convulsively. There was a big lounge chair next to the Capehart. I picked her up bodily, since she didn’t want to let go of me, and crossed to the chair. I sat in it with her on my lap. After a minute she straightened up and her eyes met mine, questioningly.

  The question was, “Do you love me, Johnny?”

  But I couldn’t meet it just then. I’d pretend, of course, when I got my bearings, and after a while my memory would come the rest of the way back—or I’d manage to love her again, instead. But just then, I ducked the question and her eyes.

  Instead, I looked at her throat and saw the scar. It wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. It was a thin, long line that wouldn’t have been visible much over a yard away.

  “Plastic surgery, Johnny,” she said. “It can do wonders. Another year and it won’t show at all. It—it doesn’t matter.” Then, as though to forestall my saying anything more about it, she said quickly, “I gave away your saxophones, Johnny. I—I figured you wouldn’t want them around. The doctors said you’ll never be able to—to play again.”

  I nodded. I said, “I guess it’s best not to have them around.”

  “It’s going to be so wonderful, Johnny. Maybe you’ll hate me for saying it, but I’m—almost—glad. You know that was what came between us, your band and your playing. And it won’t now, will it? You won’t want to try another band—just directing and not playing—or anything foolish like that, will you, Johnny?”

  “No, Kathy,” I said.

  Nothing, I thought, would mean anything without playing. I’d been trying to forget that. I closed my eyes and tried, for a moment, not to think.

  “It’ll be so wonderful, Johnny. You can do all the things I wanted you to do, and that you wouldn’t. We can travel, spend our winters in Florida, and entertain. We can live on the Riviera part of the time, and we can ski in the Tyrol and play the wheels at Monte Carlo and—and everything I’ve wanted to do, Johnny.”

  “It’s nice to have a few million,” I said.

  She pulled back a little and looked at me. “Johnny, you’re not going to start that again, are you? Oh, Johnny, you can’t—now.”

  No, I thought, I can’t. Heaven knows why she wants him to be one, but little Johnny Dettman is a kept man now, a rich girl’s darling. He can’t make money the only way he knows how now. He couldn’t even hold a job as a bus boy or dig ditches. But he’ll learn to balance teacups on his knee and smile at dowagers. He’ll have to. It was coming back to me now, that endless argument.

  But the argument was over now. There wasn’t any longer anything to argue about.

  “Kiss me, Johnny,” Kathy said, and when I had, she said, “Let’s have some music, huh? And maybe a dance—you haven’t forgotten how to dance, have you, Johnny?”

  She jumped up from my lap and went to the record album cabinet.

  “Some of mine, will you, Kathy?” I asked. I thought, I might as well get used to it now, all at once. So I won’t feel again, ever, as I had when I’d almost put my fist through that jukebox window.

  “Of course, Johnny.”

  She took them from one of the albums, half a dozen of them, and put them on the Capehart. The first one started, and it was a silly gay tune we’d once waxed—“Chickery chick, cha la, cha la . . .” And she came back, holding out her hands to me to get up and dance, and I did, and I still knew how to dance.

  And we danced over to the French doors that led to the balcony and opened them, and out onto the marble floor of the little railed balcony, into the cool darkness of the evening, with a full moon riding high in the sky overhead.

  Chickery chick—a nice tune, if a silly tune. No vocal, of course. We’d never gone for them. Not gut-bucket stuff either, but smooth rhythm, with a beat. And a high-riding alto sax, smooth as silk.

  And I was remembering the argument. It had been one, a vicious one. Musician-versus-playboy as my career. I was remembering Kathy now, and suddenly tried not to. Maybe it would be better to forget all that bitterness, the quarreling and the overwork and everything that led up to the blankness of the breakdown.

  But our feet moved smoothly on the marble. Kathy danced well. And the record ended.

  “It’s going to be wonderful, Johnny,” she whispered, “having you all to myself . . . You’re mine now, Johnny.”

  “Yes,” I said. I thought, I’ve got to be.

  The second record started, and was a contrast. A number as blue as “Mood Indigo,” and dirtier. “St. James Infirmary,” as waxed by Johnny Marlin and his orchestra. And I remembered the hot day in the studio when we’d waxed it. Again no vocal, but as we started dancing again, the words ran through my mind with the liquid gold of the alto sax I’d once played.

  I went down to St. James Infirmary . . . Saw my baby there . . . Stretched on a long white table . . . so sweet, so cold, so—

  I jerked away from her, ran inside, and shut off the phonograph. I caught sight of my face in the mirror over the dresser as I passed. It was white as a corpse’s face. I went back to the balcony. Kathy still stood there—she hadn’t moved.

  “Johnny, what—?”

  “That tune,” I said. “Those words. I remember, Kathy. I remember that night. I didn’t do it.”

  I felt weak. I leaned back against the wall behind me. Kathy came closer.

  “Johnny—what do you mean?”

  “I remember,” I said. “I walked in, and you were lying there—with blood all over your throat and your dress—when I came in the room. I don’t remember after that—but that’s what must have knocked me off my base, after everything else. That’s when I went crazy, not before.”

  “Johnny—you’re wrong—”

  The weakness was gone now. I stood straighter.

  “Your brother,” I said. “He hated you because you ran his life, like you wanted to run mine, because you had the money he thought should be his, and you doled it out to him and ran him. Sure, he hated you. I remember him now. Kathy, I remember. That was about the time he got past liquor and was playing with dope. Heroin, wasn’t it? And that night he must have come in, sky-high and murderous, before I did. And tried to kill you, and must have thought he did, and ran. It must have been just before I came in.”

  “Johnny, please—you’re wrong—”

  “You came to, after I keeled over,” I said. “It—it sounds incredible, Kathy, but it had to be that way. And, Kathy, that cold mind of yours saw a way to get everything it wanted. To protect your brother, and to get me, the way you wanted me. It was perfect, Kathy. Fix me so I’d never play again, and at the same time put me in a spot where I’d be tied to you forever because I’d think I tried to kill you.”

  I said, “You get your way, don’t you, Kathy? At any cost. But you didn’t want me to die. I’ll bet you had those tourniquets ready before you slashed my wrists.”

  She was beautiful, st
anding there in the moonlight. She stood tall and straight, and she came the step between us and put her soft arms around me.

  “I don’t see, though,” I said, “how you could have known I wouldn’t remember what really—wait, I can see how you thought that. I had a drink or two on the way home. You smelled the liquor on me and thought I’d come home drunk, dead drunk. And I always drew a blank when I got drunk. That night I wasn’t but the shock and the breakdown did even more to me. Damn you, Kathy.”

  “But Johnny, don’t I win?”

  She was beautiful, smiling, leaning back to look up into my face. Yes, she’d won. So sweet, so cold, so bare. So bare her throat that in the moonlight I could see the faint scar, the dotted line. And one of my crippled hands, in my pocket, fumbled open one of the razors, brought it out of my pocket, and up and across.

  The Price of Salt (excerpt)

  by PATRICIA HIGHSMITH

  Gold Coast

  (Originally published in 1952)

  Carol walked barefoot with little short steps to the shower room in the corner, groaning at the cold. She had red polish on her toenails, and her blue pajamas were too big for her.

  “It’s your fault for opening the window so high,” Therese said.

  Carol pulled the curtain across, and Therese heard the shower come on with a rush. “Ah, divinely hot!” Carol said. “Better than last night.”

  It was a luxurious tourist cabin, with a thick carpet and wood-paneled walls and everything from cellophane-sealed shoe rags to television.

  Therese sat on her bed in her robe, looking at a road map, spanning it with her hand. A span and a half was about a day’s driving, theoretically, though they probably would not do it. “We might get all the way across Ohio today,” Therese said.

  “Ohio. Noted for rivers, rubber, and certain railroads. On our left the famous Chillicothe drawbridge, where twenty-eight Hurons once massacred a hundred—morons.”