Noir

by Christopher Moore

  “That’s a unit of measure. Eighth of a mile.”

  “No it ain’t, and you’re a dirty lyin’ furlong for sayin’ it is. The Martians are going to burn you down, just like on that radio program where they finally died from germs they got from touching their willies.”

  “You’re not old enough to remember War of the Worlds.”

  “I remember stuff.”

  “Look, kid, you eat?”

  “I had some breakfast. What’s it to ya?”

  “Make some coffee, and have yourself some cornflakes, and you can coach me for twenty minutes on the heavy bag.”

  “What’s your angle?”

  “I figure I might need to stay in shape for this Martian invasion.”

  “All right, but I’m watchin’ you.”

  * * *

  The night at work moved like honey poured over an iceberg. Mugs, thugs, and lugs, sitting in the smoke, nothing more to me than a drink order and a “here you go.” Every time the door opened, the hope rising in me like a hallelujah shattered like a gut-shot crystal goblet when it wasn’t the Cheese. All night like that, until around nine, when the phone rang.

  “Sal’s,” I answered, like I do.

  “I have General Remy calling for Sal Gabelli,” said a young guy, kind of shouting like he’s long-distance. Didn’t need to, I could hear him fine. “May I speak to Mr. Gabelli?”

  “Mr. Gabelli is gone for the evening,” I said. “You want to leave a message.”

  “It’s important that the general speak to Mr. Gabelli,” said the guy. “Regarding a business arrangement.”

  “Oh, why didn’t you say?” I said. “Let me look around.” I didn’t look around. “No, turns out he’s still not here.”

  Then the guy on the phone, probably some air force clerk, I figured, started to get huffy with me. “Sir,” he said, “what is your name?”

  “Struffoli,” I told him. “Pauley Struffoli.”

  “Well, Mr. St—Mr. Stru— What kind of name is that?”

  “It’s an Italian name. A proud Italian name, from a proud Italian dessert. Made of little balls of dough. It’s proud and delicious. My people went to war over struffoli, you ignorant fuck.” That was partially true. Struffoli is delicious.

  “Never heard of it,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Then I don’t want to talk to you. Tell the general, he wants to talk to his nookie bookie, he can call himself.”

  And I hung up.

  I was in no mood. Insulting my heritage. The mook.

  I mixed a couple of Manhattans and put them in front of a couple of drunks, then the phone rang again.

  “Sal’s,” I said, like I do.

  “This is General Remy,” said the general.

  “Hey, General,” I said, bright as a sack of sunshine. “Sal isn’t here. What can I do for you?”

  “About the, uh, entertainment he was arranging, you’re aware of that?”

  “The farm-scrubbed, pure-as-the-driven-snow entertainment? Yeah, he mentioned it.”

  “Well, tell him to never mind. Events have provided me with another way to achieve my purpose. I won’t be needing his services.”

  I was a little relieved, as I had no idea how, nor intention of, coming up with a bale of Bettys for his charming pleasure. I said, “I’ll tell him. But he’s going to want to be compensated for expenses.” Knowing Sal, if he lost a payday over this it was somehow going to turn out to be my fault.

  “He has some working capital,” said the general. “I’ll see that he’s compensated for his time.”

  “He’ll be happy. Say, General, I hear on the radio you had a crash in your neighborhood? What’s the skinny?”

  “Nothing. Weather balloon.”

  “You are lying like a rug, flyguy.” Maybe I wouldn’t have done that well in the military. What the hell. Sal’s got no more business with this mug.

  “Tell Mr. Gabelli that I’ll be in touch,” said the general, all huffy. And he hung up.

  The front door swung open, but it wasn’t the Cheese. The whole night it was never the Cheese. A sap, I figured, that’s what I am.

  * * *

  When I limped up to Cookie’s at 2:30 in the a.m., Milo was leaning against his hack, as he is most of the time.

  “Who shit in your tuba?” asked the cabbie. Milo was a slight fellow of about thirty, barely five and a half feet tall, with a perpetual five o’clock shadow and a slope to his shoulders from too much time sitting behind the wheel. He always wore his cabbie hat with the checkered hatband. Always.

  “Dame,” I explained. “I’ll tell you over pie.”

  “I gotta stay put. This is my busy time.”

  “Gotcha,” I said, and I joined Milo, leaning on the fender of his cab. Together we watched the goings-on through the windows of Cookie’s.

  See, the legend goes that Milo Andreas had found a parking spot outside of Cookie’s Coffee shortly after the war ended, and, parking being what it is in the Tenderloin (which is basically mythical), decided to never give it up. Truth is, during the war, Milo drove a Sherman tank that took a glancing hit from a German Panzer’s 75 mm cannon, and Milo escaped being burned alive only because he was dragged out of the wreckage by a buddy, so since then he really did not care much for driving, as it often gave him a case of the jittering willies, but he persevered in his profession, since he had already paid for the hack license and driving is the only job he knows.

  “New waitress,” Milo informed me. And indeed, through the window, I noted an unfamiliar doll in waitress togs, who approximated the shape of a mailbox, dealing burgers and fries off her arm like she’d been at it her whole fifty years.

  “Yeah? She seen Lonius?”

  “This, I do not know, but if she has not, I suppose she is in for a tall, dark, and terrifying surprise in the not-too-distant future.”

  “I don’t know, she looks like she can hold her own.”

  “Happy New Year,” cried a drunk as he came out the door of Cookie’s, toasting Milo with a coffee cup held high.

  “Excuse me, Sammy,” said Milo. Then to the drunk, “And happy New Year to you, too.”

  The drunk guy, who had the look of a banker who has been packed into a jack-in-the-box like a surprise springy puppet, but failed to fully deploy upon the weasel declaring pop, stumbled across the sidewalk holding out a coffee cup like it was dragging him along behind it. He pulled his feet under him and held his cup out to Milo like he was collecting alms for the poor.

  “Courage,” said the drunk.

  “Two bits,” said Milo.

  The drunk dug into his pocket, spilling most of his coffee in the process, then came up with a quarter, which he handed to Milo. Milo took the guy’s coffee cup, pulled open his canvas car coat, and poured a shot from a bottle he kept in the inside pocket, all very much on the Q.T., then handed the spiked coffee back.

  “Happy New Year,” said the drunk.

  “Happy New Year,” said Milo, and this is the way Milo Andreas, the cabbie who hates to drive, made rent on his single-residency hotel room in the Tenderloin. See, Cookie’s had a tradition, started years ago by theater people, who work on holidays, of celebrating New Year’s Eve every night of the year to make up for the good times they missed on the real New Year’s. So not only was there counting down, cheering, and the odd smooch, but diners had come to expect to imbibe spirits as well, and Cookie had been denied a liquor license after a rather blatant violation during Prohibition, when four city councilmen and a supervisor managed to crash an Oldsmobile into the city fireboat docked at Pier 22, and only three of them had the courtesy to drown, leaving the other two to rat out Cookie for spiking their coffees with hooch; thus the noble fry cook got blamed for the whole mess. So now, by the laws of supply and demand and showing up, the provision of spirits fell to Milo, who leaned on his cab and poured Old Tennessee (known locally as Old Tennis Shoes) out of his coat for two bits a shot, which he did from 11 p.m. until 4 a.m. every night.

  S
o Milo poured a few shots to grateful citizens, and turned down just as many for cab fare, and I retrieved a cup of joe from the new waitress, who seemed stand-up to me, as she did not give me grief for taking my coffee with cream and sugar, and Milo spiked it gratis, as we are pals.

  “So, dame trouble?” asked Milo.

  And here I was glad to spot Eddie Moo Shoes coming up Taylor Street, his Holstein-flavored stompers flashing under the streetlamps like patent leather penguins, because, as it turned out, I did not have dame trouble in the traditional sense of the word, only in the sense that I was troubled by a dame who was not, at the moment, with me. All night I waited for the Cheese to come into the bar, and by evening’s end I was a portrait in disappointment, as the Cheese neither darkened my door nor provided the light of my life, as she was a ghost, a dream, a memory, a regret, and I was nothing but a sap.

  “What’s buzzin’, cousin?” said Moo Shoes, chipper as a squirrel munching coffee beans.

  “New waitress,” said Milo. “Sammy has dame trouble.”

  Moo Shoes leaned on the cab on the other side of Milo, scoped the action in the diner.

  “Trouble with the Cheese?” asked Moo. “Already?”

  “The Cheese?” asked Milo.

  “Dame’s name is Stilton,” I said. “Like the cheese.”

  “Oh, I know her,” said Milo. “Flapjack flinger at the five-and-dime, right? Blonde? Stacked? Kind of daffy?”

  “Nah, not daffy,” I said, defending Stilton’s honor and so forth.

  “I mean kinda sad-daffy.”

  “Well, yeah,” I said, caving like a wedding cake in a hurricane. “This is Moo’s fault.”

  “What?” said Moo. “Has the new waitress seen Lone, yet?” Changing the subject, weasel-like.

  “Since when are you leaving messages for me at my building?” I was not letting Moo off that easy.

  “That kid tried to make me say ‘squirrel’ for fifteen minutes.”

  “He wanted to make sure you weren’t a spy.”

  “He’s a horrible little kid.”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “And I left you the message because I knew you wanted to know.”

  “That’s no excuse.”

  “Wait,” said Milo. “I just saw you guys on Tuesday. When was this?”

  “Night before last,” said Moo Shoes. “Broad came into Sal’s and Sammy lost his mind. You could see it happening.”

  “You could not,” I said. He could not.

  “So you met this broad two nights ago and already you’re heartbroken? That’s got to be some kind of record.”

  “I’m not heartbroken,” I said. “I’m just, you know—I think I got the flu.”

  “So you saw her?” asked Moo.

  “Yeah. Spent the night at her place last night.”

  “She changed your oil and put the chill on you all in one night?”

  “Nah. It was swell. Just, you know, she didn’t come into the saloon tonight.”

  “Well, call her, ya goof.”

  “She doesn’t have a phone.”

  “So go to her house, or were you too soused to remember where she lives?”

  “Top of Telegraph Hill, nearly,” said Milo. “Can’t even drive there.”

  “How do you know?” I said. How did he know?

  “Cabbie,” said Milo, pointing to his hat.

  “But you don’t—” I was starting to say, but you don’t drive, when I heard the tip-tap of Lone Jones’s tap shoes and the formal-dressed tower of ebony rounded the corner, top hat and all. I don’t know why Lonius wears taps on his shoes, because I have never seen him dance, but no one is going to challenge him about them.

  “Gentlemen,” said Lone, the professional greeting of a professional greeter. “How y’all doing this evening?”

  “There’s a new waitress and Sammy’s got dame trouble,” said Eddie Moo Shoes.

  “I am sure sorry to hear that, Sammy. You oughta-should come back to the gym. Make you feel better.”

  Lone and the guys on my welding crew had a boxing gym set up at Hunters Point, where they endeavored to teach me the gentlemanly art of self-defense. Lone’s strategy, which was to be fucking enormous, didn’t work for me, but a fellow called Jackson Two had actually done some boxing in the South. “You ain’t never gonna be a boxer ’cause you all gimpy and shit, but I can teach you to kick a man in the nuts and you’ll get a few licks in. Might keep you alive.”

  I’ve been working the heavy bag ever since.

  “I’m fine, Lone. These guys are just busting my chops.”

  “New waitress,” said Milo, caution in his voice, pushing back the bill of his hat so we could see he was raising his eyebrows, as if to say, You know what that means.

  “Good,” said Lone. “’Cause I’m gonna need her to bring me a meat loaf. C’mon, y’all can watch me eat.”

  Lone headed into the diner. Me, Milo, and Moo Shoes all looked at each other like someone had tossed a hand grenade in front of us and one of us ought to get to heroically diving on that rascal. I broke the standoff and scampered after Lonius, got around in front of him so I went in the door first, like I was a blocking back busting through the line to make way for my extra-large funeral director halfback. Doris—that was the new waitress’s name, it said so on her name tag—was standing just inside the door holding a coffeepot and she looked right over my head at Lonius, who is quite a sight when you’re seeing him for the first time.

  “Doris,” I said. “I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not what you are thinking. Lonius here is a friend of Cookie’s and he’s a stand-up guy, and comes in here all the time—ask any of these mugs.”

  And she said, “What I’m thinking is he’s gonna knock that hat off on the doorframe, he don’t take it off. You guys want a booth or the counter?”

  Then Lonius took his hat off, held it to his chest, and, with a half bow, said, “Excuse me, miss, but I am in disguise. You see, aspite what you think, I am not black. I am gonna be on the Secret Service for President Roosevelt, and they don’t allow that, so I’m trickin’ people. That’s the secret part.”

  Well, he didn’t have to say that. She was getting ready to seat us, but Lonius had a mission, and none of us had the heart to stop him. See, around June 1941, six months before the Japs bombed the blue bloody bejeezus out of Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt saw the writing on the wall, and that Uncle Sam was going to need to gear up for war, so he issued Executive Order 8802, which banned discrimination based on race at all defense plants. Well, for Lonius, and a lot of other blacks in the South, this was like the second chapter of the Emancipation Proclamation, and thousands left the South, where their life was little better than when there was slavery, and came to the West Coast, where they got good jobs building bombs and planes and ships and whatnot. They not only got good jobs at good wages, but Uncle Sam made sure they had a place to live while they were doing it. So Lonius came from Alabama, where he and his mama were working on the edge of starvation, and moved to San Francisco, where they spent the war years housed in the family barracks at Hunters Point, and now shared a little house in the Fillmore, where Lonius’s mama could even grow flowers in the window boxes. So, to Thelonius Jones, the sun rose and set on President Roosevelt. Even when they were at Hunters Point, Lonius had Executive Order 8802 written out on a typewriter, framed, and hung on the wall in the little apartment he shared with his mother. It was only after the war, after I had talked the owner of the Moonlight, a jazz club in North Beach, into hiring Lone as a doorman, for the novelty of it, and he and his mama moved to the Fillmore, that we found out about his Secret Service angle. It went like this:

  I stopped by to pick Lone up after work, and we walked down to Cookie’s in the Tenderloin. By this time the Tenderloin had a pretty big black population, what with the war and the city mandating single-residency hotels there for defense workers. (It was lily-white before the war.) Anyway, I figured if Cookie had a beef with Lone, I’d just grab a couple of burg
ers to go and we’d eat them sitting on the curb. But when Cookie stopped Lone at the door, saying that they didn’t serve Negroes, I heard the story for the first time.

  “Well, that’s okay, ’cause I ain’t no Negro,” Lone said. “I’m gonna be a Secret Service and they don’t take Negroes.”

  Cookie was a guy caught out of time, the changes to his neighborhood coming fast and painful through the last couple of decades, but he crossed his big arms and said, “Do tell?”

  “Yes, sir. I see’d it down to the colored theater in a newsreel. They stand by the door to make sure the wrong element don’t wander into the White House. I picked the spot at the White House right where I’ma stand. I don’t care he don’t walk. No sweat to me to carry a little ol’ fella around while he run the world.”

  “When was the last time you saw a newsreel, son?” Cookie asked.

  “Been some time,” Lone told him.

  “And you work the door at the Moonlight? In North Beach?”

  “Yes, sir, I do.”

  “I been wanting to go down there and listen to some jazz. You suppose you could get me a good seat?”

  “You know I could,” said Lone.

  Cookie just shook his head, a man who couldn’t remember why he’d met us at the door in the first place. “Well, why don’t you two take that booth there in the back, and if anyone gives you any trouble, you tell them about the Secret Service.”

  “I sho’ will,” said Lone.

  That was two years ago, and none of us has had the heart to tell Lone that President Roosevelt was dead.

  Now I said to Doris, “Oh. You’re okay that he’s, uh—”

  “No, about that I do not give a shit,” she said. “I spent the war welding Liberty ships at the Kaiser yard in Richmond. More than half the people I worked with were colored. We got along fine. Sit where you want.”

  “I’ma need me a meat loaf, miss,” Lone said.

  “A whole one,” I added.

  “And mashed potatoes, you got ’em,” said Lone.

  “I’ll put your order in. You find a seat and when it comes up I’ll see if I can find you.” And off she went to yell at the night cook.