Noir

by Christopher Moore

  “No. Myrtle is not have men visitors before this. Just skinny man and you.”

  “Then why do you think she’s a floozie?”

  “Your sister is dress like whore. Sorry. But she go out showing the this and the that.” She gestured at the this and that on herself and I started to feel a little brotherly protection for my slutty sister. I hadn’t seen my real little sister in years and maybe I missed the feeling of wanting to pound someone on her behalf, but this Russian or Polish grandma was probably not the best target for my protective wrath. I shrugged it off.

  “Well, thank you. If Myrtle comes in, will you have her call this number and leave a message for Sammy?” I wrote down the number for Sal’s. I figured Bennie would answer and take the message, but better than if I left my own number and trusted the kid to answer. Bronko Nagurski in a housedress took the cable car ticket I wrote it on and looked at it like I had rubbed cholera on it.

  “Okay,” she said. “I will.”

  * * *

  Outside, on the steps of Myrtle’s building, I was lighting a coffin nail and trying to figure out what to do next when I spotted a black Chrysler rounding the corner at Fourth Street carrying the two mugs in the black suits from outside Sal’s. I knew it was them right away because I spotted the sunglasses on the one in the passenger seat, and while there was still some daylight left, it being summer, the fog was coming in and a guy in shades now had better be playing piano in a smoky club or selling pencils on the street or he would stand out more than somewhat. I didn’t know who these mugs were, or if they were following me to Myrtle’s building, but I knew where they were going now, and I was suddenly regretting giving my name and number to the Russian granny. Maybe the old broad would mind her own business. I would give six-to-five against.

  I pulled my hat down and hustled my bag of rats down the sidewalk and I was into an alley before they could get out of the car. I waited, listened, there’s still a lot of hustle and flow on Mission Street that time of night—citizens heading home from work late or out to dinner early, winos shuffling to their next drink or a doorway to bed down in—but Myrtle’s building had twin revolving doors that sounded like brush cymbals when they turned, so when I heard the sizzle, I risked a peek around the corner. Yeah, they were inside. And yeah, the trunk of that Chrysler was plenty big enough to hold a crate full of dead Sal on ice. The trickle of water running out below the bumper gave me the idea that Sal might still be relaxing inside.

  I couldn’t figure it. They weren’t wiseguys, and they definitely weren’t cops, not unless the cops were suddenly snatching stiffs out of locked rooms and neglecting to mention it to the papers. But then, I hadn’t seen the papers today. Maybe I should check, I thought. Nothing worse than to think you figured an angle on something, then have someone tell you they read it last week in “Hints from Herb.” I figured I’d grab a Chronicle once I was out of back alleys, see what I could find out. Not that I expected to open the paper looking for Stilton and have a page-two headline say, “The Cheese Sleeping Off a Bender in a Rattrap Hotel off Van Ness Avenue.” No, if I found her in the paper she’d either be getting married or she’d have gotten dead. The thought gave me a chill. I pulled my collar up—wished I’d worn my overcoat.

  I broke out of the alley in the middle of the block on Third Street—the fog off the bay was streaming between the buildings like a scarf through a stripper’s legs, leaving everything damp and smelling of sailors’ broken dreams. Some rough-looking guys huddled in a doorway nearby, sharing a no-label green glass jug of something, probably something sweet and strong, fortified wine—four guys guaranteed drunk for a buck. There was a sax man sitting on the sidewalk across the street, his sax case laid out before him, playing a blues riff, mournful and wailing. A lull in the traffic, no streetcar ringing for blocks, just the sax, the low growls of the winos, and the hum of wires overhead. The sax man’s notes hooked me in a spot right under my jaw where I was all knotted up with fear and heartbreak and hope, so I limped on over.

  The sax man stopped playing, adjusted his reed, smiled out of the corner of his eye.

  “Leg hurt when it’s damp, huh?”

  “Foot,” I said. “Yeah.”

  The sax man pulled up a pant leg and revealed a dark wooden shin. He knocked on it. “Aches like a bad tooth when the fog’s in, and it ain’t even there. Land mine.”

  I could see a lone nickel resting in the dirty red velvet of his sax case. I pulled out what cash I had, thirty-six bucks and some change. I threw in the coins, then looked at the money in my hand and threw in the ten and the twenty. Six bucks to last me the rest of my life. It would have to do. Small price.

  He looked in the case, then up at me.

  “You crazy?”

  “Probably. That’ll get you a room, hot meal or three.”

  “I could use a drink. You wanna share a drink?”

  “Early for me. Miles to go,” I told him. “But you get out of the cold and have one for me.”

  “Yeah.” The sax man tipped his horn. “What you wanna hear?”

  “Whatever you were playing before is fine.”

  “Sad.”

  “Yeah.”

  As he played, I walked my rats up to Market Street, back into the flow of the unbroken. I bought a paper at a news kiosk and tried to wrestle it into the ferryboat fold, tucking my rats under one arm like a banker with flowers for the wife, and reading from streetlight to streetlight as I made my way into Chinatown.

  * * *

  “Need more rat,” said Uncle Ho.

  It only took me about thirty blocks of backtracks and zigzags before I found the opium den’s red door. A big Chinese guy in traditional silk jacket and hat let me in and led me through the sickly sweet smoke to a back room where Uncle Ho sat drinking tea at a carved mahogany table under a red paper lantern over a bare bulb. I guess the fire marshal doesn’t include opium dens on his rounds.

  I put my sack of rats on the table by Ho’s tea. He opened the sack, untied the box, peeked in.

  That’s when he said, “Need more rat.”

  “You use those up, then I’ll get more.”

  Uncle Ho scrunched up his mug in disapproval until he looked like one of those dried-up faces you carve out of an apple in third grade to teach you that time is cruel and we are all just going to shrivel up and die, so there’s no point in getting out of bed. (Third grade was my broken-heart year, so I may have absorbed a different lesson from the dried apple face than other kids did.) That was the face Ho put on.

  “Need many rat to bring snake.”

  “There are many rats in the alley out back. Have your gorilla go catch some.”

  “Only white rat work.”

  “That’s malarkey,” I said. “How do you know this, anyway? You sure you’re gonna use these rats to catch a snake? Maybe you get a cat or two by accident? Huh?”

  As soon as the word cat left my yap I was aware that I had stepped deeply into dog shit, as far as Uncle Ho went. He gave me the dried-apple face of scrutiny.

  “Brother lie! I only play with cat.”

  “Right, our animal pals. Who doesn’t have a special animal friend as a kid?” I was shrugging so hard I looked like I was trying to sprout wings.

  “Bring more rat in morning,” said Ho.

  “Okey-dokey,” I said. “Will do.” I saluted, which I’m not sure is absolutely kosher in Chinese circles, so I bowed a couple of times, too, just in case.

  “And take fat cop away in morning.”

  “Uncle Ho.” I was pleading. “I don’t—Eddie doesn’t—” I was stumbling. I got nothing.

  What the hell were we going to do with Pookie O’Hara in the morning? Ever? I mean, Eddie and I had discussed that we had no solution to the Pookie problem, but we hoped that something would occur to us before our rent on the opium bunk ran out. “Hey, Ho, we are paid up for two days. You said—”

  “Morning,” said Ho. He waved a hand to dismiss me, and the palooka in the silk jacket took my arm to
make the point.

  “Those are first-rate fucking rats,” I added as I was escorted out the door.

  14

  Jukin’ to Jimmy’s

  I did the climb, 387 steps up and half that down the other side, back to Stilton’s place, just to check, maybe she came in. Nothing was moved except the note I’d left her. The note I signed. With my own name. What a dope. Someone had been there, but there was no sign it was the Cheese. No clothes thrown around; the shower pan and sink were dry.

  I ran all over the triangle around City Hall from Van Ness Avenue to Market Street to Golden Gate Avenue that we call the theater district. Actually, no one calls it that, and if someone does it’s because they are from out of town, because it is the Tenderloin, but it also happens to contain most of the grand theaters in the city, and I peeked my head into every one, looking for a tux-and-top-hat revue, even asked around about a period play that might involve an actor dressed just so, but no dice. No one had seen such a thing since Gene Kelly was last in town, kicking high and tapping toes and whatnot. The Chronicle revealed no such revue going on in the various clubs, either, so I was left without direction for finding the Cheese.

  I headed to Cookie’s in search of some tea and sympathy, or maybe a grilled cheese and scuttlebutt. Milo was manning his station, pouring shots and wishing happy New Year to one and all. I joined him at the side of his cab.

  “Happy New Year,” said Milo. “That is a very sharp suit, Sammy. Very sharp indeed, but it does not disguise the sadness that leaks out of you at the various corners.”

  “Yeah?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Milo replied. “May I buy you a cup of New Year’s cheer to help bolster your spirits?”

  “That would be nice, Milo. Thanks.”

  Milo caught the eye of the new waitress, Doris, who was no longer new, and signaled to her with an upraised digit, to which she inquired by pointing to me, to which Milo nodded, and lickety-split Doris delivered a coffee with cream and two spoons of sugar to me at the curb. Which was new.

  “That’s new.”

  Milo said, “Yeah, she is a swell broad, Doris. We have an arrangement.”

  “An arrangement as in dividing the pie, or an arrangement as in hiding the banana?”

  “Alas,” said Milo, “Doris has a few more years on her than I usually prefer in a broad and reminds me a little of my mother, and besides, she is stubbornly married to a longshoreman who I hear is easily sored up.”

  “Alas,” I sighed. “But her java is top-shelf and just a snort short of perfect.” And she does not bust my chops for not taking it black, which makes Doris a stand-up broad.

  Milo perfected my cup with a short pour from the pint under his jacket.

  “So?” Milo inquired.

  “So,” I said, and here I considered my position before launching into the whole megillah. Milo knew about Pookie, of course, because we had commandeered his cab for the kidnapping, and he knew we had him stashed somewhere, but he did not know about the snake, about my dead boss, or the strange guys in the black suits who were, apparently, shadowing me. So, rather than endanger a pal with needless details, I quickly rehashed the Pookie situation and filled him in on my short and heartbreaking history with the Cheese, wrapping up that I was distraught that I did not know where to find her.

  “Ah, dames,” Milo said. “I told you that one was daffy.”

  And suddenly I was miffed that Milo would disparage the Cheese. “Milo, you don’t know a thing about dames. I’ve never even seen you with a dame.”

  Milo did not detect my ire, and replied in an academic manner. “Sammy,” he said, “you’d be surprised at the number of dames who wouldn’t turn a trick in a million years, but will bargain themselves into giving it up for cab fare when it’s late and they want to get home.”

  He was right. I was surprised. The circumstances of Milo’s personal life had never occurred to me before. I always viewed him as a solo act, despite much talk of trim and making time that was passed among the gents leaning on the cab. I was suddenly struck with a horrifying suspicion.

  So I asked, “Milo, I know you said you know her. Did Stilton ever give it up for cab fare?”

  “Nah, she was a hard case. I offered to take her home from the Fillmore for a five-count peep at her fun bags, once, and she told me to jump up a monkey’s ass.”

  That’s my girl. I was so relieved I nearly poured out my coffee by accident. I said, “Guess she bargained you down some—”

  “Are you kidding, it woulda been worth it, that broad had a great set of cans.”

  Has, I was thinking. Has a great set of cans. “Has,” I said. Right then I would have given a year’s pay to run my lips down the luscious canyon of her cleavage, and drift to sweet oblivion in her arms . . .

  The Cheese does indeed have a great set of cans on her, but Milo can’t talk about her that way.

  “You are spinning yarns like a Stiltskin, Milo. No dame ever offers you so much as a smooch on the cheek before you’d run her off the meter.”

  “No, they would, they do, there are often offers of hand jobs and so forth”—and here Milo removed his hat for the first time since I knew him, and I was surprised that he had quite a respectable head of dark hair—“but it always involves driving, so then I’m nervous and in no mood for romance.”

  “Romance?”

  “Yeah, romance.”

  “Having a dame yank you off for cab fare is romance?”

  “I’m a poet at heart, Sammy.”

  “Yeah? Me too.” I would have given a year’s pay to know she was safe, whoever’s arms she was in.

  We both leaned back against the cab and stared wistfully into the diner, which was jumping with late-night merriment, but by the cab, there was none.

  Milo finally said, “So, you track her to her friend’s place?”

  “Right. Maybe. And the neighbor sees this skinny guy in tux and tails. But I been to every show in town, and no one features a guy in tux and tails with stage makeup and red lips.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Milo. “Tux and tails and red lips?”

  “Yeah, like I said. No one sees him.”

  “But you do not mention the red lips before, Sammy. The reason you can’t find this guy is that he is not a guy. What you describe is an entertainer, but the show is at Jimmy’s Joynt.”

  “Jimmy’s Joynt? On the Embarcadero?” I’d heard of it, but I did not know it.

  “Yeah, it’s a drag joint.”

  “Like Paper Dolls? Like Finocchio’s?” Both were well-known drag show clubs that had been knocking it down in North Beach since the thirties. I’d been to Paper Dolls, they did it up large, guys made up like Mae West and Sophie Tucker, not lipstick in a suit.

  “No, not like that,” Milo said. “Broads in drag. Dressed like Sinatra, Fred Astaire. Lady lovers.”

  “That’s it! Milo, how do I not know this?”

  “As a poet, perhaps, a lot of practical knowledge gets by you.”

  “I gotta borrow your cab. I can’t hoof it all the way over Telegraph Hill again.”

  “Nah, I need it to sleep in it. Kind of forgot to pay my rent this week. I’ll drive you.”

  “But it’s your busy time.”

  “Yeah,” said Milo. “I can drop you off, be back in two ticks.”

  “I’m not giving you a hand job.”

  “That’s okay,” said Milo. “I’m a poet.”

  * * *

  Jimmy Vasco liked vodka martinis, rare steaks, and leggy redheads. Jimmy had slicked-back black hair, wore a tux and tails, a diamond stickpin the size of a puppy’s eye, and spats over patent-leather tap shoes. Jimmy smoked Pall Malls in a long black holder, drove a ’36 pearl-black Ford coupe with a rumble seat, and, when the occasion required, carried a German .380 automatic pistol. Jimmy could shoot pool like a shark, tap a toe like Bojangles, and croon a tune as smooth as Mel Tormé. Jimmy was the owner and master of ceremonies at Jimmy’s Joynt, just off the Embarcadero, and she was quite th
e dame.

  Milo told Sammy all of this while driving him through a chowder-thick fog to Jimmy’s Joynt, a onetime warehouse on Pier 29, so Sammy was prepared and showed no surprise at all when he was greeted at the door by a broad in a double-breasted men’s pinstripe suit, not unlike his own, but two sizes bigger and somewhat less rumpled.

  “Good evening, sir,” said the host. “Welcome to Jimmy’s Joynt. You on your own, or will friends be joining you?”

  “Just me. Nice threads,” Sammy said, eyeing the dame’s suit.

  “Thanks,” she said. “Right back at you. Can I find you a table, or maybe you want to find a spot at the bar. I’m afraid you’ve missed the last show.”

  “Well, actually . . .” He paused, thinking ma’am, thinking miss, thinking maybe buddy. His experience of the lesbian community was somewhat limited, which is to say, limited to what he had read in certain novels, such as Gunslinger Gym Teachers of Lesbo Gulch, Jailhouse Sex Kittens in Heat, Little Women, and so forth.

  “Butch,” provided the door dame—big grin, more friendly than challenging. This was her turf and she tended to it with delight.

  “Butch,” Sammy said, returning the grin. “I’m Sammy.” He offered his hand to shake and she gave it enough of a squeeze to strangle a beagle, in case he wondered how she came by her moniker, which he did not. “I tend bar over at Sal’s in North Beach. Not a classy joint like this. The liquor is watered and the clientele is mostly scum, but the long hours and bad tips make up for it.”

  Now Butch gave him a nod and a genuine smile—he was in the business. “What can I do for you, Sammy?”

  “I’m lookin’ for a friend of mine. Friend of a friend, really. Someone saw her with a skinny guy with slicked-back black hair—tailcoat, tux, and lipstick. Sound familiar?”

  “This friend of a friend of yours got a name?”

  “Myrtle. I don’t know her last name. Tallish redhead. She works with a dame I might be somewhat smitten with, who’s gone missing. I just need to find out if she’s okay.”

  Butch considered him for a moment—sussed out Sammy’s vibe. “Take a seat at the end of the bar. Anyone comes in, flag down the bartender. Her name’s Mel.”