Noir

by Christopher Moore

  “Did they ask about me?”

  “They did.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “I pretended I didn’t speak English.”

  “I should have thought of that.”

  “Well, you are just learning. Also you are not Chinese and do not speak Cantonese.”

  “I know eight to ten words.”

  “Chop and suey are not Cantonese words.”

  “Eight words.”

  “So they keep asking me stuff even though I can’t understand them, and I am saying various colorful things about their mothers in Cantonese, but they won’t scram. Finally Lois comes out and offers to translate if they buy her a drink and they leave posthaste, as Lois can be frightening when she wants something.”

  “Lois is turning out to be a stand-up dame. How goes that?”

  Eddie bounced his eyebrows in the manner of a guy who has wang-dang-doodled the dragon and can park in the Forbidden Palace anytime he likes, but as a gentleman, he changed the subject. “Why do you think the tax men take Sally Gab’s stiff?”

  “Courtesy?” I ventured.

  “I did not get the sense that courtesy was their strong suit.”

  “It has something to do with this general that Sal sets up dames for.”

  “The one you were supposed to pimp for?”

  “Yeah. Maybe military secrets or something. Maybe the general is going over to the commies or something. There’s not a lot to do in New Mexico.”

  “Yeah, maybe they have great communism weather,” said Moo. “Look, I need you to take some stuff to Uncle Ho’s.”

  “Can’t you do it? Your uncle does not care for me.”

  “You mentioned the cat, didn’t you?”

  “I did not.”

  “These,” said Moo. From behind the podium he pulled an umbrella and a CO2 fire extinguisher.

  “Why can’t you take them?”

  “He insists you bring them. He said, ‘Have the wiseass gwai lo bring them.’”

  “I may have mentioned a cat. There may have been a passing cat reference.”

  “He said bring a car,” said Moo. “So it’s good you have a car.”

  “An umbrella and a fire extinguisher?”

  Behind Moo I noticed Lois Fong slithering her way up the runway from the club. Her silver cheongsam was slit up the side past the curve of her hip. She was easy to notice.

  “Edd-ieeee!”

  “Go,” said Moo, holding out the extinguisher and the umbrella. “Take them. Call me when you can. Don’t get put in a sack.”

  “I won’t,” I said, and I was down the hall and out the door to find Myrtle, sitting in the running car, chatting with a cop.

  “Oh, good,” said Myrtle, matter-of-fact, “you got them. I was just telling Officer Bill here that we were here borrowing some stuff for Jimmy.”

  I noticed then that she was waving the car registration around, which she had unhooked from the spring that normally held it on the steering column.

  “I told the nice officer that you would never double-park, but it’s an emergency and that’s why you left me here to explain.”

  I climbed into my side of the car. Myrtle took the fire extinguisher from me like she’d been waiting for it and braced it on the floor between her knees. I threw the umbrella behind the seat, nodded to the cop.

  “Thanks for giving me a break, Officer,” I said.

  “A fire extinguisher?” asked the cop.

  “I said it was an emergency,” said Myrtle.

  “Well you better get going, then,” said the cop. “And don’t double-park in this neighborhood again, I don’t care what time it is.”

  “Sure thing,” I said. “Thanks.” I started the Ford, ground the gearshift a little getting it into first, and we were off. Then I took a breath.

  “Pretty smart,” I told Myrtle. Bars and restaurants are always lending stuff to each other, glasses, booze, chairs, whatever you’re short of, the guy across the street or even across town will lend it to you because he never knows when he might be in the same boat. It’s an unwritten law, and until a place welshes and doesn’t pay you back, you live by it. Myrtle knew this and so did Officer Bill, evidently. As Myrtle hooked the cellophane envelope back around the steering column I could see the car was registered to Jimmy’s Joynt. “Really smart,” I said.

  “A single girl in the city, you learn to improvise,” said Myrtle. “Besides, I didn’t want you blastin’ anybody until I’m at the hideout.”

  “Which will be soon,” I said, even though I had only just now considered that I did not know of any hideouts that were not also known to the phony tax men. “One more stop.”

  Myrtle played Miss Perky Pollyanna until we got about half a block down the alley to Uncle Ho’s House of Opium and Snake Catching. The Ford’s tires made a sound like we were rolling over shrimp and the fenders brushed wooden crates on either side, rocking them as we went by. A cat darted ahead of the headlights and disappeared into the dark. Run, kitty! Uncle Ho will have his way with you!

  “This is spooky,” said Myrtle. She hugged herself and shivered.

  “We won’t be long. I just need to drop off the stuff we picked up.”

  There was a turnout off the alley in front of the red door—enough room to park maybe three cars. As I pulled in, the headlights raked a pile of pink, gelatinous debris that leaned against the wall by a trash can. Pookie O’Hara.

  “Stay here, doll,” I said, climbing out of the Ford. I left the engine running and the headlights on. I could smell Pookie from ten feet away—rotting meat and ammonia—and I thought, dead. I held my breath and moved closer where I could see that he was still breathing. So, not dead. Unconscious and rancid and naked except for an undersize pink kimono, but definitely not dead.

  Myrtle rolled the window down. “I’m not sure an umbrella and a fire extinguisher is going to be enough, Sammy.”

  “It’s not for him,” I said, but the stench hit Myrtle and she cranked up the car window like she was reeling in a flounder.

  Dead or alive, there was nothing I could do for Pookie short of seasoning him for the rats, so I pounded on the red door and Uncle Ho himself opened the hatch—he had to be standing on his tiptoes to see through the little window.

  “I brought your umbrella and your fire extinguisher.”

  “Leave by door. You take cop.”

  “Fine,” I said. “I’ll take the fire extinguisher and the umbrella with me.”

  “Fine! Take cop.” Ho snapped the little hatch shut.

  And then I knew I had been beaten by the tiny cat molester. I couldn’t leave Pookie lying in the alley, and even if I did and the rats didn’t eat him, when he woke up he was going to be sored up more than somewhat. I knocked again. The hatch slid open—Ho, on tiptoes, peeked out.

  “Okay, but I need help getting him in the car.”

  Ho made a satisfied sighing sound, like he had vanquished a lifelong enemy or was taking a satisfying whiz. The bolts were thrown and two big Chinese guys came out, followed by Uncle Ho, who barked orders to them in Cantonese. Myrtle watched in horror as they carried Pookie O’Hara to the Ford. I opened the rumble seat and they poured Pookie in, headfirst, then, after I did some yelling, pulled him out and put him back in, feetfirst. The big cop nearly filled the whole space, and his arms hung out over the fender like he was lounging on an inner tube in a pool.

  “I need his clothes,” I told Ho, who sent one of his goons to fetch Pookie’s effects. Meanwhile I got the fire extinguisher and umbrella out of Myrtle’s side of the car.

  “That dead guy is coming with us?” she inquired.

  “He’s not dead. Just resting. And yes.”

  “What is this place?”

  I gave it a thought. “Bathhouse. This guy had a little too much steam.”

  “What are they bathing in, sewage?”

  So maybe bathhouse wasn’t the best angle to play. “Stay here,” I explained, and shut the car door.

  I ha
nded over Ho’s snake-catching supplies; he handed them off to his guys and turned back to me. “More rat?”

  “No more rats. Look, Ho, how long will Pookie be out?”

  “Three, maybe four hour.” Ho wobbled a wizened hand in a three, maybe four hour way.

  “That might not be enough. Can you give me something to keep him out?”

  Ho made the gestures of shooting himself in the head, cutting his throat, catching arrows in the heart . . .

  “Come on, Ho. Just give me a few more hours.” What I was going to do with a few more hours, I did not know, but I’d take them if I could get them. “I’ll come back with more rats, how about that? It’s for Eddie. He’s family.”

  I must have hit a soft spot in the geezer, because he said, “You wait,” and tottered back into the opium den. One of Ho’s thugs set Pookie’s clothes on the hood of the car and followed the old man in.

  Myrtle rolled down the window and held up a folded-up wool blanket. “Hey, Sammy, Jimmy keeps this behind the seat. You want to wrap your friend up? It gets chilly at night in just your nightie.”

  “Thanks, doll.” I took the blanket and gathered it around Pookie, tucking his arms inside the rumble seat. Among Pookie’s clothes was a set of suspenders, so I clipped them around the blanket and Pookie was all wrapped up, snug as a mug in a rug. I pulled his hat down hard on his big coconut and stepped back. Voilà! To the untrained eye, he looked like nothing more suspicious than a dead-drunk palooka trussed up in a blanket in the rumble seat of a Ford.

  Just as I was starting to get nervous, Ho came back with a small leather box, such as you might keep a nice fountain pen in, if that is your fancy. He opened it to show me a loaded glass syringe and needle.

  “You wait four hour, give cop here.” He touched the vein in my neck. It was like being touched by a crêpe-paper ghost, and suddenly I was feeling kinship with all the cats in Chinatown, past and present, as the heebie-jeebies had their way with me.

  “Thanks, Ho.” I took the box from him.

  “Wait, two, three hours. He may no sleep, but will no move.”

  “Sure thing.” I dropped the leather box in my jacket pocket and jumped in the Ford.

  Myrtle said, “What was that?”

  “Medicine,” I said. “For him.” I nodded to the back, fired up the Ford, and made a slow crawl out of the alley to Jackson Street, where this time I turned the way the arrows pointed. I did a left and a right and we were on California Street, heading up Nob Hill as sweet as you please.

  “There’s the Mark Hopkins,” said Myrtle, as we passed the Mark Hopkins Hotel. It, and the Fairmont across the street, put us in a canyon of light in the fog. “I used to go up to the Top of the Mark during the war. Bunch of us girls would get all dolled up, go up there—say good-bye to the guys shipping out. They’d always go up to the Top of the Mark to say good-bye to the good ol’ USA. You can see all the way from the Golden Gate to the Oakland Hills from up there. We’d dance all night and never have to buy a drink. Of course it’s too swanky for me now, but during the war they let us in outta patriotism and stuff.”

  “Yeah?” I said. “That where you met Stilton?”

  “Nah, I didn’t meet her until after the war, when I got the job at the five-and-dime. After her old man got killed, she worked up at the Kaiser yard in Richmond. I was over across the bay in Sausalito, working on Liberty ships. She had it tougher than me. I didn’t lose nobody close. Bet I said good-bye and danced with dozens that didn’t make it home, though. You don’t like to think about it, but the odds . . .”

  “That was good of you,” I said. “Going up there to dance with those guys. A day in the shipyard is no cakewalk. You had to be beat.” And as far as I knew, she didn’t even like guys.

  “Yeah, but you get a couple of free cocktails in you, the piano is playing—you got a guy thinks you’re the last good thing he’s ever gonna see, tells you you’re beautiful. It wasn’t shoveling shit.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh, then I caught myself, thinking of the last time I saw the Cheese and how I treated her. Myrtle sensed something was up, patted my hand on the shifter.

  “Don’t you worry, Sammy. Tilly is a tough broad. She’ll be okay. You’ll take care of her. Look how you’re taking care of me. She told me you were a swell guy, but now I can see that for myself.”

  I just threw a smile at her. Yeah, I was taking care of her. I had no idea where to take her. I had no family here, no job to speak of, anymore—nothing—just a bunch of guys who would watch my back. A bunch of guys who were all a couple of onions short of a Gibson, but, you know, pals.

  “Why, you must be a hell of a friend,” Myrtle went on, “to go get your buddy when he’s been tossed out in the alley behind a joint like that, not even hesitate. Nah, Sammy, you’re a swell guy. Tilly is lucky she found you.” Again with patting my hand.

  I wanted to puke.

  “Tilly’ll understand, don’t you think?” Now Myrtle squeezed my hand like she wanted to juice an answer out of it. “About me? I mean, about me and Jimmy? I mean, she’s just about the best pal I ever had—I just love her—and not in that way. It would just about kill me to disappoint her.”

  “You and me both, kid. That’s why we have to get you somewhere safe. Somewhere the tax men will never think to look for you.”

  “Tax men?”

  “Bad guys,” I said. I downshifted and headed through the light at Van Ness into the Western Addition, the Fillmore, what used to be Japantown, what the cops now called Dark Town.

  17

  The Road to Lone’s

  Every guy can basically be boiled down to what he wants and what he’s afraid of. What Sammy wanted, right then, was to find Stilton. And what he was afraid of was that something had happened to her and he might never see her again. What he wanted, if he found her, when he found her, was to bring her home, safe and sound, and to let her know just how swell he thought she was. But what he was afraid of was that she would find out that he had not hurt his foot in battle, had not, in fact, even gone to battle, and that she would be in the wind when she found out. He was afraid because it had happened to him before, like this:

  Sammy grew up in Boise, Idaho, the second son of a paper salesman and a schoolteacher, two brothers and a sister, pot roast on Sundays, church on Christmas and Easter, Little League, picture show on Saturday, the Great Depression, occasional bum in the yard, kid crush on Shirley Temple, the whole can of American soup.

  So, Sammy was about to turn sixteen and his pop said to him, “Sam, you want to drive when you turn sixteen?” And Sammy admitted that he would very much like that. And Pop said, “You’re going to need to get a job.” And before the kid could protest, Pop saw to it that he was hired at the warehouse at the paper company Dad worked for, and Sammy was moving, stacking, and counting all manner of pressed wood pulp after school and on weekends, which Pops reminded him was a privilege, as there were grown men who would love to have that job so shut up, kid.

  Sammy’s older brother, Judges, also worked for the paper company, so Sammy figured he had also answered the “you want to drive?” question a year earlier. Judges was named after one of the books of the Bible, as was Sammy—Samuel—as Sammy’s mother found great comfort in her faith during labor, when she swore to God that if Sammy’s dad ever got that thing near her again she would murder him in his sleep. Sammy’s sister Ruth only missed being called Deuteronomy because by the time she arrived, Pops has learned to slip the doctor a double sawbuck to have Mom sedated when it came time to fill out the birth certificates. Unfortunately, this was not before Sammy’s younger brother got the moniker of Second Samuel, which caused no little confusion around the house until he turned two and they decided to call him Skip.

  By age seventeen Sammy had an old Chevrolet sedan and a girlfriend called Shirley, a sweet Catholic girl whom he was pretty sure he was going to marry, if for no other reason than she would not let him use condoms because the pope said they were a sin (although she was l
ess concerned about how the pope felt about doing the backseat bonk with Sammy in the first place).

  So Sammy got through high school, and was just about to turn nineteen when one day at work he was directing the loading of some enormous rolls of newsprint onto a truck, and as Sammy looked down at his clipboard, the guy driving the forklift lost his grip on the steering wheel, sending a loaded pallet into the edge of a trailer, scissoring Sammy’s right foot against the trailer, crushing it into a pulp of bones and toes and skin. When he woke up the Japs had bombed Pearl Harbor and his mother was about to sign consent for the removal of Sammy’s foot, which the doctors said could go gangrenous any second, but Sammy said no.

  “Patch it up, Doc, and get me back on my feet. I got to do my part.”

  The docs did the best they could, stitching and splinting and binding the foot, and after a couple of months, Sammy was walking with crutches. Meanwhile, his brothers and just about every guy he went to school with had signed up and shipped out to fight the Japs and the Jerrys. Shirley tried for a while to stick by Sammy, visiting him every day at first, but after a month she showed up less and less, always having an excuse that she was doing something to support the war effort instead of coming by. Three months in, she showed up at the house with tears in her eyes.

  “I can’t do it anymore. I just can’t. People are saying things. Awful things about you.”

  “Things like what?”

  “Like you’re yellow. Like you got hurt at work so you wouldn’t have to go off to war. Like those guys that shoot their own toes off so they can come home.”

  “But I got hurt before we entered the war.”

  “People don’t believe that.”

  “What people?”

  “You know, people who are going off to war.”

  “Like guys who are trying to make time with you?”

  “No. Brave guys who are serving their country.”

  “Like Johnny McElhenny?” Johnny had been sniffing around Shirley since before she and Sammy had started going out.

  “We’re getting married before he ships out.”