Kansas City Noir (25 page)
“Let’s go,” Sam said, and grabbed the dead man’s ankles. Charlie took the wrists. They pitched forward and back, until the swing had momentum enough for Player’s dead weight to clear the five-foot wood fence posts. The body hit on Sarge’s side of the pen with a sloppy thud.
Sam and Charlie eyed each other in the settling dust. After a moment, there was the sound of rustling hay, and snorting, and then the sound of teeth splitting bone.
Charlie doubled over and dry heaved. Sam ignored him, moved to the PT Cruiser, and peered into the trunk.
“You’re gonna want to get this clean,” he said.
Charlie rolled his eyes. “Thank you, Sam.”
“Leave it here,” Sam said, cupping his hands for Charlie’s keys and tossing another set in return. “Take the Ford.”
Charlie missed again, but felt around in the grass for the keys to Sam’s 1960 F100 Ford truck. When he looked up, he saw Sam’s back disappearing into the darkness toward the woodshed. “Hey,” said Charlie.
Sam turned, made a shooing motion with both hands, and kept walking.
The F100 backfired maddeningly all the way home on I-70. It forced Charlie to drive the speed limit. It was 3:45 by the time he pulled into his driveway.
Charlie stripped off his clothes in the basement and shoved them into the washing machine, switching the setting to hot. In the blackness, he crawled into bed next to his snoring wife and stared at the ceiling until the room filled with light.
* * *
The disappearance of Major Player made the news after two days. On the third day, Charlie called Sam to say that he thought it was time for Sarge to give the ultimate sacrifice to Price’s. Sam delivered the butcher-paper-wrapped cuts of meat to the restaurant in Charlie’s freshly detailed PT Cruiser.
And on the seventh day, Charlie prepared to host Major Player’s entourage, despite the absence of the rap mogul himself.
That morning, as he left the house, Charlie told his wife that she ought to stop by Price’s that evening. He’d learned, years ago, the consequences of leaving her out of a restaurant celebration. “Wear something special,” he told her with a wink.
That day, Charlie had the kitchen humming. Generous portions of Sarge, incarnate in dollops of pulled pork atop buttery biscuits, appeared with a flourish on plates. Marcus stopped and greeted each table as guests were seated. Charlie caught himself looking twice at guys dressed Major Player–style in long white tees.
Charlie was directing the proportioning of cole slaw on plates when he sensed that things had become ominously quiet on the restaurant floor. He exited the kitchen’s swinging doors to see a man holding a badge in the doorway. Marcus the busboy looked to Charlie helplessly.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the cop said loudly, “I’m Detective Phillips, as some of you may know.”
The occupants of several of the tables grew visibly uncomfortable.
“As many of you also know, an individual who goes by the name of Major Player has been missing for over a week,” Detective Phillips went on. “I am all too familiar with the culture that says that you ought not cooperate with authorities like myself.”
The detective held some business cards aloft, then placed them by the racks of weekly papers near the entrance. “This Major Player is, I understand, a friend and associate to many of you, so I’m simply placing a stack of my cards here by the door for anyone who is concerned for his welfare and wishes to contact me at a later date.”
The detective was in the midst of his parting words when the front doors opened behind him. Charlie recognized the silhouette of his wife in a figure-hugging gray dress as she squeezed past the cop and scanned the restaurant floor.
Charlie hurried toward her, untying the apron he wore over his clothes. “Paulette!” he greeted warmly, kissing her on both cheeks. “We, too, are deeply concerned for Mr. Player and his family,” he said over his shoulder to the detective, guiding his wife toward an empty table.
“Hold on, Mr. Price,” the detective said, with a hand on Charlie’s shoulder. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”
Charlie whirled around with his best how-do-you-do face. He placed a hand on his wife’s back to present her the way she’d taught him the night that he’d accompanied her to her first formal Chamber event. And as he did so, he spotted a gleam around her neck. Paulette had strung Major Player’s diamond ring on a chain and was wearing it as a necklace
The detective saw the ring at precisely the same moment. “Why, hello,” he said. “Mrs. Price, I assume? Now where did you get that lovely piece of jewelry around your neck?”
Charlie’s wife beamed. “You know, I was just doing the laundry this morning, and earlier, Charlie had told me to dress up tonight for some big affair. And wouldn’t you know, he left this ring in his pants pocket for me to find?”
“I see,” Detective Phillips said, with exaggerated interest. “And is that a
P
written on that ring, in diamonds?”
Paulette smiled demurely. “Why, yes.”
“Can I have a moment in private?” The detective’s hand snaked up to grip Charlie’s arm. “If you’ll excuse us, ma’am.”
Sam emerged from where he’d been helping in the kitchen to see the detective guide Charlie through the front door. Sam’s eyes met Marcus’s, and the busboy wandered over.
“Seems like,” Sam whispered in the busboy’s ear, “Charles Sr.‘s predictions are coming to pass.”
And Marcus nodded.
BY
P
HONG
N
GUYEN
West Bottoms
Jim Pendergast, 1882
After I took in all that money from the races, Papa Pendergast told me a joke I won’t soon forget.
A rich man walks into a saloon and says, “I read in the news today that Andrew Carnegie gave a hundred thousand dollars to the poor. I’ve had some good fortune in my day, and I too would like to devote my life to philanthropy. Can you tell me where I can find the poor?” So the drunkard to his right chimes up and says, “Well, sir, I’ve been laid off from my job at the factory since last Tuesday and my back hurts so bad from the fifteen years I worked there I can hardly take another job. I’m mighty hard up and I wouldn’t mind an act of grace whether it comes from the Lord or His messengers on earth.” So with a tear in his eye and a kind word, the rich man gives him a hundred dollars.
Hearing this, the drunkard to his left leans over and says, “Lord knows that no man can measure his suffering against another’s, but I can tell you that I’ve never known what it’s like to make a decent day’s wages. I was orphaned by the war and raised on a railroad car, never had a bed of my own and grew up so sickly nobody’d employ me. Last week I got my first real job, at the factory, and wouldn’t you know it but before I get my first bank note, they up and fire me last Wednesday.” With a consoling look, the rich man reaches into his breast pocket and pulls out another hundred, pressing it into the drunkard’s palm with a handshake.
Pretty soon all the drunkards are clamoring around and telling him stories, each one surpassing the last in the details of their poverty and the depth of their suffering, but pretty soon he starts to notice a recurring trend in all their stories. It appears that every one of them has been fired from a local factory last week. After giving away every hundred-dollar bill that he owns, the rich man turns red-faced with anger, imagining the soulless tycoon who bankrupted this whole town.
Turning to the bartender, the rich man says, “I have done all that I possibly can within my means, and now I will go make my fortune again, so I can do more good works for the poor. But before I go, may I ask you, who is this terrible tyrant who hires men at the factory, works them to death, then puts them out on the street when nothing is left of them but tales of woe?”
Looking blankly at the rich man, the bartender says, “Why, sir, I thought you already knew. It’s Andrew Carnegie!”
I’ve spent too much time over the years looking for a moral.
Money will ruin your soul
.
Never trust a rich man
. But I figure the keystone is this:
If you get rich, resist the temptation to give to the poor, because they’ll have it all, and pretty soon you’ll be the poor.
After some years I figured out that Papa meant it as a sort of strategy, a way of living in the harsh world of business, which he knew I was fixing to enter:
If you’re the richest man in the world, all you have to do is give away a little; in trying to emulate you, your competition will impoverish themselves.
But at the age of twenty-two, this is all I heard: “Be a saloon keeper, son, and you’ll learn everybody’s secrets.”
* * *
It’s six a.m., the dog’s hour, when I unlock the doors and let the first customers in. By opening time I’ve already had the night cops coming off their beat, playing one last game of rummy and shooting fistfuls of whiskey so they’ll have something to sleep off, and one salesman who sets up at the bar and keeps looking at the door after every sip, trying to muster the strength to kick back the stool and get out—an Irishman named Whelan, I let him in early because he’s more than just a regular; he’s like furniture now.
Besides, I take pride in the way my establishment welcomes every soul, provides a second home to all of the lost, and Whelan is the most lost sonuvabitch I’ve ever seen.
Right away Rob Toke comes in with an antique musket he wants to sell, to keep him in drink for another week. His short hair is brushed back, making it stick up part of the way like stepped-on grass. He’s got lady hips and a torso that can’t seem to keep any weight, a sharp nose and a way of raising his eyebrows when he talks that makes him look surprised by his own words. I’m just the opposite, I suppose: heavy around the middle, slim in the legs, and as excitable as an Indian chief.
“Ain’t she a beauty?” he says, cradling the musket like a baby. He places it down on the wood grain by the cask ale.
Leaning over it so I can smell the gunpowder, I shrug. “It’s not from the war, I’ll tell you that much.”
“Not the war between the states, my friend,” he says, running his fingers along the Dutch lock, a hundred-year-old span of iron, admirably worn. “The War of Independence. It belonged to my great-grandpa.”
Seeing as he hasn’t put a musket ball through me, I can only assume he brought it in hoping to sell it off. “Does this look like a pawnshop to you, Toke?”
“Come on, Jim,” he says. “It’s just a gift. I figure since my dad’s passed, it’s better to get rid of all the old stuff.” He fidgets, looks away from the gun, scans the room, lingering on the tap. I’ve always liked Toke, but no man ever wore his weaknesses so openly as him.
“But if you were interested, I’d take a week of drinks in trade.”
I stare at him a long time. I mean a long time. “Take your treasure and bury it, Toke. In my place, no good man ever goes thirsty.”
He brushes back his prickly hair, mutters his thanks, and waits a full forty seconds before filling his glass.
* * *
John, Michael, even Hannah, or for that matter any of my brothers or sisters, have a job waiting for them at The Climax—which I named for the horse on whom I won my fortune—if they find themselves out of work, but only Tom actually shows up every day to clean the place the way a worker is supposed to. And the boy is all of ten. Trouble is he’s starting to talk like a saloon regular, and John has reported as much to our mother.
“You teetotaling sonuvabitch,” Tom says to John that afternoon. Then he turns to me like he’s tattling to Mom. “As soon as John showed up last night he started cutting customers off at three drinks.”
John makes a production of polishing the counter, ignoring the wily runt in front of him. “This way of life—the kind of business you run—isn’t long for this world,” he says, dropping his Christian wisdom on the saloon floor like rose petals.
“Nothing is, Johnny,” I say, dropping my saloon wisdom on him like a horse pile. John has wet-looking hair that falls down on his broad forehead in pointy strands, and manly features that stand in contrast to the bruised expressions he often wears. He could have been on the rugby team at college. Tom’s hair is similarly straight, but it moves away from the front of his head like it’s afraid to get in the way of his little bulldog face.
“Close up, will you?” I say to John as Tom and I make for the door. “And keep the tap flowing until the midnight hour. We’re gonna get the hell out of the Bottoms tonight.”
* * *
Tom and I have always been Folly Theater faithfuls. They mean to keep a body entertained, and weekdays or weekends I’ve never had to suffer through a miserable opera or melodrama or traveling lecture. They get the best comics, jugglers, hypnotists, magicians, and quick-drawers on the circuit every time. Last week it was a plate spinner who kept up to eight pieces of fine china going at once; tonight it’s a more elevating form of relaxation: a traveling show, the wonders of the wizard of Menlo Park. Mr. Edison won’t be making an appearance himself, of course, but two of his assistants, trained in the operation of his phonographic and incandescent machines, will be.
The ushers at the Folly walk the aisles and pass around printed cards from silver trays, while wearing gloves; Tom rolls his eyes at me, and I mutter a plea to the Lord that the Folly isn’t going swanky. As it turns out, written on the cards are merely reminders not to smoke in the theater, as the equipment being used today is sensitive, and combustible. We sink in our chairs, Tom more than I, and light our pipes anyway.
A gentleman in a mustache and a white suit walks through the parted curtains and down the center of the stage, to faint applause, while behind him an assistant—a long-legged lady—wheels a table full of contraptions out into the middle. For her, the audience gives a more stirring welcome, with some hoots and howls thrown into the mix.
Though he looks convincingly foreign, the man’s speech betrays his Midwestern origins. Cynically, I conclude that he’s not even an inventor’s assistant from New Jersey, but a Chicagoan who purchased some sophisticated new equipment, trained himself to use it, and now travels week-long tours with his pretty young wife to satellite cities like St. Paul, Indianapolis, and Detroit, where they stay at the Savoy and the Ritz, getting royal treatment just for throwing around Edison’s name.
