This is a re-telling, YoWorld style, of a great novel by Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely.
This is not intended to be a rip-off of a great detective classic, but a tribute to the author, the genre, and of course, Film Noir )It was made into a film starring Dick Powell entitled Murder, My Sweet.
Pour yourself a whiskey and enjoy.
1.
It was a warm day, Spring. Yotham city goes from Winter to Spring in an afternoon. After a couple of months the servers can get a little warm (BVG just sent someone to get a better air conditioner [it’s not always cold in Canada, eh?]). But it was hot today. I’d left the car in the sun in the lot behind Alton. Learned seatbelts make decent branding irons. Today the Old Noob was medicinal.
I just got a shave by the only guy I know with a steady hand. A haircut too, two bits. He even changed the oil in my hair.
I was between cases, which meant I was between bars… looking for clients. My last client, a Mrs. Herrup, wanted to find her husband (Zip). I don’t know why. I gave her a break, started without a retainer. Either they fell in love, or ran away. Maybe both. Either way, I spent an afternoon at Vinny’s, drinking.
When I waited long enough I went to Uther’s Pendragon’s Bar & Grill. Then on to Tommy’s Tophat. Then Sammy’s on the southside. Then Rick’s Place in Morrocco. I was working my way down the alphabet and I didn’t care.
I got to Quinn’s Inuit Take Out & Bar. It might have had class once… but that would have been bck when Zynga was still turning a profit. The sign on the window read: “SEAL FLIPPERS! Permafrost Ripened! $1 YoCash”
The window on the second floor was open… Someone was playing a rag time tune on a agiarut and a tautirut. A punchline drifted out… “and THAT’S why you CAN’T HAVE YOUR KAYAK & HEAT IT TOO!” Loud laughter.
A shadow fell on the wall. He was looking up at the window and the sign too… Mesmerized. Like a saint in epiphany, or a cheese taster discovering prunes. He was the shape of a man, not more that six foot, six inches tall, and when you get to half of something, you may as well round up. He wasn’t wider than a beer truck. He was ten feet from me, his arms hanging loose at his sides, a forgotten cigar smoldered between a couple of fingers…
2. Yadda, My Sweet
He was big enough to carry a Mafia V Cop henchman in his pocket and not be too conscious of its weight. He was large. Not large like a large drink at the drive thru, but large like parking a Caterpillar 12G motorgrader in a two car garage large.
He had an ‘09 fedora, one that would go for over a mil at YoBay, but he didn’t look like he would know that. It was stretched over his head like something he had known for a very long time. His ears were buttons. Not “cute as buttons”, but the round knobs like folks get from being pounded on in a boxing for a few years. He didn’t look the sort that it bothered him. He wore a new suit, a jarring assortment of mismatched, bright colored, expensive YoCash items that had that new item look… chosen for bright colors rather than style.
He was pale and needed a shave. His crooked nose seemed to prop up his thick brows like those boards women used to use to prop up long clothes lines.
He stared at the faltering neon sign of QUINN’S INUIT BAR. A smile slowly appeared on his lips and gradually illuminated his eyes.
He looked like a man with a problem. A man with a problem and with dough. Seeing as I was also a man with a problem, being fresh out of clients and short on YoCash, I took a professional interest in his interest in an establishment that was probably seedy when indoor plumbing was the latest mark in civilization’s progress.
He stepped across the sidewalk and managed to open the door without stressing the hinges too much. The door admitted him, barely. It shambled in, and it closed behind him. For a moment.
The door sprang open and something flew out. A tangle of awkward angles flapping in the air like clipped chicken. It landed in a heap in the street, untangled its legs, and resolved itself into what passes for humanity in that neighborhood.
It was one of those grifters you see in front of Alton Towers… dressed in cheap clothes, moaning they are poor and new, and haven’t anything to their name, yet sporting a diamond badge.
In professional curiosity I opened the door to a stairway that climbed toward’s Quinn’s establilshment. Or, I assumed it did, but the view was blocked.
Large, sad eyes peered out at me. He gripped my shoulder solemnly.
“I throwed him out. You seen that? He was gonna pick my pocket, so I throwed him out. That was all I did.”
“Sure, Pal. I saw that. He had it coming. I would have thrown him out for just the way he looked at me. You did good. Real good.”
He released my shoulder. I tried not to look like I was checking it for damage as I straightend my collar.
“This is that kind of place,” I said. “You sometimes run into that kind of guy in places like this.”
“Don’t say that, Pal,” the big man purred, like four tigers after dinner. “Sylvia used to work here. Little Sylvia.”
He reached for my shoulder again. I tried to dodge, but he was quicker than he looked. His fingers massaged my shoulder again like a four car incident at the Indy 500.
“Yeah… little Sylvia. I ain’t seen her in eight years.”
He lifted me up three steps and set me down so he could peer into my face. I was wishing I had brought my gun with me, but he probably would have just taken it from me and eaten it.
“You say this place ain’t no good? It used to be good. It used to be nice.”
“Go on up, see for yourself.”
He let go of my shoulder and I pondered whether I should see my doctor or go straight to the emergency room.
He looked at me with large, sad, brown eyes. The same sort of eyes a certain large primate used on the girl of his dreams just before he tumbled from the Empire State Building.
“Let’s me and you go on up and see if we can get less thirsty.”
It didn’t seem like just a suggestion.
3. Yadda, My Sweet
He made to go up the stairs, but paused.
“I ain’t seen Sylvia in eight years,” he said in a voice that sounded like 18 wheelers rolling over an overpass. “Eight long years since I said good bye. She ain’t wrote me in six. But she’ll have a reason.”
His eyes seemed to see past me and past the stairs, and past what ever had past in the last eight years… “She used to work here. Cute she was. Cute as a bug.” His eyes refocused. “Let’s you and me go on up, huh?” He reached for my shoulder again.
“All right!” I yelled. “I’ll go up with. Just lay off carrying me. Let me walk. I’m fine. I’m all grown up. I go to the bathroom alone and everything. Just don’t carry me.”
“Little Sylvia used to work here,” he said gently.
The incredible bulk pushed aside the swing doors at the top of the stairs. It was a long room, dark, with the patina of decades of tobacco smoke and sweat. A juke box was playing Duke Ellington, and the locals were pretending they were enjoying themselves. At least they were smiling a little… until they saw Chuckles.
“It’s all dif’rent,” he said. “There used to be a stage over there. And there was other pichers on the walls. But this bar was here.”
He pointed at a blackboard that read: “TODAY’S SPECIAL: Walrus Lips on a Stick - $1.25”
“There used to be a picture of Sylvia there. She was real cute. Cute as a bug.”
He looked at the bar keep as if he was trying to place the face, then gave up.
“Where’s Sylvia?” He turned to the patrons. “Anyone know where Sylvia is?”
A man I would have called large just this morning, about the size of a ’68 VW Bug, walked over. “Look fella. There ain’t no Sylvia here. I’ve worked this joint for five years and we’ve never had no Sylvia. We don’ wan’ no trouble, but I’m gonna ask you to leave,” the bouncer said.
My associate looked around. He turned to the bar keep. “I wan’ a whisky.” He looked at me. “Wha’ you wan’?”
“Same,” I said.
The bouncer put his hand on the large man’s shoulder. “Lissen fella, I asked you real nice to leave, so leave.”
I looked grimly at the bar keep I was pretty sure the bouncer had just made an error of judgement.
“Take your hand off me while it still works,” my colleague said without turning around.
Apparently the bouncer felt he had a reputation to uphold. He took his hand off the shoulder and turned it into a fist about the size and density of a twelve pound bowling ball. He paused, as if to consider what he was doing. Then he made a mistake. He swung hard and connected to the side of the big man’s jaw. A sigh went around the room.
It was a good punch, delivered by someone familiar with such things. He had dropped the shoulder just right and turned his body into it. It was clear he had done it before.
The big man’s jaw had moved about an inch.
He blinked, and looked at the bar keep. “I wan’ my drink.”
He stood up and turned around carefully, the way an elephant on a stool does at the circus. The bouncer swung again and the fist, as large as it was, became encased in the big man’s paw.
The other paw came up and grabbed by bouncer by the throat. The bouncer tried to knee him in the groin, but the big man spread his legs a little to get a good stance, picked him up with a grunt, turned him in the air, and heaved him. The bouncer bounced. Off the pool table and into a couple of guys leaning against the wall. He twitched and lay still. He might have been unconscious. Or maybe he was getting smart.
“Some guys have the wrong idears about when to get tough,” he said to me.
The barkeep brought the drinks.
4. Yadda, My Sweet
The bar keep set the drinks down carefully, glancing at the napping bouncer on the other side of the room.
“You know where Sylvia is?”
The barkeep swallowed hard. “No sir. I don’t know Sylvia.”
“How come you don’t know? She worked here.”
“I’ve been working here five years and I’ve never known anyone in my whole life name of Sylvia. The boss bought this place six years ago and we’ve never had a Sylvia here.”
“Look, Pal,” I said to Paul Bunyan, “he doesn’t know Sylvia. No one in this place does.”
He looked at me as if I had just appeared out of no where.
“Who asked you? What are you doin’ here?”
“You invited me, remember?”
He peered at me and recognition crept over his face. “Oh yeah. There ain’t nuthin’ left of this joint. It used to be nice. There used to be a stage over there.”
I finished my drink and turned around. The bar was empty, except for the bouncer who was moving slowly with great effort. He crawled along the baseboard like a fly with one wing. He looked like a man who had suddenly grown old, disillusioned. The big man looked at him, and then paid no further attention to him.
He turned to me and smiled crookedly, which is the only way he could do anything with that mug. “Where you figure I been for the last eight years?”
“Catching butterfliles.”
The bouncer found a door at the back… his hand managed to turn the knob and he crawled thorugh.
He poked me in the chest. “I been in the joint. My name is Malloy. They call me Moose, on account I’m big. They put me away for the Big Dog Bank Heist. It was a solo job.” He smiled, like he was remembering good times. “$40 grand YoCash. They couldn’t really pin much on me. They couldn’t find the car, the dough, nuthin’. Course there was one of them cameras in the bank, but I had my face hid in a Caspar da Friendly Ghost mask. They shouldn’t be able to say it was me because I’m big, but they did. Barely. So, I did the eight years. Now I’m lookin’ for Sylvia. I was gonna treat her right. Now I can.”
Moose noticed a door at the back of the bar.
“Where that go?” he asked the bar keep.
“The barman’s eyes floated in his head, focused with difficulty on the door through which the bouncer had stumbled.
“Tha—tha’s Mr. Cannon’s. He’s the boss. He’s got his office back there.”
“He might know,” the big man said. He drank his drink at a gulp. “He better not crack wise neither. Two more of the same.”
He crossed the room slowly, lightfooted, without a care in the world. His enormous back hid the door. It was locked. He shook it and the moulding flexed, the door warped, popped open, and a sign reading “Louis Cannon” flew off to one side. He went through and shut the door behind him.”
“There was silence. I looked at the barman. The barman looked at me. His eyes became thoughtful. He polished the counter and sighed and leaned down with his leftt arm.
I reached across the counter and took hold of the arm. It was thin, brittle. I held it and smiled at him.
“What you got down there, Pal?”
He licked his lips. He leaned on my arm, and said nothing. Grayness invaded his shining face.
“This guy is tough,” I said. “And he’s liable to go mean. Drinks do that to him. He’s looking for a girl he used to know. This place used to be a different establishment. Get the idea?”
The barman licked his lips.
“He’s been away a long time,” I said. “Eight years. He doesn’t seem to realize how long that is, although I’d expect him to think it a life time. He thinks the people here should know where his girl is. Get the idea?”
The barman said slowly: “I thought you was with him.”
“I couldn’t help myself. He asked me a question down below and then dragged me up. I never saw him before. But I didn’t feel like being thrown over any houses so I came along. What have you got down there?
“Got me a sawed-off,” the barman said.
“Tsk, tsk. That’s illegal,” I whispered. “Listen, you and I are together. Got anything else?”
“Got me a gat,” the barman said. “In a cigar box. Leggo my arm.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “Now move along a bit. Easy now. Sideways. This isn’t the time to pull the artillery.”
“Says you,” the barman sneered, putting his tired weight against my arm. “Says—”
“There was a dull flat sound at the back of the place, behind the closed door. It might have been a slammed door. I didn’t think it was. The barman didn’t think so either.
The barman froze. His mouth drooled. I listened. No other sound. I started quickly for the end of the counter. I had listened too long.
The door at the back opened with a bang and Moose Malloy came through it with a smooth heavy lunge and stopped dead, his feet planted and a wide pale grin on his face.
A Colt Army .45 looked like a toy pistol in his hand.
“Don’t nobody try to fancy pants,” he said cozily. “Freeze the mitts on the bar.”
The barman and I put our hands on the bar.
5. Yadda, My Sweet
Moose Malloy looked the room over. His grin was taut, nailed on. He shifted his feet and moved silently across the room. Hard to believe someone so large could be so quiet. It was like an enormous storm cloud moving over the city, or the smile of an IRS auditor. He looked like a man who could take a bank single-handed.
He came to the bar. “Stand up,” he said softly. The barman put his hands high in the air. The big man stepped to my back and prowled me over carefully with his left hand. His breath was hot on my neck. It went away.”
“Your bouncer friend, Allan Rensch, the fella what put his hand on me, is gonna be OK, but your boss, Mr. Cannon, he don’ look so good. He didn’t know where Sylvia was neither,” he said. “He tried to tell me—with this.” His hard hand patted the gun. I turned slowly and looked at him. “Yeah,” he said. “You’ll know me. You ain’t forgetting me, pal. Just tell them johns not to get careless is all.” He waggled the gun. “Well so long, punks. I gotta catch a street car.”
He started towards the head of the stairs.
“You didn’t pay for the drinks,” I said.
He stopped and looked at me carefully.
“Maybe you got something there,” he said, “but I wouldn’t squeeze it too hard.” He laid a 10 YoCash note on the bar.
He moved on, slipped through the double doors, and his steps making the building creak remotely going down. It didn’t seem right that someone so large and foreboding could be so quiet, like a roiling thunderstorm slipping over Yotha City, or the smile of an IRS auditor.
The barman stooped. I jumped around behind the counter and jostled him out of the way. A sawed-off shotgun (hacked item, never released) lay under a towel on a shelf under the bar. Beside it was an Itsaboy cigar box. In the box was a .38 automatic (Mafia 2). I took both of them. The barman pressed back against the tier of glasses behind the bar.
I went back around the end of the bar and across the room to the gaping, bent door behind the crap table. There was a hallway behind it, L-shaped, almost lightless. The bouncer lay sprawled on its floor, napping, knife in hand. I leaned down, pulled the knife loose, and threw it down a back stairway. The bouncer breathed stertorously like an idling ’39 Plymouth.
I stepped over him and opened a door marked “Office” in flaked black paint.
There was a small scarred desk close to a partly boarded-up window. The torso of a man was bolt upright in the chair. The chair had a high back which just reached to the nape of the man’s neck. His head was folded back over the high back of the chair so that his nose pointed at the boarded-up window. Just folded, like a handkerchief or a hinge, like organic oragami.
A desk drawer was open at the man’s right. Inside it was a newspaper with a smear of oil in the middle. The gun would have come from there. It might have seemed a good idea at the time, but the position of Mr. Cannon’s head proved he was wrong.
There was a telephone on the desk. I laid the sawed-off shotgun down and went over to lock the door before calling the police. Mr. Cannon didn’t seem to mind.
There was a bottle of Old Noob Kentucky Bourbon in the lower right hand drawer and I helped myself.
When the prowl car boys stamped up the stairs, the bouncer and the barman had disappeared and I had the place to myself.
