The rats, a noir piece

They say you must be crazy to walk the Chicago streets without some lead in your pockets. Maybe I am insane. Maybe it’s just this city; there ain’t a decent man in sight.

I walk the littered alleys. My shoes clack against the side walk. Rain drips from my soaked trilby as steam fills the night air. Dumpsters line the streets where the rats take their fill of the city’s filth. Billboards clutter the walls: ‘Cool crisp Rice Krispies’ and ‘Camels’ cigarettes. Chicago, the product of capitalism and like all capitalist centres, unfit for habitation. It’s enough to make me sick.

I walk past Lincoln Avenue and down a risky side street. The smell. Oh god damn the smell. Even the rats find offence and scatter. The bar looks as run down as I feel. I take a moment. A moment to linger in the relentless rain and curse the city. The bar’s brass door knob is cold to the touch. It’s funny how many sensations a man takes notice of once a gun’s been pointed at him.

I’m greeted with the stench of smoke and stale piss. The smell suits the place. I make my way across to the bar. Jazz music’s playing in the background. The parquet floorings worn and grimy, holes left miss-matched against the skirting-boards hold balls of dust and bullet shells. Burgundy paint’s peeling off the walls, the lighting’s dim.

The place is empty except for me, the barman and a fella half slumped in his drink. He looks the kind of chump that drinks till he’s in the gutter. He’s unmoving unless you count his matted grey beard moving against his cheeks as he mumbles in his sleep.  Chicago’s finest.

As I sit myself down on one of the worn stools against the bar, the tender, James Walker himself, clocks me.

“What’ll it be?” He’s a sorry sort of guy. A streak of piss up the wall really. Probably a catch back in his day but the Chicago years are kind to no one.  I ignore Walker’s question and pick at the dents in the dull bar. He speaks up again.

“Well, you got a name if you don’t got a drink in mind?” He turns his back on me and starts straightening the bottles of spirits, keeping an eye on me through the mirror on the wall.

“Parker. I’m Richard Parker and liquor, any liquor.” Walker’s a clumsy fella, drops two glasses on the floor and spills the ice before a tumbler of whiskey’s finally in front of me. 

He seems nervous and goes back to the liquor bottles. I clear my throat.

“You know, there’s only one thing to do when you live in Chicago: leave. If you don’t leave, you die with the rats.”

Walker faces me through the mirror again.

“And what are you gonna do Parker? Move, or join the rats?” Light through the blinds cut his face into shreds of black and white that wobble when he licks his lips.

“Me? I’m gonna smoke the rats out from their gutter and burn with them.”  I take a lighter from my trench coat’s pocket along with a cigar and light it. Smoke pours over the wooden bar between me and Walker, he takes a seat opposite me.  He lights a Camel cigarette.  Pfft, this fuckin’ town and it’s billboards. 

“You see Walker, I’m a private detective. This city’s got more crooks than a book’s got pages. Here’s what we’re gonna do: I’m gonna tell you all about this city and you’re gonna pour yourself some liquor and listen up.”

Walker does as instructed and sits back down in front of me. The background Jazz builds up to a crashing tempo before calming. I take a deep sigh and begin.

“You heard of John Gunther, Walker?”

He shifts in his seat which creaks.

“No, I haven’t, I don’t care for much outside the bar.”

Outside of the bar, the rain is still pelting the streets; it’s falling heavily against the window. The outside, tapping to get in.

“Well Walker, he says that the era when crooks ruled the city is gone forever. I say he’s as wrong as a nun in a whore house. A few months ago, I started investigating a mob. They seemed pretty small time. I was keen on one of them in particular. Johnny. He had a record as long as this bar. Rumour had it, he’d started working for George "Bugs" Moran, a washed up gangster trying to make it big time again. You heard of him?”

He frowns, “Sure have, had a bit of a run in back in the day with Al Capone, right? Gunfight over the illicit bootleg liquor trade?”

The Jazz, a little number by Miles Davis if I’m right, reaches another intense crescendo. The hair on my arms raises, I always did have a soft spot for jazz. For a minute I’m lost in thought. Walker takes a sip of his liquor and I’m reminded of my own. The bite on my throat kicks me back into conversation.

“Yeah, that’s the guy Walker. As I said, rumour had it, Bugs was trying to make it big time. Johnny had been linked to him. There’d been a robbery at a jewellers up town.  The guy who owned the store, well, he was shot twenty-three times. The store was completely cleaned out. If Bugs needed cash to fund a mob, he definitely had it now. I had to tell the stiff’s family. Hell of job that.  Like I said, leave this city or die with the fuckin’ rats. You ever had to give news like that Walker?”

He shrinks back inside of himself. I’ve gone wrong asking that, pulled a trigger that’d long been held. I notice he’s trying to hold his hands steady as his finds the bottom of his glass and his eye’s well.

“I don’t usually talk about it Parker. My wife, she, she died. It was a shooting; I uh, I had to tell my daughter, Jean, she was eighteen at the time. I haven’t seen her lately. Carry on; I’ll fill up our glasses”

His stool scrapes across the floor as he walks back to the shelf of spirits. The lights in the room are even dimmer than before. I talk to him through the mirror again as he composes himself.

“I was sure Johnny was behind it. People identified him but evidence didn’t stick. Rats wriggle out of their traps. Anyway, I started following him, getting to know his routine. Whore houses, gambling, dodgy deals, nothing I could stick him with though. Johnny was a bit of a chump. Couldn’t tell a bullet from a gun if someone didn’t tell him. Big guy though. I kept talking to him in the whore houses. Under cover of course. Named myself George. Suddenly I was Johnny’s friend who he’s introducing to people. None of them would talk though.  You listening Wa-”

The fella at the end of the bar, the guy asleep in his drink, he’s starting to snore.

“I’m listenin’ a lot closer than he is, Parker. Carry on.”

I look up to the mirror and notice the light through the window behind the spindle stair case is shining on my face. I look like I’m behind bars. Bile shifts in my stomach, my insides clench.

“Well Walker, I’m in a burlesque house with Johnny. He’s all jittery like some sugars found its way up his nose or somethin’.  He says his favourite girls coming out. And I swear, when she came on stage, she was every man in the world’s favourite girl. Heck, she’ll always be my favourite girl. An eagle in a city of rats. That’s what my Ev was. She came out in these black stockings. You know, lacy at the top, a line going down the back of her leg. She had this delicate little corset on. Oh, her skin, Walker. Her skin was so pale, I always said to her she was a sheet of paper and I’d do my best to keep her that way. Her hair was all curly and neat like the girls do, brown and long.”

I stop for a moment. I drain my drink. I know there’s no going back now. The rain is still tapping on the window and the jazz has died down slow.

“Anyway, me and Ev, we hit it off. She’s was my gal. Johnny, he knew she was my girl. Turns out, he was the ones who got her the gig at the burlesque house. He told her he knew Hugh Hefner, the guy with the bunny magazine. She wanted to be in it. She lived in their pockets, always asking to go see the big gangster Bugs so he could make her a bunny. I knew Ev was better than that. The more time we spend together, the deeper we both got. I told her everything; I told her I’m not some crook named George. I told her I still haven’t got my confession from Johnny. Another drink Walker?”

He pours the whisky again. For a streak of piss, he holds his liquor well. I notice he has a revolver in his suit. I walk to the wooden coat rack by the door and hang up my coat. Walker takes in my sharp black suit.

“That’s a mighty fine suit, Parker.” He lights another cigarette.

“Ev smoked. She had one of those long cigarette holders. She’d hold it with those satin gloves of hers, and look at me. She’d keep my eye as she took a slow drag, and blew it my way. I could watch her do that for years. After I told her the truth, she said she’d help me. She was more in favour with the rats than me. After all, I was Johnny’s friend. Johnny who didn’t know a bullet from a gun. She was every fella’s friend. We got an apartment. A little thing. Ev said the smaller the home, the closer we were. She filled the place with candles. I came home every day to a meal, candles lit and the silk sheets drawn back. It always smelled of vanilla. Vanilla and her perfume, sweet with a bite.”

Walker takes a sip of his whisky and clears his throat.

“Sounds like you and Ev had quite a place going for yourselves.”

I curl my toes in my shoes and light my cigar. I swirl the smoke in my mouth and picture Ev with her cigarettes.

“We did, but I’m running out of time Walker. One night, Ev comes home. She’d been at the Burlesque bar with Johnny and the fellas. She was all shook up, spilling her words. Best I could tell before she left was I needed to meet her the next day at the burlesque bar, before it opened. I turn up and the lights are off. One candle’s lit and Ev’s sat there, gun in her hand. I ask her, I ask her what she’s doing with a gun in her hand. What’s she doing pointing it at me? And then Johnny’s there. Big Johhny. Suddenly knowing his gun from his bullet.”

I fill the air with more smoke from my cigar. The saxophone in the jazz is screaming at me.

“I told you, Walker. I’m going to burn with the rats. Johnny kept shouting his mouth, calling me Detective Parker. Ev had told him everything. The whole time Johnny’s shouting, Ev didn’t move. She sits and points her gun. I and Johnny start scuffling. I grabbed my gun and instead of shooting, I hit his head with it, he fell to the floor. Same time I do that, Ev took her shot.”

Walker looks pale.

“Ev’s bullet hits the light behind me. I shot her chest. Right on the freckle beneath her collar bone.”

Walker looks at me with pity.

“Now here’s the funny part. Inside my betrayer’s bag, there’s a note and a tape. The note’s for me. She wrote how she’s got to leave town. She needed to fly like the eagle she was but she’s taking a few rats down on her way. She’d taped Johnny’s confession. She’d given me what I needed, but Johnny knew. That’s why he was at the club. Her bullet was for Johnny and I murdered her.”

Walker backs away from the bar. My eyes well.  Rain pounds the windows.

“I handed in the case. Johnny’s knock to the head gave him amnesia. I said that Johnny shot Ev. Like a rat, I wriggled from my trap. Johnny was sentenced.  But big gangster Bugs is on his way to fill my chest with lead, Walker.”

Walker takes my liquor away from me.

“I came here to make sure the right man shoots me. Ev’s name was Jean-Evalyn Walker.”                                                                               

And just like that, my name is history. The jazz cuts out. The record is over. Walker’s face crumples. I take a drag from my cigar.

I fill the air with smoke as Walker takes out his revolver. I die with the rats.