Excerpt from Noir

Noir

Chapter 1 — Sammy and the Cheese

She had the kind of legs that kept her barrel from resting on her shoes — a size eight dame in a size six dress and every mug in the joint was rooting for the two sizes to make a break for it equally they watched her jerk in the door and take a seat at the end of the bar. I raised an eyebrow at the Southward African merchant marine who'd been spinning out tales of his weird cargo at the other end of the bar while I polished a shot drinking glass.

"That there's a tasty bit of problem," says the sailor.

"Yep," I says, snapping my bar towel and draping it over my arm every bit fancy as y'all please. "Y'all know what they say though, cap'n, full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes." And then I move down the bar toward the matriarch, beaming a grinning similar a lighthouse full of amuse, but trying to go along my limp on the Q.T. to discourage curiosity.

"I don't think that's what they were talking nigh, Sammy boy," says the sailor, "but steam on." Which is the kind of cheering a guy will requite you lot figuring it's no skin off his nose if you lot become shot downwardly.

"What can I get you, toots?" I says to the dame. She'southward a blond, the dingy kind, and her hair is pinned upward on her head so it kind of shoots up night, then fountains out yellow every-which-way in curls at the acme– makes her look a little surprised. Her lips remind me of a valentine heart, shiny red and plump, merely a trivial lopsided, similar perhaps she'd taken a shot to the kisser in an earlier round, or the valentine heart haa acute angina. Kleptomaniacal but inviting.

Then the dame fidgets on the bar stool, as if to become a better fit on her bottom, causing a gasp to go through the bar that momentarily clears the smoke, similar a truck-sized dragon has sucked it out through the dorsum door. It's not that a solitary dame never comes into Sal'due south, it's simply that one never comes in this early, while it'south still lite out and the haze of hooch hasn't settled on everyone to shine over a doll's rougher edges. (Low-cal being the natural enemy of the bar broad.)

"The name'southward not toots," says the blond. "And give me something cheap, that goes down easy."

At that place then commences a lot of coughing equally all the guys in the articulation are of a sudden paying attention to draining drinks, lighting cigarettes, adjusting the angle of their hats and whatnot, as if the dame's remark has not only floated like a welcome sign over a room full of hustlers, gamblers, day drunks, stevedores, sailors, ne'er-do-wells, and neighborhood wise guys, each and every i a hound at heart. So I looks over the shotgun bar, trying to grab every eye every bit I am reaching downwards as if I am going for my walking stick – which is my version of the indoor baseball bat most bartenders keep, and even though my cane is ten feet out of reach, they get the message. I am not a big guy, and I am known to take a deadening boil, simply I take quick hands and I put in an hour on a heavy bag every twenty-four hours — a habit I picked upwards due to my inability to know when to keep my trap shut, then it is known that I can handle myself. Most of these mugs have seen more than than one guy poured into the gutter out front later thinking my sunny disposition and bum foot make me a pushover, so they go on it polite. And then again, I too command the flow of alcohol. Could be that.

"What practise I call you and so, miss?" I enquire the blond, locking my baby blues on her cow browns, careful not to ogle her wares, as dames ofttimes do not intendance for that, even when it is axiomatic that they have spent no little time and effort preparing their wares for ogling.

"Information technology'due south missus," she says.

"Will the mister exist joining you lot, and so?"

"Non unless yous want to wait while I get home and grab the folded flag they gave me instead of sending him home." She doesn't look away when she says information technology, or grin. She doesn't look downwards to hide her grief or pretend she is pushing back a tear, only looks at me expressionless on, a tough cookie.

Commencement I'1000 thinking she might be busting my chops for calling her Toots, but whether she is or isn't, I'm thinking the best way to dodge the hit is to act like I'm taking a shot to the body.

"Awe jeeze, ma'am, I'm sad. The war?" Had the be the war. She can't be more than twenty iii or four, just a few years younger than me, I guess.

She nods, then starts fussing with the latch on her bag.

"Put that abroad, it'due south on the house,' I says. "Let's showtime over. I'm Sammy," I says, offering my hand to shake.

She takes it. "Sammy? That'southward a kid's name."

"Aye, well the neighborhood is run by a bunch of old Italian guys who think anyone under sixty is a kid, so it's on them."

So she laughs, and I feel similar I've simply hit a abode run. "Hi Sammy," she says. "I'm Stilton."

"Pardon? Mrs. Stilton?"

"First name Stilton. Similar the cheese."

"Like what cheese?"

"Stilton? Yous've never heard of it? It'due south an English language cheese."

"Okay," I says, relatively certain this daffy wide is making upwards cheeses.

So she pulls her hand back and fidgets on the stool again, similar she'south building upwardly steam, and all the mugs in the place finish talking to lookout. I but stand in that location, lifting one eyebrow similar I practise.

"My father was a soldier in the Great War. American. My female parent is English —war bride. They had their first real appointment afterwards the war in the village of Stilton. And then, a few years later, when I was born, that'south what pop named me. Stilton. I was supposed to be a boy."

"Well they totally screwed the pooch on that one." I says, and I requite her a quick in one case-over, out of respect for her non-boyness. "If you lot don't mind me sayin'." Suddenly I wish I am wearing a hat so I tin can tip it, but and so I realized that she and I are probably the only people in all of San Francisco not currently wearing hats. It is like we are naked together. So I grab a fedora off a mug ii stools down and in a shine move I put information technology on and give information technology a tip. "Ma'am!" I says with a bow.

And then she laughs over again and says, "How about you lot set up me an old fashioned before you go far any deeper, smart guy.

"Annihilation for you, toots," I says. So I flip the hat back to the hatless mook down the bar, give thanks him, then step to the well and get-go putting together her drink.

"Don't phone call me toots."

"C'mon, it'south better than the cheese."

"Simply the cheese is my name."

"So it is," I says, setting the drink down in front end of her and giving it a swizzle with the straw. "To the cheese. Thanks."

Now I want to ask her what brings her into my bar, where she's from, and does she live around the neighborhood, only there'south a fine line between being curious and being a pitter-patter, so I exit her with the drink and brand my way back down the bar, refilling drinks and pulling empties until I get back to the South African merchant marine.

"Looks like you charmed her, all right," says the crewman. "What's she doing here, past herself, in the middle of the afternoon? Hooker?"

"Don't call back so. Widow. Lost her former human in the war."

"Damn shame. Lot of those about. Thought I was going to leave my married woman a widow a hundred times during the state of war. Worked a Liberty transport running supplies across the Atlantic for most of it. I still get nightmares nigh German U-boats —" The crewman stops himself in the eye of the tale and shoots a glance down the bar at my cane. "But I gauge I was luckier than nearly."

So after feeling pinnacle of the world over making the blond laugh, I'm feeling like a four-star phony all of sudden, which happens like that, simply I milk shake information technology off and requite the sailor a slap on the dorsum, letting him off the hook. "Doesn't audio that lucky," I says, "considering your cargo."

"Similar Noah's bloody ark," he says. "That'southward what information technology is. You lot haven't sailed until you've sailed through a storm with a seasick elephant on lath. Had a stall built for him in the concur. Poor bloke that has to muck it out volition be at if for days. We offloaded the animal in San Diego concluding week, but the stink still lingers."

"Any tigers?" I enquire.

"Only African animals. Tigers are from Asia."

"I knew that," I says. I probably should have known that. "Never seen a tiger."

"The big cats don't bother me much. They're in iron cages and you tin can see what y'all got, stay abroad from them. Push a bit of meat into the cage every few days with a long stick. A very long stick. It's the bloody snakes that requite me the jitters. Next week our sister ship is bringing in a cargo of every deadly bloody viper on the dark continent, going to a lab at Stanford, and snakes don't need to eat, so they're only in wooden crates. You can't even run into them. But if ane of them was to get loose, you'd never know until information technology bit you."

"Like a U-gunkhole?"

"Exactly. There'll be a dozen black mambas on board. Those buggers abound ten, fifteen feet long. Saw one of them go after a bloke once when I was a kid. Mambas don't run away similar a proper snake. They stand up up and accuse subsequently you — faster than you tin run. Poor bastard was expressionless in minutes. Foaming at the oral cavity and twitching in the dirt."

"Sounds rough," I says. "That settles it. I am never ever going to Africa."

"Information technology'southward not all bad. Y'all should come over to the dock in Oakland in the morn and encounter the balance of menagerie before we off-load. I'll give you the grand bout. Ever seen an aardvark? Goofy encarmine creatures. Will endeavour to burrow through the steel hull. We got two aardvarks."

"Aardvarks are delicious," says Eddie Shu, because that'southward the kind of thing he says, trying to stupor people, because information technology is a well-known fact that Chinese guys consume some crazy shit. Eddie is a thin Chinese guy wearing a very shiny adjust and black and white wingtips. His pilus is curled up and lacquered back to await like Frank Sinatra's. I don't see him come in because I am trying to continue an heart on the blond, and so I figure he sneaks in the back door, which no one is supposed to do, just Eddie is a friend, so what are you lot gonna exercise?

"Pay no attending to this mope," I says to the sailor. "He lies like an Oriental carpet."

"Fine," says Eddie. "But as the Buddha says, a human who has non tasted five-spice aardvark has never tasted joy."

"Uh huh," I says. "The Buddha says that, huh?"

"Far every bit you lot know."

"Eddie Moo Shoes, this is Captain – " and here I pause to let the crewman make full in the details.

"Bokker," says the S African. "Not a helm, though. Commencement mate on the Beltane, freighter out of Greatcoat Town."

So Moo Shoes and the Mate substitution nods, and I say, "Eddie works at Club Shanghai downwards the street."

"Who's the tomato," Eddie asks, tossing his fake-Sinatra forelock toward the blond, and I find I am somewhat defensive that he calls her a tomato, despite the fact that she is that plus some.

"Just came in," I says. "Proper noun's Stilton."

"Stilton?"

"Like the cheese," I explain.

Eddie looks at me, and so at the sailor, and then at me. "The cheese?"

"That's what she said."

"Have you seen her naked?" asks Moo Shoes.

Now in the mean fourth dimension I have been watching various patrons circle and dive on the blond, and I run across each of them limp away, trailing smoke, shot down with a regretful but coquettish smile. And meanwhile, she keeps looking up at me, similar she'south saying, "Are you lot gonna allow this go on?" Feels similar that's what she was maxim, anyway. Maybe every guy in the identify feels that manner. This Stilton broad has something…

"Oh yes," I says, answering Moo Shoes. "She walked in naked, merely I had to ask her to put on some apparel so as not to distress the upstanding citizens who frequent this fine establishment on their way dorsum and forth to mass."

"I'd like to encounter her naked," says Moo Shoes. "You know, make certain she's good plenty for you lot."

"Not for you lot, then?" the sailor asks Moo.

And Moo Shoes nearly goes weepy on u.s.a., hanging his head until his Sinatra forelock droops on the deplorable. "Lois Fong," he says.

"Dancer at the club," I explain.

"That dame wouldn't so much as punch me in the throat if it fabricated me cough up golden coins."

"It's a Chinatown thing," I explain further. "They have customs and whatnot."

"We are a mysterious and ancient people," Eddie says to the sailor.

"But yous accept seen her naked," I say, clapping Moo on the shoulder, a ray of fucking sunshine on his dark despair.

"On the job," Eddie says. "So has everyone else at the club. Don't recollect that makes it whatever easier."

Then I observe the blonde's drink is low and information technology's time I pay her a visit, then I concur upwardly a finger to marker the place in Moo Shoes' sulk. "Be right back."

"Another erstwhile fashioned, cupcake?" I says with a grin, daring her to get sore at me.

"My proper name's not—" and she catches herself. "You buying, wise-donkey?"

"Me? There'southward a dozen guys in here already offered to buy you a drink."

"Peradventure I was waiting for a meliorate offer," she says, and rolls her eyes, bats her eyelashes, then sighs wistfully – well, fake wistfully, which makes me laugh.

"Y'all know information technology doesn't price me anything if I buy y'all a drink, similar it would one of these mooks."

"Which ways you won't retrieve I owe you anything in render, like one of these mooks, correct?"

"No, no, no," I says. "Perish the idea." So I lean in in hopes of perpetrating a lilliputian conspiracy. "Although I have told my friend Eddie back there that I accept seen you naked, so if he comes over, embrace my bet, would yous?"

"I accept a birthmark on my right hip." She winks.

"That's the spirit!"

"Shaped like Winston Churchill."

"That must be a sight to behold," I says.

"How well-nigh that potable, Gunga Din?"

I like a dame who knows her Kipling, or any poetry, for that matter, as I am a sensitive and poetic soul. My dear ma was an English instructor, and from the time I squeak out my first word she steeps me deeply in metaphor, simile, symbolism, alcoholism and all the various iambs of the poetic tradition, all of which have served me greatly over the years in pouring drinks, welding ships, bird-dogging broads, and waxing poetical on both this and that.

And then I'one thousand nearly the say the aforementioned about the Kipling to the Cheese, when the door flies open up backside her and in walks Emerge Gab, Sal Gabelli, my dominate, followed closely by an Air Forcefulness general with and then many campaign medals on his uniform that it looks similar someone is losing a game of mahjong on his chest.

The bar is called Sal's, after the aforementioned Sal, although in that location is no sign that says and then, and over the years the articulation has been known as Flossie's, Danny's, The Expert Time, Grant Avenue Saloon, The Motherlode, Barbary Belle'due south and a one-half-dozen other monikers going back to 1853 when the place first opens on the aforementioned spot. I am told that the long oak bar and askew mirror back bar came around on the Horn on a clipper ship with sailors who dreamed of hit gilded in the California hills. Currently, the sign reads only, Saloon, Sal beingness too inexpensive or too smart to put his name over the door. Sal is a well-known in the neighborhood, but likewise well known to be such a douche bag that no one would be surprised to see a long red hose and nozzle trailing out his pant leg. The joint might have survived the neat convulse of 1906, but Sal knows that having his name on the identify merely might be plenty to bring it down.

"Full general," says Sal, a rangy fifty-yr former who is always in need of a shave, wears suspenders and an ill-fitting suit, and holds a cigar in his jaw at all times. "This is Sammy Two-Toes, my guy with his ear to the ground in the neighborhood. He'll exist able to help yous out with your footling trouble."

I cringe a little at the nick-proper noun, which only Sal uses, and I give the Full general the once-over. He's a alpine fellow, pushing sixty, with a pencil-thin mustache. When he takes his chapeau off, he reveals a jail-house window of dark strands of pilus combed over a bald pate. "Sammy," he says, as if he wished he has a rank rather than a name to phone call me by. It would be a low rank, I gauge from his tone, and he just nods, non offering his paw to shake, as I am clearly beneath his consideration.

"Two-Toes knows all the hustlers in town, don't you Sammy?" Says Sal, who suddenly realizes he is talking over the shoulder of a dame and steps back from Stilton to requite her a gander. "Hey, sweetheart—"

"Concord that drink, Sammy," Stilton says, standing upwards and putting her finger in Sal'south face to shut him upwards, a red-lacquered nail a one-half inch from poking him in the center. "I gotta scram."

Before I can say anything or make a move she keeps her one finger in Sal's mug while she threads her other hand through the strap of her bag holds information technology upwardly to put the halt on me, which I practice. "I'll see you afterward, handsome," she says, and in a single move she drops both arms, pirouettes, and slides out the door while her skirt is even so twirling, leaving me, Sal, and the general not a trivial dumbfounded, and me feeling like luck takes a powder on me. Lost, is what I'chiliad maxim.

"Extraordinary," says the general, still looking at the spot Stilton has merely vacated. "Now that's exactly the type of young woman—"

"The gimp is your guy , then—" says Sal, cutting him off.

Merely then Eddie Moo Shoes comes sliding behind the general forth with a couple of other guys. The evening oversupply tends to clear when Sal is around, as many find him revolting going back to the war when he gouges military guys for the privilege of ownership watered-down hooch by off-limits hours.

"Catch you after work for a bite," Moo Shoe'due south says.

"Sure," I says. "Meet y'all at the club."

Eddie waves and is gone, but Sal says, "I told you lot no fucking Japs."

"He's Chinese," I say.

"Aforementioned difference," says Sal.

Now Sal knows his place is but a block out of Chinatown, and the Chinese were in San Francisco long before the Italians and that his Italian fisherman ancestors had been selling fish to Moo Shoes' Chinese forefathers for five generations, but he chooses to ignore this in favor of showing his patriotism to the full general with indiscriminate bigotry. Merely the douche bag is my dominate, and he gives me a task after the war, when jobs are not easy to come by, and under somewhat phonus bolongnus circumstances that I would rather non have him examine, so I let it pass.

"What can I become y'all, Full general?" I says, looking past Sal.

"Scotch, neat. Single malt if you have it." He looks around at the identify and assesses it as the kind of place that won't accept a single malt. Most places don't. The Scots had to suspend distilling it during the state of war and it'southward non a quick process, but I remember seeing something…

"I'll see what I can find."

Every bit I rummage around nether the bar, Sal says, "Full general Remy's but in town for a few days — meeting with some mucky-mucks, only he'due south coming dorsum next week."

"I'g hoping to make some arrangements for some – some — social company upon my render." For a armed services guy, the General seems a lilliputian uncomfortable being in a bar. Possibly it's merely Sal's bar, and how those two end upward together is mystery to me besides.

Sal says, "The General is commander of a base of operations back east."

"Oh really," I say, my head withal downward with the spiders and the dust looking for Scotch. "Where is that?"

"Roswell, New Mexico," says the general.

There it is. I pop upwards from nether the bar with a dusty canteen of Glen Fiddich. "Never heard of it."

"No reason you would," says the Full general. "Aught ever happens there."

"Right," I say, corking the bottle. "Double?"

"Please," says the General.

And so I cascade, thinking not at all about New Mexico, simply about the Cheese, and how she walks out without my getting her number, or even finding out if she lives in the neighborhood, wondering if she just jitterbugged out into the cracking beyond, never to be seen again. But then I think, no, she stands upward, and stands upward to Sal on my behalf. And even though I don't know where she comes from, where she goes to, or how to find her, it feels similar I'grand going to see her over again, and when I do, something is going to happen — something big and strange and hopeful, and there'south not a goddamn thing I tin can do about it.