The Pickup

A classic Noir short

The Girl

I was one cheap whiskey away from oblivion, which is where I’d managed to keep myself for a couple of years at that point. But I was alive, and that’s more than I could say for a lot of guys who were still bleaching their bones on sandy beaches in the Pacific.

There was a tense poker game going on at one of the card tables in the middle of the common room. The heat felt like a cast iron lid over the place. I intercepted a bead of sweat just under my left eyebrow, before it could drop into my eye.

One of the poker players had a white paper cup in front of him, filled almost to the brim with peanuts. I’d been watching him clean out the other guys for a while now. They wanted to quit. He didn’t want to let them. He wanted whatever peanuts they had left in front of them. None of the heckling from around the table was going to dissuade him.

One of the players with a face like a rusted anvil leaned over, grabbed a peanut from the paper cup, and popped it into his mouth. He smiled at the winner. The winner turned beet red. He took his winning seriously, peanuts or dollars.

Kurt, the manager, came in just in time to head off the explosion. He looked straight at me and called out there was a dame asking for me by name at the front desk. The room started hollering and catcalling. Even the poker players looked up from their argument and joined in.

On the second try, I managed to get up from my seat, and I followed Kurt out to the lobby. There was a woman alright. She wasn’t Lauren Bacall, but she was easy enough to look at.

“I am Anastasia,” she said, in just enough of a vaguely Russian accent. “Is there somewhere private where we could discuss.”

Before I could even think about it, Kurt growled “You know the rules, no lady visitors on the upper floors. No damn visitors at all, in fact. This is a respectable flophouse. Hang on.”

He walked over to the common room. “Alright you lot, clear out. Our friend here has a lady visitor, and they got private business to talk about.” More catcalls and hooting and hollering. “Go on, git. It’ll be a few minutes.”

The men filed out of the room and headed upstairs, examining Anastasia along the way. She stared ‘em down and didn’t blush one bit. The poker winner carried his peanut-filled paper cup past her, like it was the crown jewels of England.

When the parade had ended, Anastasia stepped into the semi-darkness of the common room and sat at one of the tables. I followed her and sat across from her.

When she was done wrinkling her nose at the smell of stale sweat, brilliantine, and cheap tobacco that defines the traditional American flophouse, or the Single Room Occupancy, as the more sympathetic social workers like to call them, she launched into her spiel.

“You are highly recommended,” she said.

I looked at her, not quite sure what to make of her yet. “Who by, and for what?”

“I have it by your friend Chet, that you are very reliable man,” she said in what could have been a Russian accent.

My good buddy Chester. He tried to throw me a bone once in a while, and I guess I was grateful for it, most of the time. We’d been cops together for about 5 years before the war, straight out of school.

He’d gone back on the force when the show was over. I hadn’t quite managed it. Some people are just better at coming back. He’d been in North Africa and Europe with Ike, fighting the good fight, while I’d been island hopping and dodging malaria with that bastard MacArthur. On days when I felt a glimmer of compassion for myself, I thought maybe that had something to do with it, too.

“Sometimes,” I admitted. “Anyway, what’s it all about, sister?”

“I need someone for a driver,” she said. “You drive cabs, yes?”

“I fill in a few hours overnight for a friend of mine, once in a while,” I said.

“Good,” she nodded. “I need a driver, maybe half hour, forty minutes, tomorrow at lunch, in the city.”

The way she said “city,” sliding the vowels, reminded me of a childhood friend’s father who’d come from the old country. I wasn’t sure exactly which old country, though. The stories varied a bit every time he told them. Might have been Russia, maybe.

I shrugged. “I’ll check my social calendar, just to be sure, but I guess I could do the job. You gotta car? Because I sure don’t.”

She flashed her baby blues at me, not for the first time. “You can borrow cab, yes?”

“Getting a cab for an hour at lunch time, downtown, is gonna cost,” I said. “It’s not like working a few hours on the graveyard shift.”

“I can pay,” she said. “This is no problem. I give you twenty-five dollars now. Twenty-five dollars after. And you rent cab.”

I tried not to let my surprise register. But you can never really tell when other people can read you.

As flatly as I could, I said “Lady, for fifty bucks, I can get you a Cadillac, and I’ll still have plenty enough left over for my fee.” I’ve never been much of a negotiator.

“Oh, this is fine,” she said, “but we need regular cab, just ordinary, thank you.”

This caper had Chet written all over it. He wasn’t a bad guy, but his house was just a little too nice for a beat cop, his cars a little too current, and his wife’s mink a little too obvious. Not too much. Just a little.

I knew I should have turned her down flat, then and there. But I didn’t. Fifty bucks was a couple of months of rent, or two whole cases of rot-gut. Wasn’t sure which one I’d go for in the moment. Maybe half and half. I’d deal with any trouble later, I thought. And I did. Plenty of it.

She told me where I would pick up two men at noon the next day. They would tell me where to drive them. She gave me the twenty five dollars in a pink envelope, she smiled, turned around, and walked out. I could hear the catcalls as she walked through the lobby.

I waited long enough for her to be clear of the place, and I went upstairs to grab my overcoat and my hat. I headed out to Wilensky’s garage, a few blocks north of Kurt’s flophouse, or the Yorkton, as the faded sign above the front door proclaimed.

I found my friend Joey, whose cab I sometimes took for part of the night shift. The cab wasn’t available the next day around noon, and I’d pretty much known that. But Joey had brought me to see Old Man Wilensky in his cubby-hole office at the back of the garage.

His desk wasn’t in any better state of repair than his cabs. At least he couldn’t be accused of treating himself better than his mostly downtrodden drivers. When Joey had put my case to him, he chewed on his cigar stub for a moment, rifled through some papers on his desk, and then he announced that he’d found a car for me, and that it would certainly run for at least an hour. The five dollar bill I’d laid in front of him had probably helped him find me a jalopy for the lunch hour rush.

The cab rental itself was another four bucks, but only because I was a friend of Joey’s, he emphasized. I could live with that. I don’t think the old man had any sense that I drove one of his cabs a couple of times a week on the regular. I’d guess he was sound asleep at night. He wasn’t the type to worry about much.

The Pickup

I’d been waiting about ten minutes, on a narrow side street, right where she told me. Two men walked up from the main drag. They were each carrying a small duffle bag, dark green. They sat down in the rear of the cab, duffle bags on their lap.

One of them handed me a piece of paper with an address scribbled on it. It was on the north side. I caught a glimpse of him in the dashboard mirror when he leaned over. He had yellow eyes, and I don’t mean his irises. The other guy leaned in close to my ear and said, “Shut up and drive.” I hadn’t said a thing.

I put the car in gear and pulled out onto the street. I started turning back toward the main drag.

“Take the long way,” said Yellow-Eyes. “Stay on the side streets.”

I nodded and kept going straight. The other guy took off his hat and wiped his brow. I could see in the mirror that his hair was slicked back and too black to be real. His broad forehead was split in two by a prominent widow’s peak.

I avoided the main streets, which added some travel time. We made it in about thirty-five minutes. We could have made it in twenty on the boulevards. The place was a square apartment block with a deli on the ground floor. I pulled up in front.

Yellow-Eyes reached his pasty right hand into the left breast pocket of his overcoat. Widow’s Peak stopped his movement. “Give the guy his fee. He did good. He doesn’t talk too much. I like that.”

I still hadn’t said a word. Widow’s Peak was the older man and the senior partner, that much was clear.

Yellow-Eyes put his left hand into the right breast pocket of his overcoat and threw a plain brown envelope onto the front seat, next to me. They both got out onto the sidewalk, duffle bags slung over their shoulders.

Widow’s Peak leaned into the open passenger side window. “You get going now, just like Lot’s wife, savvy?”

I got going. As I motored away, I could see them standing there on the sidewalk, watching me vanish. When I turned the corner two blocks later, they hadn’t moved an inch.

That feeling I’d had that I should have turned down the job hadn’t gone away. I drove back to the garage, returned the cab, and settled up with Joey and Wilensky. I added a couple of bucks for each of them over what we’d agreed. Good will is rare these days, and you never know when you’re gonna need it.

I walked over to a steak house I used to go to once in a great while before the war. Nothing too fancy, but good. It was mid-afternoon by then, and I had the place to myself. I had a T-bone, done as rare as they dared, with an oven baked potato and a beer.

There was an apple pie sitting under a glass cloche at the front. I had a big piece à la mode. I topped it all off with a double of the good stuff. That taste of the good life would keep me for a while, and I could go back to my more spartan existence.

It was just about dinner time when I walked back to the flophouse. There was a paperboy in front loudly hawking an extra edition of the evening broadsheet. Security guard shot dead in robbery downtown. Not exactly a bank. More like some high flying financial outfit. Just before noon. A short walk from my pickup.

I gave the paperboy a dime, grabbed a paper, and walked off without waiting for change. When I went into the flophouse, I walked right by the noisy common room and took the four flights to my room two by two. I locked myself in, sat on the lumpy cot, and I read on.

I didn’t have to be Dick Tracy to figure out there might be a connection between the headline and the little job I’d done in the afternoon, but I didn’t have enough to take it to anybody yet. Besides, it could still be my overactive imagination. I decided to sleep on it.

The Gumshoe Work

I woke up early. Some guy one floor below was screaming his head off. Another guy was pounding on the ceiling one floor below that. A regular morning at the flophouse.

I took a section of the bedframe apart, rolled up half of what was left of my ill-gotten gains, and stuffed it inside the steel tubing. You could never be too careful these days. I put the bedframe back together, put the other half of the money in my pants pocket, put on my overcoat and my hat, and I headed down the noisy stairs.

Kurt was sitting at the front desk, reading the morning paper and eating a grilled cheese sandwich. There was already some card playing in the common room, and plenty of black coffee drinking. I breezed past both. Kurt never even looked up.

Once on the street, I took a bus to the North Side. I knew where I’d dropped off my two birds the previous day, but I didn’t know where they’d gone. There was only one place I could start.

The deli on the ground floor of the square apartment block where I’d left them was almost empty. I grabbed a paper from a rack at the door, and I had a seat in a booth by the window, with a good view of the street and the sidewalk.

A young man in a black apron came up to my table. I ordered some black coffee, and a couple of pancakes with apple sauce. Why not. I still had some money.

The morning paper had a few more details about the robbery. The murdered security guard had been a good family man. The mayor had made a statement. He was outraged that such things could happen in our city in this day and age. If anything, he was even more outraged than last time it had happened, a couple of weeks earlier, and the time before that, too, but not quite as outraged as next time it was going to happen, to be sure. Our dogged and brave police force was right on the case, and these miscreants wouldn’t be on the run for long. Nobody got away with it, not in this town.

Now we were getting to the interesting part. Two men, armed, not much of a description. Scarves on their faces, collars pulled up high, dark glasses, hats pulled down low. They’d shot the guard for no apparent reason. He was cooperating, doing his job, which in those circumstances is not to shoot anybody, but to be a professional witness, and to get the firm a discount on their insurance by just being there.

They had hit a payroll that had just helpfully finished being counted, and was about to roll out to one of the big trucking companies in town. Probably an inside job. They’d stuffed the money in dark green duffle bags and they’d split.

Those were my guys alright. Now I just had to find them, and learn enough about them to shop them. I wondered if Anastasia would still be with them, and what her part might have been in all this, apart from finding a pigeon. I half hoped that was all there was to it, but I wasn’t optimistic.

I didn’t have to wait long. It wasn’t the platinum blonde Anastasia with the wrinkled nose from the flophouse. It was a raven haired beauty with a blue pillbox hat walking in the door, but the blue eyes were the same, and the rest of her, cheekbones and all, was recognizable, too.

I looked away and kept an eye on her reflection in the window. She walked up to the counter and asked the young man in the black apron for three pastrami sandwiches, a couple of ice teas, and some ginger snaps.

When she’d walked out with her wax paper package, I waited for a moment. I didn’t think she’d noticed me. Why would she have. But you never know. It was a gamble I had to take.

Since I was still in my generous mood, I put a dollar bill on the table, grabbed my hat, and walked out the door, about 20 feet behind her. I let a couple of pedestrians get between us.

Two blocks on, she took a left down a side street. I gave it a moment before I poked my head around the corner, not too far. No sign of her. So she’d gone into the first block of apartments on the left, the Trainor, it was called, in faded gold lettering, hand-painted on the glass above the front door. I hadn’t given her enough time to walk any further, and if she’d crossed the street, I would have seen her.

The place was three stories high, squat masonry like they don’t make anymore in the big cities. There was an entrance hall with mailboxes behind the front door, and maybe four apartment doors on each side of the hallway. There were some stairs leading up to the upper floors on the right. So that would make about two dozen apartments. I had my work cut out if I was going to find her and not get spotted.

There must have been a doorman at some point, it had been that kind of building once upon a time, but those glory days were long gone. I went back to the corner and leaned against a lamp post for a while. I kept a good view of the entrance.

Pretty soon I saw the mailman coming up the street, which is what I’d been hoping for. I left my post and bumped into him just as he was coming back out of the building.

I put my hand in my pocket and flashed a five dollar bill. “Say, friend, I’m looking for a place to rent, and the local papers haven’t been too much help. This is right near where I need to be. Any apartments in there that aren’t getting any mail lately?”

He looked at the bill in my hand, then he looked up at me. “Sure, number three. Used to be an old woman lived there. Died, must’ve been about a year ago. No mail since then. I don’t think anybody’s been living there for now.”

I thanked him and gave him the fiver. So that would be ground floor, second door on the left, normally at least. I couldn’t very well barge in there. They’d be armed. I couldn’t go to the cops quite yet. For all intents and purposes, I’d been an accessory. Not a willing one for sure, but I knew a sergeant at the local precinct that would love to make it look that way, given half a chance.

I just had to wait. These guys would be trying to split, but not before some of the heat died down. I couldn’t know for sure when they would feel safe enough to make a move, but I thought it wouldn’t be today.

They were comfortable enough, in a nice place they thought nobody knew about, they had pastrami sandwiches and ginger snaps two blocks away, and they had a girl who could run errands mostly without being recognized. They would wait a few days. That was another gamble I had to take.

Before I went back to the flophouse to think about my options, I dropped by my good buddy Chet’s prim and proper house on the outskirts of the city. He’d done well for himself. I was happy for him.

I knocked on the door, hoping he wasn’t there. To my relief, his lovely wife answered and didn’t call after him, which meant he was some place else at the moment. She looked surprised to see me, but she smiled and said hi. That was more than I expected out of her.

Even if Chet had been there, I wouldn’t have told him he’d dropped me in it, even if I wanted to. I liked him well enough, but I didn’t trust him that much. I told his wife I just needed a package I’d asked him to store in his attic when I’d gotten back from the war.

It was a shoebox, wrapped in plain brown paper and tied up with a string, I told her. She let me stand on the porch while she went to get it. The way I probably looked, I couldn’t blame her. I was no sight for the kids.

It was late afternoon by the time I got back to my room. I opened the package and took out the 8mm Nambu pistol I’d taken off a dead Japanese Lieutenant near the beach at Biak in fourty-four. I felt sorry for him even now, and even more sorry for the people waiting for him back home, but I told myself, yet again, that he’d been trying to kill me and my buddies, too.

I took the weapon apart and cleaned it. I put it back together, loaded it, and I put the extra twelve rounds in my pocket. That’s all he’d been carrying when I found him. I wasn’t meaning to use it, but you never know. I put my head down and went to sleep with the pistol next to me.

The Take-Down

Next morning, I woke up with a plan. I packed my pistol in my overcoat pocket and I headed back to the deli, but this time I didn’t go in. I stood at a bus stop across the street, with a good view of the front door.

I intercepted the local beat cop as he was passing me on the sidewalk. I’d spotted him the day before. I hailed him with a nod.

“Waters, isn’t it?”

He looked me up and down. “Say, I’ve seen you before.”

“You sure have,” I said.

He pointed his baton at me. “How long’s it been?”

“Since before the war,” I said. “I didn’t rejoin the force afterwards.”

“So I heard,” he said. “I know it was rough for you. If I can do anything to help, let me know.”

“I’m doing alright,” I said, “considering.”

“I don’t know how you guys did it,” he said. “I was stateside the whole time. Spent most of it in a gatehouse at a Naval Air Station in Pensacola. I feel pretty rotten about it, if you wanna know.”

“That’s the job they gave you,” I said. “Nothing to feel bad about. They just gave me a different one.”

A bus came and went. I stopped talking while its engine carried it from the stop, and I took another pause while the exhaust fumes dissipated.

“Did any foreign agents or saboteurs get through your gate?”

He smiled. “Not that I know of, anyway.”

“Then you did as good a job as any of us,” I said, “maybe better.”

“I guess,” he said.

“But listen,” I said. “I stopped you for a reason. I got something for you. It’s a good collar. One you can brag about for a long time.”

His brow furrowed.

“The payroll job,” I continued, “a couple of days ago.”

He cocked his head. “Go on.”

“I came by some information,” I said. “It’s the real deal, on the level.”

“That sounds like something for the precinct,” he said. “That’s for the brass. What are you coming to me for?”

“I don’t wanna get involved,” I said. “In fact, I want nothing to do with it.”

“And I suppose,” he said, “you came by this information in an honest and innocent way.”

“As honest and innocent as I could,” I said.

He took a deep breath. “Ok, friend, what’s the play?”

“You know the Trainor Building,” I said.

“Sure,” he said. “Couple of blocks over, on the right. First door.”

Waters knew his beat, like I knew he would. And I knew he was honest, at least before the war. I took a chance he still was. Another bet I had to make.

“If I’m right,” I said, “the two crooks who pulled the job are holed up in there. Waiting for the heat to come down. There’s a girl with them. Real looker. She goes out in the morning to get sandwiches and sundries for the crew. I’m gonna smoke’em out. You and the boys just be ready to grab them at the back of the building.”

“How are you gonna do that,” he said.

“You leave that to me,” I said. “You just be ready. As soon as you can.”

“Alright,” he said, “I’ll call it in. You better be right about this. I’m sticking my neck out, calling out the cavalry like that.”

“Keep an eye on me for now,” I said, “from a distance. I’ll walk by you in a bit. If I tip my hat, the show’s on.”

“Sounds like a plan,” he said.

“But call it in now,” I said. “When the ball gets rolling, you won’t have much time. They’ll scram, and plenty fast.”

“Just one more question,” he said. “How did I come up with this stuff?”

“You saw them carrying dark green duffle bags in the alley.”

He nodded. “That’s something a beat cop would notice alright.”

“Sure is,” I said.

Waters nodded again, this time more firmly. He walked one block toward the Trainor and stood there, apparently inspecting the traffic.

Not a moment later, Raven-Haired beauty went into the deli. I crossed the street and waited for her outside the door. She almost dropped her wax paper package when she ran into me on the sidewalk.

She tried to walk by as if she hadn’t seen me, but she knew the jig was up. I grabbed her by the elbow.

“Let go of me,” she said, “I will scream.”

“Suit yourself,” I said. “If a cop gets here, they’re gonna start asking questions you don’t want answered, like where you’re staying right now, and who’s there with you.”

Her eyes grew wide. “I did not know. They tell me nothing. They say get the driver. That is all I know. They threaten me.”

“Sure,” I said. “That’s why you’ve been running errands for them for a couple of days. You do their ironing, too?”

She clutched her wax paper package to her chest. “I can get you money. I don’t like those guys. They are bad.” She looked up at me. “You have gun?”

She was quick. “I have gun,” I said.

“Then you come with me now. Only Larry is there with money. Chuck is out to buy car. They leave tomorrow. They want to leave me behind, I know. We can get money now. I split with you.”

Maybe Chuck was out, and maybe he wasn’t. But Larry, the girl, and the money would do just fine if he was.

I said, “I gotta better idea. You go in there, you tell’em they’ve been made. You tell’em the driver was a cop the whole time, and he’s found out where they are.”

She went pale. “No. They kill me for sure. I hire you. I bring you in.”

“Alright,” I said, “fair enough. Then you just tell’em there’s a plainclothes man casing the joint. You saw him yesterday, and he’s there again this morning.”

“What happens after,” she said.

“You leave that to me,” I said.

“You get them,” she said, “And we get money.”

I smiled as warmly as I could. “Something like that.”

She closed her eyes for a minute and she took a deep breath. When she opened them again, she was composed. Cold as a frosty morning on Lake Michigan. She started walking toward the Trainor. Like the day before, I followed her from a distance. I tipped my hat when I went by Waters. He started walking down the street, toward the alley behind the Trainor. He’d been to the callbox already, I guessed. My word must still have been worth something after all.

I wasn’t sure what the girl was about to tell them. Maybe she’d follow my lead. Maybe she’d tell them some cockamamie story that would suit her purpose better. Maybe she’d tell them the driver was onto them. It didn’t really matter, as long as the end result was to make them move out the back of the building.

I could have gone in there and got them to turn on each other several times with my witty banter and my automatic. I could have delivered them to the cops like a nice package wrapped up with a ribbon and a bow. I could have tried to find out who was their man on the inside. But this was no dime store novel. I left all that messy business for the cops.

I went to stand across the street from the entrance, collar up, hat pulled down low. From where I was, I could see a couple of cop cars getting into position at either end of the block, near the alleyway.

Within a few minutes, Widow’s Peak was at the front door, squinting his eyes toward me. I tightened my grip on the pistol in my overcoat pocket, just in case. I didn’t really care if he recognized me. That would depend on the story she’d told them, anyway. He ran back in. They were about to move, alright. I was hoping it would be in the right direction. The game was on now, and all I could do was watch.

About five minutes after Widow’s Peak had gone back in, there was a single gun shot from inside the building. From out on the street, it sounded like a faraway firecracker, barely audible above the street noise. Nothing that anybody would have noticed if they hadn’t known about the little drama unfolding inside.

About a minute after that, I heard a voice through a megaphone behind the Trainor. I knew it was Captain Driscoll, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying.

I made my way to the end of the block, crossed the street and went to the end of the alleyway. I blended into a growing group of gawkers behind one of the cop cars.

About fifty feet away, just outside the back door of the Trainor, Widow’s Peak was standing, holding two duffle bags in one hand, and pointing an automatic at Anastasia with the other. She was standing a couple of feet away from him, eyes wide, hands in the air, vociferously trying to convince the cops she needed saving from a madman.

I guessed from this that Yellow Eyes had been on the wrong end of the negotiations about the money, and maybe about the girl, too. How many times she had switched sides, and in what studied order, I couldn’t tell, but I got there just in time to hear the megaphone bark out, “Do us a favour and shoot her. We know she’s in on it.”

At which time Widow’s peak dropped his gun and his dufflebags, raised his hands, and lowered his head in defeat. Five cops moved in and relieved him of his loot. They grabbed him and the girl and moved them toward an awaiting paddywagon. That was the last I saw of them.

The Aftermath

It must have been a week later. I was sitting at a lunch counter near the flophouse, one grey afternoon, having a donut and a coffee. Mallory, my old Sergeant, sat down on the stool next to me.

“I don’t know how you got the dope,” he said, looking straight ahead, “and I don’t particularly give a good goddamn, if that’s what you’re worried about. But I know it came from you. Waters told me the whole story. He’s a good cop.”

I took a sip of my coffee.

Mallory ordered one for himself, black, as I remembered. “The reason I wanted to talk to you, is that you might’ve heard the payroll firm put out a reward for the recovery of the money. Comes out to a thousand bucks. It comes to you, if you want it.”

I turned and looked at him. “That could buy me my own cab, couldn’t it.”

“It sure could,” he said. “Maybe even a nice one.”

I stirred some more sugar into what was left of my coffee. “Put it in the Police Widows and Orphans Fund, will ya? Courtesy of Waters and the Police Brotherhood.”

“If that’s really what you want,” he said. “Mighty fine gesture.”

“I’m not ready for my own cab,” I said. “Sounds like a lot of responsibility.”

Mallory slammed his cup down on the counter. “Son, I don’t know what to make of you. And you sure as sin don’t know what the hell to make of yourself. You never even tried to get back on the force, after the war.”

“It’s not for me,” I said.

“I won’t disagree with you there,” he said. “You’ve never been a cop. You don’t think like one, and you sure don’t operate like one.”

He took a sip of his coffee and grimaced. “I heard the DA’s office is looking for an investigator though. Those guys at the DA’s kill me, you know. They really do. You bring them a good, solid case, and all they wanna do is poke it full of holes. They keep lookin’ for all kinds o’problems that ain’t there.”

“There’s a difference between knowing who did what, and proving it in a court of law” I said.

“Anyway,” he said, “I never liked those DA guys. They remind me of you a little bit too much. Maybe you should look into it. But you gotta clean up, first. DA’s pretty strict on that.”

“I’ve been working on that,” I lied.

“Look into it,” he said.

“Maybe I will,” I said, “maybe I will, at that.”