Kinda-sorta noir project here. I've already run it through the ringer a few times, and there's a couple of items that need adjusting, but I figured I'd pitch it to the crowd here and see what comes back.
***
Century Park lay under a late November snow, the blanket of white cut through with unswept stone pathways and broken occasionally by the angular shape of a bench, newly sheathed in ice. Rising from the white, a collection of dark trees with bare limbs thrust their skeletal branches to the iron-gray skies above. At the entrance, two stone lions kept watch, facing each other through sightless eyes in a decades-old staring match. Between them, past a set of iron gates left ajar, lay a trail of footworn stones that twisted languidly into the further reaches of the park. Somewhere near the end of that path was Short.
Nick Ryan knew the park well. When he’d been little, this was the place he came to spend his free hours. This was where his friends congregated. The park had been every locale from the Alamo to Custer’s Last stand to San Juan Hill, and when they finished knocking off Mexicans or Indians or Spaniards it became the place where they retreated to discuss such weighty matters as girls, futures, and money.
Later, it provided a place to take girls, provided there were girls that could be had. A couple of wooded acres like the park was bound to provide a few good hiding places, and they had excelled at finding them. Especially Fat Jimmy. For a kid who had such lousy luck with girls, he had an inborn knack for knowing just where to take one. As he explained, Autumn was the best time to try. Fifteen at the time, Fat Jimmy had been a fountain of knowledge, a godsend to a crowd five and six years his junior. Last Ryan heard, Fat Jimmy was lying under a cheap tombstone in a cemetery up by the lake.
Ryan lit a cigarette, not quite ready to abandon the warmth of the car for the cold outside. Fat Jimmy was a good guy – just didn’t know when to shut his mouth was all, and maybe not quick enough to know his advice wasn’t always appreciated. He wondered if that was what got him in the end, or if it was his eating habits. Either way didn’t make much difference. Ryan hadn’t talked to him in years. He probably wouldn’t know him if he’d passed him on the street. In fact, he could only recall seeing Fat Jimmy once, after the war, and he wouldn’t have known him then if it hadn’t been for his godawful ugly hat. Supposedly that was how they identified him for his funeral, too.
Fat Jimmy’s hat was so ugly it was legendary. No one knew where it came from. Little Bill Waldron had picked it out of the trash one day in the late summer, having decided he need a hat after his brother—Big Bill Waldron—told him he was getting a bald spot. Little Bill, certain that a stinking trash hat was better than a bald spot, wore it religiously until their mother threw it out the window and into the garbage pile from whence it came. Little Bill had gone to fish it out, and by the time he got down the alley Fat Jimmy had already claimed it, along with a pair of perfectly good dice. The two of them wagered on who could roll the highest number, with the hat as the prize. It was perhaps the one time Fat Jimmy had gotten lucky, and from then on he wore the hat, claiming it gave him an air of class. Ryan knew for a fact it had given him an air – class wouldn’t have been his choice of term - and wondered if that was why the girls kept their distance.
Not long after the hat spread its peculiar odors to another head, there had come the argument over whether or not the battlefield of the day was going to be in Cuba or Gettysburg. That was the day Big Bill took up a fallen branch and laid it across Tip Short’s face so hard Short lost one of his teeth. Then, unconcerned with the thin trickle of blood running down his chin, he dove into the nearest leaf pile in search of his missing tooth. Short was sore about the whole affair until he found a quarter, at which point the lost tooth was forgotten altogether and the group started throwing up leaves in search of the lost treasure certain to lie mere inches below the ground. Ryan didn’t know whether or not any treasure ever turned up – he doubted it – but it wasn’t for lack of trying.
Big Bill was doing okay, he thought. Ryan was pretty sure he’d heard about the bigger Waldron from a conversation somewhere a while back. For whichever reason, he was of the mind that Big Bill had established himself a laundry service. There was probably a wife and few kids somewhere in there, too. He bested all of them – he’d made it, and honest.
Little Bill hadn’t fared so well, even though he’d managed to get famous. Still hunting his treasure, he’d tried to single-handedly clean out the big bank downtown. Befitting his talent as a criminal mastermind, he’d left his car sticking half into the street before he went in for the job, and he emerged – cash, stickup gun, and all – to find a Garden City cop writing him a ticket. The next day, his big dumb gap-toothed smile made the front page of all the papers.
Ryan snorted at the memory, stubbing the remains of his cigarette in the ashtray. He took a long look at the world beyond the windows, the park frosted with fresh white snow and the gutters jammed with oily black sludge. A woman with a bag of groceries crossed the street and disappeared into one of the tenements up the street. He resigned himself and pushed open the door, bracing himself as best he could against the blast of cold air against his skin. Slamming the door, he turned up his collar and walked into the park.
Of all of them, Short was the one who had a chance to be something. As far back as Ryan could recall, Short was the one with the head for numbers. At twelve he was working in the shop not far up the street from their building, tending the cash register and keeping count of winnings and losings for the greasy thugs who played cards in the back. He was honest and he knew numbers, and because he was those two things he was as good an account as could be had.
He wasn’t fifteen before he’d moved on to bigger things. Short was counting money for low-level mob men by the time Little Bill was being processed into the state pen, and making more money than he could spend when Fat Jimmy began terrorizing the cities finest restaurants in earnest. He was buying a second car when Big Bill was hiring his first Chinamen, and he was living in a small castle when Ryan was walking down the gangplank of the troopship at the start of the peace.
Ryan shook his head at the thought. While Short was in Garden City carving out a good life for himself, Nicholas Ryan was huddling at the bottom of a muddy trench in France, loaded down like a pack mule with cartridges and grenades and dreading the whistle that signaled another assault. He returned from Europe a few months later, not a hero, but rather a man who had survived a little while in hell and found he wasn’t afraid to pull the trigger when he had to.
Short had been good about it, though. He tracked Ryan down as soon as he heard he was back in town, taken him to a big dinner and bought him a new suit. Ultimately, it was Short who found him employment again. It wasn’t bad work – shooting the odd wop wasn’t much different than shooting the odd German, and the pay was better. It was a lot like the army, in fact. Ryan did what he was told and didn’t ask questions, and he had a roof and three squares a day, and most of his expenses were handled.
There were other things, too. Side jobs for friends, like sometimes how Short would have a problem that required Ryan’s unique talents. Ryan could handle those. Everybody knew who he worked for, and nobody asked questions. Better yet, nobody could touch him. Not the cops, not the two-bit street punks, not the G-men, nobody. Short always made it worth the effort. There was usually a good dinner involved afterwards, when an envelope of twenties would change hands under the table. The formality was a real pain in the ass, but the cash made up.
Today was no different, as far as Ryan knew. He’d gotten a call in the morning. Short was on the other end, more terse than usual, and the message was straightforward enough. Short was having some trouble. Short needed to get out of town. Short was going to wait in the park. He didn’t specify which park – he didn’t need to, and somebody might be listening in – but Ryan knew well enough.
He’d put on his heavy coat and taken the little short-barreled .38 off the table by the door, wondering for a minute whether or not he’d need it. He erred on the side of caution and slipped the revolver into his pocket, then drove over the park. Ryan knew what it was all about. He’d heard rumblings, from the men he worked for and the men he worked with. Short had committed the cardinal sin. Short had turned.
He found Short sitting on a park bench with his hands in his lap and wearing a black woolen overcoat and fedora. The look about him spoke less of a man and more of a hunted animal.
“You alone?” Ryan asked.
“Yeah.”
“I been hearing rumors.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I hear you’re playing for the feds now.”
“I had to.”
“Maybe,” Ryan said. “Lindy?”
“Dead.” Lindy was Short’s wife, a sturdy, uncomplaining woman who turned a blind eye to the shady dealings that provided her requisite level of comfort. Ryan wasn’t surprised. The men who pulled the strings could move fast if they had to.
“Leaving town?”
“I can’t. They’re waiting. I know it.”
There followed a moment of uneasy silence. This was a rough business, but that was how it was sometimes. Ryan had no trouble with it, though for all the good it did him, he thought offing a man’s family was a lousy thing to do. But then again, knifing your friends and business partners in the back wasn’t much better.
“They almost had me,” Short said in a dull voice. “It’s only a matter of time now.”
There followed a silence.
“We’ve been friends a long time, Nick.”
Ryan said nothing. In his nervousness he’d begun to pace, and from pacing had gone to walking in circles around the bench. He was distantly aware of the cold and the park now. More, he was growing ever more concerned that Short had dragged him into this. If word got out that the two had met he’d most likely turn up floating facedown in the lake. No easy way out.
He forced himself to stop. Short had made a bad decision, yes, but he couldn’t justify leaving him to face the wolves alone. Once they caught him he’d be dead. He’d just get dead real slow, maybe a finger or two at a time. His employers were unforgiving men, and few things were harder to forgive than betrayal – provided it could be forgiven at all.
“Can you help me?” Short asked, without a hint of pleading.
Ryan fingered the cold lump in his pocket. “Maybe.”
***
Century Park lay under a late November snow, the blanket of white cut through with unswept stone pathways and broken occasionally by the angular shape of a bench, newly sheathed in ice. Rising from the white, a collection of dark trees with bare limbs thrust their skeletal branches to the iron-gray skies above. At the entrance, two stone lions kept watch, facing each other through sightless eyes in a decades-old staring match. Between them, past a set of iron gates left ajar, lay a trail of footworn stones that twisted languidly into the further reaches of the park. Somewhere near the end of that path was Short.
Nick Ryan knew the park well. When he’d been little, this was the place he came to spend his free hours. This was where his friends congregated. The park had been every locale from the Alamo to Custer’s Last stand to San Juan Hill, and when they finished knocking off Mexicans or Indians or Spaniards it became the place where they retreated to discuss such weighty matters as girls, futures, and money.
Later, it provided a place to take girls, provided there were girls that could be had. A couple of wooded acres like the park was bound to provide a few good hiding places, and they had excelled at finding them. Especially Fat Jimmy. For a kid who had such lousy luck with girls, he had an inborn knack for knowing just where to take one. As he explained, Autumn was the best time to try. Fifteen at the time, Fat Jimmy had been a fountain of knowledge, a godsend to a crowd five and six years his junior. Last Ryan heard, Fat Jimmy was lying under a cheap tombstone in a cemetery up by the lake.
Ryan lit a cigarette, not quite ready to abandon the warmth of the car for the cold outside. Fat Jimmy was a good guy – just didn’t know when to shut his mouth was all, and maybe not quick enough to know his advice wasn’t always appreciated. He wondered if that was what got him in the end, or if it was his eating habits. Either way didn’t make much difference. Ryan hadn’t talked to him in years. He probably wouldn’t know him if he’d passed him on the street. In fact, he could only recall seeing Fat Jimmy once, after the war, and he wouldn’t have known him then if it hadn’t been for his godawful ugly hat. Supposedly that was how they identified him for his funeral, too.
Fat Jimmy’s hat was so ugly it was legendary. No one knew where it came from. Little Bill Waldron had picked it out of the trash one day in the late summer, having decided he need a hat after his brother—Big Bill Waldron—told him he was getting a bald spot. Little Bill, certain that a stinking trash hat was better than a bald spot, wore it religiously until their mother threw it out the window and into the garbage pile from whence it came. Little Bill had gone to fish it out, and by the time he got down the alley Fat Jimmy had already claimed it, along with a pair of perfectly good dice. The two of them wagered on who could roll the highest number, with the hat as the prize. It was perhaps the one time Fat Jimmy had gotten lucky, and from then on he wore the hat, claiming it gave him an air of class. Ryan knew for a fact it had given him an air – class wouldn’t have been his choice of term - and wondered if that was why the girls kept their distance.
Not long after the hat spread its peculiar odors to another head, there had come the argument over whether or not the battlefield of the day was going to be in Cuba or Gettysburg. That was the day Big Bill took up a fallen branch and laid it across Tip Short’s face so hard Short lost one of his teeth. Then, unconcerned with the thin trickle of blood running down his chin, he dove into the nearest leaf pile in search of his missing tooth. Short was sore about the whole affair until he found a quarter, at which point the lost tooth was forgotten altogether and the group started throwing up leaves in search of the lost treasure certain to lie mere inches below the ground. Ryan didn’t know whether or not any treasure ever turned up – he doubted it – but it wasn’t for lack of trying.
Big Bill was doing okay, he thought. Ryan was pretty sure he’d heard about the bigger Waldron from a conversation somewhere a while back. For whichever reason, he was of the mind that Big Bill had established himself a laundry service. There was probably a wife and few kids somewhere in there, too. He bested all of them – he’d made it, and honest.
Little Bill hadn’t fared so well, even though he’d managed to get famous. Still hunting his treasure, he’d tried to single-handedly clean out the big bank downtown. Befitting his talent as a criminal mastermind, he’d left his car sticking half into the street before he went in for the job, and he emerged – cash, stickup gun, and all – to find a Garden City cop writing him a ticket. The next day, his big dumb gap-toothed smile made the front page of all the papers.
Ryan snorted at the memory, stubbing the remains of his cigarette in the ashtray. He took a long look at the world beyond the windows, the park frosted with fresh white snow and the gutters jammed with oily black sludge. A woman with a bag of groceries crossed the street and disappeared into one of the tenements up the street. He resigned himself and pushed open the door, bracing himself as best he could against the blast of cold air against his skin. Slamming the door, he turned up his collar and walked into the park.
Of all of them, Short was the one who had a chance to be something. As far back as Ryan could recall, Short was the one with the head for numbers. At twelve he was working in the shop not far up the street from their building, tending the cash register and keeping count of winnings and losings for the greasy thugs who played cards in the back. He was honest and he knew numbers, and because he was those two things he was as good an account as could be had.
He wasn’t fifteen before he’d moved on to bigger things. Short was counting money for low-level mob men by the time Little Bill was being processed into the state pen, and making more money than he could spend when Fat Jimmy began terrorizing the cities finest restaurants in earnest. He was buying a second car when Big Bill was hiring his first Chinamen, and he was living in a small castle when Ryan was walking down the gangplank of the troopship at the start of the peace.
Ryan shook his head at the thought. While Short was in Garden City carving out a good life for himself, Nicholas Ryan was huddling at the bottom of a muddy trench in France, loaded down like a pack mule with cartridges and grenades and dreading the whistle that signaled another assault. He returned from Europe a few months later, not a hero, but rather a man who had survived a little while in hell and found he wasn’t afraid to pull the trigger when he had to.
Short had been good about it, though. He tracked Ryan down as soon as he heard he was back in town, taken him to a big dinner and bought him a new suit. Ultimately, it was Short who found him employment again. It wasn’t bad work – shooting the odd wop wasn’t much different than shooting the odd German, and the pay was better. It was a lot like the army, in fact. Ryan did what he was told and didn’t ask questions, and he had a roof and three squares a day, and most of his expenses were handled.
There were other things, too. Side jobs for friends, like sometimes how Short would have a problem that required Ryan’s unique talents. Ryan could handle those. Everybody knew who he worked for, and nobody asked questions. Better yet, nobody could touch him. Not the cops, not the two-bit street punks, not the G-men, nobody. Short always made it worth the effort. There was usually a good dinner involved afterwards, when an envelope of twenties would change hands under the table. The formality was a real pain in the ass, but the cash made up.
Today was no different, as far as Ryan knew. He’d gotten a call in the morning. Short was on the other end, more terse than usual, and the message was straightforward enough. Short was having some trouble. Short needed to get out of town. Short was going to wait in the park. He didn’t specify which park – he didn’t need to, and somebody might be listening in – but Ryan knew well enough.
He’d put on his heavy coat and taken the little short-barreled .38 off the table by the door, wondering for a minute whether or not he’d need it. He erred on the side of caution and slipped the revolver into his pocket, then drove over the park. Ryan knew what it was all about. He’d heard rumblings, from the men he worked for and the men he worked with. Short had committed the cardinal sin. Short had turned.
He found Short sitting on a park bench with his hands in his lap and wearing a black woolen overcoat and fedora. The look about him spoke less of a man and more of a hunted animal.
“You alone?” Ryan asked.
“Yeah.”
“I been hearing rumors.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I hear you’re playing for the feds now.”
“I had to.”
“Maybe,” Ryan said. “Lindy?”
“Dead.” Lindy was Short’s wife, a sturdy, uncomplaining woman who turned a blind eye to the shady dealings that provided her requisite level of comfort. Ryan wasn’t surprised. The men who pulled the strings could move fast if they had to.
“Leaving town?”
“I can’t. They’re waiting. I know it.”
There followed a moment of uneasy silence. This was a rough business, but that was how it was sometimes. Ryan had no trouble with it, though for all the good it did him, he thought offing a man’s family was a lousy thing to do. But then again, knifing your friends and business partners in the back wasn’t much better.
“They almost had me,” Short said in a dull voice. “It’s only a matter of time now.”
There followed a silence.
“We’ve been friends a long time, Nick.”
Ryan said nothing. In his nervousness he’d begun to pace, and from pacing had gone to walking in circles around the bench. He was distantly aware of the cold and the park now. More, he was growing ever more concerned that Short had dragged him into this. If word got out that the two had met he’d most likely turn up floating facedown in the lake. No easy way out.
He forced himself to stop. Short had made a bad decision, yes, but he couldn’t justify leaving him to face the wolves alone. Once they caught him he’d be dead. He’d just get dead real slow, maybe a finger or two at a time. His employers were unforgiving men, and few things were harder to forgive than betrayal – provided it could be forgiven at all.
“Can you help me?” Short asked, without a hint of pleading.
Ryan fingered the cold lump in his pocket. “Maybe.”
