It’s been a long time since I’ve posted. It was a challenging winter and I feel like I’m finally getting my feet back under me. Fortunately, my main man Ben pulled me back in for some writing contests this spring.
This one, “Hope Memorial”, was an old idea that I firmed up into a sci-fi crime noir to fit the genre assignment. I didn’t win or place, and the feedback accurately reflected the near total absense of a plot or motivation, but I liked playing with style. I’ve been reading a lot of crime fiction lately – Colson Whitehead, Chester Himes, Raymond Chandler, George Pelacanos, Elmore Leonard – and I dig it. I want to explore more of this world.
Anyway, here’s “Hope Memorial”. More to come soon.
(Photo by me!)
Hope Memorial
It was precisely midnight in Cleveland, late November. The snow turned to sleet under the arc lights on East Fourth. It looked like a black-and-white movie; a shattered Bedford Falls.
Tucked into the shadows of a deep-set apartment doorway, Strawberry looked up to see a pink Cadillac parting the clouds. His ride. It hovered noiselessly at the curb and the rear door popped open as he approached.
“Howdy, pardner.” The young woman driver greeted him too cheerfully, her voice muffled by the plastic partition separating the front and back seats of the Caddy. “West Side, huh? On to the next watering hole?” Long, dangling earrings sparkled as she studied him in the rearview mirror.
For some reason this Midwestern woman had adopted a honky-tonk affectation, drawl and all. Parma Cowpoke. Blond curls spilled out of a ten-gallon hat, the top of which scraped the car’s ceiling as she turned to get a better look. She smiled, but her eyes froze when she got a good look at her passenger.
He saw himself from her point-of-view: soggy fedora dripping fat raindrops, trench coat pulled tight around his neck, tired eyes.
“Yeah,” Strawberry said. “West Bank.” Then he flashed a holo-still. “Have you seen this man?”
When she pulled to the curb in front of the shattered remains of the West Side Market, she took off her ten-gallon and turned to look at him straight on. Fear had softened into something like curiosity. She had a crooked smile. She muted the dashboard recorder.
“I’m real sorry I couldn’t help you out this time,” she said. “The Good Lord knows I could use the money.”
“How’s business?” he asked.
“Oh, it’s fine, honey. Fine.”
He knew a liar when he saw one.
“Take a book,” she said. He briefly scanned the rows of pamphlets and well-worn paperbacks tucked into the seatback pocket. He sighed and reached for the door.
“You have a good night now, ya hear?”
Her eyes were kind; he decided to let her live.
***
He watched the pink Caddy elevate into the November muck, then looked at the remains of the Market. He had come here in another life: holding his mother’s hand, the smell of fish and pastries, raw meat and fresh vegetables. Now vegetables were like gold. So were mothers. Something skittered in the dark behind the stalls.
Across 25th, bass beats and neon lights advertised Gentleman’s Alley, but he wasn’t going in. He stood stock-still in the rain, considering his next move, when two vagrants stepped out from the Market ruins and shrugged deeper into their jackets. The taller one pointed towards the Alley. The shorter one scanned the street and locked eyes with Strawberry.
A pause and then he bolted, tripped over some rusted debris, then limped to the corner and fled east on Lorain.
Trapped.
Strawberry followed quietly, slipping his shock-cuffs from deep inside his coat.
As he turned the corner, he saw the man stop running and drop to his knees in the middle of the wet street. He clasped his hands behind his head. He knew the Protocol.
“I didn’t touch her!” he yelled.
Funny, nobody had said he had.
As Strawberry stepped in front of him, he realized he didn’t even know who he was or why he ran. But in this business, if someone ran when they saw you, you went after them. Chances were good.
“You’re pretty stupid,” Strawberry said. He glanced towards downtown where Lorain Road ended in the black chasm yawning over the Cuyahoga. “Can you fly, kid?”
He looked closer at the kneeling man’s face. About the same age as his target. The same malnourished desperation.
“Where’s Bentley?” Strawberry demanded.
“I heard Bentley moved up. I wouldn’t worry about Bentley no more.”
The kid held his gaze. Strawberry couldn’t tell if he was crying or if it was just the rain.
“Forget it,” Strawberry said. “Let’s talk about the girl.”
“No wait!” the kid said. “I know where to find Bentley tonight. I can take you.”
Would he lie? Probably. One way to find out.
Strawberry cuffed him and called for another ride. He looked east again at the unlit outline of the Terminal Tower dissolving into the fog. Headlights emerged from the murk and settled down beside the abyss above the river.
“What’s your name, kid?”
“Rockjaw.”
Strawberry shot him a look and the kid gave a parody of a grin. His teeth were chipped and broken; black gums oozed. Strawberry swore and turned away.
“How’s business?” Strawberry asked.
“Which one?”
Like he thought, stupid.
“You look like a walking cliché,” Rockjaw sneered. “Nice hat and jacket, you putz. First day?”
Strawberry pulled his blackjack from his pocket.
“You think you’re better than me?” Rockjaw said. “I know your type. You think you got law on your side but you ain’t got no morals. Followin’ orders? You’re a poorly paid fist. At best. Who’s pulling the strings, smart guy?”
Strawberry swung his blackjack and knocked out a few of those ugly teeth. Hell, he was probably doing the kid a favor. He left the kid face down in a puddle and got into his ride.
“Who’s he to you?” the driver asked when Strawberry flashed Bentley’s holo-still. Hard to blame him. Night before Thanksgiving, crowds humping across the river all night.
“Let’s say I got an award for this fella,” Strawberry said. “Let’s also say I’m being paid real money to find him. And let’s just assume, between you, me, and the lamppost, that I think he’ll be happy to be found.”
He counted the lies on his fingers as he said them.
The driver was an older guy, bald head and a gray, stubble beard. He kept his car hot and humid, like a swamp, and it reeked of BO. He studied Strawberry’s hat and jacket.
“You a gumshoe or something?”
“Today I am. Tomorrow, who knows,” Strawberry said. “Seems this fella hasn’t responded to our queries, so they outsourced the gig to me.”
Our. Strawberry smiled. It didn’t suit him.
The driver smiled back at some obvious conclusion.
“I know your man,” he said, “but you won’t find him hitching over the river all night.”
“What would you suggest, Charon?”. Strawberry reached into his coat. “I’ve got a reward here for a helpful soul.”
He pulled a Melania from his wallet and held it up to the dome light. It could go a long way in a town like this.
Without a word, the driver pushed into gear and lifted away from the crooked river.
***
They crossed the Cuyahoga one more time, over the Hope Memorial Bridge, honorific to a dead comedian’s stonemason father. Strawberry saw the amputated Superior Viaduct, that unholy wound, now looming over an abandoned aquarium. And the Terminal Tower, downtown’s monolith, the Van Sweringen brothers’ doomed ode to unfettered Roaring Twenties optimism, now scaffolded and crumbling.
Art Deco towers marked the corner of Carnegie and Ontario. Toothbrush light standards bathed the Jake in a pointless November lumière. What kind of electric bills did the ballclub rack up to illuminate the progressing snowstorm?
Traffic trudged back and forth over the black river. Strawberry thought of all the partiers and survivors strung out along the muddy river tonight; refugees from the dark, from the cold slush, from the raw sting of a November gale that crept through every crack in every door.
Line up your shots, clasp hands, and retreat, retreat from the dark swirling at the precipice of this Great Wasted Lake.
A world of human wreckage.
***
They didn’t have far to go. The driver turned north at the ballpark, through Cleveland State’s abandoned campus, then into AsiaTown along St. Clair. He stopped under a skybridge connecting two old warehouses in the East Thirties.
“This is him, huh?” Strawberry asked, peering up the red-brick façade. The entire building was dark except for two lights on the top floor. Small, opaque windows cracked and bulged outward, like the building was holding its breath.
“Keep your coin. I don’t whore myself for government flunkies,” the driver said. He showed Strawberry his gun. “Now get out.”
Strawberry hesitated, but it seemed his boss had given him a blackjack for a gun fight. Anyway, no good in risking his biometric stressors tripping the cab’s alarm. Strawberry slipped out and the driver sped off.
The front door stood unlocked and unmarked. Beside it sat a hip-high statue of some fat creature with a long pastel tail. Someone had placed a traffic cone over its head.
Inside, the air smelled of chlorine, like there was a lap pool somewhere in the building. A thin man stood behind a low desk next to the dented gray elevator. His eyes were on Strawberry as he crossed the threshold.
When Strawberry showed him the holo-still, the man glanced toward an unlit corner, then slipped through a curtain behind the desk.
“How’s business, Strawberry?”
The question came from a pair of thick legs crossed in gray slacks whose torso was obscured in shadow.
“He’s here,” Strawberry said. “Bentley.”
“Never mind Bentley. He’s proven his loyalty.”
Strawberry felt his blackjack through the outside of his jacket.
“Your problem, Strawberry,” the man said, “is that your elbows are not sharp enough.”
“If it’s a matter of loyalty…”
“Oh, stop groveling. You should have done something with the woman in the Cadillac. She was offering literature, wasn’t she? A radical.”
“Are you from DC? Where’s this coming from?”
Strawberry stepped forward. The man raised a hand, gentle as a benediction, and Strawberry stepped back. His wet shoes squeaked.
“We have another job for you, Strawberry. Last chance.”
“You’re from Florida, aren’t you?”
“Careful, Strawberry. I was told you were obtuse. Just don’t get curious.”
The man in shadow lit a cigarette and inhaled. The ember outlined the edges of his tan face.
“Are you ready to do your part for the shareholders in this country? You know how Patriots are rewarded? Handsomely is the answer, Strawberry.”
The man ashed onto the floor.
“So, Mr. Strawberry, are you ready for your next gig?”
As if he could decline.
“You may be fatuous, but you speak the proletariat language.” A pause. “You do know what a proletariat is, don’t you?”
As if Strawberry would let him know otherwise.
“You’ll embed with a resistance group here. We’ll imprint the details. The government will be…appreciative.”
“And Bentley?”
As if on cue, the elevator dinged softly and Bentley strode out. He wore a thick wool hat and a light gray suit, a black umbrella hooked stylishly over his arm. He tapped his nose as he walked past Strawberry, like he was flicking a gnat, and exited to the street.
Strawberry walked out to the sidewalk and watched Bentley stroll north towards the lake, umbrella raised against the elements. He called for a ride.
Yesterday a cabbie, today a PI, tomorrow – what? A spy?
Such was the world handed down to him.
He glanced at the statue with the cone on its head. He stepped over and slapped the cone away. Underneath was a rat.
Ray Danner 