Kirby's Last Circus Read online

  “Decoration Day.”

  “You got lucky—Moss owes me twenty-five.”

  “When did he borrow it?”

  “Decoration Day.”

  Bud Hackelson came in, nodded to Kirby, and went to the south end of the bar. Lulu popped a splotched glass and a bottle of Hickory Barrel Ale onto the mahogany and turned to saunter after Bud Hackelson, smiling, her full buttocks rolling provocatively. Kirby yawned and took a slug of his drink. Funny how a woman’s walk can change so abruptly. Kirby knew the signs—they had something on the fire, Bud and Lulu. It’d peak, they’d hit the hay, Lulu would pussy-whip him within an inch of his life, and Bud Hackelson would never again be seen within howitzer range of Lulu’s Jungle Tap. Lulu lost more damned customers that way. Kirby sat, sipping his beer, watching Bud and Lulu play grab-ass until the telephone rang. Lulu answered and waved to Kirby, holding the phone aloft. “For you, Birch—it’s Jim Gallagher.”

  Kirby took the phone and said, “Where the hell are you?”

  “Armitage and Albany—The Chili Pepper—know the place?”

  “Been by it—smack-dab in the middle of Tortillaville.”

  “Yeah, how soon can you make it?”

  “Twenty minutes, outside—what’s up?”

  “I may have a problem here—three tacos want to take me out in the alley.”

  “What for?”

  “To work me over. As I recall, it had something to do with the fucking Alamo—one of these characters claims to be a shirt-tail relative of Santa Anna.”

  “Jim, this is getting monotonous. Last week it was that joint on Division Street.”

  “This is no time for trivialities.”

  “I’m leaving now.”

  “I’ll try to stall ’em. Be in the alley.”

  Kirby hung up, grabbed his cigarettes, dodged traffic crossing Diversey Avenue to his Ford, peeled rubber leaving the curb, ran half-a-dozen red traffic signals while careening southeast, and hit Armitage and Albany in fifteen minutes flat. He sprinted into the alley behind the Chili Pepper and stopped short. Jim Gallagher was there with three Mexicans, one of whom was conscious, squatting against a rotting wooden fence, holding his head and groaning. Jim Gallagher was perched on a garbage can, smoking a cigarette. He smiled sheepishly. He said, “I couldn’t stall ’em.”

  Kirby said, “Which one’s the relative of Santa Anna?”

  Gallagher said. “I forget—what the hell, they all look alike.”

  Kirby said, “So now what?”

  Gallagher said, “Well, we could drive down to North Avenue.”

  “What’s on North Avenue?”

  “Diablo’s Den.”

  “What’s at Diablo’s Den?”

  “More Mexicans.”

  “Pass.”

  Gallagher blew on his knuckles. “Okay, we’ll go to Lulu’s and sing.”

  They went to Lulu’s and sang. They sang “Did Your Mother Come from Ireland?” and “Peg o’ My Heart” and “Galway Bay” and somebody called the fucking police. Kirby would have bet five hundred dollars that it was Lulu, but Kirby didn’t have five hundred dollars. Not at that time.

  Two

  They call it depression, or melancholia, or the blues, or the black dog. Whatever they call it, Birch Kirby had it. It wasn’t an occasional thing with Kirby, it seemed permanent—a downward pressure that threatened to hammer his brain into his socks, a vast weariness more mental than physical, a numbing treadmill fatigue that comes when effort has outdistanced accomplishment and the future is nowhere to be seen. Kirby was on the shady side of thirty-seven and he was sick of the big gray city on the diseased lake. He was a loser gorged with losing and fed up with fellow losers, the fever was deep in his belly, in his eyes, in his soul, a man damned if he quit and damned if he didn’t. The best spans of his existence were those spent in sleep because sleep brought dreams that Kirby didn’t recognize as dreams until he awakened, dreams that held hope for that moment or that hour or however the hell long dreams last, and hope to Birch Kirby was a golden-haired lady in a silver gown—he’d seen her many times, she’d come with his dreams, but always her face had been turned from him.

  At two-thirty in the morning he was sleeping the deep sleep, the sweet sleep, the sleep of sleeps, when his telephone jangled him out of it, one level at a time. When he’d managed to break the surface he sat up in bed, plucked the phone from its cradle, dropped it, lost it, found it in his shorts, fished it out, glared at it, and said nothing. Tizzie Bonkowski’s voice rustled on the line, cautious, subdued. She’d be using the emergency telephone she kept hidden in her bathroom laundry hamper. “Birch?”

  “Yeah, Tiz?”

  “Birch, trouble!”

  “Okay, Tiz, hang on.” Kirby hung up, piled out of bed, dug his clothing out of a chair, and dressed fumblingly to ease from his apartment and across the hall. He located Tizzie’s key on his ring, unlocked her door, and stepped into her living room. Tizzie Bonkowski sat huddled on her sofa, trembling as with a chill, her lank peroxide-blonde hair straggling about her drawn face, her large, pale-blue eyes wide with fear. The front of her black satin pajamas had been ripped out, and high on her left cheek there was a livid bruise that would be a full-fledged shiner before dawn. At her tiny bar a hulking, hairy-faced man mixed himself a drink. Kirby waved to him. He said, “Well, hi, there!”

  The hairy-faced guy wrinkled a fuzzy lip and growled, “All right, you sonofabitch, out—I mean now!”

  Kirby said, “Aw, looky, fella, don’t be that way!” He approached Tizzie Bonkowski’s guest, extending a peaceful hand and smiling his most ingratiating busted-tooth smile. The hairy-faced character wasn’t buying any olive branches. He coiled and lashed out like a diamondback rattler. Kirby brushed a schoolyard haymaker into thin air and buried his left fist to the wristwatch in the big man’s solar plexus, doubling him up like an eleven-dollar jack-knife. He brought him erect with a right uppercut and tagged him with a crisp left hook and a whistling right. He caught him in a fireman’s-carry as he crumpled floorward, lugging him into the hallway and pitching him down the stairs. When the prolonged rumbling had ceased, Tizzie Bonkowski appeared in his doorway. She chirped, “Thanks, Birch! Come in, won’t you?”

  Kirby smothered a yawn. “Not tonight, Tiz, thanks anyway.”

  “Just for a little while?”

  “Naw, Tiz, I’m still half-asleep. You’d better put some ice on that eye.”

  “I will, right away. You’re always welcome, Birch.”

  “I know that, Tiz.”

  “Birch?”

  “Yeah, Tiz?”

  “Your fly’s open.”

  “Yeah, well, you see, I got dressed in a hurry. Goodnight, Tiz.”

  Kirby liked her, he really did, he liked her a whole bunch. When you’ve slept with a woman a few dozen times, when you’ve listened to her mumble in her sleep and felt her snuggle against you in the dead of the night, you get hunches, and Kirby had a hunch that Tizzie Bonkowski was one helluva female, even if she was a twenty-five-dollar hooker.

  Within five minutes Kirby was sleeping the deep sleep, the sweet sleep, the sleep of sleeps, and Hope had returned to his bedside, a golden-haired lady in a silver gown, but her face was turned from him and this saddened Kirby, even in his sleep.

  Three

  Lulu O’Doul said, “A penny for your thoughts.”

  Kirby came out of his dark brown study to glance around Lulu’s Jungle Tap like he’d never seen the place before. He said, “Don’t get in over your head.” He and Lulu were the only people in sight, and his Hickory Barrel Ale had gone flat. “I was sort of hoping that Jim Gallagher would come in this afternoon.”

  “Why—so you two can get into a brawl with a couple bricklayers?”

  “I don’t know any bricklayers.”

  “No? Well, I’ll bet Gallagher does! You bastards drive me crazy! If you ain’t in a fight, you’re raping poor ‘Little Annie Rooney’!”

  “We never raped ‘Little Annie Rooney
’ here—we rape ‘Little Annie Rooney’ over at Bailey’s Keg. Bailey always requests ‘Little Annie Rooney.’”

  “Bailey is a drunken, stone-deaf masochist.”

  “Jack Bailey is a highly intelligent and sensitive man.”

  “Uh-huh, and Attila the Hun wore panty-hose. Say, I heard somebody busted into Doc Anzivino’s office last night.”

  “Yeah, kids, probably, looking for dope.”

  “Dope—what kind of dope? Dentists don’t got H or coke.”

  “Then maybe it was needles.”

  “Pushers give needles away. It’s a standard introductory offer. You live in Doc’s building—hear anything unusual during the night?”

  “Yeah, a guy fell down the stairs. Helluva ruckus.”

  “That ain’t unusual in Doc’s building. I hear tell that ten, twelve guys fall down them stairs damn near every week! What’s wrong with ’em?”

  Kirby shrugged. “Drunk, I suppose.”

  “I’m talking about the stairs!”

  “Oh—well, nothing, except that the light ain’t too bright up there.”

  Lulu didn’t respond. She was staring through her murky plate glass window. She frowned and said, “Who do you know that drives a long black Cadillac?”

  “Foggy Dugan.”

  “Who’s Foggy Dugan.”

  “The chauffeur at Nash-Courtney Funeral Parlor on Lawrence Avenue.”

  “The guy who always wears roses in his lapel—steals ’em from the flower car? That bastard?”

  “Sometimes it’s a carnation.”

  “Well, anyway, this ain’t Foggy Dugan.”

  Kirby turned to watch a big man depart the Cadillac parked in front of Lulu’s. He wore a rumpled gray leisure suit, a powder-blue sports shirt, and shiny black loafers. His dark hair was silver-flecked and thinning but he was tanned and fit-looking and Kirby would have thought twice before calling him anything but “sir.” He carried himself well, walking lightly, shoulders back, belly sucked in tight, and he had the gnarled hands of a lumberjack. He was bushy-browed and steely blue-eyed with the battered nose of a club-fighter, a tight, turned-down-at-the-corners, thin-lipped mouth, and a jutting, confident jaw. He stalked into the dim confines of Lulu’s Jungle Tap, pausing briefly to take stock of his strange surroundings before easing his considerable bulk into a booth. Lulu leaned over the bar and muttered, “Batten down the hatches—I think the joint’s just been busted.”

  Kirby shook his head. “Not by this cat. He ain’t no cop.”

  “Why ain’t he no cop?”

  “He don’t got that defeated look—Chicago cops all got that defeated look.”

  Lulu sighed. “Okay, hold onto your hat.” She left the bar and headed for the booth to speak briefly with the newcomer, flicking her eyes in Kirby’s direction during the conversation. When she returned, she wore a puzzled expression. She said, “Birch, he wants to talk to you!”

  Kirby said, “Then he’s some kind of fucking bill collector.”

  “I don’t think so. He looks Government to me.”

  “Okay, then he’s Internal Revenue—he’s still a fucking bill collector.” Kirby slid from his barstool and approached the booth the way you approach a crocodile-infested swamp. The big man stood to extend a horny paw the size of a dinosaur ham. He said, “Good afternoon—you’re Birch Kirby?” Kirby nodded and they shook hands. The big man said, “I’m Hastings Jefferson, Chicago director, Central Intelligence Agency.” He flashed a plastic-sealed green and while identification card and gestured Kirby into the booth. “I’d like a few minutes of your time.”

  Kirby said, “Well, look, if it’s about—”

  Jefferson made an impatient deprecatory motion. “It’s about nothing you’re connected with, Kirby.”

  Kirby took a seat in the booth, eyeing Jefferson warily. “Then what’s your problem?”

  Jefferson sat across from Kirby, elbows on the table. His steely blue-eyed stare was penetrating. “That, Kirby, is one helluva good question, and I wish to Christ I knew the answer.”

  Kirby shrugged. “The Egyptian Sun God was ‘Ra,’ if that’ll help.”

  Jefferson shook his head. “It doesn’t.” He loaded a thickly-crusted bulldog black briar pipe with ornery-looking shag tobacco and put a match to it. The resulting conflagration reminded Kirby of the night Livingston’s Used Tire Shop had burned down. He waved the smoke away and Jefferson smiled apologetically. “Sorry. It’s British stuff—I became addicted to it during the war.”

  “The war we won?”

  Jefferson snorted. “Kirby, this nation hasn’t won a war since 1776.” He hunched forward in the booth, lowering his voice a few notches. “You come highly recommended, and I’m confident that you can be of valuable assistance to your country.”

  Kirby said, “Hold it right there! Recommended for what?”

  “We’ll come to that.”

  “Recommended by whom?”

  “One of our people, of course.”

  “Yeah? Well, I don’t know any of your people, of course!”

  “You did, and quite recently.”

  “If you’re talking about Moss Hallahan, the sonofabitch owes me fifteen dollars.”

  “Moss Hallahan? The name isn’t familiar.”

  “Jefferson, you’re confused—you’ve gotten me mixed up with a horse in a different race. I don’t handle anything but divorce stuff.”

  Jefferson studied Kirby with a knowing smirk. “Honest to God, Kirby—nothing but divorce stuff?”

  “That’s right, divorces—ask just about anybody!”

  Jefferson chuckled good-naturedly. “Well, that may be true, and then again it may not be true. At any rate, this weighs in a tad heavier than the average divorce case. I’ll be honest with you—this thing could be dangerous.”

  “Don’t underrate divorce matters—they can get pretty hairy.”

  “I’m talking about physical danger.”

  “So am I. Just a month ago an irate lover piled out of a motel room and chased me two blocks down North Avenue—stark naked, yet!”

  “He must have been pissed.”

  “She sure was!”

  “Well, Kirby, you don’t shun danger. I have it on excellent authority that you acquit yourself satisfactorily in tavern brawls.”

  “I steer clear of tavern brawls, Jefferson.”

  Jefferson nodded, producing a small leather-bound notebook, and paging through it. He said, “All right, let’s see now—on the night of April 14 there was an altercation at the Boom-Boom Club on West Irving Park Road during which you coldcocked two motorcyclists, both of them Hell’s Angels. On the evening of May 10 you kicked the living shit out of a bartender and three truckdrivers at Webster’s Whirlwind on North Austin Boulevard. On the afternoon of May 29 you sent a couple of off-duty Chicago police officers to Ravenswood Hospital. On the—”

  “Cease and desist! You’ve been talking to Jim Gallagher!”

  “Obviously.”

  “Well, for your information, Jim Gallagher started every one of those fights!”

  “No matter, Kirby—no matter at all.”

  “I’d better have a long talk with Jim Gallagher.”

  Hastings Jefferson sucked on his black briar pipe with no results. He relit it carefully, rotating the match over the bowl until the shag tobacco glowed cherry red. He leaned back in the booth and blew a cloud of smoke at the ceiling. He said, “That would be difficult, Kirby—Jim Gallagher’s dead.”

  Four

  The grimy, graffiti-smeared walls of Lulu’s Jungle Tap rushed at Birch Kirby with meteor-like speed, then paused to waver and retract. The great rushing sound in his ears dimmed to a murmur. From atop Lulu’s ancient cash register the autographed glossy 8 × 10 of Kid Gavilan seemed to be staring in disbelief. Hastings Jefferson was saying, “They dug what was left of him out of the debris of that warehouse fire at California and Milwaukee early this morning—charred beyond recognition. Good thing Jim always wore his army dogtags, otherwise he�
�d have been just another John Doe.”

  Kirby sat slack-jawed, peering at Jefferson through misty eyes, saying nothing. He’d loved that Irishman like a brother.

  Jefferson went on. “Jim Gallagher was the Agency’s best trouble-shooter. He couldn’t sit at a desk, he had to be out where things were happening. He spoke very highly of you, Kirby—that’s why I’m here.”

  Kirby tried to clear his throat and rasped, “What the hell was Jim doing in a goddam warehouse?” His voice seemed to be coming from another galaxy.

  “That’s Agency information and you aren’t privy to that—not all of it—not just yet.”

  Kirby croaked, “Accident?”

  Jefferson gritted, “Accident, my balls! Cold-blooded murder, pure and simple! Jim was onto something and they had to silence him!”

  “‘They’—who—who had to silence him—why?”

  “The Russians—Jim was working on something they didn’t want worked on!”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. We see the tip of the iceberg, that’s all.”

  “You’re baying at the moon. Gallagher was a real estate agent.”

  Jefferson shot Kirby one of those looks usually reserved for the very young. He said, “Gallagher knew as much about the real estate business as you know about fucking astronomy, maybe a helluva lot less! Real estate was Jim’s cover! You don’t know anything about covers, do you, Kirby?” His tone dripped sarcasm.

  “Well, he sure looked kosher to me! What the hell, he drove a thirty thousand dollar automobile!”

  The corners of Jefferson’s eyes crinkled with a smile. “Oh, you’re good, all right, Kirby! Gallagher told us that you’re good!”

  “I don’t follow you. Good at what?”

  Jefferson nodded. “All right, Kirby, play your part, it may be best that you do, but, God damn it, man, don’t play it for me! I know better—the entire Agency knows better!”

  “I don’t know what you’ve been drinking, but I’d sure like to meet your bootlegger.”

  Jefferson winked at Kirby. “Okay, let’s consider the obvious, the too obvious—the things you’ve gone to great lengths to make obvious. Ostensibly, you’re flatass busted. Ostensibly, you wrapped up your most recent divorce case three weeks ago and the check bounced. Shall I go on?”