Kansas City Noir

By Steve Paul, J. Malcolm Garcia, Kevin Prufer and Grace Suh

Dark and gritty tales set in the “Paris of the Plains,” including Nancy Pickard’s “Lightbulb”—selected for The Best American Mystery Stories 2013.
 
Akashic Books’ groundbreaking, globetrotting noir anthology series sets all-new stories in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective metropolitan area. Now “Kansas City, famous for its jazz, its barbecue, and its shady history, provides the venue for this solid addition” (Publishers Weekly).
 
This collection includes brand-new stories from J. Malcolm Garcia, Grace Suh, Daniel Woodrell, Kevin Prufer, Matthew Eck, Philip Stephens, Catherine Browder, John Lutz, Nancy Pickard, Linda Rodriguez, Andrés Rodríguez, Mitch Brian, Nadia Pflaum, and Phong Nguyen.
 
“Hard-used heroes and heroines seem to live a lifetime in the stories . . . Each one seems almost novelistic in scope. Half novels-in-waiting, half journalistic anecdotes that are equally likely to appeal to Kansas City boosters and strangers.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Travel has many unexpected benefits, so even if you’ve never had a reason to visit the city itself, you’ll find Kansas City Noir surprisingly well worth the price of the ticket.”—Bookgasm
 
“Picture steam rising from a sewer grate on a rain-slicked street. The sound of footsteps comes closer and closer behind you as you walk down a dark, downtown Kansas City alley. If this scenario entices you, then you just might enjoy Kansas City Noir.”—Kansas City Public Television

• Language: English
• Publisher: Akashic Books
• Release date: Oct 2, 2012
• ISBN: 9781617751448

J. Malcolm Garcia

J. Malcolm Garcia is a freelance journalist and the author of The Khaarijee: A Chronicle of Friendship and War in Kabul and What Wars Leave Behind: The Faceless and the Forgotten. He is a recipient of the Studs Terkel Prize for writing about the working classes and the Sigma Delta Chi Award for excellence in journalism. His work has been anthologized in The Best American Travel Writing, The Best American Essays, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. He lives in Kansas City, Missouri.

Book preview

This collection is comprised of works of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors’ imaginations. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Published by Akashic Books

©2012 Akashic Books

Series concept by Tim McLoughlin and Johnny Temple

Kansas City map by Aaron Petrovich

Cover photo courtesy of the Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, Missouri

eISBN: 978-1-61775-1448

Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-61775-128-8

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012939264

All rights reserved

First printing

Akashic Books

PO Box 1456

New York, NY 10009

[e-mail]

www.akashicbooks.com

Table of Contents

Cover page

Title page

Copyright page

Map

Introduction

PART I: HEARTLAND

MISSING GENE

BY J. MALCOLM GARCIA

Troost Lake

CAT IN A BOX

BY KEVIN PRUFER

Country Club Plaza

MISSION HILLS CONFIDENTIAL

BY GRACE SUH

Mission Hills

COME MURDER ME NEXT, BABE

BY DANIEL WOODRELL

12th Street

THE SOFTEST CRIME

BY MATTHEW ECK

41st and Walnut

YOU SHOULDN'T BE HERE

BY PHILIP STEPHENS

Midtown

PART TWO: CRAZY LITTLE WOMEN

THE INCIDENT

BY CATHERINE BROWDER

Northeast

THE GOOD NEIGHBOR

BY LINDA RODRIGUEZ

South Troost

THELMA AND LAVERNE

BY JOHN LUTZ

West 8th Street

LIGHTBULB

BY NANCY PICKARD

The Paseo

PART III: SMOKE & MIRRORS

YESTERDAYS

BY ANDRÉS RODRÍGUEZ

Milton's Tap Room

LAST NIGHT AT THE RIALTO

BY MITCH BRIAN

The Celluloid City

CHARLIE PRICE'S LAST SUPPER

BY NADIA PFLAUM

18th and Vine

THE PENDERGAST MUSKET

BY PHONG NGUYEN

West Bottoms

About the Contributors

Also in the Akashic Noir Series

Bonus Materials

Twin Cities Noir: Sneak Peek

The Guy by Pete Hautman

About Akashic Books

Introduction

Papa's Blues

It was winter when a young newspaper reporter, recently back from the war in Europe, holed up in a rooming house in Michigan and turned his mind back to Kansas City.

He churned out a story of the kind he hoped one of the magazines would want. There was a murder. There was a mild-mannered newspaper man named Punk Alford. And there was an anguished, effete suspect who stroked a sword's edge as if it were . . . well, you know.

Whether the budding author mailed that early effort to the Saturday Evening Post or any other magazine is unknown. But the story was never published, so Ernest Hemingway's future reputation was spared embarrassment and his apprenticeship in writing continued a few more years.

Hemingway, of course, later penned some of the great noir ur-tales of the 1920s and '30s, notably The Killers and To Have and Have Not. Lesser known among Hemingway's fictional record are murky-toned stories such as A Pursuit Race, about a wigged-out heroin addict, and God Rest You Merry Gentlemen, featuring a castration, both of which share two significant things with the unpublished Punk Alford story—namely, an origin and a setting in Kansas City.

Hemingway was eighteen years old in October 1917 when he arrived in Kansas City from a Chicago suburb to become a reporter at the Kansas City Star. For the next six and a half months, before he decamped to join the ambulance service in Italy, Hemingway discovered, while chasing ambulance surgeons and cops, what we still know: the streets of Kansas City are paved with dark tales aplenty.

Kansas City is a crossroads. East meets West and North meets South here. Since its settlement in the first half of the nineteenth century, Kansas City has represented a place of opportunity, optimism, and ornery behavior. It outfitted travelers and dreamers on the Santa Fe, California, and Oregon trails. It grew on cattle, grain, and lumber. It nurtured Jesse James, jazz, and gin-slinging scoundrels.

When I put out the call for contributions to this collection, I imagined we'd produce tributaries to a fictional stream that extends from nineteenth-century cowboy novels, through Hemingway's brand of gritty tales, and to the contemporary, unsparing visions of his successors. (For a taste of period Kansas City pulp at its peak, try finding—it's not easy—a copy of Tuck's Girl, a paperback novel published in 1952 by another onetime Kansas City Star reporter, Marcel Wallenstein.) I deliberately failed to define noir to prospective contributors. As previous anthologies in this series have shown quite effectively, the term represents a big tent. So here you will indeed find serial killers, moral turpitude, and police detectives at work. But you are just as likely to encounter quieter tales of inner turmoil, troubled reflection, and anxiety. The heart in stress can lead people to unpredictable and midnight-blue places.

In Cat in a Box, Kevin Prufer's veteran detective/protagonist is on the trail of a killer while his own body threatens to change the course of his life and career.

In Nancy Pickard's Lightbulb, a woman climbs deep into regret and guilt over an old memory. Pickard's story also negotiates the long shadow of Kansas City's racial divide, as does Linda Rodriguez's tale of a widower trying to maintain his life's order in a time of upheaval and collision.

Some stories within evoke real places and people, though just a reminder—this is a collection of fiction, not history. In Come Murder Me Next, Babe, Daniel Woodrell, master of Missouri noir, imagines a femme fatale who may resonate with Kansas City readers of a certain age. And in setting Yesterdays in Milton's Tap Room, Andrés Rodríguez imagines an alternate history for the much beloved bootlegger, bar owner, and friend to jazz, who died in 1983. (Milton's, a noirish bar if there ever was one, I add with great affection, also shows up as a touchstone in Philip Stephens's troubling and trenchant Midtown tale, You Shouldn't Be Here.)

By contrast, Nadia Pflaum invents a barbecue legacy that may or may not sound like a real Kansas City institution. (We repeat: any resemblance to real people . . .) And Phong Nguyen steps into that nineteenth-century dime-novel current to imagine an episode from the earlier days of political machinist Jim Pendergast and his famous Climax Saloon.

Some stories take liberties with geography and specific places, which, of course, is the prerogative of fiction writers. Local readers can make their own gotcha lists, though I trust they will do so with a smile and nonetheless recognize their city's pulse reverberating in these pages.

First-time visitors to Kansas City usually note with surprise the greenery and the winding, hilly topography of our sprawling, two-state metropolitan area. Yet even the City Beautiful foliage and suburban finery can hide crime and lives of moral weakness, as Grace Suh displays in Mission Hills Confidential.

Tourists and locals alike love their sports here, their slow-smoked ribs, their shopping, and the gab that goes on at neighborhood bars. Walking on the wild side is a long tradition here too, evidence of the full range of Kansas City's human condition. Our lineup of fine writers explores that condition in numerous and compelling ways. Through wintry chill. Through moonlit mystery. And often, befitting our literary and musical heritage, through singing the blues.

Steve Paul

Kansas City

June 2012

PART I

HEARTLAND

MISSING GENE

BY J. MALCOLM GARCIA

Troost Lake

Evening

Fran's at night school studying for her associate's degree. I don't feel like watching TV so I get out the knife one of the interpreters gave me in Kandahar and start throwing it at the wall. He said he got it off the body of a bad guy who blew himself up laying an IED in the road, but I think he stole it off one of our guys, because it's a Gerber and it doesn't look like it was in any explosion. The terp could throw it and stick it every time. I'm not that good, but I throw it at the wall anyway. I can do it for hours.

I was a contractor over in Kandahar. Electrician. Worked there for twelve months. When my year was up, I flew home to Kansas City and took up with Fran and a couple of months later moved in with her. Mr. Fix It, the soldiers called me. Did some plumbing too. A little out of my league, but at two hundred tax-free grand a year I was more than willing to say I could do anything. I got used to the noise: mortars, sniper fire, return fire, .50-calibers, AKs, generators grinding all night, guys living on top of each other telling dead baby and fag jokes. Awful quiet now that I'm back. Behind Fran's house, I hear buses turn off Prospect and onto 39th Street, drone past and slice into the night until I don't hear anything again. The knife helps. I like the steady repetition of tossing it. The precision of it. Like fly fishing. Gene understood. He fought in Korea.

The trick with the knife, I told Gene, is you got to establish a rhythm. You do that and the silence becomes part of the flow and the plink the knife makes when it enters the wall interrupts the silence, and the small suck sound it makes when you pull it out, and then the silence again until you throw it, again and again.

Right, Gene said.

Next day

This is the third week I haven't seen Gene at Mike's Place. Out of all the regulars, he's the only one missing.

Melissa isn't here but we all know where she is. A public defender, Melissa has a court case this afternoon. I overheard her tell Lyle yesterday she would be working late. And Lyle? He may have a job painting or installing a countertop or a new floor or fixing someone's shitter. What I'm saying is, Lyle's around. He's a handyman. He'll be in later, as will his buddy Tim.

Bill's here. He's retired from working construction and basically sits at the bar all day drinking up his disability. And Mike, of course. It's his bar. The floor dips and the stools wobble, all of them, and the top of the pool table's got a big slash in it and someone walked off with the cue ball, but it's a good place—cheap, and it's only a couple of blocks from Fran's.

Then there's Gene. Or was. He drove off is how I look at it. Flew the coop, as they say. Well, that's it. I'm leaving too. Montana is what I'm thinking. I've been considering a move for a while. I mentioned Montana to Gene. He thought it was a good idea.

Wide open, no people, he said.

Absolutely, I said.

I'll tell Fran tonight.

Evening

What's on at seven?

Golden Girls reruns.

Oh.

You've had beer.

I was at Mike's.

Well, you missed my mother.

Oh . . . yeah?

Yeah. It's all right. I wasn't expecting her.

Fran's mother does that; drops by without calling. She's divorced and bored. Good thing Fran was here instead of me. Her mother nags me when Fran's not around. She knows I'm not going out on many jobs. I've told her we're okay. I earned a bundle in Afghanistan. She thinks I should have stayed another year and made even more.

I'm going to Montana.

Montana?

Yeah.

When?

I don't know.

Oh.

I play solitaire, spreading the cards across the blanket of our bed. I tell Fran not to move her legs beneath the blankets and disturb the cards but she does anyway.

Why Montana?

It's wide open.

Fran doesn't look up from her book, The General and the Spy. A man on the cover wears an open red tunic and some tight-ass white pants a real guy'd never wear. His skin's the color of a dirty penny and he has no hair on his chest. A woman's got her hands on his stomach, ready to rip into those pants I bet.

Fran folds the corner of a page, closes the book, and wipes tears from her eyes.

Nobody cries over those kinds of books, I tell her.

Montana?

I'm thinking about it. Gene's missing.

Who?

A guy I know.

Fran goes, Let's change the channel. Then let's talk.

Go ahead. Change it.

I changed it last time.

What do you want to watch? I ask.

I don't know.

She picks up her book and puts it down again. We stare at the TV, the remote between us.

Next day

Bill sits beside me at Mike's, buys me a beer. Crass old fucker Bill. Bald as a post and bug-eyed. He's always hunched over and rocks back and forth and makes these sick jokes about his neck being so long he can lick his balls like a dog. Deaf as Stevie Wonder is blind.

Hey, Bill, Tim says.

What you say? Bill asks.

Fuck you, Bill, Tim says.

What you say?

Tim laughs. Laughs loud and talks loud like we're all deaf as Bill. He sits at the end of the bar where Gene always stood, wipes his hands on his sweatshirt and jeans. Tim works in a warehouse in the West Bottoms. Refrigeration parts. Something like that. Comes in grimed in grease and oil. Starts at five in the morning and works all the time, weekends too. With jobs the way they are, is he going to say no when his boss offers him extra hours? I don't think so. Not with paying out child support to his ex.

His money being so tight is why he killed his dog's puppies. At least that's how he explains it. The dog, a brown and white mix between this and that, had a litter of seven. He put six of them in a pillow case and dropped them in Troost Lake. Then he shot the dog. Easier than getting her fixed. I stopped sitting next to Tim when I heard about the puppies.

Every time I think of them, I'm reminded of these Afghan laborers in Kandahar. One afternoon they found some puppies when they were collecting trash. A trash fire was burning and they threw the puppies into the fire. You want to hear some screaming, listen to puppies being barbecued. I hear them now. I ball up my fist and right hook my temple once, twice, three times, waiting for what I call relief pain to wrap my skull and take their shrieks out of my head. Tim and Bill look at me. I open my fist.

Fucking mosquito, I say and smack the side of my face again.

Big-ass mosquito, Tim says, still looking at me.

It's strange seeing him in Gene's spot at the end of the bar. Gene never sat, just stood. No matter how cold, he always wore shorts, a T-shirt, and a windbreaker. Brown shoes and white socks. Legs skinny and pale as a featherless chicken. Wore a cap that had the dates of the Korean War sewn in it. He told me that Kansas City winters didn't compare to a winter in Korea.

I saw frozen bodies stacked like cord wood covered with ice, Gene said. Some of them I put there.

It got cold in Afghanistan too, I said.

I remember one time when this truck driver got to Kandahar in December. Brand new. Just off the bus. He was so wet behind the ears I had to tell him where the chow hall was. He kept rubbing his hands together and I pointed out the PX where he could buy some gloves. He went on his first convoy an hour later. This guy, he got in his rig, took off, but realized he was in the wrong convoy. He turned back to the base and approached the gate fast because he was out in no man's land by himself. You didn't approach the gate fast. You didn't do that. But he was scared. Some Australians shot him five times with a .50 cal. I mean, he was obliterated. They had to check his DNA to figure out who he was. Less than two hours after I showed him the chow hall, I saw them put his body pieces in bags.

Evening

Fran tells me what I'm planning is called a geographic. Moving to get a new start somewhere else in the mistaken belief you'll leave your bad habits behind is how she puts it. She studied psychology last fall and thinks she can pick apart my mind now.

I mean it. I'm gone, I say.

She goes, When you decide to do it, just go. Don't bother telling me because I'm not going with you. Men have left me before. I survived. I'll survive you. Leave before I come home. Make it easy on us both.

I will, I say. I can do that.

Okay, she goes, okay.

Next day

Just me in here this afternoon.

What's the latest on Gene? I ask Mike.

Haven't heard a thing, he says.

Mike has owned Mike's for ten years. He was in a band, got married, and had a kid. In other words, time to get a real job. So he bought the bar and named it after himself. He's divorced now, sees the kid every two weeks, plays gigs occasionally, and runs this place. Says if he ever sells it, the buyer will have to keep the name. Years from now nobody will know who the hell Mike was but his name will be here. A piece of himself nobody will know and can't shake off. That's one way to make an impression.

I first came to Mike's by chance. I used to drink at another bar on the Paseo but one night it was packed. After Kandahar, I couldn't handle crowds, so I left. On my way home, I stopped at Mike's. Some lights on but barely anyone in it. I had a few beers and came back the next night. Two nights in a row and Mike figured he had himself a new regular. He bought me a beer and said his name was Mike. We shook hands. Sealed the deal, as they say.

I met Fran here. She was shooting pool by herself. Bent over the table, her ass jutted high and round against her jeans, and any man with a nut sack would have known that if she looked that nice from behind she'd be more than tolerable face-to-face. And, if she wasn't, so what with an ass like that. But she was fine all the way around.

She had light brown hair and a determined look. My glance moved down past her chin and rested on a set of perky tits that pressed just hard enough against her T-shirt that my imagination did not have to strain too hard to know what would be revealed when she undressed. I asked to shoot pool with her and we got to chitchatting. One thing led to another is what I'm saying.

I'm not sure when I noticed Gene. I just did. I remember seeing this old man at the end of the bar and thinking how solitary he looked, how he was off in his own world. He had one of those faces that sort of collapsed when he didn't talk, mouth and chin merging into a flat, frowning pond. When he took off his hat, the light shined on his bald, freckled head. He'd still be standing in his spot when I left a couple of hours later, the same bottle of Bud he had when I first came in half empty and parked in front of him. He barely said a word to me in those days. Just nodded if we looked each other's way. But then as I began showing up every night, he started saying hello and I'd say hello back.

Evening

Fran and I drop our plates onto the crumb-graveled carpet for our beagle to lick. Partly chewed pizza crust, orange grease. Slobbered up in seconds. I reshuffle the cards.

I'm going to sleep, Fran says.

Say what?

Turn the TV off.

I'm still up.

Turn it down then.

It's not loud.

Please.

But it's not.

Shhh.

I shut off the TV, go out to the living room. I sit in the dark fingering my knife. The way Gene has vanished, an eighty-year-old man. I can't help but notice the empty space at the bar. Like a radiator turned off. All that dead air, dead space.

Funny what you learn about a guy after he's gone. For instance, Tim and Lyle said that Gene would come to Mike's at eleven in the morning. He would stay all day and apparently be pretty toasted by the time

Reviews for Kansas City Noir

[jess_reads · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I listened to this book at work this summer and also on a road trip. The most compelling thing about this book was that all of the stories were based in or referenced Kansas City, so it was fun to actually picture the locations that were mentioned. Other than that, the stories were less than compelling and many of the characters were pretty unlikable. That being said, while I read mysteries, I'm less familiar with noir as a sub genre and this style may not be my kind of book. (I have picked up a copy of Seattle Noir, and will test this theory at a later date.)