Bebop Noir

By John Ireland

A schoolteacher moonlighting as a serial killer, an obese cope hiding from mirrors in his own shadow, a woman who can't tell the truth, a man who can't tell the difference, plus a little jazz a little sex a little Shakespeare a little murder, and an Australian lesbian who sings like Mel Torme.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9798350951325

John Ireland

John Ireland was born into the fantasy world of the movies. His father was an Oscar nominated actor. His mother was a more private artist. Ireland fell in love with words and became a writer, producer, and director of television movies, stage plays, and the feature film, "Johnny Morran." When he turned to writing literary fiction, his muses were the crime movies of his youth, combined with French and Italian films from the sixties and seventies. His other passions include modern art, cooking, and racing cars. He lives with his wife in Los Angeles.

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Copyright 2024 by John Ireland

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Print ISBN: 979-8-35094-840-0

The Los Angeles Stories

This is the sixth and last in this anthology of human dramas and comedies. All rooted in the City of Angels, the time is the present, the characters are passengers to an uncertain future, the only technology that is important is the human heart.

Los Angeles is the kaleidoscope through which we view these stories. Smiles lies dreams fears desires hates regrets…like shards of broken glass they litter the city’s sidewalks.

Welcome to LA, where every life is weighed and measured…and available for a price.

Table of Contents

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1

Outside. Night. Rain. An empty street. Latin jazz plays. Muted. Distant. Pushing and pulling, like a river, like a samba, like a woman on the loose, like a man on the run.

Inside. Brown bodies dancing. Music explodes like angry traffic. The dancers are a sea of people. The women tease and the men anticipate. Asses and breasts and muscles and beer and promises and maybes.

The musicians glisten with happiness. Johnny Saturday strains into a trumpet. His suit is neglected, his hair is convenient, his age is that no man’s land between his first piece of ass and his second marriage.

Sweat. Tits. Stella. Everything she is is there. Her body her heart her lies her needs. Her lips are a smoky invitation, her eyes are a warning, her flesh is as white and cool as snow, there’s no bra under her T-shirt and her nipples are as dark as coffee stains.

The dance floor is packed, Carnival in Rio. It takes a few moments for Johnny to realize Stella is by herself. Men offer themselves to her but she dances away. Then she smiles and moves toward Johnny.

Johnny smiles back. My dad always told me that the difference between a flirt and a fuck is the size of the lump on your head. And dad was usually right.

Stella laughs as she disappears back into the mob. Johnny can smell the smoke, he can feel the heat, he just doesn’t want to believe there’s going to be a fire.

During their ten, Johnny and the band share a joint in the back room. Crates of booze and pop are the only chairs. Fat Alvin, the keyboard player, says he would have let her pee in his eyes just to see where it came from. Harry Small, on clarinet, calls women like her a death sentence. Luis Jaminez, the spastic on guitar, wants to express an opinion but can’t get the words out. Fat Alvin tells him to save it for the next set. Bob Marius, the drummer and club owner, tells them it’s time to get back to work.

A different club, a different night, a different music, a different people. Mostly young and white. Johnny’s trumpet is on a heavy solo. Sam the Redman, a six-foot-four Navajo wearing Lolita heart-shaped sunglasses, hammers on the piano so hard the bass player has to smile and wink at Johnny. Sam is long and tall and made of bones and skin. His fingers have been shaped by years at the keys. Music is his only occupation. Heroin is his only vacation. A dream is his only memory. Out of the crowd, like a ghost passing through a wall, dances Stella, looking for Johnny. He points his horn at her and plays dirty sounds, then gestures he wants to talk. She doesn’t say yes or no, just disappears into the crowd.

Driving home that night, Johnny told Sam the Redman, She’s like one of those exotic cars that goes two hundred miles an hour.

Sam said, If that doesn’t kill you, there’s always a guy with a badge waiting down the road who will.

A month later. A Mexican wedding. The families are poor, the booze is cheap, the laughter is rich. Johnny and an accordion player are the only two musicians. The bride and groom perform the Mexican Hat Dance. The guests clap out the beat. Suddenly Stella is there too, looking at Johnny with her body. This time he knows it isn’t an accident and, well, that says it all, doesn’t it?

Night. An aluminum Gypsy village made of several old trailers sits on flat tires and blocks of wood and is sandwiched between two concrete walls. An old brown man sits under the stars and watches a kung fu movie on a portable TV. Johnny and Stella share a bottle of vodka as they stagger and stumble under a Jacob’s ladder of wires supplying bootlegged electricity.

Sam the Redman says I’ve got the mark of the X on me. My bank account is an X, the motor in my car is an X, my apartment is an X, Johnny’s voice and the Asian chatter from the TV are muted by a jet plane taking off.

Stella spins in a circle, looks up at the sky, and yells. What is this place? Where the hell are we?

You’re in a borrowed trailer at the north end of Burbank, next to the airport.

Inside the ruins. Johnny doesn’t bother to turn on a light. The moon sneaks in the trailer’s one window and shows everything they need to see. Abandoned half-read books, a microwave, dirty laundry, a bed. Stella raises her T-shirt over her head.

Johnny watches her breasts sway freely. I’m sleeping on sheets stolen from an ex-girlfriend. Sam the Redman says. . .

Sam the, Red, who is. . . ? She grabs the vodka bottle from him, takes a long swallow, then drips some on her breasts.

Sam the Redman, he’s my. . . Johnny wrestles off his shirt. He’s my conscience.

With her free hand she begins struggling with his belt. I had a conscience, once. I figured out the difference between bad and good when I was five years old. She pours the vodka down his throat and then down her own. Even back then, I knew that bad was going to be more fun than good.

She plants her mouth on Johnny’s and they fall backward. The trailer’s small bed can barely contain them. Their limbs thrash, their voices grunt, their breathing comes in gasps and hisses and whimpers and growls. His hands are slow and sure. She likes it on top.

The same place. Morning. The empty vodka bottle lies on the floor. Bursts of morning sunlight ricochet off the glass and splatter on her naked body lying spread-eagle across the bed. She sleeps like a tiger with fresh kill in its belly.

Johnny, wide awake, naked, sits on a kitchen chair and shakes all over as he tries to bring a cup of coffee to his lips. The smell of her juice and his semen fills the small trailer. He thinks of all the girls he’s fucked and all the girls that have fucked him. None has been as good or as scary. None has been more of a stranger and yet more familiar. That’s what makes Johnny shake – not he vodka or the fucking, but how well he knew her and she knew him, and how easy and relaxed and good it felt.

Green trees hold laundry on hangers. The old brown man sits on the steps of his trailer, still watching the portable TV. A four-year-old brown child cranks the handle on a plastic ukulele and plays Pop Goes the Weasel. The old man and child ignore the voices inside the trailer.

Johnny yells, Jesus, you just woke up and already you’re gone. Try the coffee, talk for a second. I don’t even know your last name.

Do you remember my first?

Yeah, I remember. Sarah.

Stella, you asshole. Stella.

Stella explodes out of the trailer. Johnny appears in the doorway, holding the two cups of coffee. The little girl stops playing her ukulele and looks at them.

Johnny watches Stella disappear into the shadows of the willow trees.

Oil fields. Day. Stocker Road west of LaBrea is a battlefield and a burial ground. Thousands of black pumps churn and plunge into the earth and suck out the thick blood-like goo. Murder and rape and money and success and death and dust-to-dust has turned the once-green hills into a lonely and sad brown clay. The sky is so dirty the sun bounces off the air and rapes Johnny’s eyes with glare as he drinks from a bottle of mescal. Sitting next to Johnny is Sam the Redman, driving the battered Mustang convertible. Sam isn’t Johnny’s only friend, but he is his best.

A Mariachi band laughs and cries from the ancient stereo cassette deck. Johnny and Sam the Redman wear tuxedos and sing along with the music and yell to hear each other when they speak.

Johnny looks at the worm and shakes the bottle of mescal. Knock-knock.

Redman grabs the bottle and drinks. Who’s there?

Why is every girl a one-night stand?

Why is every girl a one-night stand who?

Johnny takes back the bottle, Ahhh, fuck you.

Because you’re a musician.

That explains why I’m a one-night stand, but what about the girl? It was so good that even when we thought we were killing each other we didn’t stop.

You were married.

That was a one-night stand, too. Fucking beggars have more brains than we do. Johnny drinks and swallows the worm. They don’t work, they just sit there, and the money falls in their laps.

Just proves that being smart doesn’t mean being happy.

Being poor does?

Sam is losing patience with Johnny. Are you happy? Right now, today, are you happy?

Johnny gives up the argument. Sam, you sure you’re not a Hindu?

One hundred and ten percent Navajo. . .

They finish the sentence in unison, . . . a hundred percent for mom and dad, plus ten percent for the other guy.

Redman grabs the mescal and drinks. Never forget the other guy, never forget the other guy.

Johnny laughs, the world spins, thunder rumbles and lightning cracks.

Outside a pink box. Pouring rain. Day. The two-story apartment building’s cotton candy-colored walls form a square horseshoe around a chlorine-green kidney-shaped pool. Johnny grunts boxes of his life from an old VW convertible. The cacophony of possessions fills his arms, and the rain follows him up a flight of stairs.

A multi-sexual slab of cellulite with orange hair and wearing an old kimono sags on an oxidizing aluminum lawn chair by the pool and ignores the downpour. No jam sessions.

Johnny stomps through rain puddles, up another flight of stairs, and down the balcony to #9.

Inside. Everything is a cheap collection of leftovers. Johnny dumps his treasure on the Formica kitchen table, pulls out a six-pack, opens a beer, sticks the rest in the fridge.

Back on the street. Johnny slows as he comes down the stairs. Sitting on the VW’s fender is Stella, soaking wet. Stella kicks at him with her foot. Ever hear of suitcases?

Johnny doesn’t answer her as he grabs an armful of loose clothing from the car and heads back up the stairs.

Stella enters #9 and sees that Johnny’s dumped his armful in the middle of the floor. She checks out the fridge, grabs a beer, and explores the hallway.

She finds Johnny in the bedroom. The box spring and mattress rest on the floor. A pole lamp is the only other furniture.

Johnny doesn’t say anything, stands there, sucking on his beer and watching her.

Stella begins making the bed with a set of wrinkled sheets. What would you call this? Minimalism, post-nuclear, what?

Johnny tears tinfoil from the inside of the window. I call it postmortem. It reminds me of where Lenny Bruce died.

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