Dark End Of The Street - Andrew Madigan

An American Hard-Boiled Mystery Novel

Dark End Of The Street by Andrew Madigan

Book excerpt

Horvath has time to kill so he starts walking uptown, blisters be damned.

It’s early spring. The sun is shining, birds are singing, flowers are in bloom, all that pretty stuff.

Full belly, fresh pack of smokes, sun on his face. What more could a guy want?

He stops in a record store and starts flipping through through the albums lined up in wooden bins. He’s been meaning to buy the new one from that young guy. Beard, steely gaze. Washington Somethingorother. Or maybe Somethingorother Washington.

A clerk is walking by. He’s got one of those faces that Horvath just can’t stand. Prim little mouth, upturned chin, untrustworthy eyes. Hair that spends too much time in front of the mirror, admiring itself. He’s got black-framed glasses, a little mustache, and a hat perched on the side of his head like a guy who’s about to jump off a building.

He stops the clerk, against his better judgment. “Excuse me.”

“What is it?”

The way he says this, it sounds more like Why the hell are you bothering me? I got things to do, places to be.

“I’m looking for a record.”

The clerk gives him a no-shit glare.

“Washington…something. Young jazz player. Alto sax, maybe.”

The clerk is silent, inspecting his nails. Guy works in a record store, but he thinks he’s the King of Siam.

“I heard good things.”

“I have no idea.” The clerk sighs. “I mean, Washington’s a really common name, you know? Especially for jazz musicians.”

He’s lucky I haven’t been drinking, Horvath thinks. And that I’m not in the mood for any rough stuff.

“It’s the name of a city, too.” The clerk walks off toward the back room. He’s got teeth to polish, lines to memorize.

He thinks of all the Washingtons he’s passed through. Charmless, forgettable little nothing towns. Dirty, foul, rat-infested sewers. Feral beasts covered in grime and corruption instead of fur. Of course, there’s also Washington, DC, the filthiest town of all.

They’ve got a whole section of Lester Young. That’s a good sign.

He grabs the record Young made with Roy Eldridge and Harry Edison and heads for the listening booth. A peroxide blonde smiles at him from the blues aisle, but he’s not in the mood for small talk. And from the looks of her, the talk would be pretty damn small.

The first side starts to spin. When the needle hits the groove, Horvath thinks of a trolley car rolling across town on steel tracks.

Lester Young could blow sax like other men breathe. He didn’t follow a path. When he played, it was like a Chrysler racing down the side of a mountain. You always felt it would spin out of control, though it rarely did.

He didn’t bother with Side 2. There’s no way it could live up to the first half.

On the way out he sees the blonde, who’s sizing up a tall thin man looking at R&B singles.

The clerk looks over at Horvath and scrunches his eyebrows like a couple of hedgehogs wrestling. Cheap bastard, he thinks. Didn’t even buy a newspaper.

It’s time for a drink so Horvath turns left and heads downtown. The streets are dirtier but the whiskey’s cheaper. That’s a pretty good trade-off, as far as he’s concerned.

Smith’s Tavern. The locals probably call it Smittie’s.

He pushes through the front door and takes a seat at the bar.

The place is dark, nearly empty. It’s quiet and there aren’t a lot of pictures on the walls. Just the way he likes it.

Two young men huddle at a table by the window, heads together, wearing faces they borrowed from a gangster movie. They think they’re a couple of tough guys. He sees a bulge under the arm, where a holster should be.

An older woman sits alone at the end of the bar. She stares at the empty glass in front of her the way you’d look at a man’s suit hanging in the closet after he died. She’s falling fast and one of these days she’s going to hit rock bottom.

The bartender’s standing there, looking down at Horvath.

“Whiskey, neat.”

The bartender makes the smallest movement that would count as a nod. He follows this by reaching down to the rail for a bottle of rye without taking his eyes off the customer.

“You got a jukebox?” he asks.

“No.”

“Good.”

It takes a couple seconds, but the bartender smiles.

He has a few drinks, but not a few too many. He needs to keep his wits about him.

He thinks about that Lester Young record. Would’ve been nice, but he’s running low on cash. And he likes to travel light. Only a sucker walks around all day with a shopping bag. Never know when you might need your hands.

After the first drink, Horvath starts thinking about the stiff he dumped in the trash bin.

They told me there’d be bodies. This is a bad town, and everybody knows it.

Wasn’t my guy. That much I know. But who was he? Didn’t have an ID or billfold.

What does it have to do with me? Nothing, maybe. Could be a coincidence.

But no, Horvath doesn’t believe in those.

Happened right outside my window. Did they see the chalk mark? Were they trying to tell me something? Maybe it was a message, a little postcard sealed in blood.

I better check in. He raises his chin at the bartender, who sees him but doesn’t move an inch. He’s got a newspaper in his mitts, pretending to read it.

After a few long seconds, the bartender puts down the paper and walks over real slow like he’s got anvils where his feet should be. He yawns, leans against the bar, looks down at Horvath with eyes like crosshairs.

He says nothing the way other men say Yeah, this better be good.

What is it with bartenders?

“Whaddya need, pal?”

“You got a payphone?”

“Yeah, in back.” He jerks his head over his shoulder.

Horvath sees a dark hallway behind the bar.

“Change for a dollar?”

The bartender makes change, begrudgingly, and slaps it on the bar. “Want me to take the air out of your glass?”

“Sure, make it a double this time.”

The bartender pours the drink, pushes it forward.

“Say, you Smith?”

He looks at Horvath with dead eyes.

“You know, Smith’s Tavern. You the owner?”

The bartender shakes his head. “There ain’t no Smith, far as I know.”

“It’s just a name, huh? Doesn’t mean anything?”

“Something like that. Guy named Childers runs the place.” The bartender aims the double barrel of his eyes at Horvath. “Why you wanna know?”

“Just curious.”

The men are quiet now, but the bartender doesn’t back away.

“Thanks for the drink.”

The bartender nods, shuffles back to his paper.

He downs the whiskey, hops off the barstool, and walks around the bar. One of the young men by the window looks over for a second, but then goes back to his conversation. The old woman doesn’t even notice he’s there. Just keeps staring at that empty glass.

Dartboard, cigarette machine, ashtray that needs to be dumped.

Big empty room off to the left. He remembers the old days, when women weren’t allowed in the bar. Had to sit in a side room if they wanted a drink.

He walks down the hallway, decorated in early Mildew with accents of Water Damage and Wood Rot. I guess you’d call the style Eclectic. They keep the lights dim so you can’t see just how decrepit the place really is.

At the end of the hallway, there’s a sliver of light coming from a small room. He puts his ear to the door. Two men are talking, arguing. Maybe there’s three of them. Silence walks in when they stop to drink.

Phone’s on the wall, to his right. He puts in a couple dimes and calls Ungerleider, his contact at the firm.

It’s a short call. Ungerleider doesn’t have much to say because he never does. To him, a couple grunts is like a Shakespeare play. Horvath keeps it short, too. He’s just checking in. Telling them what he knows, which isn’t much, and seeing if they have any new information. They don’t.

He hangs up and checks the slot for change. Empty.

The boys in the back room are still quiet. It must be time to shut up, sit back and drink. He smiles. After a few more rounds they’ll be arguing again, and then the fists will come out to play.

He lights up and leans back against the wall. There’s one thing he didn’t tell Ungerleider. He found something in the alley, near the body. A clue.

That’s another thing McGrath taught him—always hold something back, just in case.

Plus, he isn’t sure it’s a clue, not yet. He needs to poke his nose around first. Life is filled with leads that turn into nothing but dead-ends.

Book Details

AUTHOR NAME: Andrew Madigan

BOOK TITLE: Dark End Of The Street

GENRE: Crime & Mystery

PAGE COUNT: 306

IN THE BLOG: Best Hard-Boiled Detective Novels