Neal Pollack

Published by Akashic Books

©2005 Akashic Books

All rights reserved

ALSO IN THE AKASHIC NOIR SERIES:

Brooklyn Noir, edited by Tim McLoughlin

Brooklyn Noir 2: The Classics, edited by Tim McLoughlin

San Francisco Noir, edited by Peter Maravelis

FORTHCOMING:

D.C. Noir, edited by George Pelecanos

Dublin Noir, edited by Ken Bruen

Manhattan Noir, edited by Lawrence Block

Baltimore Noir, edited by Laura Lippman

Twin Cities Noir, edited by Julie Schaper & Steven Horwitz

Los Angeles Noir, edited by Denise Hamilton

London Noir, edited by Cathi Unsworth

Miami Noir, edited by Les Standiford

Now I'’m walkin’' on the sidewalks of Chicago

If I buy the bread I can’t afford the wine

Now I'’m walkin’' on the sidewalks of Chicago

Wishin’' I had lived some other time

—Merle Haggard

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

LUCIANO GUERRIERO 99th & Drexel

Goodnight Chicago and Amen

BAYO OJIKUTU 77th & Jeffery

The Gospel of Moral Ends

PETER ORNER 54th & Blackstone

Dear Mr. Kleczka

JEFFERY RENARD ALLEN 35th & Michigan

The Near Remote

ACHY OBEJAS 26th & Kedvale

Destiny Returns

CLAIRE ZULKEY 19th & Sacramento

The Great Billik

ALEXAI GALAVIZ-BUDZISZEWSKI 18th & Allport

Maximillian

ANDREW ERVIN Canal & Jackson

All Happy Families

M.K. MEYERS Grand & Western

Monkey Head

KEVIN GUILFOILE Grand & Racine

Zero Zero Day

TODD DILLS Chicago & Noble

Arcadia

C.J. SULLIVAN North & Troy

Alex Pinto Hears the Bell

DANIEL BUCKMAN Roscoe & Claremont

Pure Products

AMY SAYRE-ROBERTS Roscoe & Broadway

Death Mouth

JOE MENO Lawrence & Broadway

Like a Rocket With a Beat

NEAL POLLACK Clark & Foster

Marty’s Drink or Die Club

ADAM LANGER Albion & Whipple

Bobby Kagan Knows Everything

JIM ARNDORFER I-94, Lake Forest Oasis

The Oldest Rivalry

INTRODUCTION

ONCE THERE WAS A CITY

While I was working as a reporter in Chicago, from 1993 to 2000, the city changed. Very profound, you say. Of course the city changed in seven years; that’s what cities do. True enough, but cities change during certain periods more than others. In the ’90s, Chicago changed a lot, and it’s changed even more, and more quickly, in the years since I’'ve left.

It’s very possible to visit Chicago these days and see no more grit than you would in, say, Indianapolis. During his nearly twenty-year reign over the city, Richard M. Daley has overseen a studied program of urban renewal, civic booster-ism, and tourist pleasing. His Chicago shines with a well-buffed gloss. One by one, the weird old bars and restaurants, the bizarre little museums, the hardware stores that never had any customers disappeared, some in blatant land-grabs, others subtly, almost imperceptibly, like construction dust blown out to the lake. In their place stand condos and fresh-brick branch libraries, a Frank Gehry bandshell, and a spaceship in the middle of Soldier Field. In many ways, it’s a better city than the one Mayor Daley inherited, but it’s a far less interesting one, and it certainly makes for less interesting stories.

Chicago’s literature, with a brief detour into the world of Saul Bellow and occasional forays by Theodore Dreiser, has rarely concerned itself with the vagaries of the upper and upper-middle classes. The city’s best writers—Nelson Algren, James Farrell, Studs Terkel, Richard Wright, and so on—have traditionally used working people as their palette. They accurately captured the rough streets and random cruelty of urban life, but for people living in Chicago, their stories meant something more. They shaped the way Chicagoans think about themselves, and about Chicago.

The excellent new stories I’'ve collected in this volume try to fill the gap between how the world sees Chicago and how Chicago sees itself. Many of the stories take nostalgia as a theme. Some have a yellowing snapshot feel, as though they'’re trying to archive a city that’s just about gone. Adam Langer looks wistfully back at neighborhood life in the 1970s. C.J. Sullivan’s protagonist, long past whatever sad prime he once had, also remembers the ’70s as a golden age. Peter Orner drifts even further back, to the 1950s, while inhabiting the mind of one of Chicago’s most sinister criminals, and Claire Zulkey visits the city 100 years ago, when people were strange and their crimes even stranger. Now that was a city worth writing about.