A Dame is a Monkey Wrench (noir short fiction)

(Originally written for OU’s Intro to Creative Writing class)

“I know what you think I am. What you think I did,” I say to the man with the gun. “You think I wanted him dead. That all I cared about was the cash. Well you’re dead wrong. Wants and facts are two different things, and the fact is the sun went down on all my wants that day.”

His cigar’s presence is strong, clinging to the air like a wino to the bottle. The gun is what concerns me. It’s the dog and I’m the mailman; before this is all over, it’ll bite. Tale as old as time.

“My life ended like a cigarette in the downpour that night, I’m just a dead girl walking,” I say. “You won’t get anything from me because the getting is long gone.”

“Maybe you should be talkin’,” he says. “Maybe you should tell about what happened, start wherever you like but end with what happened to the money and where my piece ended up. Maybe tell about Jackie too. I miss him,” he takes a long drag from the cigar and blows a ring in my face. Thick, strong tobacco invades my senses and it all comes flooding back. “We’ve got another chapter until we can close this particular book.”

***

It all started during the day shift of a nightclub, he was holding aces and eights when our eyes met from across the room.  I was just a waitress, then; no idea that I’d fall in love, become wildly rich, and lose it all before the end of the month. I watched men gamble their lives away every time I went to work, I should have known better but… Well, you look at those steely eyes and that flawless grin and try to tell Jack “no.” You can’t.

I followed him out of the building, he’d forgotten his wallet. 

“Sir, your wallet!” I called out as he stepped into the cab. 

He took it from me. “Thanks, sweetie,” he looked through the bulging leather vessel and counted every bit of green right in front of me. “I’m missing a Benjamin here. You know anything about that?” He asked it playfully but I knew how men could feel inside with a smile displayed like that. 

“Oh, I thought maybe I could get a reward?” I said, feigning embarrassment. 

“A reward before returning it? That’s good,” He took all the cash from inside—Four-hundred dollars, U.S.—and tipped me. “Your real reward,” he said.

“But-”

“There’s more money in the world, sweetie,” he said. “A whole lot more. And it’s mine for the taking.”

“Well, anytime you feel like spending that money…” I gestured to the nightclub. 

“Oh, honey,” he said. “It’s too much for one man. A guy like me needs a little help every now and then. Besides, you’ve proved you wanna take it just as much as me. Whadda ya say?” He opened the cab door and slid down the seat. He patted the open chair. The driver looked at me, then the meter. 

I couldn’t just go, could I? With this man I’d never met? With the man who bet high and lost big? With the man who carried too much cash to be straight?

Then I saw those steely eyes. That grin.

“Yes,” I said. I got in.

That was the first night of the rest of my short life.

***

We didn’t go where I expected. Not at first.

The diner had alternating purple and blue waves along its walls and patterning its booths. Jack chose a booth all the way in the corner, intended for larger gangs than ours of two. 

I ordered a club and cherry soda. He ordered flapjacks and joe. I waited with bated breath for him to speak. To explain. Why had I gotten in that cab?

“So, Grace…” He started.

“How’d you know my name is Grace?” I asked.

“I know the name of every girl in that club, forwards and backwards. The owner and me… We go back.”

I nodded. 

“So, Grace, you’re probably second-guessing yourself about now. Thinking ‘If this doesn’t go right, I can take my sandwich and hit the pavement’ and you’re okay for that. Before we go any further I need to ask, what’s the biggest crime you ever committed?”

Images flashed in my brain as a response to this. The .22 in my purse that day on the beach. His eyes… calm and then surprised and then frozen. His head erupting like a popped balloon. Blood on the sand. I thought these things as I said: “I stole a car when I was sixteen… My dad’s. He never pressed charges and I never set foot in Rhode Island again.”

“Grand theft auto? I didn’t know you had something like that in you!” He laughed as he said this. He sipped his coffee and looked at me with a different thirst in mind. “Prove it.”

“What? How?”

“I’ll go to the bathroom, cause a big scene, get the attention of all the Jacks and Jills around here while you go skim the register. Just take what they won’t notice, okay? We don’t need heat before a job like this but I want you to prove you can do something like this.”

I cracked my knuckles. “Shall we?”

Jack was already up and gliding to the back of the house where the facilities were located. I waited one moment, then two. Soon enough Jack was hooting and hollering for help. One waitress went back, then two. Everyone’s eyes were on the hallway to the water closet and none were on the till. I walked, slowly and inconspicuously over to the counter and slid the drawer open. I took two fivers and enough quarters to buy a few comic books. I started back toward my seat but saw that Jack was gonna be awhile, seeing this through. I took the time to refill his coffee and grab a pie from the display. 

When he came back from his bathroom job he saw my haul. He smiled like a dad who just found out his son enlisted to fight the Reich. 

When things settled a bit he spoke up. “That’s more or less what we’ll be doing… Only you’d be the eye candy like I just was. The cause for no alarm, you get it?”

I nodded. Easy enough.

Our food arrived and he waited until the gal was out of earshot to continue. He grabbed the salt and pepper shakers, the ketchup and mustard, a packet of sugar and the cup of cream. 

“We’re lookin’ at a basic armored car gig. The cream is the car.” He moved the cream to the middle. “Meet our driver Salt and passenger Pepper.” The shakers were positioned in front of the creamer. “Now, Salt and Pepper see Sugar—that’s you—in the road one day so they have to stop. One goes to investigate, to help you out and see if you’re hurt while Ketchup and Mustard—me and my partner—go and get the other to open up the back of the car for us, nice and calm.” He mimicked the action on the table, then took the creamer and poured it into his coffee. “And the joe is our wallets, getting nice and rich.”

“What about Salt and Pepper? Someone’s gonna cry ‘wolf!’”

“Knock 'em down.” He knocked down the shakers. “Drag ‘em out.” He placed them back in their caddy at the edge of the table. “By the time Sherlock arrives we’ll be somewhere not called Baltimore.”

“Where’s that?”

“Plenty of places aren’t called Baltimore, sweetie. Take your pick.” He finished his coffee with a smirk.

***

The cab pulled into the parking lot of an abandoned auto shop. “You’re joking, right?” I asked. 

Jack handed the cabby some cash from his shirt pocket and the driver burned rubber getting out of there. A rat investigated the garbage pile closest to us. “Home sweet home,” he joked. “It’s temporary.”

We walked in and somehow the inside looked worse. What were at one point pin-up posters were now rugs. Tattered and dirty on the ground—and not the kind of dirty they were intended to be. An old chassis sat above one of the bays, it’d been stripped for parts and left to rust a long time ago. The whole building had. I started to wonder if I’d made a mistake, this was a place for bad things and worse people, but I wouldn’t have confirmation that I did make a mistake until much, much later. 

“Who’s there?” A voice from the back called out. “Lemons?”

Jack looked at me. “My last name,” he explained. “That would be Mustard calling out from the back—I wasn’t just jokin’ before. His last name’s really Mustard,” then he called out, “Yeah, we’re here, Bert!”

“We?” Bert asked. He rounded the corner, finishing a Coke as he went. He launched the bottle into a corner and it became shards. “Who’s the dame?”

“Grace,” I said. “You are…?”

“Confused. Lemons, why is there a dame here? We don’t need some legs getting in the way of this job here!”

I scoffed. Jack motioned for me to take it easy, I did. 

“I got a new angle. Grace here is gonna help us on this one. There hasn’t been a dame on a crew like this since Bonnie and Clyde. We’ll get notoriety in addition to the cash.”

“Notoriety ain’t what’s needed. I’d take all cash and no women if I could. Besides, you know as good as me what happened to the Barrows. You sure about this? We’re getting very close to burning this town and she can’t hesitate if it comes to that.”

“She can burn ‘em as good as the rest,” Jack winked. 

At that moment I could’ve jumped to the moon to prove Bert wrong. Instead, I lit two cigarettes: one for me, one for Jack. Bert looked at me like I’d just picked his dog up by the collar and swung.

We whiled away the afternoon playing cards and going over the plan forwards and back. I knew my role, almost had my lines memorized, and was only one rehearsal in. Bert stared me down like I was an eye test all day. I could feel his anger so I blew him a kiss. If kindness could kill there’d have been a Bert shaped outline on the floor. Finally in the evening, Jack left. “I’m gonna grab us a bite to eat. You two keep your heads down. Make nice!” He winked as he shut the door. 

The once-busy auto shop was deathly silent when the door’s echo faded. Bert waited, sized me up. “You can leave now. I won’t tell Jack. Things’ll get ugly if you stay, so don’t stay.” He said.

“Ugly for who?” I asked.

“Jackie and me. A dame is a monkey wrench in the grand scheme of things. We have a plan, a life, a future.”

“What if I’m the skeleton key? I solve all your little problems and we get off scot-free.”

“Jesus, lady, you are my problems. I’ve done a hundred jobs with Jack and the only ones to ever go bananas had a blonde involved.”

“Lucky for you, I’m a redhead.”

I crossed the shop toward him. He needed to know I didn’t scare easy. A thought struck me. “You’re jealous.”

A bead of sweat on his brow. I had him. “Jealous?”

“Of ‘Jackie’ and me. You wanna be the apple of his eye and not his getaway driver, is that it?”

“You’re crazy. I’m more than a getaway driver.”

“But not enough, that it?” I lit a cigarette. “Look I don’t want any bad blood between us, but I know your type. You have a lot of insecurity to cover-up but honey… I don’t mind sharin’ if Jack is game. I’m not like a lot of people, I don’t look down on that sort of thing,” I took my time with my cigarette, gave him eyes that no human man could resist. “I enjoy it.”

It was more than a bead now. His bald head was shining with sweat in the pale factory lighting. He stomped off. I could hear him raging in some back room somewhere. Metal was crashing and he was yelling with effort. I knew three things about Bert now: how good he was at hiding emotions, how he felt about me, and which way his door swung. All of this was very valuable stuff. If push came to shove I was the expendable new girl, but I had lots of leverage. 

***

The next day we rehearsed, the day after was showtime. Rehearsal went okay. Bert drove us to the intersection and Jack talked us through the plan. We watched a squad car drive through and a beat cop make his rounds. When the clock hit three, Jack showed us his watch. The street was empty. 

“Tomorrow a moving bank will be waiting at that stop sign. Everyone knows what’s needed from them on the day?” He asked.

Bert and I nodded. He lit a smoke and handed one to Jack, then looked at me in the rearview. 

“What happens if things go cock-eyed? Say Salt or Pepper don’t take the bait or they pull a gun or resist?” I asked. “It may be bad form to assume the worst but I wanna know this doesn’t end in four concrete walls for the lot of us.”

“It goes bad, you bolt,” Bert said. 

“Not necessarily. Look, we don’t want a body count attached to us. That’s how we all end up taking a trip to the chamber or the chair. But you can bruise ‘em a bit if needed. Everyone’s more cooperative with a broken nose and a gun in their mouth.”

“I don’t have a gun,” I said. It wasn’t exactly true. Working at a club, someone always had a heater. I carried one in my clutch every now and again. But since that day on the beach all those years ago, all those miles away, I hadn’t touched the thing.

“You won’t need one,” Bert said. 

Jack looked at Bert and then passed a gun from under his seat back to me. “It’s loaded. You know what to do with it? How it works?”

I went back to that day on the beach. The day my husband—‘till death do us part—hit me for the last time. Said my name for the last time. Breathed for the last time. I remember sitting and waiting. I hadn’t planned it but I knew what could happen when I got so scared of him I had to go and buy a gun. His body grew cold. The tide rose with the moon. The waves washed the blood out from the sand. Henry’s body was carried by the current away from me. My crime was covered, it was like nothing had ever happened. I couldn’t imagine how he felt but that’s on account of he couldn’t feel anything anymore. But I felt good that day. Even now when I feel bad I know I could feel worse if old Henry was around to grip the bottle or my throat at the end of the day.

“Sure,” I said. “Hold it with both hands, squeeze the trigger, and don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes.”

Bert and Jack both turned to look back at me. Surprise in their eyes. I knew I went cold when I said it but I’d hoped they couldn’t tell. 

“That’s good enough for our purposes I guess. You shouldn’t need it,” Jack said after a moment. 

Bert drove us to a steak restaurant and we ran up a big tab. The wine flowed like water. I pretended to have a good time. All I could think about was the weight of the guns in my bag.

***

It rained hard. The rainstorm that wouldn’t stop until one of us was dead and all our money was in the drink. We parked in the same spot as the day before and waited for three. Jack read the paper, Bert looked up and down the street—not out of paranoia, but out of the habits of a criminal who has done this all before and knows how quickly a job can go sideways. I sat in the back, hand in my purse, and ran my fingers over the gun until I could have told you how deep every curve was, where it wobbled and where it was hard metal, how many pieces it was total. It was a big enough gun that I knew one or two bullets would do what I needed and that’s what worried me. I knew what I was capable of, what was in my heart could extend to what was in my hands. 

The armored car rounded the corner at two-fifty-eight. I got out of the car and made my way to the intersection, messing up my hair and tearing my dress as I walked. When everything was in position, I emerged from an alcove and screamed at the top of  my lungs. I fell feet in front of the moving truck and prayed it wouldn’t hit me. “Please, you have to help me. This man attacked me and he shot my husband!” I didn’t need waterworks because the rain was doing the job for me. I just made a sobbing noise and went around to the driver, codenamed Salt. 

Salt looked at me and then to Pepper in the passenger seat. He had jet black hair, so he really should’ve been Pepper. Pepper didn’t have any hair at all—what’s it called? Alopecia. “Call it in. Then help her,” Salt said. 

Pepper reached for a radio and I screamed. “No it’s gotta be right now. My beau might bleed out. Please!”

Pepper took a second, grabbed the shotgun and followed me. No alarms, just like the doctor ordered, but now my guy had firepower. I ran down the street to a random alleyway and pointed. Pepper followed like a dutiful soldier, raising his gun and braving the dark passage. I took the opportunity to look at the truck. Jack had the driver out and was kicking him towards the back door. 

I followed Pepper real close. “Stay back, miss. He could be anywhere.”

“Were you in the war?”

“Okinawa and Wake Island, ma’am. You’re in good hands,” We reached the dead end of the alley and he turned back to me. “Are you sure we’re in the right place?” He lowered the shotgun when he turned to me and I gave him a knee to the stomach. He doubled over and dropped the bird gun. I snatched it up and gave him a whack with it. He fell into a Dumpster and spat blood out. 

“Cuff yourself.” I said, pointing his own gun at him. I didn’t need soldier-boy to show me how he survived the Pacific. 

“You don’t have to do this.”

“You’re right,” I pumped the shotgun. “I have two options.” 

In the distance I heard a few pops. Handguns. I had just a second to make a decision and I made it. Time slowed down as I did. Pepper had made it all the way through the biggest conflict and some of the bloodiest battles in the world to get put down like a dog in some Baltimoreon alley. I saw the whites of his eyes and his pupils too: they were begging.

He screamed just as the gun went off. Both sounds echoed like thunder down the alley. More rain followed. I took a second to get over my shiver, then I booked it to the street back to the truck. 

Everything happened fast then.

The other guard lay dead and Bert and Jack sped towards me. They threw the door open and we burnt rubber getting out of there. In fact, we went so fast that Bert blew a stoplight. He tried to brake but the road was wet and the visibility was bad. A cop car ended up in front of us and I remember a sudden stop and a lot of broken glass. 

I was never out. I took a second to get my bearings and climbed out of the busted wagon. The patrol car was on its side in the middle of the intersection, siren blaring flat like a beached whale trying to call home. I pulled Jack out of the passenger seat and grabbed the moneybag from between his feet. 

He came to about 15 feet from the car. Other cars were stopping now, but everyone was looking at the wreck and not at us. I asked Jack if he could walk and he nodded. 

“Run.” I told him. 

***

We sat in the auto shop for a long time without lights or words. Jack was okay. Headache and a few missing teeth but otherwise up and running. 

He told me about how the guard went for his gun when they were bagging the money up, and how he hadn’t wanted to shoot anybody but Bert had pulled the trigger before he could blink. 

“It wasn’t supposed to go down like this, baby. We were supposed to be on a plane or a train by now, drinking martinis and showering in dough.” He said.  

I kissed him then, long and deep. We took advantage of the time together. He was okay and we did have money, we just had to lay low for awhile. 

Awhile came about an hour later.

We were taking shifts and sleeping and he had first watch. I was awoken to a gun being pressed against my head. Jack was already tied up and gagged by this point so I knew what was in store for me. Before long we looked like a couple of suckling pigs before a big dinner. Bert looked at us, flanked by some mean looking heavies. He had a nasty cut running across his face like someone had tried to cut his head in two between the mouth and nose. It still oozed and seeped blood and had rough bandaging where he could keep it from interfering with his senses.

“You didn’t try to wake me up, sweetheart. You left me in that burning car,” He said to me. “I watched you go, take your boy toy and ditch without waving goodbye. And you took the cash we wasted two guys over. Did you really think you could just lay low and I wouldn’t come to get what’s mine? All of it?” He bade the men to remove our gags and they did. 

“Bert. Be reasonable, there’s plenty of money there,” Jack pleaded.

“Eighty grand! We smoked some teenagers for less than six figures and you think that’s enough to share with someone who wanted me dead from the word ‘go’?” He crossed to Jack. Took his partner’s head in his hands and kissed him on the lips. At this the heavies got a mean look. One of them went to clobber Bert and he shot without looking. Bullseye.

The man fell back and stopped moving. “I know you don’t agree with my lifestyle but unless you want to join your friend I suggest you keep that an opinion and nothing more. My money is just as green as the next man’s,” Bert barked. The remaining heavy nodded, it was clear he was scared that such a small, wounded man was capable of such exact and swift violence, because I was too. “Jack. I’ll give you one more shot at this. It’s me or Grace. Pick me.”

Jack’s gag was removed and he looked up at Bert. Then back at me. “It’s you, Bert. It was you from the start.”

Bert wept. He rushed and kissed Jack again, then removed his bindings. They shared a long, weeping embrace and I looked on, waiting for a sign that it wasn’t true, that I wasn’t about to become the only body in this body shop. My sign didn’t come. When they were done with their embrace, Bert looked at his lone guard, “Do what you want with the dame, just make sure her heart stops before you leave.” 

The heavy made their slow way toward me and I started to shut off the non-vital parts of my body. Anything that wasn’t dedicated to survival of heart and brain was shut down. My mind raced for escape routes and saw no checkered flag. They had just removed my gag when red and blue lights flooded through the broken windows and empty doorways. 

“It’s the brass!” Yelled the big guy. “How’d they find us?”

There wasn’t time for an answer. I watched Jack reach down and grab the gun from Bert’s belt. He shot wildly, as a reaction. Jack scooped me up in one hand and held the bag of cash and gun in the other. He opened a door, and cut me loose. I found my purse on the table nearby and pulled my .22. 

“I thought you didn’t have a gun?” Bert asked.

“You know that the most honest player in the world has a card up their sleeve every now and then,” I responded with a smile. He smiled back. 

We took shots at the cops until we found an opening. I took one last look at the auto shop and saw Bert standing up. I shot and watched him grab his head and fall like a slinky down the stairs.

For a brief moment it was sand and sun outside, the roar of the ocean in my ears. Some other man from my own ancient history lay dead in front of me. The gunfire and rain returned as they would again and again in my dreams until the end of time.

We ran until my heels broke, and then until they bled, and then until we both doubled over and vomited. We were in the heart of Baltimore and cops and crooks were the ribcage. Pretty soon the wail of sirens was the ambience of the city. And everywhere we turned, eyes followed us. Nowhere was safe so we just tried to put pavement between us and any other person we saw. Once or twice we circled back to where we’d been. The gun was never far out of reach and the briefcase never left Jack’s hand. 

The odds were against us and the bet was high, so we were bound to lose. At some point in our maze of alleyways and back streets, we picked wrong. We didn’t know it until it was much, much too late. I stopped and looked at Jack. He was beaten, bloody, and I knew he’d cried at least once during our long walk. 

“You picked me.” I said.

“I loved Bert, sweetie, but you… You’re the real deal. You make a guy like me feel alive. Bert always had an edge. You’re nice and soft.” If only he knew. 

“Do you love me?”

“I’m thinking I do.”

He leaned in to kiss me as the first shot rang out. His lips touched mine as the bullet hit. I saw the light in his eyes flicker and dim to a dull glow, like a candle in the early breeze of the night.

 I don’t know if the gunfire was from the side of the cops, or the gang of heavies Bert had promised a big sum, but they didn’t ask us to surrender or walk away or drop the case. 

Jack did drop the case. He grabbed where his lungs were and his hands came up bloody. He looked at me and collapsed as other bullets began to fly.

It turned into a crossfire. Bullet casings fell like rain and we huddled behind a stack of bricks and a dumpster in No Man’s Land. There wasn’t space for me by Jack so I watched as he bled out. It hurt then and it would hurt forever more, seeing my guy weep scarlet. 

The case of money sat at his feet. We’d never make it out of Baltimore, at least not together. 

Jack looked back at me with those steely eyes, now permanently open and missing the shine behind them. I started to cry. I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye. 

The tears wouldn’t dry on account of the rain but I composed myself quickly. I waited until there was a break in the action, grabbed the case, and made for the fire escape. I shot all the bullets in Jack’s gun, mine had run out back at the auto shop. I hopped roofs and scampered ladders until I made it to the river. I waited until morning and took the first ferry to somewhere not called Baltimore. I never looked back. 

***

“The rest is unimportant because nobody important is in it,” I say with tears drying on my cheeks. “The only important man in my life left a Baltimore alley in a body bag.”

Bert looks across the table from me as I finish my story. He has a tear in his eye, too. 

That cigar is a lot shorter now, but it’s not quite done and neither is he—not for lack of trying. He’s got a nasty scar going across the top of his head, a bullet wound from that night thirteen years ago.

“You don’t have to tell me shit I already know.” He says, sniffling. 

“You asked me to dish so I dished.”

“And now I’m telling you to shut your goddamn trap and tell me where the cash is. If I can’t have my guy I’ll at least have my green.”

He and I know that cash is long gone, he just wants me to admit there’s nothing left for him to take but one thing. The thing he’s really here in Havana for.

“Some of it’s in my diamond ring, some of it’s in my closet, but most of it burned up in the fuel it took me to get the hell away from Baltimore, from that life, and from all the enemies I’ve made since.”

“You could’ve spent that money a little better.” He says between puffs. “There’s not enough cash or fuel in the world to keep me from righting this wrong.”

“Jack picked me, and that’s something you’ll never get to change.” I say. Every word feels like the final one.

“I know, sweetie. But I picked him and that’s something I’ll never get to change either.”

I feel the shot before I hear it, we’re so close. My body rocks as if an earthquake has struck only the ground my chair is on. Then I smell the cordite and gunpowder mix with the Cuban fragrance of Bert’s cigar at the exact moment I hear the thunderous boom. It’s all I can do to stay upright. I tumble back and loose myself from my chair. My whole body hurts. 

I take a few shuffle-steps through the door and I’m out on the beach, no longer in some dingy Cuban bar. Another shot. This one I feel as I hear it and it puts me on the ground. The pain is so tremendous I almost don’t feel it. I think I scream but I don’t know. Probably a safe bet.

I roll down the beach a ways as every part of my body not focused on survival of heart or brain shuts down. I look back at the years, thinking: If I’d just done this or that, I wouldn’t be here dying on this beach in Cuba. But my thoughts are all wrong, Bert would have found me if it was the last thing he did. It very well might be the last thing he does. The waves crash on the shore and wash over me. Warm salt water. Poseidon pulls me away from the Cuban shoreline.

All that money is gone. Jack is long gone. And now, Bert’s gone too, he’s walking away, becoming an ant on a hill as I join the ocean’s ranks.

I think of Henry one last time. He didn’t get to feel this because it was over quick for him. But I don’t want my last thoughts to be of Henry, so I think of Jack instead. He’s winning big up in some twenty-four and seven heavenly casino. His steely eyes are bright and his smile is the size of the Eiffel.

Only one thing left to do.

At least it’s not raining. At least it isn't some alleyway. At least it isn’t Baltimore.