S T A R
By Julie Morrigan
Sammy lit a smoke and leaned back on his bar stool at the 500 Club.
‘Hey, Dean,’ he said. ‘Did you ever meet McGraw?’
‘Who?’
‘McGraw. Irish dick works downtown.’
‘He told me this story ‘bout a broad he was sweet on. Celeste, used to sing at “Santini’s”. Remember her? It kinda stayed with me.’
‘Yeah, she was a cute kid. How’d it swing?’
I was downtown on the trail of a weasel named Benny the Snitch when the call came in. Just that morning we’d found the landlord of a rundown rooming house with his brains all over his pillow, one eye staring at the ceiling, the other turned to jelly by hot lead. I figured if anyone knew who done it, Benny did. Turns out a couple of flatfoots had got lucky and they already had the killer bang to rights, sweating over his relationship with his maker in a holding cell.
‘What’s his name?’ I asked, flicking a match and putting the flame to a smoke.
The flatfoot chuckled. ‘Miss Celeste Aubuchon, if you please,’ he said. ‘Scumbag Sammy got iced by a dame.’
Thirty minutes later and I’m back at the station house, gulping down a mug of stewed coffee while Smitty fills me in.
‘We was questioning the people that live in the rooming house. Asked ‘em all straight out did they do it. We ask her and she says “yes”, calm as you like and goes and gets the gun.
Apparently she can kill a guy, but telling lies is a bad thing, she can’t do it.’
‘No kidding!’
‘And McGraw, you wanna see this broad. Looks like a goddamn movie star!’
I could hardly wait to see this exotic creature for myself. She sounded like quite a piece of work. I had her moved from the cell to the interview room while I finished my coffee, then I headed off to question the city’s latest stone cold killer.
Smitty had told me she was a swell looking dame, but she still took my breath away. She was standing when I went into the room, her back to me, and I got the chance to take in her shape: she had curves in all the right places, topped off with a platinum blonde hair-do. When she turned, I gawped. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, sleepy, brown eyes and blood red lips, cheekbones you could cut a finger on. She was smoking a cigarette in a holder, and when she saw me, she took it from her lips and moved towards me.
‘Hello, sir, I’m Celeste Aubuchon,’ she said, holding out her hand in a formal greeting.
‘McGraw,’ I said, shaking her hand, careful not to squeeze too hard. For all the poise and polish, the dame looked fragile.
‘Please, take a seat, Miss Aubuchon.’
‘Thank you, Mr McGraw,’ she said, taking her seat at the table.
‘Just McGraw.’ I sat opposite, her perfume wrapping me in its heady sweetness and drawing me in.
‘Call me Celeste,’ she said, smoothing the skirt of her emerald green suit over her thighs.
‘So, Celeste, what’s the story?’ I asked, as I tried to keep my eyes off her lips and my mind on the job.
‘I killed a man,’ she told me. ‘But he was a bad man and I’m not sorry.’
‘I see. Want to tell me how it all went down?’
Celeste took the cigarette from the holder and tamped it out in the ashtray, put the holder on the table in front of her. ‘It all started last year,’ she told me. ‘I packed my good shoes, my best lipstick and all my dreams into a cardboard suitcase and headed west to seek fame and fortune. I’m a star, McGraw. I wanted the world to know.’
‘How do you make that out?’ I asked, struggling to recall where I had seen this dame before.
‘When did you know you were a cop?’ she asked me.
‘Gee, I always wanted to be a cop, right from when I was a kid. I was born to do this job.’
She shrugged. ‘Same here. I was born to be a star.’
‘You and a few hundred other dreamers,’ I muttered, thinking how many times I’d heard that line or one like it. I was surrounded by stars. They shined my shoes, gassed up my car and packed my groceries. ‘So, what happened to turn you from a star into a killer?’
‘My looks got in the way.’
‘Forgive me for saying so, but I would have thought your looks would pave the way rather than block it.’
She nodded an assent. ‘Up to a point, for sure. Looks and talent got me parts in a couple of B-movies. Then I had a screen test for a real peachy role. The studio wanted to make me their newest starlet. There was just one problem.’
‘Which was?’
‘The casting couch. I was expected to … earn my opportunity, shall we say.’
‘I’m guessing you decided not to.’
‘The studio head was old, fat, bald and married. I was saving myself for the right guy. I wanted to be a starlet, not a harlot. I said “No”, another girl said “Yes” and that was it: I wasn’t even on the B-movie roster anymore.’
‘Tough break.’
‘I picked up a job singing in a club, “Santini’s”, on Fifth and Main.’
Bingo. That’s where I’d seen her, singing sad songs in a voice like liquid gold, half-glimpsed through a smoky haze as I sipped Bourbon and tried to forget the sights I’d seen that day. Celeste was right: she was a star.
‘I was sharing a nice apartment with three other actresses, but even with the pay and the tips, I could no longer afford my share of the rent. So I had to pack up my little suitcase again and find somewhere cheaper.’
‘I’m guessing that was the rooming house.’
She nodded. ‘I cut back, tried doing without things, but I couldn’t do without enough of them to make ends meet. There’s been some weeks over the last two months I’ve had to pay my rent on my back.'
I took out two cigarettes and lit them, offered one to Celeste. She took it and met my eyes while she put it to her lips and drew. I felt sorry for the dame. She had turned down a studio chief, preferring to wait for her one true love, then had to give it up for Scumbag Sammy. ‘The last few weeks I’ve made the rent, but this week when he came knocking, I couldn’t cover it. I had a cold, I couldn’t work for some nights. I had half, and I promised to pay him the other half in two days time. I would have, too, but he wouldn’t agree. He told me to take what I had and buy something nice for myself, and to go to his room that night wearing it.’
‘But you bought a gun instead.’
She nodded.
‘Who sold you the gun?’
‘I don’t know his name. He was a friend of a friend of a friend. No questions asked, you know the score.’
I sure did. It was an old song she was singing. ‘You took the gun to Sammy’s room.’
‘The door was on the latch. I went in and he was lying there, waiting for me. I … I couldn’t take it no more, McGraw. This isn’t how I came out here to live.’
‘So you shot him.’
‘Yes, I did. I aimed for between his eyes, but I was slightly off.’
‘Still, it did the job.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why didn’t you run? Or lie?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know, McGraw. Maybe I just wanted to be little Jenny Brown one more time. Tell the truth and shame the devil, that’s what Momma always said to me.’
The trial was an open and shut case. Took but a couple of days to sentence Celeste to the chair.
I visited Celeste every week in prison, took her smokes, powder, lipstick, the bare essentials, while a bunch of appeals tried and failed to keep her alive.
‘This isn’t living, McGraw,’ she’d drawl at me through a cloud of smoke. ‘I’m already dead.’
I still had a foolish dream that she’d get out one day, come to me and let me look after her like the gal deserved. My dream got the same treatment hers had, however, and so on one cold, dank morning in December, just a week before the holidays, I got to say goodbye to her for the last time.
‘Don’t be sad, McGraw,’ she said to me, when she saw my face. ‘How else was this movie ever going to end?’
My last view of her was when she was led into the chamber by the guards, shaven-headed, her platinum locks all gone, but still beautiful. She would always be beautiful. The guards were pretty much all in tears as Celeste and I locked eyes for the last time and the hood was placed carefully over her head. She was brave right to the end.
As they pulled the switch, I recalled her last words to me: ‘Look out for me, McGraw. I’ll be shining down on you every night from the heavens, the brightest star you ever saw in your life.’
(c) 2011 Author Julie Morrigan
Another AT THE BIJOU Debut
Absolutely*Kate: Wow Julie! That story's an all star, star-studded linger to the soft reaches of the mind.
JULIE MORRIGAN: Thanks for reading Kate, and for giving me the opportunity to have a shot at this. I really enjoyed doing something a little different, it was great fun! :) And I'm very much looking forward to seeing how it all plays out. Gonna be good, I know it's gonna be good. AT THE BIJOU rocks, no doubt about that.
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| Sultry is as sultry does |
Kate ~ Will you tell us more about the talents of JOOLS? And I love this theatre. Your regulars are so,
shall we say - Livley?
Absolutely*Kate: Don't mind if I do splash, Ms Lake. And thank YOU for classin' up our venerable joint, as NOVEMBER GOES NOIR ~ AT THE BIJOU. Now, more on Morrigan ~
Variously described as a crime author, Brit Grit writer — and even 'the new queen of urban noir' — Julie's short stories have been printed in respected publications such as Bullet, Out of the Gutter and Blink Ink, and online at such venues as A Twist of Noir, Thrillers Killers & Chillers, and here AT THE BIJOU.
October saw the publication of Julie's latest novel, Heartbreaker — the thrilling story of the excess, betrayal and guilt behind an English rock band — and new short story collection The Writing on the Wall — a collection of weird and spooky tales guaranteed to send a shiver down your spine.
Julie may be found online at her outtasite author's site ~ Julie Morrigan . She is currently working on another novel and a third collection of short fiction. Both will be published before the end of 2011, and I'm proud to say, she'll be sailing her wonders with us upon HARBINGER*33.
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| It's all about the starboard side |
Jools, We love your splendid shows as NOVEMBER goes NOIR ~ AT THE BIJOU. But ... uh ... will you do our shadowy audience a favour?
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| JULIE MORRIGAN, STAR |
Thanks so much for this, Kate. It's all very much appreciated. You really are a generous soul. You rock, m'dear! So certainly ~ what can I do for the lovely folks AT THE BIJOU?
Absolutely*Kate: As the classy dame you are, will you get in character ~ Will YOU go Noir?
Absolutely*Kate, Kevin Michaels,
Ms Lake, Mr Bogart, and all my
fine friends AT THE BIJOU ~
~ "Here's lookin' at you kids!"
Ya don't mess wit' my material Toots. No matter how swell ya sling your woids. You're cruisin, I tell ya - da whole bunch of you wanna be hoodlums . . . but hey, I dig it.
November
Goes NOIR
AT THE BIJOU
NOIRTORIOUS
AUTHORS
every other day that's NOIRVEMBER
Be there
or be square Bub.
Talkin to you too, Toots.
rises on:
By ~ KEVIN MICHAELS
the Rat-A-Tat-Tat of
yet a new BIJOU Debut ~
CHRIS RHATIGAN
BIJOU Hero
making his first official appearance on our stage ~
a cup of Joe,
JOSEPH GRANT
ABSOLUTELY*KATE, BOGEY & PALLY PRODUCTIONS
"NOVEMBER GOES NOIR, AT THE BIJOU"
"NOIRVEMBER" term coined & minted
by the trendy Harry B Sanderford
