Old Pros

Here’s a George V. Higgins guy talking:

Never did like Nino.  Most guys I’ve done business with, I’ve got along with good.  When something’s happened to them – they got careless, trusted someone they shouldn’t of, did something they’re not sure of?  Then they hadda go away?  I been, you know, sorry for them.  Hoped whatever happened to them, not… too bad.  They didn’t have much pain.  Nothing I could do – ‘cept wish they’d been more careful.  But still, I did feel sorry.  Bad they hadda go away.  Nino, I did not.  Very careless man.  Loud about it, too.  Full of the big talk.  Now Nino’s in Walpole – I’m right?  Will be a long time.  Don’t wanna be there with him.  Always figured him for trouble.  Never liked the guy.

     [At End of Day, 2000]

Here’s one from Elmore Leonard:

     If it was ten or twelve years ago, and Jimmy told Tommy Bucks in those words, ‘Handle it,’ that would be a different story.  I mean, back when he first came over.  Tommy’s a Zip.  You know what I mean?  One of those guys they used to import from Sicily to handle the rough stuff.  Guy could be a peasant right out of the fucking Middle Ages, looks around and he’s in Miami Beach.  Can’t believe it.  They hand the Zip a gun and say, ‘There, that guy.’  And the Zip takes him out.  You understand?  They import the kind of guy likes to shoot.  He’s got no priors here, nobody gives a shit, he gets picked up, convicted, put away.  If he does, you send for another Zip.  Guy comes over from Sicily, he’s got on a black suit, shirt buttoned up, no tie, and a cap sitting on top of his head.  That was Tommy Bucks, ten, twelve years ago.

     [Pronto, 1993]

 

There’s a trick to it.  It’s not actually real speech.  If you sound it out loud to yourself, you hear the cadence.  It mimics real speech, but the rhythms are compressed, or stretched out and exaggerated.  The language feels authentic, even if nobody really talks like that.  You wish they did. 

Twain has the hang of this, too.  The way Huckleberry Finn sounds, the mouth-feel.  A very good case can be made for Twain as the first American writer who’s trying to give you a sense of genuine vernacular speech, and what you hear with George Higgins and Dutch Leonard is a kind of shortcut to that.  It doesn’t sound labored; it sounds natural.

Read the opening scene of The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Higgins’ first book.  I’m not going to quote the whole thing here.  You can hear the guy’s voice in your head, at least I can.  Pick up Leonard’s LaBrava and read it for the third time.  If it’s the first, settle in.

There’s something comforting about their work, both of them.  And immediately familiar.  Like the guy a couple of stools down.  You know you’re in good hands, and you can go with it. 

“She made up a story, that Joe Young stole her stepdad’s Model A and abducted her.  I told her, stay with that, and you won’t go to jail.  But then the newspapers got hold of it.  ‘Girl-friend of Pretty Boy Floyd Guns Down Mad-Dog Felon.’  After a while she got over it.”

“And you married her.”

“Not till she grew up.”

[Up in Honey’s Room, 2007]

Seriously.  If you haven’t been in the neighborhood lately, stop by.