S1, E5 | A One Way Ticket to the Main Event

\ Seattle - 1930 /

Resting his arm on the crafted curve of the passenger seat’s door as his eyes stare past the rain-battered window, Jimmy keeps to himself as the drive carries him away from the life he’d been tempted to leave behind in favour of one that promises to reward him with infinitely more. With the waterfront quickly approaching, the labourer pays little mind to the scenes that surround him with patience, opting to wait for the climax of their journey to present him with answers he’s yet to have.

Within minutes, the hefty body of metal on wheels begins slowing itself to a stop on the side of a small, secluded road just off of Smith Cove, gears shifting into place for one, final time before the parking brake is pulled. “Are we here?” Jimmy asks aloud, turning to look at the man responsible for whisking him away from the bridge he’d slaved over for days in total, offered no more than a smile before the driver steps back into the downpour.

With his recruitment following in his forward-directing footsteps, Wilbur slams his fist into the heavy, metal door barricading the sanctum of his fight pit from the dreary, drizzling world he intends to shelter himself from. Patient enough to wait a few seconds for a reply, the wealthy gentleman watches the barrier pull inward to reveal his business partner’s inquisitive face, the building’s interior lighting coming as a sight for sore eyes from their guest.

“This is the guy?” Norman wonders aloud, peering past his pally’s shoulder and onto the scarred and cut face of the filthy-handed labourer. “I did a number on him, ain’t I?” Wilbur retorts, lifting his lip just slightly to present his business colleague with a sight indicating much the same is true for his new friend.

“It seems you both did” Norman replies, finally stepping aside to allow the men entry to their renovated warehouse, the mountains of dirt stacked up just a few feet from the building having once belonged to the ground that’s now been dug up. Where a flat surface once sat now resides a gradually-descending row of levels falling deeper into the earth with each row of seats, the only unoccupied space being the respectably-sized square at the descent’s very centre.

“It’s nice, isn’t it?” Wilbur wonders aloud, shedding his coat and stationing his hat upon one of many coat racks, eyes gazing upon the spacious halls he expects to fill with enthused spectators. “I don’t know what it is” Jimmy responds, still wearing his damp overalls and dirt-covered overalls, his boots tracking mud and water across each spot of the ground he walks upon.

“It’s the place where your life is going to change forever” Wilbur replies, his arms stretching outward as if he were attempting to touch each end of the monstrous building they share the embrace of. “Forgive my friend, he likes to speak in aggrandisation” Norman interrupts, eyes passing toward their visitor, the man wearing a posture that makes clear the idea that he is a fish out of water, “this is the place he wants you and the others to fight.”

“Others?” Jimmy quickly wonders aloud, eyes squinting amidst the pause that breaks his question in two, “who are the others?”

“No one- yet” Wilbur replies with equal speed, voicing the same answer that his business partner had parted his lips in an attempt to offer, “that’s where you come in.” Filled with questions and curiosities, Jimmy remains quiet for a moment as the man who’d brought him here turns around, looking at him whilst his own eyes take toward their third contemporary.

“Why me?” the labourer soon replies, his right eyebrow arched higher than the left whilst the man he presents the question to begins pacing around the top-most level of the decline, the platform intended to join the others that gradually descend in forming a row of seats. “Because Norman will be taking care of the logistics whilst I look at filling these seats with some rather worthy clientele” Wilbur answers, “we’ve only been in the city for a cup of coffee. We don’t know who we’d look for.”

“And you think that I do?” Jimmy replies, shrugging his shoulders as he looks to the man with curiosity, “what makes you think I’d know who to look for?” Turning his lips into a smirk, Wilbur gradually taps his feet against the ground as he walks off to the side, approaching a small row of shelves stationed against the wall closeby. “Let me ask you this, kid” the man begins, squinting his eyes as he inspects the various objects positioned for viewing, “what kind of people stole your cash box?”

Not having anticipated a question requiring as much insight into his strife as the one voiced, Jimmy pulls his head back and searches for the way of phrasing the inquiry that lingers at his tongue’s tip. “How did you know about our box being-?” he wonders aloud, watching his chauffeur spin around quickly and toss a small, easily-buryable metal box across the room and into the hands of its rightful owner.

“Every dollar your pitiful day job has ever earned you is all there, don’t worry” Wilbur remarks, watching the man look on with surprise at the physical storage he’d been stripped of the day prior before their eyes meet again, “how else did you think I’d found out about where you worked?”

“You-” Jimmy grunts, taking three steps forward in anger before finding the calm voice of the well-off gentleman ahead of him to be too influential for him to follow through on his instinctual reaction. “You’d never have thought someone with my wealth would have gone over to ransack your little cabin in the middle of puckered-ass alleyway because why would you?” Wilbur wonders aloud, his voice lulling the enraged labourer into a momentary silence and stop.

Unphased by the visibly angered demeanour in which his subject has presented him with, the fight pit’s mastermind enthusiastically steps over to a makeshift bar near the corner of the room, an arch in his eyebrow as he continues speaking whilst in search of a preferential bottle of liquor. “You do know- however- exactly what kind of people would have taken it” Wilbur speaks, finally opting for a bottle of strong gin, “you know because you live with them.”

“Are you talking about Cathy?” Jimmy wonders aloud, given his correction by the man opting to remain mostly silent a few paces behind him. “He’s talking about the others in that camp. He’s saying you know who’s desperate enough to ransack you” Norman reiterates, his claim doubled down on by the man mid-pour. “You know who the people most-willing to do anything to get out of that place are” Wilbur replies, taking his eyes toward the man in question, “you know who will fight for every last bit.”

“What makes me so different from the rest of them?” Jimmy replies, his hesitancy to buy into what’s being offered to him not relenting without a fight being put up for its reluctance. “I walked into that speakeasy off and on for three weeks. I dressed as a superior and walked much the same” Wilbur remarks, calling back to the revelation he’d become privy to minutes earlier, “you said it yourself, you’d figured I had the ability to get you whacked. And yet, you broke my tooth.”

“I won’t apologise for it if that’s what you’re interested in” Jimmy replies, doubling down on his stance with a demeanour built to imply he’d happily do so again. “I wanted someone that was willing to take a swing. I knew what I looked like and what I was doing, and I knew what I was looking for” Wilbur corrects, a finger raised into the air as he holds his half-glass of liquor against his moving chin, “you had nothing to lose, and now you have this to lose.”

“And what is this?” Jimmy finally questions aloud, peering over his shoulder at the mostly-subdued gentleman awaiting the conversation’s climax, “you promise me this thing will pull me out of that hole and all these other things, but you ain’t telling me why I should believe you.”

“Willy’s many different things, but I can vouch for his honesty with something like this” Norman interjects, watching the visitor’s sights turn back to fall upon him. “I was fine with staying in California, but Willy convinced me to come up north with him. I didn’t know why until a couple hours after we got off the train in town” the man continues, “but I didn’t need it to justify packing my bags. If there’s one thing Willy won’t do, it’s make a gamble he won’t fight like hell to make pay off.”

The curious gleam still held within the white of his eye, Jimmy takes his attention toward the ground his boots had stained as the voice ahead of him calls out once more. “If that shack and baking in the sun over that bridge all day is all you want in life, be my guest. I’ll drop you back off at the hooverville and leave you to it” Wilbur explains, laying out the options afforded to the man he presents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to, “but if you want more than that, this is your ticket.”

Bowing his head, Jimmy stares at the ground before glancing at the pit near the warehouse’s centre, rows of lightbulbs illuminating a ground that will soon become a coliseum that he weighs whether or not to become a modern gladiator of. His right eyelid squinting, the man lets a breath leave through his nose before returning his attention to the offer’s dealer, his lips parting to present the response his momentary silence had been building to.

After a brief ride, the metal box Wilbur sits behind the wheel of slows to a stop just outside the boundary lines of the hooverville’s reach, his passenger waiting for a moment before stepping out. “I’ll be back tomorrow to get your answer” the driver remarks, shifting the car into a full stop before extending his clean hand to the filth-covered one his potential brawler holds, paying no mind to the dirt that stains his palm as their handshake follows through.

“Thank you” Jimmy responds honestly, reclaiming the metal box from his lap before opening the door, stepping out into the subsiding rainstorm whilst the vehicle’s operator watches on. With his door slammed shut, Wilbur presses his foot to the pedal and drives off for a return to his residence, leaving the labourer behind. With a huff, the worker presses the box against his side and carries it with himself forward, walking the grounds of the camp for what may or may not be one of the last times.

= Seattle Noir is created by Zachary Serra, all rights to the series belong to Zachary Serra and the entity of Pacer1 from the start of Season 1 onward =

Slowly lowering herself into the chair stationed at her makeshift desk, Cathy stares at the ground whilst her husband stands over her, scratching the back of his neck as the air grows quiet. “I see” the woman murmurs, lowering her eyes as her hands couple together at her lap, sitting with the revelation presented to her by the man to whom she’d sworn devotion to.

Digging his heel into the ground, Jimmy suffers through the silence for a few moments whilst only able to seek reprieve in the creaking of the floorboards to which his shack had been built from. Hearing the raindrops beyond the shed’s walls appear to grow louder and more raucous with each passing minute, the labourer finally decides that something more than uncomfortable inquisition is warranted.

“I don’t plan on doing it for longer than I need to, Cath’” Jimmy remarks, continuing to stare at the back of the woman’s head, her face tilted toward the unsteady ground that once more sits in the dirt used to rebury the metal cash box at the home’s centre. “If what this twit is saying is true, we’ll have more than enough to sustain ourselves after a year- maybe two” the man persists, continuing to present his best effort to reassure the woman already blanketed in countless other thoughts.

With little expectation of swaying his wife’s opinion, the labourer- beaten by a week of being short-changed, screwed over and beaten- drops to his knees and takes the woman’s hands into his own. “I don’t expect you to be pleased with this. I’m not asking you to be, I’m asking you to understand” Jimmy proceeds, locking eyes with the woman seated before him, “my job- first and foremost- is to provide for you. This- this wooden box is squat.”

“Do you think I’m mad about this, James?” Cathy wonders aloud, as uncertain over what assumptions her partner has as he is of hers. Taken aback and unsure of how to respond, the worker leans back just slightly at a loss, “I- well, I’d have thought you’d be upset” he replies honestly. Squinting her eyes before they trail off toward the same side of the home she gets out of her seat to walk toward, the man’s missus responds as honestly as her husband had.

“Do you know why I don’t like when you get into fights?” Cathy inquires mid-walk, hands swaying gently by each of her sides. Adjusting the denim suspender over his left shoulder, Jimmy slowly follows the woman’s path as he searches within his head for an answer, “because you don’t like thinking that I’ll get hurt?” the man responds, watching his wife turn back with the same look of concern written upon her visage from earlier.

Shaking her head in refusal, the woman remains standing across the room in silence as her husband watches her, still struggling to find the conclusion she’d hoped he’d find on his own. “I do worry that you’ll get yourself so badly hurt that you’d never be the same again, but that’s not why I hate the fightin’” Cathy corrects, filling the quietude that suspends itself within the air between them on her husband’s behalf.

“I hate the fightin’ because I hate that you’re so mad at everything that you feel getting your hands dirty is the only thing that can keep you intact” the woman continues, her husband’s expression falling to a more sombre level than it had once occupied with each word. “I don’t like the idea of you going out and gettin’ yourself beaten, but it beats working on that bridge in the burning sun every day!” Cathy utters, disheartened at having to explain herself like such.

“It’s one thing if you’re fightin’ for money, it’s another if you’re fighting just ‘cause you’re so full of hate that you can’t help not to” she concludes, a disclosure that earns the man’s full sight. “It’s not that I can’t help it, doll- it’s-” Jimmy attempts to respond, his voice falling silent to offer his wife’s the room it had occupied. 

“It’s exactly what I said it is, James” Cathy interjects, her right foot presented slightly further than her left as its sole presses into the ground, “it’s a way to stop bein’ so mad.” With his chin veering slightly aside, the bruised labourer looks away for a moment to collect his thoughts, being left with his wife’s remark whilst having very little defence against it. Parting his lips, Jimmy prepares to speak, though comes up empty, the silence he offers only certifying his wife’s assertions.

“I don’t know what you’d rather I do, Cath’” the man finally concludes, shaking his head in disappointment as he lowers himself to the ground, taking a seat directly beside the hole he’d carved into the middle of the floor. “If I were with the other half of the dicks I work with, I’d be taking out my anger on you” Jimmy explains, staring at the ground as he speaks whilst his missus watches from across the room, “I choose to stand on the side that take it out on twits at the bar.”

“I want you to be in a place where you don’t need to take it out at all” Cathy interrupts, watching her husband’s eyes take up toward her whilst her voice is forced to raise, having to fight for supremacy with the increasingly-hard rainfall that collides with their shack home. “I don’t want you to be in a place where you have to hold that kind of anger at all” she continues, journeying across the dirty floor to join the man, “I’ve always thought I was enough to make that possible.”

“You are” Jimmy retorts, before immediately finding resilience in the woman’s response. “No, I’m not. And honestly, I shouldn’t be” Cathy interrupts, lowering herself to the ground to join beside the man, her open palm resting against his chest whilst her head rests against his shoulder, her body leaning into his with her husband’s arm wrapped around her waist, “a lady’s only supposed to be part of the reason why a man’s happy. If whatever else you do doesn’t give you that, I want what will.”

Resting the side of his head against the woman’s dry hair, Jimmy thinks aloud for the lady in his arm to answer, “even if that’s fighting for a living?” With a gentle lift of her chin, Cathy presses her lips to her husband’s cheek, “you know our agreement-” she replies, following through on the peck before pulling back just slightly, looking the man in the eyes and holding the other side of his head within the reach of her fingertips, “-just don’t come home in a body bag.”

|

Striking the same spike he’d taken a hammer to for the last two minutes for the final time, Jimmy lets his mallet fall to the ground as he tucks his hands upon his waist. Kneeling atop the hot asphalt, the worked bruiser stares out at the fresh water below and props a smile onto his face, paying little mind to the footsteps that draw toward his direction. “Don’t get too caught up in the sight seeing, kid” Kenny remarks, his voice presenting little in the way of good will.

Having glanced toward his side just in time to watch the older labourer pass him by, Jimmy reaches his hand out and calls forward, “wait!” he shouts, preventing the worker from walking any further. “I just want to say sorry again for the other day. I don’t know where my noggin head was at” the younger man explains, trying to keep their brief interactions from growing bitter under the guise of misunderstanding.

“Just watch your swing next time and you’ll be fine” Kenny replies, shrugging off the man’s remarks before turning around to continue about his journey, a metal box of tools carried in hand. Offering little more than a simple nod, Jimmy finds himself tempted to call out for the man’s return once more, only for the tables to be turned on him by the men that approach.

“Jim!” Stanley exclaims, a smile worn on his face as he leads a more nonchalant Jesse to the third member of the tight-knit group. “What can I do you for?” Jimmy replies, pushing himself off the ground and dusting his knees off with a few swipes of his hand. “You need to hide- now” the same man responsible for calling out the man’s name commands, waving toward the distance of the bridge with a level of worry in his voice.

“Why? What’s wrong?” Jimmy questions aloud, a squint in his eye as Stanley takes him by the shoulder, trying to hurry him toward a stack of metal near the roadway’s end. “The guy from the bar a couple nights ago is here!” Jesse calls out, matching their friend’s run with a quick walk of his own. “Who? Wilbur?” the labourer replies, brushing off his friend’s hand and attempted dismissal before backing a few feet away.

Hearing this supposed altercation occur closeby as he stands at the bridge’s end, both hands hanging by his sides, Kenny turns back to look at the squamish between the three labourers with a bushy eyebrow raised. “I don’t know what his name is!” Stanley replies, quickly trying to hurry his friend toward the safety of cover, only for the hesitance of the man he aims to help and the reluctant pull on his elbow from the third man to thwart his efforts.

“Wait, how do you know what his name is!?” Jesse calls out, watching his friends pause halfway toward Kenny before their conversation is interrupted by an exclamation from the other end of the elevated roadway. “James!” Wilbur shouts aloud, his arms thrown out at each side as he approaches, hat sitting atop his head and trench coat thrown over both shoulders, “I’ll be right there, just give me a second!”

Looking at their friend as if he had three heads, Stanley and Jesse await further explanation they have their hearts set on receiving, unsure of why the same man they’d taken for a potential assassin just nights prior had spoken toward their fellow workman as if he were an old friend. “Do you moonlight as a trigger man or something, Jim?” the latter man inquires, taking the dismissive eye roll he’s returned with as an answer.

Standing by to watch the encounter for himself, Kenny slightly turns his back to the road’s lip and keeps his thoughts to himself, not wanting to interject himself into the unknown. “What’re you doing here!?” Wilbur wonders aloud with a smile on his face, tooth still chipped from the other night, “come by to take one last look at the workplace before you hit the big time?”

Carrying their own squints, the man’s pair of friends look at him in curiosity whilst Kenny stares blankly, tempted to begin stepping away from the roadway’s drop into the warm, yet deadly waters below. “No, I- I came here to work” Jimmy answers honestly, stuttering over his words before the reply he gives prompts his wealthy colleague to hunch forward and chuckle.

“Work? Why would you even bother showing up?” Wilbur wonders aloud, shrugging his shoulders whilst retaining the smirk he holds in the corner of his mouth, “you are taking the deal, aren’t you?” Left with too many holes to be left unfilled, Stanley presents his voice to the pair in the way Jesse refuses to do, “what deal are you talking about?” he wonders aloud, the inquiry prompting both men in question to turn toward him.

Feigning surprise, Wilbur turns to look the inquisitive man in the eyes before spinning back toward his potential acquaintance, his finger drifting between the bruised labourer and his taller friend. “You didn’t tell them about the fight pit?” the opulent gentleman inquires, watching Jimmy attempt to answer before his friend interrupts him once more. “Fight pit?” Stanley questions, watching both men stare at him once more, “what fight pit?”

“I was waiting until after the shift to tell them” Jimmy assures, a fleet of different looks paid in the direction of anyone within the immediate vicinity. “Oh don’t worry about that, I just paid off your supers” Wilbur replies, waving off the man’s explanation with more dismissal than a teacher would provide to a misbehaving student, lifting his voice for anyone to hear, “go home, everyone! Work is done for the day and I’ve paid you all handsomely!”

Standing around in confusion, the other unnamed workers simply stare in the direction of the dapper-dressed figure of wealth without certainty over what to take from his appearance or declarations. Too tempted to pull himself away from the bridge’s ledge, Kenny sneaks his way toward the same stack of metal Stanley had attempted to usher his friend toward the safety of, reclaiming a folded piece of paper from it with black writing scrawled on it reading, ‘to the kids’.

“I don’t think you can do that” Jimmy reassures, watching the well-dressed gentleman dismiss his assumption with a wave. “That pales in comparison to what I’m about to do” Wilbur replies, waiting a moment for the man to digest the vow, uncertain of what it means. Peering around the metal stack, Kenny watches the affluent visitor cup his hands together and shout for all ears to hear it.

“If you would like to make thousands of dollars a year, step on up!” Wilbur exclaims, jockeying the labourers together as if they were cattle, mere spectators to the carnival-like display he puts on. “What are you doing!?” Jimmy asks aloud, watching the slue of workers he’d spent every day working alongside begin to chatter amongst themselves, uncertain of whether or not the invitation is one worth even investigating for themselves, let alone blindly accepting.

“Jim, what’s going on?” Jesse calls into question, pulling a toothpick out of the corner of his mouth in order to speak freely, one hand tucking his thumb within a loop sewn into his overall uniform. “Go ahead, James- tell them what’s going on” Wilbur doubles down, tucking one hand into the pocket of his beige trench coat whilst the other hangs freely by his side, waiting for the man he’d been presented to by way of dumb luck to follow through on the request made.

Keeping to himself, Kenny presses his hand against the pile of building material and listens closely to the words spoken, not wanting to miss anything said in the very near distance. Beginning to converge upon the same area, the various labourers join each other in gradually making their way toward the small group of men near the construction’s end, trying their best to hear what’s revealed by their fellow colleague.

With his mouth slightly agape and tongue pressed into the corner of his lip, Jimmy stares at the man provoking him into taking the centre stage before sharing that same sight with his friends, raising his voice just loud enough for any other passerby to hear. “This is Wilbur” the man introduces, watching his prosperous and pleased friend turn back toward the oncoming group of workers and wave with a smile, “he’s a- a- a something. He’s rich and he’s from California.”

“I’m an entrepreneur from California that’s come to the Pacific Northwest in search of somewhere to forge an empire” Wilbur corrects, regaining control of the situation he knew was too bold for Jimmy to handle, though was dire to see him try and wrangle in, “all you need to know about me is the following- I have a lot of money, I have a rolodex of wealthy clientele, I can supply you with liquor, and I can make you stupidly rich.”

Though hidden from view of the others, Kenny hears the affluent entrepreneur out before turning his attention to the note in his hand, looking at it whilst the public discourse continues just ahead. “I’ve renovated a warehouse in the city for use as a spectacle. I will host various members of the upper class and allow them to take wagers on a variety of hand-to-hand combat endeavours” Wilbur continues, looking around at the company he hosts before coming to a realisation.

“The thought is just now occurring to me that you may not understand half of the words that I’m saying, so let me simplify it for you-” he proceeds, lowering the grandeur of his vernacular, “I own a place that I want you to fight each other in. Rich people will be there and gamble on which of you will win. I’ll pay you more than you make working on this death trap, and if you win- you’ll make more money than those that lose.”

Unsure of how to react, Stanley and Jesse stare at the pecunious figure before glancing back to their friend, his agreeable shrug prompting them to then turn toward each other. “Any issues with the police- or rather pigs to you classless folk- will be taken care of by me” Wilbur explains, turning his back to Jimmy with the assumption that he’d already won his vote the night prior, arms extended toward the crowd of builders that he stands before, “one time offer, who wants in?”

Whilst some dismissively laugh at the proposal whilst others take it anywhere from seriously to inconceivable, the vast majority of the crowd appears torn on whether or not to take the leap they’ve been provided with the avenue toward. Met with a pause he hadn’t fully intended to receive, Wilbur waits for those accepting few to make themselves heard before discovering the first reply to come from those whom his back is shown to.

“I am” Kenny calls out, watching the well-dressed man spin around to look at him as he steps out from behind cover, the first to take the leap that others had been waiting for the chance to take. Looking down to his hand once again, the older labourer throws his arm back and releases the folded note over the same ledge he’d stood along the edge of, allowing it to tumble into the waters below.

“Me too!” another worker shouts from within the crowd, his hand hoisted high for the affluent figurehead to see upon turning back around, a good number of others following suit in accepting the terms laid out for them. Each new recruit bringing an even wider smile upon the entrepreneur’s face, Wilbur soon finds himself satisfied with the lot he’d obtained before turning back once more, eyes glued toward the three he’d yet to be given a reply from.

“We’re in” Jesse remarks, playfully swatting Stanley on the arm whilst jutting his chin toward their friend just a few feet away, “all three of us.” Meeting that gesture with a lifted eyebrow, Wilbur soon takes his eyes toward the same man this encounter had begun with and smiles. “I wanna hear him say that” the dressed-down Californian responds, his back fully displayed to the crowd as his front is provided to one man, and one man only.

Other than the slightest furrow of his brows, Jimmy’s face presents not even an ounce of emotion, no hesitance nor overwhelming glee to be provided to the man across from him. Barely leant to the side, the man’s head joins his eyes in lining itself up with that of Wilbur’s own, no stumble in the words he responds with, nor reluctance in the posture he presents, lips moving to allow his voice to offer just two, short words.

“I’m in.”

== Seattle Noir ==