Dirty Little War: A Crime Novel

“Dirty Little War has moments that encourage quick reading and fast page turning, and pending violence at the hands of erratic and mercurial characters can keep you guessing about who is on whose side.”

Sometimes you read a book that tells a pretty good story, but it wants to be shorter. That is the case with Dirty Little War. At just under 500 pages, it is longer than it needs to be. Pretty much everything that is going to happen has happened in the first 200 or so pages. After that, it all tends to repeat itself with slight variations until the action picks up toward the end.

It is the story of Huck Waller, a poor boy who leaves Louisiana in the 1920s following an altercation with a pimp and makes his way north by hitching rides and hoboing on railroads till he lands in Chicago, broke and without prospects. He is approached by a pair of toughs with a promise: “Alright Huck Waller—step right this way, your future’s waiting.” The “future” is toeing the line in freight yard and stockyard bareknuckle boxing matches, getting beaten by and beating opponents as onlookers win and lose betting money in a series of fights that differ little from one to the next.

But those same tough guys play a larger role in Huck’s future. “‘Hundred bucks just for driving?’ Huck couldn’t help thinking he could sure do with money like that.” The “driving” is running bootleg whiskey out of Canada for an organized crime syndicate known as the “North Side,” an Irish operation at odds with the Italian mobs on the south side. The Chicago gangsters hijack, burn, and murder in pursuit of domination of the city’s booze trade, but little changes. While running whiskey is lucrative, Huck had “the feeling the North Side figured him for some stockyard fighter, thick enough to stand toe to toe, throwing punches till the last man was standing, but not seeing him as much more than that. A guy they let drive their whiskey from Canada.”

So, Huck goes to work as well for Yellow Cab, a taxi firm owned by a man named Hertz. Employing the services of the toughs who use him in bootlegging, Huck works as a security consultant—paid muscle in Yellow Cab’s shooting and wrecking war with Checkered Cab, owned by a man named Markin. Huck also finds himself in the employ of Markin to fend off union intervention, again working with the same group of gangsters as a troubleshooter, “meaning if there was any trouble, Huck would be the one shooting.”

Along the way he meets a homeless orphan named Izzy and takes him under his wing. The boy is smart and a serious reader compared to Huck, who is barely literate. Izzy says of books, “A whole world in there, Huck. Reading’s the best thing I ever did. No offense. I mean if you want, maybe I could teach you some.” Which he does.

There’s also a love interest. Hospitalized to recover from “war” wounds, Huck is smitten by a nurse. She is not interested. “They got the N-O word where you come from?” she says. But he is persistent and when she loses her nursing job, he finds her working as a “nickel-a-dance girl” in a speakeasy. They eventually marry, but she never comes to terms with his employment. During a pillow talk conversation after she becomes pregnant, Huck “guessed this was leading back to her saying she wanted him out of working for the taxi outfit and the gangsters.”

But getting out of a life of crime, especially one involving organized crime, is no simple task so he keeps working. And saving money. “Huck had salted away enough for a couple of lifetimes, invested well . . . and had built a tidy stock portfolio paying him fat dividends, Huck financially secure and feeling long past the need of sticking his neck out.”

Despite wanting out, Huck must continue sticking his neck out as the taxi and bootlegging wars drive toward violent conclusions.

On a few occasions the author uses anachronistic language, with words and phrases that did not enter the language until years, even decades later than the 1920s in which the story is set. The phrase “venture capital,” for example, did not become synonymous with private investment until the 1940s. “Going forward,” meaning from now on, became business jargon in the late 20th and early 21st century, but in this book it is ahead of its time. Likewise, these anachronisms from popular culture: “yadda-yadda” and “crackheaded.”

Dirty Little War has moments that encourage quick reading and fast page turning, and pending violence at the hands of erratic and mercurial characters can keep you guessing about who is on whose side.