May 28, 2019

Cocktail Talk: Night Squad

I’m continuing along with a little David Goodis, following our stop at Nightfall and peach cordials, all from the David Goodis Start House Noir Classics collection of three books from this prince of the bleak, breathtaking, and sometimes nearly too dark – though Night Squad doesn’t end quite in that manner, though it ain’t exactly all light and flowers, either. There’s an ex-cop gone bad and wondering about going good again, a really bad part of town run by a bad boss who really likes rowing (really!), a bar and some drunks, another bad guy trying to take over, and, well, lots of other stuff, including the below talk on booze and prices and goathead, and I don’t know what that means. Maybe you do? Maybe reading all the past David Goodis Cocktail Talks will help?

The deal is, Jim, there’s an acute shortage or funds. So let’s take whiskey, just as an instance. A legitimate bottle, a fifth, it’s four dollars and up. The contraband booze, the cooked corn and goathead, you get it for a dollar a pint. Of course sometimes it’s poison, but those times are very seldom. Maybe one batch out of five thousand, and you’ll admit that’s a tiny percentage. Chances are, when you drink the homemade juice you won’t be sick the next day. I’ve never had a hangover from the corn or the goat, and that’s more than I can say for some well-known legal brands.

–David Goodis, Night Squad

Rathbun on Film