Noir Read online

  When was it she told you this? In the Shed? Here in the office? Maybe the night she picked you up on the street when you were in trouble. You’d just come out of the Vendome after meeting with that guy in the goatee who wanted to buy the toy soldiers, Marle, one of Mister Big’s lieutenants, you’d assumed, and had started down the mostly empty street. You’d paused to light up, and noticed there was a little cluster of men huddled in the shadows just beyond the next streetlamp. Others, you sensed, were gathering behind you. You touched your rod, looking around for some place to throw yourself if the bullets started to fly, when a limousine screeched up to the curb. The back door flew open: it was the widow. Get in, Mr. Noir. Quickly. You needed no second invitation. Bullets were zinging off the limo’s roof even as you sped away. What was that all about? she asked as though somewhat exasperated. I think I’m on to something, you said. You couldn’t help but notice that her black skirt had hiked up a bit when she leaned over to open the door, revealing a tiny patch of pale flesh just above the gartered black stocking. Since she didn’t pull the skirt back down you thought tonight might be the night. The driver was a hulk who didn’t talk, though there was something stiff-necked about him that suggested an inner rage, or else a humorless stupidity. You filled her in on the miniature soldiers scheme, she told you family stories. You remembered that at some point she said: My body melted against his and the world was filled with him. A golden wave of passion and love flowed between us. Was that the football player? Her husband? Or maybe she was defending her father after some disparaging remark you’d made. The sacredness of family: one of her themes. Might even have been her brother. Any of whom other than the dead husband may have been driving the limo. My body began to vibrate with liquid fire, she said. You figured this was an open invitation but knew better than to throw yourself on her and rip her clothes off, as was your wont. Even trying to touch her knee or that bare patch which you couldn’t stop staring at would be rebuffed, you knew. You had to hope you were headed to her place where all would be revealed. But she dropped you off in front of your office building and said good night, the liquid fire abruptly quenched. Or dammed. What do you do with liquid fire? You were in some pain and about to slam the door in reply, when she reached out her hand, took yours, and squeezed it gently in her warm moist palm. Had the same effect as if she’d squeezed your dick. When all this is over, she said, her voice trailing off into some limitless future. And then she was gone. That was the last night you saw her alive.

  You were still hurting, but the edge was off, blunted by Rats’ prescription, the brandy, and the flow of blood to other parts. Recalling the widow’s stories had filled your dick with a bit of liquid fire of its own and, lying there on the office sofa, you had taken it in hand. You were changing the story. You weren’t ripping her clothes off, she was. She was mad with desire, couldn’t wait. Neither could you. Nevertheless you fell asleep. You don’t remember what you dreamt, but when you woke you thought you were locked in that fishbait hut at the docks and couldn’t get out. There was someone in the office. Over near the hall door. More than one. Where’s the fucking flashlight, one of them asked. I forgot it, Marle. Shall I turn on the lights? No, you goddamn idiot. Light a match. Seemed to be several of them, all bumping into each other, cursing softly. Your heater was in your trenchcoat pocket, hanging from a clothes tree near the door. What you still held in your hand was useless. Fishbait. Where do you think the snoop’s stowed them little fuckers, Marle? Start with the desk. I’ll look for a wall safe. Dibs on one a them camp followers if we find them. You slid softly off the sofa onto the floor for maximum cover. The only thing close at hand was the brandy bottle. You took a final slug, hating to waste it, then pitched it toward one of the struck matches. He hit me, Marle! one of them screamed. They started shooting. Bullets were flying. One struck the sofa where you’d been lying with a muffled thud. Oh shit! He got me! It’s an ambush, Marle! There’s hundreds of ’em! They—aaargh! All their guns were blazing at once. It was like the finale of a fireworks display. There were screams, curses, crashing bodies. The shattering of glass.

  When silence had fallen, you crept over to get your rod, throw on the lights. There were five dead guys in leather jackets. May have been more. The door was open and there was a trail of blood out into the hallway. Was Marle among the late departed? Probably. Three of them had goatees, more than you’d seen before in the whole city. You felt good. It was as if you’d accomplished something. It relaxed you and you locked the door and doused the lights and crashed to the sofa again, falling almost immediately into the sweetest deepest sleep you’d enjoyed since the widow first turned up. Certainly nothing like it since.

  BY THE TIME BLANCHE WOKE YOU THE NEXT MORNING with your mended and freshly ironed clothes, she had already cleaned up the mess. Except for a few new pockmarks in the walls and furniture freshly stressed by ricocheting bullets, the place looked like it always did. Good thing, too, because Blue turned up while you were still shaving. He’d traced the phone number in the ad and wanted to see your miniature soldiers.

  You’re not going to believe this, Blue, but they were rented, photographed, and returned.

  You’re right, Noir, I don’t believe it. Who’d you return them to, the man you rented them from?

  A guy who said he was his brother.

  Sure, tell me another. They’ve been stolen, Noir, and you’re the last guy to have seen them. I’m putting you under arrest.

  Sounds like an insurance scam, Blue. You’re playing right into the hands of the real crooks. Blue only smiled. You knew you were in for a working over by Blue and his goons down at the station. But you’d just had a working over, you didn’t need another one.

  Then Blanche went over and whispered something in Blue’s ear, winked at you past the back of his head.

  You mean—? Yeah, good point. All right, Noir. I’m gonna let you go for the moment. But I’ll be keeping an eye on you.

  What did you tell him? you asked her after the captain had left.

  That it was your birthday, Mr. Noir, and that he should come back tomorrow.

  My birthday’s not until six months from now.

  There was a phone call for you while you were sleeping. From somebody’s ice cream parlor. She wants you to stop by. Have you been going off your diet again, Mr. Noir?

  At Big Mame’s you had another parfait. Why not. With hot butterscotch, maraschino cherries, and marshmallows on top. Instead of a chocolate twig sticking out, there was a rolled-up note from Rats asking you to meet him in the railway freight yard near the grain elevator at sundown. Sundown? That thing still came up?

  Now, as you have a smoke and polish off the second bottle of wine from its shattered neck, slumped against a wall in the smugglers’ tunnel, remembering with nostalgia Big Mame’s parfaits and meditating morosely on the thready web of story you’ve become entangled in, it occurs to you that the tattoo on your butt has stopped itching. Maybe that means they’re finally leaving you alone. Though who’s “they”? Trouble with webs. When you’re in one, you can’t see past the next knot. It’s like being trapped in two dimensions, cut off from overviews. Not something achievable from down here, but maybe you can get an underview. Look up destiny’s skirts. That old whore. Very dark under there, as always. Like the city. Oozing with slime and enshrouded in fog. Something nosing around your pantleg. You give it a kick. You feel headachy and rumpled, dirty, your sockless feet sweaty in your shoes. How long have you been down here? Weeks maybe. Time passes indifferently in the shapeless dark—or near dark, as the case now is: You’ve crawled from a pitch blackness into a dim gray light coming from you know not where. Or else you’ve dozed off and it has crept up on you in your stupor. The weed’s not your brand, but it will have to do. Down to the last one, though, the deck’s empty. What you’ve had instead of food. You spit out the chip of glass between your teeth, toss the bottle aside, tuck the fag end in the corner of your mouth, and, on hands and knees, press on grimly toward whatever’s ahead
.

  What you find is another low locked door, light leaking thinly around the edges, and the first thing you hear when you unlock it and stick your nose in is: I’ll tell, I’ll tell! Don’t hit me again! and you know where you are: the basement of Blue’s docklands police station. You’ve been here before as a guest, leaving a tooth behind to cover room and board. You back out quietly, but what choice do you have? It’s through here to the next door, if there is one and this isn’t a dead end, or crawl back to the strangled sex kitten’s pad, where they’re probably still hunting for you. Wouldn’t last long there. So, hoping that the element of surprise might give you an edge, you push on through and rise up with a snarl, legs apart, fists in trenchcoat pockets as though clenching iron, smoldering butt dangling from your lower lip. Two guys in white shirts are beating up a prisoner in the holding cell under a harsh light, three others are sitting at a table under a hanging lamp with a green shade, smoking, playing cards. Snark is there with a pack in his hand, wearing his leather shoulder holster over his black suspenders, elastic bands around his shirt sleeves, sucking on a whiskey bottle. They ignore you, don’t even seem to see you there. It’s like you’re invisible; or they’ve agreed you are. They may have a rule about it. Some deal struck with the smugglers. Rats once hinted at it. The place has a closed old-socks smell like a gym, the cement floor stained darkly. The cops at the table holler at the other two to get back to the game. Their prisoner has passed out, so, with a final kick to the belly, they shrug and do so, leaving the cell door ajar, probably hoping he’ll try to escape and they can shoot him. A new hand is dealt, bills and coins are tossed toward the pot at the center.

  You go over and poke around in their lunch-boxes, find half a baloney sandwich and a candybar. Snark, his thumbs in his suspenders, is talking about you. He says you’ve been a busy boy, you’re the prime suspect in at least five murders, maybe more. Possible pedophilia on top of it. Blue, he says, couldn’t be happier. On the table beside him is your fedora. He puts it on (it sits on his big head like a party hat) and says he doesn’t think you’re guilty, but tough shit, you’ll probably get the chair anyway. The others laugh, smoke around their ears like smutty halos, and Snark grunts, his equivalent of a laugh. Foo. The Bordox hasn’t settled well on your empty stomach. Which is in sudden turmoil. A cleansing agent, after all, the candybar the fatal catalyst. Snark is laying out the evidence against you, which could be useful, but you’re headed, on the double, for the john, the porcelain appurtenance you need so badly on bare bulb-lit view behind its gaping door.

  SHOOT-OUTS AND DRIVE-BY KILLINGS ON CITY STREETS, hold-up victims gunned down behind their counters, mob hits in restaurants, these are the images that captivate the public, but they are all far down the crime-scene frequency list behind beds and biffies. Your getting the goods on an adulterous lover has usually led to blood on the tiles and linens. Political wheeler-dealers and mob bosses are rarely snuffed with their dignity intact. Michiko once told you about a lover, poisoned in effect by a powerful laxative in his wasabi and killed when he heaved himself desperately onto a booby-trapped stool. Your clients often ask you for your targets’ toilet habits. The poopoo charts, as Blanche calls them, wrinkling her nose in disdain, though she knows and accepts the importance of the body’s habits and exudations in committing and solving crimes, and has often, in her own prim manner, schooled you in their finer points.

  Gazing morosely out at the crumpled body in the holding cell from your disheartening squat over the seatless crapper, you notice the black-on-black door with its silver lock at the back of the cell, and now, after wiping yourself with the crime reports nailed to the wall for the purpose, you pull up your pants and stride toward it, wary eye on the card players. Who are in a distracting row about an extra ace on the table, fingers pointed at Snark. Any stupid beast on the run knows better than to step into a cage with a lure at the back, but it’s your only shot, and when the cell door does not spring shut behind you, you’re figuring you just might make it. Until the prisoner on the floor of the cell grabs your ankle, making you nearly drop the key. You kick free, cursing him silently, but see then it’s your old chum Rats. The poor sonuvabitch is still wearing his special shoe but they have rammed it onto the wrong foot. Since you got Flame’s note, taped to the manikin, you’ve worried that you might have been set up, used as a decoy by the cops to nab both of you in one swoop. Why else did Blue let you go? You know trying to carry Rats out with you will break the invisibility spell in here, but he’s a pal and you owe him one, what can you do. You unlock the black door with your passkey (yes, it works!), prop it open, and step behind it for a moment, take a deep breath, then dash back and grab up the lifeless backstreet merchant, toss him over your shoulder. You hear a phone ring somewhere. And then the bullets start flying, ricocheting off the bars, whizzing past your head. You pocketed some of the manikin stash and now throw loose bills and a bunch of bags and bindles out the door as you duck back into it to keep the avaricious fuckers busy while you make your getaway.

  Mankind’s absurd fate, you are reminded as you stagger along, pushing deeper into the smugglers’ passage, the shooting and footsteps behind you dying away, is slow suffocation on a sick and dying planet: the tunnel is apparently linking up to the city’s sewer system and the air is getting decidedly pungent. The species of which you are a dissolute member does not live, it endures, and this is what it smells like. Rats weighs a ton and you wonder if they, literally, pumped him full of lead. Where the tunnel opens up into the sewers, you have a choice: which direction? Old rule: follow the flow. But further downstream, you run into multiple branches. It may be just glitter off the wet walls, but you seem to catch a glimpse of Fat Agnes and you start to splash along behind him, but at the fork you spy an old tennis ball, speared by a swizzle stick, in the mouth of the other branch. It’s your princess of the alley. Someone still loves you. The teasing will-o’-the-wisp glow of Fat Agnes continues to appear down one cloacal channel or another as you proceed, but Mad Meg’s buttons, shoelaces, tennis balls, and candy wrappers lead you out at last.

  You emerge from the pipe through which the city’s sewage is dumped into the sea. You drop Rats on a pile of stones and concrete chunks and wade out into the water to wash the sludge off your shoes and pantlegs. Out here, the air stinks of rotting fish and rusting metal, but it’s a relatively sweet stink and you suck it in. The gulls are squawking, protesting at your walking through their dinner. It’s some dark time of day which around here could be noon. You can hear the rhythmic growl of unseen traffic, an echoey medley of sirens, horns. The way they sound off the water: early evening maybe. There’s a ferry parked nearby, its carport open. You’ve seen that before, know where you are. Skipper’s lowlife hooch house is not far away. Place to lie low for a time. First, you put Rats’ shoe with the three-inch heel on the right foot, and while you’re doing that he comes around. His scarred lips move. He seems to be trying to tell you something. You lean close. Flame, he whispers. Flame? He’s out again.

  You heave the old grifter back up on your shoulders and trudge toward Skipper’s, planning to use what’s left of your manikin stash as currency to hole out there until this blows over, even if you have to wait until Blue retires from the force. On the way, you pass the place where the body was found. The trigger for the mess you’re in. The chalk drawing has washed away, replaced by a crude sketch of a naked guy with a big pistol for a dick, firing away at a disembodied cunny hanging in the air like a worm-eaten apple. Nothing left of the original crime scene portrait but a pale colored smudge underneath the pistol. You gaze down at it, trying to remember how it was when you first saw it. You do remember. Oh man. Who can you trust? You drop Rats off at Skipper’s with a packet of the smugglers’ C-notes, pick up some fags, and, head buried in your turned-up collar, head for Loui’s.

  ALL OVER TOWN AS YOU WALK THROUGH IT, YOUR MUG glowers darkly on WANTED posters. They’ll never recognize you. You’re prettier than that. Something wrong with the picture
, though. What is it? You put yourself in Blanche’s shoes. Well, for one thing, you’re wearing a fedora on the poster, Mr. Noir, and you don’t have that any more. And there’s no folded handkerchief in your jacket breast pocket. That’s not even your pinstripe suit. Blanche thinks you’re too unobservant for a private dick. She likes to set little tests for you, moves things around in the office, adds an ornament to your desk, hangs a new picture, paints the walls a different color, then asks you what’s changed. The only thing you ever notice is if she moves the sofa because when you go to lie down on it you hit the floor. You use the forest-and-trees argument: when you’re on a case, you’re focused, see what’s important, but too many details are irrelevant and clutter your vision. She says there are no forests, that’s a false and undefinable category, there are only trees. When you described the chalk drawing to her, she wanted to know if you could see the victim’s ears. You didn’t remember but said probably not, why did she ask? The outlined body you described, Mr. Noir, was a naked one. Your client was never naked, but men like to draw women that way. So, unless it was somebody else like one of your waterfront floozies, you can ignore everything about the drawing from the neck down. But men are never interested in women’s heads and would just draw what they saw. So, was the dead body wearing a widow’s hat and veil or was her head bare? That would be the clue. If you’d only been paying attention.