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  SAME EERILY DESERTED INNER-CITY STREETS, SAME OCCAsional streetlamp casting its poor light, same trashbins and shadowy doorways, but everything frozen solid, sheeted with ice. Abandoned tenements, tilting perilously with the weight of their icy crusts, glitter with multiple reflections of the glazed streetlamps, the frozen streets and sidewalks do. There is a faint cracking sound as of the frozen freezing deeper. You can’t move and you know, or seem to know, that you are dead. Iced up solid. Unable even to shudder. This knowledge is itself frozen and cannot move on.

  YOU’RE PRETTY SURE YOUR EYES ARE OPEN, BUT YOU CAN see nothing. It’s like staring into Skipper’s eyepatch. The idea that you are dead is still in your head, but the pain there tells you otherwise. And the cold: do the dead feel cold? Is that what hell is? A frozen eternity living with the pain you died with? You start to relax into that in a perverse what-the-fuck way, some treacherous part of your bruised brain telling you to let go—then you catch yourself. Where are you? Some kind of box. A coffin? But cold, like an icebox. And suddenly you know. The crypt at the morgue. The refrigerated vaults. You’re in a cadaver drawer.

  How do these things work? You can’t remember. Your frozen head is throbbing, you can’t remember anything. Never been inside a file drawer before though you’ve opened and closed them often enough. A catch somewhere? You have to stay cool. So to speak. You can’t. You’re starting to panic. Which means at least you’re alive and kicking. Kicking: that’s what you’re suddenly doing, you’re kicking at the far end, recalling now that the stiffs are usually filed head first so one can get idents without having to witness any horrors above the tagged feet or disturb the modesty of the dead. That fucking Creep. If you get out of here, you’re going to throttle the evil sonuvabitch with your bare hands. Your desperate kicks are blows to his bug-eyed face. And then there is a metallic snap and light and you’re gliding out on steel rollers into the white room, stripped to the frosted buff and wearing a toe tag, about three drawers up.

  RATS ONCE TOLD YOU ABOUT A PAL OF HIS WHO DIED whose cadaver got used as a container for a drug shipment. His body was gutted by a friendly mortician with a habit and stuffed with bags of angel dust (snowballs, as Rats calls them) and sewn up again, the brain cavity and scrotum filled with diamonds and emeralds from a recent heist. This was a kind of memorial tribute to his pal, Rats said with his sneering scarfaced grin, the pal, whom he loved like a brother and maybe was a brother, having always referred to his balls as the family jewels. He woulda got a snort outa that. The one mistake they made, Rats said, was not knocking out his pal’s gold teeth. Some smalltime hoods got wind of the body in transit, stole it for the teeth, and unaware of the stuffing, threw the remains off an overpass to make it look like suicide. It got struck by a speeding semi, setting off a snowstorm in summer and an orgasmic scatter of jewels that caused a ten-hour traffic jam. Even though all he salvaged from the operation were the two teeth, the cheap hoods soon following his pal off the overpass, and though the mob was on his back for awhile after that, Rats called the failed operation pure poetry, even though it probably wasn’t the kind to win a Nobel. Since then, the idea of using bodies as stash bags has become standard procedure, so they’re always looking for fresh packaging materials. Why you tend to feel a little uneasy around Rats: you sense he’s always mentally measuring you up, estimating your capacity.

  AS YOU EASE YOUR ABUSED BOD DOWN OFF THE CABINET tray, you can actually hear the ice crystals whisper their little dying snaps and pops, but at least you’re defrosted enough to be able to shiver from the cold. You try to remember what happened, but the blow to your head has deleted most of it. Something about a doomed planet. And a doughnut. Or half a doughnut. Makes your head, aching, ache all the worse, trying to think about these things, so you give it up. Your exact words, spoken aloud to all present, are: Fuck it. The Creep is nowhere to be seen, the place deserted. You check your corpus d for scars. There are plenty, but no new ones. You find your clothes dangling from the body hoist above the dissection slab like flayed hides. Still wet. Cold. Tie draped over the hanging organ scale, spotted with chili. Is that a clue? The .22 is still in the jacket pocket, though it has been fired. But the black veil is missing. You wonder if it is hidden somewhere and open the other drawers. In one of them, popping out head forward like a jack-in-the-box, you find the Creep, color: blue, with his nose bandaged from the last time you were here and a bullet hole in his forehead like a beauty spot. Looks like one made by a .22. Not only have you blown your case, you’re going to be a wanted man. The Creep’s unseeing eyes are wide open, bulging. The ogler still, now ogling death. He once described bonesaw whine as a love song, formaldehyde as an aphrodisiac. You pull his tray all the way out in case the veil is secreted somewhere; it isn’t, an unpleasant and futile exercise. His toe tag reads: BIG. Does it refer to the toe it’s tied to, or is it a signature? It reminds you to take off your sock and look at your own: THIS LITTLE PIGGY SHOULD STAY HOME.

  Your thoughts exactly. How long do you remain loyal to a dead widow who never even lifted her veil for you and from whom there can be no more bankrolls? You pull on the rest of your cold wet togs, tip your fedora down over your nose, turn up your trenchcoat collar, and, before the cops can turn up, head back to the office under the gray rain, head ringing, your cold rags sandpapering your skin as you walk. Blanche meets you at the office door, peering disapprovingly over her hornrims, and orders you out of your clothes. This is apparently one of the days she turns up. She bandages your head, smears lotion on your chafed skin, remarks on your bleached pubic hair. You hadn’t noticed; proof you can’t use that the Creep was shot after you got filed away. She kneels down to read the tattoo on what she calls your sit-me-down that says, she says, in small print, inside a broken heart: YOU ARE BEING FOLLOWED. You were wondering why it was itching back there. She loans you her silk drawers—you’re getting used to them now, but you’re definitely not buying a pair of your own—and takes everything off to the laundromat. This time it is of course not the widow who turns up, in peace may she. It’s Captain Blue. I’ve come to arrest you for murder, Noir, more than one, but I can’t take you in like that. You use bleach? It’s disgusting. You’d cause a riot down at the station and lose those things hanging out before I could even get you booked. I’ll come back in ten minutes, killer. If you haven’t got some goddamned clothes on by then, I’m going to shoot you.

  THAT RAINY MORNING A COUPLE OF WEEKS AGO WHEN the widow found you in Blanche’s pink underpants, your bandaged head rocking unsteadily on its stem, all you could think to say was: This is one tough case, lady. Look what they did to me!

  What? That? she asked, head tipped toward the undies. Who did?

  You looked around for something to wear. All you could find was your hat so you put it on, perching it atop your turban, lit up a cigarette, dangling it sullenly in the corner of your mouth, and sat behind your desk, though sitting hurt. Even worse when, to show that things were cool in spite of appearances, you tried to put your feet up on the desk. Big mistake.

  Are you in pain, Mr. Noir?

  Just—ungh!—worrying about you, kid. You’re mixed up with some pretty rough company.

  I know that, Mr. Noir. It’s why I came to you. What have you found out? Have you been able to follow my husband’s business partner?

  Working on that. I’ve been checking into the insurance policy. Seems it might have been invalid if death was by suicide. Would have been important that he died, or seemed to die, by some other means.

  I didn’t even know he had an insurance policy, she said, worrying her pale fingers in her lap, her multifaceted diamond glinting like coded signals in the dim light leaking in through the windows, streaming with rain. Her fragrance was fresh and innocent, yet somehow dangerous. Seductive. When her head dropped a moment, you made a quick adjustment to your silken bonds. Better. But not much. Why do some guys like to wear these things? He never talked about business with me, she said. She heaved a sigh, her breasts rising and falling
provocatively inside their black lace bodice. I miss him so.

  Though you couldn’t see her expression behind the veil, you could hear the sorrow in her voice. The fear. Genuine or faked? Who cares? Give the girl a break. Enjoy yourself. Tell me again how you met your husband.

  I was a poor girl, alone and friendless in the city, and he was—he advertised for a maid and housekeeper. He was good enough to hire me, though I had no references. I was very grateful.

  So to thank him you provided other services . . . ?

  What can you possibly mean, Mr. Noir? I of course did all that was asked of me to the best of my limited experience. And he was appreciative of my application and, being of a kind and generous nature, was always attentive to my needs.

  Yeah, sure. But, in a word, how did you get it on?

  Get it on? Oh, you mean. . . . How did we fall in love? You were watching her legs again. She knew you were watching her legs. She parted them slightly and they seemed almost to release a sigh from within their skirted shadows. There was more of you stretching Blanche’s panties now, but oddly you felt less uncomfortable. It happened one day when I was changing out of my work uniform and he passed by. The wind must have blown the door open behind me. I didn’t know he was there until I heard him breathing at my back. As he pressed against me I could feel him trembling with emotion, as I was trembling, too. It was all very innocent, but I was at a loss to know what to do. And he was such a handsome man, strong, manly. He could not conceivably have dressed as you are dressed, Mr. Noir.

  Too bad, he never knew what he missed. And where was the wife all this time?

  I think I told you. The poor woman was bedridden and did not have long to live.

  That’s how she was when you started undressing there?

  Working there? Yes, I think so. Or soon after. The dear man was distraught. He fell to weeping inconsolably on my breast.

  While standing, or supine?

  Mr. Noir, I do not understand the point of your questions. And would you please put both of your hands on top of the desk where I can watch them?

  IT WAS BLANCHE, LATER, WHO ASKED ALL THE SERIOUS questions. What you asked was: So, what are you doing tonight, sweetheart? We can talk more about all this over supper. But when you looked up, widow wasn’t there. She had an interesting way of coming and going. She’d left another roll of bills on the desk, but you had no pockets, so when Blanche returned she picked it up and locked it in her desk drawer. For expenses, she said. We have a lot to do. I have learned that the deceased’s estate passes to one of two heirs, but must pass intact, meaning that one of them has to relinquish their share or die. A kind of macabre joke. When you gave her back her undies, she gazed at them with something between repugnance and dismay, then asked you to turn around. What do you know about your client’s background, Mr. Noir?

  Well, she comes from a small country town with tree-lined streets and green lawns where everybody loves each other.

  Sure, she said. And bodies buried under the rose bushes and unspeakable horrors in the family den. I didn’t mean that. You can look now. I mean, what do you know about her mother, her brother, her boyfriend, and her father, the drug dealer?

  Town pharmacist, you corrected. Your clothes were warm from the dryer and comforting. Still having trouble keeping your brainpod from bobbing about, though, and it was therefore less useful than usual.

  Where are they?

  You supposed they were back at the farm. What did they have to do with this case?

  If her father was supplying her with poison and whatever narcotics her husband was using, then they could all be involved.

  But who said—?

  And what about the person you’re supposed to follow?

  I’ve got a lead on that. Last night. From Snark. That’s how I got in trouble.

  With Officer Snark?

  No. Afterwards. Though he might have been there. The details are blurry. But Snark told me Mister Big has the hots for medieval toy soldiers. I’ll buy a few and advertise them and see if I can get a nibble.

  The sort of miniatures he would want you can’t afford. Not even with the black widow’s handouts. You’ll have to rent them. I’ll look for a dealer.

  IT IS YOUR OWN COMFORTABLE FRESH-SMELLING UNDERwear, warm from the dryer, rags though they be, that you are looking forward to now. But Blue’s ten minutes are nearly up when Blanche returns empty-handed. The clothes are still in the dryer, she had to wash them twice to get the morgue smells out, it will be another twenty minutes. You can’t wait. Blue is due any second. You turn your back and give Blanche her drawers back (I hope that tattoo was done with a clean needle, she says reproachfully), shove your bare feet into your squishy dogs, pull on your cold wet trenchcoat, drop your .22 and Blanche’s skin lotion in the pockets, perch your fedora atop the bandages, and hurry out, down the back stairs. At the alley door, you check the mirror apparatus you’ve rigged there as a lookout and see that some lunk is waiting for you outside, cosh in hand. Blue covering all bets. There’s probably somebody on the fire escape, too. Time for the old straw dummy routine, hoping only this isn’t a cop who has already been burned. You keep the dummy down here, dressed in a trenchcoat and fedora for just such occasions. Cops. Landlords. Disappointed clients. Irate husbands. You spread the dummy head-down on the stairs, unlatch the door quietly, stand so as to be hidden behind the opened door, throw an old kitchen chair and cry out: Oh fuck! Help! Your would-be assailant rushes in and delivers a blow to the dummy just as you brain him with the butt of your .22. It’s not one of Blue’s boys. It’s the suit, the Hammer, the thug who accosted you in Loui’s Lounge, the one you slugged and were slugged by down at the docks. He’s out cold. Your hurting head hurts more to think of how his head will hurt, but just desserts for the dickhead after what he did to you last night. You quickly rifle his jacket pockets, switch your rod with his .45, dart out into the rainy alley. You can hear sirens out front. You take a right, a left, a right, losing yourself in the alleyed labyrinth. Loui’s is a good idea. Flame will let you hole up in her room and the food’s good.

  The alley. You can’t say it’s your home away from home, having no real home to be away from, but you know it well. You’ve spent serious time in it. Have been mugged, chased, blown, asked for a light, beaten up, paid off, conned, dumped, supplied, scared shitless, given hot tips, shortchanged, shot at in here. You say, here. The alley is not on any streetmap. It is under it somewhere. Or behind it. It is negotiated intuitively; maps are useless, maybe even deceptive. Even in the rain, its scabrous brick walls are layered with shadows, worn like old rags. It is not uninhabited. It has its pimps and dealers, street tramps, smalltime grifters, misnamed homeless (they know where their home is better than you do), muggers, psychopaths, deviants. Not unlike City Hall, in short, or any church or company boardroom. You have to keep your eye out for one of them in particular. Known as Mad Meg, she likes to leap out of the shadows and stab people with her rusty kitchen knife. Once an honest stripper, but misused by a sadistic sugar daddy who pumped her full of brain-burning opiates, thrown out on the streets when her mind went and her body bagged, now the hidden princess of the alley. Like the alley, she’s treacherously complex yet rough on the surface and without façade, oddly innocent or at least neutrally unmotivated even as she lunges at her victims, somewhat pestilential, smelling of urine and half-blind, the indecorous backside of the human condition, the poxy dead end we all try to avoid. She’s a friend of yours though she doesn’t always remember that. You bring her things that she collects like coat buttons, swizzle sticks, shoelaces, candy wrappers, and old tennis balls, and once she got you out of a scrape by attacking the killer who was attacking you, though that may have just been the luck of who was on top. You have nothing to give her today except Blanche’s lotion or your own laces, but no need, she remains hidden.

  Not that your route to Loui’s is without incident. You witness a murder for one thing. You’ve just stepped into an abandoned bicycle shed to get out
of the downpour when you see two figures at the other end of the alley dragging a third, mere shadowy outlines as though the rain were a drawn blind between you with dim silhouettes playing on it. Through the rain’s rattle you can hear one of them giving orders, the other whining in reply in a squeaky voice. The guy giving the orders does not sound like a street mug. He turns to go, but Squeaky returns and pumps a round of bullets into the victim’s head. Psycho. The boss scolds him in a father-to-son way and leads him off. Sirens sound. Can’t stay. Who was it? Never know. One of life’s little mysteries.

  ONE WET DAY’S END YOU WERE TAILING A GUY THROUGH here who you thought might be Mister Big. This was after you’d delivered your illustrated classified ad for the toy soldiers to the city newsrag. Through a friendly dealer, Blanche had learned of a private collector who owned a unique set of figures from the Battle of Agincourt with brigandines made out of mouse leather and bascinets of silver with hinged visors, stuffed and quilted gambesons on the French crossbowmen, knee-length hauberks of silver chain mail on the English archers, beards and horse tails of real hair with brass and leather trappings for the horses, honed steel swords, velvet surcoats, and silken jupons (see what you learn in this racket), and she was able to get permission to photograph some of the figures for a philosophical journal she claimed to edit, though insurance for the day cost half the widow’s roll. The ad promised a private showing to genuine collectors only, and the newspapers had not even hit the streets before the calls started coming in.