Noir

by Robert Coover

  Fingers grunted. That dude was born ugly, he said, getting up to go. Thanks for the jittersauce, my man. Then, holding the glass to his lips as if to finish off the drink, his bent back to the room, he growled: Check out Big Mame’s.

  The ice cream parlor?

  He winced, as though to say, Shut up! Plant you now, dig you later, man, he declared aloud, and drifted away, tossing off a Let it wail, baby! over his shoulder.

  THE NEXT DAY, EN ROUTE BIG MAME’S, YOU STOPPED in at the office to pick up another cannon, but before you could leave, Blanche brought in dossiers of three possible new clients, all lucrative, all boring. She said she was sorry about the previous client, the poor silly mixed-up thing, but she was glad all that was over. Well, you said, it’s not over, and over her protests (This is a detective agency, Mr. Noir, and it is not supported by dead clients!) you stepped past her, tipping your fedora with a deadpan wink, and ankled on over to the ice cream parlor, head ducked against the blinding glare of the wet streets. There were a couple of kids in there sucking at a milkshake with two straws. The place was irritatingly cheerful and stank of milk and bubblegum. Like the morgue: sweet rot. You stared at the kids for a moment. They were blowing bubbles at each other in their shake and giggling. It was like they lived in a different world. They did live in a different world. It was called daytime. The parlor was otherwise empty. You could hear Big Mame at the back, ordering up bananas, nuts, and maraschino cherries. Over by the window: a table with eight or nine empty banana split bowls, one chair. You knew who’d been there. He’d left a cigar butt and a newspaper behind. You glanced at it. The usual miseries. Wars and threats of wars. Murders, robberies, crimes by the column. More rain on the way. Slumping economy. Accusations of corruption and crackdowns on juvenile troublemakers. The latest humiliating defeat of the city baseball team. Your horoscope for the day suggested that to play it safe it was better to spend the day in bed. Watch out for falling meteors, it said. Then you saw it. Bottom of page seven, the obits page: Fingers was dead. Run over by a hit-and-run driver who jumped the curb and clipped him on the sidewalk last night as he stepped out of the Woodshed.

  That was when you decided to look up Rats to see what he knew about missing bodies and drive-by assassins, ended up in Skipper’s sleazy waterfront den instead, got rescued from Blue’s goons by Michiko and sent back to Loui’s by the note she handed you.

  YOU LEAN AGAINST A ROUGH WALL, LIGHT UP A FAG, THE match’s flame blinding in the coalpit dark, realizing now where you’d seen before that pug-faced cabbie who delivered you to the dead sex kitten’s pad: in the Shed. Fingers’ ugly sideman on bass. What’s the connection? No idea. Connections probably an illusion in such a fucked-up world as this. Why you’re down here. Illusory connections. Until it burns your fingers, you hold the match to the wall to read the graffiti: Your future is all used up, it says. Swell. Your belly’s growling, the only thing besides the scurrying vermin that breaks the silence. You’ve long since consumed Flame’s provisions. You still have the bill clip in your pocket, but it isn’t clipping anything. The big bills are gone as well and you’re even out the taxi fare. Twixt twos and fews, as Fingers would say. On the nut. Sometimes you can stand up in here in the smugglers’ tunnel, sometimes not. Standing or on all fours, you have to feel your way. When you pulled those bricks closed behind you, except for the basements you pass through, that was the end of any light. It’s a kind of entombment, but you feel at home here, trapped in some nameless dark corner of the world and no way out, burrowing through a black night, not knowing where you’re going or why, but somehow impelled to get there, the condition you were born to. The guys who built these routes must have worked their butts off. They were smalltime crooks, trying to get something for nothing, but they were heroes, too, in their way, pitting their strength and wits against the odds, and less pernicious than the grubby boiled hats on top who bully the world out of its goods, then pass laws to protect what they’ve stolen, hang those who try to take it back.

  The impenetrable darkness reminds you of the widow. How little you knew of her. Was she just an innocent kid from the sticks who found herself helplessly drawn, through loneliness and love, into a big city plot of deceit, greed, and murder? Or was she herself, as Blanche believes, a ruthless streetwise killer, bewitchingly beautiful maybe, but all ice inside? A sexy hooker who landed a rich cokehead and bumped him off? This isn’t the tender sophisticated lady you know and love, but of course her own tale addenda seemed to put the lie to her innocence. When she admitted to having been raped by her father and you said that was a rotten way to lose your cherry (there are probably nicer ways of putting it, but you don’t know them; or if you know them, they don’t roll out past the stones in your mouth), she confessed that her father was not her first lover, her grandfather was. She truly loved him, she said. He was so noble and handsome. He awakened dormant desires and taught her about her body. Made her feel beautiful. But which was the lie, the idyllic rural village where they sold cotton candy in the park on weekends, or the sexy grandfather? She often seemed to be crafting her confessions, if they were that, for you. As if, all along, she were trying to reach you, read you, tell you what you wanted to know. Her father, later, was in such a hurry, she said, but her grandfather was gentle and took his time. They spent a whole day just touching each part of each other’s body and talking about them, without even kissing them. Who was that for, if not for you, you randy old lech? And your own attraction to her: Did it matter whether she was the abused virgin from the back country or a vicious scheming assassin? Well, it probably affected the way you’d have touched her, if she’d ever have let you: lacing fingers tenderly or grabbing her wrist with the gun in it; but, no, whatever, you were hooked. And, except for the Creep’s nasty remarks and the legs she showed, you don’t even know what she looked like. Although now, in the deep dark, as, crouched under the low roof, you stumble along (you can’t hear your own footsteps: the walk of a dead man, as they say), you can almost see her. Smiling at you behind her veil. Sweetly. Wickedly.

  And then—a thin light, a locked door that your passkey opens—you do see her. Nearly knocks you to your knees. Veiled, dressed in black, black-stockinged, standing in a mostly naked crowd. Of manikins. You’re in the basement of a women’s dress shop, filled with manikins and parts of manikins, one of them decked out in widow’s weeds. There’s a bride, too, a swimmer, a woman in jodhpurs, others in underwear or night-gowns or business suits. Most of them are bare or mostly bare, most bald as well, some half-disassembled, armless, headless. In the dusty penumbral light, there’s an eerie sensuality about them with their angular provocative poses, their hard glossy surfaces, their somnambulant masklike faces, features frozen in glacial eyeless gazes. In short, not unlike most of the women you’ve known. You know you’re in trouble because they look good to you. You pass among them, stroking their sleek idealized bottoms, their hard shiny breasts. Why are they so beautiful? You peel down undies, lift skirts. Nothing underneath of course. Just a lot of rigid bare bodies, dressed in their absence of definition, yet, in a chilling way, they excite you. You touch the hard lumps between their legs, thinking about the soft wet pussy of the little sex kitten, the one who asked you to protect her and whom you failed, poor thing. So alive. What did the Creep say? Like wet velvet. Though he was talking about a dead woman. Wasn’t he? Or. . . . You hesitate before the manikin widow, feeling confused, chastised. Like you know something you don’t know, or shouldn’t. You take hold of the black skirt hem, drop it. Not right. Can’t look under the veil either. You don’t want to see that cold blind deadpan face.

  There’s a message taped to the pubic knoll of a nearby manikin, naked except for a red wig. It’s from Flame. Figured you’d have to come through here sooner or later, Phil, it says. Just wanted to let you know that the cops got Rats. Collared him after he saw you. He’s in for a bad time. But it’s you they’re really looking for. They think Rats will lead them to you. You’re a famous guy. They’re pinning at leas
t five different murders on you, lover. I’m hot! And lonely without you! Be careful! I miss you, baby! I want you back!

  You’d hoped Rats had got away. He was on the run, he’d put himself at risk to tell you something about what you were looking for. You’d met in a train-yard amid abandoned railroad cars black with rain, someone had apparently tipped the cops, and they were waiting for him. For you, too, probably. All Rats had time to tell you was that there was a mystery about the widow. Had to do with the chalk drawing. And then he told you to tear ass, he’d lead the cops a chase, he knew how to shake them. You got away but apparently he didn’t. Must have lost his clog, the poor gimpy fucker. You owe him one.

  WHAT YOU’D BEEN LOOKING FOR, EVER SINCE IT WAS found down in the docklands, then disappeared, was the widow’s body, and after a couple of bad days, you were consoled the night that Michiko’s note sent you there by Flame’s own orange-tufted nicely cushioned pubic knoll (you kiss your fingertips and tap the hard one here in memory of it). You were in need of consolation. Your client dead, her body missing, your pal Fingers run down, your own health in constant jeopardy. Not to mention what would have been a broken heart if you had one to break. That was a few nights ago when you were met in Loui’s by the ham-fisted thug with the roscoe. The suit. The Hammer. You never learned his real moniker; Flame named him that night with her song. He quickly became something of a nuisance. Later he got knocked off in the alley, blown away with your own .22. According to Snark. So who was he really? Why did he want you to lay off the body hunt? What was he doing the next night down at the docks? The widow had spoken of a mad-cap brother who liked to emulate detective pulp badguys. Could this have been the same guy? She said she thought he was working for Mister Big, might have been out to snuff her. Going for badguy sainthood. If that was the Hammer in the alley rain, who were his killers? Rivals of Mister Big? Or Big’s own hatchetmen, eliminating a cowboy interloper? Maybe Loui had some of his mob connections take him out as a favor to you. And to himself: the mug was bad for business, as he said himself that night, signaling his bouncers to toss him. Joe the bartender dismissed him as a fucked-up dude, winging it on his own, noting that real hoods, like cops, tend to partner up when on the job. And they go careful on the sauce. This guy had been in here before and didn’t know when to stop. You could feel for that. You know when to stop but knowing doesn’t help.

  The next day you launched the search in earnest, starting with a return to Big Mame’s ice cream parlor. Fingers sent you here and you asked Big Mame why. She just shook her jowls and went about her business. She had one of those classic mudbucket faces, sullen and rumpled and full of sorrow, the kind that was very expressive but said nothing.

  Fingers is dead, Mame.

  No blame on me, Mister Bad Luck.

  There’s a dame who’s dead, too. A widow. Why are people trying to stop me from looking for her remains?

  Can’t say. What’s it to you anyhow? You do the dirty with this lady?

  I don’t even know what she looks like.

  So how you gonna know it’s her if you find her?

  I’ll know.

  But it was true. How would you know? By her legs? Legs aren’t faces with eyes and noses. Good thing, too. It would be a mess to have faces down there. No, what you were in love with was something less visible: a voice, a manner, poise. Style. A counter to your cluttered and seedy life. Would that be recognizable in a dead body? Mame only folded her arms over her big breasts and stared dully at you when you asked her questions, but you figured, even on the run, Rats would have to stop by sooner or later for a hot butterscotch sundae, he couldn’t stay away, so you let her know you wanted to see him. Your favorite is a five-layer parfait she makes, topped with cherry sauce, whipped cream, and rum raisins, and you had one of those before hitting the streets again.

  YOU PAID FOR IT OUT OF THE ALLOWANCE BLANCHE HAD handed you earlier in the day on your way out the door, given only after you’d agreed to change your socks. Blanche seemed to be turning up at the office more regularly now that the widow was dead. Mostly to try to dissuade you from the unprofitable pursuit of a client who no longer existed. She had peered reproachfully at you over her horn-rimmed spectacles, plucking red hairs from your pants and jacket and unshaved lip, and pointed out that the important thing was not where the body was, but why did it go missing? In whose interest was that?

  I don’t know. Mister Big wanted it as a souvenir?

  You are a silly man, Mr. Noir. As we know, the deceased’s husband willed the estate to the two of them with the stipulation that the estate remain intact, so before it can be finally probated, one of the two beneficiaries must relinquish their share or die. The last thing the second beneficiary would want would be to lose the corpus delicti.

  So I’m doing him a favor if I find it.

  You might as well ask for a commission. Unless there is something wrong with the body.

  What could be wrong with it?

  She’d shrugged her little dismissive shrug, pushing her glasses further up her nose. Shall I cancel the ad for the miniature soldiers? Nothing’s come of it. It’s a waste of money.

  No, constable, we have not yet abandoned the field, you’d replied, taking back your trenchcoat which she had threatened to send to the cleaners. Let’s add that we can also offer a set of miniature camp followers. Action figures. Hold down the fort, sweetheart. I’m off to the hunt.

  SO, SQUEEZING THE WEBBY BLACK VEIL IN YOUR pocket as though to wring knowing itself from it, you pushed off from Big Mame’s, your chin sticky with cherry sauce, to see what you could turn up. For awhile, you were literally looking everywhere, as though the corpse might be hidden under a carpet or behind the door. In flophouses, movie theaters, beer halls, public toilets, penny arcades, massage parlors, gambling dens, hock shops, gyms, and boxing arenas. You checked in with your contacts among the city’s dealers, strippers and street vendors, numbers runners, hoods and hookers, pimps, plastic surgeons, pickpockets, addicts, medics and ambulance drivers, counterfeiters, cops and con artists. There were vague rumors, they wanted to help, eager for your coin, but you got nothing you could call a real lead. A one-armed taxi driver said he picked up a woman dressed in black who had to be lifted into his hack by the two gorillas she was with and taken to a fancy block near the harbor, but added that she snored like a horse the whole way, so that was probably not who you were looking for. A newspaper vendor outside the bus station who had lost his nose in the last war and had to tape his thick glasses to his temples told you he’d seen a fat guy shoving a duffelbag that might have held a body into one of the baggage lockers. You weren’t sure how he could see anything through his thick ink-smudged lenses, but coughed up the better part of Blanche’s allowance to get the station manager to open all the lockers within the vendor’s view. There was actually a duffelbag in one of them. It was full of candy bars, jawbreakers, bubblegum, all-day suckers, and children’s underwear. You’d just helped solve some crimes you’d never get credit for, might now even be accused of, but you hadn’t come closer to finding the dead widow.

  At the morgue, you took a look at Fingers’ cadaver, stretched out flat, his hunched slump ironed out by the spine-crushing blow he took, the poor bastard. Yesterday after leaving Big Mame’s, you’d stopped by the Woodshed to pay your respects. No chalk figure drawing of the victim on the sidewalk, only a bass clef like a fetus. They told you he’d been struck by a stolen taxi. The Shed’s old wooden door sits back from the street. The car that decked him had to have all four wheels on the sidewalk—and, the direction it was going, would have had to cut over from the far lane. The owner shrugged and said people had different musical tastes. He knew there were some who thought Fingers was too heavy on the left hand. You asked the Creep to see all the female stiffs and made him pull them out just far enough that you could look at the legs, more in blind hope than with any conviction you’d see anything you recognized, having to put up all the while with the Creep’s evil sniggering. I have some othe
r pretty people here if there’s something particular you want, he whispered, and you popped him one, right on the honker, flattening it to a bloody splatter in the middle of his ugly bug-eyed face. Made you feel better, the way hitting out always does, even if it’s completely senseless. You don’t understand this need for rough stuff. It’s just something you have to do from time to time to tell the world what you think of it. Blanche is always telling you to grow up and stop hitting people, but you can’t help it, your fists have a mind of their own, you go on doing it. You might say it’s who you are, but you don’t know who the fuck you are. Just a dumb dick, sometimes full of aimless rage. After you slapped the Creep around a bit more, he admitted he’d heard about a body floating around with a price tag on it, but he didn’t know where it was. What do you mean, floating? I don’t know, he sniveled, lapping at the blood on his upper lip. That’s what I heard. You don’t want me to hit you again, do you, Creep? He rolled his popeyes up at you and grinned with swollen lips, his nose streaming. Yes, please. You left the sick sonuvabitch and stepped out into the night.

  Where it was raining again. Lightly, just enough to scatter glittery reflections on the street and to drive most pedestrians inside, making the streets seem like a damp empty stage with sinister events brewing in the darkened wings. You pulled your fedora down over your eyes, doggedly continuing your search, stopping in at the aquarium, casino, the Chinese theater. On the third floor of a cheap hotel in the theater district, a silhouetted woman was undressing behind a drawn blind. Same window as last night? No, different neighborhood. The kind of movie showing nightly all across town. The movie you’re in. Chasing shadows. You paused to look into a backstreet watch-repair shop window. Old sleuth’s habit of using a window as a mirror to see if anyone’s following you. There was. Fat Agnes. Across the street. You spun around to confront him: not there. Just a blinking neon light advertising McGinty’s Pool Hall. You turned back to the window to check: Yes, that’s all it was. You were on edge. Seeing things. What you saw now through the curtain of rain dripping off your hat brim was your own reflection, staring back at you with rain-curtained eyes, cigarette glowing at the lips, the multitudinous faces of time ticking away in the shadowy background. What are you doing out here, you dumb fuck, you asked it, it asked you, the lit cigarette bobbing as if scribbling out your question. You don’t love the widow, alive or dead. That’s bullshit. You don’t love anyone, wouldn’t know what to do if you did. This is what you love. The gumshoe game. Played alone on dark wet streets to the tune of the swell and fade of car horns, sirens, the sounds of breaking glass, cries in the street, the percussive punctuation of gunshots and shouted obscenities. You nodded and your reflection nodded. You love your own bitter misery, your knotted depression. In short, you’re a fucking romantic, Noir, as Joe the bartender likes to say. A disease you medicate with booze, needing a dose now. The widow knew how to get under your skin. Denial. Frustration. Deception. Depravity. You eat it up.