Noir

by Robert Coover

  Cheered by all this heavy thinking, you crossed over to McGinty’s, where you found Cueball alone at table, peering down the length of his cue the way he used to peer down rifle barrels, his eyes so close together they seemed almost to join at the bridge of his sharp narrow nose, crossing into each other as they took aim. He wasn’t always Cueball. He was once a famous hit man named Kubinsky, but he changed his name while doing time when nature changed his hair style, leaving him with a shiny white dome like one of these wigless manikins. About as much emotion in him, too. Give him a pistol, he’d somehow shoot himself in the elbow, but put a rifle in his hands and the flies on the wall ducked and shielded their eye facets. No telling how many poor suckers he’d iced before his prison vocational retraining. When he was still Kubinsky and had hair, it was said he worked on occasion for Mister Big and you asked him what he knew about the man. You were convinced that the elusive Big had something to do with the killing of the widow and probably the disappearance of the body, too, in spite of what Blanche said. Yeah, I done some jobs for him, I think they were for him, Cueball said, potting three balls with one stroke, but I never seen him. There was a bunch of guys running around town saying they was Mister Big, but none of them really was, none I met. He was quietly clearing the table on his own, there being few who dared challenge him. Cueball, like most professional killers, was a loner. No male friends and, when in need, he hung out mostly with working girls, partnered up with none of them. Except one.

  YOU KNOW THE STORY BECAUSE KUBINSKY HIRED YOU to find and tail the girl. In Kubinsky’s case it wasn’t just the fee. He was a scary client and refusing him in those days was a kind of suicide. The chick was a dishy but simple taxi dancer named Dolly, who confused the guys she danced with by falling passionately in and out of love with each of them from dance to dance, resulting in a lot of consequential mayhem between suitors. Kubinsky was not a dancer, he literally had two left feet, the little toe on his flat archless right bigger than the big; this was not how they met. He was hired by a smalltime racketeer named Marko, one of her baffled lovers, to kill her. Marko was instructed to walk her out onto the street for a smoke between dances and he could have the pleasure of watching her drop at his feet. When Kubinsky got her in his sights, however, he was for the first time in his life utterly and hopelessly smitten. He was not confused. He knew exactly what he wanted. It was Marko took the hit just as he was fitting the fag he’d lit from his own into Dolly’s lips, a cruel expectant smirk on his mug.

  This ruthless cold-blooded torpedo stunned by love was a sight to see. You’d only heard about lovers drooling. Kubinsky drooled. He panted. His eyes lost focus, the pupils floating haphazardly away from the bridge of his nose. His stony white face was puffy and flushed. He stumbled when he walked, bumped into things. He wept, he snuffled, he dribbled at the crotch. You witnessed this transformation because he turned up at your office one morning, offering you a bag of money and lifetime impunity from a bump-off if you would find the missing Dolly for him and tell him what she was doing. After knocking off Marko, he’d put the rush on her immediately, walking onto the dance floor and shoving her current partner aside, which naturally impressed her, but since he was no dancer, it was not easy for Dolly to love him, open to the general idea though she always was. He’d bought up every dance night after night and did his best to learn the two-step, and finally she did seem to fall for him, enough anyway to go on a two-step tour of several exotic cities with him until the money ran out and Kubinsky had to come back and take on more contracts to pay for his love life.

  The cop who had been assigned the Marko murder case, however, was waiting for her. He had figured out that to get what he wanted from her it was best if she was in love with him, which simply meant dancing with her. He booked one entire night when Kubinsky was out working and took her home with him, dancing all the way. Or, rather, as you soon learned, to a rented room across town. After a couple of days, his wife reported him missing. Probably he’d forgotten what it was he’d wanted to know. You submitted your report. Kubinsky returned, asked for all copies, plus negatives of the damning photos and your notebooks. His eyes were crowding the bridge of his nose once more, though redder than usual. The pallor was back. His rifle case was in hand. He seemed to be a doing a melancholic little two-step there in the doorway. He said he planned to eat the barrel of his rifle, but first he had some business to attend to. Crossing Kubinsky could be lethal, but you’d had something going with Dolly for a dance or two yourself, and wanted to know she was still there for a dime. Besides, Kubinsky was a man of his word; you figured he’d honor his warranty. You tipped the cops.

  Kubinsky was nabbed before the killing, which no doubt embittered him, but it saved him from the chair. The cop changed his name and disappeared. So did Dolly. Maybe they’re dancing together yet. Did Cueball né Kubinsky ever figure out who ratted on him? Maybe. But prison transformed him. Maybe it was the saltpeter in his diet. Most likely it was his new obsession. Without a rifle at hand, he picked up a cue stick in the prison rec room and the rest is poolhall history.

  CUEBALL HAD A STRAIGHT SHOT ON THE SIX-BALL INTO the corner, but he chose instead to go for a double bank, clipping the six from behind the eight just enough to send it skidding into the same corner, the cue ball continuing up the table and nudging the seven-ball into a side pocket. You wondered if he ever attempted any ricochet hits that way. Two for the price of one. I heard about a floating body, Cuby. You hear anything?

  Word’s getting around you’re shit luck on a smelly fork, Noir.

  That scare you, Cuby?

  He shrugged, chalking up. It’ll cost you.

  Here’s what I got. You emptied out your pockets onto the green nap.

  Down at the docks, he said. Pier four. Somebody’s boat. Won’t come cheap. Better reload before you go down there.

  YOU’RE HUNGRY, WISH YOU HADN’T POLISHED OFF Flame’s sandwiches and whiskey so fast. You search the women’s dress shop basement for provisions, poking through the wardrobes, disassembling some of the manikins. Sorry, sweetheart, I’m going to have to take your head off, you won’t need it. You feel like some kind of hardnosed gynecological sawbones, watched by a widow rigid with disapproval. You find hollow limbs and heads and molded bellybottoms full of stash left behind by the smugglers—bags and bricks of narcotics, stolen jewels, watches, banded stacks of bills no doubt from bank heists—but nothing to eat. Money’s sometimes called lettuce; you try it, it’s not lettuce. You pick up a loose forearm with a screw at the elbow end for attachment to the rest of the arm, and use it to pull the cork on one of the bottles of wine in your trench pockets. They’re both from some country you’ve never heard of called Bordox. Sounds like an antacid or a cleansing agent. Tastes like one, too. You shake the bottle. It’s full of gunk. The stuff’s well past it. You like your wine straight from the grape. You can add the alcohol yourself. But you’re hungry and thirsty and it goes down easily, straight from the neck. You strip the bride and use her white wedding gown as a blanket, tip the widow to the floor and cuddle up beside her under it, the forest of plastic bodies towering above you.

  While you’re lying there, Mister Big turns up, wanting to see the advertised camp followers, and, having nothing else to offer, you point up at the manikins. He laughs what seems to you a cruel laugh. You’re a sucker for dangerous dames, Noir, he says. He has brought along an army of antique mobsters. Knights, archers, crossbowmen. Or perhaps these are the miniature soldiers you are trying to sell him. Probably. Though they are not miniature, they are life-size, unless you and he are toy-size. They are blind and motionless, yet somehow threatening, like momentarily paralyzed zombies. You feel some elemental boundary has been breached. You cling to the widow for reassurance. But it is not the widow, she has disappeared again; the manikin lying beside you is naked and tattooed like Michiko and she has pushed her leg between your legs. It is snowing cocaine and diamonds from above. The stuff would seem to be leaking out from between the pink shiny thigh
s of the giant manikins, but this is a mystery, for there are no outlets there. Maybe this is what Big was laughing at. He has made a joke about plastic surgery while wielding an ice pick. You are trying to figure things out, Noir, he says, when there is nothing to figure. You try to look closely at him so you’ll remember his face, but he is never quite where you look. Out of the corner of your eye you see him trying on the bride’s gown. This excites the tattooed manikin beside you who has grabbed your dick with a cold dead claw. Which is how you wake up, spilling your seed into the widow manikin’s inflexible hand and scared shitless.

  You need a john, can’t find one, use a hollow leg. The widow manikin lies on her back at your feet like a stiffened corpse, her hand held palm-up accusingly as if you might have killed her with your spunk. You need to get out of here. The only door in sight other than the one you came in by needs your passkey and leads back into the tunnels.

  BY THE LIGHT OF DAY, SPEAKING LOOSELY (IT’S BUTTHOLE black in here), your dream makes depressing sense to you. After buying Cueball’s tip a couple of nights ago, just before you had to go underground, you headed straight for the fogged-in docklands and pier four. Your pockets were empty except for the widow’s veil and note, but you were holstered up with other tools of the trade. Marketing corpses was still illegal, far as you knew; you figured you could just lay claim to it, at gun-point if necessary, throw it over your shoulder and tote it away.

  It was a dark damp night, the sort you’re most at home in, with a thick coiling fog that concealed movement and allowed only occasional glimpses of wet brick, swaying yellow lamps, occasional gray shadowy figures emerging out of and disappearing into the mist. Such fleeting glimpses (for a moment you caught sight of the sky-blue police building spectrally aglow as if lit from within, and then as quickly it was gone again) were like the sudden brief insights that cut through the fog of a case, and you were on the alert for anything that might help you solve the mystery of your client’s life and death and her hold on you. You were trying to fit the bits together, but they were invisible bits—it was like trying to work a jigsaw puzzle without the pieces. As you drew nearer to the piers, warning signs appeared saying WATCH YOUR STEP and DANGER—HIGH VOLTAGE, and it was as though they were posted there for you. Things Blanche might say. You could hear water slapping softly against something. The honk of unseen gulls. Must be close. But which was pier four? No idea. You heard heavy footfalls behind you and ducked behind a small white fishbait hut with shutters on the windows, a ramp at the door, a box outside with the sign: ICE. Which you read as: freeze! A burly mug in polished dogs stomped by, head down, muttering to himself. Big guy with big mitts. On a hunch, you let him pass, then stepped out into the fog and followed him. More by ear than eye.

  At the water’s edge, you passed huge coils of black cable on massive bobbins like giant spools of thread, beached buoys and floats, old concrete gas tanks standing together like benumbed sentries, wreathed by wisps of fog as if they were smoking (you could have used one). You proceeded warily, stopping whenever the steps stopped. They backtracked sometimes, suggesting the guy you were following didn’t know where he was going either. Or maybe he had heard you behind him and was checking or else was just pacing. Forced you to flatten yourself against shed walls from time to time. Then their sound changed. They were walking on wood, growing fainter. Then they stopped. You crept forward, found the wooden pier, stepped out on it stealthily. Foghorns in the distance. The squawking gulls. Buoy bells. The black water lapping. Otherwise a thick misty silence. If the guy knew you were there, he could be on you before you could see him. Blackness at first, but then a hollow glow ahead, which eventually revealed itself as a ghostly white yacht, rearing up in the fog. There was something nightmarish about it, but you didn’t hesitate. You boarded it, .22 in hand.

  Was there someone else on the yacht? There was. Through a small window, you could see a light moving about down in the main cabin. Probably that tough you were tailing. The light was picking out leather sofas, teak tables and cabinets, navigation charts, fish tackle, step boxes. And then he saw it, you saw it, in the adjoining bunkroom, half obscured by a bead curtain: a body. He moved toward it (there was something glinting in his free hand), and you moved toward the cabin door. It was ajar. As you slipped through it, the guy doused his flashlight and turned on the bedside lamp and you saw then who he was. The bum you’d met the night before in Loui’s. The suit. The Hammer. And by the hothouse aroma you knew whose body it was. It also belonged to someone you’d seen the night before. She’d helped you escape Blue’s goons at Skipper’s. You’d heard her scream. You thought about just backing out and leaving them to it, but then you saw the Hammer raise a knife, and you stepped quietly forward, tapped him on the shoulder, and when he spun around, met him with a roundhouse, gat in hand. He crumpled like a sack of shit. You grabbed up the shiv, tossed it out the porthole, and while he was still groggy, you lifted him by his collar and slugged him again. And again. Did this palooka work for Mister Big? Take that, Mister Big! Wham! Was he responsible for Michiko’s death? Take that—pow!—for Michiko. The widow’s disappearance? Biff! Bam! There was a telephone on the bedside table. You ripped it out of the wall and hit him over the head with it, then clobbered him with a brass telescope. You were having a great time. You lifted him for one last blow to the gut (his jaw was hurting your knuckles) and threw what was left of the rube to the floor, went over to kiss the “4” on Michiko’s cold forehead. Goodnight, sweetheart, you said. Phil-san gonna miss you, baby. You strode off the yacht, lighting up, feeling pretty good about yourself. Until he caught up with you.

  YOU CAME AROUND, STRETCHED OUT IN YOUR BRUISED skin on your office sofa, Blanche applying ice packs and iodine and spooning in a bit of what she called cough medicine. Something you’d picked up from Rats for moments like this. There was nothing that did not hurt. Every time we get up, something comes along and knocks us on our ass again. As someone said. One of your clients maybe. Laughing probably. Just before he got knocked down for good.

  Lift your leg, Mr. Noir.

  Ow!

  Now the other one.

  Oh shit. What happened?

  You tell me, Mr. Noir. They fished you out of the water down at the docks, badly damaged. Your friend Officer Snark saw the light on and dropped you off up here rather than hand you over to Captain Blue, who I believe harbors bad feelings toward you.

  It was the goddamned Hammer, you groaned. He hit me when I wasn’t looking.

  The Hammer?

  A guy I ran into last night. The one who told me to lay off the search for the body. I should have killed the bastard. I don’t know if I’m tough enough for this racket, Blanche. But what are you doing here? It’s after midnight.

  After the new advertisement, the calls just kept coming in. Some of them were not nice. I have finally had to take the phone off the hook. Either we cancel that ad, Mr. Noir, or I quit.

  Sure, sweetheart. Kill it. I don’t think I want to find that evil fat-assed sonuvabitch anyway. Or the body either. Leave it lie. Wherever.

  I am pleased to hear it, Mr. Noir. If you had listened to me in the first place, this wouldn’t have happened. Your clothes were drenched and filthy and in dire need of mending. I’ll bring them back in the morning. Then we’ll close this case once and for all. Is there anything more I can . . . ?

  Well, I could use a good brandy, but—

  There’s a bottle on the table beside you, Mr. Noir. I took the precaution . . .

  Beautiful. You’re an angel, angel.

  She blushed, took her glasses off for a moment, put them on again. I try to do my best, Mr. Noir. Now get some rest and take care of yourself. You shouldn’t be disturbed. The phone is disconnected and I’ll doublelock the door.

  Thanks, kid. And hit the lightswitch when you go.

  A FEW BRANDIES LATER, YOU WERE STILL ON YOUR BACK, but back on the case again, thinking about your client, her story. On the one hand, she seemed to have been a ruthless schemer who tw
isted men and truths around her little finger like taffy, and on the other, a sweet kid from a nice town with a weakness for older guys. You, for instance. Not Blanche’s view, but then Blanche trusted no one. Made her a useful assistant in a detective agency but blinded her to life’s tenderer side. That night, lying there in pain and darkness (this is a tough life), the cough medicine just beginning to take a numbing grip, was when you first started thinking about the way the widow might have been using her old-guys stories as a way of coming on to you. I was strangely flattered by the heartrending ardor of his gaze when he looked at me, she said of her grandfather, or else her father. While gazing steadily at you through her veil (you supposed), her thighs whispering. I felt an eager affection coming from him, melting my resolve. My heart jolted and my pulse pounded. I knew it wasn’t right, but I was powerless to resist. It was the most important experience of my life, Mr. Noir. But not always older guys. There was that football player in her home town, her first sweetheart, the stud she romped with on the village bandstand. You once asked her whatever happened to him. It is unkind of you, Mr. Noir, to keep bringing up embarrassing moments from the past, she said. If you continue, I will have to be less candid with you. But if you must know, my father had a man-to-man talk with him over a new drink he had concocted in his laboratory. My father was always a great experimenter. Perhaps my sweetheart overindulged. He awoke several hours later less a man than he was before.