Noir

by Robert Coover

  But how did you—?

  Elementary, lady. Even my office assistant figured that much out.

  Your office assistant?

  Yeah, Blanche. She’s a good kid but no pro at the sleuthing game. Bit of a dummy really but she makes good coffee. The mirrored widows rotate and different ones are pointing at you now. You discovered your husband had taken out a big insurance policy on you, suggesting he did not have in mind an old age together, so you moved first, drugged him and shot him. Like most dames, though, you can’t tell right from left and botched it, and there had to be a cover-up. You needed this bigtime racketeer here with his cop and city connections, so you partnered up with him, which also solved the problem of your ex pitting the two of you against each other with his pernicious will. The idea was to hitch up so you could inherit the estate intact, that’s where that big rock comes from, not from your deceased dearly beloved, but since neither of you were the type to make do with only half, it was unlikely you’d both live out the honeymoon. Mourning suddenly dead spouses is a weekend sport in your crowd. So you both started making moves. Meanwhile—it’s all coming to you now, you feel a certain exhilaration, you’re really good at this—your brother butted in, tried to get a piece of the action, you had your psycho pimp and old man take him out. Ugly back-alley stuff. Your dopey hotpants stepdaughter knew too much and had a loose mouth, so you silenced her, too. So far, except for the sex kitten, I haven’t mentioned anybody who wasn’t also one of your lovers, and who knows, maybe you’d got your talons in her, too. You’re a hot ticket and have a lot of poor suckers on the string.

  And what about you, Mr. Noir? Are you on my string?

  You got classy gams, baby, but I’m on nobody’s string. Besides, your lovers all end up in cold storage. Your current stud and business partner hiding behind these mirrors is next whether he knows it or not. It was why you hired me. To try to get a fix on him so you could send in your assassins. You knew the kind of ruthless sonuvabitch you’d signed up with and figured you wouldn’t be walking away from your next trip to the morgue, unless you nailed him first and went there for a goodbye kiss. My guess is, you press on, only one of you will walk out of here alive today.

  You don’t know how much Mister Big is on to all this, but it never hurts to sow a little distrust. She turns as a page might turn and seems to disappear and for a moment you’re alone with your reflection. But then she reappears in the mirrored image behind you, the gun pointed at your head. You’ve got the right kind of trenchcoat, Mr. Noir, but other than that you’re a rotten detective. A blind Eye. You deserve to die. You hear the click of the safety and figure you’re a goner, but it’s your mirrored image across the way that shatters. You’re flat on your ass again, pratfelled by fear. Though of course you are fearless. You do what you can, from your somewhat awkward position, to show this. You can hear her breathing serenely above you. That and the blood pounding in your ears is all you can hear. You can smell something though. That familiar aroma. The one that drifted up your nose each time you got kayoed when tailing the panhandler. A fragrance you have smelled almost every day and should have paid more attention to.

  Blanche!

  That was not a nice thing you said about me, Mr. Noir.

  Yeah, well, ah, I was only trying to get your dander up, Blanche. I knew all along it was you but I wanted you to give yourself away.

  Really? You are so brilliant, Mr. Noir. You take my breath away.

  A lotta years in the biz, kid, you say, ignoring her sarcasm. So, lemme see, what’s your angle here? You find your fallen fag beside you and, though it’s no longer lit, you straighten it out and tuck it back in the corner of your mouth. Helps you think. Blanche just turned up at your office one day and offered her services. When was that? You don’t remember. You’re not good at that sort of detail. Where did she come from? You never asked. Was the widow’s story her own? Was she leading a double life? Was the Hammer her brother, Squeaky her ex-lover? You never thought of Blanche as having lovers. Brothers either, for that matter. You try to imagine her working the streets, picking up a guy with a rich wife, seducing him into murder. You can’t imagine it. You realize your deductive powers are being tested, but your appetite for this backstreet knowledge racket is fading. Your stubborn belief that two and two will eventually equal four is probably completely naïve. Some knots, like the twist your thumped brain’s in now, cannot be untangled. You have an acute longing for your office sofa. Mister Big probably has a liquor cabinet somewhere, but you’re too weary and hurt too much to get off your heinie to go look for it. That damned Blanche can really wield a sapper. Your fedora lies on the floor in front of you with a bullet hole through it. Cherchez la monnaie, she wrote in your hatband. Maybe she was teasing you with a clue. Catch me if you can. So, all right, think about it. There’s a fortune to be had and she’s going after it. So, it’s either the double-life scenario or she knocks the widow off and takes her story on as a kind of second thread. Or maybe the widow’s already been snuffed by Mister Big or whomever, and she steps in, puts on the veil, slips into the dead widow’s history, hoping to blackmail her ostensible partner into a payoff. One reason to get rid of the body. If there was one. But then along come all those weird family members. Hers or the dead widow’s. Something has to be done about them. Something is done about them. By someone. And then there’s Blue. He’s working for Mister Big. Or for her. You’re in the middle. The sucker who gets set up for their crimes. An ignorant grunt at the Battle of Agincourt only looking for a hole to hide in. In your mouse leather brigandine. You explain all this to Blanche who is standing over you. She leans down and lights your crooked cigarette for you. It goes out. She lights it again.

  When you sent me into the smugglers’ tunnels, that was just a trap.

  I didn’t send you, it was your friend Flame did that.

  Oh. Right. But she’s Blue’s agent. You may all be in cahoots. What upsets me most is killing my pal Fingers. Just because he tried to warn me.

  He was run over. I don’t drive, Mr. Noir.

  No, that’s right. You used a taxi. You and Pug.

  Who?

  And the morgue attendant. He tries to tell me something about a fake murder and he gets blown away. Sealed his own fate, as you said.

  Sorry, but it was your widow friend who said that, Mr. Noir, if I may put it that way. But was it murder? Or was it suicide? He was a man with a fascination for extreme experiences.

  Saved the best for last, you mean. Maybe. But what about the poisoned wife, your ex’ed ex, your abusive old man doling out lethal pharmaceuticals, your psycho ex-lover with the squeaky voice?

  Oh, Mr. Noir. I just made all that up.

  Made it up? Ah. Right. I guessed as much. Made it up. Shit. Didn’t I just say so? But who was the guy who attacked me? The Hammer? The guy I saw getting riddled in the alley?

  I have no idea. One of Captain Blue’s officers? A common thief? I have found, Mr. Noir, that if you make a story with gaps in it, people just step in to fill them up, they can’t help themselves.

  Your case is coming undone. You’ve sleuthed up a well-made scenario, several in fact, but your characters are leaving it. You stare at the glowing ash end of your bent butt as though looking for the last word there. You should flick it away, that’s always an impressive punctuating gesture, but it’s all you’ve got. But people have died, Blanche, you say, and tuck the smoldering fag back in your lips.

  I know. They always do. They won’t be missed.

  You have to admit, she’s one tough cookie. Is she telling the truth? Who knows? As some guy said, when it concerns a dame, does anybody ever really want the facts? Hey, you got great legs, sweetheart, you say, struggling painfully to your feet. Funny I never noticed before.

  Sit down, Mr. Noir, she says and fires her gun and the cigarette’s not there any more and your lips are burning as when dozing off and smoking a butt to the end and you’re back on your ass again. I have some contracts for you to sign. We’re going t
o be partners.

  I was just thinking of retiring, you grumble, licking your singed lips.

  You can’t retire, Mr. Noir. You are wanted for six murders and innumerable other unspeakable crimes. I intend to help you solve all those crimes for Captain Blue and save your life. I’m afraid your choice is between a partnership or what Captain Blue likes to call his electric cure. Now sign here, Mr. Noir, and then let me fix up that finger for you. Luckily, I brought along some iodine.

  WHO DO YOU LOVE, BABY? YOU ASK YOURSELF AS YOU walk through the drizzly night streets in your leaky fedora on your way back to the office with black-veiled Blanche, smoking a fag from a fresh pack still reeking of chocolate, rum, and geranium, picked up in the corner drugstore—literally: there was a holdup under way and the owner was somewhat preoccupied, so Blanche plucked a couple of packs off the shelf, gave the money to the holdup man, and led you out before you could play the hero and get into more trouble—and, you reply, silently addressing the dark naked city: You, sweetheart. Joe was right. We were made for each other. Your footsteps echo faintly in the hollow night as if the city were whispering back to you, clucking her tongue, licking her lips.

  You’d wanted to celebrate the new partnership with prime rib and a few drinks at Loui’s or an in memoriam set at the Shed or at least a five-layer parfait at Big Mame’s, but Blanche wouldn’t have it, insisting you had to get back to the office before Blue caught up with you. She said she planned to dress you in her widow’s weeds until you were out of danger, and this had a certain appeal, but you agreed only so long as you could wear your own underpants. You wondered aloud if Blue was working for Mister Big and she said, no, he was a mostly honest cop. He just doesn’t like you is all. As best you can understand it, according to Blanche, she invented a widow and then Blue invented a body, and Blanche borrowed the body idea to move what she is calling the Vanishing Black Widow Caper in a new direction. Something like that.

  But wait a minute. What about Fat Agnes?

  The ignis fatuus? Just your overactive imagination, Mr. Noir. The risk of pursuing others is that you can also feel pursued. A hazard of the trade, I’m afraid. Rarely fatal but often disabling.

  No, come on, Blanche, I saw him. He had a little cleft chin and a button nose and thin hair combed across the balding dome. He smoked cigars and wore a fob watch.

  So did your father, Mr. Noir.

  Ah. Did he? But he seemed so real.

  You are a sensitive impressionable man, Mr. Noir. And you’ve taken a lot of blows to the head.

  Yeah, right. Thanks for those.

  There are other unanswered questions—like, what really happened to the panhandler? is he Mister Big?—but when you broach them, she says: Please. Don’t ask. It’s all quite simple. But sometimes not knowing is better. It’s more interesting.

  She’s right. You still don’t know who did what, but as Blanche has reminded you, that’s not really the point. Integrity is. Style. As Fingers liked to say, you can’t escape the melody, man, but you can make it your own. You are moving through pools of wet yellow light, surrounded by a velvety darkness as soft as black silk stockings, and it is not the light but the obscurity that is most alluring. The mystery of it. The streets are deserted and, as you turn into them, kissed by the drifting fog, they open up before you, the buildings seeming to lean toward you. Stuttery neon signs wink at you overhead. Behind a steel chainlink fence in an empty playground, a child’s swing creaks teasingly. Somewhere there’s a melancholic sigh of escaping steam. It’s beautiful to be walking down these lush wicked streets with the widow at your side, even if knowing that it’s Blanche inside does spoil it a little. Just the same, while she’s still dressed as the widow, you wish she’d lift her skirts and show you her legs once more.

  You go past a STREET CLOSED sign and find yourself standing in front of your own office building. Look, says Blanche, lifting her veil and pointing up at the office window on the second floor. BLANCHE ET NOIR, it says. PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS.

  Et, you say. Is that the past tense of eat?

  It could be the future tense, Mr. Noir, she says, pushing her horn-rimmed glasses up on her nose and gazing at you under the raised veil with proprietary affection, if you play your cards right.

  It’s funny. While you’re working on a case, every outcome seems possible. When it’s over, it’s like nothing could have happened otherwise. You are, hand played, where you are. You’re not sure whether Blanche is a wannabe private eye or a master criminal, but with a little practice you could get used to her. As long as you have dibs on the office couch. She knows the file system, it’s her invention really, she’s able to reload the watercooler by herself, and she can sure handle a heater. Your lips are still burning. All right, partner, you say, pursing those tingling lips and popping a little kiss, while lifting and lowering your fedora, deal me in. Her veil drops as though to curtain a blush. But just one more question, you add, looking back over your shoulder. Where the hell have we just come from?

  Sorry, Mr. Noir. The Case of the Vanishing Black Widow is closed.