Seattle Noir

by Curt Colbert

  “Come along, Jacob. I can’t let you burn in your own hell,” he intoned.

  As I struggled, he threw me over his shoulder and hastened for the stairs. When I looked back, the music solidified, taking form.

  Holmes cried, “If you die, Jacob, it will be at the gallows!” He tightened his grip on my legs as he dashed through the conflagration, pausing only to vault over burning debris.

  As he ran up the stairs, I looked again for my brother.

  In the flames, I saw the music building, bleeding in colors up the walls. John Moriarity stood in the flames, wearing his secret smile.

  He held a baton. Conducting, of course.

  The mournful notes dripped like rain, hissing into the fire and lamenting my name.

  FOOD FOR THOUGHT

  BY G.M. FORD

  Pioneer Square

  The address turned out to be one of those Oriental rug shops down in Pioneer Square, one of those joints that, depending upon which banner hung in the window at the time, had either lost its lease, gone bankrupt, suffered smoke and water damage, or was just now in the process of retiring from the business… for the past twenty-five years or so.

  A broken bell sounded as I used my knee to separate the warped door from the frame. The door came loose, shaking in my hand like a palsy patient as I looked around the place. Awash with piles of brightly colored rugs, folded back, strewn this way and that, the space smelled of dust and desperation. Movement at the back of the room lifted my eyes.

  He was a short little guy, bald as an egg and shaped like one, seated at an ancient desk, up to his elbows in paperwork; he glanced up, immediately made me as a noncustomer, and went back to his paper shuffling. I ambled along the central aisle.

  “You Malloy?” he asked, without looking at me.

  I said I was. He sat back in the chair. His hard little eyes ran over me like ants.

  “You don’t look like a private eye.”

  “It’s a cross to bear.”

  He considered the matter for a long moment before heaving himself to his feet and retracing my steps back to the front door, where he flicked the lock, flipped the sign to read CLOSED, and pulled the shade to the bottom of the glass panel. He fished a mottled handkerchief from his pants pocket and wiped his hands as he waddled back my way. I held my ground. He walked around me.

  “I’ve got a problem,” he said.

  “That’s what you said on the phone.”

  He dabbed at his wet lips with the hankie. I looked away.

  “My wife’s trying to poison me.”

  I shrugged. “Eat out.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “So am I.”

  He repocketed the hankie.

  “I need her to stop.”

  “I don’t do muscle work.”

  He laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  “You’ll see.”

  “Probably not,” I said.

  Somebody tried the front door, gave it a frustrated rattle, and stalked off.

  He sensed I was losing interest and reached into his other pants pocket.

  He waved a wad of cash, two full inches of greenbacks, bundled both ways by a red rubber band. “I’ve got $2,500 here for somebody can get her to stop.”

  I tried to stay calm. Twenty-five hundred would solve a lot of my present problems… food and rent for instance. “Why me?” I asked.

  “They say you’re a hard guy.”

  “They who?”

  “Fella I know.”

  I thought it over. “How do you know she’s trying to poison you.”

  “My doctor says so. He says she’s been trying to poison me little by little over the past few months.” He let his hands fall to his side with a slap. “Some kind of algicide he thinks.”

  My eyes followed the wad as he dropped it on the desk. “Call the cops.”

  “I can’t. She’s my wife.”

  “Get a divorce.”

  “I can’t.”

  I made a rude noise with my lips. “Sure you can.” I waved a hand in the air. “Even if you needed cause… which you don’t anymore… I’m pretty sure poisoning would qualify as irreconcilable differences.”

  He made a face. “I’m orthodox. My religion doesn’t allow for divorce.” He caught me ogling the money. “All you gotta do is get her to stop.” He made the Boys Scouts’ honor sign, which really made me nervous. “My friend says you can be very persuasive.”

  “Not to mention this is a community property state.”

  His face went bland and blank as a cabbage. “Not to mention,” he said.

  “And all I’ve got to do is get her to stop.”

  “That’s it.”

  I held out my hand. We each cast a glance at the wad on the desk.

  “Later,” he said. “After I’m—”

  “Now,” I countered. “I don’t want to have to come back here.”

  “And if you can’t pull it off?”

  “Your buddy was right. I can be very persuasive.”

  He hesitated, took stock of me again, and then picked up the money, bounced it twice in his palm, and dropped it onto the desktop. He of little faith.

  “Come see me when you get it done,” he said, and went back to the paperwork.

  The icy rain marched across the pavement like ranks of silver soldiers. I stood in the doorway of a used furniture joint directly across the street from the address he’d given me. I fondled my pocket imagining the wad of bills weighing heavy on my hip and smiled as wide as a guy who was two months behind on his rent could manage. It was a sandwich joint, half a dozen tables and a stand-up counter, big saltwater fish tank along the north wall. The Gnu Deli Delhi. Cute. Real cute.

  I’d made a quick pass an hour ago. The place was jammed.

  The sign on the door said they were only open for breakfast and lunch and closed at 3. I’d decided to wait it out. It was 3:10 and the place had cleared except for the pair of girls who’d been working the counter. The sight of the girls shrugging themselves into their raincoats sent me hustling across the rain-slick street. Halfway across, squinting through the hiss and mist of afternoon traffic, I saw her for the first time, coming out from what must have been an office somewhere behind the counter, big ring of keys in her right hand, holding the door open long enough for the girls to slip out and my toe to slip in.

  She looked me over like a lunch menu. “You want that foot to go home with the other one, you’ll move it.”

  We were nose to nose through the crack in the door, which made her over six feet tall. Big and brassy, showing a half acre of bony chest and a thick tangle of red hair held at bay by an enormous tortoise shell clip. Hard as I tried, I couldn’t work up a picture of them as a couple.

  “I need to have a word with you.”

  She leaned against the door. My shoe started to fold.

  “Whatever you’re selling…”

  “Your husband sent me.”

  It was hard to describe the way her lips moved, somewhere between a smile and a sneer… a snile maybe. She eased off on the door. “Get out of here.”

  “He’s been missing you,” I tried.

  “You know what my husband’s missing?”

  “What’s that?”

  She smirked. “A stepladder and delusions of grandeur.”

  “He says you’re trying to poison him.”

  She eased off on the door. My shoe unfolded. “What if I am?”

  Took me a second to recover my jaw. “You’re not even gonna deny it?”

  “Why should I? The world would be a better place without that little worm.”

  She turned and walked back into the restaurant, leaving me standing in the doorway as the steady rain beat itself to death on the awning. I stepped inside and closed the door behind me.

  She skirted the counter and made her way back by the meat slicer. “I asked him for a get.” She switched the slicer on. “He laughed in my face.” She could tell I was confused. “A get’s
an orthodox Jewish divorce.”

  “So? Get going. Get lost. Get down the road. No need to kill the guy.”

  “And give up everything? My business… my children… my standing in the community.” She waved the whole idea off. “Not a chance. I’d be an outcast, a pariah.” She shook her head slowly. I opened my mouth but she cut me off. “If I was trying to kill that maggot, he’d be long dead.”

  She pulled what appeared to be a roast beef from the refrigerated display case and plopped it down onto the slicer. I watched as she made an adjustment and began to slice.

  “He says you’ve been feeding him an algicide or something.”

  She glanced up at the big fish tank and smiled. “I was just trying to get his attention.” She returned the meat to the case. “I figured a couple of days in the can might help him see his way clear.” She produced a block of cheese, separated several slices. “Besides…” she said, gesturing at the tank, “the fish don’t seem to mind that stuff at all.”

  “So you figured…”

  She took a bite from the sandwich and grinned again. “I figured what was good for pond scum was probably good for my husband.”

  I took a deep breath. “All he wants you to do is stop.”

  She lifted an enormous knife from the counter.

  “Fat chance,” she said around a mouthful. She waved the blade as she spoke. “What he wants… Mr.…”

  “Malloy,” I said.

  “What he wants, Mr. Malloy, is for me to come back and take care of him…” she sliced air with the scimitar, “clean the house… take care of the kids…”

  I started to speak, but she cut me off again. “And what you want… Mr. Malloy, is that 2,500 bucks he offers every damn fool he can get to come out here and bother me.”

  I felt the color rising in my cheeks. I started to protest.

  “So what’s your story, Mr. Malloy? How did he talk you into this fool’s errand?”

  I’d have objected but I was busy asking myself the same question.

  “You behind on your alimony payments? You need to pay your lawyer?” Her voice began to rise. “Or did you just go to school on the short bus?”

  My mouth moved but nothing came out.

  She held up a restraining hand… went right to unctuous. “Here I am being rude,” she said. “Eating in front of guests. Can I make you a little something. A nice brisket sandwich or something? A little coleslaw maybe?”

  My stomach did a series of back flips. “I’ll pass,” I replied.

  Her face said that was what she figured. “You go back and tell that bottom feeder that either I get my get or he can spend the rest of his life sleeping on the couch with one eye open and eating take-out Chinese.”

  She used the remains of the sandwich to point the way out. “Now take yourself back out of here. I’m going to close up.”

  I opened my mouth again, but once more she beat me to the punch. “You tell him… you tell him… either I get my get or I’m going to spend the rest of my life making his existence as miserable as humanly possible.” She swallowed the remainder of the sandwich and then licked her fingers and showed her teeth. “Till death do us part.”

  “Listen…” I stammered.

  She picked up the knife and started back around the counter. I reached behind me and took hold of the door handle. “Easy now,” I whispered.

  “Easy my ass,” she spat. She came forward, holding the knife low, making a sawing motion as she moved my way. Parts of me contracted like a dying star. I pulled open the door. She kept coming. I stepped outside and closed the door. Rain drummed the awning.

  She locked the door with a smile. I’d seen that smile before. On the Discovery Channel. Shark Week. The neon OPEN sign went out.

  He was still at the desk with the roll of bills at his elbow. He waited until I picked up the money to look at me. His facial features seemed to be having a meeting in the middle of his face. “You did it?” he asked.

  The wad was warm in my hand. I shook my head, removed the rubber bands, and peeled off two hundred bucks.

  “I’m taking two hundred for my per diem and for the aggravation.”

  “Guess you weren’t as hard a guy as they said.”

  “If I had to go against her every day, I’d be in the storm door and aluminum siding business.”

  “So what is it I get for my two hundred bucks?” he asked.

  I pocketed the bills. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” I said as I wrapped the rubber bands around the pile of money. “You’re not giving her a get …no matter what. Is that right?”

  “You’re a quick study, you are.”

  I cleared my throat. “And you plan on staying married to that woman and living in the same house with her.”

  He nodded.

  “Well then… I guess what you get for your two hundred bucks is a piece of advice.”

  “Such as?”

  “If… you know… sometime in the future… you think maybe she’s trying to slip you something… a little more of that algicide or something…”

  “Yeah?”

  I dropped the wad onto the desk. It bounced.

  “Take the poison,” I said, and headed for the door.

  ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

  KATHLEEN ALCALÁ is the author of a story collection, Mrs. Vargas and the Dead Naturalist; three novels set in nineteenth-century Mexico: Spirits of the Ordinary, The Flower in the Skull, and Treasures in Heaven; and a collection of essays, The Desert Remembers My Name. A cofounder of and contributing editor to the Raven Chronicles, Alcalá has been a writer in residence at Seattle University and the University of New Mexico. She teaches in the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts on Whidbey Island.

  CURT COLBERT is the author of the Jake Rossiter & Miss Jenkins mysteries, a series of hardboiled, private detective novels set in 1940s Seattle. The first book, Rat City, was nominated for a Shamus Award in 2001. A Seattle native, Colbert is also a poet and an avid history buff. He is currently finishing the fourth book in the series, Nowhere Town, as well as working on a present-day novel, All Along the Watchtower, featuring Rossiter’s son Matt as a Seattle-based PI.

  R. BARRI FLOWERS is a best-selling, award-winning author of more than forty books, including the thrillers State’s Evidence, Persuasive Evidence, and Justice Served. He is the editor of the American Crime Writers League’s mystery anthology Murder Past, Murder Present and the recipient of the prestigious Wall of Fame Award from Michigan State University. He has appeared on the Biography Channel and Investigation Discovery. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.

  G.M. FORD is the author of the six-book Leo Waterman series, which has been nominated for Shamus, Anthony, and Lefty awards. He also writes another series based on the disgraced reporter Frank Corso, and he recently completed his first nonseries novel, Nameless Night. Ford lives and works by the shores of the Pacific Ocean, and is a former creative writing instructor. He is married to mystery author Skye Moody.

  PATRICIA HARRINGTON is a Derringer Award winner and her work has appeared in Woman’s Day and Mysterical-E. The author’s first mystery novel, Death Stalks the Khmer, had the distinction of being used as supplemental reading in university social work and intercultural communication classes.

  THOMAS P. HOPP lived his earliest years in a West Seattle housing project. He draws on his European and Native American heritage to explore diverse themes in fiction. He studied molecular biology at the University of Washington, earned a PhD in biochemistry at Cornell Medical College in New York City, and helped found the biotechnology company, Immunex Corporation. His latest medical thriller is The Jihad Virus.

  LOU KEMP’S writing has appeared in Eldritch Tales, Black October, and Pirate Writings, as well as several anthologies. One of her short stories received an honorable mention in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 2005 edited by Ellen Datlow. She has just completed a novel, Farm Hall.

  BHARTI KIRCHNER writes novels, cookbooks, essays, short stories, and magazine artic
les. She is the author of eight books, including four critically acclaimed novels. Her first novel, Shiva Dancing, was chosen by Seattle Weekly as one of the top eighteen books by Seattle authors in the last twenty-five years. Bharti’s work has been translated into German, Dutch, Spanish, Thai, and other languages. Her story in this volume, “Promised Tulips,” is an excerpt from a novel-in-progress.

  ROBERT LOPRESTI is enjoying his third decade in western Washington. His more than thirty published short stories include a Derringer Award winner and an Anthony Award nominee. His first novel, Such a Killing Crime, was published in 2005.

  STEPHAN MAGCOSTA has worked as a contributing writer for the Stranger and guest film curator at the University of Washington’s Henry Art Gallery. He has read commentary on NPR and his writing has appeared in La Voz, the Raven Chronicles, and on numerous websites. He recently finished writing his first novel, Surrounded by Grey, an Aztec noir set in Seattle and pre-Colombian Mexico.

  SKYE MOODY is the award-winning author of seven books of fiction, three books of nonfiction, several short stories, and a five-year newspaper column about New Orleans’ French Quarter for the Times-Picayune. Her latest nonfiction book, Washed Up: The Curious Journeys of Flotsam and Jetsam, was a “Washington Reads” selection in 2008. She has been a poet in residence at Tulane University and writer in residence at Seattle University. Moody is married to thriller writer G.M. Ford.

  PAUL S. PIPER is a librarian at Western Washington University in Bellingham. His work has appeared in various literary journals, including the Bellingham Review, Manoa, Sulfur, and CutBank. Piper has four published books of poetry, and his writing has appeared in the books The New Montana Story, Tribute to Orpheus, and America Zen. He also coedited the books Father Nature and X-Stories: The Personal Side of Fragile X Syndrome.