by Peter Manus
I have to add that I am, like, sitting here typing this with tears streaming because I am scared to death that fickel is going to ban me for what I did. But I did it for the right reason and I actually feel some relief getting it off my chest, particularly now when I think that fickel needs as much support as we can give her. Okay, nuff said, that’s it. I’m sorry.
marleybones @ February 5 12:51 am
Look, I’m happy to be wrong. It’s just, well, this is all getting increasingly strange.
i.went.to.harvard @ February 5 01:05 am
So (awkward pause) if we’re done with this bit of verification, which may come across as a betrayal of our faith in fickel but which I, for one, think had the effect of freshening our resolve, I’d like to talk about where fickel stands.
She’s got no lawyer—Mr. Groin turned out to be as reliable as fickel depicted him from the start. She’s also got in her possession important evidence related to a murder investigation. It’s crucial that this be turned over to the police, and fickel must either do this herself or go the route 36-D has been urging all along and sit down with the Rottweiler. And the more time that goes by, the tougher it’s going to be to turn over the gun and the will and walk away, protected by the truth.
roadrage @ February 5 01:07 am
In short, time to get back to where you started, fickel: Burly-Bear.
chinkigirl @ February 5 01:08 am
If these deaths are related—and they very well may not be, since independent (or maybe I should say slightly related) motives have been identified for all of them—but if they ARE related, then fickel could be in danger. She needs to get herself some kind of protection. Any kind. Now.
hitman @ February 5 01:15 am
Well, if everyone else is sitting there diddling themselves waiting for fickel to come around, I’ll be happy to break the silence:
GET THE FUCK ON LINE AND STOP THE HEAD GAMES OR I’M GONNA PRINT THIS ENTIRE SITE AND SEND TO THE COPS MYSELF.
roadrage @ February 5 01:19 am
Dewd.
fickel @ February 5 01:22 am
Hi. Wow. Lots of confessions and accusations in my absence. I went to the roof of my building—it’s one of those rare, unfreezing winter nights lately—to sit with a baggie of ice against my jaw while I think and smoke my once-a-year cigarette (four of my once-a-year cigarettes, actually), and, yes, to cry because I am very scared and angry and alone.
Some answers, which apparently are much warranted:
This is all deadly serious. I realize I’ve adopted a sort of cinematic tone at some points—somehow it seems to help me get stuff off my chest—but it’s not intended to belittle the situation.
No, I don’t mind that a couple of you have been checking my facts. I should have anticipated that, and if I’d thought about it, I would have realized it was going to happen, and, no, it wouldn’t have stopped me from blogging, so no harm done, really. However, please leave me my autonomy and privacy. I want to make my own decisions about what to do next.
hitman, I don’t play head games. If I’m offline for a while it’s because I’m offline—silence does not equal silent treatment.
Next call is yours: you can believe me and stick around or flip me off and scram. But don’t threaten me again. This is my blog and I’ll go to the cops with it when I choose to. That’s my say. No one is banned. I’m off to bed. And, yeah, guys, I’ve double-bolted the door.
hitman @ February 5 01:30 am
See you at the morgue.
wazzup! @ February 5 01:31 am
One of pulp immortal Ross Macdonald’s most EXCELLENT neo-noir thrillers! A favorite of mine, aside from this read itself, OF COURSE!!!
fickel @ February 5 01:33 am
…sigh.
30
February 5 @ 8:27 pm
>ONCE MORE INTO THE BREACH<
Today, probably as a means of avoiding figuring out what I am going to do about that pesky gun and its pesky mate, the Colonel’s will, I once again left my office at lunch with a mission in mind. I swear that Noah is going to bust a blood vessel, he is so dying to know “who I’m seeing” and “why he roughed me up” (all the yawning and poor attention to my hair is giving me a very “beat in the sheets” kind of look, which the blue bruise to my jaw just accentuates). Anyway, I got to Downtown Crossing at around one, managed to slip through the crowds like a wraith, and found myself easing my way into the Jewelers Building in no time.
I enter The Blue Pearl and immediately experience a pang of remorse over Slenderbuns—I was whisked away from his body so quickly that his death hasn’t seemed real to me until this moment, when my eye moves down those long swimmy counters and there is no undulating black merman touching his tie in greeting. Instead, X herself emerges from behind the curtain. She has on a dressy velvet blouse, blood brown with lots of silvery spangles, and has painted her lips a lugubrious purple. Up on top of her head, she’s attached some sort of complicated headdress of braids that gives her this air—she is asserting an end to mourning or at least a beginning of a new phase in the process. I wonder if she was impacted by Slenderbuns’ murder, or whether her husband’s suicide consumes her too profoundly for the after-hours murder of a part-time employee to make a dent. She either doesn’t recognize me or doesn’t consider my presence to warrant a reaction. It doesn’t matter—I’m not there to make friendly.
Me: (reaching the counter and getting out M.H.’s sketch of the Peacock’s necklace) I’m sorry to barge in on you, but I’m wondering if you could take a look at something for me.
X: (seeming to “come to”) I was expecting someone. (She seems to recognize me.) What is it? (She takes the paper up and studies the sketch of the necklace.) Yes, it’s beautiful. But we aren’t constructing jewelry currently.
Me: It’s Mr. Pearle’s design, isn’t it? (I go to point to the photo of the Peacock’s necklace, but it isn’t there. In its place hangs a mirror that, to be honest, fits the spot like it’s been there forever. I almost mention that the photo is missing, but stop. I mean, she’d know that, just as she must know that the sketch is of the same piece.)
X: (raising her eyes—she’s on something but doesn’t seem incoherent—she knows she’s lying to me.) I wouldn’t be able to tell you whether this is one of Stephen’s designs without studying it. (She seems to have a new thought.) May I hold onto it?
Me: (It’s dawned on me that maybe she has no idea who I am—after all, our prior conversation took place virtually in the dark. Maybe she thinks I’m someone who is gearing up to accuse her dead husband of having copied someone else’s necklace. I debate whether to clue her in and finally figure that I’m not getting anywhere incognito, so I might as well go for it.) We met the other night. Do you remember?
X: Of course. (But it sounds like she’s trying to place me and is being polite.)
Me: At Stephen’s loft. That was me.
X: Yes. And how are you dealing with it? (Weirdly, something still rings false.)
Me: I don’t know. I was wondering whether you knew who constructed this necklace? I understand that Stephen designed, but that he tended to commission others to do the actual work.
X: (She shakes her head, causing the skinny braids that top her hair tower to quiver along with a pair of oblong metal earrings.) I’m afraid I don’t have that information handy, and I’m short-staffed. Perhaps if you called another time. (She’s so lying. She couldn’t possibly be ignorant about a piece like this, even if he’d created it while they were estranged. I mean, they’d remained business partners, hadn’t they?)
Me: Well, what about us taking a look at Stephen’s handwriting? We could compare it with those notations on the sketch. I have some familiarity with handwriting types. I could probably tell at a glance whether the writing on the sketch is or isn’t Stephen’s.
X: (raising her eyes. They’re very dark, the type of eyes that could easily exude malice. I get nothing but a bland, patient desire for me to go away.) I wouldn’t know where to find th
at. Maybe if you called back another time, I might have had a chance to look through some files.
Me: Mrs. Pearle, does the name Guy Ferguson mean anything to you? He’s an artist who sometimes makes jewelry, and I think he painted a portrait in which the subject is wearing a necklace exactly like this one. It makes me wonder if he constructed the necklace for Stephen.
X: (shaking her head placidly) I’m afraid not. It’s a pretty name, if I may say so. I hope it belongs to a pretty man. (She lowers her eyelids, then flutters a glance up at me.) A pretty little thing, like you.
Me: (realizing that she’s not quite as out of it as she’s acting.) Yes, well, thanks.
X: (eyes still on my face, she taps the glass in front of her with a spadelike nail) Will this do?
Me: (looking down to the blue velvet, where a bit of “parchment” nestles amid the trailing bracelets. On it is printed, in a dashing script, some drivel about craftsmanship, or should I say materiam superabat opus?) Stephen wrote that?
X: (reaching into the case and bringing out the piece of paper) Stephen did all the calligraphy for the shop. (She lays the paper flat so we both may admire it.)
Me: (trying to resist snatching the sketch back to compare the two) Can we?
X: (She lays the sketch down, keeping a secure grip on it between two of her thick-knuckled fingers. The handwritings are not alike. The script on the sketch is far more elegant, and Stephen’s parchment effort is going for a similar effect. One is the handwriting of an artist—the other is not. X and I pretend to muse.) Well, it’s hard to say…(she’s lying, lying, lying) Perhaps I could hold onto the sketch and compare it to other examples of Stephen’s handwriting. Plus I could figure out whether Stephen designed this beautiful necklace?
Me: (not happy about it, but more interested in something else, now that I have my answer) Well, I don’t want to lose my sketch, but if you promise to take care of it.
I walk out, very aware of her eyes on my back. As I wait for the elevator, it occurs to me that I should have at least gone through the pretense of giving her my name and number so she could contact me when she’d done her “research.” I walk back toward The Blue Pearl and stop short. The place is pitch dark inside. I try the door. Locked. Probably some service elevator back there. Sneaky bitch.
Of course, I have my sample of Stephen’s handwriting to compare to the diary—the blurb about the tennis bracelets that I palmed while she was making her case for keeping the necklace sketch.
So maybe I’m the sneaky bitch, come to think of it. ;)
GIVE IT TO ME STRAIGHT
wazzup! @ February 5 09:09 pm
Or maybe Mysterious Hottie a.k.a. Guy Ferguson is the sneaky BASTARD!!!! Ten to one as this excellent noir develops we will learn that HE WAS HIDING IN THE BACK of this jewelry shop, listening to every word. That lady would know she better end up with the sketch or she is one DEAD DUCK!!!! And probably the lady X is killed in spite of her effort to stay alive. No honor among thieves, and you know it!!!
webmaggot @ February 5 09:10 pm
Whatever that dude’s smoking in Amsterdam, I want some.
roadrage @ February 5 09:11 pm
Best doobie in the world, those Nether-hounds. Trust me.
chinkigirl @ February 5 09:13 pm
Hey, so I’ll bite, wazzup!. I mean, we are noir fans. So why would the M.H. and X be in cahoots, and why would he kill her?
wazzup! @ February 5 09:15 pm
First, information for my favorite friends: I smoke Gitanes. Only the best.
Now, to answer chinkigirl: Here is my theory. Mr. Suicide never married X, see? Slenderbuns HINTS as much to our fickel, you remember? But X is terrific businesswoman—she makes a lot of CASH for Mr. S’s business—maybe millions—but maybe all in HIS NAME and not hers, see? So when he starts to drift, she is maybe not so philosophical about it as she pretends. Maybe she’s worried about her $$$!!! Maybe she does the digging and finds out something about this Mysterious Hottie that Mr. Suicide is shacking up with—something REAL NASTY BAD involving INCEST and MURDER. Then she plays a “wait and see” game. Maybe when Mr. S starts looking to move along from the NASTY BLOND MAN to the PRETTY YOUNG GIRL he spots at a concert, this is a danger signal for X, because it is now not looking so good for him to be ever coming back to X—1 fling is a LOT different than 2 flings, now am I right?
So X gets BUSY. She uses the “REAL NASTY BAD THING” to BLACKMAIL the Mysterious Hottie into KILLING Mr. Suicide. She promises him $$$—after all, she is Mr. Suicide’s business partner—so she will own it ALL if he dies!!! Mysterious Hottie likes the idea, so he does as X tells him. Maybe he makes his move so fast that X can’t change her mind! Shades of Double Indemnity and Dial M for Murder rolled up into one GIANT ball of NOIR FUN, eh?
36-D @ February 5 09:31 pm
So…go on.
wazzup! @ February 5 09:32 pm
Yes, you are right, my friend of the famous bosoms, as the best has yet to come.
Now X is stuck with what she has done—COMMISSIONED A MURDER, but also the Mysterious Hottie now has the “UPPER HAND” more than before. He’s a class A lunatic—think Robert Walker in Strangers on a Train, eh?—and now SHE is scared to death. And Mr. Suicide’s estate is one giant mess because X, remember, is NOT his wife. So there will be no money for a while, just the business, so she cannot offer Mysterious Hottie cash to make him blow away like a bad wind.
In the meantime, Mysterious Hottie KILLS Slenderbuns—maybe aiming his gun at the lovely fickel or maybe just not wanting Slenderbuns and fickel to talk anymore because Slenderbuns is one of the ONLY ONES who can put Mr. Suicide and Mysterious Hottie together. Either way, he don’t need another person around, figuring out his CRIMES.
On a SPREE, Mysterious Hottie finishes off the last connection—the Peacock! He takes out the Colonel, too, as the Colonel KNOWS the artist as well. Now Mysterious Hottie is relatively SAFE…except that X could CRACK, particularly if she ups her dose of whatever drugs she’s taking. So he engineers an overdose. Coming attractions, eh?!?
The last danger remains—fickel HERSELF. The only thing that keeps her alive is the blog that Mysterious Hottie knows about, on which he is DESCRIBED although the NAME he gave her is FAKE. If he kills her, the cops will be all over that blog, so he bides his time.
Good stuff or WHAT, my grand American cousins?
hitman @ February 5 09:40 pm
Yeah, it’s good stuff. Any other time I’d call it real fine. However, could we knock off the black-and-white B-movie tales tonight?
marleybones @ February 5 09:44 pm
I have to agree. We’ve been screwing up enough lately with our lame attempts at humor and skepticism. Yes, and the list starts with me, so no need to shout me down, boys.
36-D @ February 5 09:45 pm
Wait, so we’re not buying into any of that at all?
roadrage @ February 5 09:46 pm
Because I kinda was thinking that someone should tell a cop to take a run over to X’s place and, you know, make sure she’s not…
webmaggot @ February 5 09:48 pm
…rolling around choking on her own vomit with an empty bottle next to her.
hitman @ February 5 09:50 pm
Yeah, well, in the meantime, fickel, I’m assuming you’ve had time to compare the jewelry shop “calligraphy” and the handwriting in the diary. I mean, that was your goal in lifting the handwriting sample, was it not? Anything definitive?
fickel @ February 5 09:55 pm
Well, if I may dispense with the usual caveats about public vs. private handwriting and copies vs. originals, I think it’s pretty conclusive that the writer of the diary is NOT, in fact, Mr. Suicide.
chinkigirl @ February 5 09:56 pm
Holy Smokes! The diary was written by the pretty little thing! That seems hugely significant to me.
fickel @ February 5 09:58 pm
Yes indeedy. You know, it struck me when Burly-Bear and I were together with the Colonel, the Colonel threw ou
t some presumption that the police had verified Mr. Suicide’s handwriting, and at that moment Burly-Bear had this particularly inscrutable facial expression going on.
roadrage @ February 5 10:03 pm
Pretty dumb of them not to check the handwriting against Mr. Suicide’s.
i.went.to.harvard @ February 5 10:05 pm
Hard to believe, in fact.
marleybones @ February 5 10:06 pm
Mmm, my view is that the cops did compare the handwriting and were proceeding under the assumption that the diary was not written by Mr. Suicide. Hence Burly-Bear’s slip, later that evening, that he hadn’t gotten anything all that terrific out of the Colonel.
36-D @ February 5 10:07 pm
Well, what could he expect, when he set the old man up by never making it clear to him who’d written the thing. Like why would he do that anyway—O-M-EFFIN-G!!!!
fickel @ February 5 10:08 pm
My sentiments exactly. Burly-Bear wanted to see if something would come out that would allow the cops to identify the writer as ME. Just like bringing me to Mr. Suicide’s loft to see if I’d know something about his place that I shouldn’t. We have a new contender for the sneaky bitch prize.
webmaggot @ February 5 10:10 pm
The cops are, and have all along, been after fickel. You want to verify, lurking cop?
i.went.to.harvard @ February 5 10:13 pm
So think back, fickel. Did Burly-Bear ever elicit from you a copy of your handwriting?
chinkigirl @ February 5 10:14 pm
And—must say, I dread asking this one—does your handwriting resemble that in the diary?
fickel @ February 5 10:18 pm
Burly-Bear didn’t have to stretch his talents to get my handwriting. I signed a witness statement the day he came by my office. Of course, a person’s signature is the least reliable indication of their everyday writing, since a signature is what we call self-conscious writing while a diary, especially one written upon waking up in the middle of the night, would be pretty much the opposite. My guess is he knows that. He also got my phone number (and had me write my name next to it) the night he came by to warn me about the “other witness.” Man, he’d be one low form of humanity if that whole scene was just an opportunity to get my handwriting.