St. Louis Noir

by Scott Phillips

  But with Briggs around, Trent finally understood how that cat must have felt.

  Eventually, it was all just too much.

  Trent zipped his jacket all the way up to his collar as he stood waiting for Briggs to arrive at her house—a cheap-looking affair that he supposed was the best she could get on short notice. Or maybe she was just cheap. He knew her car, a beat-up 1996 Saturn that she didn’t bother to wash. All she had to do now was drive up.

  She usually left the paper around six p.m., and it was already five forty-five, so it wouldn’t be much longer. No one was out on the street, maybe because it was starting to get cold. He was about to zip up his jacket again when he remembered that he already had.

  And there she was, the Saturn rattling along as if it needed a tune-up and oil change. Briggs parked the car, scurried to her front door, and unlocked it. That was when she felt a push, then something hard on the back of her head. Then nothing.

  Trent had taken a risk: someone peeking behind a curtain could have seen him ambush Briggs. That was one of the things he hated about himself—his impetuousness. But he was glad he’d read that news report a couple of years back about quicksand along the Mississippi River.

  Things went pretty much as Trent had expected they would. Briggs wasn’t important enough for the police to put much effort into looking for her. Anyway, Trent knew that life was nothing like TV. Most crimes didn’t get solved.

  Briggs’s sister Esther flew in from San Francisco, stayed in St. Louis just long enough to make it look good, then headed back. Claire was appointed arts editor with no raise in pay. She wasn’t much of a disciplinarian, but the staff had gotten the message about punctuality, and management felt no need to bring in another Genghis Khan—especially considering the money being saved by not having to pay Briggs.

  With Briggs gone, Trent felt better than he had in years. Whatever gene stopped people from committing heinous acts wasn’t part of his DNA, but he’d known that for a long time. It wasn’t a matter of whether he could kill someone, but whether he thought such action would be appropriate given the circumstances. If he ever met someone like Briggs again, he might take similar steps. Perhaps make further use of a hammer and a big plastic bag.

  Although he seriously doubted such a thing would ever happen again, it was nice to have the option.

  Tracks

  by Jason Makansi

  The Hill

  Damn! Trisha thought, squeezing her hand brakes in front of the flashing reds, clanging bells, the line of coal cars approaching from the west. She thought about dashing across the rails. Then the barricades descended. Suddenly, feeling the burn in her thighs, she welcomed the forced rest. She dismounted precisely, swiveling like an indicator on a scale in a doctor’s office. Then she unleashed her medium-length, loosely curled blond hair from her helmet.

  The ground rumbled. Her aching buttocks reminded her to spend that hundred dollars for a better seat.

  “Damn all this coal and global warming,” she muttered.

  She propped her bike against the high chain-link fence topped with barbed wire surrounding the RC Pharmaceutical plant. To her left, the huge storm-water drainage canal passed underneath the roadway. Her half-gloved hands mopped the sweat burning her eyes. She positioned her helmet on the sidewalk behind her head and lay down. Above her was a cloudless cobalt sky.

  It’s good to be forced to slow down, she thought, not really believing it.

  She was startled by a shrill warning whistle, another freight train passing on a separate set of tracks fifty yards or so behind her.

  What if both trains get stuck? she wondered. Well, if I had to, I could always follow that storm-water drain, or whatever it is, out of here. She glanced at the sloping concrete embankment and the roadway bridge ahead of the tracks. She’d never seen but a trickle of water in it. The small office building across the street was lifeless on a Sunday morning.

  She closed her eyes, which were often complimented for being as blue as the sky above her. The moistness in her thighs absorbed the heat. Her head cooled. She had an urge to fondle herself, lifted her head to look around as if she just might.

  What seemed distant at other times—the factory, the canal, the office building­—now seemed to close in. The urge passed.

  An Italian-flag banner flapped from a nearby streetlight.

  This definitely is not the Hill, she thought, chuckling about the quaint Italian neighborhood to the south. Not far in the other direction was lush Forest Park where she had met her friends for their regular Sunday-morning workout.

  Her breathing returned to normal. Both sets of trains were moving slowly. Soon, she felt uncomfortably exposed, not to mention baking, so she crossed the street and sat under an awning on the steps of the little office building.

  A discarded plastic fast-food tray rolled down the opposite side of the street, collided with a sturdy weed, got knocked off course, bringing Trisha’s gaze to a small area of desolate landscaping: a few large rocks, faded mulch, nothing green. Across the way, beyond a large parking area with only a few rusted shipping containers, she watched a short, dark, thin man framed against the stark white backdrop of the factory siding exhale smoke against the stagnant air. He tossed his butt, and wandered toward the fenced perimeter.

  This is straight out of a Hopper painting, she thought.

  * * *

  Earlier that morning, Slinky Watkins drove into Miller’s back lot and parked her truck.

  “You don’t have to work weekends,” her boss had said repeatedly. “Miller’s Capezio is plenty satisfied with your performance.”

  She preferred it though. She liked to pull and stretch and fondle the fabrics, silk sleeves, ruffled skirts, and supple shoes that the dancers bought from Mr. Miller. She’d slide a garment under her armpits, across her back, and under her crotch, places where her skin was more sensitive, her body more responsive. Sometimes the garments returned by the dancer’s parents still smelled sweetly of a young girl.

  Once she didn’t hear Mr. Miller’s car. Her ears were flat against her head from the super-tight legging she’d fit over her head. Slinky yanked it off just in time, when she heard the door open and the piercing automatic bell. Her boss was startled to find her shirtless. Thankfully, the day wasn’t so warm to have the air conditioners turned on, yet warm enough that someone working alone just might want to cool off by taking their shirt off. Slinky barely had breasts. In fact, she had the smallest breasts of any woman she had ever seen. What she never understood was why her cherry-red nipples, the size of small cranberries, never seemed to relax. Against her pale skin, they looked like swollen sores. She wore a bra only to hide them.

  Mr. Miller had reversed course immediately. Slinky acted like nothing unusual had happened.

  “Hey, I’m only trying to save on air-conditioning,” she said moments later, walking past him.

  Mr. Miller was a kind employer. If he was able to overlook her five years of hard time at the Missouri Eastern Correctional Center, he could overlook catching her shirtless on a Sunday morning. He never mentioned the incident.

  Adapting to the train schedules was part of working at Miller’s, from the first tremble of a coffee mug to the deafening noise and nauseating smell of brakes grinding against metal. Occasionally, two sets of trains passed simultaneously on Sunday morning at around 10:48 a.m. Once, Slinky watched a lone jogger, stuck between the tracks, wait a long time. He stomped his feet, cursed, and waved his arms—no match for the futility of his situation.

  She liked to see the bikers in their bright, tight body suits, colorful, reflective, the clothing like separate skin. Fluorescence of epidermis! She liked the phrase so much she wrote it down. She remembered how she learned the science word for skin. “Your epidermis is showing! Your epidermis is showing!” the kids in elementary school yelled on the playground. She loved that word, but she hated remembering her childhood.

  Such thoughts always led to that really mean girl at the swimming pool that one
summer, who yelled, “Ugh! Her blood is showing! She is a girl!” when her period had started and she had no idea about it. The girl encouraged her friends to tiptoe toward her as a group, like she was diseased. They pointed “down there” and joked and laughed, surrounding her near the fence. Two of them poked her with their fingers. Hysterical, Slinky searched frantically for something to keep them away, reached for the skimming net with a short metal handle hanging off hooks on the fence, and beat back her tormentors, but not before she’d gashed one of them along her cheek, deep enough for a dozen stitches and a permanent scar. That girl’s father, a lawyer who worked for a prominent downtown firm, saw to it that Slinky was barred from going to that pool again.

  She never forgot who caused her all that grief.

  In high school, Slinky did math with the boys in the science club and insisted on taking up wrestling. She loved the feel of the tight outfits. The contact with others aroused her, even though it was fighting. Her brothers and her father taught her how to fight but not about what would happen to her body. They wrestled and horsed around all the time. Those were the only times she didn’t feel awkward about her body. The coach lauded her prowess on the mat, but the boys’ parents eventually had her removed from the team. No more epidermis contact.

  * * *

  Now, she heard the high-pitched squeals of metal on metal. She looked at the old industrial clock behind its thick wire cage: 10:42. Right on time.

  She pushed her solid, curveless frame from the desk and turned to look out the office window. A woman with her bicycle. Beyond the fence across the street were the inactive loading docks. The all-white exterior and fluorescent purple company sign with its flowery cursive lettering accentuated the sun’s glare. She could see the humidity separate from the air, the kind of day perfect for being in a swimming pool. The more Slinky stared at the cyclist, the more she became the girl who made fun of her first menstrual bleeding.

  Were any cars waiting? None! Her face brightened. The bicyclist had two minutes to reverse course. She checked the parking lot around back. She looked toward the open concrete storm canal. Once, during a flash flood, there was so much water flowing by, she worried that the canal might spill over. Someone could throw a body in there and not see it until the drain met the River des Peres. Mr. Miller told of a time when they did find a body down there and had to call the police to remove it.

  At 10:48 a.m. the train approached on the tracks behind her building. Slinky smiled. Her skin, her epidermis, prickled pleasantly. Her throat constricted. She swallowed hard.

  She returned to the office. The bicyclist was gone but her bike remained. Slinky’s smile evaporated. The only escape was through the storm drain. Not a good idea. Some kids found that out the hard way once. Mr. Miller and his warehouse crew had to rope tow them out.

  She hurried to the front entrance, peeked out the long vertical side window. Her smile returned.

  Slinky found a tight, stretchy maroon leotard in the stock room. She thought how the word rhymed with retard, a name she was called often as a kid. She returned to the front entrance and pulled on the door with steady hands, but trembling so much inside she could barely hear herself think. The onslaught of the trains’ clanging assaulted her ears before the laden heat of the morning whacked her face. In one motion, she threw the fabric over the girl’s head and tied it behind her. Then she grabbed one arm in a half nelson, put her other arm around her neck, pressuring the Adam’s apple, and dragged her into the foyer. She knew how to put to good use the arms her coach said resembled dinosaur bones. The cyclist did not struggle. Being fit for one sport didn’t make you fit for another, Slinky thought.

  “Look at it! Ugh!” The voices reverberated in her skull. She felt the pointing fingers indent her skin.

  * * *

  VJ, the guard, noticed the bicycle, but the rider was missing. It looked expensive, but what did he know? The last time he rode a bike was in India. Bikes there sure didn’t look like this one. That was back when his name was Vijay. When he used that name, people thought he was a dumb immigrant. When he changed it to VJ, people thought he was a savvy foreign-born American.

  He pulled his half-pint out of his back pocket, drained the last swallow, and popped a fresh stick of Doublemint into his mouth. He rubbed his belly. Ten seconds and he’d have the fence unlocked, the bike hidden in a shipping container, empty for years except for the time he discovered those teenagers drunk on an overcarbonated mix of Coke and beer, jeans around their ankles, awkwardly fucking like they’d never done it before. He relieved them of all of their cash, threatening to turn them in to the authorities, before he sent them packing toward the hole in the fence they’d entered from. For good measure, he copped a feel from one of the girls.

  What the hell, he thought, not like there are many perks to this job.

  He made a dash for the bike.

  * * *

  Slinky mashed her pelvis against the tight black Lycra lining of the cyclist’s buttocks, then against the back of her thigh. She relaxed her other hand from restraining duty and forced it down into her own pubic hairs, finding her spot. With her forefinger, she massaged vigorously, rubbing against the biker. Only a few seconds later, her body spasmed, shuddered, then stilled. She paused long enough to smell sex on her fingers.

  Sensing her attacker momentarily distracted, Trisha reached into the front pouch of her cycling shirt and pulled her emergency air pump out so sharply, it expanded like a big switchblade. The hard plastic snapping valve lock had hurt her many times when it accidently came down on her thumb. Her aim was true when she swung around. She caught the aluminum tube against the person’s right cheek, the plastic valve tearing at a nostril. That stunned her attacker enough for Trisha to break loose while her attacker’s hands gripped her face to contain the bleeding.

  Outside, Trisha stumbled and grabbed the stair railing. She felt as if she were going to barf. Her grip was like glue. The railing shook, as though it would come out of the bolts in the cement. In her distress, she forgot how she even got there, then remembered, and saw that her bike was gone. She ran into the street, thinking her attacker might chase her, and nearly collided with the first car that had passed through the first railroad crossing, only to slam on the brakes before the next crossing. She approached the driver’s side, motioning hysterically for the man to roll down his window. He gave her an angry look, tried to ignore her, then motioned her in the direction of an SUV with an official-looking insignia on the side and an emergency light on top.

  As Trisha hurried toward it, she had the presence of mind to ask herself what she would say. She had not been raped. That old line, You should see what the other guy looks like, came to her. Recalling the moment she swung at her attacker, she realized something not quite right about his face, a softness, a frailty. He looked more feminine than male.

  He could easily have abducted her, or worse. No clothes taken off. No blood, no scratches, no bruises. No evidence. Still, she felt violated, humiliated. What about her bike? She could at least report it stolen. But she had no evidence she had a bike. Wait! Her helmet! She ran back and found it on the steps. But who could have taken the bike? Had someone come from the woods behind the factory?

  A pickup truck scratched out of the lot adjacent to the building. It approached the railroad crossing to the left just as the gate lifted. Thinking this might be her attacker, she considered running after the vehicle, hoping to catch the license number. The last train car, an engine colored dirty yellow and coated with grease, got more distant with each second. The truck was well gone before Trisha had taken a first step toward it.

  She then walked to the other railroad tracks toward the SUV, realizing after a dozen or so steps that it had left. She stopped on the sidewalk, bent over, and began bawling. Driver after driver held up by the trains passed her in a huff in both directions.

  Tears exhausted, she looked up and saw the guard at the far end of the industrial lot. She ran in his direction between the fence and t
he storm-water canal, which she now realized was much deeper than she’d thought.

  “Hey! Hey! Please, can you help me?!”

  * * *

  VJ started toward the fence, beyond where the windows and doors had been boarded up as long as he’d been working here. He’d been expecting his “drop” at 11:05 a.m. at the one part of the property overlooked by the security cameras.

  His older brother, the “genius” financial consultant, bragged that making money was all about vacuuming up nickels and dimes in transaction fees. Well, VJ could play that game too. Whatever this powder was they refined in here, people out there were willing to pay a boatload of money for scrapings off the rolling lines.

  Startled upon hearing a plea for help, VJ turned in Trisha’s direction, ignored her for a second, then stopped.

  “Someone attacked me in that building over there. My bike was stolen! Could I make a phone call?” Her arms hung limp on the stiff wire fencing.

  “That’s against policy,” he said, taking in her breasts, framed by the wired openings.

  “Could you at least call 911?” She sighed heavily.

  Still loopy from the heat and the last of his whiskey, VJ thought about the teenagers in the storage container. How appealing this woman was, even mussed up, darling white-girl freckles dotting her cheeks, pinkish splashes on her arms, thighs that looked like they could grip and hold an industrial-sized vat.

  “Wait, was your bike over there?”

  “Yes.”

  VJ looked at her, then down the railroad tracks, at some distant point. Who was he kidding? He wasn’t going to fondle this woman. He was one incident away from losing his job and being shipped back to India. His brother would never help him again.

  “Okay, lady, I saw the bike and took it in for safekeeping. I’ll level with you, I thought about selling it if no one claimed it. But I didn’t steal, okay? We make deal? I bring your bike back over to that fence. You don’t mention a word.”