Noir

by Christopher Moore

  The Cheese laid out a burger, a tray of fries, and a Coke on the torn-open sack by the moonman and backed away. “He’ll figure it out,” she said.

  He did. For a guy with a little mouth and a scrawny frame, he could sure pack it away. The burgers and fries were memories in seconds. He poured more of the Coke out of the paper cup onto his kimono than he got in his mouth, but he got what he needed, I guess, because he flipped the cup over his shoulder and started digging in his box of junk.

  “What did you tell the guy at the junk shop? About him?” I asked the Cheese.

  “I said what a nice junk shop he had, and asked him could my daughter look around, as she is an enthusiastic kid when it comes to junk. Which she, he, is. He dragged me over there.”

  “And the guy does not think anything is fishy.”

  “He didn’t say a word,” said the Cheese. She gave me the smile, posed, changed angles with her shoulders to show off her charms.

  “Sneaky,” I said.

  “Nothing sneaky about it.” Now the smile slid into a grin and I was awash in her moxie.

  “Your dress has a little stain from carrying wet moonman,” I pointed out with a french fry.

  “Yeah, he didn’t notice.”

  “Good thing,” I said.

  She uncapped the Old Tennis Shoes and poured a splash over her Coke, then looked at me. “Too early?”

  I shook my head.

  She offered me a splash. “Driving,” I said. It’s too early.

  “Look, he’s making something,” she said.

  The moonman was messing with his tools, the dry-cell batteries, the cornet, twisting parts together with baling wire.

  “He’s so cute. You know we can’t take him to the Examiner now?” said the Cheese.

  “Why not? Those tax guys are not going to care that he is cute. They are only worried that we know about him.”

  “But he’s ours. If we show him to the world they are going to take him away and do experiments on him and stuff.”

  “Doll, I don’t know how else to keep them from punching our tickets as witnesses otherwise.”

  “We’ll figure something out. I’m not selling him to Ripley’s Believe It or Not, either. If he wants to get a job down at the wharf charging tourists to look at him, that’s his choice. I’m not selling him. Wouldn’t be right.”

  “Stilton, he’s not a kid, he’s—”

  “What’s he doing now?” She jumped up to her knees.

  The moonman had his bundle of crap wired together, and now he was straining—his big almond eyes going narrow like he was squinting—pointing one of his little froggy fingers, which developed a bulb at the tip, then squirted black fluid.

  “Yikes!” said the Cheese. “That’s gotta smart.”

  But out of the fluid oozed a crystal, like he was growing a fingernail, but it wasn’t a fingernail. It was like a blue-green crystal a couple of inches long. With his other hand he snapped the crystal off with the rusted pliers. Then he fitted the crystal into his bundle of crap.

  “What do you think he’s doing?” whispered the Cheese.

  “I think he’s fitting that crystal into a device that will contact the guys on his home planet. See, every crystal has a certain frequency it vibrates at. You can build a radio out of just a crystal and a battery. That crystal probably has the same frequency as his planet, so it will just call them up. The bell of the cornet will direct the signal.”

  “No kidding?” said the Cheese, giving me the wide eyes of wonder. “How do you know all that?”

  “I read it in a Popular Mechanics.”

  Then there was a huge P-PHOOM! noise and a blinding flash of light from the moonman’s direction and when we could see again, where one of the two Holsteins used to be was now a little pile of white ash and a beefy mushroom cloud rising into the sky above it.

  “Holy crap!” said the Cheese.

  “It was an old issue,” I explained.

  * * *

  It was sunny in the city; the water around Pier 29 threw spectral reflections on the old warehouse walls. Bailey and Hatch crouched outside the back door of Jimmy’s Joynt ready to make their move.

  “Guns?” Hatch asked.

  Bailey considered for a moment telling Hatch that the subject might be alive, and might be venomous. They had no idea what the subject was capable of and Washington had not been forthcoming with any details, but drawing guns in broad daylight might be noticed.

  “Vasco is supposed to be a small woman. Less than a hundred pounds, and this Myrtle Simmons is also slim. The bouncer won’t be here this time of day. We knock. When the woman in the tuxedo answers, we take her and leverage her to control anyone else.”

  “Standard operating procedure?” said Hatch.

  “There is no standard operating procedure, Hatch. No one has done this before.”

  “So, from now on, this will be standard operating procedure, right?”

  “Yes. Knock on the door and grab the tiny lesbian in the tux. That’s how they’ll put it in the manual.” Sarcasm made Bailey feel dirty, out of uniform, but he couldn’t help it. Hatch could be such a nitwit.

  “Right,” said Hatch. He knocked on the door.

  “Come on in, it’s unlocked,” came a woman’s voice.

  The heavy wooden door grated on rusted hinges as they pushed on in. A long hallway, dark, with light spilling out of a door twenty feet down on the right.

  “Come on in,” came the woman’s voice again. “Close the door behind you, would ya, gents?”

  They moved inside, Bailey first, signaling for Hatch to close the door. He did. Through his sunglasses Bailey could barely make out the patch of light coming through the door. He took a tentative step. “Jimmy Vasco?” he said.

  “Yeah, that’s me,” said the voice. “Step into my office.”

  Before he got two more steps he saw the bright V of a tux shirt on black, the bow tie at about his eye level. He tried to look over his sunglasses and saw an enormous shade coming toward them, beneath the bright white line of French cuffs, balled fists like the heads of two massive pit bulls. Bailey reached inside his jacket for his .45 and light exploded in his head as he was hit first from the right, then from the left. He heard Hatch shout, then everything went away.

  * * *

  They awoke sitting in the Chrysler, parked by Pier 29, their black hats in their laps, both their guns gone. Bent remnants of their sunglasses sat on the seat between them. Bailey looked at his partner, who was trying to lift his arm, but giving up and letting his hand fall into his lap, the effort too much. Hatch did manage to moan. His right eye was purple and nearly swollen shut. Bailey tasted blood in his mouth, felt for broken teeth on one side, and winced. He touched his jaw. It felt as if a painful grapefruit had grown there. He managed to get the key in the Chrysler’s ignition.

  “Where?” Hatch managed to ask.

  “Motel,” Bailey said.

  After they stopped the bleeding and used most of the room towels to make ice packs, Bailey sat at the little table to write his report.

  Subject may have the ability to greatly enlarge lesbians. Extreme caution recommended in future, he wrote.

  * * *

  Across town, in the Fillmore, Mrs. Jones was making tea for her guests. Thelonius said they’d just be here a while, until it was safe.

  “That’s a very fancy suit,” said Mrs. Jones.

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “My boy Lonius got one just like it.”

  “Yeah, we’re like two peas in a pod,” said Jimmy Vasco.

  “Sugar?”

  “Yes, please,” said Myrtle.

  23

  The Cheese Holds Sway

  P-PHOOM!

  The second cow went up in a flash and a mushroom cloud without so much as a moo and the moonman was drawing down on a third Holstein out in the meadow.

  “Stop that!” barked the Cheese. “What’s wrong with you?”

  And the moonman turned and looked at her a
nd made a sad whistling noise. I was just watching the muzzle of his cornet cow-blaster so he didn’t point it our way.

  “Maybe he’s a little loopy from being dead for a couple of days,” I offered.

  “We probably ought to go,” the Cheese said to me. “C’mon, Moonman.” She waved him over and to my surprise he followed. The moonman walked kind of goofy, more like he was prancing than walking, and I was trying not to laugh, in case he took it the wrong way and blasted me into cinders.

  We got to the car and the moonman climbed up over the bumper into the rumble seat and cradled his cornet cow-blaster in his little arms like a baby doll.

  “We should probably take that from him,” I said.

  “You go ahead,” said the Cheese. “Wait just a sec.” She ran around my side of the car. “You got the keys?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Let me have them.”

  So I handed her the keys. “Okay,” she said. Then she kissed me, patted my cheek, and said, “Go take it from him.”

  I looked at the moonman, who suddenly looked very tough in Pookie’s hat and the pink kimono. I held my hand out. The Cheese gave me the keys. I got in my side of the car and waited for her to get in on her side.

  “You’re a quick study,” she said. “I like that in a guy.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Thanks, Toots.”

  There were more fields and an orchard or two, and the sign said “Petaluma 18 miles,” which was where I’d catch Highway 101. From there it was less than an hour to the Golden Gate and into the city. I stepped on the gas to put some miles between us and the disintegrated Holsteins. The Cheese smiled and shook her hair out in the wind. In the mirror I saw the moonman holding on to Pookie’s hat with both froggy hands, which meant he was not holding his blaster. Good. It was a moment. Then the siren.

  And there he was in my mirror, a flatfoot, Johnny Law, a copper on a motorcycle—so it was probably a highway patrolman. I was feeling the Walther heavy in my jacket pocket, thinking maybe this guy got a call from Pookie and was laying for us. I pulled over and handed the Walther to the Cheese. “Chuck that under the seat, doll, would ya?”

  She did without a word. Fluffed her hair in the mirror. Checked her lipstick. I rolled my window all the way down. The cop flipped open his ticket book as he approached, stopped alongside of the moonman, who was slouching now in the rumble seat. About all I could see was the big hat and the tarnished brass bell of his death ray.

  “Good afternoon, Officer,” I threw back.

  The Cheese scooched over to my side. “Hi,” she said. Somehow during her quick personal reassessment she had undone the top couple of buttons of her dress, and now, with her nearly in my lap talking out the window to the cop, I felt uncomfortable in several ways I had never experienced before. The ’36 Ford coupe has many attractive features, but large side windows are not one of them, and my face, and the Cheese’s face, and her charms, filled up nearly the whole space. I’m guessing we looked like a comedy and tragedy mask set to the cop. Or maybe fear and lust.

  “You shouldn’t let your kid sit back there,” said the cop.

  “Kid?” I said.

  “Yeah, your kid, in the rumble seat,” said the cop.

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “Our kid.”

  “What’s wrong with him?” asked the Cheese. “Officer,” she added, with extra flooze.

  “Not the kid, the rumble seat. It’s not safe. That’s why they don’t make cars with these anymore.” The cop looked over the moonman, closer than I cared for, and the moonman raised his cornet a tick.

  “He’s Chinese,” I offered quickly.

  “But you’re not Chinese,” said the cop.

  “We adopted him. Poor kid. The missus can’t have kids of her own, on account of she caught the clap from a sailor during the war.”

  “He died at Okinawa,” said the Cheese.

  “God rest his soul,” I added.

  “So you married her?”

  “Yeah, the sailor was my brother. Only decent thing to do was to marry her, after her clap cleared up.”

  The cop looked back at the moonman. “Why’s his head so big?”

  “Shhhhh, you wanna hurt his feelings?” I said. “The kid can’t help it.”

  “What’s wrong with him?” pleaded the Cheese. “Honey, what’s wrong with our Chinese big-headed son?” She slid over me until she was hanging out the window. “Hey, buster, are you saying he doesn’t deserve a break just because he’s a little funny-looking? His father was a goddamn war hero.”

  “For the Chinese?” asked the cop.

  “No!” I said. “My brother wasn’t Chinese, just the kid.” I was losing the thread of our story. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the moonman rising, standing up on the seat, drawing a bead on the cop.

  The Cheese started wailing, “Oh my God, our son is cursed!”

  With the Cheese completely filling the window frame, the cop couldn’t really see me, and I was furiously shaking my head at the moonman, hoping to discourage him from reducing the cop to ashes.

  “No!” barked the Cheese with a stern look past the cop at the moonman. “No, no, no, no,” she kept on, then she covered her face and resumed the sobbing. I grabbed her around the hips and pulled her back into the car, then peeked around. The moonman was sitting again, hiding under his hat. The cop had backed a couple of steps out into the road, like maybe we had some kind of crazy that was catching. If there had been any traffic, he woulda been creamed, but there wasn’t.

  “Sorry, Officer,” I said. I unsnapped the registration from the steering column, dug for my wallet. “The war was tough on a lot of folks. She’s still trying to get over it.”

  The cop flipped his ticket pad closed and fitted it into his back pocket. “You got enough problems, buddy. I’m gonna let you off with a warning. Just slow it down and get that kid out of the rumble seat.”

  He backed away toward his motorcycle. The Cheese let out one big last wail of grief to seal the deal. The cop hopped the last few steps, jumped on his Harley, and kicked it to life. The moonman made a sad whistling sound that ended in a click. Which could mean good-bye or “I wish I woulda zapped that guy.” Who knows?

  The Cheese came out of her grief pose. “Maybe we should let him ride up here with us?”

  I was suddenly wiped out. The last two days wrung out of me in the last two minutes. “How about we get a room down the road and hole up until we figure out what we’re going to do?”

  “I’m game,” she said. She looked out the back window, then back to me. “What about him?”

  “Maybe he sleeps in the car?”

  “You would make our son sleep in the car?”

  I winced at the sound of that. “I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep with him in the room, doll. He kind of gives me the willies.”

  “Bathtub?” she said.

  “Deal.” I fired up the Ford and put it into gear.

  “I still have the fifty bucks the general gave me,” she said. “May he rest in peace and whatnot.”

  * * *

  We checked into a clapboard motel outside of Petaluma, and when I got back from fetching dinner I walked in on the moonman motorboating the Cheese.

  “Hey!” I exclaimed, barely hanging on to my sack of sandwiches.

  The Cheese was sitting on the bed, and the moonman was standing between her legs, face deep in her cleavage, making a burbling noise I didn’t even figure was possible for a mug with no lips.

  “Oh, it’s okay,” said Stilton. “I was helping him fix his kimono and he just stepped up. Kinda cute, really.”

  “It’s wrong in multifarious fucking ways, is what it is,” I exclaimed. “Back off, buddy.” I pulled the moonman back by one of his little shoulders and he made his sad whistle noise. I glanced around to see where his cornet was before I scolded him further. When I spotted it across the room on a wingback chair decked out in flower fabric, I let loose. “No,” I said. “Those are mine. No!”

 
“Aw,” said the Cheese. “You’re jealous. He doesn’t even have a willie. And his kimono smells like dead skunk.”

  “C’mon, Stilton, you don’t know where he’s been.”

  “That’s true. What did you get?”

  “Grilled ham and cheese sandwiches, fries, Cokes.”

  Stilton and I ate sitting on the bed, like a little picnic indoors. The moonman ate his stuff sitting in the wingback chair, looking from me to the Cheese and back like he was watching tennis. We watched him right back, like we were munching popcorn at a moonman matinee.

  “How do you suppose he poops?” whispered the Cheese around some fries.

  “I don’t want to think about it,” I told her. But then I started to wonder. “He has no butt to speak of. Nothing but smooth, really, below the waist. We don’t even know if he’s a he.”

  “Well, keep an eye on him,” she said. “There’s a tub in there and I haven’t had a bath since Moses was a kid.”

  “You need any help scrubbing stuff?” I offered.

  “Not in front of the moonman,” she said with a wink. “But see if you can get the kimono off him and throw it in the laundry. The stink would knock a buzzard off a shit wagon.”

  “Pookie,” I explained. “I’ll throw the blanket in, too. Lock the bathroom door.” Before I headed out the door, I pointed to the moonman, who was still worrying some fries in his chair. “You stay right there, buddy.”

  There was an ice machine along the walk to the office where the laundry was, and I thought maybe the moonman would be more comfortable in there for the night. Maybe that’s the kind of weather they have on Uranus or wherever he was from. I don’t know.

  I put the kimono and the blanket in the washing machine along with my shirt, which was pretty gamy, so I was in my suit jacket and undershirt, talking to the desk clerk like I was an operator, while the wash ran.

  “That your coupe?” he asked. He was a kid, maybe seventeen—thin, dark hair and eyes—was gonna be a lady-killer when his skin cleared up.