Noir (6 page)

SAME EERILY DESERTED INNER-CITY STREETS, SAME OCCAsional streetlamp casting its poor light, same trashbins and shadowy doorways, but everything frozen solid, sheeted with ice. Abandoned tenements, tilting perilously with the weight of their icy crusts, glitter with multiple reflections of the glazed streetlamps, the frozen streets and sidewalks do. There is a faint cracking sound as of the frozen freezing deeper. You can’t move and you know, or seem to know, that you are dead. Iced up solid. Unable even to shudder. This knowledge is itself frozen and cannot move on.

YOU’RE PRETTY SURE YOUR EYES ARE OPEN, BUT YOU CAN see nothing. It’s like staring into Skipper’s eyepatch. The idea that you are dead is still in your head, but the pain there tells you otherwise. And the cold: do the dead feel cold? Is that what hell is? A frozen eternity living with the pain you died with? You start to relax into that in a perverse what-the-fuck way, some treacherous part of your bruised brain telling you to let go—then you catch yourself. Where are you? Some kind of box. A coffin? But cold, like an icebox. And suddenly you know. The crypt at the morgue. The refrigerated vaults. You’re in a cadaver drawer.

How do these things work? You can’t remember. Your frozen head is throbbing, you can’t remember anything. Never been inside a file drawer before though you’ve opened and closed them often enough. A catch somewhere? You have to stay cool. So to speak. You can’t. You’re starting to panic. Which means at least you’re alive and kicking. Kicking: that’s what you’re suddenly doing, you’re kicking at the far end, recalling now that the stiffs are usually filed head first so one can get idents without having to witness any horrors above the tagged feet or disturb the modesty of the dead. That fucking Creep. If you get out of here, you’re going to throttle the evil sonuvabitch with your bare hands. Your desperate kicks are blows to his bug-eyed face. And then there is a metallic snap and light and you’re gliding out on steel rollers into the white room, stripped to the frosted buff and wearing a toe tag, about three drawers up.

RATS ONCE TOLD YOU ABOUT A PAL OF HIS WHO DIED whose cadaver got used as a container for a drug shipment. His body was gutted by a friendly mortician with a habit and stuffed with bags of angel dust (snowballs, as Rats calls them) and sewn up again, the brain cavity and scrotum filled with diamonds and emeralds from a recent heist. This was a kind of memorial tribute to his pal, Rats said with his sneering scarfaced grin, the pal, whom he loved like a brother and maybe was a brother, having always referred to his balls as the family jewels. He woulda got a snort outa that. The one mistake they made, Rats said, was not knocking out his pal’s gold teeth. Some smalltime hoods got wind of the body in transit, stole it for the teeth, and unaware of the stuffing, threw the remains off an overpass to make it look like suicide. It got struck by a speeding semi, setting off a snowstorm in summer and an orgasmic scatter of jewels that caused a ten-hour traffic jam. Even though all he salvaged from the operation were the two teeth, the cheap hoods soon following his pal off the overpass, and though the mob was on his back for awhile after that, Rats called the failed operation pure poetry, even though it probably wasn’t the kind to win a Nobel. Since then, the idea of using bodies as stash bags has become standard procedure, so they’re always looking for fresh packaging materials. Why you tend to feel a little uneasy around Rats: you sense he’s always mentally measuring you up, estimating your capacity.

AS YOU EASE YOUR ABUSED BOD DOWN OFF THE CABINET tray, you can actually hear the ice crystals whisper their little dying snaps and pops, but at least you’re defrosted enough to be able to shiver from the cold. You try to remember what happened, but the blow to your head has deleted most of it. Something about a doomed planet. And a doughnut. Or half a doughnut. Makes your head, aching, ache all the worse, trying to think about these things, so you give it up. Your exact words, spoken aloud to all present, are: Fuck it. The Creep is nowhere to be seen, the place deserted. You check your corpus d for scars. There are plenty, but no new ones. You find your clothes dangling from the body hoist above the dissection slab like flayed hides. Still wet. Cold. Tie draped over the hanging organ scale, spotted with chili. Is that a clue? The .22 is still in the jacket pocket, though it has been fired. But the black veil is missing. You wonder if it is hidden somewhere and open the other drawers. In one of them, popping out head forward like a jack-in-the-box, you find the Creep, color: blue, with his nose bandaged from the last time you were here and a bullet hole in his forehead like a beauty spot. Looks like one made by a .22. Not only have you blown your case, you’re going to be a wanted man. The Creep’s unseeing eyes are wide open, bulging. The ogler still, now ogling death. He once described bonesaw whine as a love song, formaldehyde as an aphrodisiac. You pull his tray all the way out in case the veil is secreted somewhere; it isn’t, an unpleasant and futile exercise. His toe tag reads: BIG. Does it refer to the toe it’s tied to, or is it a signature? It reminds you to take off your sock and look at your own: THIS LITTLE PIGGY SHOULD STAY HOME.

Your thoughts exactly. How long do you remain loyal to a dead widow who never even lifted her veil for you and from whom there can be no more bankrolls? You pull on the rest of your cold wet togs, tip your fedora down over your nose, turn up your trenchcoat collar, and, before the cops can turn up, head back to the office under the gray rain, head ringing, your cold rags sandpapering your skin as you walk. Blanche meets you at the office door, peering disapprovingly over her hornrims, and orders you out of your clothes. This is apparently one of the days she turns up. She bandages your head, smears lotion on your chafed skin, remarks on your bleached pubic hair. You hadn’t noticed; proof you can’t use that the Creep was shot after you got filed away. She kneels down to read the tattoo on what she calls your sit-me-down that says, she says, in small print, inside a broken heart: YOU ARE BEING FOLLOWED. You were wondering why it was itching back there. She loans you her silk drawers—you’re getting used to them now, but you’re definitely not buying a pair of your own—and takes everything off to the laundromat. This time it is of course not the widow who turns up, in peace may she. It’s Captain Blue. I’ve come to arrest you for murder, Noir, more than one, but I can’t take you in like that. You use bleach? It’s disgusting. You’d cause a riot down at the station and lose those things hanging out before I could even get you booked. I’ll come back in ten minutes, killer. If you haven’t got some goddamned clothes on by then, I’m going to shoot you.

THAT RAINY MORNING A COUPLE OF WEEKS AGO WHEN the widow found you in Blanche’s pink underpants, your bandaged head rocking unsteadily on its stem, all you could think to say was: This is one tough case, lady. Look what they did to me!

What? That? she asked, head tipped toward the undies. Who did?

You looked around for something to wear. All you could find was your hat so you put it on, perching it atop your turban, lit up a cigarette, dangling it sullenly in the corner of your mouth, and sat behind your desk, though sitting hurt. Even worse when, to show that things were cool in spite of appearances, you tried to put your feet up on the desk. Big mistake.

Are you in pain, Mr. Noir?

Just—
ungh!
—worrying about you, kid. You’re mixed up with some pretty rough company.

I know that, Mr. Noir. It’s why I came to you. What have you found out? Have you been able to follow my husband’s business partner?

Working on that. I’ve been checking into the insurance policy. Seems it might have been invalid if death was by suicide. Would have been important that he died, or seemed to die, by some other means.

I didn’t even know he had an insurance policy, she said, worrying her pale fingers in her lap, her multifaceted diamond glinting like coded signals in the dim light leaking in through the windows, streaming with rain. Her fragrance was fresh and innocent, yet somehow dangerous. Seductive. When her head dropped a moment, you made a quick adjustment to your silken bonds. Better. But not much. Why do some guys like to wear these things? He never talked about business with me, she said. She heaved a sigh, her breasts rising and falling provocatively inside their black lace bodice. I miss him so.

Though you couldn’t see her expression behind the veil, you could hear the sorrow in her voice. The fear. Genuine or faked? Who cares? Give the girl a break. Enjoy yourself. Tell me again how you met your husband.

I was a poor girl, alone and friendless in the city, and he was—he advertised for a maid and housekeeper. He was good enough to hire me, though I had no references. I was very grateful.

So to thank him you provided other services . . . ?

What can you possibly mean, Mr. Noir? I of course did all that was asked of me to the best of my limited experience. And he was appreciative of my application and, being of a kind and generous nature, was always attentive to my needs.