Noir

by Robert Coover

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

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  Copyright © 2010 by Robert Coover

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  Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress

  eISBN: 9781590204924

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  For Bernard Hoepffner, partner in crime.

  YOU ARE AT THE MORGUE. WHERE THE LIGHT IS WEIRD. Shadowless, but like a negative, as though the light itself were shadow turned inside out. The stiffs are out of sight, temporarily archived in drawers like meaty data, chilled to their own bloodless temperature. Their stories have not ended, only their own readings of them. In your line of work, this is not a place where things end so much as a place where they begin. Following the usual preamble: You were in your office late. The phone call came in. You pulled on your old trenchcoat with the torn pockets, holstered your heater under your armpit, and headed for the docklands. The scene of the crime. Nightmarishly dark as it usually is down there, even in the middle of most days, lit only by dull swinging streetlamps, the reflective wet streets more luminous than the lamps themselves, though casting no light of their own. Everything shut up tight but as though harboring unspeakable doings behind the locked doors and barred windows. Fishy smell in the air. Black water lapped the concrete landings and wooden piers somewhere down below. Occasional gull honks: pale sea crows, scavenging. Usual small gathering of gawkers, drunks, cops, bums, their faces shadowed by caps and hats. A perverse and sinister lot. Also scavenging. You shouldered your way through them, hands in your coat pockets. But you were too late. The body had already been removed to the morgue. There was only a clumsy chalk drawing on the damp stones, a red patch at the crotch crudely gendering the drawing. Blue was there. As expected. His beat. What are you doing here? he asked. Just out for a stroll, Blue. Captain Blue to you, asshole. Mr. Asshole to you, Blue; she was a client of mine. Who was? You shrugged and lit a cigarette. The body? The killer? The tipster? No idea. The only connection you were sure of was the phone call. Down below you could see a ferry, backed up against the docks, its carport gaping. Which was disturbing. Could have been anyone. From anywhere. Have to check the passenger list. If there was any. It means things will be messy.

  Now, at the morgue, the night attendant tells you a body was brought in, but it’s gone again. Must have got stolen, he says. How the fuck could it have been stolen, Creep? Don’t know, man. I been here all night. It was here and then it wasn’t here, what can I say. You slap him around a bit to remind him of the hazards of losing a body and ask him what she looked like.

  Medium tall, well stacked, painted toenails but not much makeup, no jewelry, blondish hair, same color as her pussy.

  She was naked?

  Not when she came in.

  Where are her clothes?

  They’re gone, too. Except for this. He hands you a gossamery black veil. You recognize it. Or think you do. You pocket it and turn to leave.

  One more thing, the Creep says. You turn back. Her pussy, he says, stroking himself. You can see the sparkle in his buggy little eyes.

  Yeah?

  Creamy. Soft. Like wet velvet.

  IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON WHEN SHE FIRST TURNED UP AT your office. Blanche had left for the day. Which was fading, the lights dim. Maybe she planned it that way, entering as though bringing on the night. Or dragging it in in her wake. She was dressed in black widow’s weeds, her face veiled. You’d seen her type before. But there was something about her. A looker, sure, but more than that. A kind of presence. She was poised, cool, yet somehow vulnerable. Tough but tender. It might just be a social call, you thought, taking your feet off your desk and lowering them into the puddled shadows on the floor. Or she could be hiding a murder, fearing one, plotting one. Fearing one, was what she said. Her own. She wanted you to tail a certain person. She handed you a piece of paper with a name on it. You tried not to wince. Mister Big. How did you get mixed up with this guy? you asked.

  He was a business partner of my late husband.

  Why late? What happened to him?

  I don’t know. I thought you could find out. The verdict was suicide.

  But you think it might have been murder, you said. She sat, lowered her head. A nod perhaps. That’s what you took it for. It won’t be easy, you thought. The man is protected by an army of thugs and is said to have half a dozen lookalike doubles moving about the city as decoys. Though who these were was hard to say because no one knew what he looked like in the first place.

  The widow seemed to be studying her pale hands, fingers laced together in her black lap. You did likewise, studied her hooks: sensuous expressive mitts of a dame in her thirties, unaccustomed to hard work, ornamented only by a wedding ring. With a big rock. Why she wasn’t wearing gloves. No sign of nervousness or uncertainty. She knew what she was doing, whatever it was.

  She looked like trouble and the smart thing probably would have been to send her packing. But the rent has to be paid, you don’t have enough business to turn down anyone. And besides, you liked her legs. So, instead, even though you knew her story before you heard it, the inevitable chronicle of sex, money, betrayal (what the fuck is the matter with the world anyway?), you asked her to tell it. From the beginning, you said.

  I AM NOT FROM THE CITY. MY EARLY YEARS WERE SPENT in a small country town far from here, a pretty village with neat tree-lined streets, well-kept lawns, schools and churches that were right in the neighborhood, and a sunny central park with a white wooden bandstand where bands played on weekends. A town where everybody knew each other and loved each other and said hello to each other on the streets and no one was afraid. What I remember now was how much light there was. My father was the town pharmacist and taught Sunday school at church; my mother held bridge parties and volunteered in the municipal library. I was a drum majorette and my younger brother, a happy-go-lucky boy, played on the school basketball team. We were very happy. I was in love with the captain of the school football team and he was in love with me. But then one day my father caught us in what he mistakenly thought were compromising circumstances, and in a fit of temper he sent me away from home. I was only sixteen years old and penniless and all alone in the world when I arrived here in the city. I was, as you can imagine, utterly bereft and desolate, overwhelmed by grief and despair, and facing the hard realities of poverty and loneliness with fear in my heart. But then, by the happiest stroke of good fortune, the sort I thought was never to be mine again, I was able to obtain a position as a maid in the house of the kind and generous man who was later, after the death of his beautiful wife, whom he loved dearly and whose death nearly brought on his own, to become my husband. I tended his critically ill wife through her final days, while he wept at her bedside. The poor man was shattered when she died and became bedridden himself and I had to care for him, too. An affection grew up between us and in time we married. And that is my whole story, except for my husband’s tragic and mysterious death which has brought me here this evening.

&
nbsp; SHE REACHED UNDER HER BLACK VEIL IN THE DARKENING office (outside, the neon light was doing its nightly stuttering-heartbeat turn) and dabbed at her eyes with a white lace handkerchief. Until she did that, you believed her story because you had no reason not to. Now, it seemed as full of holes as her black veil. You had a hundred questions to ask, but with a silky whisper she crossed her legs and you forgot them. So instead you told her it was a tough assignment, you’d need to buy some help, there would have to be some dough up front.

  She uncrossed her legs (you thought you saw sparks) and reached into her purse, handed you a fat bankroll. No need to count it. I’m sure you will find it adequate. It was more lettuce than you’d seen outside the salad bar at Loui’s, but you tossed it dismissively on your desk, lit a cigarette and, sending some smoke her way like a searching inquiry (or maybe just, vicariously, to feel her up), said you’d see what you could do.

  She stood to go, batting at the smoke. What does the M stand for, Mr. Noir? she asked, nodding toward the sign painted on the street window behind you, seen in reverse from in here: PHILIP M. NOIR / PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS.

  Family name, you said. She thought about that for a moment, then she moved toward the door, nylons whistling softly as though through lips not fully puckered. You remembered one of the forgotten questions and, while she was standing in the doorway, silhouetted against the hanging hallway bulb outside, you asked it: You said you were caught by your old man in compromising circumstances . . . ?

  Yes, well . . . we were not wearing any clothes. But it was completely innocent. We were young and curious.

  We’ve all been there, you said, trying to imagine the scene. But where—?

  Oh, on the bandstand, if you must know. On a Sunday afternoon. We intended to collect money afterwards. For charity. A childish idea, I know . . .

  THAT NIGHT, IN CELEBRATION OF YOUR NEW CASE, YOU decided to treat yourself to a steak dinner at Loui’s Lounge. But before you went, you pocketed your .22 and dropped down to the docklands to look up an alley merchant named Rats, who was always good for a tip or two, even on occasion a reliable one. This time, instead of having to muscle it out of him, you had some scratch to lay on him. A desolate part of town, busy enough by day, but a grim warren of crime and human misery by night. A few lowlife gin mills, some illegal backstreet gambling joints, a couple of flophouses, and a lot of ominously dark streets. The bodies on the sidewalks could be bums or drunks, could be corpses. You recognized one of Rats’ runners lurking in an alleyway and told the kid you wanted to see the man. You gave the kid a bill to authenticate your request, then backed into a shadowy doorway, your hand in your pocket gripping your rod, eyes scanning the wet night streets for trouble. A couple of blocks away you saw a pair of cops silhouetted against the ghostly backdrop of the sky-blue police building behind them, yapping with a prostitute. Propositioning her maybe, or pumping her for info. Or just hassling her because they got their kicks that way.

  Someone was watching you. And then they weren’t. You lit up. Whereupon Rats emerged warily out of the shadows. A scrawny unshaven grifter with a short gimpy leg, paranoid eyes, and a permanent sneer, carved there with a knife. It’s the kind of face you’d be wearing if your face read the way you felt about the way things were. You offered him a smoke, passed him a bill, big enough for merchandise as well as info. You realized that one of the questions you’d forgot to ask the dame was her name and the name of her dead husband. But you described her visit to your office and Rats knew who you were talking about, he had also noticed her legs (in the news shots, he said), and he filled you in. They say her gent offed himself, but she reckons he was rubbed out, Rats. What have you heard? He shrugged. They found him with a hole in his head, he said, and a .38 in his hand. Registered to him. No other prints. You nodded, took a drag. Cut and dried, hunh? He dropped his butt to the damp pavement and ground it out with the three-inch heel he wears on his right boot to keep him from tipping sideways. Not quite, he said, releasing the smoke like a kept secret. The hole was in the yoyo’s right temple. The gun in his left hand.

  RATS, YOU’RE THINKING TONIGHT, MIGHT KNOW SOMEthing about the missing body, having a market interest in them. And about why your pal Fingers got hit last night and by whom. After paying your respects at the Woodshed by lifting a glass or two and asking a few questions, you drop back down to the docks, but no sign of the dealer or his runners. The car ferry has pulled out. The dark streets are empty, or seemingly empty. There is always a restless scurry in them that might or might not be partly human. The chalk drawing is still there, but it has changed since yesterday. The figure is on its side now, head to knees. And something has been added. Outrage is not generally in your repertoire of emotions. You’ve seen too much, taken too many hard hits, expect the worst as a matter of course. But sometimes your repertoire expands. Like now. You want to thump somebody. Terminally.

  You head on down to Skipper’s Waterfront Saloon, a smoky lowlife dive the cops call the Dead End Café, they’ve hauled so many stiffs out of there. Skipper’s a cantankerous old seadog with a heavy limp, his face mapped by ropy scars, a dead-black patch over one eye like the opening of a tunnel into the void. The last thing some men see, it’s said. Telling their future. Everybody’s future. Skipper rarely talks, just lets things be known. He points to his black patch. He points to you. Lets his parrot do all the talking. Hit me again, baby, it says. Squawk! Hit me where it hurts. Whores, mostly well past their prime, ply their trade freely in here, Skipper taking his cut by way of the room he rents them by the halfhour at the back. A filthy vermin-infested and foul-smelling hole in the wall with stained unwashed sheets, shadeless bedside lamp on the floor beside the mattress, the bulb painted red, used hypo spikes underfoot, a basin and pitcher for douches. You know. You’ve been there.

  Romance. Comes all ways.

  The smoke in here is thick enough to slice and sell as sandwich meat. You light up in self-defense, order a double, straight up, no ice, ask about Rats. He’s on holiday, you’re told. Meaning he has been sent up or is on the lam. Blue’s here, though. Duty or picking up a piece of the action, who can say. He comes over and says: I thought I told you to steer clear of here, buttbrain.

  How can I? It’s my second home. If you give me a minute I’ll think of my first.

  Don’t be stupid. You can get badly fucked over in this neighborhood.

  I was hoping you’d protect me, officer.

  Don’t kid yourself, Noir. I look forward to chalking your final portrait.

  Speaking of that, what happened to the artwork out in the street? Yesterday it showed a figure with its arms and legs sprawled out. Now it’s curled up on its side. And there’s the dog . . .

  Homicide’s been here. Maybe they saw things differently.

  They saw a dead dog fucking a dead woman? How come we missed that?

  Just not paying attention, I guess.

  You’ve got a problem, Blue. Not just who killed the woman, but who killed the dog? And what was the weapon, by the way?

  I give up. Sexual ecstasy?

  You feel like belting him one, but his goons would make your night even more unpleasant than it already is, so instead you show him the piece of paper the dame gave you. What does this mean? What does this guy have to do with it?

  Blue whistles softly. Where’d you get this?

  He reaches for it, but you pocket it. It’s a kind of talisman. The only physical proof you ever knew the lady; the veil in your pocket may or may not be hers. Picked it up on the street, you say and down your drink, turn to leave. You catch a glimpse of Blue nodding to a couple of his off-duty cops and you figure you’re about to get tailed. Or nailed.

  Go for it, scumsucker, the parrot squawks. My ass is your ass!

  At the door, Michiko, one of the local whores, comes over to flirt with you. Hey, Phil-san, she whispers, wrapping her parchmenty arms around your neck. She uses a body powder that makes you think of an airless hothouse. She looks like she is dressed from head to to
e in a densely patterned body stocking, but she is actually wearing only her skin and a thong—if that’s not a tattoo, too. She leans close to your ear as though to nibble at it and whispers: Go out back door, Phil-san. Somebody waiting for you in front. C’mon, baby, she says more loudly, reaching into your pants. Quickie-quickie? Michiko love you!

  MICHIKO WAS NOT ALWAYS A SUFFOCATINGLY PERFUMED bag of old painted bones. She had a certain enigmatic Eastern aura when she was younger and worked the snazzier joints. Before that, while she was still just a kid in schoolgirl clothes and white cotton panties (white panties used to be a big deal; you miss those times), she had been the moll of a notorious yakuza gangster who had his own portrait tattooed on the inside of her tender young thighs. Where he could keep an eye on things, he said. A rival gang leader kidnapped her and “blinded” the portrait with red splotches, and just for good measure added a mustache and blacked out two of the teeth before returning her to her lover. He also had his own hand, recognizable by its don’t-fuck-with-me dragon tattoo on the back and the superhero code ring on his pinkie, tattooed over her plucked pubes, the middle finger disappearing between her lips. Her lover responded by sending her back to the rival with the dragon tattoo reduced to a simpering please-fuck-me position, the ring finger chopped to a bloody stub, signifying a humiliating three-knuckled yubizume, and the middle finger blackened as though torched by its impertinence. The lover also tattooed Michiko’s ears with haikus celebrating the “black mist” of summer and winter’s “ice-heart,” which was a play on his own name, and inked the circles of a target on her buttocks around the bull’s-eye anus with the phrase “You’re next, asshole!” on the right cheek. The rival was not dismayed. With a simple stroke he changed winter’s “ice-heart” to winter’s “withered-dick,” which also turned out to be a play on the lover’s name, assumed the “asshole” could be either of them and so merely added a semiautomatic weapon on her left cheek with his gang’s insignia on the handle. On her face, he tattooed a snake, the head coiling out of one ear onto Michiko’s upper lip, its mouth biting its own tail, which was coiling out of the other ear, the face of the snake a portrait of the lover, the tail the lover’s own cock, which was famously (a favorite subject of the tabloids) tattooed with the Kanji symbols for “King of Water Business.” This the rival subtly altered to “King of Urine Business” and sent her back again. The lover accepted the biting snake, but put a face on the bitten tail with very big ears, mocking the rival’s donkey ears which he always tried to keep pinned under his black fedora (“Mister Hee Haw” is what the cops called him, and they loved to humiliate him by knocking his hat off), and applying the Kanji symbols for “Number One Hot-Ass Warrior” to the head. Then, just for fun (he loved her after all and wished her to be beautiful) he turned her breasts into magnificent mountainous landscapes with little bridges over streams that his own gang members posed on in their pinstriped suits, holding up placards that read: Do not dream mountains from anthills, pisant. The scene invited interpolations and the rival obliged by turning it into a classic yakuza bloodbath with his own gang, disguised as giant ants in black fedoras and suits, wiping out the lover’s gang. He decorated her belly with a bulbous raccoon-dog with testicles like beach balls, etched a crimson “4” on her forehead, the sign of death, inscribed a stormy seascape on her backside with giant waves crashing over the small of her back, and converted the target into a whirlpool with a fishing boat being dragged down into its dark center, giving one the sense, if one approached her from that direction, of entering the eye of the storm. Thus, she continued to get passed back and forth between the two yakuza bosses as a kind of message board, the gangsters coming to so admire each other’s art in the end that their rivalry, to the disgust of all their gang members, became purely an artistic epistolary one. They covered her with fragments of famous scenic and erotic masterpieces, always with implicit or explicit threats and insults, burned the signs of the zodiac in the appropriate places on her body, inscribed four centuries of yakuza history in all the blank spaces, covering even the soles of her feet, her lips and scalp, her eyelids and armpits. So obsessed were they, they might have started working on her insides had not their own lieutenants organized a public exhibit of Michiko in the city’s modern art museum and, at the moment that they bowed to one another, executed both of them with tattoo needles fired into their ears. Michiko meanwhile ended up tattooed from crown to toes with layers of exotic overwritten graffiti, a veritable yakuza textbook, slang dictionary, and art gallery, a condition that served her well in her subsequent career, once the museum, which claimed ownership of her, was paid off: she was worth a C-note just for an hour of library time. All of it fading now. Losing its contours, its clarity, the colors muddying, wrinkles disturbing the continuities, obscuring the detail. Suffering the fate of all history, which is only corruptible memory. Time passes, nothing stays the same; a sad thing. A haiku somewhere on her body says as much.