Richmond Noir

by Andrew Blossom

  Often Tacko woke in the night and lay awake for hours. He couldn’t turn his brain off. One night, but just the one, he pondered ways a reasonable man might realistically kill himself, but otherwise he just thought about how much he didn’t want to resume his former life. Is that what it was already? His former life? What he wanted, what Tacko most needed, was something different, a fresh possibility, even the merest glimpse of one.

  For a about a week he considered writing a novel, one set in the cutthroat world of advertising. He actually outlined one on the computer. But when he read over what he’d done, it sounded like every other story ever written about an ad agency, so he deleted it and looked at Internet porn instead.

  Honestly, Tacko could not recall how the habit started—from boredom and curiosity, probably. But he’d also recognized just how infrequently (hardly ever) he thought about women these endless unemployed days and nights at home, and so it was possible he was using the stuff as proof he hadn’t lost interest in sex. Porn gradually became a daily routine, and one of his favorite pay sites (by the middle of February, he’d subscribed to six) was DaBlonde’s. Not only because she was located in his hometown, although it surely played a major part. (Finding her site had been a sheer accident, serendipity, link to link to link to link …) No, what he liked best about her? The woman seemed utterly reckless. Fucking men in stairwells, hallways, at highway rest stops. Behind the Museum of the Confederacy. That took guts. Her site biography (which Tacko figured was probably all bullshit, but he chose to disregard his cynicism) stated that she’d been raised in a strict household and had never even kissed a boy before she was twenty-one. And look at her now!

  “You seemed like you were going to say something.”

  “No,” said Tacko. “Just thinking.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Sure you do,” said DaBlonde.

  “Who came up with your name?”

  “It’s what my ex used to call me, but that’s not what you were thinking. He’d call me that when he called me a slut. So what were you really thinking?”

  “All right. I was just wondering—you and Louis met online? At a chat room?”

  “Yeah…? I was in North Carolina and Louis was living here. Well, out in the county. So?”

  “I was just wondering. Was there, like, one day, one particular day, when the two of you just said that’s it, enough, and then packed your stuff and walked away and—got together?”

  “I guess. But it’s not exactly an original story. It happens all the time.”

  “Well, maybe.”

  “It does. People walk away, Tacko. And the world doesn’t end. You can do whatever you always wanted and nobody can stop you. Is that what you’re asking me?”

  “Yeah. No. I’m not sure.” He was babbling now because he realized this was the first time she’d called him by any name, and she’d chosen his last name, the least familiar, even the coldest, of the possibilities. His heart sank a little.

  DaBlonde got up. “Go take your shower.”

  “Yeah, sure.” Tacko rolled out of bed and started collecting his clothes from the floor (shirt, briefs, jeans, one sock, Clarks boots, second sock) while DaBlonde fingered apart two thin blinds and looked out the window. That side of the condo faced a gutted brass foundry covered by construction company signage.

  “It’s still raining,” she commented. “Listen to that.”

  “It’s supposed to stay like this till midnight,” said Tacko, just to say something.

  He picked up the Amboys’ framed wedding picture. They were both laughing with their toothy mouths open. He set it down and thought he might not shower after all, just get dressed and go home. But since he was already standing naked at the bathroom doorway, he went in and turned on the faucet in the tub. This was so weird. The whole thing. Being here. Taking a shower now. Using their shampoo, their liquid soap, their scrubby.

  As soon as he turns off the water, Tacko hears voices raised in an argument. The Amboys quarreling? But no, the man’s voice isn’t Louis’s. Tacko can’t make out what he and DaBlonde—it’s definitely DaBlonde’s voice—are hollering about. Then he hears the guy shout either “disgusting” or “disgust me” and feels a spurt of jangling dread. He starts to put his clothes back on without drying himself.

  That’s a shot. Fuck.

  Somebody just fired a gun, out there. Beyond the bathroom door, beyond the bedroom, out there in the loft.

  And that’s a second shot.

  He’s fully dressed now, but paralyzed, unable to decide whether to move—to investigate, to implicate himself—or to stay put.

  He opens the door a crack and Louis Amboy’s hysterical voice carries in.

  “Scott, please. Scott, please. Please, Scott.”

  He makes cheap furniture. And empty threats.

  “Scott, please, for God’s sake!”

  Why isn’t DaBlonde saying anything?

  It’s still raining hard and downstairs the band is still playing. Tacko quietly closes the door and locks it.

  Three more shots in a burst. Silence, and then another shot. Then silence.

  The first slap against the bathroom door is percussive enough to shake it; the second is the merest scratching tap.

  Now a spot of dark red glistens in the narrow gap between the bottom of the door and the saddle. The spot widens, liquefies—blood. In its flow, carried along, comes an inch-and-a-half-wide sodden strip of black silk.

  A tie end from DaBlonde’s Chinese robe.

  Straddling the pool of blood, one foot planted on either side, Tacko unlocks the door, eases it toward him, and her huddled body insistently pushes it open the rest of the way. He glances down for only a moment, but long enough to register DaBlonde’s fixed eyes. His head goes groggy, and he wills it clear, staring through the bedroom and out into the living area, seeing part of the black-and-white sectional and a row of blue screen monitors on a molded glass table.

  The only sound now is the rain lashing at the building, the windows, the roof. The band has finally taken a break.

  Now Tacko is standing at the bedroom door, now he’s creeping out into the loft, and now crouching beside Louis Amboy sprawled on the floor, a bullet hole at the base of his skull. Blood runs down the back of his neck into his collar. Tacko’s mind fills with strobing light and he bolts for the front door.

  “Hey!”

  It’s a young guy, thirtyish, full head of brown hair, filthy tan barn jacket, short barrel revolver clutched in a fist streaked with mahogany wood stain. He steps out of the kitchen, or glides from behind a bank of computer monitors (sound on, DaBlonde groaning), or just leans forward in a flexible mesh chair, and says, “You’re disgusting.” Or maybe, “You disgust me.” And squeezes the trigger. A hundred times, like it’s a fucking machine gun.

  “Hey! Tacko!” DaBlonde: tapping on the shower glass. “You want to leave me some hot water?” She pulled open the door, shed her robe, and stepped into the spray, smiling as she nudged Tacko from under it. “Can I have the shampoo?” He plucked it from the caddy, Elizabeth Arden, and handed it to her. “You can stay. We can share.”

  But he was already out. “No,” he said, “I’m done.”

  Louis Amboy was conveying a French press and three ceramic mugs on a service tray from the kitchen to the coffee table when Tacko came out of the bedroom fully dressed and grabbed his leather coat from the sectional.

  “You’re not leaving, I hope.”

  “I should.”

  Louis carefully set down the tray. He cocked his head. “Well, if you have to.”

  “This was fantastic.”

  “Tell me something, Mr. Tacko. Would you be interested in making it a regular thing?”

  “Sure. I guess. I don’t know.”

  “Ah,” said Louis, seeming abashed. “Can I loan you an umbrella?”

  “No, that’s okay.”

  “Well then. Good night.”

  “You too.” Tacko would�
��ve had to walk all the way around the mammoth sofa to shake hands, so he just waved to Louis. But it wasn’t like he wouldn’t shake hands. It wasn’t like that. Even so, riding the elevator down, he felt like a real shit, then had an abrupt impulse to push the button again and go on back up, saying he’d changed his mind, he’d wait out the rain and have that cup of coffee now, if they didn’t mind. Because you can do anything you want and nobody can stop you—wasn’t it true?

  He’d have to think about that some more.

  “Vincent!”

  Tacko flinched. He’d flipped up his collar, hunched a little, and stepped outside into the gusting rain, but hadn’t gone three steps across the sidewalk before someone hailed him. Shit.

  It was Dave Sandlin, a VP at the Eury Agency, wearing a tux and smoking a cigarette in a doorway not ten feet down the block from the Amboys’ street entrance. Tacko felt he had to go over. Had to? Had to.

  “How you doin’, boy? Haven’t seen much of you lately.” Sandlin transferred his cigarette to his left hand and they shook. “Keeping busy?”

  “Not really.” Tacko glanced past Sandlin into the gallery, saw the musicians picking up their instruments again, the drummer sliding behind his kit, an all-white, dressed-up crowd drinking and talking, and large abstract paintings, black the dominant color, hanging on the walls. “Just enjoying life.”

  “Fuck’s that mean?” Sandlin laughed but looked skeptical. “I thought I’d hear back from you.”

  Tacko, who’d been standing in the rain like an idiot, finally stepped under the overhang. “I’ve had a few personal projects I’ve been taking care of.”

  “Yeah, well, you don’t want to stay out of sight too long, Vinnie. People forget you. Look.” Sandlin tossed away his cigarette and pulled out his wallet, extracted an embossed card. “Give me your hand.”

  “What?”

  “Put out your hand.” He placed the card in Tacko’s right palm, then tapped it. “Fax me your damn resume. What’s today, Friday? I want it on Monday. All right? Okay?”

  Looking at the card, looking at Sandlin, looking at the people, many of whom he recognized, dancing now in the gallery, Tacko felt disgusted. You disgust me. You’re disgusting. “Thanks,” he said. “Monday. Promise.” Pocketing Sandlin’s card, he put out his hand again. “Well, let me run.”

  “What the hell’re you doing down here anyway?”

  “Visiting friends.”

  “Fax me.”

  Tacko dashed across Decatur Street and walked along the chain-link fence to the parking lot entrance. When he’d arrived there were only about a dozen vehicles, now there must have been close to a hundred, most of them Beemers, Lexuses, and SUVs, and he couldn’t immediately remember where he’d left his. Rain drilled on a diagonal through the vapor lights. As he peered up and down the lanes, then jogged to a red Cooper he thought was his but wasn’t, Tacko noticed a man sitting in a parked Saturn that was at least ten years old and badly dinged. The interior dome light was on. The man was rummaging through a leather satchel on his lap, but glanced up at Tacko. He looked about twenty-five, had stringy long dark hair and a soul patch. Tacko nodded. The man did not.

  By the time Tacko found his car, he was drenched and his shoes and socks were infused. He got in and just sat there dripping. Then he glanced up and there were DaBlonde and Louis Amboy gliding up and down in front of their wall of windows, DaBlonde in that Chinese robe, her hair in a blue towel turban. The pair of them moving forward and sideways and back, box stepping.

  They were dancing. Her tiny, him huge, they were dancing, waltzing—not gracefully, shamblingly, but still. Still, they were waltzing alone in their little weird-shit world.

  Tacko turned the car on, and the heat, then just sat there watching.

  He had his cell phone, he could call them, invite himself back. Nothing to stop him, if that’s what he wanted to do. He took it from his coat pocket and Dave Sandlin’s business card came out with it. He glanced at the card—exquisite printing—and then opened his window and tossed it out.

  They were still waltzing up there, and Tacko started scrolling through his stored numbers—Abbott, Bill; Adler, Ed; Agnew, Connie, Alman, Foster & Meeks; Amboy, Louis & Andrea. Thirty-two on Tacko’s speed dial. He hesitated, then was startled by a car door slamming nearby.

  The guy from the Saturn stood alongside of it now in the downpour staring at the Amboys’ brightly lit condo, staring up at them as they danced their mechanical waltz. Then he strode toward the open fence gate, satchel swinging in his hand. He crossed the street, passing a few people departing the fund-raiser under voluminous black umbrellas. He walked directly to the building’s corner entrance. Tacko glanced back up at the Amboys’ windows, but they were no longer in view.

  When he looked back down, his eyes tracking past where it was chiseled United States Cardboard Company, the young man with the satchel had opened the door and was going inside. Had they buzzed him up? Had they invited over another “friend”? Or thought Tacko had come back?

  He turned off the car, opened his door, and got out. Stood in the rain for perhaps a minute, but still didn’t see anyone in the windows.

  Dave Sandlin, he noticed, had gone back into the gallery.

  A middle-aged couple hurried by under umbrellas, squealing with laughter as they hit puddles.

  Tacko started to get back into his car, but changed his mind and jogged up the line to the Saturn.

  North Carolina plates.

  And now when he looked back up, the Amboys’ condo was dark, except for an ambient blue wash that came off the computer monitors.

  On his way back to his Cooper, he stooped and picked up Dave Sandlin’s card. Then he got in, tossed the card on the other seat, restarted the engine, and drove home.

  Did he even have a fucking resume to send?

  MIDNIGHT AT THE OASIS

  BY ANNE THOMAS SOFFEE

  Jefferson Davis Highway

  Dedicated to the memory of Saleem Hassan

  Things were bad, real bad, when I went to bed that night. Coming up on one month without smoking rock meant having to deal with the mess I’d been making of my life since I first picked up the pipe. No job, hardly any money, and a real pisser of an attitude problem—not that I’d started with the friendliest personality, but you work with what you’ve got.

  “For somebody so young and pretty, you sure are awful hateful, Kim.” This was something Beau said to me once while we dragged the stinking corpse of a harvest-gold Frigidaire down the steps of a trailer I was cleaning for the Arab. But that I could deal with. This particular night really started to suck when the sun went down and two of Ivan’s girls walked over from the City Motel to give me a gentle reminder about the money I owed.

  “Ivan’s lonely,” the one with the broken teeth said. She grabbed a fistful of my hair and jerked my head to the side.

  “He don’t miss you,” sneered the one with the gimpy arm. “He just miss his money.” She reached out with the good arm and smacked the side of my face, hard. The other girl let me go, and they stood there and looked at me with as much disdain as two twenty-dollar whores could muster.

  “Ivan knows they fired me from the diner,” I told them, rubbing my cheek where it stung. “Tell him I’m looking for work.”

  “You think he cares?” Teeth reached for my hair again but I stepped back. “You better get that pretty little ass out on the corner and make his money.”

  “Just don’t do it here,” Gimpy-Arm warned. Then the two of them headed back out to Jeff Davis, where a car had already pulled over to meet them.

  They didn’t need to worry about me horning in on their territory. I was already pissed off at myself for being a trailer park stereotype, what with the waitressing and the crack rocks and all. I’d only moved to Richmond from Christians-burg that spring and already I was like something out of a bad indie movie full of trailer park caricatures. Beau told me not to worry about it, that it happens to a lot of people when they first move into Rudd�
��s, but that hardly made me feel better. It’d almost been a good thing that the diner fired me and Ivan cut off my tab, because it did for me what I couldn’t do for myself.

  I went to bed with my cheek still tingling, worrying and thinking about the money—a thousand dollars, not that much to some people but a hell of a lot to one unemployed teenage waitress in Rudd’s Trailer Park. I’d heard about things Ivan did to people who owed him less, and it wasn’t anything I wanted to be a part of. He’d told me stories, casually, while I smoked on his dime at the City Motel. At the time I thought he was confiding in me because I was different, like he could see the light behind my eyes. In hindsight, he was probably just issuing a warning. When I finally fell asleep, I dreamed of box cutters, of socks full of rolled nickels, of the gimpy-armed whore’s hard little eyes.

  So you wake up from a night like that and you figure there’s nowhere to go but up, right? You figure you’ll make a pot of black coffee, warm up the old Emerson record player that came with the place, put on Metallic KO—Iggy Pop being the Patron Saint of Trailer Parks—and shake it out, clean a trailer or two, and go on with life. That’s what I figured until I opened my door and found a random crackhead on my steps, or what looked like a random crackhead until I realized he was there for a very specific purpose.

  “Ivan says you gotta pay him before Saturday,” he said without looking up.

  “I can give him something on Saturday, not all.” Realistically, there was no job, no legal job, that would make me that much money by the weekend.

  “Ivan says he needs it all by Saturday.” He picked at a sore on his hand. “Or else you’re gonna fall off the Lee Bridge.” When he looked up I could see that he wasn’t telling me because he wanted to. He turned away. “Ivan says nobody would miss you.”

  I like to think that I’m tough, but when he said that, it stung worse than the gimpy-armed whore’s slap.

  Ivan’s messenger skulked out of the trailer park, and I sank down and sat on the step where he’d been, picturing my waterlogged remains floating down the James River, wondering how long I would lie on a slab at the city morgue before somebody claimed me. If anyone ever did.