by Alan Trotter
‘Terrence,’ he said, ‘another day I’d have laid you flat already, but I’m in a good mood. I got guests here. Marly’s wearing the sweater I got her for her birthday, and it suits her. But there’s no way for you to walk away from this but you put down the gun. And then you’ve got to go to jail. Sit out your time. Everyone from heaven to hell and on down to the local police station knows you earned it.’
‘You ever had a chance to lay me flat you’d have done it,’ shouted Terrence, his big gun drawing a jittery outline around Swagger.
‘I’ve had chances before, Terrence,’ said Swagger calmly. ‘You know what I haven’t had before? The law on my side. But as long as you’re waving that gat around I can put as many bullets in you as I like, and they’re not going to take away my P.I. ticket, not even going to ask me how to spell your name properly, I bet. You’re just another scuzzball got taken out in the course of my peerless investigative work.’
_____ tapped me on the leg. He wanted me to look at a picture hanging on the wall. It was a handsomely framed photograph of Mike Swagger. Swagger was tipping his hat back with the barrel of his Colt .45 to show off his smile to the camera. It was nicely lit. He had signed it.
Behind the desk, with the same gun in front of him, Swagger continued negotiations. ‘Instead of that you’re going to put the gun down, we’re going to work out a confession for you to sign, and I’m going to make sure that they don’t so much as caress a bruise onto you on your way to the cells. Okay Terrence?’
‘No,’ said Terrence. ‘I can’t sign no confession. They told me they’d p-pull out my throat, they’d kill me if I said one word to the cops.’
‘P-pull out your throat? Kill you?’ Swagger asked. He sighed. ‘Well, I guess I can’t raise it,’ he said, ‘but I’ll match it.’
Terrence’s gun rattled some more. Swagger smiled at us flatly from the wall: the one behind the desk looked more stubbled, tired, aggrieved. _____ yawned and crossed his legs.
Finally Swagger lost patience. ‘Goddammit Terrence,’ he said and his chair went back, the gun came up, and the barrel threw a blast of fire toward the ground, where it went through the coke’s foot, and he went down howling. Swagger came round the table to the loud mess on the floor, and gargled its cries by pressing his foot against its neck. ‘What do you need a throat for anyway, Terrence? This is the most I ever heard you say for Christ’s sake.’ Then he heeled it away, disgusted, and picked up the abandoned revolver. ‘I didn’t need another hole in my floor, Terrence,’ he said. Then, to us: ‘Sorry about this, boys, won’t take a second now.’
_____ smiled, like he was having enough fun now not to mind waiting.
Swagger dragged the mewling Terrence with his punctured foot through to the anteroom by the hair. _____ and I got up to watch. Marly was standing watching too. She didn’t seem to be finding it too unusual a show. Swagger cuffed the coke to a handle of a filing cabinet. Terrence was weeping curses and Swagger told him to keep it clean, and in a moment of hurt, angry clarity the coke managed to spit two words at Swagger, the second ‘off’. As he was saying it Swagger’s fist connected, slamming his head to the cabinet, and before Terrence dropped, Swagger had caught his head in both hands and lowered him like the head was a bowling ball and he was in his run up. He left Terrence slumped on the ground with one arm held up by the handcuff, looking like he hadn’t been able to decide whether to pass out or hail a taxi.
‘Sorry about that, kitten,’ Swagger said to Marly.
She smiled demurely. It was a hell of a smile.
Swagger came back in the room and sat down, slapping his hands on the desk and looking at us like we were a feast laid out for him. ‘Pull those chairs over here!’ he said. We dragged them closer, with some effort and a fair amount of noise, which drew Swagger’s eyes down to the floor, and for a moment he looked sombre. ‘That punk,’ he said. ‘Blood and holes. My floor doesn’t need it.’ But his cheer came back to him quickly. ‘Childs should be here soon. Let me fill you in, though all on the QT, you understand.’ He took a cigar from a box, bit the end from it, took a lighter the size of a railcar from his desk and ignited it. He blew a couple of large, soft clouds.
‘Used to be this town was lousy with dicks,’ he said. ‘So much competition you could hardly shake up enough business to get by, but that’s not the case any more. The city’s low. It’s good for business, sure, but it’s a problem when you’re a couple of hands short and could use an extra gum-heel. Childs and me thought you boys might fill a need, as it were.’ He turned the cigar in his hand as he spoke. ‘There’s a case. More angles to this thing than the two of us together can keep on top of. More angles than a geometry textbook.’ He grinned at both of us in turn, making sure we got that one. ‘We need someone we can trust to go knock on some doors. Nothing complicated, just take a couple of names, maybe ask a couple of questions and report back on the parties involved, be our eyes and ears on the ground.’
There came the noise of the outer office door. We turned awkwardly round in our chairs to see Childs come through from the anteroom. He took position by Swagger’s desk. As Swagger talked, Childs reached across his body and took a pouch from beneath his missing arm, then laid it on the desk, took a paper from it and started piling it with tobacco.
‘There’s a strange bird in town. A Frenchman, by the name of Lowden,’ Swagger continued. ‘Or he says that’s what he’s called. Clarence Lowden, as in Lowden Cosmetics.’
Lowden Cosmetics made creams, lipsticks, perfumes: stuff so expensive you’d almost believe it could do all they promise. Ruin marriages or save them, depending on your preference. Stop ageing for good. Turn back the wind.
‘Clarence is the son and heir. All you have to do is confirm he is who he says he is. The case we’re working on, there are certain financial benefits that might accrue to Lowden, depending on how it all plays out,’ Swagger said. ‘You’ll go to the apartment straight from here. You don’t need to alarm Mr Lowden, it’s not that kind of job. And don’t worry about being seen, that’s fine, you’re legit now,’ he said. ‘You don’t even necessarily need to speak with him.’
Childs turned the cigarette he’d been making with practised delicacy, twisting an end. He put the pill in his mouth and a match from somewhere sparked on the inside of his thumbnail. As he lighted the twist of paper the stump of his shoulder raised in sympathy, moving the ghost of a hand to shield the flame.
‘If this Lowden’s a phoney …’ Swagger let the consequences drift in the smoky air. He took his big feet from his desk and tossed a slim brown file into _____’s lap. ‘That’s a handwriting sample from the real Lowden.’ _____ looked at it with glittering eyes like this was as good as tickets to the circus. ‘We don’t know what the real Lowden looks like, so that’s how you’re going to tell.’
*
They walked with us most of the way to Lowden’s, while _____ kept his arms wrapped around the file, clutching it to his chest. Then Swagger reminded _____ of our instructions, and they breezed.
The building slumped, half-sized between its neighbours: they looked like they had it by the shoulders, ready to sling it into traffic. _____ pressed the bell marked ‘Fischer’ and when the lock buzzed we went up. Fischer met us through a door that stayed chained. He looked us up and down like he was going to be measuring us for suits, then passed Lowden’s key. ‘Don’t bring it back here,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to know any more about it.’
We took the key along to Lowden’s. The apartments didn’t look like the sort that might house an heir to anything more desirable than rheumatism. When there was no answer to our knocks we let ourselves in.
There was a wall bed that was up. There were a couple of chairs for receiving guests and one more beside a small flat-topped desk. There was a trunk pressed against the wall. There was a body on the floor.
Fat Lowden had his eyes peacefully closed, his face a beautiful sky blue, one blue cheek pressed into the carpet. His rear-end was up in the air, so from his
knees to his head he made a triangle packed with his big, round gut. His arms were splayed out and his neck was corrugated, the same as Holcomb’s had been. He was in the very middle of the room, like he was on display, like he was art. He looked like a hermit crab stripped of its shell.
_____ gave an angry grunt, and for a moment looked like he was going to give the corpse a kick, but instead he started searching the room. He took the drawers from the desk and threw them on the ground. The first was empty, in the second a single long, brass screw rattled. He pulled down the wall bed, and when that didn’t achieve anything he pulled off the sheets. Then he threw the bed up, banging it against the wall, screaming at it, banging it again.
Lowden had bare feet. I looked around for his shoes. They were lying neatly by the desk.
Meanwhile _____ was trying to lift the lid of the trunk but the whole trunk came with it, jumping clear of the ground, like it was trying to buck him. _____ was looking for something Lowden had written on. Something he could use to compare with the sample Swagger had given him. He’d been given a handwriting sample and now he’d been cheated out of it. He took out his knife, jammed it in the lock of the trunk and tried to force it, but got nowhere. He flung the knife into the carpet. He screamed, cursed, and then he did kick Lowden, right at the pitch of the triangle, and it seemed like it lifted him a full inch off the ground then put him back down in the same ridiculous position, his blue face as serene as ever, his head a deflating balloon.
I started checking Lowden’s trouser pockets. I took out a keyring with six keys on it, and a metal comb. Then _____ grabbed the dead man’s jacket and I had to stand clear. _____ started ripping it off him, shaking the body out of it, and then shaking everything from the pockets. There was a large handkerchief that flapped fragrantly into the room, some coins, a platinum watch on a chain, a fountain pen, an ivory sheaf of engraved cards, and a nearly empty package of violet pastilles. _____ roared with dissatisfaction, his hands on his head, his eyes wide and furious. While _____ was rending his hair I looked at the cards that were spilling from the sheaf. They said ‘Clarence Lowden’. It didn’t matter.
_____ took the keyring and went back to the trunk. The second key he tried opened it. I went over and stood with him as he burrowed through the layers of smartly folded clothes and towels. At the bottom, beside a .25 automatic with a walnut handle and a box of ammunition, was a stack of Hotel New Europe writing paper. _____ flung himself on the paper, found it was blank and threw it in disgust. He grabbed Lowden by his shirt and shook him like he was going to make him talk, then punched him hard, knocking his nose sideways. There wasn’t any blood. The dead don’t bleed much: they’ve aged out of it.
Finally _____ grabbed the pen and jammed it into Lowden’s hand, his own hands encasing the dead man’s like he was bringing comfort to him too late, then he pushed the pen down onto a sheet of the paper, trying to make a loop or a line that he might match against the ones in Swagger’s sample, but the paper bent into the carpet and tore, and _____’s hands tightened in anger, and a snapping came from Lowden’s dead fingers. _____ roared angrily again, then finally seemed spent. He kneeled on the carpet with his head down so there were two penitents, one blue and silent, the other red and panting.
After a time _____ said calmly—like it was the most obvious, quietly tedious thing in the world—that we had been wasting our time. And then stood up and wiped the hair back from his brow.
*
We were near a place where _____ liked the milkshakes, and by the time he had finished a milkshake a lot of his anger had left him. Then we went back to Swagger’s to tell the shamus what we’d found.
Behind the communicating door to Swagger’s office there was only darkness—Marly told us he’d left a message saying we should come by again the next day, anytime before noon. It sounded so nice the way she said it that _____ had her tell us again. Then _____ let her know that her boss had sent us visiting with a corpse.
She looked gingerly thoughtful, like he’d offered to buy her a drink and she was considering it. Maybe this was how she always looked in grief. ‘You might want the buttons involved,’ _____ said. He got no reaction. He shrugged. We turned to go.
‘See you in the morning, boys,’ she said, and her voice lapped at us like the tide.
*
Like a lovesick young pup _____ went back to the same dive where we’d been drinking with Swagger the night before.
I wasn’t in the mood to watch him drink, and if the dialogue-heavy gumshoe did show, then I knew I wouldn’t be in the mood to listen. But I needed somewhere to be. This is always the thing, this is the tide we can’t not swim against—that we all always have to find somewhere to be. You chew down the tiredness until it chokes you, you keep finding somewhere to be until you’re excused, finally. Like Lowden had been excused. Like Holcomb had.
If I was going to carry on being somewhere, I decided it would be Evelyn Heydt’s. _____ had already forgotten her: he’d found a place to be, for now, and it was sniffing at the heels of Swagger, hoping he’d get given a chance to have a hand grenade blow out his kidneys, or be passed another handwriting sample.
I hadn’t forgotten her.
I had the thought that the place I wanted to be was with her, and it sent me tumbling into a well of myself—I found she’d been swimming around in there, a great shoal of welcome thoughts, had been there ever since we’d been in her apartment, ever since we’d seen her standing at her window, beautiful and unaware. I’d been peering past her to watch _____ kick a fat corpse, to sit with him as he drank an angry milkshake, but now thoughts of Evelyn Heydt plunged together, filled my view, pushed out _____ and Swagger.
I was going to go and see Evelyn Heydt.
*
At every stop on the streetcar more and more people got on. I felt like I was at the bottom of a chute and men with ties and ladies with grocery bags and squabbling kids were being dropped onto me. I got pushed further, tighter to the back. Then the redheaded pickpockets got on. In a line they got on, paid their fares and moved into the car, one, two, three.
I watched them for the rest of the journey. They hadn’t seen me. They talked, looking forward rather than at each other, and as the car started to empty out again they moved, almost marching, around one of the vertical metal poles, the same as the one I was holding on to.
The way they moved started to make me feel queasy, the way their movements matched each other. They moved like three bottles carried by the same wave. As one of them turned the pole he stretched his arm out and peeled away from it, and stepped a big, high-legged marching step to the window, his arm raised to a handle. Then the second followed behind: the same turn, same big step back to the window and arm raised. And then the third: the movements passing one to the other like a finger runs along the keys of a piano, and from where I was watching they disappeared, one behind the other, like they’d been stacked inside each other. Only when the streetcar went around a corner or reached a slope could I see that there was more than one of them, the three identical images spreading apart then resolving into each other again. It was as though seeing the first burned him into your eye, leaving other pale redheads ghosting behind. As they muttered and moved I watched how they raised their hands and turned their feet around other passengers, the beating of their lips, and I couldn’t see a difference between them. I couldn’t shake the feeling I was seeing the same moment three times. Then in sequence they left the streetcar.
Like three bows on a single kite string, one after the other.
Once, in a wooden hut by a rollercoaster, I’d seen a spinning toy lit by flashing lights. It was a cylinder of panels that showed a running horse with an Indian on his back, and the horse really did run, its legs drawn in pen but in flickering movement, as the cylinder spun and the flashing light controlled the time, taking the individual moments and making them into a single, living scene, until the spinning slowed, and the horse separated into shuddering, sliding parts.
Wh
en the triplets had left, a woman on the streetcar with a kind voice asked me if I felt all right. I was shaking. I coughed some vomit into my hand, and she didn’t move from me, but gave me a handkerchief from her bag.
*
On the street, it was Marly I comforted myself with thoughts of as I cleaned my face and hand. Marly was a fixed point, something you’d want to keep: she was in it with Swagger, but a lot gets forgiven for that voice, those eyelashes, so however you approached things you’d want Marly to be there—at least to know she existed as a possibility, a warm thought to enjoy as you drift to sleep.
Holcomb I liked a lot less, but now I felt as if I needed him too. If I could I wanted to unwring his neck, slip his drooping eye back into place and pat down the big sagging bruise around it, to paste up the hole the bullet had drilled in his cheek and put his teeth back in his mouth like I was dropping nickels into a machine.
More than anything there was Evelyn Heydt. Beautiful, stage-lit Evelyn Heydt, beautiful and close, with her fluttering eyelids, her quickened, pulse-warmed cheek. To be back in that moment of pursuit, to be drawn towards her blood-red lips as they trembled, but with life, not fear.
I rinsed off the handkerchief with the overrun from a gutter.
*
I pressed three bell-buttons together, none of them Evelyn Heydt’s. The lock of the street door buzzed and I went in and up the stairs.
