Brooklyn Noir

by Tim McLoughlin

  “Hey, he came at me, it was an accident.”

  He gritted his teeth, a raw sound like a nail on glass, said, “This is going south.”

  He was right. The dead man was a cop, in plain clothes, and the heat was on. Sean called me that evening, went, “You wasted a fucking policeman, there’s going to be serious repercussions. I’ve a meet with my superiors and I’ll let you know what’s going to happen.”

  He slammed down the phone. So I waited, checking my travel arrangements. I’d fly from Shannon to New York, and hell, splurge a little, grab a cab all the way to Brighton Beach, because I liked the sound of it. Then I’d find Maria.

  I’d already packed and was trying to decide what movies to bring, when Sean called. “It’s bad.”

  “Tell me.”

  “We can’t have a cop-killer on our hands, the pressure is enormous.”

  I took a deep breath, said, “You’ve given me up.”

  For the first time, he sounded nervous, then, “I’m giving you a chance, I wasn’t even supposed to call you.”

  “You’re all heart, Sean. So what’s the bottom line?”

  Deep breath, then, “They’re sending two guys to pick you up, they’ll be there in twenty minutes, so get the fuck out and run like hell.”

  Curious, I asked, “And these guys, they’re not bringing me to the authorities, are they?”

  “You’re wasting time, get moving.”

  Click.

  I’ve poured a Bush, opened a beer, and am going to have a boilermaker. The Sig is in my lap and I have that song playing, here comes my favorite riff: “Fade …”

  DUMPED

  NICOLE BLACKMAN

  Fort Greene

  I met her at this party on Clinton Street. When I’d see her around the neighborhood I’d just stare at her, like she was unreal. I saw her in the deli, talking on her cell-phone, so I followed her around the store just to listen to her talk. She just seemed, I don’t know, special, you know? I guess I had a crush on her. One night we both end up at this party, we started talking and I was just blown away. We talked about everything and I kept bringing her drinks just to have something to do. She was smiling and laughing like she thought I was funny, and I think I’m doing really good here, so I’m not going home any time soon. We stayed really late and the sun was coming up and a couple of people were passed out on the couch, so we just crashed on the floor with some blankets and stuff. I’m lying there with my hand on her thinking maybe I’ve got a shot. I didn’t think it would become anything, I thought she was messing with me, you know?”

  Brian just listened as Sean spoke. The light cast stark, flickering shadows on his face as the cargo van rocked slightly. They’d been on the road for a few hours or more and they still had no idea where they were going.

  “Anyway, so she comes over the next night, and then she wants to see me three, four nights a week, and I didn’t know how to handle it, or, like, handle her, you know? I guess I was just … afraid of her. I mean, why was she dating me? It’s like you dream about something for so long … a girl, a car, a new job, whatever. Then if you get it, you still don’t think you deserve it. It’s a mistake, or someone’s playing a trick on you like that movie Carrie when they dump pig’s blood on her head and it’s all a joke.

  “She just … wasn’t like anyone I’d ever dated before. The girls I usually dated worked at indie labels or were somebody’s assistant or read manuscripts and fucking hated their jobs, and we’d go out for pizza and see some special effects movie where stuff blew up, you know? We’d get drunk and they’d wake up at my place, hung over and ugly, and maybe we’d see each other again, maybe we wouldn’t. I had a system and she didn’t fit the system. At all.”

  Sean sighed, silenced for a moment by the memory of her. He seemed to forget he was sitting in the back of a van, his wrists and ankles bound in gaff tape, arms tied behind him to the van’s wall bars, with two other guys he didn’t know.

  “I mean, I do ad sales and I do okay, but she made a lot more money than me, you know? I didn’t know where to take her. We’d go out to dinner and she’d order stuff I couldn’t pronounce much less pay for. Dating her was like dating a movie—she’d show up at my place in a black town car, wearing a trench coat with nothing but black lace panties underneath, and dare me to fuck her in the car. I mean, she wanted to go down on me in a taxi as we were going across the Brooklyn Bridge, like she thought it would be a huge turn-on, and I … I just couldn’t do it.”

  “A woman wants to blow you in the back of a cab and you flinch?” Brian spat.

  “I know, I know, but the only thing I could think of was, what if the driver saw? What if other people saw?”

  “Who the fuck cares?” Brian really didn’t like him now. Besides, he was short, and short guys were usually weird, like they needed to compensate.

  “I cared! It was … I guess I just chickened out.” Sean was flustered now. “Come on, she knew all kinds of stuff, everywhere we went she had a story about something cool that happened there, and she’d run into people she knew wherever we went. On Sundays I’d wake up and she’d be sitting on my couch reading the New York Times Magazine. I didn’t know girls like that. Then there’s the morning I wake up and she’s laughing her ass off.”

  “About what?”

  “She looked at my bookshelf, and she saw a whole row of paperbacks on the shelf facing backwards so you couldn’t read the titles. So she started turning them around and burst out laughing.”

  “What were they, porn?” Brian snorted.

  “Nah. Worse,” Sean muttered to the floor, glum.

  “What’s worse than porn?”

  Star Trek novels.”

  “Dude …” Brian exhaled a long, pitying sigh.

  “I know, I know. Whatever. I like them,” he pleaded.

  “So why’d you turn them around on your shelf then?” Brian leaned as far forward as he could.

  “Because it’s embarrassing. I didn’t want people to know that’s what I read. Anyway, I knew it wasn’t going to last. At first, it was like Christmas every day. I mean, I’d had my eye on her for months, and I’d have fantasies about her when I’d jack off in the shower. The first time I fucked her in that shower I nearly passed out. Come on, she’s beautiful, she’s smart, she’s up for anything, and she wants to be with all the time. I’m thinking, you’re kidding, right? After a week or two, I was like, how do I do this? I don’t know how to order off a menu with her, much less make conversation, she’s going to get bored of me fast. I knew that! Shit, even my friends were like, ‘She’s so out of your league, enjoy it while it lasts, pal.’ So I did what any guy would do to keep a woman hooked on him.”

  “What, spent all your money on her?” Brian rolled his eyes and leaned against the van wall. They’d spent a long time trying to figure out what they had in common—he couldn’t believe it was a woman.

  “Uh uh, I went down on her every chance I had. I knew her pussy better than her gynecologist.” Sean grinned, sitting back. “I’d look up at her and there would be nail polish streaks on the wall over the headboard. Fucking streaks the wall I’d work on her for like twenty minutes and she’d come so hard she’d push my head away and just twitch like she was electrocuted …”

  Brian thought he saw him wink. God, this guy was such a tool. He wished the blond guy passed out in the corner would wake the fuck up.

  “… Then I’d start all over again. I’d make her come three or four times and she’d be pulling me to her, begging me to fuck her. Now she needed me for something, now I had something she wanted really bad …”

  Brian chuckled softly and smirked at Sean, knowing he couldn’t possibly have anything she wanted. Brian slid his feet as far forward as he could to stretch his legs. He tried to figure out how long they’d been in this van. They had to have been sitting here talking for two hours, another hour or two on top of that when they were passed out. So, three … four hours, maybe? When he tried to rub his wrists together he realiz
ed his watch was gone. They took his fucking watch.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  “… Sure, I’d fuck her occasionally,” Sean said, carried away by the memory. He could smell her now, feel the curve of her waist. “Really slow, so she’d be moaning for it. I’d get her really worked up and then sometimes I wouldn’t finish her off. It was like a control thing, totally passive aggressive, you know?”

  Brian was bored. This kid was such a fucking amateur. “Cut to the chase.”

  Sean had thought about it a lot, he just never said it out loud.

  “After two or three months, we went out to dinner and I had it all planned out. It was going to be farewell sex, like a last meal before an execution, you know? In the morning, I just bit the bullet and as soon as she woke up, I told her we needed to talk, and she wrapped herself around me in bed. She got nervous like animals do when they know they’re going to be killed, you know? The worst part was she held my hand while I told her all this, like she thought I couldn’t be cruel to her if she was holding my hand.”

  They sat in silence in the windowless van, listening to the sounds of cars and trucks on the highway.

  “I told her that I wasn’t interested anymore, it was me and not her, this isn’t what I wanted, you know, standard dump speech. But I kind of twisted it a little and said I didn’t like how she was always doing stuff for me, buying me things and taking me places like she just thought she was just being nice when it was actually a control thing of hers.”

  “Nice touch. How’d she take it?”

  “She just curled up in a ball and cried for an hour. I was in the other room watching TV when she suddenly comes out with her stuff in a bag. She’d called a car service and didn’t even look at me, she just grabbed her shit and left. I mean, I felt awful, it was a shit thing to do, but I’d rather have her angry at me than drag everything out.”

  The silence hung in the air, cold and thick.

  “You want to know the truth?” Brian said gently.

  Sean nodded, hesitant.

  “You were a pity fuck,” he spat.

  Sean’s face hardened.

  “She told me about you,” Brian continued. “She laughed that you were Transitional Guy, like you were a comic book character, except you didn’t know how it was supposed to end. She was supposed to end it, not you. So, yeah, it fucked her up and she had serious damage, but what can I tell you? That’s my thing, so I moved in.”

  “What do you mean?” Sean said, chilled.

  Brian sized him up carefully, to see if he was worth telling. “I bartend over at the Alibi by the park. This was, like, three years ago. September … a couple months after you dumped her. She came in one night with two or three other girls and I just zeroed in on her, ’cause she looked like she hadn’t been out in a while. You could tell that her friends took her out to cheer her up, so I kept making eye contact with her when I was at the other end of the bar. I gave her some quarters for the jukebox, asked her to go pick out some Tom Waits, kept her glass filled. Lot of attention, just kept looking at her and then looking away like she caught me. I’m good, right? By the end of the night, her friends are gone, the bar’s empty, and it’s just the two of us talking.

  “She’s smiling and playing with her hair, looking up at me, stroking her collarbone and fiddling with her necklace, leaning forward on the bar, it’s all body language. You know the thing about showing their palm, right?”

  Sean shook his head, his light brown hair falling in his eyes, making him look even younger. This was a master class, and he tried to keep up. He couldn’t believe guys like this actually existed and this was what he was up against.

  “When a woman shows you the palm of her hand, she’s open,” Brian explained patiently. “It’s a major sign. It means she’s vulnerable and she’ll probably show you something else, know what I mean? So anyway, I’ve got her, I’ve totally got this chick. It’s classic … classic. Everyone has one thing they’re born knowing how to do, right? This is it. This is what I do better than anyone else.”

  Brian tried to move his arms.

  “Fuck, my arm’s asleep. Anyway, I know what to talk about: stories about my family, what kinda pets I’ve had, how much I like to travel, where I’ve been and where I want to go next. Always say Morocco or Thailand, by the way, just trust me. It gives her a way to size me up, decide if I’m a quality guy, right? And she’s just glowin across the bar at me. She even says I’m not like the other guys and, you know, I do the blushing thing. You know the blushing thing, right?”

  Sean shook his head, confused.

  “You have to do it like this,” Brian confided, as he leaned forward a bit on the box and looked down at the floor of the van. “When she gives you a compliment or you ‘confess’ something, you look down like you’re a little embarrassed or trying to hide a smile. Then you keep your face down and look up with only your eyes, like this.”

  He demonstrated, his eyes peeking up shyly through his lashes. “Slays them every time, I’m telling you.”

  Brian’s expression morphed seamlessly from innocent and charming to cold and hard again, and then he grinned as he leaned back against the van wall. With his black hair and sharp eyes he looked even colder. “The best part was she thought she was the one pursuing me because I was acting like I had a serious crush, like it was love at first sight and this had never happened to me before.

  “We talk about artists we like, so l ask for her number like I’m real shy, say there’s this Bill Viola show she might like to see. She’s actually blushing, like she’s already thinking of how to tell our grandkids how we met. I just knew it.”

  Brian was smug. “I’ve never hooked a woman so easy, so fast. Never

  “So what did you do?”

  “I didn’t even touch her that night, total gentleman. Called her the next day, said I couldn’t wait to talk to her, that I’d been thinking about her all day, and she’s totally charmed, right? So we made plans to see the gallery in the afternoon and I kind of kept it rolling to dinner and finally back to my place to hang out. We started talking about ecstasy and how she hadn’t done it in so long, so I said I had some at my place and we could share it, right?

  “She was so wrapped up in the moment,” Brian snorted, “thinking I was so easy to talk to, that we had so much in common … Fuck, I could have gotten her to do anything … I probably could have gotten her to shoot heroin I mean, my place is kind of a dump and she’s going on about how amazing the view is and how cool the paintings are and whatever. She’s totally delusional at this point, she thinks it’s karma, like we’ve really connected.

  “So we have sex and she says it’s spiritual and amazing, you know, but it’s just E-love. Sex on ecstasy just fucking bonds you, except she’s never had sex on E before so it’s new to her and she thinks this is chemistry. Yeah, it’s chemistry, it’s fucking lab chemistry. So now we’re rolling and I love this part, this is where the head-fuck gets deep

  “Then it just became a question of how little could I do and still have her want me? It became a game and I stretched it out for months Little by little I pulled away, real small stuff like I stopped kissing her, wouldn’t hold her after sex, never went down on her. No foreplay, no talking, it was just fuck her and go to sleep, like when I’m done, we’re done. I wouldn’t even kiss her when she’d cry. I’d roll over with my back to her, and I swear I’d just be lying there, grinning in the dark. She’d sob for a while then finally she’d go to sleep. The next morning I wouldn’t say a thing, act like nothing happened. I know, cold, right? But you know what?”

  “What?” Sean asked nervously. This is who she ended up with after him?

  “She’d call me that night, want to come over, act like nothing ever happened,” Brian said, incredulously. “And I’d always blow her off, wouldn’t call her back for like a week! I’d wait for the voicemail to pile up and she’d get panicky, thinking it was something she’d done. I’d be out with the guys and we’d brag about who has the crazies
t phone messages from a woman, who can string some bitch along the longest, right? And there was no question, I won. I was the king of this, I had proof right here. I’d save the messages and play like a dozen of them to everybody, and they’d start with her all sweet. ‘Hi, it’s me,’ became annoyed, like, ‘Hey, where have you been?’ and then she’d get concerned, ‘Are you okay?’ and finally, after a week, it’s, ‘I’m sorry you’re so upset at me, I miss you, please forgive me.’ She didn’t even know what she’d done to make me disappear but she was already begging me to take her back! The next time I’d see her, and I’d always wait like at least a week or two, she’d apologize to for being such a basket case, and promise it’d never happen again!”

  “Jesus …”

  “I know! Totally fucked up, right?” He was on a roll now, and his dark eyes flashed. “But here’s the thing: If a woman thinks she’s worthless, if she’s been dumped by enough guys and her self-esteem is that low, she’ll excuse anything to keep you. I was so under her skin, she was dependent on me like a drug, she was hooked just like a junkie and she’d put up with whatever she had to.”

  Brian was grinning hard now. He’d never had an office job, never made serious money, kept getting fired, and had the shittiest credit of anyone he knew, but in this one sport, he was a champion. “Here’s the secret, and I know it’s so fucking wrong, but the worse you treat them, the more they want you. It’s totally fucked up, but the sooner you understand that, the better off you’ll be. I’m telling you.”

  Sean was quiet and let Brian’s story sink in. He was colder now, inside and out. The van hadn’t stopped once and they still had no idea where they were going or why. The back of his head was throbbing from where he had pounded his head into the van wall to try and get someone’s attention. He looked over to his left and saw the blond guy’s eyes were still closed, though he wasn’t slumped over anymore.