New Canadian Noir

by Claude Lalumiere

  That’s what Hedge and I had come up with: a small T branded just above the upper gumline in back of the rookers’ front teeth. We knew whoever was rustling Tony Galanto’s joy toys would go over the sophisticated stolen equipment with a fine-tooth comb, or get his mechanic to do so, looking for any distinguishing exterior marks or under-skin identifiers, eliminating moles, birthmarks, and giveaway signs of stress and strain as required. And a rebuilt remote control would render the rooker sufficiently changed in other physical appearances for their camouflaging purposes. But it would have to be a really thorough, or kinky, house mechanic who searched behind the upper front teeth for a tiny identifying brand.

  I let go of Clementine and sat down on the bed, flared a cig.

  “Why, honey, I hope that ain’t all you got to offer a gal?”

  Her teeth shone like a constellation. She dropped the white leather chaps, eager to please, built for it in the truest sense of the phrase. All rookers were programmed to be willing and able, compliant with any human desire, all of the time. Only this time, her considerable charm was wasted.

  When she strolled over to me in her cowgirl boots, her breasts bouncing like overstuffed saddlebags, I switched her off. The room remote wasn’t just for working the bed and screen.

  I worked my way across town, from west to east. By the time I hit the Hotsheet Motel on Pipeline Road, the plastic chit Tony Galanto had given me was running dangerously low on credit. I’d probed more females with tongue or finger in three days and nights than a gynecologist does in a month. It was a dirty job, but someone had to do it, I guess.

  And I’d like to say that I carried my part off strictly professionally, testing the merchandise for markage and then moving on. But if I left a room in under the thirty minimum bought and allotted minutes, suspicions would be aroused. I had to kill time somehow.

  So, when I pushed through the roadside glass office doors of the Hotsheet Motel, I was more than a little worn out.

  This place was owned by Bim Starrett. It was done up low-track sleazy, a one-storey horseshoe loop of twenty rooms connected to the front office. The flaky paint scheme was yellow and red, the rooms threadbare, the beds creaky, the sheets hot as advertised.

  Taylor was tall and skinny and tan-lined, dressed for cheap thrills in a purple tube top and pair of pink shorty-shorts. Her blonde, black-rooted hair was a fluffy mess, her war paint garish. Her mouth hung loose as her joints. She was everything you’d expect to find and pay for in a motel like that, open for business all hours.

  “So, how you want it, big boy?” she slurred.

  I grasped her arms and pulled her close. She groaned when I kissed her, moaned when I thrust my tongue into her mouth and curled it upwards.

  I groaned. Nada.

  I headed for the door, getting suddenly weary of the grind.

  She grabbed my arm and spun me around. “What the fuck! Is that all you got?”

  I stared at her. Taylor’s heavily made-up face had darkened with rage.

  “Sorry, sweetheart, but I’ve got miles to go before I sleep with yet another rooker.”

  I shook off her claw and exited, bumping into Cindy on the sidewalk outside. She was placidly bringing some dirty sheets to the front office. When we touched skin, she went into full seduction mode.

  Her shtick was little girl lost, her overripe body on shameful display in a white shirt tied up at the front and a ruffled plaid skirt that barely came down to her thighs. She toed the concrete with a patent-leather shoe tip, her brown pigtails bobbing, eyes and braces glinting softly in the harsh light as she glanced up at me.

  Eschewing the preliminaries, I stuck a finger in her mouth. She eagerly sucked on it. And I touched pay dirt – the small T brand! “We’re going home, sweetie,” I rasped.

  Cindy blinked her liquid-brown eyes. “Back to my room, sir?”

  It wasn’t in her programming to go anywhere else. I manually switched her off, slung her over my shoulder. The door to room 20 opened up and Taylor glared at me. I blew her a kiss and spun around and strode forward. Right into the broad waiting chests of two male motel employees. “That’s the guy,” Taylor sneered.

  “Takin’ little Cindy for a walk?” one of the men asked.

  “Dine-in only, pal,” the other man growled.

  They formed a solid wall of muscle, blocking my path and seriously jeopardizing my future.

  I did a slow half-turn and dumped Cindy up against Taylor. “Okay, okay,” I said, nice and easy. “No harm done.” Yet.

  I clenched my hands into fists and whirled around, hit the man on my right full in the face, knocking him backwards. I sunk a left hook into the other guy’s gut, doubling him over. Followed that up with a kick to the jaw, toppling him onto the pavement. His cement head cracked on the concrete.

  The other man charged me with open arms. I avoided his crushing embrace with a well-timed foot to the groin. Then I brought up my right fist and shattered it and his chin. I’m the only one who cried out, though, because my assailant was out cold, joining his buddy on the ground.

  I scooped Cindy back up onto my shoulder, preparatory to rushing her over to my vehicle and zooming back to the relative safety of Tony Galanto’s office. But a pointed boot-tip tripped me up. I staggered forward, spun around.

  “Mrs. Tony Galanto, I presume?”

  “Taylor” confirmed my suspicions by spitting in my face, trying to claw my eyes out. I clicked a short left off the point of her chin and her eyes flickered like candles. I caught her up, draped her over my other shoulder, and shuffled fast and furious for my vehicle.

  “You helped Bim Starrett steal the rookers?” I said more than asked, when we were all safely zooming away from the battleground and stolen property depot known as the Hotsheet Motel. Tony Galanto’s wife was in the front seat with me, Cindy in the back.

  “We were going to be partners!” she retorted, rubbing her jaw. “Which is more than Tony would ever let me become.”

  “Then why were you working the rooms?”

  Her eyes glittered defiantly. “For compassion, for empathy, for love! What a woman needs!”

  I stared at her.

  She shook her head. “You wouldn’t understand. In a world of rookers, what chance does a real woman have? All females are property, objects, as far as men like Tony Galanto are concerned – not people.” She brushed a couple of fingers under her nose. “And he’d rather get his pleasure from a rooker. They don’t give him any backtalk, or demand anything of him. And there’s more variety.”

  She blinked, tears in her eyes. “So I take my feelings where I can get them. The customers give me tenderness…and longing.”

  She almost had me crying. But then her voice changed. “And they give me money.”

  I snorted.

  She suddenly pressed against me. A warm, slim arm coiled around my neck, a soft, slender hand sliding up onto my chest, then lower, where the crux of the matter lay with most men. “Don’t take me back to Tony,” she breathed in my ear. “He’ll kill me.” She squeezed the growing interest in between my legs, her body hot and inviting, like her parted lips. “We can be together – knock off Bim and take over his operation!”

  She was a woman, alright: scheming and manipulative, and very, very restless.

  I clipped her on the chin again, the bruise I raised there branding her as off-limits.

  All I wanted to do was deliver unto Tony Galanto what was his. And then get the hell off this wild desert planet where the waters ran too deep for the likes of me to fathom.

  THE LAST GOOD LOOK

  Chadwick Ginther

  Old Town gets practically medieval after dark.

  When the trolls come out from under their bridges and the suits are made of armour, not by Armani. The old gods were long gone, or long dead, but what they’d left behind could still cause a body grief.

  Case in point: the cyclops giving me the stink eye from across the tavern. Maybe he had a score to settle. Maybe I’d killed his brother, hi
s sister, his mother, his father. Hell, maybe I’d killed them all.

  I’ve done a lot of killing in my time.

  “What’re you looking at, troll?” The cyclops brayed a laugh. He sauntered closer. “Shouldn’t you be under a bridge?”

  The same smartass remark, time and again.

  He was big, but I wasn’t worried. So am I. Bigger’n most. Bigger’n him. I stood and straightened my suit jacket. I cracked my knuckles and it drowned out the jukebox.

  I dragged my monocular pal outside, leaving him to cool down in the biting Winnipeg winter. He should’ve remembered that cardinal rule: There’s always a bigger guy.

  He’d called me a troll, and he was right. But I want to set one thing straight, I don’t live under a bridge. Pile the joke on enough times and even a troll’s shoulders drooped under the weight.

  It got dark early this far north – making Winnipeg a desirable vacation spot for the discerning monster. Didn’t hurt that the city was perennial champ in the murder capital of Canada contest. Pick the right victim and no one’s going to look for you too hard.

  Out in the alley in the heart of Old Town, I heard her steps before I saw her. Light from the streetlamp and the fog of car exhaust obscured her in a halo. Her perfume smelled like wood smoke and sizzling meat. She wasn’t dressed for the weather, but that didn’t seem to bother her. Her lack of concern for a killing cold imbued her with a sense of casual danger. She had two-toned hair – dyed black and blue, that reminded me of the chump snoozing at my feet – and a jaw set for business. She stopped within my shade. I could feel her, a bonfire in the cold span between me and the Old Ways. I shifted my shadow.

  “You’re Neal?” she asked. Pupils dilated, searching for light in the darkness, melding into her smoky eye makeup, as if she were looking at me with ravenous sockets. Neal – Neelak Trollborn. Wizard of Runes. Muscle for Hire. Champion – when it suits me. Which it doesn’t, these days. Step into my shadow and you’ll catch a glimpse of what I’ve done.

  “I need your help.”

  “My kind of help gets people hurt.” When I wasn’t trying to pass myself as human, my speech came out as a rumbling growl. She caught my meaning.

  “Maybe I need someone hurt.”

  I grunted. “Who doesn’t?”

  She stepped back into my shade. Persistent, I’ll give her that. She didn’t flinch. Gave me a faint smile.

  “You’re dressed differently than I’d expected.”

  I shrugged. I knew a cheap custom tailor. Nice thing about a well-fitted suit, it can intimidate as easily as a cocked fist or a growl. Hides what you don’t want seen, shows off what you do.

  One last look of appraisal, and she said, “But you’ll do.”

  Whatever she wanted, she wanted it bad – and she needed a monster to get it. Needed me. Too bad I was out of the monster business.

  “No, I won’t.”

  “Don’t you want to know what I want you to do?”

  I shrugged. “Does it matter?”

  She didn’t lean in or try and tempt me. I wondered if she knew that the sight of skin would only get me hungry. Tempting the troll inside the man was not the best way to do business.

  “I need somebody found,” she said, each word sharp, like steam hissing from a kettle.

  Her long, manicured fingernail played with a golden hoop that bisected her lower lip while she waited for my response.

  “And then what?” I asked. “If a person only needs someone found, they don’t ask me to do the finding. They ask me when they want to turn somebody into some body.”

  She flashed me a toothy grin. Whether she appreciated the pun, or she figured I was game, I couldn’t say. I didn’t know what dirty deed she wanted done, but I felt the thrill, the rush, bubbling up from my marrow. The old times. The Old Ways.

  I choked that thought down.

  “I don’t do that anymore.”

  If she was disappointed, she didn’t show it. Didn’t press her case, either. Surprising. She struck me as the type who was used to being obeyed. When I got back inside, the waitress had left a drink at my table, and it wasn’t alone. Someone was in my booth. He was short, squat and bald. I could smell his fear, and followed his eyes to my shadow.

  “Hello, Armin,” I said.

  “Neelak Trollborn, as I live and breathe.”

  I was a popular guy tonight. I didn’t like that. I’d been left alone since after the Calgary Affair.

  “I mostly go by Neal, these days.”

  “I don’t need Neal,” he said. “I need your old self. Your wild self.”

  “You’re asking a lot.” I asked, “How’d you find me?”

  “Does it matter?” A slight smile, playing at nonchalance, and then, “You’re not too hard to spot.”

  I returned his smile, just as slightly. “You’d be surprised how easily Neelak Trollborn can slip through the cracks when he wants to.”

  “Those must be some big cracks.”

  “There are cracks in this city large enough to fit a linnorm through. You know that. You used to live here.”

  Armin drew a handkerchief from his pocket and daubed at his sweating pate.

  “I need your help. You owe me that much.”

  And more.

  “I do.” Not that I was happy about the debt.

  “Will you help me?”

  Anyone else, I would’ve turned down flat. Had turned down flat. I slammed my drink. “Let’s talk upstairs.”

  I led him to what used to be the pub’s stage. The owner gave me the space, and I kept the worst of Old Town from coming knocking on a Saturday night. I motioned for Armin to sit on the leather couch – he didn’t. I poured us each a two-troll-finger tumbler of whiskey.

  “So, whaddaya need, Armin?”

  My old fight manager stared at his feet; antsy, by the way he was shifting his weight.

  “I need you to get in the ring again, Neelak.”

  My surprised face looks a lot like my angry face. Armin blanched and took a step back, eyeing the stairs and ready to bolt. I stared down at my giant mitts. I hadn’t realized I’d clenched them into fists until I saw the fear in his eyes.

  I could see every old crack and split along those knuckles. They’d healed, but still ached sometimes when my blood got up and I remembered who I really was.

  “I’m done with that,” I said. “I thought you were done too. ‘Bigger scores than fight stakes,’ that’s what you said.”

  “I was done, but…remember when I found you?”

  I nodded.

  Armin smiled. “You were trapped in a golden box. Fenced in with the bones of dead children.”

  “I didn’t kill them,” I muttered.

  “I know,” Armin said. “They were sacrificed to keep you in your prison. You were mostly dead yourself when I pulled you out of there.”

  “What’s this got to do with the fight?”

  “The guy who tipped me off to you – Toone? He said he had a tip on a binding ring. I found it.”

  Armin held up a rune-marked golden ring, rolling it from knuckle to knuckle before palming it. I couldn’t tell for certain it was what he said it was. Binding rings were rare, made in the Inquisition days of Europe to bind a beast into human form, and I’d already been sleeping then. Judging from its runes, this ring could be legit.

  He sighed. “Toone didn’t know that the bound subject was still alive.”

  “They want the ring.”

  Armin nodded. “And they want me dead. Can’t touch me personally while I hold the ring. But they don’t need to. They’ve already killed Toone. Strong-armed everyone I’ve ever owed. If I don’t place another fighter, I’ll have to forfeit the ring.”

  And any safety it offered.

  I asked, “Are you calling in my debt?”

  He looked up at me, eyes watery. “Can’t we call it a favour?”

  “I don’t do favours, Armin. You know that. If it’s the old days and the Old Ways, I have to get paid. I can’t buy whis
key with favours.”

  A shake of his head. A pleading look in his eyes. Strange to see on Armin’s face. “I’m tapped out. I don’t think I can afford your old rates, even with the friends and family discount. Not until I get this handled.”

  “You managed other fighters,” I said. “And you’re owed other favours. Call one of them.”

  “There’s no one else.” He was talking fast – desperate. I didn’t like it. I’d never known him to be desperate. “Debt or no debt, haven’t I respected your wishes all these years?”

  I felt my head bobbing in agreement. One might call what Armin had done respect, one might also call it keeping an ace in the hole.

  “Where’s everyone else?”

  “Dead.”

  Now it was my turn to take a step back. Armin had managed some tough customers. Mel – one of the Gorgon sisters – and Billy-Danny – a two-headed, three-armed ogre – came to mind immediately. Shit, he’d even had a flock of harpies on his roster for a time.

  “What happened?”

  “One last fight,” he begged, dodging my question.

  “Let me guess.” Anger curled up my lip to show a little fang. “They went up against the guy you want me to fight.”

  “Yeah,” he said, eyes alternating between his shoes and my fists. “Sorry, Neelak.”

  “Hypothetically, what would I be up against?”

  “I don’t know,” Armin said, and I didn’t buy it for a second. “Someone old. Older than you.”

  I drained my glass. “You don’t fuck around when you make an enemy.”

  My voice was a rumble of anger, but I felt it inside, that old thrill. A challenge. It’s been a while since I’d faced someone no one else could beat. There’s always a bigger guy.

  I’d grown used to it being me.

  I shook my head. “Goodbye, Armin.”

  I woke up in flames. Smoke filled my room to the top of my fourteen-foot ceiling. Sirens rang, but I knew it was a lost cause. This fire burned too hot, spread too fast, for it to be accidental. I grabbed my suit bag, cradling it to my belly to protect it as I burst through the flames and out the window. Glass shattered, scraping my arms, and then I felt a blast of heat at my back and a slap of cold at my front.