Noir - By Robert Coover Page 0,3

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 toe 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