Mankind’s absurd fate, you are reminded as you stagger along, pushing deeper into the smugglers’ passage, the shooting and footsteps behind you dying away, is slow suffocation on a sick and dying planet: the tunnel is apparently linking up to the city’s sewer system and the air is getting decidedly pungent. The species of which you are a dissolute member does not live, it endures, and this is what it smells like. Rats weighs a ton and you wonder if they, literally, pumped him full of lead. Where the tunnel opens up into the sewers, you have a choice: which direction? Old rule: follow the flow. But further downstream, you run into multiple branches. It may be just glitter off the wet walls, but you seem to catch a glimpse of Fat Agnes and you start to splash along behind him, but at the fork you spy an old tennis ball, speared by a swizzle stick, in the mouth of the other branch. It’s your princess of the alley. Someone still loves you. The teasing will-o’-the-wisp glow of Fat Agnes continues to appear down one cloacal channel or another as you proceed, but Mad Meg’s buttons, shoelaces, tennis balls, and candy wrappers lead you out at last.
You emerge from the pipe through which the city’s sewage is dumped into the sea. You drop Rats on a pile of stones and concrete chunks and wade out into the water to wash the sludge off your shoes and pantlegs. Out here, the air stinks of rotting fish and rusting metal, but it’s a relatively sweet stink and you suck it in. The gulls are squawking, protesting at your walking through their dinner. It’s some dark time of day which around here could be noon. You can hear the rhythmic growl of unseen traffic, an echoey medley of sirens, horns. The way they sound off the water: early evening maybe. There’s a ferry parked nearby, its carport open. You’ve seen that before, know where you are. Skipper’s lowlife hooch house is not far away. Place to lie low for a time. First, you put Rats’ shoe with the three-inch heel on the right foot, and while you’re doing that he comes around. His scarred lips move. He seems to be trying to tell you something. You lean close. Flame, he whispers. Flame? He’s out again.
You heave the old grifter back up on your shoulders and trudge toward Skipper’s, planning to use what’s left of your manikin stash as currency to hole out there until this blows over, even if you have to wait until Blue retires from the force. On the way, you pass the place where the body was found. The trigger for the mess you’re in. The chalk drawing has washed away, replaced by a crude sketch of a naked guy with a big pistol for a dick, firing away at a disembodied cunny hanging in the air like a worm-eaten apple. Nothing left of the original crime scene portrait but a pale colored smudge underneath the pistol. You gaze down at it, trying to remember how it was when you first saw it. You do remember. Oh man. Who can you trust? You drop Rats off at Skipper’s with a packet of the smugglers’ C-notes, pick up some fags, and, head buried in your turned-up collar, head for Loui’s.
ALL OVER TOWN AS YOU WALK THROUGH IT, YOUR MUG glowers darkly on WANTED posters. They’ll never recognize you. You’re prettier than that. Something wrong with the picture, though. What is it? You put yourself in Blanche’s shoes. Well, for one thing, you’re wearing a fedora on the poster, Mr. Noir, and you don’t have that any more. And there’s no folded handkerchief in your jacket breast pocket. That’s not even your pinstripe suit. Blanche thinks you’re too unobservant for a private dick. She likes to set little tests for you, moves things around in the office, adds an ornament to your desk, hangs a new picture, paints the walls a different color, then asks you what’s changed. The only thing you ever notice is if she moves the sofa because when you go to lie down on it you hit the floor. You use the forest-and-trees argument: when you’re on a case, you’re focused, see what’s important, but too many details are irrelevant and clutter your vision. She says there are no forests, that’s a false and undefinable category, there are only trees. When you described the chalk drawing to her, she wanted to know if you could see the victim’s ears. You didn’t remember but said probably not, why did she ask? The outlined body you described, Mr. Noir, was a naked one. Your client was never naked, but men like to draw women that way. So, unless it was somebody else like one of your waterfront floozies, you can ignore everything about the drawing from the neck down. But men are never interested in women’s heads and would just draw what they saw. So, was the dead body wearing a widow’s hat and veil or was her head bare? That would be the clue. If you’d only been paying attention.
Well, there was a clue, but you didn’t recognize it as one at the time and didn’t tell her about it.
You met Flame on the same day you first met the rich widow. Coincidence? You told her the widow’s story, she had a different version, seemed to know a lot about it. Or maybe she was just guessing. Making conversation, wanting to make out. You were carrying some pedigree nose candy from Rats, she wanted to share some of it. You were there every couple of nights after that. Eased into the dark by her sultry lullabies. The night they found the body and you first saw that drawing, you dropped by Loui’s for a requiem drink and she tried to lure you into staying (Hey, if we are what we eat, baby, I could be you by tomorrow morning. .), but, still grieving, you went to the Shed instead. Bad choice. She knew that? You were back at Loui’s the next night, though, and she was waiting for you. Love? You don’t believe in love, victim of it though you too often are, so scratch that. Flame’s a working girl. Her job? She tried to tell you a story a few nights ago, but you fell asleep on it. Or were drugged. It was about twin brothers on opposite sides of the law with her in the middle, gun in hand. A gun that went “spat.” She seemed to be trying to tell you she was both guilty and innocent of something. Something she couldn’t have helped, either way. The cop was using her, but so was the badboy lover. A commonplace tale maybe of love and betrayal, doubled and redoubled, but what you want to know is, who was the cop?
HEY, BLONDIE’S BACK! FLAME SAYS, GREETING YOU LOVingly when you walk in, opening your pants to take a peek. Time passes, you say; it’s growing out. Her affection seems genuine, but what can you know? Joe pours you a double on ice, remarking that you smell like you just crawled out of a sewer, and Loui comes over to greet you, looking nervous. There’s a reward on your head, dear boy, he says. Lucky for you business has been good, or I might be tempted.
Yeah, I know, Loui. I’ve seen the movie posters. Somebody’s trying to pin a bunch of murders on me and I gotta find out who really did them before I get grabbed. Starting with that chalk drawing down at the docks.
You mean, the dead widow?
I was just down there, Loui. Sprang Rats, what was left of him after Blue’s goons had worked him over, and dropped him off in safe hands. Passed by where the body was found. All that’s left of the chalk drawing is a faded smudge of the red pubic patch. Should have paid more attention to that. That was you, wasn’t it, Flame? The artist’s model.
Blue’s undercover agent stares coolly at you a moment. She’s not as pretty as she was before. She sticks a cigarette in her mouth and Joe reaches over the bar with a lighter. I owed Blue a favor, she says.
Pretty big favor, sweetheart. Did you also model for the dog-fuck?
Sure, baby. Did you like it?
Who was the dog?
Your friend Blue. He put on a costume. Actually it was a bearskin, only thing they could find. The artist took some liberties.
So did you, sweetheart. Pour me another, Joe.
Blue’s after your pretty tattooed ass, lover. I figured if I played along I could buy you some time. She moves in between your legs. I love you, baby. Couldn’t let anything happen to you. It’s why I bought you that key to the smugglers’ passage.