The panhandler has paused over near the fireplace where he’s poking about in it as if it were a trashbin. You fire a shot, shattering what turns out to be a mirror, and the fireplace disappears, revealing a billiard table behind it, the panhandler shuffling toward it. The fireplace is now seen to be opposite from where you thought it was. Maybe. Your reflection across from you looks confused. You straighten it up, switch on the hard guy again, take a drag, the butt dangling in your lips, smoke curling through your sinuses like a house burglar.
But when you iced my client, you say, something went wrong, and you had to hide the body. You stole it out of the morgue before I could get there. Now, I want that body.
Well, says the voice. The panhandler, over at the billiard table, is putting the balls into a plastic shopping bag in exchange for some rotten oranges and melon rinds. If you insist.
A shot rings out, the.22 flies from your hand, and blood appears there on the trigger finger. It’s the widow. She fires again and your hat flies off. There is a lady in the room, Mr. Noir, she says.
Yeah, well, I never was one for the niceties, you gasp, clutching your wounded hand, trying not to cry. I’ve been chasing a body around. Thought it was you.
It was. I wasn’t dead, is all.
So that’s how you disappeared from the morgue.
That’s right. I walked out. The morgue attendant tried to tell you that in his vulgar way, sealing his own fate, I’m sorry to say.
You remember this, the odd thing he said. So, you’ve known all along. Just weren’t conscious of your knowing. As she moves around through the harsh rhomboids of glare and shadow (the panhandler has vanished), she multiplies herself in the mirrors. You’re surrounded by black-veiled widows, scissored by striped light. Some of them are pointing the gun at you, some are aimed in other directions, which tells you something about which one’s the real one, but you’re tired now and don’t really want to think about it. Who knows, maybe they’re all real. Had you pegged from the start, sweetheart, you say, wrapping your bloodied finger in your lapel pocket handkerchief. A gold-digger working the street who struck on a john who wanted to knock off his rich wife. In collusion with your emasculated hometown pimp and your sinister old man, you supplied the murder weapon out of the family drug store in exchange for a marriage contract and a share of the loot. The old story.
But how did you—?
Elementary, lady. Even my office assistant figured that much out.
Your office assistant?
Yeah, Blanche. She’s a good kid but no pro at the sleuthing game. Bit of a dummy really but she makes good coffee. The mirrored widows rotate and different ones are pointing at you now. You discovered your husband had taken out a big insurance policy on you, suggesting he did not have in mind an old age together, so you moved first, drugged him and shot him. Like most dames, though, you can’t tell right from left and botched it, and there had to be a cover-up. You needed this bigtime racketeer here with his cop and city connections, so you partnered up with him, which also solved the problem of your ex pitting the two of you against each other with his pernicious will. The idea was to hitch up so you could inherit the estate intact, that’s where that big rock comes from, not from your deceased dearly beloved, but since neither of you were the type to make do with only half, it was unlikely you’d both live out the honeymoon. Mourning suddenly dead spouses is a weekend sport in your crowd. So you both started making moves. Meanwhile — it’s all coming to you now, you feel a certain exhilaration, you’re really good at this — your brother butted in, tried to get a piece of the action, you had your psycho pimp and old man take him out. Ugly back-alley stuff. Your dopey hotpants stepdaughter knew too much and had a loose mouth, so you silenced her, too. So far, except for the sex kitten, I haven’t mentioned anybody who wasn’t also one of your lovers, and who knows, maybe you’d got your talons in her, too. You’re a hot ticket and have a lot of poor suckers on the string.
And what about you, Mr. Noir? Are you on my string?
You got classy gams, baby, but I’m on nobody’s string. Besides, your lovers all end up in cold storage. Your current stud and business partner hiding behind these mirrors is next whether he knows it or not. It was why you hired me. To try to get a fix on him so you could send in your assassins. You knew the kind of ruthless sonuvabitch you’d signed up with and figured you wouldn’t be walking away from your next trip to the morgue, unless you nailed him first and went there for a goodbye kiss. My guess is, you press on, only one of you will walk out of here alive today.
You don’t know how much Mister Big is on to all this, but it never hurts to sow a little distrust. She turns as a page might turn and seems to disappear and for a moment you’re alone with your reflection. But then she reappears in the mirrored image behind you, the gun pointed at your head. You’ve got the right kind of trenchcoat, Mr. Noir, but other than that you’re a rotten detective. A blind Eye. You deserve to die. You hear the click of the safety and figure you’re a goner, but it’s your mirrored image across the way that shatters. You’re flat on your ass again, pratfelled by fear. Though of course you are fearless. You do what you can, from your somewhat awkward position, to show this. You can hear her breathing serenely above you. That and the blood pounding in your ears is all you can hear. You can smell something though. That familiar aroma. The one that drifted up your nose each time you got kayoed when tailing the panhandler. A fragrance you have smelled almost every day and should have paid more attention to.
Blanche!
That was not a nice thing you said about me, Mr. Noir.
Yeah, well, ah, I was only trying to get your dander up, Blanche. I knew all along it was you but I wanted you to give yourself away.
Really? You are so brilliant, Mr. Noir. You take my breath away.
A lotta years in the biz, kid, you say, ignoring her sarcasm. So, lemme see, what’s your angle here? You find your fallen fag beside you and, though it’s no longer lit, you straighten it out and tuck it back in the corner of your mouth. Helps you think. Blanche just turned up at your office one day and offered her services. When was that? You don’t remember. You’re not good at that sort of detail. Where did she come from? You never asked. Was the widow’s story her own? Was she leading a double life? Was the Hammer her brother, Squeaky her ex-lover? You never thought of Blanche as having lovers. Brothers either, for that matter. You try to imagine her working the streets, picking up a guy with a rich wife, seducing him into murder. You can’t imagine it. You realize your deductive powers are being tested, but your appetite for this backstreet knowledge racket is fading. Your stubborn belief that two and two will eventually equal four is probably completely naïve. Some knots, like the twist your thumped brain’s in now, cannot be untangled. You have an acute longing for your office sofa. Mister Big probably has a liquor cabinet somewhere, but you’re too weary and hurt too much to get off your heinie to go look for it. That damned Blanche can really wield a sapper. Your fedora lies on the floor in front of you with a bullet hole through it. Cherchez la monnaie, she wrote in your hatband. Maybe she was teasing you with a clue. Catch me if you can. So, all right, think about it. There’s a fortune to be had and she’s going after it. So, it’s either the double-life scenario or she knocks the widow off and takes her story on as a kind of second thread. Or maybe the widow’s already been snuffed by Mister Big or whomever, and she steps in, puts on the veil, slips into the dead widow’s history, hoping to blackmail her ostensible partner into a payoff. One reason to get rid of the body. If there was one. But then along come all those weird family members. Hers or the dead widow’s. Something has to be done about them. Something is done about them. By someone. And then there’s Blue. He’s working for Mister Big. Or for her. You’re in the middle. The sucker who gets set up for their crimes. An ignorant grunt at the Battle of Agincourt only looking for a hole to hide in. In your mouse leather brigandine. You explain all this to Blanche who is standing over you. She leans down and lights your crooked cigarette for you. It goes out. She lights it again.