noir

As he flipped the light switch, he heard Dierdre’s voice behind him, “Why don’t you have your robe on, baby?”

Of course that was what she noticed—that he wasn’t wearing the blue robe she’d given him as a gift. The woman was obsessed with that robe, constantly asking him to validate the gift by telling her how much he loved it.

He turned halfway around to look back at his blonde girlfriend. Dierdre looked at the smudged shit on the carpet and then back up at Orlando, giggling.

“Ha-ha-fuckin’-ha,” he said. “Could you please get me a rag?”

She moved past him, making her way to the bathroom where he’d originally been going before stepping on the dog shit. Orlando heard the faucet run for a moment and then Dierdre was back with two maroon face towels in hand. She handed one to Orlando to wipe off his foot while she went to work cleaning the brown stain from the gray carpet.

Once his foot was clean, Orlando went to the restroom and took a leak. He flushed the toilet and washed his hands. As he turned back toward the hallway, Dierdre stood and turned toward him. Now face to face, they both smiled.

“I’m sorry, babe,” she said. “I promise Dax won’t do it again.”

Orlando looked at her beautiful face, taking it in, “You can’t promise that.”

“I can,” she said. “I’m promising.”

He grinned. “Then we’re in agreement that if he does it again, he goes to live someplace else.”

“Like where?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe doggie heaven.”

Just another night in The City. Two million people, and it seems like half of them must be awake, despite the hour. It’s the kind of night where the cold settles into your bones like a disease, eating at you, and you can’t get rid of it no matter how much whiskey you drink or how many suspects you chase down dark alleyways, hoping that this time isn’t the last time, hoping this night isn’t the night you catch a knife in the dark.

I’m seated at the counter at Mickey’s, nursing a glass of rye and going over the details of my latest case. A string of murders, each one more grisly than the last. All the victims are girls working the streets in the poorest quarter of The City. A regular Jack The Ripper this guy is, I figure. A copycat of the worst kind.

But all of that goes out the window when this dame walks in and sits on the stool next to mine.

The smoke in Mickey’s is so thick you could cut it with a knife. This dame, she moves through it all like a divine wind, and when she turns her eyes on me, it’s everything I can do not to drop my shriveled cigarette right there on top of my notes.

“Detective William Gray?” She asks, and I can hardly think straight enough to remember my name or agree with her that must be the one I’m supposed to have. This dame, she’s a tall drink of crimson sin, all legs, red dress, ruby lips and a figure that could put a man on his knees quicker than any bullet could. “I need your help, Will.”