A detective story in three stupid acts.
ACT I: PREAMBLE
Der-dum, der-dummm (clinnng… clannng… clonnng…)
- Sliding bassoon, hint of clarinet, musical bottle clings; saxophone passes, monochromatic lighting and all that crap. I’d been chasing down hopheads running numbers at the racetrack all afternoon and just wanted a quiet snooze over a glass of hard liquor when the intercom rudely interrupts my prospective slumber.
“A lady to see you”, chirps my secretary, Susan, from the adjoining office. “Says it’s urgent.”
“Send her in”, I growl, slapping the amber liquid down on my grandfather’s old oak desk and watching its contents slosh woozily against the tumbler’s glossy sides.
She enters the room packing the kind of figure that could make a grown man weep. A flowing dress of shimmering pink satin, blonde hair curled to shoulder-length in perfect, whirling spirals. Elegance personified. Want on two legs. Jeopardy incarnate.
“I’m looking for a man”, she tells me, and don’t I know it. Her voice is a smoky, sultry husk, delivering the kind of sensory overload usually reserved for the fleeting scent of cask-aged whiskey.
“You have my attention”, I tell her. “Miss…?”
“Rapprocher. But please. Call me Lola.”
Lola. The very sound is like liquid caramel lolling on my tongue, summoning images of milkshakes, bubblegum and a tall, cool glass of summer Cola (ice cubes in the top, thin red straw, cherry bobbing seductively on the side).
“Call me flattered”, I tell her. “It’s not every day a man gets the chance to meet destiny head-on.”
She surveys the premises while digesting my words, but doesn’t flinch. She’s cool as a glacier, but beneath her studied exterior I sense a hint of breathlessness in her next pronouncement.
“Who are you…?” she enquires. I want to tell her I’m a fucking magician, baby, a conjurer; I make things vanish and reappear at will. I’m whoever or whatever you want me to be. I’m the motherfucker with his hand in yours as we watch the atoll detonate at the end of the world. “ - Detective…?”
“Avarice”, I tell her. “It means covetousness, avidity, craving and greed. Because when I see something I want, I must have it at any cost.”
“In my experience”, she counters, “No man could ever want this something badly enough. Tell me, Detective - how much action do you think you can handle?”
“All the action you can give me, baby”, I flub in an unconvincing attempt at casual rapport, but I’m lying through my teeth. She instinctively senses there’s been a panic on these last few months, and I’m knocked for six: comedy boxing glove, tweeting cartoon birds, the whole nine yards. All I’m seeing now is a glittering night vista - a skyline of stars in our own private Hollywood. I don’t believe in Jesus or the Saints, just the purest of chemical reactions: one part sulphuric acid to three of nitroglycerine.
She reaches into her purse and extracts a golden cigarette case, playfully teasing the pristine cylinder of tobacco with slender fingers. I move to light it for her, trying hard not to knock over a free-standing desk-lamp with the raging stonk-on chafing manfully inside me kecks. I am, by this stage, totally gaga, and would honestly struggle to locate tits in a bra. I want to tell her I’m in love with the sound of her voice, but think better of it.
“What are you doing for the rest of your life?” I ask, making idle small talk.
“Please, Detective – one step at a time.” She offers the faintest hint of a smile as smoke winds steadily into the air. “I’m looking for something which I was hoping you might be able to help me find.”
The devil rides a hot-rod. She’s ten moves ahead of me and I’m struggling to keep pace, but I continue shuffling pieces round the board, waiting to be ensnared in her trap.
“What is it?” I half-whimper, knowing full well by now that there’s absolutely no turning back.
“Come closer”, she says, and whispers in my ear. It feels like swimming. The only thing I’m aware of is blood pounding, rushing, gushing, cascading in torrents; Niagara fucking Falls.
“An urn”, she tells me. “A precious family heirloom. It was stolen from my mantelpiece last week. It contains something very valuable to me.”
She pulls away and sits back down, sloping on her chair in chic repose. I’m momentarily distracted by the cut of her shoes, and wonder what it would take to get her to slide them onto the floor for an impromptu foot massage. I can already feel danger buzzing round me like an irate wasp, but she’s sucked me in faster than a tropical cyclone. I feel the wave churn inside: the depth of the swell is staggering. I’m floating dumbly in a laudanum stupor, ready to take on anything she can throw at me: greasers, rebels, hoodlums in a knife-fight. My desire is paramount.
“I’ll take that action”, I tender, staking my claim for whatever measly pittance it commands.
“It’s settled, then”, she replies, snapping shut the golden clasp on her purse and stubbing the cigarette in a vacant ashtray. She hadn’t taken one drag the entire time; she literally just let the damn thing burn in an act of wilful attrition. “Two-hundred a day, plus expenses; payment of an extra thousand on delivery.”
I’ll waiver the charges, but she needn’t know that just yet. As she rises from her seat and smoothes the dress against the curves of her body, we share a look of recognition: a sudden impulse from a past life. I feel her senses zero in on the frantic thump of my heartbeat. She is all things to heaven, my dancing honeybee, and she instinctively knows my cardinal weakness.
“We’ve met before”, I tell her, with thinned eyes and a rapidly diminishing sense of equilibrium.
“And we’ll meet again”, she purrs, slinking out of the door in an aromatic haze so engorging that I can feel her perfume seep through my pores into the very bloodstream I depend upon for life.
Tsssss, tsi-ti-tsssss, tsi-ti-tsssss, tsi-ti-tsssss…
- Languorous jazz cymbals, popping double bass, occasional stabs of brass for emphasis. I’m on a drumroll, screeching down the I5 towards what I know full well may turn out to be the final bridge between this life and the next. Initial enquiries were a piece of cake. Johnny the Shiner put me on to some small-time junk trader operating out the back-alley of Sam’s on 49th; when the mug didn’t show for business, I slapped a few bums around to get the inside dope. The hapless pusher got himself caught up in a racket involving stolen artefacts from the homes of wealthy property-owners over on the South side; when he tried to strike out on his own with a piece of the catch, his buddies got the jump and put him on the first train to Palookaville. The killing got written up as a suicide, but I knew better: the slash marks on the wrists had all the panache of a professional slice-artist. That meant only one name in this town: Ricardo ‘Ratface’ Rizzini.
From that point on, it was all plain sailing. I tracked Rizzini and his gang of wiseguys to a beachfront shack where they’re holed up with the stash of antiques. As I sidle cautiously along the shore, I see a light on in the back room and hear the sound of muffled chatter: no doubt another fixed card game where no-one ever gets to hit 21.
Easing across the sand towards the slatted villa, I should be paying attention to the nagging sense of fear gnawing away at my gut, but I find myself preoccupied with the sound of the ocean as it drifts gently back and forth in a soothing rhythm quite at odds with my own immediate peril. There seem to be voices alive in the waves, rushing to and fro, all whispering a hushed sigh of…
Lola. That name again. It contains the promise of illicit thrills; of words like ‘lust’, ‘lascivious’, ‘licentiousness”. All those delirious, lazy ‘L’s - well, all the decent ones, anyway. I daren’t mention the other trip in the lexicon, the main event; that can come later. For now, I’m edging along the shack’s wooden panelling like it was the last wall in a prison shower, piece cocked and ready for action. A moth bangs its wings against the case of a humming fluorescent lampshade as I sneak a glance through the open doorway and take a peek inside.
Blackjack. The urn is sitting dead-centre on a glass coffee table in the middle of the room. It’s surrounded by gleaming antiquities of infinitely greater value, but I know immediately that this is the item I’m looking for: a curious glow seems to envelope its harsh ceramic outline, as if calling out to me in the shadowy half-light.
As I inch precariously towards the pile of treasure, I hear a dismal, howling squeal as a rogue floorboard creaks beneath me. What an absolute shitter.
Voices, startled, firing in rapid succession:
“What the - ?”
“Hey!”
“Get him, boys…!”
I reach out and grab the prize in my greedy hands before hurtling back out through the swinging panel door, stumbling down the porch steps and reeling away on pure instinct. Bullets are flying overhead, strafing every side, and I’m right in the bastard middle of it. I take one in the shoulder but barely feel the sting as I catch a glimpse of spinning stars overhead and am reminded of the sparkle in her eyes. I hoof it away from the chalet flacked by gunfire, clutching the urn to my chest as if it contains the elusive first draft of the Dead Sea Scrolls, running like a massive girl while attempting to not get my arse shot off.
ACT III: PROVIDENCE
Waaaaah… wah-wah; waaaaaaah…
- Crappy muted trumpet, faintly melancholic overtones, broken-looking brother pouring his last reserves of breath into improvised jazz figures in a bid to transport his wounded soul. I’m back in the office, sweltering in 48-degree heat, teasing the sweat from my brow as I hear the rumble of an engine skip into earshot.
Daylight scorches my retinas as I lift one sliver of the metallic window-blinds. I hear the sound of heels clicking on the sidewalk as she descends from the winged door of a jet-black Cadillac. She has returned to me, my unknown temptress, the great unanswered question. She sashays towards the rundown building on 34th Street I deign to call my place of toil, and I find myself mesmerised by the metronomic clunk of her shoes on the wooden staircase as she ventures inside. Moments later, the compact desk-speaker buzzes.
“Miss Rapprocher to see you, sir.”
“Send her in, Susan.”
This time, it’s personal rather than business. Black, velveteen dress sweeping against her ankles, white satin gloves, dark violet hat with a widow’s veil: a vengeful kitty-kat with every kind of sin on her mind. She pulls up a chair, flips it around and positions her legs either side of the taut leather backing. The slice in her skirt reveals stockings that are netted like a spider’s web, and I’m instantly caught in her maze of attraction once again. She takes a liquorice twist from the jar on my desk and toys with it a while.
“Well, Detective – did you find what I was looking for?”
I raise the brim of my fedora to meet her gaze with mine.
“Yeah, I found it”, I proffer, feigning nonchalance. “And I damn near bought the farm in the process.”
I stoop down and pick up the urn, wincing slightly as I place it on the desk in front of me. She observes my haemorrhaging shoulder with evident concern.
“You’re hurt.”
“It’s not critical.” Truth be told, I’m aching for her to apply the band-aid, to make it all better with one soft brush of her mouth. “But what, pray tell, is so important that it was worth risking my hide for?”
I know she won’t give up an answer that easily, but I throw the question out there all the same. She responds with predictable cunning.
“…You tell me.”
From the suggestive look in her eyes as she glances up from beneath the perimeter of her oversized hat, I understand exactly what is inside. I pause for emphasis before delivering the killer blow.
“It’s the ashes of every man you’ve ever loved.”
“Very good, Detective.” She smirks softly, her silky, dew-laden voice dripping like sweet nectar. “I’m impressed. And now, Mr Avarice, will you do me the favour of placing the jar on that ledge over there?”
I humour her and zip the blinds out of play, forcing open the window and balancing the urn on the peeling surface of its grimy sill. She reaches inside the dark mesh of her stocking and coolly extracts a small silver revolver. I should’ve known all along the broad was packing heat, but I don’t sweat it; I’m too far down the road now to care. A ray of intense Florida sunlight reflects in the piercing glint of the barrel as she takes aim, squinting for accuracy before squeezing the trigger.
- Puh-taaaaowww…!
I thought they only made noises like that in Western bar-rooms. The urn shatters on impact and the dust of her former lovers showers through the window, surrendering to the wind as it dances away on a warm breeze. The air hums with electricity for a single, jolting moment as the sonic ricochet continues to reverberate.
“Thankyou, Detective”, she says, blowing a snaky flicker of smoke from the pistol before sliding it back inside her inner thigh. “You see now that what was past is merely prologue.”
She stands. Swishing her skirt back into place and angling her ridiculous headgear to the appropriate slant, she spins on a dime, about to exit my world forever; by this point though she has a hook in me like the spike on a dope fiend, and I know exactly what I have to do.
“Wait”, I blurt almost desperately as her gloved fingers touch the shining brass doorknob. She turns back towards me, places one hand against her voluptuous hipline and arches her eyebrows.
“What is it that you want from me, Detective?” she enquires, invitingly.
I want to tell her there ain’t a damn thing good in this world, sister; that there ain’t no surfing the shit-tide or rigging the drag race. You get what you pay for in this life, with just one lousy shot at making it mean something. I give it to her straight.
“I’m just looking for the missing piece”, I tell her.
She takes three crossed-steps forward, revealing her plunging neckline in all its glory as she stoops across the desk and grabs hold of my tie. I feel the slipknot in my own noose tighten, but am powerless to resist as she sweeps back the net of her weeping black veil.
“Kiss me you fool”, she smoulders through glistening, ruby-red lips - and as she draws me near, I am completely, utterly helpless.
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