Dispatches From Noir

Morg Malden ambled into his tiny living room from his even tinier bedroom. Eleven o’clock. Good thing he didn’t have anything pressing today. Or the next day. Or the day after that.  He’d have to do something, sooner or later. But he’d get to that. 

Breakfast first. Morg flipped open a pizza box lying on the floor since the night before. God damn. Ants. This shouldn’t have been surprising. But Morg had been leaving pizza sitting on the floor overnight at least weekly for the past several years. Never had any problems. Oh, well. Live and learn. But he’d have to get that pizza out of here. Otherwise ants would just continue to congregate in the middle of the tatty carpet.

He threw out his breakfast, lunch and dinner, cursing at himself as he did. Now breakfast would be just beer. He thought back to his late grandfather. It was hard to believe Morg had been a kid. But he had. And his toy had broken. His grandfather had shrugged. “Life’s a gyp, kid.” That’s probably offensive now, Morg thought. Not that his grandfather would have cared.

Morg ambled over to the refrigerator. No pizza, no grandpa and nothing in the refrigerator besides beer. Oh, he had memories. Memories of his grandfather and memories of the pizza. Fat lot of good that did him. He reached for a cheap beer and cracked it open. Here was breakfast. He raised the open bottle to toast no one in particular. Life’s a gyp, kid.

They tell you never to burn bridges.  The investigation isn’t about you.  Act respectfully when you’re questioning someone.  You may need to get a little rough sometimes, but apologize after you get what you need.  Honey gets more flies than vinegar and all that.

It’s a good idea.  So I try to do do it that way.  But sometimes good ideas just get stretched to the breaking point.  This broad just wanted to lecture me.  The workers were all oppressed.  It was all about power, I had to realize that.  All I knew was that one worker’s head had been oppressed by a very large wrench.  I’d figure out all the oppression in the rest of the world later.

She didn’t like my priorities, but I needed priorities in my line of work.  She said she didn’t plan on getting a job and submitting to the oppression.  She wouldn’t get a job, that much was for sure.  

They say not to burn bridges.  They don’t say what to do if you don’t wanna cross those bridges ever again.They don’t tell you what to do with a bridge that doesn’t go anywhere.  All good ideas have exceptions.  She was a two-bit cunt.  So I told her so.

He was a lot shorter than he looked.  He was a lot thinner than he used to be.  His cane wasn’t a prop anymore as he shuffled out to the piano.  Onstage, his voice was as scratchy as it was soulful.  But it had always been both.  Not much had changed about his voice, or his songs.  He was still a percussive rascal at the piano.  But a lot changed when he stepped away from it.

He still sang about debauchery.  He was gleefully dissolute when he sang.  Age hadn’t dulled his performance a bit.  But it was all in the past.  He sang and pounded out ragtime melodies, and the dissolution still lived.  But only in his voice.  The old bluesman had filthy, happy memories, but no vices.  After the show he was leaning heavily on the ripe young girl who accompanied him.  But the old dog was too tired to hunt.  The spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak.  

She was standing at the bus stop. Sounds like a Hollies song. But she had a wedding ring on, and I already had a moll. No romance here.  But she was still standing at the bus stop. Reading a book. I was curious. I glanced over to see what it was. It was a Robert B. Parker.

She saw me looking. Glanced up. I nodded. Pulled the Mike Hammer I had in my messenger bag and held it up. She smiled and nodded back.  She turned back to her book. I put mine away. Checked my watch and wondered when the goddamn bus would get there.

Nothing more was said.  Nothing more to say.  We were both members of the same fraternity.  It has no name.  Doesn’t need a name.  All it needs is a dirty world—and an avenging angel.  Or several: Spade, Hammer, McGee, Spenser, whoever.  Someone to tame the monsters in a dirty world.  

James Ellroy said the message of film noir is “You’re fucked.”  It isn’t just in the movies. It was in the books before that, and it’s still there.  That’s why we read.  And that’s why we have our heroes: they make sure the bad guys get fucked just a bit faster.  

That’s what this fraternity is about.  There may not be much justice around.  But there’s some “get fucked” vengeance stored away in books.  So we keep that alive—we’ll take what we can get.  We may not have anything else in common.  We don’t need anything else in common.  We just share little nods of recognition and respect.  Because we know who we are. 

We keep the avenging angels alive.  Every time we turn a page.

It’s beginning to look a lot like February.  No one ever writes a song about that.  Why would they?  No one ever looks forward to February.  But February comes.  Hell, it’s here already.  February is the shortest month, they say.  They’re wrong. February is the whole goddamn winter between Christmas and spring.  

And it’s beginning to look a lot like February.  There’s no more festivities.  A bit of tinsel is still up and out of place.  All it does is remind people that the holidays are over.  If it snows, the snow is interminable.  If it doesn’t, everything is cold, grey, brown—and dead.  It’s February again, and it’ll be February for a while yet.

It was a beautiful fall day.  The kind of day that gets onto postcards and makes people look forward to autumn.  The sky was blue, the clouds were fluffy.  The leaves were the perfect spray of color.  The wind was invigorating, not biting.  

It was the kind of day where leaves wait their turn to jump off the branch and fall to the ground below.  And if I could find a bridge high enough, I’d jump, too.  That’s the kind of day it was.

I hate Raymond Carver.  Never read any of his books.  I’ve heard good things about them.  I should read them.  But I can’t.  I can’t because I hate Raymond Carver. I hate Raymond Carver because he’s a huge disappointment.  Whenever I look at any fiction listed by the author’s last name, I always start with C.  Where else would I start?  Down the list or across the stacks I go.  And then that bastard sneaks in.  The name Raymond catches my attention.  But I’m always disappointed to see it’s just Raymond Carver.

I catch my breath and keep going.  Sometimes the collection gets around to Chandler.  Sometimes it doesn’t.  I’m disappointed either way.  That’s why I hate Raymond Carver.

“Out of the mouths of babes,” they say.  I guess they mean wisdom pops up when you least expect it.  I don’t know much about wisdom, but this guy was no babe. In any meaning of the word.  He looked more like he’d be felling trees with a blue ox named Babe.  Looked like a mountainous mountain man.  Long white hair down to the middle of his back, and beard about as long in front.  

He also wasn’t someone I’d expect to be very wise.  He walked around town muttering and bellowing imprecations.  Sometimes at passers-by.  Sometimes at other bums.  Sometimes at no one in particular.  

today he was more sociable than usual.  He sat more or less placidly in front of the supermarket.  A bagboy on a smoke break talked at him, but the old prospector just listened.  The bagger thought he found wisdom when he looked in the mirror every morning.  Couldn’t wait to share it, either.

The geezer just listened until bagboy started going on about the wonders of ethanol.  The bagboy didn’t know to call it ethanol.  He just was amazed that someone had figured out a way to make gasoline out of corn.  This was too much, even for the old coot.

“But we need that corn to eat!”  The growl crept back into the tattered man’s voice.  ”That’s fuckin’ stupid!  How are we gonna eat if we put all the corn in our cars.”  I doubted he had a car to put gasoline, corn or anything else in.  But I wasn’t going to butt in as he belittled the bagger.

The bagboy tried to make a weak defense.  ”Maybe they just use the bad corn!”  

But the geezer’s calm was gone.  ”They need that to make whiskey, you asshole!”

I’m not one to interfere.  I just walked away.  Besides, the old man was right.  I doubted he read The Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times.  If he did, he’d know corn prices were increasing because of the demand for corn to make ethanol.    He didn’t have to read any newspaper to know how important whiskey is.

The mouths of babes, yessiree.  But not just babes.  Wisdom also comes from the whiskey-soused mouths of bums.