Supernatural Noir

Meyers knew. Drozdov had dipped into the fight game awhile, hadn’t he, and more people seemed to get hurt on those occasions. Somehow Drozdov and the mob accommodated each other, kept to their respective territories. He must have had co

Meyers shook himself back to the present. “Okay, so Cody tied up this dame.”

“Said he blindfolded her and the second she tugged it off, she was hit in the face with blood like out of a fire hose—and that’s how it looked, all right. Feet was still tied to the chair. We seen her and we ran into the room before we knew what was . . . what all the lumps on the floor was.” Her chin trembled and she clamped her lips together and shot him an accusatory glance. After a minute she went on. “Dottie started screaming, and then this doll comes around, and she starts screaming, too.”

“You were in shock, all three of you.”

“Sure.” In the streetlight glow he watched her revisit the moment, watched her face pulled by awful currents of memory. “There was four bodies in there, John. The stink. And you couldn’t look anywhere at all. You just . . .”

He tried but could not fathom how it had happened. How could nobody have witnessed Kid Willette’s demise?

“I’m cold,” Cynthia said abruptly. “I think I’m sick, you know? Probably oughta go home, like Dottie. Stay in bed.”

“I’ll give you a lift,” he said. “On the house.”

“You let Snuffles in there, too?”

Meyers and the weepy-eyed dog considered each other. “So long as he’s done his business,” he said. They walked over to his cab.

Somewhere around Fifteenth and Walnut, Cynthia suddenly spoke out of the back. “I know where she is, you wa

He glanced in the mirror, realizing what she was saying. “Where?”

“Cost you another ten.”

He laughed that she’d got her nerve back. “And here I am giving you and your mutt a free ride.”

“Fine, take it outta my fare. You got a pen?” she asked. “I’ll write it down for you.”

He took out the pocket notebook he used as a log and opened it to the back page, handed her a pencil.

While she wrote, she said, “Cops interviewed the three of us in the same room. She gave up an address. Might be phony, but it’s up in the Fairmount. Brown Street.”

In the mirror he watched her scribble in the notebook. “Why in the name of God did Kid go to work for him?” he asked.

She looked up at the gaze of his reflection, her eyes bright and wet. “If you don’t know, then nobody does, honey. Didn’t tell me nothin’.”

He focused on the street again. Yeah, he knew. A lot of dollars and no sense.

——

Fifteen minutes later, Meyers pulled the cab into a space on Aspen Street, then strode on up the hill to Brown at the top of the ridge. This woman lived within spitting distance of Eastern State, and he wondered if she had maybe some relationship to the prison. Or maybe it was just cheap rent.

Ke

The duo laughed a little nervously, and Meyers smiled. He chatted about nothing, and they kept walking. They soon passed the address Cynthia had given him. Without appearing to look, he noticed the glow of a cigarette in a doorway across the street.

Meyers walked another block with the women, then tipped his cap and turned away. He crossed the street. After a minute he started back the way he’d come, but at double the pace now, feet hitting the pavement with the sound of someone in a hurry. The doorway lay just ahead.

He barreled along and at the last instant as he was passing the door he pivoted on one foot and punched a short jab straight into a solar plexus. The man in the shadows didn’t even have time to raise his hands in defense. He folded around the fist, spitting the cigarette past Meyers, who swung his right into the man’s jaw so hard that the body bounced off the door and against the brick around it. Meyers was ready to hit him again if necessary, but he slid down onto the step and tipped onto his side. Meyers yanked him upright and pushed his legs back into the shadows. He patted the body down and reached into the coat. He drew out a wallet—and a badge.

This was not good.

He stuffed the possessions back inside the jacket. The cop groaned. Meyers turned and walked quickly across the street.

Beside the door was a panel with three buttons, no doubt one apartment for each floor of the row house. The first two had names beside them. The third-floor label was blank. He pressed the button. Even as he did, he realized how stupid it was. She had no reason to let him in, and if she was hiding from trouble, she wasn’t going to let anybody in at all. To his surprise, though, the door buzzed and clicked on its latch, and he pushed inside before she could change her mind. He took the stairs two at a time.

The door at the top hung ajar, and he hesitated then, feeling a little too much like a fly visiting a spider. He looked at the name Cynthia had written down. “Miss Luka . . . chova?” he called.

“Come,” she answered as if granting him an audience.

The apartment had a short, narrow foyer that opened on a living room, with a kitchen off to the right and another doorway, presumably the bedroom, at the back. One low-wattage wall sconce—a fake candle under a little paper shade—lit the room a diseased yellow.

The woman was sitting on a ragged love seat against the wall. Her legs were crossed at the knee. She had long black hair and wore a gray dress and a jacket that had an almost military cut to it. She was smoking a long, odd-shaped cigarette, and her large eyes glittered behind the stream of smoke. She leaned forward and tapped her ash against a glass ashtray on the small white coffee table in front of her. A scattering of tarnished coins or buttons lay strewn across the tabletop. They had an oily sheen. Meyers stayed in the doorway, his hands balled into fists in his pockets, but nothing else in the place seemed to be moving.

“Who are you?” she asked in a voice that sounded like it didn’t much care. “You are not from Drozdov.”

“You’re right on that score. My name’s John Meyers. I was a friend of Kid Willette’s.”

“Who?” She seemed genuinely perplexed. What she didn’t seem was frightened. Cynthia, out in the open, had been more edgy than this. The woman seemed tired, as if she’d run out of gas well back down the road.

“He was one of the boys who worked for Cody Aldred.”

“Cody, yes. He was blond man?”

“Yeah. He was a blond man.”

“Ah. I am sorry for your loss. I did not have opportunity to know him.”

“What happened, Miss Luka . . . What happened at the roadhouse?”

“You are not policeman?”

“No. I drive a cab. Willette used to be a boxer. I used to be a trainer.”

“Like father and son, no?”

Meyers leaned against the jamb. “Not really, no.”

She nodded solemnly. “But you feel you have duty to his memory.”

“Something like that, I suppose.”