The Gumshoe's Grocery List

What I Need from the Supermarket

A pineapple so beautiful it’ll make a man mad. Drive him bonkers. Send him right over the edge. The kind of pineapple that shows up in your life one day when you least expect it. Places itself right on your counter and dares you to carve it up for all that delectable nectar that’ll have you at church the next day asking for forgiveness. A pineapple you can make a smoothie with or an upside down cake. Your choice. But be careful. Choices have consequences. You know that all too well.

Two onions. One’s for amateurs. Real men get two. One for slicing, one for dicing. The same way you sliced that guy’s nose when he tried to tell you that he didn’t know where that missing girl went. The kind of dicing that happens to rats who can’t keep their mouths shut. You don’t do any dicing. Not anymore. That life’s behind you now. Your nose is clean, and it’s in one piece. Oh sure, you’re not scared to leave a mark or two to let the rabble know you’re still not a guy who likes being lied to, but you’d never put anybody directly underneath a tombstone. Not since that one night in Fresno when you swore to be more like the angels. That night you did things that can’t be undone. But we don’t talk about that night now, do we?

Heavy cream. Not the light kind. You only do the heavy. The light doesn’t do it for you. Never did. You want the thick. The dense. The bulbous. You want that cream to be as soupy as the bath water was the night you found that millionaire floating in it. You can still hear his wife outside the bathroom swearing up and down that she found him that way. You still remember the hints of lavender in her perfume. You still don’t know why you didn’t call the police as soon as you found the corpse. Instead, you took her in your arms and pressed a kiss on her so passionate, the electricity that came off your lips should have been enough to revive her husband. But it didn’t. Nothing did. Two months later, they convicted her of the murder. She may have killed her spouse, but she also killed your desire for love and companionship. You let yourself be a fool and you got fooled. What did you expect? A dame is a dame is a dame. And cream is cream until it isn’t. Only when it’s heavy. Only when it pours out like concentrate. Oh yeah--

Steak tips. You love a good tip, don’t you? When it comes in a whisper in an alleyway after you leave a jazz club where a beautiful singer in a red dress seems to be giving you the eye. A waitress comes by and tells you that the singer wants to see you in her dressing room. You go backstage and find her red dress on the floor. She asks you what you’re doing at the club when you’ve been told to stay away. Her husband doesn’t like you snooping around, and if you’re not careful, you’ll wind up in a bathtub--or worse. Sleeping with the fishes. Wait, fishes--

Tuna. Get the good kind. You had a few extra cases this month. You can afford it. Besides, life is short, isn’t it? One day, you’re eating chicken salad on whole wheat and the next, you’re chewing on worms with only coffin wood to keep you company. You never got the good tuna, because there was always going to be a tomorrow, wasn’t there? Well, here you are, kid. Here’s your tomorrow. Go get that tuna, will you? Today is tomorrow and tomorrow might never come. She told you that as she was putting that red dress back on. She told you to do what you like, because that’s what she was going to do from now on. You made your way out the back, and once you were in the alleyway, you heard somebody whisper the word ‘paprika.’

Paprika. Nice and spicy. Just like the maid when you showed up to see about that silver hawk that was stolen out of the office of a murdered oil magnate. His socialite wife swore that the hawk was there the last time she went to bring her husband lunch, but what do a stolen hawk and a dead tycoon and a hobnobbing lady-who-lunches have to do with a hill of beans in this world?

Beans. Three cans. You need the protein. You gotta keep your strength up in this cold world of ours, don’t you, kid? Kidney or chili, what does it matter? You’ll eat ‘em and you’ll like ‘em or you won’t eat at all. This is Chinatown, isn’t it? You eat what’s put in front of you. Oh, and uh--

Chinese takeout. Pick it up on the way home from the grocery store. You’ll be too tired to cook after the day you had. Breaking that case wide open about the mob guy masquerading as a police officer who planned on poisoning the water supply took everything out of you, and you’re going to want to have some egg drop soup and some fried rice and pass out before you even put the groceries in your fridge. Lazy? Sure. But who isn’t these days? Who isn’t doing the bare minimum just to get from one hour to the next? Who isn’t counting the days until the sun grows so large it cremates the whole planet? Who hasn’t gotten roughed up once or twice outside an all-night coffee shop just because they took a few photos of an ambassador’s wife at a pool party where she was the only woman on the diving board? Nobody's gonna pay the rent for you, are they? You need to cover your own living expenses--rent, hot water, having the glass in your office door replaced every few weeks when it gets shot out by a mysterious figure at the end of the hall--

--And groceries. Don’t forget about the groceries. Those don’t buy themselves either.

It’s a crazy town, isn’t it, kid?

But at least you can still find a good pineapple when you need one.