A Short Silk Robe

He said, ‘I’ll love her ‘til I die.’

I placed my hand upon his shiny, bald head and pushed him down into the back seat of the black and white. Goddamn husbands and their regrets.

‘Save it, buddy,’ I said, and tapped the Plymouth’s roof with the flat of my hand. Fallen leaves and prickly seed pods snapped, crackled and popped under the departing wheels like a copywriter’s breakfast cereal.

I took in a lung full of the crisp Autumn air, then lit a cigarette to make up for it. Somewhere between getting the call and turning up to the scene, it had gone from very late to very early. The morning sky was the kind of blue that usually gets described as eggshell or powder. But it was all just a big bunch of empty to me.

There were no blue skies for the brunette in apartment number nine either. Face down on the polished floorboards, she was wearing a short black silk robe with an oriental pattern, suspenders, and fishnet stockings. One on a long shapely leg, the other one wound around her long shapely neck. Her slender arms were stretched out above her head and the fingernails were painted red to match her toenails. She wore a gold wedding band, and one of the nails was missing from the index finger of her right hand. I traced the claw marks on the varnish and found it stuck up between the fourth crack.

The room was furnished in the sparse modern style. There was a mustard three-seater sofa with wooden armrests, a pair of aluminium and copper standing ashtrays at either end, a brand-new RCA Victor record player in a dark mahogany cabinet, and a coffee table that held a bottle of Old Imperial gin, two tumblers and an ice bucket. The ice had turned to water, and the bottle was either half full or half empty, depending on your inclination. Mine was halfway past caring.

Tall windows looked out over the street, screened by a liquidambar. I watched as a pair of finches twittered and flittered amongst the fiery foliage, the five-fingered leaves as sharp and finely pointed as the brunette’s acrylics.

The meat wagon rolled into view and parked out the front. I tossed the spent cigarette into the ice bucket and tipped my hat to the unlucky lady.

‘Time for one last ride.’

I worked better alone. A partner was just another kind of problem, and I had a real knack for solving this kind of case.

‘You’re like a bloodhound with these murdered broads, Slade.’ said my Lieutenant. ‘You were wasted in Narcotics.’

I took the compliment, but the truth was I had always been a hunter. In the war they called it heroism, out here we called it Homicide.

The basement interview room had no window, no one-way mirror and no ventilation. It had a low ceiling of rectangular tiles with small dotted indentations and a set of fluorescent lights, one of which I’d rigged to flicker now and then. The only decoration was an oversize clock that ticked loud and tocked slow.

Baldy stank of booze and despair. He was manacled to the table by two 15-inch lengths of chain cuffed to his wrists. His pale green bowling shirt was turning two-tone with dark, slick, semi-circles of underarm sweat. It sickened me. With his tanned-brown nut of a head he looked like a grotesque and poorly peeled avocado, and I despised those peculiar Mexican pears.

He’d been playing the blackout defence. ‘I woke up on the couch… you gotta believe me!’ And just like the hands on the wall clock, we’d been going around and around in circles for a while. His nerves were almost shot, and he had two cigarettes on the go. I was making do with one. The shared ashtray between us had long since stopped counting.

I crushed a Camel into the carcinogenic carnage and took a long slug of Irish from my flask, savouring both the warm, peaty taste and the imploring look from Baldy.

I tapped the pen against my notebook and waited a long time before I spoke. On the far wall a shiny black beetle, with long thick antennae that waved like bamboo in a breeze, continued yet another futile ascent to the ceiling, searching for a way back to Bugville.

‘According to the operator, when you called for an ambulance you said, “She’s dead, oh my God, she’s dead. I think I must’ve killed her!”’

‘They! They must’ve killed her. Maybe the operator heard wrong. Maybe I misspoke!’

I sighed and tapped my pen some more, took another slug, stared a while longer at the beetle. The wall clock ticked on relentlessly. Then something shifted in Baldy’s bowels and an awful stench filled the room. It wouldn’t be long now.

‘She was dead,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t do it. I swear! We wuz just havin’ fun… I remember she brought out a fresh bottle of gin from the kitchen. I put on the new Patsy Cline record…. We wuz slow-dancin’!’

He slammed his forehead onto the table, then balled his fists and rapped them against the sides of his skull. The bracelet chains scraped against the worn, scratched laminate and a column of ash tumbled from the forgotten filter wedged up against the knuckles of his second and third fingers. Finally, his shoulders heaved, and he began to sob.

I leaned forward and soothed him.

‘Just because I don’t care,’ I said, ‘doesn’t mean that I don’t understand.’

He looked up at me with something between gratitude and confusion in his big, dumb, teary, brown eyes.

I placed my left hand gently upon his cheek, cupping it against his jaw. His breathing calmed and he began to relax. Then I grabbed his ear and with my other hand scraped the brunette’s talon all the way down his cheek until it drew blood.

He recoiled, gasping.

‘The evidence doesn’t lie, pal,’ I said. ‘Now, how about we get that mugshot taken, eh?’

A jazz quartet played on a small stage with a blue velvet backdrop lit by a single spotlight. Double bass, drums, piano and a muted trumpet. Occasionally, the trumpet player would sing. He had a high, pure, but somewhat slurred voice that probably made some people feel things that they didn’t always want to feel. He himself looked like a man that used to feel that way all the time, until he found the secret to not feeling anything at all. At least for a little while.

At 2am, the ‘Last Resort’ cocktail lounge of the once grand Barker Hotel was a melancholy kind of place. But I was in a melancholy kind of mood. There was just something wistful about execution days.

I took the folded silk from my pocket. It was a red belt with an oriental pattern, designed to wrap around a matching black robe. I held it to my face and inhaled her scent. Remembered her fear.

We’d planned it together. It was easy enough to spike a glass of gin with a few barbiturates, and she was so excited when she opened the door to me at midnight.

‘I did it, handsome!’ she said, pulling me toward the snoring chump laid out on the couch. ‘Let me pack a bag.’

‘What’s the rush?’ I said, twirling her around and nuzzling into her neck from behind, my hands cupping her heavy breasts before reaching way down low beneath her waist. ‘Let’s have a little fun first.’

Old Baldy had maintained his innocence until the end of course; they always do.

He’d said, ‘I’ll love her ‘til I die.’

And now they were together.

A waitress appeared with my martini. She had long black hair, lips like pillows, and the kind of figure that would look good in a short silk robe.

I flashed her my badge.

‘Buy you a drink sometime?’