Hearts & Aces Pt. 1 - Another Worthwhile Day

A hardboiled detective story of a double murder, set in New York in the 50s. Go to http://andrewhenleywriting.wordpress.com for more of my writing.

If you could pull back the curtain of grey rain, you’d have a nice view of New York skyline from my window.  My hat is resting on the desk in front of me. I won that hat when no one called me on a bluff of 6 high. I thumb the two blood red cubes in my pocket. 42 spots that mean anything’s possible. There’s a part of me that misses those days. When all or nothing meant some guys walked out with ten times what they walked in with, and some guys never walked out at all.

 

These days all I see are case files taking up space on my desk. No cards, no dice and no chips. But they work in the same way. Everyone has a tell. A flicker, a twitch, like a big neon sign saying ‘Liar’. You just have to look for it. Only problem is sometimes a bum hand and a big bet can make you more jittery than a murdered skeleton in your closet.

 

My shoes have scuffed soles but a newly shined top. I rest them on my desk and sit back in my chair. My stubbled face is reflected in my shoe’s leather. I reach past my braces and waistcoat into my jacket pocket. I feel the metal loops of my little black book and the frayed corners of a pack of cards. The other pocket houses the dice, a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. Plus a switchblade in case I ever need to keep things quiet. Eventually I pull out my pen. Silver with gold fixtures, it looks like a hollow point. I turn a page in my little black book and doodle. I don’t have any open cases now, and I feel that wasting a day would be accomplishing something. It’s always the same when I doodle. Black inked outlines of playing cards. Diamond, clubs. Spades. Hearts & aces.

 

It gets to 11:30 and I’m on somewhere between my 4^th and 7^th cigarette. It’s not something I keep count of anymore. I used to smoke so much and so regular I could tell the time just by knowing how many I’d burned through. But the old days are the old days. I’m looking forward to sleeping tonight knowing this day will count for nothing. The rain has stopped. Then my phone chirps up with its dull shriek. I hold it to my ear.

“Saul? We’ve found a body.”

 

Damn. Another worthwhile day. I notice that sometime while I’ve been sat here I’ve fished my dice out and have been casually rolling them across the desk.  I scoop them up and light another cigarette. Through teeth holding the cancer stick in place I ask “Where?”

 

Outside the atmosphere is a thick as porridge but nowhere near as warm. The cold November wind almost steals my lucky hat as I crouch down beside the body. The streetlight above us swathes her in spotlight. Her china white fingers still lightly grasp a cigarette. Her last coffin nail, burnt down almost to the filter. Night falls in the city that never sleeps.

 

Around us, life goes on as it always does. Drunken singing invades our solemn silence. All the way up the Colosseum of surrounding high rises, faces press against the panes, trying to catch a glimpse of what becomes of us all. Graffiti stains the wall across the street from the girl. The bright yellow and pink scrawls decorate the grey.

 

Two young boys slowly creep up to us, giraffing their necks to watch. One of the patrol cops standing over me shouts for them to beat it. Wrapped up in his light blue armour, he can handle simple street punks. The cold has slapped his chubby cheeks a rosy red. He’s both agitated and bored. A rookie, still wet behind the ears and this is his first dead body. No obvious cause of death.

 

I crouch next to the girl. Her eyes are green marbles, glassy and colourful. She has a peach scent, acrid and sweet. Beneath her marble eyes and sharp ridges of cheek bones, her lips are swelled and bubbled white. Like she’s been kissing a red hot stove. Above all this, her ginger hair, that colour leaves go in autumn just before they die, is a shattered setting sun on the pavement.

 

There’s no plastic pink heels or ripped lace stockings. No cheap vinyl clinging to catclaw nails. Instead a purple dress hanging wholesomely well below the knees. All fur coat and still wearing her knickers. Her fur coat is like an expanded puffer fish, thick and padded and spined. She can’t have been here long. This is a part of New York where dead bodies are junk shops, and fur coats don’t last long in junk shops.

 

Not the type of girl you usually find on the street corner. Certainly not the usual type of girl you find dead on the street corner. Not the type of girl you usually find dead anywhere. That she had been would be an embarrassment to her. The cigarette slowly disintegrates into a pile of ashes. Dust gathered in the gutter is carried off in the breeze.

 

I pull my black notebook out by the rings and scrawl a description of the girl. I note down the cigarette and the fur coat. The green eyes, the bubbled lips. Red hair. And peaches. In the top corner of the page there’s a heart drawn in black and the carved imprint of an ace of spades.

Reviews

[ntezbnggreen]

I like the incredible descriptions and it is a nice start. It wraps up nicely with the ace of spades, i love the symbolism. the fur description.....perhaps you could say " pissed" "irate", I think most will understand the appearance with that.