Hearts & Aces Pt. 2 - A Dead Man On The Floor And A Beautiful Woman In High Heels

The second part of my hardboiled detective story, Hearts & Aces. For more of my writing, go to andrewhenley.wordpress.com

The dead girl has told us all she knows, and she wasn’t much of a talker. The coroners’ assistants show up to take notes and wrap up the body. Santa’s Elves, I call ‘em. Before the coroner gets here, the chubby rookie gets a crackled call on his radio. He holds it up to his jug handle ear and nods along like it were Elvis himself singing the blues in his shell-like. The message stops. A second or so later, the nodding stops.
“Detective? They found another one. A man. Over on the East Side.”

The East Side apartment I get called to is well decorated, and would have been in pristine condition were it not for the dead guy stealing the thunder in the bedroom. Clean him out, and you’d have the venue for this year’s biggest party. The art in most East Side apartments was like the people in most East Side apartments; tasteful, beautiful, but largely pointless. In this particular apartment, there was a varnished tree stump on a white lacquered podium. Its stiff wooden roots were octopussing out across the red cloth with a lace edge that dressed the podium. It would be more effective underground but looked prettier on display.

Inside the bedroom there was a dead man on the floor and a beautiful woman in high heels. She’s wearing fishnet stockings, and Dorothy red heels. Diamond chandeliers hung heavy in her earlobes. Her eyelashes are a dense black rainforest surrounding two clear blue lakes. Her hair is sprayed into place, full and layered and twisting like a sleek, thorny rosebush. It’s black, dark as domino dots. Her lips are thin, but she gives them an extra-quarter inch with a thickly applied lipstick, an orangey pink tone. Above her stockings, thin pink underwear barely does the job of covering her front and gives up completely when it comes to her rear. A silk lilac nightgown hovers above these, loosely tied.

“I’m Blanche La Fleur,” her voice quivered like a violinist giving it the old vibrato. “I came home… from Rick’s… and… I just found him like this!”
She was acting, and she was a bad actress. But even bad actresses knew how to cry. A screen of baby blue nails covered her lipstick inflated lips as she forced herself to hyperventilate and make sob-sob noises. Her make up didn’t run.

Despite her and her lack of clothes’ effort, I ignored her. She even tried to block my path to the stiff, but I sidestepped her. He had a thick garden of brown hair on his head that I imagine was usually combed in a neat pattern. But his death had adversely affected his appearance, and it was now loose and straggly. His nose beaked into a long, thin point with two cateye slits for nostrils. He had the same faint scent of peaches as the street corner girl. His lips were only slightly white, with small bubbles, as if he’d only pecked a stove.

“So, Miss. La Fleur…”
“Blanche, Detective,” she said in a breathy tone with a shining smile. She was like a sexy Hamlet; someone else’s death had only served as a plot point to make her the star.
Looking at her more closely than when I first came in, I saw that her n*****s were standing to attention, begging to be noticed. The patch of silk covering them also looked slightly wet, as if she’d iced them. Because the fishnets, red heels, lipstick, denizen lashes and bare behind wasn’t enough.
“Miss. La Fleur, you say you were at Rick’s tonight? And you came home and found…”
I fishhooked my black notebook out of my pocket and clicked my ballpoint pen. It was an invitation for her to fill in the blanks. She obliged.
“Cole. My fiancé Cole Blakowski. And yes, I found him like this when I got home.”
“And you left Rick’s at what time?”
Blanche picked up a packet of cigarettes and an old brass lighter from her dresser. She softly clamped her lipstick around a single cigarette and withdrew it slowly. The box had an apple and an arrow on it. A yellow flame licked up from the lighter as she rolled a spark out of it with her thumb. She blew a misty, perfect O smoke ring. I doodled the curved three domed outline of a club with a thick, black heavy duty A while she wasted my time.
“What’s your name, Detective?”
The last word dripped off her tongue like warm syrup.
“Art Saul. Now, Rick’s. What time did you leave?”
“Midnight.”
“Can anyone vouch for that? Anyone see you there, Miss. La Fleur?”
“Ask the barkeep. There are other men who’d remember me, but uh, I don’t remember them,” she told me with a giggle.
“And you found Mr. Blakowski like this when you got home at what? Around 12:30?”
“Yes, that’s right detective.”
“Thanks Miss. La Fleur. That’ll be all.”
I stored my notebook back into my pocket and headed for the door.
“Don’t be a stranger, Artie…”