Hearts & Aces Pt. 3 - Murder, Right?

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

After equal measures of tossing and turning and whiskey that night, I fell asleep. I dreamt about a man and a woman kissing over a stove, about pissed of puffer fish wearing fur coats, and long legs in fishnet stockings shrouded in smoke. When the smoke disappears, the woman in the stockings winks and takes a bite out of a peach.

I wake up too early for a man who needs his beauty sleep as much as I do. I take another night cap but don’t sleep any better. I still wake up too early in the morning, and lie there in bed with my eyes shut, not letting anything in the room know I’m awake yet. My mind is like a dog chasing its tail; it keeps going around in circles without any success or learning anything new. Eventually my alarm clock drills on its bells and gives me the OK to get out of bed. I head down to the coroner’s.

The coroner’s lab has the sickly fresh new car smell of formaldehyde. The whole place has the cold dampness of a cave, the formaldehyde like cave mist that clings to your nostrils and throat and even a little bit in your ears with every breath. Amongst all the shining metal and clean tiles, the coroner stands with her hands in her white coat pockets in between the two metal beds the corpses slept on. The bodies themselves are covered neck to toe in a green plastic sheet, but they still look like Thanksgiving centrepieces on display.

The coroner is the bad side of 30. She has dark blonde hair and light brown eyes, but really they’re all the same colour. Her ponytail hangs straight and narrow, like an icicle. Her nose suits her methods, it’s short and sharp. I’ve often wondered if her nose was always like that or if it adapted to her work, they way dog owners grow to look like their dogs.

There are no pleasantries exchanged. There’s not much pleasant in our line of work, and if we ever find anything we don’t exchange them, we keep them to ourselves.
“The lips. Notice them, Arthur?”
“It’s Art,” I tell her, and rest my hat over a steel tray of surgical instruments. “The bubbles. What do you make of them?”
“Definitely chemical. Haven’t been able to figure out what yet.”
“Any chance it smells like peaches?”
“Peaches?” her eyebrows form a what-are-you-talking-about shape as she bends herself forward to sniff each corpse’s lips. “Can’t smell it. You sure?”
With no regard for my grace or decorum, I wholeheartedly sniff both of the stiffs. “You can still smell it on the girl.”
“Yeah?” the coroner sniffs her again. “Can’t get it. Did find something interesting on the guy though.”

She pulled the green sheet off him with a quick tug, like he was a kid and he had overslept for school. His chest was covered in little circle burn marks, about the size of a beer bottle neck.
“It’s the same stuff as on the lips,” she tells me with her eyes fixed on his chest.
“So it’s murder, right?”
“Definitely. Oh yeah. Chemical burns with this concentration �" has to be deliberate. Should figure out what it is you’re dealing with soon, Arthur.”
Her eyes are still on the dead guy. He’s a lot more interesting to her than I am. I pick up my hat from the steel table of cutters and slicers and holder openers and head for the Homicide Office.

A lot of police departments I’ve worked were just beige holding pens of busy work. Beat cops looking for arrests to add to their tally, and to hell with protecting and serving. Homicide is where the real cops are. Especially the Chief. He’s in his 60s, tubby, and the only hairs on his head are in a thick grey moustache. The Chief might be carrying a spare tyre these days, but he’s still got a racecar fast mind, switchblade sharp. He still wears his tan leather pistol holster under his jacket, just to remind him of the uniform. He never carries his gun in it.

The Chief greets me with a file as I walk in.
“Saul. Got an ID on your East Side guy.”
“Cole Blakowski. The fiancée told me at the scene.”
“I got a sandwich thick file here. You think all I got is a name? Blakowski was a big gambler.”
“What kind?”
“Worst kind,” the Chief lights a cigarette with a match and finishes his sentence through his teeth. “Rich and bad.”
“I meant, what’s his game? He a casino hound? Card shark?”
“Poker. Over at-”
“Charlie’s Den.”
“How’d you know that?”
“It’s where I used to go, except I was poor and good.”
I light a cigarette of my own.
“I got more for ya. No ID on the dead girl yet, but get this; ‘Blanche La Fleur’, no record of her anywhere.”
“Hm. Have someone look into it, I’ll go to Charlie’s.”
“Yes m’lord, right away. Oh, hold on. You ain’t the Chief here, I am!”
His cigarette nodded in agreement and ash crumples on the floor.
“So what do you want me to do?”
“You go to Charlie’s. I’ll have someone look into it.”

I walk to what used to be my side of town and see Charlie’s Den in the distance. I feel its spider legs crawling around me, trying to pull me in. My only distraction from this feeling is the woman in the fire hydrant red dress with her smooth black forest of long hair swaying on her shoulders. Is it just Little Miss Coincidence, or is there a reason I should care about why she’s here? Standing outside Charlie’s, looking more like butter would burn than butter wouldn’t melt, Blanche La Fleur.