According to his story, some goods belonging to a murder victim had passed through his hands and he was being blackmailed by a bent cop who threatened to hang the murder on him if he didn’t pay up. I’m just a businessman, he growled. I have no idea what fucking murder he’s talking about, one forgettable rich bastard or another, but I know my situation ain’t good. Crabbe figured the cop was working for the mayor, known for his shake-down rackets, so he couldn’t go to the guy’s superiors. He knew you as one who took no shit from city hall and bore the scars to prove it and believed he could count on you. As Blanche, cleaning your office, liked to say: Your horror of gratuities from officialdom, Mr. Noir, is matched only by your horror of cleanliness. The cop was on his tail and your job was to tail the tail and log his movements. Presumably so Crabbe could steer clear of him and look for ways to put the blackmailer on the defensive.
You had spotted the guy, followed him for awhile. Big thuggish lout with a chain-smoking habit, a pocket flask from which he sucked freely, and a dark scowl. Mean-looking slow-moving sonuvabitch, well armed. But why would a blackmailer tail his victim, you wondered. The usual drill is to set payoff schedules and otherwise keep out of sight. You had to see Rats on a shopping trip, so you described the cop and Rats said he knew him, bruiser named Snark. Weird fuck but straight. Which meant that the old pawnbroker, running from the law, probably had a hit man ready to strike when you gave him the pattern of the cop’s movements.
So what now? Turn on your employer and squeal to the cops? Give Crabbe back his money (which you’d already spent) and drop out, letting the bodies fall where they may? Send in false data and risk getting taken out yourself? But weren’t you running that risk anyway? You were asking these questions out loud. You realized you’d been interrogating, not your glass of whiskey as is your habit, but the hand in your in-box. You took it out and set it on your desk on its thumb and rigid fingers like a pentapod and, taking a long slug, asked: And what about you, sweetheart? Where’d you come from? A woman’s hand, you felt certain. When, some time later, you first saw the widow’s hands in her lap you were somewhat reminded of it, but the severed hand had longer fingers, bonier knuckles, stubby fingertips like those of a professional pianist, a thin but sinewy wrist; it was well-tanned and bore three small rings, none of them a match for the widow’s rock. Curious, though: a lapis lazuli winged scarab with hieroglyphs, intertwined gold and white gold serpents with ruby eyes, and a carved bloodstone ring with some sort of Arabic inscription. So something of an exotic dame, a dancer maybe. Acrobat. Fortune teller. The long expressive fingers, hard unpainted nails, sharp knuckles suggested to you that she had long healthy bones, was tall, erect, lithe. Your type. One of them.
Thus, you assembled her from what the hand told you. It began as a lark, but became increasingly obsessive. You turned the hand over, examined the pads on her thumb and fingers, the flesh on her palm: Small breasts, you thought. Slender hips. You checked out her life and luck lines, what her palm said about her heart and head, her fate. You were no adept, they said nothing. That she’d had a misfortunate life you didn’t need her palm to tell you, the raw wound at the wrist said it all. By the fine hairs on the back of the hand, you figured she was auburn-haired. With brown eyes? Because of the bloodstone maybe, you guessed green. You saw a tall slender auburn-haired green-eyed beauty with a stub where the right hand should be. Wearing? The sequined briefs and halter of a circus aerialist maybe. Or gypsy silks. For the moment, nothing at all. Though she stood at some distance from you, an expression of ineffable longing (for you? for her hand?) on her high-boned face, she seemed at the same
You had spotted the guy, followed him for awhile. Big thuggish lout with a chain-smoking habit, a pocket flask from which he sucked freely, and a dark scowl. Mean-looking slow-moving sonuvabitch, well armed. But why would a blackmailer tail his victim, you wondered. The usual drill is to set payoff schedules and otherwise keep out of sight. You had to see Rats on a shopping trip, so you described the cop and Rats said he knew him, bruiser named Snark. Weird fuck but straight. Which meant that the old pawnbroker, running from the law, probably had a hit man ready to strike when you gave him the pattern of the cop’s movements.
So what now? Turn on your employer and squeal to the cops? Give Crabbe back his money (which you’d already spent) and drop out, letting the bodies fall where they may? Send in false data and risk getting taken out yourself? But weren’t you running that risk anyway? You were asking these questions out loud. You realized you’d been interrogating, not your glass of whiskey as is your habit, but the hand in your in-box. You took it out and set it on your desk on its thumb and rigid fingers like a pentapod and, taking a long slug, asked: And what about you, sweetheart? Where’d you come from? A woman’s hand, you felt certain. When, some time later, you first saw the widow’s hands in her lap you were somewhat reminded of it, but the severed hand had longer fingers, bonier knuckles, stubby fingertips like those of a professional pianist, a thin but sinewy wrist; it was well-tanned and bore three small rings, none of them a match for the widow’s rock. Curious, though: a lapis lazuli winged scarab with hieroglyphs, intertwined gold and white gold serpents with ruby eyes, and a carved bloodstone ring with some sort of Arabic inscription. So something of an exotic dame, a dancer maybe. Acrobat. Fortune teller. The long expressive fingers, hard unpainted nails, sharp knuckles suggested to you that she had long healthy bones, was tall, erect, lithe. Your type. One of them.
Thus, you assembled her from what the hand told you. It began as a lark, but became increasingly obsessive. You turned the hand over, examined the pads on her thumb and fingers, the flesh on her palm: Small breasts, you thought. Slender hips. You checked out her life and luck lines, what her palm said about her heart and head, her fate. You were no adept, they said nothing. That she’d had a misfortunate life you didn’t need her palm to tell you, the raw wound at the wrist said it all. By the fine hairs on the back of the hand, you figured she was auburn-haired. With brown eyes? Because of the bloodstone maybe, you guessed green. You saw a tall slender auburn-haired green-eyed beauty with a stub where the right hand should be. Wearing? The sequined briefs and halter of a circus aerialist maybe. Or gypsy silks. For the moment, nothing at all. Though she stood at some distance from you, an expression of ineffable longing (for you? for her hand?) on her high-boned face, she seemed at the same
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