Fade To Noir

I felt cold steel kiss the small of my back. As it pressed against my flesh, I opened my eyes and held my breath. I didn't have the slightest idea where I was or what I'd done to deserve it.

There was nothing new about that. I opened my ears real wide and listened. As the grogginess lifted, I could tell by the soft breathing and hint of perfume that I was being accosted by a woman. Well, there was nothing new about that, either. Just another dissatisfied customer.

She moved the piece further up my back. I figured, at that range, I'd get ventilation wide as a manhole. No point waiting for her to find the sweet spot. I slowly drew a deep, shuddering breath and prepared to move fast. The kind of cat-like reflexes I used to have nine lives ago.

I spun around so quick I surprised myself. I grabbed her wrist and she yelped. I'd managed to knock the burner out of her hand except when it clacked to the floor, it sure didn't sound like a fumbled roscoe.

"Mr. Snead!"

My eyes adjusted. I saw flowers on a table at the end of my bed. The windows and doors were in the wrong place. I wasn't home in bed at all. Then I remembered. I was in the hospital.

"Release me, please!"

"Sorry, babe," I croaked. The nurse was a flame-haired beauty, all freckles and cheekbones. "Shouldn't sneak up on a PI like that. We're jumpy."

She got all huffy. "I was just listening to your lungs."

I was dyin' for a smoke. Then I remembered that's what this was all about. "What did my lungs have to say?"

"Turn over please, Mr. Snead," she said crisply, not interested in small talk. "I have to prep you for your biopsy."

"Come again?"

Dames have asked me to do some strange stuff in the boudoir before, and I'd thought I'd seen it all. Then this one pulled a rubber hose out of a deep white pocket and lifted my drafty nightshirt.

I caught her wrist again and turned on the Snead charm.

"Can't we talk this over first?" I pleaded. "Say over dinner at La Petite Rose?" I may have overplayed my hand a little emphasizing "tit" as I drank in the view.

She wasn't having any of it. "I can get a large, male attendant to do this, Mr. Snead," she snapped as she ripped her wrist from my grasp. "I can even find someone who enjoys it too much, if you like."

I got the picture. "Sure, doll," I said, poking my butt out into the cold morning. "Just be gentle, okay? It's my first time."

I heard her muttering something about sexist pigs and dinosaurs. Then somebody else shoved a needle into my arm and asked me to count backwards. I was back where I started, in Never-Never Land.

The name is Snead. I used to be a cop. I used to think that private dicks were the scum of the earth. Then I became one. Now I'm sure of it.

It's a young man's racket. Long hours, lousy food, poking your nose in where it isn't wanted and having to be ready at a moment's notice to plug somebody or get your ass out of Dodge. I stuck with it longer than most. I've got 30 years' worth of memories in this game -- I've been shot six times, dropped in the Hudson twice, had two contracts put out on me and slept with too many grateful clients to count 'em all.

I've seen the business change, too. Now you've got all this high-tech stuff, laser-sighted ray guns and night vision glasses. A lot of PIs are broads, too. I can't get used to that. I guess I'm the last a dying breed.

Now I'm dyin' too.

Least, that's what the doc said. The next afternoon he was telling me all about the exciting journey he took up my whatsis with a fiber-optic camera. I half expected to receive a video copy for my home library.

This Doctor Rosen-Silver-Berg-Stein-whatever was going on about parts I didn't even know I had. I tried to pay attention, but it was all I could do to keep from jumping out of that go-cart they had me hoisted on and running down to the cigarette machine in the lobby.

"What's the bottom line, doc?" I finally said. "Am I gonna live or what?"

"To be completely candid with you, Mr. Snead, you're a mess," he said. Tell me something I don't know, I thought. Something the two ex-Mrs. Sneads wouldn't say amen to.

"You have the lungs of an 80-year-old West Virginian coal miner," the doc began. "You've got a bleeding ulcer. Your liver is shot. And we don't even have all the test results back yet. God knows what else we'll find."

Another man might've swallowed his gum hearing news like that. Even pull his gun out of the night table drawer and put a bullet through any healthy organ he had left. But not me. Frank Snead and the Grim Reaper exchange cards at Christmas.

During the Delvecchio case I was left to bleed to death on a lonely pier in the Bronx. I used my head, and about thirty feet of duct tape, to get myself out of that pickle. I also remembered the Liebermann caper, the time that neo-Nazi fraulein put enough arsenic in my stein to dust off a Panzer division.

I survived. So as that overpaid sawbones was delivering my last rites, I wasn't at all impressed. This, too, would pass.

"So, now what?" I said. "Do I need some spare parts? I know where we can get a deal on a liver."

The doctor pinched the bridge of his nose. "I'm not getting through to you, Mr. Snead. We think your prognosis is grim."

I stared at this wet-nosed kid for a good thirty seconds. Then I tipped my head forward and brushed my hair aside. I had a war wound to show him.

"See this?" I said. "I took a.32 slug in the noggin in'82. Bullet lodged in my medusa obligata."

"Medulla oblongata," he sighed.

"Whatever," I said. "I lived. All these TV pictures and x-rays you're taking about -- they don't scare me. Neither do you. If this assignment is too tough for you, doctor, I'll find somebody with a little steel in his spine and some grey in his hair. I'm sure he'll know what to do."

That set the doc back on his heels. He sat all the way down.

"There's also the question of money."

"What about it?" I said.

"You don't have any," he said, pointing out the obvious.

"So, I'll share a room with the screaming meemees downstairs," I said. "I've never gone first class. It's not my style. I don't even like those flowers."

"You don't understand," he said. "You can't afford what it would cost to even begin to treat what you've got."

Well, that one set me back. "What would it cost?"

I could almost see the wheels turning under his rug. "Four -- maybe five hundred thousand."

"You're kidding me!" I gagged. "Who's got that kind of money? What is this bullshit?"

"Excuse me, Mr. Snead," he said, "but have you ever heard of the Surgeon-General's Report? Ever seen The Days of Wine and Roses? Ever heard of the four basic food groups? How about Blue Cross?"

I wanted to get up and strangle him. But this character probably had a shyster for a brother, and I only had enough dough for cab fare back to my deathbed.

"So what you're telling me is I can't afford to live, is that it?" I said.

The doc told me I had already worn out my welcome at his snazzy place of employ. My two days of residence had sucked up all the scratch they were able to get when they passed the hat at Lucky's Bar on 44th Street. I figured it was the least Lucky could do -- my bar bill had put three of his kids through

college.

They were going to transfer me to the hospital where they send all the welfare cases. I had other plans. When they weren't looking, I got into my trousers and put on my beat-up fedora one more time. Holding all my failing parts and bodily fluids real tight under my trench coat, I slipped into the hall and down a service elevator.

I went for a walk and tried to get my head straight. I thought of all the things I could do. I wandered back to my apartment and popped open the loose floorboard at the back of my closet to count my life savings. Not a smart place to stash your Jacksons -- the interest is lousy and I never got a toaster for it -- but there's no penalty for early withdrawal. I counted it twice -- $137. So much for a ride on the Orient Express.

The way I figured it, I was down to two options -- a weekend in Atlantic City or jumping off the Empire State Building. The only question was how fast I wanted to blow my brains out.

Whenever I was stuck between a rock and a hard place, or a bad decision and worse, I could count on my on-again, mostly off-again girlfriend Consuelo for a little love and understanding -- hopefully more of the former. Years ago she was my secretary at my hole-in-wall office down by the waterfront before moving onto a job with better fringe benefits than fucking the boss and bailing him out of the hoosegow. Non-bouncing paychecks had more appeal too.

I strolled up to her building on the East Side and pressed the buzzer which crackled like it was installed by Marconi himself. My angel eventually answered with the phlegmy rasp you can only get from smoking a carton of Camels every day for sixty years.

"Who the fuck is this?" she growled. "It's fucking midnight!"

I smiled as I leaned into the speaker, the rain dripping off my brim. "Consuelo, it's your fucking Romeo."

There was a pause before her angelic/satanic voice returned, all silk wrapped in barbed wire. "I gotta lotta Romeos, this one gotta last name?"

Still playing hard to get. "It's Snead, Frank Snead," I said, like I was some kind of pretty boy limey spy. "You remember, the guy you threatened to throw out the window last time I was here?"

"You gotta fat lotta nerve, Frank."

"C'mon, buzz me in, will you?"

"You got a good reason for showing up at this hour?"

"Same reason as always: bad case, bad luck, and the hope you've still got that bottle of rye you're too good to drink yourself."

That won her over. The lock buzzed.

"Don't keep me waiting, gumshoe. I need my beauty sleep."

I'd forgotten Consuelo lived in a six-storey walk-up and by the time I got to her door I was panting and sweating like a schoolboy about to lose his cherry. I didn't get a chance to knock at the door, my creaking bones and rattling coughs telegraphed my arrival from the fourth-floor landing. I found her waiting impatiently.

Consuelo was a sight for sore eyes. The curves that always turned my head were still there although they widened the road for freeway traffic. She still had a balcony you could recite Shakespeare from and cleavage so deep you'd need to be Jacques Cousteau to plumb the depths of it.

She had that tired "Hello, I'm up here!" look on her face but had long resigned to her bazooms' awesome powers of distraction.

"You look like something the cat wouldn't bother dragging in," she said, stepping aside to let me enter.

"Good to see you too," I said as I stepped inside, looking around her dingy joint. Nice to see her current employer wasn't any better at lifting her from poverty. She'd put the bottle of rye on the table with two dirty glasses, so maybe all or most was forgiven after all.

Consuelo closed the door behind me with a soft click, leaning against it like a cat waiting to pounce. "So, what's the story this time? Run afoul of the cops? Jealous husband? Or did you just come here to ruin my night?"

I dropped my hat and coat on the back of a chair, and shook off the damp. "Maybe I just wanted to see you."

She arched an eyebrow, folding her arms. She knew me well -- perhaps too well.

"You? Show up uninvited without an ulterior motive? Pull the other one, Snead."

"Fine," I said. "I came for that. But maybe I needed to talk, too. It's been a hell of a week."

"Isn't it always?" She crossed the room, a sway in her step even after all these years. "You're supposed to have friends for this kind of thing. And yet, here you are."

"You're my closest thing to a friend, Consuelo," I said, dropping into her worn couch with a groan. "Which says more about my life than I care to admit."

She broke a tight smile, just a touch. She perched on the edge of the sofa, studying me like I was the New York Time's crossword and she was stumped on some four-letter words. "Tell me about the case, Frank."

"The case?" I pulled a coffin nail out a crushed box in my pocket.

"You've got a case that's eating at you," she said with a hint of a smile. "And you're looking for a little... inspiration." She leaned over and plucked the cigarette from my fingers and lit it, her eyes never leaving mine as she sucked deep and further inflated her Hindenburgs. I may have had one foot in the grave but another part of me was inspired to rise from the dead.

The woman who deserved better swung into my lap and besides crushing my throbbing johnson she tore half the stitches they sewed into my gut. The lusty expression on her face was soon eclipsed with concern.

"You do look like the hell," she said. "Something's wrong."

"Nah," I said with the false courage I took from the rye and gathered her in for a smooch, hoping my groans might be interpreted as foreplay.

She accepted the sloppy offering but wasn't fooled for a minute -- which in my current state was probably all I was good for. "You're a lousy liar, Snead."

"Yeah, but I'm good at other things," I said before plucking the cig from her hand and took a hit, exhaling a thin plume I hoped would serve as a smoke screen from further examination at close range.

She rolled her eyes, but she didn't get up. "Why can't I quit you?" she said softly.

It was me who would be quitting her, and all the other skirts I'd yet to pump sunshine up. It was last call.

"It's one for the road, baby," I whispered as she turned out the light. "Let's make it one to remember."

A few hours later I was back on the street, the sun still undecided if it would show. Made no difference to me. I ended up at the office. I ignored the collection of third and final notices shoved under the door and sat down in my musty old chair.

It was lonely for a minute until I pulled open the deep drawer of my desk and found my old friend Jack Daniels. I put my feet up, tipped my hat down over my eyes. Lit up a Camel.

I kept an eye on the door. I was waiting for the grinning man.

I don't know what I'll do when he finally shows. I'll probably grin back.

Still got my teeth.

-30-