Edited by Poison Ivan
The cottage where Peter Schmidt was killed stood empty and was in bad need of repair. Shingles were missing from the roof, the gutter was full of the sludge from too many fallen leaves, and the paint job was anemic. But one look up and down the street, and Moe could see the house fit right in with the neighborhood blueprint. There wasn't a single home that had felt a paintbrush in a decade.
The lawn might have been green a week ago, but since then a hundred pairs of feet had trampled the yard: flatfooters, newshounds, and curious onlookers. But no one was there now. It was just Moe and his memories. The light of day didn't make the reminiscing any easier.
Moe did the whole circle around the house, pausing for a brief slant at the spot that bore his thumbprint. The bloodstain had turned brown like a cartoon mud puddle - flat and depthless - on pale cement. Moe flinched at the memory of the hot blade slicing into his gut. Not seeing it coming still rankled. Pure gut sense and a keen eye had always kept him alive and healthy. Moe worried that maybe he was getting old.
He stomped back around to the front of the house. The mailbox was empty. No name graced its faceplate. There was no chance he'd find a welcome mat in front of an unlocked door, so he chewed over the breaking and entering angle. As he considered the wisdom of committing a crime in broad daylight, a flash of light caught his eye. From across the road, at a rundown, muddy white house, drapes that had forgotten to meet in the middle suddenly jerked closed. Concrete jungles weren't all bad. There was always a neighbor who saw something.
Moe made the trip across the street. He eyed the drapes and the crack still left between, but there was no light inside. The city-provided mailbox - one nail gone, the other loose - clung feebly to clapboard. Its gold-painted name, F. Thompson, was faded from a decade of neglect. A hard knock might have brought the whole façade crumbling down, but before Moe had balled his fist, a rusty hen in tattered chenille swung open the door. Her face had seen some years - exactly how many was hard to tell. Her housecoat came together like the drapes: agape down the middle. Bloomers and an over-crowded brassiere peeked through the split.
The old dame's arm stretched slowly up the doorjamb, straining the threadbare belt of the robe. Her teeth clicked together like they needed revving up to speak "Who're you?" she finally said.
"Moe to my friends. How about you?"
She cocked her head. The pose might have been coquettish back when the mailbox was new, back when F. Thompson was still brightly painted. "How can a lady be sure it's safe to give her name?"
"Toots, you're safe as money in a vault with me. I know when to be a gentleman."
The woman's eyes skimmed Moe like a slow massage, reaching every nook and cranny. She shifted her stance, and her belt gave up its battle. A small hump of belly lay exposed. "You're my kind of gentleman, Moe. I'm Mrs. Thompson, but you can call me Opal."
Moe avoided looking at her bare stomach by nodding toward the mailbox. "And F. Thompson would be your husband?"
Opal suddenly remembered her robe and sheepishly closed it again, tightening the belt. "That would be my
late
husband. Eight years gone. Blasted bank."
Moe did some arithmetic and put some history two and two together. Thompson must have been one of those unlucky saps who lost it all during the bank scares. "That was a tough time for all of us," Moe commiserated.
"We lost everything. All the banks went belly up in '32. Fred couldn't handle it. The bank was his baby. Goddamned man. He was always too prideful for his own good." She paused, looking past Moe, and then continued. "He took his revolver that had never even been loaded before, trotted in his bank as big as you please, stuck the barrel into his mouth, and pulled the trigger. If he'd waited just one more year, when Roosevelt took over ..." She shook her head and sighed, "
One more year."
She got miffed then and tugged on the ties of her belt. "The banks were coming back. He might have recovered along with them. But not my Fred, no sirree. He splattered his useless brains all over his desk and left me here in this neighborhood where a person can't go outside for fear of getting knifed or ... or worse."
Too many men during the early thirties thought death was the only way out. Maybe it was. Who was Moe to say different? "You haven't had it easy, Opal."
"Yeah, well, that ain't why you're here."
"You're a smart cookie, Opal." Moe nodded toward Schmidt's cottage. "What I'm curious about is the goings on over there."
Opal glanced down the street, first left and then right. "You the police?"
"No. A private dick."
"Private dick, eh?" She slid her hand in the gap of her housecoat and scratched an itch at the base of her neck. "Maybe you'd like to come inside and sit for a spell?"
"Maybe I would at that."
Opal led the way through a front room piled high with dozens, if not hundreds, of cardboard boxes, so many that Moe's shoulders touched cardboard on either side. The boxes were heavy and didn't give as he inched his way behind Opal. There was no light except what the cracked curtains offered, and the pillars of cardboard blocked most of that. Another path veered off toward the picture window, but Moe followed Opal until they reached a kitchen. The boxes ended where the two rooms met. It was like walking out of a bunker.
The kitchen walls were yellow, maybe from paint, maybe from age. A four-seater table, littered with newspaper clippings and a pair of scissors that had done the snip work, took up most of the space. Laced doilies hung over the backs of the chairs in limp moons as someone's idea of decoration. Old grease and tobacco blessed the room like a priest's thurible.
Moe hesitated at the room's edge, waiting for Opal's cue. Her housecoat worked its way open again. Opal didn't seem to mind. Her bloomers were threadbare and hung loosely around doughy hips. When she sat, her heavy bosom nearly rested on the table. She pointed to one of the chairs. "Have a seat."
Moe did as she asked, barely avoiding knocking a doily to the floor. The room was warm, the air stagnant. Moe tried to breathe without inhaling too deeply. "Some setup you got here, Opal," he said. "What's in the boxes?"
Opal sat back from the table and crossed her legs. Her robe opened wider, but she let it go. "Newspapers," she said. "I have proof of everything that's gone on around here for years. In this neighborhood, a lady in my position can't be too careful."
"What exactly is your position?"
"Ain't it obvious? A single woman all alone."
Times were tough. Crime was at an all time high. People were scared and angry about the possibility of war. But stacking the living room with cardboard boxes - ceiling high, filled with newspaper clippings - seemed an unusual safety measure. But Moe was learning Opal Thompson was an unusual bird. She wasn't bad to look at. Once upon a time, she might have been pretty, back when she was the belle of the banker society. Her eyes were wide-set and still had a bit of sheen to them. Their color was somewhere between blue and brown. Her nose would have been her worst feature - big and fleshy - but the years had let the rest of her face catch up and match its plumpness. Her lipstick tried to make an upper lip that wasn't there. And Moe couldn't remember when he'd seen a pair of melons as big as Opal's. He'd seen a lot younger women who looked a lot worse.
"I take it you don't do much walking around the block," Moe said.
Opal scooted back on her chair and chuckled. "That murder wasn't the first one 'round here, only the most recent," she said. "I'm comfy enough right in my own home."
Moe glanced around the kitchen. His first impression had been one of muck, but on closer inspection he realized the counters were clean. There weren't any dishes stacked high in the sink, or garbage spilling out from the can. In fact, the only thing out of its place was the clippings on the table. Cooking smells must have buried themselves into the cardboard and the doilies. Otherwise the place was every bit as clean as his own joint.
"Ever get out long enough to share recipes with your most recent neighborhood tragedy?"
Opal shook her head. Her bobbed salt and pepper hair was sprayed in place and didn't move. "Mr. Schmidt kept to himself. He was gone most days and came home late most nights."
"But you knew his name?"
Opal shifted in her seat, uncrossing her legs and hooking her feet around the legs of her chair. Her chunky thighs blocked much of the view of her crotch, but Moe was still treated to a peep show of pubic hair poking out along the sides.
"Paddy, the boy who delivers groceries, comes in and sits with me on occasion." Opal raised her arm and patted the back of her hair. Her massive tits fought gravity not to drop. "Paddy likes to
