wastrels

Part 1

Current Part:
     I was committed to a relationship with a girl named Jane, though she didn't know it. She worked 6 or 7 days a week at a cafe by the park, which we frequented on Frankie's dime. She had straight, black hair and a prominent nose. She wore an apron over her skirt. She had that dead look in her eyes of a woman who believes nothing can harm her anymore.
    "Jane, another coffee please."
    Her frown would deepen. "You got it." She had to wear her first name on her chest, so she couldn't really stop me from acting familiar with her. I could tell it bothered her.
    I couldn't stop watching her. The only thing that drew my eyes away was the pack of pigeons shitting on the outside of the window sill. The coffee was terrible, but I'd never really cared about that. Everything tasted of ashes.
    In the summer we sat near the open door so Frankie wouldn't stink up the place. "Don't embarrass me, Frankie," I'd say.
    "You embarrass yourself."

---

    I got a job at the same Walmart I used to steal from, which was convenient. But God the people there. I worked the freak shift, the witching hour. Which was great, because those customers never wanted to talk to anyone. They were deformed, sad proto-humans; blobs in electric wheelchairs; women with sickening face injuries. There was a manager on duty, but she never left her office at night. I mostly just wandered the aisles with a mop, drifting in the fog from my own nostrils. Sometimes Frankie came to visit me in the stock room, to haul away any damaged merchandise in his shopping cart.
    One time we got robbed. I was in the back, though. I walked up to the cashier later and she said, "Someone took all my money." She opened the drawer to show me. It was empty.
    "Did he have a gun or something?"
    "Nah, he just reached over and took it."
    "Did you tell security? That guy with the big neck, right?"
    She didn't seem to hear me.
Anyways, the liquor store was in the same parking lot, so it was easy to just hit it up with my paycheck. Check to cash places are everywhere. I always got RC Cola as a mixer cause my initials were on it.
    I shared the results with Frankie, and then he'd say, "I found a bag of grass under the bridge man." Then we'd just sort of float off down the highway. The lights were bright like a football stadium, glowing billboards everywhere.
    We couldn't see the stars from anywhere near the city but just the same I could look up and wonder. Obviously, there were other planets up there with other (ever freakier looking) people on them, but I wondered if there was another me, someone I could really relate to, even more than I could to Frankie. A total loser. A wastrel.

---

    The weekly tradition was for the boss to call me upstairs when I came in for my shift, before he left for his daywalker life. His tie and skin were both glossy. "Siddown Robert."
    "Thanks."
    "You know what your problem is, Robert?"
    "What, sir?"
    "You don't want to participate."
    "Sir?"
    He would turn to the window that looked down on the clothing department and cast his voice into the distance. "People like me have built this glorious civilization..."
    "Yessir."
    "And people like you just want to tear it down because there's no place for you in it."
    "Yessir."
    "Fortunately!" He'd turn back to me then and remove his sunglasses with a flourish. "You're too weak and choleric to do any real damage."
    "Yessir."
    "So people like me will continue to provide your kind with food and shelter for whatever modest labor you can provide with that husk of yours."
    "Thank you, sir."
    He liked my attitude. "I like your attitude, Robert. Good talk! You may leave me now."
    "Enjoy your evening, sir." I'd shuffle down to my mop, most weeks too blazed to remember what he'd said to me up there.

---

    "Frankie, we're getting out of here."
    "Howzzat?"
    We were by the highway again, lying on the pavement. I think it was morning already because I could see the clouds. "Stick up your thumb. We'll hitch a ride." We stuck our thumbs up to the sky.
    Sometimes we did hitch a ride, but it was just to downtown. Everything was too expensive, but we could ride the subway around for a while or stand on the street corner. One intersection was great because the  people there were always shouting at each other. Horrible, hateful comments. "Do you think they know each other, Frankie?"
    "I can't tell." He'd found a ratty armchair and a bag of popcorn somewhere. "Doesn't sound like it."
    I always thought I'd see violence there, but instead they'd curse each other breathless and then sort of stumble away. "Let's go see Jane."
    "Okay." Frankie never made a decision. He would just wait for someone else to make him stand up and go. "I could sit here forever, though."
    "I know you could."

I'll bet it was about 4:30 am in a Walmart

    I'll bet it was about 4:30 am in a Walmart where I'd gone to purchase a series of jackets when I started to noticed people popping and exploding around me. The soup cans in the canned soup aisle were covered in pink slime with a consistency between jello and cake frosting. Bits of grey matter had glommed to the shelving, still twitching with the vitality of baby octopi. Two aisles down, a fat woman's neck was eating itself. She panted and gurgled in pain as she bent over for a 40-pack of snot-colored sport drink.

---

    Frankie Bacon was my best friend but not for any length of time. I'd met him the Tuesday before in a park, where he was wringing the neck of every pigeon he could get his hands on. Then they went into the pile hidden behind a couple bushes but still sure to be discovered. Everything out of Frankie's mouth made me smile then laugh then cry, even his toxic breath. "Roger," he'd say, "do you think people will ever stop dying?"
    "What do you mean?" I'd say. "What people?"
    "All people. They just keep dying. Like all the fucking time. When will it stop?" Then I'd notice the tears leaking from his eyes.
    "I dunno. Once there are no more people, I guess."
    So he'd take a snort from the vial hanging around his neck, the one labelled 'Smelling Salts' with a sharpie, and grin: "That's right, isn't it!?"
    I was in love with Frankie for a lot of reasons, but chief among them was that despite looking like and being a bum, he always seemed  to have just enough cash to cover whatever we were doing. A crumpled twenty forgotten in his coat pocket or a thick roll of singles. Myself, I think I had a job or something, but whatever they paid me went quickly to bottles of everclear and hotdogs. I hadn't been to my apartment in long enough that I couldn't really prove that it was still there. But the idea of its continued existence was comforting.
    The other thing I loved about Frankie was that he was ugly as shit. He was short, fat, and wrinkly. He could've been the lovechild of John Belushi and a rat. His hair started halfway back his scalp and from there lived the life of a rowdy teenager; curling, poofing, starting up punk bands, and sometimes catching on fire. Just by standing there, he made me feel handsome and young.

Who is Pekanese Blue?

    "Seems like scary stuff. But mostly, we alter lines of code. There's very little actual piloting done these days. Tweaking facial recognition software, alignment with the GPS (though that's rapidly approaching perfection), improving how the intelligence handles infrared distinction..."
    "Uh-huh." Scotty screwed up his eyes to express his boredom, completely lost on his talking partner.
    "If I'm being honest," the twat whispered, "we don't really even code. The algorithms have been capable of making their own adjustments for years now."
    "Orly?"
    "Fortunately, most higher-ups can't tell the difference. Generated code looks the same as handwritten: gibberish vs. more gibberish."
    Scotty blew a bubble in his $20 coffee. He'd bet he had a 20 in his jacket somewhere, but he'd planned to dash even if Twat hadn't offered to pay. "You'll be techsourced, soon enough [[ya twat]]," he said [[and thought]].
    "Oh, I don't doubt it." The guy lit a $20 cigarette and smirked. "But I'm hoping I'll be dead by then. Shit takes time. Or maybe I'll hear that buzz like a dog-sized bee myself one day, huh? My own function busting my head like a watermelon?" He put it out and took out another one, in case the girls at the next table hadn't seen how smooth he looked lighting it. "That'd be some kind of poetry, right? You seem like the poetic type."
    "That's right."
    He lost his stare in the middle distance somewhere. "Where would I go? I don't have the scruples for marketing." A puff of smoke twatted from between his lips.
    "Sure."
    "And a place like this? Café work (he emphasized the diacritic on the second syllable) just feels...beneath me. Ya feel me?"
    "I feel you." He felt icky. But well caffeinated, damn.
    "Anyway, Transient, thanks for the chat." He put the butt out. "I get bored between shifts. And during. And sometimes while sleeping... I'm not selling it super well, but you wanna go corporate, I've got your back. You seem like a smart guy. Or good at hiding idiocy. Either way works in the biz, whatever the biz is." He handed Scotty a bizness card, decorated with gold-embossed lightning bolts.

    German Special
    Expert Ninja Coder
   
        and Professional Twat


    Scotty turned it in his hands and said, "Wow."
    "That's right, bud. Shall we get the check? Miss?! Little Miss! Yeah, you."
    She came over with a glossy smile and tried to nab the card he held out while avoiding his fingers.
    Scotty tried to slip in a couple platitudes before he slipped out, but found them dying to the far off whine of a bumblebee which he imagined to be somewhere between the size of a dog and a buffalo.
    German lit a final cigarette and openly ogled the women at the next table. "Sounds like a plus-sized model. Same software, though. We should probably be flattered. Something knows we exist, at least for the moment." He smiled. His teeth were the beyond-yellow of coffee and cigarettes. "Anyway, it's been sweet."
    Obligated to do so, Scotty Transient tried as hard as he could to think of something poetic to add, but the only two thoughts he could have were [[I've wasted my entire life.]] or [[My brain feels like Jell-O right now.]] Neither one seemed up to his own standards, so he was still thinking as the room filled with fire and shrapnel; too fast to process, too slow to escape.

In the Woods, Venus Waited

camping out beneath stars, the smell of pine deep in stinging his nostrils till he thought a capillary or two might burst, he remembered instead the smell of the bourbon drifting back through his throat when he sat in the alley, watching the cats skulk, the rats creep, and the headlines proclaiming the end of society. when he looked up, the brick wall across from him was still real, a flawed pattern, its consistency just inconsistent enough to get forever lost in if he'd been an ant on his way home. he took another pull, and he was back in the woods, Venus bright and foggy high above. It was this moment, the first time he ever realized that he would never go there. That he was forever stuck in the corner of the room, looking out but unable to move.
    A raven crowed in the trees some distance away, its weight audible in the branches. He passed out and went back to the city.
    "Hey bud." A polite kick woke him. "Hey bud." "You can't stay here."
    He brought  his bulk slowly upwards, a strand of drool still clinging from his lip to the bottle's. His stomach was heavier than he remembered it being. He must've eaten somewhere.
    "Hey bud."
    "I'm goin," he tried to say. He fell over instead. The voice game him one more polite kick and faded away.
    The smaller tree branches rubbed against each other like conniving fingers. A hole went right through his middle, as if he'd left part of himself in the city. An organ or two. The roots under his back were making inroads beneath his flesh, twining between his fingers, propping him up.
    It was some time later that he woke. He knew because the morning light that'd been coming on was gone, replaced by full dark again. A deep orange glow filled the air and danced in the pavement. If he could stand there was a park bench across the street. Just there. Maybe 20 steps away. 20 normal steps. 20 steps through traffic. The first 5 or so out in plain sight of the people walking to somewheres, walking in shiny shoes, walking between appointments, walking through cell phone air, walking over his rootfingers. He felt tied to the spot. Everything waited beyond the alley. If he could stand. One of the cats came and nuzzled at his outstretched hand. Its ribs were clearly visible, and he thought how easily it would be crushed if he were to step on it. If he could stand. Not that he would. Step on it, that is. It was just something that occurred to him. To make him feel like he might be a bad person. But that he might not know, because he couldn't seem to get moving, anyway. Maybe that was the reason for it.
    The thing was, the sky was nice and small in the alley. Only at noon could it reach all the way down to him. Also the noise, the noise was close, but contained, as if the mouth of it all was a TV set blaring in the corner. But actually, he realized that night in the woods, he was the one in the corner. But all the same, his roots could spread beneath the surface into the soles and hearts of the folks out there while he stayed secret. Invisible. A part of the scenery. Drunk.
    This night, the one where his fingers lay in the woods while he stared at the city flickering in its porthole, what sky he accessed was a deep and hooded purple. Ravens lined the upper edges of the brick buildings and hopped up and down the fire escapes. If he didn't move, which he couldn't anyway, it was impossible to distinguish the bottom of the stairs from the top. So it appeared instead as if an obsidian lattice extended from the rooftop of each building, myriad rectangles intertwined and inhabited by avian giants fluttering above a primordial ocean.
    The bottle was empty. Shit. The bottle was empty. But there was another one. Another one somewhere.
    Somewhere. Was it here?
    Would he have to stand? Could he?
    No, there it was. Turned on its side beneath a torn carry-out box. He wasn't going to open it just yet, but he touched it with a finger to make sure. He wasn't going to open it just yet. A light from the back of the alley shone through the amber. He wasn't going to open it just yet. Leave the golden firefly a bit longer. Then he would drink it. Once the cat left. Once it stopped watching him.
    Instead of going back to sleep, he considered that he might write a poem about roots. About roots below the city but above the sewer. He considered that it might make him famous. He considered how then how much they'd look up to him for being drunk and dirty and wanting to step on cats.
    In the poem, the roots would go up into the heel of each person who lived beyond the alley, and freeze them in place. They would all miss their appointments. Their phone batteries would die. They would have to look at each other. Maybe start a conversation. The ones right here by his alley would even have to look at him. They wouldn't talk to him, they would talk to the other, real people nearby, but they would see him, see his roots. In the poem, a man who had lived in the sewer would be smothered by the growing roots. They would break down his corpse for nutrients, needed for all the people stuck in place and unable to go to restaurants or cafés anymore.
    He considered that his poem was a good idea, and he thought out the first stanza in his head, a thing that he would write and show to people, and read fervently aloud in the places where people listened to things. Once he could. Get up.
    In the Woods, Venus waited. She stood aloft, a single bright eye of judgement shrouded in the purple fog. She seemed to be the candle around which the hooded black shapes crowded and sharpened their beaks. She seemed to be a light across a channel which flashed him a signal in Morse code that he couldn't decipher. She seemed to be the business end of an infinite needle held in the Sun's fire, and pointed straight at the space behind his eyes. She seemed to be a hole in his dark corner through which he could see that there was light in some other place outside it. She told him there were other lights, too, but he saw only the purple dark and the black.
    In the Alley, the TV set was still blaring, the people still on track to their appointments. And it was time to open the second bottle. Then he could get up. Then he could get up. 

the realm

who could breathe in the city with the
air tight and crowded and the
paperwork piled in the gutters
between stacks of ill-suited
face-painted monkeys
eating each other's grins
as the world turned
slowly to its end

a chestpain that never would
go away till it broke itself
out and cracked the sewers
where they put the poop
they used to fling and smear
on each other and still would
if they hadn't hidden it away
so they could peruse and try
on fancy clothes poop free
so the heiress could move through
the shop window where the masses
had no poop to fling anymore
and still i'm not breathing as
wine flights pass through the bowels
and yet wind still into the
cracked sewers laden with
processed cheese plates
and pâtés
the river of shit
with its floating sachets

like the gondola ride we rode
down canals old enough
to remember the taste of our blood
my mistress is as old as the hills
its the teeth and eyes that show it
she laughs when she cries
and says "Shit is the realm of the poet."

51st and Fink, chapter 2

first chapter here.

    Old Town is the oldest part of Uptown, about 20 blocks from Downtown, and 3 or 4 stone-throws from the river, if you got a decent fastballer. My prime haunting grounds were close, close enough I coulda heard the shots myself.
    At this point, the rain no longer fell, it just sort of hung there and spread out into shards of rippling mirror that showed my own face to itself. I tried to keep my attention on the visage of 215 Nantucket Way, former residence of Margaret and Mark Lamb. Mark's pieced together dental records lay cozy in the folder, but Fats hadn't given me a thing on Maggie. What and wherever she was, she wasn't at 215 anymore. Yellow tape wrapped across the columns of the front stoop, some cut and others pasted over. When I wobbled to the side a bit, light from the next block pierced all the way through the holes in the wall, hundreds maybe thousands of them.
    I found my way past the mirrors and up the front steps under the tape. The doorknob was cold in that particular way that you get to know. No matter the season, you can feel that heat of life in a place only when it's absent. And different from folks just out for the summer. Nothing sucks that heat away like an autopsy, suits crawling through it, poking at it, chalk lines and emptied liquor cabinets.
    When the street stood as dark and quiet as it could, I flicked on my light
and slipped inside. The whole house leaned back and forth with me like we'd both drifted out into the bay. The shadows swayed too, with black curls hiding behind them. I shooed them away a bit with the light, peered up the stairs, tiptoed around the first floor in my loafers. The bedroom was a hollow cube of swiss cheese painted black and red and still with the faintest hint of gunpowder in the air. I flipped through the dresser drawers a bit and wondered what the hell I was expecting to find. A treasure map maybe, with a big X labelled Reggie Finks.
    Feathers covered the mattress where I sat, littered the floor, sometimes lifted up and drifted down the hallway on a draft, as if a ghost somewhere were assembling a chicken. I sat watching them cross through the beam of my light and listened to a Ford rolling down the wet street outside. I sat and imagined Fats jowling his way around this room two weeks ago, probably stuffing his face with a bearclaw. I sat and imagined an officer collecting Mark Lamb's teeth with a pair of tweezers. I sat and wondered if Maggie woke up after Reggie said, "Make it loud." I wondered if she'd even been there at all. The room was so torn up that it told me nothing. Just pick a story and run with it, it said.
    A thump came down the hallway where the feathers had been drifting, arm in arm with a hiss and a whisper. The floor still sloshed with the gold water in my head, but whispers were a new thing. And anyway, you gotta trust your ears in this business. I stood up carefully.
    As I floated in line with the feathers, down the hall toward the kitchen, timbre came into the whispers. Foreign voices but not real foreign. Fellas from that part of the city that kept itself cordoned off from the rest. Voices like fishy food or a minor key you never knew existed. "You gotta pool when I push, dummie."
    "I no poolin nowheres till you push!" they hissed, but softlike.
    "How can I push without a pool?" there was a thump and a curse. I floated round the corner like I belonged there. Started making a bit of noise and flicked on my flashlight. Two cats in jackets that didn't quite fit them, the sleeves wrinkled and lapels folded. Between them was a long cardboard box, half on the floor and a few slices from their claws on either side. They blinked their slitted eyes at the light and hissed at me.
    "You boys need a hand with that?" I said. Just like it was nothing.
    Another light flicked on from across the box, a skinny, twitchy fella dressed up in the blue, who'd come up the stairwell after them. "Who are you?" he said. My light made little pinions tick and shift across his badge. One of them touched his index finger alighted on a pistol grip.
    I didn't make a move to show the badge in my wallet. "Friend o' Fats down at 31st. He wanted me to take another poke at the old gal." The cats' ear hairs were all standing at attention, their backs arched under cheap suits. Those eyes never did my nerves any good.
    "Yeah? 31st, huh?"
    "That's right."
    Slim took off his cap and scratched at the exposed crew cut while his trigger finger stayed where it was. "Well, I ain't heard o' no Fats, but I'll radio down to 31."
    "That's fine." I felt cold inside. Like my whole torso was just a hunk of metal. "Mind if I have another look downstairs in the meanwhile?" We both knew there was no 31 to radio.
    His eyelid twitched. The two felines watched us with feline stairs. "Wwweeelll," the twitching moved to his nose and mouth, then off his face and down his right arm. "…lemme give a call down to the station first and sort out whatever needs to be--"
    I backed off and gave a fake glance at my watch. "You know, I got to be off shift in a bit, anyway. Not for wasting my time round this dump when dinner's on the table, you know?" Slim gave me a look that just kept on looking as I backed my way to the foyer and out the door. Neither of us asked any questions. But if you tell me that was a real flatfoot, I'll eat my dirty socks.

    I coulda lived a quieter life, sure thing. You might think I washed up on the shores of the Hudson, but truth is there was another life before this one. Anymore, I can't fathom how it worked. Something about drawing rooms, marble counter tops, and beautifully stagnant neighborhoods; saturated with 3 bedroom houses that promised a dream straight out of the box. Mail order happiness. Manicured gardens surrounded fresh coats of paint, slathered on eternally in the eternal longing for eternity.
    Dad looked at me one day through his tan wrinkles and his whiskey fog, right there in the kitchen. And there was something there in his eyes, under the mask. Anyway, whatever it was, I was gone before sunrise. How many years ago was that?
   
    Aside and atop of the disappearances, the fake cop and cohorts had me spooked. But I wanted to know what had been in that box even more. I could be a hardcase under the influence, for sure, so I headed back up mystery Maggie's way two nights later, after one solid day of greasing the wheels. Did the chemicals make the man that stood in that empty basement, was it the other way round, or some mix of both? Either way, it was true about the basement. They'd cleaned the place, scrubbed it, even shined the concrete floor till it looked like a mirror. Just like the filled in hole of 31st precinct, there was the feeling of someone up the ladder looking down on me with a smirk across his face.
    I wanted nothing more than to put the screws on floating head daddy Finks, but I didn't have the leverage. I had nothing, really. Some hopped up cats lugging boxes with a fake copper. A bedroom full of holes. A leggy bombshell, now missing, who liked to mail teeth. And Maggie. Where did Maggie go? That was starting to look like the hundred dollar question. At this point, I knew her only as the stiff's wife, so I headed to the morgue.
   
    As these things happen, 215 Nantucket wasn't far from the precinct's remains, so the folder led me straight down memory lane to the old morgue where I'd spent so many restless hours. By this time, I'd had enough of new faces, so I brought an old one with me. Barney knew his stuff and always had. Coroner, chemist, forensicist, alchemist, general miracle worker. I smuggled him right through the back door, and we got to work.
    "I don't need to tell you how I feel about this, do I?" he said.
    I lit a cigarette to keep the stench away. "You parked your sorry butt under the old train station to get away from places like this. Your days of fondling the dead were behind you, you'd hoped. What's more, you ain't keen on breaking the rules in public."
    He gave me a look through his bird-eyed glasses. "That's it exactly. More colorful than I might've put it."
    "I'm tellin ya, Barney. I'm a lonely old gumshoe with no friends that ain't disappeared neath a hundred tons of concrete. Much less ones with your powers of perception and accredited credentials." Flattery'd always gone a long way with Barney. He was reedy and weak-willed in both body and soul.
    "Let's get to work, shall we?" He snapped on his gloves and took a stool by the slab. I wheeled Mark Lamb from his coffin fridge to have a chat with us.
    "Cause of death, professor?"
    "Well, his head looks to have been shattered by gunfire."
    "I figured that part. Caught him on the shoulder, too." Mark, or the stiff rather, had blood like glass now, he was so cold. It coated the remains of his head and shoulder like growths of red crystal, but flaking off in little bits onto the sheet we'd laid out.
    Barney tapped with his fingers here and there, feeling, groping. "Pretty fresh needle mark on the arm there. And Jack?"
    I turned back around. "Yeah?" Hadn't seen a body like this in a while. Too much soft P.I. work, taking photos of cheating husbands, finding lost puppies.
    "Two of his toes are missing." He gave the remaining ones a flick.
    "I see that. Shot off?"
    He shook his head. "There are teeth marks at the base."
    "Scavenger? Maybe they had pets."
    "Doesn't look it to me. Too wide and flat."
    "What're you tellin me? People teeth?" He tapped his nose. I pulled the little tin I kept from my pocket and popped it open. Still two teeth in there.
    "I can't match it up with no instruments. But somebody bit this guy's toes off. Somebody with big teeth, too."
    "Gotchya." Smoking does wonders for your gag reflex. I exhaled up at the fluorescent light above me, a vision of moonlit chompers in the smoke. "Needle marks, Barn. Somebody drugged him?"
    "Or drew his blood. But he could've drugged himself for all I know."
    "Was he dead or alive at the time?" I was starting to get a narrative in my head, but it held together as well as a pile of bones.
    "It's about as fresh as the others. That's all I've got short of spiriting him away to my lab." I gave him a look at that, and he stared. "No. Oh no."
    "Oh yes. We're stealing a corpse. You got a home for him in your cave?"
    "I mean the freezer should work, but I'd have to find a way to hook back into the power grid."
    "You'll find a way, Barn. You always do." I leaned down and smoothed the stiff's hair. "Ya hear that? We're bustin' you outta here. Where's Maggie, Mark? She stick that needle in your arm? Maybe bite off your toe?" I put my ear down close to what was left of his mouth, but he didn't say anything. "Cool as a cucumber, this one."
    Barney was rubbing his temples. "You need help, Jack."
    "That's what I have you for. Gimme a hand, will ya? This sucker's heavy."

    We hailed the next cabby who looked trustworthy (my car had disappeared a week prior, along with a couple of days) and stuffed the body bag in the trunk, then took the scenic route to Barney's abandoned train station. It didn't make sense yet, but I had the makings of the thing every gumshoe wants: a trail to follow. I'd already nabbed Mark. Now just find Maggie, and somehow she'd lead me to Reggie, who could hopefully tell me why Ms. Paycheck had stopped answering my phone calls. Like I was collecting the lost cards from an old deck.

    Just like I said, Barn found a way. I left those prize teeth with him and hit the streets. It was time to step up my game shadowing Reggie Sr. Fat old bastard had given me nothing so far. In fact, It was time for some B & E. I had the hots for that rolodex on the 10th floor of 51st and Fink, and whatever else I could wrap my grubby fingers around. A drowning man'll grab anything. Which was good, cause I was gonna need to do some climbing. This late, every door on the street was clapped in iron.
    I tugged my hat low against the water in the air folding like silver ribbons and took a stroll over to the next block to duck down an alley. Patted my coat to make sure Knife was still in his pocket. No fire escape, but a dumpster and a drainpipe. A wet drainpipe. I'm not a light guy, but I got desperate fingers. I slip off my loafers and climb onto the dumpster. Deep breaths. A few of them. I can feel my stomach weighing me down. Every six feet or so there's a crack and some screws in the pipe I could latch onto, but who has arms that long? Ah well, let's get to it.
    I got a few feet in the air before falling. I'm not constructed for this. Probably no one is. Amber fuzz in my skull doesn't help. The dumpster rang hollow and let out a mongrel whine. I respond. "Oooohhhhh. My back." The whine got louder. "Hang on, gimme a sec."
    When I got the lid open I was greeted by a writhing, moaning trash bag. A pair of lips materialized against the plastic and began to speak. "Would you be so kind as to help me out of this receptacle?"
    "Sure thing, bud." I had nothin better to do.
    I recognized Hank from the late Fats's case file, even if he looked a bit worse for wear.
    "It's Henry, actually."
    He was waning in distinct phases, so close to nothing that he was almost invisible there in the alley with a banana peel in his shirt pocket, tufts of hair held together by gum wrappers. "So.." I said. "What are you doing in the trash?"
    "Not my choice, I assure you." He made some useless attempts to right his hair and tuck in his shirt. "I was thrown out. I don't suppose you're able to remove handcuffs?"
    "Not here, but if you tag along I'll bet I could work something out. How much do you know about Finks Waste?" I might not be able to climb a ten story building, but now I had a living(?) rolodex, with a literal chip on his shoulder.   

    The overgrown conservatory crammed into Barney's empty train station was starting to feel like home. The bars had closed by the time we made it back, but Barney was still bent over his lab table, the stiff laid out across the room. Now that the power was hooked up a few electric lamps buzzed at intervals. "Barney, this is Hank."
    "It's Henry, actually." They looked like two of a pair.
    "Yesyes. Sit over there, won't you?" Barney waved at a dark precipice towards the South end of the station while dialed into the jeweller's glass over his eye. Still in his handcuffs, Hank shuffled over to the cliff's edge and dangled his feet off of it. I wondered for a moment if he might jump, or even stumble into the fissure by accident. But he just sat there.
    I turned back to what Barney held in his tweezers, my prize tooth with the tiny ribbon removed. "Whadda we got professor?"
    "It's not easy with just a lone tooth to go on, but I think I can say that neither of these mystery mouths bit off Mr. Lamb's toes."
    "Anything else?"
    He looked up at me, still through the jeweller's lens. "Yes. Mark had a significant dose of heroin in his system at time of death. Hence the needle mark." A pause for me to process the words. "Did you capture a suspect?"
    My brain was getting slow. The buzz wearing off. "Oh, you mean Hank. Nah, I found 'im in the trash. You got a saw around here? I told him we'd cut off the handcuffs. Hank, get over here!" He did without crossing the intervening space. I set to with the hacksaw. "So I've been meaning to ask you--"
    "-why I was laying in the dumpster?"
    "Bullseye, Hank."
    "Henry. Not by choice, as I indicated. I believe they did poison me several hours prior to your fortuitous discovery."
    "Poisoned? They?"
    "For whatever reason, it did not take, did it?" From behind I couldn't see his mouth move, made him look like a wax sculpture perched on the table. Except he was swinging his legs. "I awoke in the trash to your knock."
    "My knock, yes. Of course."
    "I could not help but notice your associate's possession of the remnants of Mr. Lamb, there on the table."
    Barney took an interest for the first time. "You know him?"
    "Of course. I know all employees of Finks Waste, at least professionally. We had never spoken in person. He is somewhat less recognizable without his face."
    I'll be the first to admit I couldn't remember much of the past however many months, but enough to know I was overdue for something to go my way. I cut through the last scrap of metal. "I been turning somersaults trying to figure how Mark fits into this. And where his wife was when her husband bought it."
    "Margaret? Why don't you ask her? She'll be down at Scarponi's tomorrow night at 8 with Mr. Finks."
    I grabbed him by the cheeks and gave them a little tug. "God bless the devil that brought you here, Sir! Let's get that trash out of your hair and go have a drink, on Doris."

    Tomorrow night at 8 I was giving off a golden aura that funhouse-mirrored in the shine of the red and white tablecloths. The maitre d' waddled over to the podium and groped at the top edges for his pen. Saying things like 'Very good Sir' and 'Well then'. "May I take your coat?"
    "D'you have extra jackets somewheres? I forgot mine." I took off my overcoat for proof.
    "Jackets are not required, Sir. But I will be pleased to take your coat from you." He gave it a little tug.
    "Even so, Mac, you got any in the back? I got a hot date tonight."
    His eyes popped over the podium top and drilled a stare at my forehead. "But of course you do." A sigh. "Right this way, Sir."
    I kept my hat low as he took me through the dining room, scoping things out under the brim. The place was packed fortunately, plenty of background noise for me to hide behind. Patrons cropped up all around, with their forks stuck as flagpoles in big wads of spaghetti, marinara flying everywhere. Right in the middle was my quarry. Fathead Finks the Sr. and his beaux, I wouldn't doubt, Maggie Lamb, both looking happy as clams. I massaged the pliers in my pocket and wondered why I'd brought them.
    A closet of lost jackets languished by the kitchen door. The host made his excuses and faded away. I grabbed a jacket that was too small and hung it off my shoulders. Loosened my tie a bit, took one last pull from Doris's flask. Then marched out to the table, saucerous green lamps hovering halfway between the ceiling and floor. "Fathead, Margaret," I said. "Glad to see you both."
    "Excuse me?" said Maggie. Reggie Sr. squeezed his eyelids together a bit and searched my face and his memory.
    I whipped out the pliers. "Not at all. Excuse ME, Madam. This will only take a moment." Then I grabbed her cheeks and jammed the pliers in her mouth.
    "WWWaaaaaaaaaaa!!" She screamed. The sound fanned out and filled the restaurant and returned as a low-grade whine like the buzzing of a kicked beehive.
    "I just need a sample for the lab, Miss. Won't take a moment!" I gave a couple tugs, but the blasted thing was really in there. Maybe switch to a molar. The wait staff were piled on my shoulders dragging me to the ground while I held Maggie by the face and yanked. Meanwhile Reggie flapped his cheeks together in astonishment. "Just one!" I said. "Ya bit off Mark's toes, right? Just one. Just ONE!" There was a sharp crack and a slaughterhouse shriek and some blood, then the waiters had me out the front door to a waiting squad car on the wrong side of the glass.

    "When you said you were going, I figured maybe you had a plan?" Barney hugged his rib cage on the other side of the cell bars and couldn't stop shaking his head. "Something more subtle than what you came up with, at least..."
    "I figured something would come to me on the way."

    Thanks to the remainder of Barney's savings, I was back on the streets in a day and change. Wasn't my first night in the lockup but it may have been one of the strangest. It came to me that I hadn't really slept in a while. The one bench in the group cell was comfy enough. I conked out for a bit, months and years filtering in and out through the halflight. Visions. Nothing that stuck in my memory. Except Teeth. I kept one hand over my right coat pocket to keep the thieves out, left on Knife's handle, deterrence for a couple of scruffs who'd wound up in there with me looking like they were headed for sentencing. Me though, I was in and out, charges pending, nothing I had to worry about right now. Long as Maggie didn't want her tooth back, that is.
    Anyway, there was a subway waiting to take me back to the old filing cabinet of Vance Investigations. Me and Barney climbed the stairs and sauntered down the hall. "I got a tooth you know."
    "No kidding, Can't say I approve of your methods, but I'll give it a look..... Hope it'll be worth the lawsuit. This your place?"
    It was in the right spot, but that was all. Thick boards lay across my door frame, and under them a solid wall of concrete. Just like 31st Precinct, my foundation still there somewhere but lost to the ages. I raised a hand and its fingers. "Yep. Welcome. Step into my office." Barney wrung his hands. "I'm gonna have a look in the window."
    "How do you plan to do that?"
    I kicked the pane of glass out of the end of the hall and squeezed through the opening to the ledge beyond. Barney popped his bald head out: "You know you probably could have opened that?"
    I hugged the side of the building and watched the traffic on the street below stutter and shift. "Now ya tell me."
    Somehow he cranked his head all the way around to look up at me. "Also, should I not point out that your recent record of successfully climbing buildings doesn't breed confidence."
    "I'd be obliged if you didn't. I'm sober this time. Ish..."
    "Don't die. I just bailed you out. A risky investment, I admit."
    I crept around the corner without answering. My late office was the second to last of the hall, not a far creep. But the rain hadn't let up for the whole story, and everything was soaked in a sheen of neon that seemed to jink sideways around my shoe soles.
    Clutching a well-placed gargoyle near my head, I drew back my left foot and kicked in the window. A raincoat and hat were pretty good at keeping the shards of glass off when I toppled inside. I stood and walked to the center of the room just where the shaft of moon and streetlight cut off and the dark began. Turn in a circle. Barn's muffled voice just audible through the concrete blocks. "Anything in there?"
    "No," I said. "Nothing."

    At least the old Franklin station hadn't been filled in yet. It was as dank and homely as ever, Barney's tools and equipment scattered about, the brand new corpse fridge humming softly, and Hank scribbling furiously in a ledger while his legs dangled from a stool. They hadn't gotten to it yet, whoever They were.
    Hank looked up briefly from his notes. "Mr. Vance, I'd like to express my most sincerest regrets that information provided to you by me has resulted in your albeit temporary incarceration at the hands of the authorities. It was not of course my intention for such events to have befallen you, especially in light of your recent kindness in delivering me from such unfortunate circumstances the other night."
    "No worries, Hank." He sighed for some reason. "It was my own doing really."
    As it turned out Maggie's fresh tooth wasn't much help in Barn matching up the grooves in Mark's frozen footflesh. Anyway, I'd had a vision of moonlit chompers that tickled a memory or a dream that struck me as the true culprit's, if only I could see who they belonged to. I could only see them grinning in the dark, stained with red.
    On top of an old cabinet stood a bunsen burner next to the be-ribboned canine I'd received in the mail what seemed like ages ago, and now my one real possession left in the world. Barney stood next to me staring at it, or maybe just waiting for me to move so he could get in the drawer. "It's gotta be hers," I said.
    "Whose?"
    "Who else's? Hers. A slate-black bombshell."
    Barn gave his noggin a good scratch. "Maaayybe I shouldn't've gone so long without bringing this up, but..... you don't make sense anymore."
    I wasn't listening. "C'mon Hank, how do you cross-reference a phone number in this day and age?"
    "You're looking for a name?"
    "I got a name that I made up, what I want is an address for this number that I got no name for."
    Hank shared a pointless look with Barney. "It should be relatively trivial, Mr. Vance to locate an address for your phone number. I must admit to being somewhat puzzled that you have not attempted this on your own given your speciality?"
    "My normal avenue of research is buried under several tons of concrete right now. And I can't trust the rest." I mined around in a drawer till I hit some liquid gold.
    "Ah yes," he said. "You're referring to 31st precinct." He said it and then he just clammed up tight. My fingers froze.
    "....Brilliant. Then I've got the golden ticket right here in my pocket." I deposited that special tooth right in next to the phone number she'd given me but never answered and dragged my two accomplices back to the surface with me.

    "Where's my flash flask, Jack?" Doris was her usual self, but resembling moreso a mummy wrapped up in cigarette smoke.
    "You'll get it back when I find my silver bullet." Her irises bugged out like a handful of razor blades. "I mean, it's not like that, really. Truth is the fuzz nabbed it yesterday."
    The razors receded and she started to fade again. "You're the one fading. You used to be that fuzz, Officer Vance."
    The joe was extra bitter today. "Right on the city's nose, I know. A brighter dumber man than I am now." She had subsumed into her own wrinkles before I could finish my reverie.
    "Mr. Vance," included Hank, "'twas as trivial as indicated to locate the Ms. Paycheck of whom you spoke, though a less incorrect moniker might have eased my search considerably."
    "What's that Hank?"
    He let a bit of steam out from under his eyelids deflating ever so slightly. I couldn't get the image of his hair full of trash out of my head. "In short, your mystery woman rents at this uptown address." He slid it across the table to me with a look. Who was this little guy? A question for later maybe. Right now I was going to see the Tooth Lady.
    "Maybe we should tag along," said Barney with a mouthful of home fries. "...to talk you out of assaulting any more women."

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Lights flickered and bounced off the white walls, floor, and ceiling of the little cubicle, if you could call it that. It was sealed to the outside, an office tomb. He felt the tie around his neck like the collar of a straightjacket, though he wasn't aware of whether or not straightjackets had collars, though if they did they would surely be something like his tie. Even though it was an entirely different color, he associated it very strongly with the eggshell dullness of the surrounding walls. Inane ramblings scrolled down his monitor, things that passed for emotion or politics. In the back of his mind, was a bear who'd been taught to sit in chairs and hold his teacups with the pinky out. To order wine at only the most brick-walled restaurants, their ceilings exposed on fake pipes and rafters to exhume another time from the grave in which they had themselves placed it. This bear in his mind drank coffee and filed reports and smiled at people on the street, while in the back of ITS mind was a fish who'd been shown how to keep his gills closed and fit into a pair of slacks without tracking his fishness on the carpets. A fish at his desk in which he kept a revolver which he didn't know how to use and didn't possess any ammunition for but which nevertheless made him feel as if the potential for something was there. It had been manufactured partially by a declawed badger whose purpose in life was to inspect the cylinders, and make sure they were to specification before loading each into a styrofoam-packed box. In the back of this badger's mind was the faint memory of a pigeon who had the faint memory of having raised his scimitar to the sound of thundering cannon atop a hill in some other lifetime. He did this with fingers, having been a lemur and not a pigeon at all; and one with a very fine hat which he had studied for years to keep clear of all the detritus which seemed to stick to it, each time staring at his pocket watch and seeing the seconds of detritus-cleaning tick by while thinking only of the stream in the back of his mind by which he had sat when he was a lion; devouring, sleeping, mating and dying by no schedule but his fancy. Afraid, hungry, uncomprehending and wondrous.