Джон Краули - New Haven Noir

“It says here bludgeoned to death with a bronze bust—” I began.

“Of Melville,” she interrupted flatly.

I liked the flatness. “—of Herman Melville. Yesterday afternoon. I mean, they’re guesstimating, I’m sure.”

“How are you sure?”

This was the embarrassing part. “I’m, like, I mean... I’m a private investigator. Custody, corporate stuff. Unfit parents, paranoid bosses. Not murder. I mean, I’m interested, but—”

“You’re a private eye?” Her eyes got warm and swimmy. “That’s cool.”

I liked that too. It didn’t feel cool. It felt pathetic. It felt hand-me-down, which it was. I have a PhD in psychology and I had a job at Wesleyan and then I made a series of errors in judgment (sexual, alcoholic, and vehicular) and did not get tenure. Worse than that, but let’s stick to the essentials. My Uncle Luis saw me through the bad times and, having used me to run his office and all googling since I was twelve, he died and left me Luis Gutierrez Private Investigations. So, boom. I had an office and a license and a copier from the eighties, and every once in a while people who had known my uncle called me for a job. Once in a while is the important phrase here. I needed an in with the police. I needed my fifteen minutes. I needed to pay my rent.

She held her phone to mine and we exchanged details. Then her phone beeped a reminder and she jumped up. “Jesus, that’s all I need. Late for my own class. Allison Marx.”

“Dell Chandler,” I mumbled.

I didn’t see her for a week. I made myself call three divorce lawyers about possible work, in a fast-paced game of Who’s the Better Bottom-Feeder? I let a nervous young wife know that her suspicions about her husband were well founded (that what he’d done to her predecessor, he was now doing to her) and I sent her to a better lawyer than the ones who used me. I played gin with Big Betty, making enough money to pay for one of her pulled pork platters, and I followed the Bullfinch case the way I read Travel and Leisure : glamorous places I wanted to go and delightful experiences I wanted to have (in this case, a regionally famous homicide investigation) — but couldn’t. I snooped around about Oliver Bullfinch, in case I could find a tidbit to bring to the police and worm my way into the investigation. I heard about ancient and deep office ressentiments , classic misogyny, garden-variety racism, and no sexual intrigue at all. He must have been one of the few old men, gay or straight, who had never laid a paw, even lightly, on an undergraduate in all Yale’s history. He was largely retired, with a dead wife, no kids — and however terrible his feuds may have been, most of the people who might have killed him were already dead and those who were alive were pretty firmly in the life of the mind, not the body. The New Haven Register stayed on it, sharing every police crumb with me. People’s alibis were intact. For two days, there was some steam over the Vietnamese woman on the cleaning staff who found his body, but once the police (and then the Register ) had interviewed her 4'10" self and were persuaded that she had had no personal contact with Oliver Bullfinch, ever, things settled down.

I had no mouse to lay at the feet of New Haven’s finest.

“Hi. Here you go.” Allison bumped into me, spilling the latte she was trying to hand me. She dropped her scone and I caught it. “How’s the private-eye biz? Any suspects?”

“It’s not my case. Of course. But it is interesting.”

“That’s a little cold, considering an actual person is dead.” She lowered her voice. “I went to the funeral. You know who wasn’t there? Seriously?”

I asked who, seriously, and she got coy and I got persuasive and, after pulling apart her scone, she sighed and said, “It probably doesn’t even mean anything, but... Daniel Markham.”

She told me all about Daniel Markham, rising star in the English department. She couldn’t stop telling me. Her face went into a spasm when she said his name. I told her that every woman had one man like that, the one who makes us look crazy, and I told her an edited version of mine. She blushed for me and laughed. We ate three scones and we had two lattes and I thought, there is nothing like a good talk with a good woman to make you not miss men so much.

“He had a nasty temper and they had huge fights in the department meetings. You could investigate,” she said. “The police’ll probably bungle it. Years ago, there was that poor girl who got stabbed to death in the middle of Edgehill Road. They never found her killer.” She stretched in the chair, her arms grabbing the edge of her seat. Strong, defined arms and short, muscular legs.

“You are in great shape. Yoga? Pilates?”

She couldn’t be a dancer; no one could go through years of dance class and still move like a puppet with tangled strings.

“I do Krav Maga.”

“Really?”

She jumped up and jabbed her right hand toward my face, then moved to my chest and swung another fist to my face, stopping short. I tried not to flinch when she whipped her right leg up and out and rested her heel on my sternum. She smiled a real and satisfied smile.

“It’s all about threat neutralization. All women should take it. I love it. I go to class six days a week. My teacher says I’ve made great progress. I’m taking the test for my black belt in two weeks.”

Her phone beeped again and she ran to her bike, waving.

“Be careful,” I called out to her.

I put my feet up in my office, also lately, sadly, my home. A shitbox room in a shitbox building at the ass end of Whalley Avenue, between Big Betty’s Bar-B-Q and Ahmed and Paula’s Groceries. Allison texted me: Dinner with English Dept tonight. Wanna be my date & investigate? I appreciated the offer. I didn’t have any plans. Nothing in my bank account. One frozen waffle in the freezer. I texted back: Ready to go. Pick me up where? She texted back: I know where you live. Hehe.

I didn’t want her to see my office home. I liked how she thought of me. I ran down when she leaned on the horn, before Betty could tell her to pipe down or lose her windshield. Allison went into drive with a painful crunch and we jerked forward and stalled. A bottle of cheap white wine rolled out under my feet. Other drivers yelled at us, the nicest remark being, “Learn to drive, ya fucking blind snowflake!”

“That’s for the Freemans. Our hosts.”

“Great. I didn’t bring anything. I hope this isn’t too much out of your way.” I didn’t want to upset her. She was gripping the wheel so tightly, little drops of water slid down the steering wheel.

We made our way up Whalley, toward Yale. She was an unusual and terrifying driver: slow, blind, and anxious. At twenty-two miles per hour, we rolled through stop signs and red lights, brushed against sidewalks, and straddled the double yellow line all the way to Freemans’ house.

Since she couldn’t take her eyes off the road, and I couldn’t bear to watch our near misses, I studied Allison. She looked the way she did when we first met: Not glamorous. Purplish-brown circles under the eyes, premature creases on her eyelids, a little eczema in front of the ear closest to me. She wore a baggy dark-brown dress, with little gray and yellow flowers, which was too big for her, as well as being fugly. The neckline kept slipping, revealing sensible white bra straps and knobby yellow shoulders. How could anyone stand to go through life with all their waifish vulnerability hanging out, for all the world to see and step on? I resisted the urge to fix her dress.

“So, is their house far?”

“St. Ronan’s. We’re almost...” The effort of answering distracted her and she swerved toward a parked car.