Curt Colbert - Seattle Noir

A broken bell sounded as I used my knee to separate the warped door from the frame. The door came loose, shaking in my hand like a palsy patient as I looked around the place. Awash with piles of brightly colored rugs, folded back, strewn this way and that, the space smelled of dust and desperation. Movement at the back of the room lifted my eyes.

He was a short little guy, bald as an egg and shaped like one, seated at an ancient desk, up to his elbows in paperwork; he glanced up, immediately made me as a noncustomer, and went back to his paper shuffling. I ambled along the central aisle.

“You Malloy?” he asked, without looking at me.

I said I was. He sat back in the chair. His hard little eyes ran over me like ants.

“You don’t look like a private eye.”

“It’s a cross to bear.”

He considered the matter for a long moment before heaving himself to his feet and retracing my steps back to the front door, where he flicked the lock, flipped the sign to read CLOSED , and pulled the shade to the bottom of the glass panel. He fished a mottled handkerchief from his pants pocket and wiped his hands as he waddled back my way. I held my ground. He walked around me.

“I’ve got a problem,” he said.

“That’s what you said on the phone.”

He dabbed at his wet lips with the hankie. I looked away.

“My wife’s trying to poison me.”

I shrugged. “Eat out.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

He repocketed the hankie.

“I need her to stop.”

“I don’t do muscle work.”

He laughed.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“You’ll see.”

“Probably not,” I said.

Somebody tried the front door, gave it a frustrated rattle, and stalked off.

He sensed I was losing interest and reached into his other pants pocket.

He waved a wad of cash, two full inches of greenbacks, bundled both ways by a red rubber band. “I’ve got $2,500 here for somebody can get her to stop.”

I tried to stay calm. Twenty-five hundred would solve a lot of my present problems… food and rent for instance. “Why me?” I asked.

“They say you’re a hard guy.”

“They who?”

“Fella I know.”

I thought it over. “How do you know she’s trying to poison you.”

“My doctor says so. He says she’s been trying to poison me little by little over the past few months.” He let his hands fall to his side with a slap. “Some kind of algicide he thinks.”

My eyes followed the wad as he dropped it on the desk. “Call the cops.”

“I can’t. She’s my wife.”

“Get a divorce.”

“I can’t.”

I made a rude noise with my lips. “Sure you can.” I waved a hand in the air. “Even if you needed cause… which you don’t anymore… I’m pretty sure poisoning would qualify as irreconcilable differences.”

He made a face. “I’m orthodox. My religion doesn’t allow for divorce.” He caught me ogling the money. “All you gotta do is get her to stop.” He made the Boys Scouts’ honor sign, which really made me nervous. “My friend says you can be very persuasive.”

“Not to mention this is a community property state.”

His face went bland and blank as a cabbage. “Not to mention,” he said.

“And all I’ve got to do is get her to stop.”

“That’s it.”

I held out my hand. We each cast a glance at the wad on the desk.

“Later,” he said. “After I’m-”

“Now,” I countered. “I don’t want to have to come back here.”

“And if you can’t pull it off?”

“Your buddy was right. I can be very persuasive.”

He hesitated, took stock of me again, and then picked up the money, bounced it twice in his palm, and dropped it onto the desktop. He of little faith.

“Come see me when you get it done,” he said, and went back to the paperwork.

The icy rain marched across the pavement like ranks of silver soldiers. I stood in the doorway of a used furniture joint directly across the street from the address he’d given me. I fondled my pocket imagining the wad of bills weighing heavy on my hip and smiled as wide as a guy who was two months behind on his rent could manage. It was a sandwich joint, half a dozen tables and a stand-up counter, big saltwater fish tank along the north wall. The Gnu Deli Delhi. Cute. Real cute.

I’d made a quick pass an hour ago. The place was jammed.

The sign on the door said they were only open for breakfast and lunch and closed at 3. I’d decided to wait it out. It was 3:10 and the place had cleared except for the pair of girls who’d been working the counter. The sight of the girls shrugging themselves into their raincoats sent me hustling across the rain-slick street. Halfway across, squinting through the hiss and mist of afternoon traffic, I saw her for the first time, coming out from what must have been an office somewhere behind the counter, big ring of keys in her right hand, holding the door open long enough for the girls to slip out and my toe to slip in.

She looked me over like a lunch menu. “You want that foot to go home with the other one, you’ll move it.”

We were nose to nose through the crack in the door, which made her over six feet tall. Big and brassy, showing a half acre of bony chest and a thick tangle of red hair held at bay by an enormous tortoise shell clip. Hard as I tried, I couldn’t work up a picture of them as a couple.

“I need to have a word with you.”

She leaned against the door. My shoe started to fold.

“Whatever you’re selling…”

“Your husband sent me.”

It was hard to describe the way her lips moved, somewhere between a smile and a sneer… a snile maybe. She eased off on the door. “Get out of here.”

“He’s been missing you,” I tried.

“You know what my husband’s missing?”

“What’s that?”

She smirked. “A stepladder and delusions of grandeur.”

“He says you’re trying to poison him.”

She eased off on the door. My shoe unfolded. “What if I am?”

Took me a second to recover my jaw. “You’re not even gonna deny it?”

“Why should I? The world would be a better place without that little worm.”

She turned and walked back into the restaurant, leaving me standing in the doorway as the steady rain beat itself to death on the awning. I stepped inside and closed the door behind me.

She skirted the counter and made her way back by the meat slicer. “I asked him for a get .” She switched the slicer on. “He laughed in my face.” She could tell I was confused. “A get’s an orthodox Jewish divorce.”

“So? Get going. Get lost. Get down the road. No need to kill the guy.”

“And give up everything? My business… my children… my standing in the community.” She waved the whole idea off. “Not a chance. I’d be an outcast, a pariah.” She shook her head slowly. I opened my mouth but she cut me off. “If I was trying to kill that maggot, he’d be long dead.”

She pulled what appeared to be a roast beef from the refrigerated display case and plopped it down onto the slicer. I watched as she made an adjustment and began to slice.

“He says you’ve been feeding him an algicide or something.”

She glanced up at the big fish tank and smiled. “I was just trying to get his attention.” She returned the meat to the case. “I figured a couple of days in the can might help him see his way clear.” She produced a block of cheese, separated several slices. “Besides…” she said, gesturing at the tank, “the fish don’t seem to mind that stuff at all.”

“So you figured…”

She took a bite from the sandwich and grinned again. “I figured what was good for pond scum was probably good for my husband.”