Robert Coover - Noir

Cheered by all this heavy thinking, you crossed over to McGinty’s, where you found Cueball alone at table, peering down the length of his cue the way he used to peer down rifle barrels, his eyes so close together they seemed almost to join at the bridge of his sharp narrow nose, crossing into each other as they took aim. He wasn’t always Cueball. He was once a famous hit man named Kubinsky, but he changed his name while doing time when nature changed his hair style, leaving him with a shiny white dome like one of these wigless manikins. About as much emotion in him, too. Give him a pistol, he’d somehow shoot himself in the elbow, but put a rifle in his hands and the flies on the wall ducked and shielded their eye facets. No telling how many poor suckers he’d iced before his prison vocational retraining. When he was still Kubinsky and had hair, it was said he worked on occasion for Mister Big and you asked him what he knew about the man. You were convinced that the elusive Big had something to do with the killing of the widow and probably the disappearance of the body, too, in spite of what Blanche said. Yeah, I done some jobs for him, I think they were for him, Cueball said, potting three balls with one stroke, but I never seen him. There was a bunch of guys running around town saying they was Mister Big, but none of them really was, none I met. He was quietly clearing the table on his own, there being few who dared challenge him. Cueball, like most professional killers, was a loner. No male friends and, when in need, he hung out mostly with working girls, partnered up with none of them. Except one.

YOU KNOW THE STORY BECAUSE KUBINSKY HIRED YOU to find and tail the girl. In Kubinsky’s case it wasn’t just the fee. He was a scary client and refusing him in those days was a kind of suicide. The chick was a dishy but simple taxi dancer named Dolly, who confused the guys she danced with by falling passionately in and out of love with each of them from dance to dance, resulting in a lot of consequential mayhem between suitors. Kubinsky was not a dancer, he literally had two left feet, the little toe on his flat archless right bigger than the big; this was not how they met. He was hired by a smalltime racketeer named Marko, one of her baffled lovers, to kill her. Marko was instructed to walk her out onto the street for a smoke between dances and he could have the pleasure of watching her drop at his feet. When Kubinsky got her in his sights, however, he was for the first time in his life utterly and hopelessly smitten. He was not confused. He knew exactly what he wanted. It was Marko took the hit just as he was fitting the fag he’d lit from his own into Dolly’s lips, a cruel expectant smirk on his mug.

This ruthless cold-blooded torpedo stunned by love was a sight to see. You’d only heard about lovers drooling. Kubinsky drooled. He panted. His eyes lost focus, the pupils floating haphazardly away from the bridge of his nose. His stony white face was puffy and flushed. He stumbled when he walked, bumped into things. He wept, he snuffled, he dribbled at the crotch. You witnessed this transformation because he turned up at your office one morning, offering you a bag of money and lifetime impunity from a bump-off if you would find the missing Dolly for him and tell him what she was doing. After knocking off Marko, he’d put the rush on her immediately, walking onto the dance floor and shoving her current partner aside, which naturally impressed her, but since he was no dancer, it was not easy for Dolly to love him, open to the general idea though she always was. He’d bought up every dance night after night and did his best to learn the two-step, and finally she did seem to fall for him, enough anyway to go on a two-step tour of several exotic cities with him until the money ran out and Kubinsky had to come back and take on more contracts to pay for his love life.

The cop who had been assigned the Marko murder case, however, was waiting for her. He had figured out that to get what he wanted from her it was best if she was in love with him, which simply meant dancing with her. He booked one entire night when Kubinsky was out working and took her home with him, dancing all the way. Or, rather, as you soon learned, to a rented room across town. After a couple of days, his wife reported him missing. Probably he’d forgotten what it was he’d wanted to know. You submitted your report. Kubinsky returned, asked for all copies, plus negatives of the damning photos and your notebooks. His eyes were crowding the bridge of his nose once more, though redder than usual. The pallor was back. His rifle case was in hand. He seemed to be a doing a melancholic little two-step there in the doorway. He said he planned to eat the barrel of his rifle, but first he had some business to attend to. Crossing Kubinsky could be lethal, but you’d had something going with Dolly for a dance or two yourself, and wanted to know she was still there for a dime. Besides, Kubinsky was a man of his word; you figured he’d honor his warranty. You tipped the cops.

Kubinsky was nabbed before the killing, which no doubt embittered him, but it saved him from the chair. The cop changed his name and disappeared. So did Dolly. Maybe they’re dancing together yet. Did Cueball né Kubinsky ever figure out who ratted on him? Maybe. But prison transformed him. Maybe it was the saltpeter in his diet. Most likely it was his new obsession. Without a rifle at hand, he picked up a cue stick in the prison rec room and the rest is poolhall history.

CUEBALL HAD A STRAIGHT SHOT ON THE SIX-BALL INTO the corner, but he chose instead to go for a double bank, clipping the six from behind the eight just enough to send it skidding into the same corner, the cue ball continuing up the table and nudging the seven-ball into a side pocket. You wondered if he ever attempted any ricochet hits that way. Two for the price of one. I heard about a floating body, Cuby. You hear anything?

Word’s getting around you’re shit luck on a smelly fork, Noir.

That scare you, Cuby?

He shrugged, chalking up. It’ll cost you.

Here’s what I got. You emptied out your pockets onto the green nap.

Down at the docks, he said. Pier four. Somebody’s boat. Won’t come cheap. Better reload before you go down there.

YOU’RE HUNGRY, WISH YOU HADN’T POLISHED OFF Flame’s sandwiches and whiskey so fast. You search the women’s dress shop basement for provisions, poking through the wardrobes, disassembling some of the manikins. Sorry, sweetheart, I’m going to have to take your head off, you won’t need it. You feel like some kind of hardnosed gynecological sawbones, watched by a widow rigid with disapproval. You find hollow limbs and heads and molded bellybottoms full of stash left behind by the smugglers — bags and bricks of narcotics, stolen jewels, watches, banded stacks of bills no doubt from bank heists — but nothing to eat. Money’s sometimes called lettuce; you try it, it’s not lettuce. You pick up a loose forearm with a screw at the elbow end for attachment to the rest of the arm, and use it to pull the cork on one of the bottles of wine in your trench pockets. They’re both from some country you’ve never heard of called Bordox. Sounds like an antacid or a cleansing agent. Tastes like one, too. You shake the bottle. It’s full of gunk. The stuff’s well past it. You like your wine straight from the grape. You can add the alcohol yourself. But you’re hungry and thirsty and it goes down easily, straight from the neck. You strip the bride and use her white wedding gown as a blanket, tip the widow to the floor and cuddle up beside her under it, the forest of plastic bodies towering above you.