WATCHING THE RED EYE
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Hammett would've come up with a better name. Chandler, too. Hell, just about anyone.
But when the mystery guy who looked more like Neil than anyone cared to admit started hanging out in Film Noir and Foreign, on off nights, near or right after sundown, that was the name that stuck. Mystery Guy.
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Actually, it all started with the pizza no one wanted. Sal's was closed for renovation or fumigation, or maybe Sal himself had finally had his reckoning with the guys from either Immigration or the IRS. In any case, Sal's was closed, and the pizza was from Domino's, but the guys had a coupon, which was good because Tuesday was always a slow day (those pricks at Media Giant had their Twofer Tuesdays, and that pretty much sucked all the business away from Gumshoe Video for the day, right there), so the guys— that being Neil and Lucien— they loaded the pie with everything but hubcaps and had it delivered.
So this skinny kid from Domino's brought the pizza, right? And it was almost still hot, because that new heat-retaining cardboard is the cat's pajamas. Lucien was first under the hood, and he was rolling piece one like a burrito so as to keep the grease off the backstock inventory sheets from some sap selling stock from St. Paul, and that's when this guy came up to the counter with a copy of A History of Violence and a cheap thirty-three and said, "Give me all the money."
Neil was by the door, eyeballing his pocket change and a couple of limp dollar bills and wondering if maybe the Domino's kid had managed to stiff him for double the tip. Lucien didn't look up from the inventory sheets. He waved his piece of pizza under the guy's chin— dismissively, he waved it, nonchalantly, like Bette Davis giving Herbert Marshall the breeze with a cigarette in The Letter— and said, "From Suriname, too?"
"What the fuck?" said the guy with the gun.
"Yep." Lucien was maybe up to "H" on that inventory list from St. Paul. He took a bite of pizza. He winced— come on, honestly, name one person who doesn't at least half-choke on Domino's— and said, "If you say you want all the money, I'll assume you mean from every country on Earth. Which includes Suriname. Which is a tall order, my friend, because the current exchange rate is—"
About that time the guy with the gun put the barrel of that cheap thirty-three in Lucien's left nostril and hoisted. When they were eye to eye, him and Lucien, the guy said, "Give me. All. The fucking. Money."
"Holy shit." Lucien was looking cross-eyed at the barrel. He wore these heavy black-frame glasses, and he looked like he mugged Peter Sellers in 1965 and stole his whole face. But he must have earned his merit badge in Morse Threat somewhere along the line, too, because he put down the pizza and popped the cash drawer on the old high-top National. Neil, whose place Gumshoe was, was stuck to the floor right inside the doorway. Like someone had replaced the soles of his sneakers with used chewing gum. He couldn't move. The Domino's guy was gone. It was nearly summer, so it was still light out even coming up on seven o' clock. There was sunlight coming through the front window, and it was hot on his right shoulder. There were dust motes floating in it. The light, not Neil's shoulder. The guy with the gun reached across the counter for the money in the till. He took the barrel of the gun out of Lucien's nostril when he did.
That's when Mystery Guy stabbed him.
Came gliding up out of the Foreign section smooth as a shark. Like his feet weren't even touching the floor. Small guy, slender. But you could tell: he could handle himself. Kind of like Alan Ladd, if Alan Ladd had dark hair and that hair needed a cut. Guy usually hovered near La Belle Noiseuse, but not like he was thinking Should I just pop into the back room for the real thing, the hardcore triple-X, or should I make 'em think I'm arty, even though this does essentially boil down to Emmanuelle Beart naked as a jaybird for three hours?, not like that: he spent time in the other sections, too, usually when there were other customers around. But he never rented anything. Just hovered. Read the backs of boxes. Watched the store. Always wore a suit. Nothing flashy, but always dressed. No tie, dress shirt open at the throat. Calm and casual. Calm and casual without once seeming like he was trying to come off as calm and casual. Nothing like Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity.
He was calm and casual when he stabbed the goon.
The goon was probably the last one to know. He looked past Lucien's shoulder like he was going to try an old-style "Look—!"-and-grab. Like he was trying to read the titles on the the tapes in the storage cases on the shelves behind the till. He set the gun down. The cylinder made a really soft metallic "thunk" on the glass counter-top. He put his hands palm-down, one on each side of the thirty-three, and fell over.
Mystery Guy was already putting away his knife. Wasn't a folder. Short, narrow blade, matte-black. He'd stuck the blade in the goon's back, just under his left-side ribs. He bent and wiped the blade on the goon's spotty t-shirt. He had a sheath for the knife under his jacket, under his left arm, strapped to his side. Meanwhile, Lucien was reaching for the gun. Tentatively. Not like he was going to try to shoot Mystery Guy with it, more like he couldn't believe it was really there.
"Don't touch that," said Mystery Guy, spotting where Lucien's hand was reaching. Cool as a melon. He straightened the lapels of his suit jacket and added: "Call the police."
He passed Neil on his way out. There was something funny about him, Neil thought. Not just HOLY FUCKING SHIT HE JUST STABBED A GUY IN MY STORE funny. Couldn't put his finger on it. Maybe because he was still frozen to the spot. His metaphorical finger wasn't working all that well. Neither was his brain. Mystery Guy walked past him, out the door, rounded the corner heading east, and, like any Mystery Guy worth his salt, disappeared.
"You assholes ordered a pizza?" In the door, Jon, big guy, sandy-haired, suddenly appeared. Must've come from the direction opposite the one Mystery Guy went. He pushed in past Neil. Walked to the counter, where Lucien was kind of staring slack-jawed at some middle-distance something. Opened the pizza box and took a slice. Looked down. "Man," he said, "is it zombie night already? I must've lost a day." He poked the dead goon with the toe of his Vans. "Jesus, that's realistic. I thought zombie night was Thursday."
"Zombie night is Thursday," said Lucien, focusing in. "Don't be an idiot. Does that look like a zombie to you? Is he moving? Is he lurching? Is he showing latent evidence of early or advanced physical decomposition? Is he—"
"Whoa, there, Einstein." Jon took a bite of pizza and frowned. "There's a gun on the counter."
"No shit," said Lucien.
"Uh, don't touch that." Neil's feet unfroze. He locked the door and flipped the window sign CLOSED-side-out. "Please don't touch that." He eased his way to the front counter and felt his way along behind it, like the store was a ship and that ship was listing.
"That is a dead man." Jon, still chewing, moved his frown from the gun to the goon. He also moved his foot about a foot farther away from the goon's back. "What the hell is going on?"
"He tried to hold us up." Neil pawed back between the card files and the tape splicer, looking for the handset to the front-desk phone. "You know that guy who's been hanging out in Foreign and Noir?"
"That little creep in the suits?"
"Yeah. He stabbed him."
"No shit."
"No shit." Neil found the phone between a maquette of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and a stack of vintage Cinefantastiques. With his thumb a second away from the second "1" in "911," he watched Lucien open the Domino's box. "Umm, maybe the police will want that as evidence."
"Fuck the cops." Lucien defiantly took another slice.
"Yeah— fuck 'em." Jon reached for a second slice of his own. About then, he finally got around to reading the writing on the box. "No: fuck this. Who the hell ordered Domino's?"
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It was, Neil thought much later, a pretty quiet night, all things considered. Only three little details got in the way. One: that goon who got killed in the store. Granted, he'd been trying to rob Lucien at gunpoint, and once word got out, it'd probably be great for business on gangster night, but still. Two— and this was the weird one, the one that really got Neil kind of spooked— was what Lucien said, or didn't say, when the cops asked him for a description of Mystery Guy, and for a second Lucien looked long and hard at Neil without saying anything at all, just before he said, "Like the love-child of Peter Lorre and Alan Ladd, if Alan Ladd had dark hair and went nowhere but Great Clips," and the cops chalked it up to shock and let it drop. And the third thing, which Neil, in retrospect, should have seen coming, only he was kind of in shock, too, was later, when Lucien and Jon had gone home, and Neil, who was locking tomorrow morning's change in the office before shutting up for the night, thought he heard the front door open and close, even though he was about ninety percent sure he'd had it locked, and then something heavy hit him in the back of the head and the world went black. Because, honestly, now that he was on the radar, in a manner of speaking, now that he'd made himself visible by stabbing the goon, tonight was really the only night Mystery Guy could make a move.
Right?
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When Neil came to, he was upside down. He was hanging from the ceiling fan in his office by a rope around his ankles. His hands were tied behind his back. He was stripped down to his underwear. And the world was slowly spinning backwards.
Mystery Guy was walking counter to the motion of the fan. He was looking down at Neil's face with eyes like two blue ice-chips.
"Welcome to the party, Mr. Lewis," he said. "A Woman's Face. Ring any bells?"
Neil had the uncomfortable sense that he was joining a conversation already in progress.
Joan Crawford. Conrad Veidt. Cukor directing. "Satan in a tuxedo," Veidt had said of his part. Went out four, five times in the past six weeks. Always to the same person. Always the same name on the slip. A Woman's Face. A woman's name—
"Holy shit," Neil said. "You're Lisa's boyfriend."
"Whose boyfriend, Neil?"
"Miss—" He stopped. He couldn't think. The blood was starting to boom in his skull. His tonsils felt like phone poles stuffed in his throat. All he could see was a pile of rental slips. Titles. Most of them for MGM or RKO mellers, late thirties, early forties. Grant, Hepburn. More Crawford. Crawford and Gable. Her name wasn't Crawford. Even less was it Gable. She had a million-watt smile, romance-novel-auburn hair that even curled softly, too, down around her shoulders, and legs that went all the way—
"Reisert's—?"
"That's better."
Thank God. But, hell, Neil's skull felt like it was going to burst, and he could practically smell oil burning overhead. Or overfoot. "This is getting—Would you shut off the fan? Please? It's a Hunter; it was really expensive; the motor's going to fry—"
"I think you have more important things to think about, Neil," said Lisa Reisert's boyfriend.
And with that he took out the knife.
The knife he'd used when he stabbed the goon. Back when he was Mystery Guy.
Neil, inverted, minnow-twisted sideways at the shoulders, trying to keep an eye on that matte-black blade as he rotated. He stammered in lieu of fainting outright: "Wha— wha— what— Stop. What are you doing—?"
"I'll ask the questions, Neil. May I ask the questions, Neil?"
"You just said you were— Yes. Yes, you may ask the questions, Neil. I mean— Oh, shit—"
"Thank you. One: describe in fifty words or less your personal philosophy regarding flirting with one's customers."
"That's a statement."
Mystery Guy touched the tip of the knife daintily to the tip of Neil's nose. "It's a question."
"It's a question." Neil looked cross-eyed at the knife-tip. "My mi-mi-mistake."
Mystery Guy smiled at him. Patiently, almost. "And so: continue."
What the hell could he say? He'd known that Lisa Reisert had a boyfriend— no, he couldn't say it like that, or that knife would end up stuck where he'd just as soon it wasn't. No: she'd told him about her fiance, and how his job took him way out of town, and some nights, just some, when the apartment got lonely, she'd stop off at Gumshoe after work and join the gang— Neil, Lucien, Buddy, Jon, whoever else might have gravitated in— for a movie or Trivial Pursuit. That was all. Hell, yes, she was gorgeous. You'd have to be blind or the Pope not to see that. And she had a genuinely sweet personality to go with those looks. That rare one-two punch. Did Neil and the guys have a crush on her? Hell, yes, they did. Jon summed it up after she left one night, after hammering them, to their eternal shock and awe, in Sports. "Snow White and the seven dorks," he said.
"There's three of us," Lucien said, looking at Neil and Jon.
"I will hurt you," Jon said. "Shut up."
But Neil had a girl, and Lisa was obviously nuts for her guy—
— her Mystery Guy. Holy fuck.—
— and it just wasn't done.
But then, before Neil could explain how it wasn't done, how it wouldn't be decent hitting on someone plainly over the moon for someone else, whether any of those someones were customers or not, before he could fish fifty words or less out of the blood flooding his cerebellum, she walked in. No, not Lisa Reisert. Violet. Neil's girl. Behind Mystery Guy. Violet, who managed to make "Asian," "exotic," and "freckled" the hottest trio of adjectives on the planet. Violet, whose legs in a miniskirt also went all the way up. Most importantly, for the sake of the capillaries starting to yodel in Neil's brain, Violet who should have walked in about three minutes earlier, this being obviously another of her pranks, though for all the crazy shit she'd pulled (and there were times she gave Susan Vance in Bringing Up Baby a run for her money in the nuts sweeps), she'd never erred on the side of potential property damage. Property damage to Neil or Gumshoe, anyway. Through the rope binding his ankles, he was starting to feel a wobbly slip-and-pull: the fan was working free of the ceiling.
But it was weird, he thought. Not the fact that he was hanging upside down from a ceiling fan while some psycho Alan Ladd knockoff stuck a knife in his face and quizzed him on relationship etiquette.
No, weird in that, for once, Violet wasn't laughing.
She walked in and stopped dead, without a word. She was behind Mystery Guy. He didn't hear her come in. He didn't turn.
She stood there for maybe a three-count, and it was like she was reading a sign on the back of Mystery Guy's head. A sign that said HIT ME.
Which she did. With, as it turned out, the fake Oscar Neil kept on top of the bookshelf just inside the office door.
She hefted the Oscar by its gleaming golden head and shoulders, swung back, and cracked Mystery Guy in the back of the skull with the base. He grunted and dropped like all the stuff that's good at dropping. Rocks, a ton of bricks, a sack of potatoes. He hit the carpet, flopped onto his back, and stayed there with his eyelids locked down tight.
"Who is that?" Violet asked.
"I could ask you the same— fuck, my head—"
"Right now?"
"What—?"
"I wasn't interrupting anything, was I?"
"Interrupting" was wearing either italics or a jacket made of quotation marks. Just as it was in the preceding sentence.
It was just about then that Neil re-realized he was wearing nothing but his boxers. And they had to be the white ones with little yellow smiley faces all over them.
"No, of course you weren't inter— Oh, hell. Help. Violet, please: get me down—"
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Between a fair bit of hoisting, lifting, and twisting, Neil descended. So, too, with an almighty crash, in a shower of plaster chips from the ceiling, did the fan. Throughout it all, Mystery Guy stayed where he was.
Flat on his back on the rug.
Out.
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Violet was studying the base of the Oscar. "I didn't know you wrote 2001: A Space Oddity."
"Odyssey."
"Sorry. There's a little drop of blood right there."
"I didn't." Keeping a nervous eye on Mystery Guy, Neil went to his desk, reached for the phone. Cops. What they needed now was cops. Lots of cops.
"You falsified a Tony? Isn't that illegal?"
"Oscar. It's an Oscar."
"Weird. He looks more like a 'Tony' to me." She set the Oscar on the edge of the desk and put her hand over the hand Neil had on the telephone receiver. "What do you think you're doing?"
"I'm calling the police, obviously."
"Obviously, you're not."
"What am I doing, then?"
"He tied you up. He was threatening you. He totally broke your fan."
"What are you suggesting we— No. You're crazy. Absolutely not. We can't hold him for ransom."
"You're right." Violet reached casually for the Oscar. "Better we should just finish the job."
"Finish the job?" Neil picked up the receiver again as Violet turned back toward Mystery Guy. The desk phone was a genuine antique, and a rotary, and the dial took its sweet time rolling back home once you hauled it to a number. He wedged the receiver between his shoulder and his ear and asked as he dialed a "9": "What the hell does that mean—?"
"Maybe we should put down some plastic sheeting first," Violet said, thoughtfully, twisting the toe of her canvas loafer into the threadbare Oriental knockoff that covered the floor in the vicinity of Neil's desk. "Getting blood out of these old carpets is really tough."
Neil, with the tip of his index finger in the hole for "1," watched as she went to stand over Mystery Guy.
Then he watched as, nonchalantly, she sized up the distance to Mystery Guy's head and swung back the Oscar.
He dropped the receiver. It hit the desktop with a solid bauxite thunk and bounced onto the floor. Neil exploded out from behind the desk, tangling his right ankle in the curlicue receiver cord, and grabbed the wrist of the hand that was hoisting the Oscar. "The hell—No!"
Violet frowned at him. "He wrecked your fan."
"Well, technically, we wrecked the fan, but—"
"He owes you. Tell me he doesn't."
Neil looked in her eyes, and, between the excess of blood loitering in his brainpan and the lingering effects of, well, being scared shitless, the crazy became contagious. As, him being with her, it so often did.
"You're right." He nodded, blew the bangs out of his eyes. "He does. So what do we do?"
Violet knelt next to Mystery Guy and proceeded to go through his pockets. A wallet. Credit cards, forty-eight dollars in cash. I.D. An Illinois driver's license bearing a name that sounded like an alias. "Jackson Rippner," she said, looking at Mystery Guy's picture. "Ooh, badass."
"I don't know," said Neil, as he returned Mystery Guy the compliment of being tied hand and foot. He felt a whole lot better when there was a wall of knots between Jackson Rippner and that knife, which was now keeping company with the fake Oscar on Neil's desk. "From what I've seen, it seems about right."
"And... ta-da." From the breast pocket of Rippner's jacket, Violet produced the latest and greatest toy from Nokia. She held it so Neil could see while she scrolled through Rippner's contacts.
At "three" on speed-dial, they found it. "Company," only all in lowercase.
"I bet that's them," Violet said.
"Who-them?"
"The shady not-quite-sanctioned-by-the-government organization he works for."
Neil had stopped at "shady." His brain still wasn't up to that much hyphenation. He watched as Violet punched "three" on Jackson Rippner's speed-dial and held the Nokia to her ear.
"It's ringing," she whispered, holding her hand over the mouthpiece. "How much do we ask for?"
"I don't really— I'm pretty sure I don't have the receipt for the— Uh, two hundred?"
Violet nodded. She waited through either three seconds of silence or a very brief greeting as someone picked up on the other end. And then she snarled into the Nokia: "We have Jackson Rippner. And we want five hundred dollars for him. Or else."
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