Noir(ish) (9781101610053) by Evan Guilford-blake

bruise was sneaking its way out from under the Band-Aid, and my jaw was still plenty sore. So was my frame of mind: Having two hoods ransack my office and knock me around in the bargain always left me sore at whoever was responsible, and Scott was still my prime suspect.
    While Gloria replaced and repositioned fallen files, flowers, and picture frames, Scott and I had talked on the phone. Then he suggested we meet, at my office. “We can talk there comfortably,” he said; he would “straighten everything out.” I almost laughed: Gloria and I would be spending the rest of the day playing King’s Men to the office’s Humpty Dumpty. I suggested The Pickup instead, at eight thirty. He asked if the chairs were large. I said they were. He said okay.
    The funny thing was that Scott didn’t ask me about the package until
I
mentioned it. He said to bring it along. I said I would.
    Between calls, I told Gloria what had happened. She said “Oh, my!” and clucked sympathetically while I helped her try to re-create order out of chaos. By the time I left, things were finally beginning to make some sense again. She cheerily volunteered to stay late and put the rest back. I offered to buy her supper; she turned it down: a special diet, she said. I gave her another bonus: the pillow. Greenstreet would survive.
    And I’d ordered a new file cabinet. With a combination lock.
    * * *
    Wednesday nights tend to be slow in the booze-and-hamburg business, another reason why The Pickup seemed like a good choice. The place was popular with cops
and
robbers; I was bound to run into people who knew me—yet another precautionary measure—but Scott and I could have our privacy.
    It also had air-conditioning that worked beautifully in a Los Angeles summer and a good house bourbon; once upon a time
we
sat there, and I drank glass after glass while she sipped her extra dry martinis, the olives slowly disappearing between her glistening full lips, and smoke never got in my eyes. Or my throat. Nobody smokes in The Pickup. Smoke makes Sydney MacMurray, the owner, sneeze. The only drawback was the lousy jukebox: Every other record was somebody singing, or playing, The Song.
    I wrapped up a little something before I left the office, and I walked through The Pickup’s door about eight fifteen. Being early was a way to settle myself in, make sure I had control when Scott showed up. I was greeted by the noise that greets every patron at every bar and grill in every city in America: rumbling voices, some hushed, some loud; laughter; the clatter of glasses and plates and people coming out of and going into the kitchen and the bar. And the jukebox, which was playing
it
. The Dick Haymes version.
Nuts
. I remembered why I’d avoided the place for a year. Come next Thursday.
    I waited by the entrance and watched while Sydney—a small, rotund man with a sly smile, the pigtail and elliptical black eyes of his Chinese mother, and the freckles of his Scotch-Irish father—ushered a guy and a girl into the seating area. The guy was in a black suit, and his hair was slicked back like that new congressman’s, something Nixon. The girl was wearing four-inch heels and a black sheath that was one size too small in the hips and two sizes too small everywhere else. She was blonder than Blondie and had a chest that resembled two pristine volleyballs forced into eggcups. Most of each volleyball was fully visible.
    â€œRight this way, sir. Madame,” Sydney said with perfect aplomb as he waved them through the crowd of tables like they were the Duke and Duchess of Woolworth. Sydney maintained his decorum whether his patrons were the rich and famous (or, as likely, notorious) or stargazers on the lookout for them. Or, like me, just in search of a little privacy to conduct business. “Thanks, pal,” the guy said. I saw him unpeel a bill from a thick roll. His companion was silent except for the snap of her