For those of you joining us for the first time you can read "Part I — With Sensual Red Lips" here. Go do that first. Don't worry, we'll wait.
Now that everyone's caught up (that needs to be) let's get to it, shall we? Here's your soundtrack for this part. I'll leave the rain (www.rainymood.com in new window) up to you this time.
A
few rain soaked hours later — having slapped Mr. Stiffy around
sufficiently — Detective Wentworth found himself at the Brown Note,
a sleazy jazz joint for con artists, criminals and aspiring
musicians, trying to get a drink from a barkeep imaginatively named
Joey. After several failed attempts at ordering scotch, Detective
Wentworth has lit another cigarette and settled for beer. Easy to
pronounce and a lot easier to stomach than scotch.
“Maybe
I thhould become a beer drinker inthtead?” he thinks to himself
before finding a vacant table to occupy.
He's
waiting for his informant to show up, a shady immigrant who goes by
many aliases but prefers to call himself Nobody nowadays.
“Who
are you talking to?”, someone would ask and it would always be the
same cheesy albeit effective reply. Nobody. I'm talking to Nobody.
A
reply that worked 90 percent of the time. The other 10 percent was
usually because the receiving end was henchmen with baseball bats and
a score to settle. Nobody had gotten beaten up a fair few times in
his life but without other options he had simply played the cards
handed to him. A rat in a country of cats, he made the best of the
situation — even though that sometimes meant going head-to-head
with the henchmen of whoever he had betrayed — to get whatever he
needed. “Half loaf is better than no loaf”, Nobody would say to
himself when times got even tougher. “Half loaf is better…”
Detective
Wentworth's eyes followed the young woman selling cigarettes from her
tray — hoping she would spare him a glance — as he was now
drawing the last breath from the last cigarette from a packet he had
bought as recently as last night. It was meant to be his last packet
of cigarettes. Then again, the Sparrow Brothers case was supposed to
be his last case and look how that turned out. “Thingth have a
habit of not ending when they're thuppothed to”, he muttered
faintly as the cigarette saleswoman walked by. He gestured towards
her and as he caught her attention, she also caught his. “Tharah?”
he gasped, but as he left the question mark lingering in the air he
could tell by the look on her face that she was definitely not Sarah.
What he had at first thought to be the spitting image of his late
girlfriend now only resembled her when looked at from the corner of
an eye. It was the way she moved that had gotten him dumbfounded but
now that he was looking directly at her, he could see clearly.
Swaying back and forth like a drunk — she probably had an inner-ear
problem just like Sarah — as she reached him he could see that she
looked nothing like Sarah. “Eight more beerth and I would have
never known the differenthe” he thought to himself.
“Whatll
it be, sugah?”
Her
accent was thick and she seemed to make no efforts to hide it. Detective Wentworth thought it made her sound slightly retarded but unlike her he made
every effort to hide his thoughts.
“Three
packetth of Deep Throat and tell Joey I'll have another beer.”
“Sorr
hon, I only gots me two packs of 'dem Deep Throat left. But I'll give
'dem to ya for 23¢”
“Here
you go, and you can keep the thhange if you can get that beer here on
the double.” He wasn't convincing anyone that he was cool but there
was no point in stopping his attempts now. “Might ath well go the
whole hog” he thought to himself and realised that he hadn't heard
that expression since his father passed away. “Never start what you
can't finish”, his father would always say before he would hold him
across his knees to pass out what he referred to as Patriarchal
Justice. Meanwhile his mother would hide in the kitchen baking and
pretending that she couldn't hear the cries coming from the living
room. The memories of his childhood had sent shivers down Detective
Wentworth's spine and his timing could not have been worse. Nobody
had entered the Brown Note through a back door and walked unnoticed
up to Detective Wentworth just he was reminiscing about his heinous
childhood. The already quite jumpy Nobody got even more suspicious as
Detective Wentworth's shivers jogged him out of his memories and back
to the cold harsh reality.
“You
Mister Wentworth? You not look good. And Nobody not telling nothing
to somebody who look like you look!” Nobody's English might have
been broken but his message was clear as day.
“Perhapth
a beer would inthtil thome more trutht in me?”, he hoped Nobody
would at least understand the word “beer” in his otherwise
incomprehensible choice of words.
“Beer?
No. Nobody not drink beer. Beer is for zhenshchiny. How you say,
woman-people? Two bottles of vodka and Nobody sing like Crested Lark. We have deal, yes?”
Detective
Wentworth had kept the cookie cutter ring in the left pocket of his
overcoat and now he was caressing the cookie cutter shaped like a
Christmas tree between his fingers to remind him of why he had agreed to
take on the case. The Sarah look-alike made her untimely return with
his second beer just as he was about to agree to Nobody's terms.
“What'th
thith? I didn't order a beer! Only girlth drink beer! I only drink thcotthh! Two bottleth of
vodka and a glath of your thheapetht thcotthh. And make it quick
thweetheart!”, he quickly said before she had any time to reply.
Noticeable
upset she slammed the beer on his table anyway as she turned around
and started swaying back and forth back to the bar. Pointing towards
Detective Wentworth and yelling to Joey to bring them “Two b'ttles of Russian water and a
glass o' Horsepiss”, she stormed out through the same back
door that Nobody had snuck in through. Detective Wentworth knew he
was going to have to deal with her later if he wanted to get a good
nights sleep. “Maybe thhe will thettle for an ethplanation and a
heartfelt thorry?”
He
turned his attention back to Nobody — who by now had calmed down
enough to take a seat — and tried his best to look serious as he
handed Nobody a worn photograph of a man in his mid-fifties wearing a
pinstripe suit.
“Tell
me everything you know about thenator McWilliamth and hith
dithappearanthe. Why would thomeone want him gone?”
…
