St. Louis Noir Read online

  He paused, watching as she waited for the hammer to fall. She was as evil as the man on top of her, but more than that, she was pathetic. He could see it in her eyes, the same nightmares in his. She would continue to see the smile in his dad’s neck and taste the copper on the air. They’d never be rid of that.

  She reached for him, nails ragged and spiked hair tangled against the top of her head. “Ian . . .” Whatever she was about to say died on her lips, eyes closing as more mascara ran down her cheeks. “Kill me.” He didn’t answer and she opened her eyes, shoving at the dead weight on top of her.

  He dropped the hammer and walked away, abandoning that place.

  Deserted Cities of the Heart

  by Paul D. Marks

  Gateway Arch

  Memory is a funny thing. It grabs hold and doesn’t let go. Daniel Hayden wished he’d get one of those diseases where you couldn’t remember, Alzheimer’s, amnesia. Anything. He knew if he told that to certain people they’d think he was nuts. Didn’t matter what they thought.

  Daniel looked up, thought he saw a mourning dove flying through the Gateway Arch, heading out in the direction of Route 66. It was gone now. He wasn’t sure if it was even there in the first place. Like Route 66, there but not there at the same time. What was left of that legendary highway passed right through St. Louis. Once America’s Mother Road, much of it now decommissioned, it existed more like a ghost or a shadow on the land. Daniel had always looked on it as an escape route. But escape to where? Besides, escape was nothing more than an illusion. Wherever he went he’d take his baggage with him.

  He wanted to forget the last three months had ever happened. Yeah, he wanted to shut those memories out. He didn’t want to think about yesterday. Didn’t want to think about today. And he definitely didn’t want to think about tomorrow. He never thought it would turn out like this.

  “I wish tomorrow would never come,” he said out loud. But there was no one around to hear him.

  * * *

  Three months earlier

  Daniel lay on the grass beneath the Gateway Arch, staring up at its clean, sweeping lines. It seemed to rise all the way to heaven, getting lost in the glare of the tawny late-afternoon sun. He liked coming here on his lunch hour or after work sometimes. It was only a five-minute walk from the office.

  He liked to daydream about being somewhere else. But he knew he’d never leave St. Louis, never get on a jet bound for anywhere, never get in a convertible, top down, and head west on Route 66. Never. Probably never make it to LA or New York either. No, he was happy enough with his life in The Lou. You didn’t hear much about St. Louis in the news. Not many movies or TV shows took place here. But there was that old midnight movie classic, Meet Me in St. Louis. His parents would watch it every Easter. He hated it. Just a musical fantasy, nothing about it was real. And nobody he knew spontaneously broke into song or dance, unless they were stoned. He sure as hell wasn’t the type to spontaneously break into song, but he did have a dream of being in a band once. Played rhythm guitar in a quartet. Even wrote some songs. He wanted to play the blues like Albert King on his Gibson Flying V, but his friends wanted to play rock. So he bought a Fender Telecaster and they rocked out. His parents wanted him to have a secure job, something to fall back on. He loved hacking computers, so they convinced him that working with computers was the way to go. And though he had a passion for it, and even loved his job, it wasn’t the same as playing music. Eventually, he sold the guitar—it felt like he was selling his soul.

  Dreams fade. New ones take their place. He still wanted to accomplish something, maybe move up at work. He was good at it—IT tech for CyberGen Management Systems, a high-powered information company that did a lot of government work. Not the most exciting job in the world, but any job’s exciting if you put your all into it, he thought. He was just an average guy. Successful, if not rich. Decent looking, if not movie-star handsome. But not a freak either. He knew he’d never set the world on fire.

  “Nice day,” the young woman said. Not the most original opening line. And where had she come from? He’d had no idea she was there.

  “Yeah, especially for this time of year.”

  “My name’s Amber. Amber Loy.”

  He didn’t think she looked like an Amber. Amber should be more exotic. She was on the plain side. Not unattractive, just not flashy. Looked about twenty-five—twenty-five going on thirty. Hair a mousy brown pageboy. Hardly any makeup except for bright red lipstick. He liked that. Black patterned nail polish. He wasn’t sure about that. Green eyes, kind of dull. No sparkle. Definitely not an Amber.

  “Daniel Hayden.” He felt awkward. But what else do you say before you start talking about your favorite movies and groups, how many times you’ve read Infinite Jest and just what the hell it means. And why was she talking to him? What did she want? To sell him religion? Dope? Undercover cop, trying to bust him?

  “Mind if I sit here?” She didn’t wait for a response. That made him suspicious.

  “Can I ask you something?” he said.

  “Sure.”

  “What do you want?” He didn’t know how else to say it. Social graces weren’t his strong suit.

  “Nothing. And you’re certainly blunt.”

  “No point beating around the bush.”

  “You’re alone. I’m alone. I’m new to St. Louis. Don’t know anyone here and was just wondering what there is to do. I was also wondering if there’s some Wi-Fi hotspots near here.” She tapped her messenger bag, so he assumed it held a laptop. “Need to catch up with the world.”

  Daniel was wary. He wasn’t the kind of guy women just started talking to out of the blue. He didn’t really like her much. She seemed ordinary and forward and looked like a hipster wannabe, just trying a little too hard. And now she was intruding on his quiet time. Invading his space.

  Awkward silence filled the air over ambient noises: boats, cars, planes, people, the wind tacking along the Mississippi. But he couldn’t hear any of it, couldn’t hear the young woman now seated next to him. Like outer space, his space under the Arch was void of sound. He didn’t know what to say. Figured she didn’t either since she wasn’t saying anything. Had they run out of things to talk about already?

  He glanced over at her, the thick hipster glasses and ironic George W. Bush T-shirt that said What, Me Worry? on it. He thought she might make a PBR appear magically out of her bag at any minute.

  “So,” he said, because anything was better than this titanic silence, “what do you like—”

  “What? Now you’re going to ask me what bands I like. And, of course, I have to say some dumb shit like some obscure band that nobody’s heard of and as soon as anybody does hear of them, I have to move on ’cause they’re not cool anymore.” She looked over at him. “Go ahead, stop me from making a fool of myself at any time.”

  But he didn’t want to stop her. He knew exactly what she was saying. She leaned into him, invading his space even more. Extended her arm, phone in hand.

  “Say, I’d rather be dead than cool,” she said.

  “Kurt Cobain.”

  “Right, now smile.” She snapped a selfie of them.

  “Do I get a copy?”

  “Sure, what’s your number?”

  He told her.

  “Well, I gotta go.” She started pulling her stuff together. “Hey, maybe we can get together for coffee?”

  “I don’t think so, I’m kind of busy.” He watched her cheeks flush. He’d hurt her feelings without meaning to.

  “Oh, busy, I get it—I can take a hint.”

  “Hey, I didn’t mean anything. I’m just kinda stressed from work, let’s get coffee.”

  * * *

  Coffee went better than he had expected, so they decided to do something over the weekend.

  “I can’t believe we’re coming here,” he said, as they approached Meramec Caverns, a little over an hour’s drive from St. Louis. “It’s so . . . middle class.”

  “Bourgeois,” the
y said together.

  “It’s so lame it’s cool.” She laughed. “And we can make fun of all the tourists, they’re so fucking midtown.”

  “While they make fun of us. We’re tourists here too.”

  “Exactly. Hey, like them in their khakis and deck shoes.”

  She’d wanted to come here, do something touristy, since she was new to the area. She thought it would be funny, but he really did like Meramec Caverns, even if they were a little middle class. He used to come here with his family, when things were good. Had fond memories of it. His father always making silly jokes and his mom taking pictures. He began to wonder what he was doing here with Amber. It’d been almost a week since they’d met under the Arch. He was starting to like her, even though he didn’t want to. Spent the whole week thinking about her. Wondering what it was about her that he liked. Why was he obsessing over her? She wasn’t trying to impress him or put on an act for him. Maybe that’s what he liked about her.

  “They say that Jesse James hid out here,” she said.

  “Yeah, but despite the sign over there, nobody knows if it’s really true.”

  “Must be true if the sign says so.”

  She squeezed his hand. Stuck her other hand in the air and took a pic of them with the sign in the background. In big neon letters, it said, Meramec Caverns—Jesse James Hideout.

  “I always thought it would be cool to be an outlaw. You wanna be an outlaw with me?”

  * * *

  The drive back was long enough for them to find out all the things they had in common: the Avengers, computer games. Even the Rams. He told her about wanting to pick up the guitar again. Since she was driving, they somehow found themselves at Guitar Center.

  “What do you like?”

  “I don’t know. They’re all out of my price range, at least anything good.”

  “Well, like what?”

  “Gibson Les Pauls, ES-335s, or SGs. Fenders. Those seem to be what a lot of people play, but what I’d really like is a Flying V, like Albert King played.”

  “So why don’t you get one? Live a little.”

  “I’ve lived . . . a little,” he protested.

  They left without buying anything, hit Atomic Cowboy for grub. She’d heard it was cool. He’d been there a few times, liked it well enough. Both ordered Atomic Fries and cheeseburgers. “Hold the chipotle mayo,” they said together.

  “We do have a lot in common.” She smiled at him, pulled him closer. Grabbed another selfie. “We both like the Rams. Both work in IT, or at least I used to and probably will again once I find a job here.”

  “I’d help you find something, but we don’t have any openings.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t hinting or anything. I still need to get settled. Your work sounds pretty deck though.”

  “Nah, I’m just an IT guy,” Daniel said.

  “IT guy with a security clearance.”

  “I just show ’em how to do what they need or fix the systems when they break down.” He didn’t like talking about it. CyberGen Management Systems did some heavy lifting for the Defense Department, the FBI, and other government agencies, as well as about half the Fortune 500. Like Las Vegas, what went on in CMS stayed in CMS. “And we’re both into computers and gaming. World of Warcraft. Assassin’s Creed.”

  “I’m into a new game, Deserted Cities of the Heart,” she said.

  “That’s a mouthful. Don’t know it.” But the title struck him. He imagined a world of bare trees and misty breezes. Disillusioned lovers walking on desolate beaches. His love life might as well have been described as a deserted city of the heart. He’d had a handful of girlfriends. And two relationships that had lasted over a year. But even when he was in them he’d felt alone and lonely, in a way that he didn’t with Amber.

  “I really like it. I go there to get away from the world.”

  “I go to the Arch for that. Even though there’s people around, I can shut it all out.”

  “That’s how I see Deserted Cities.”

  They walked out of Atomic, hand in hand. He was close enough to know that she didn’t use perfume. He could smell her, a faintly sweet smell. Almost no makeup. Definite hipster vibe, while he was definitely no style. He didn’t understand it, but he was falling for her.

  Other guys might not look twice at her. She might not fill their dreams. But his dreams weren’t the clichéd dreams of those other guys, superficial blondes with superficial intellect. She was understated in every way. And he was falling for her—hard.

  * * *

  She’d only been in The Lou a few weeks, but her Washington Avenue Historic District place was already decorated. Posters, including Andy Warhol with a Salvador Dalí mustache, dream catchers, and retro furniture. Spare, but it looked like someone actually lived there. His apartment of six years never looked or felt like home. She put out some PBR and bacon-wrapped doughnuts to munch on.

  “Tell me more about what you did,” he said.

  “I was just a low-level IT grunt,” she responded, lighting a joint, inhaling, and passing it to him—snagging a selfie of them, he with the joint in his mouth. “More like customer service, only it was in-house customer service. Anything complicated, they’d call my boss. But you’re really in the thick of it.”

  “I know what I’m doing, but I still just have a low-level security clearance.”

  His head swirled pleasantly from the beer and pot. They made silly jokes that they probably wouldn’t have laughed at if they’d been sober.

  “You wanna play some games?”

  They moved over to the Sony PlayStation.

  “Deserted Cities of the Heart?”

  “Sure, I’ll play.”

  “It’s better when two play.” She grabbed the controller. “It’s a role-playing game. You have to pick an avatar. The goal is to find love in a future society where love is outlawed. If you do find a lover, you have to keep it a secret from The Executive. If the Praetorians—storm troopers—catch you, they imprison you, you lose several turns and go back a level.”

  “Interesting, different from most of the games, first-person shooters and all.”

  He chose Orion as his avatar, a strong warrior and great hunter. She was Anwen, Welsh for beautiful, and her avatar was. In cyberspace we can be anybody or anything we want to be, he thought. Live out fantasies and you don’t even have to leave St. Louis. It’s like turning off the lights, you don’t have to see people as they really are with all their flaws.

  They swigged PBR, smoked more dope. Munched on those doughnuts, jammed on the game. He was walking down an isolated road in the middle of nowhere. Ghostly trees seeming to talk to him. The ruins of skyscrapers in the distance.

  “Jeez,” he said.

  “Something wrong?”

  “I don’t know. All this dope and the game—I feel like I’m really in it. Living it, breathing it. Time stands still—like there is no time.”

  “That’s what’s so cool about it. You’re in another world.”

  They went deep into the deserted cities, down one level after another. Hiding out from the Praetorians, ducking them as the game sucked them in deeper and deeper.

  Daniel felt woozy. “I need a break,” he said. “This is spooking me.”

  “Sure. It can get too real. Sometimes more real than real life.”

  They lay back on the couch for several minutes, neither saying a word. Sipping beer, munching doughnuts.

  “You ever try hacking?” she said.

  “No, not really.”

  “Not really?”

  “Well, white hat I guess. Except—”

  “Except?”

  “Well, I guess everyone does a little,” he said. “I broke into my nephew’s school. Changed his grade.”

  “That would be more fun than just playing games. It’s real life and it’s dangerous. Makes you feel alive when there’s a threat hanging over you.”

  “Threat?”

  “Yeah, like of being discovered.”

  He wa
s feeling no pain. He wasn’t in the room anymore. She wasn’t there. He was driving a vintage ’65 Mustang convertible, tooling down 66. The road never seemed to end. He could drive and drive and drive and never arrive anywhere. That’s what he liked about it.

  “Let’s do it,” she said.

  He snapped out of his reverie, the dream of the open road fading faster than the last chord on a blues riff. “Huh? Do what?”

  “I thought you said you could get in and out of anywhere without leaving a trace.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Live dangerously.”

  “Where do you want to go?” Daniel took a hit on the joint.

  “Let’s go into Dalloway’s.”

  “What, you wanna steal some credit card numbers?”

  “No, I just want to see if we can do it.”

  “Easy,” he said.

  She brought her MacBook to the couch. They bounced around inside the Dalloway’s Department Store’s secure computers, checking out people’s spending habits. They went deeper into some of them, could find out almost anything about anyone.

  “Scary. We’re all open books. Better not have any deep, dark secrets,” she said. “Show me how.”

  He showed her how to hack into Dalloway’s. Stoned or not, she picked it up fast. He didn’t stop to think, or maybe his mind was too foggy, that as an IT tech, she would have known how to do most of this already.

  “Let’s hack into where you work,” she said. “I bet there’s a lot of secrets there.”

  “I can’t do that. I’ll get fired.”

  “I thought you said you could go in and out of anywhere and not leave a trace.”

  “I can, but—”

  “I dare you. I’ll bet you a hundred dollars you can’t.” She said it jokingly, but it was one of those jokes that was serious underneath, at least that’s how he took it.

  Between the PBR and the pot his inhibitions were down for the count. He knew a back door into CMS’s servers. He was inside in less than a minute.

  They poked around, starting with the people who worked there.

  “Jeez. They know everything about us, don’t they?”