St. Louis Noir Read online

  Trisha looked at him, disgusted, then relieved. He was being halfway honest. Well, maybe a quarter-way.

  “Do you know who the hell works in that place?” She pointed to the building.

  “No idea. I see cars parked in front, people enter and leave, but I couldn’t ID one person.”

  Miller’s was right across the street but from this spot it seemed to Trisha a mile away.

  VJ went to retrieve the bicycle.

  In his absence, Trisha, tears brimming all over again, became aware of the quiet. A bird chirped here and there. The rails pointed silently toward the vanishing point, utility poles overhead and hushed. A rusted valve that probably hadn’t seen flow in years jutted out of the bone-dry concrete canal. Except for the guard walking toward her bike, all was at rest. Whatever just happened had moved on.

  PART II

  A Poetic Interlude

  Four St. Louis Poems

  by Michael Castro

  Gaslight Square

  In St. Louis Heat

  the heat

  the men

  in blue

  jeans

  on the black

  corner

  by the Chester

  Pipe

  Shop

  lean

  //#

  all

  afternoon

  against

  the caged

  storefront

  Gaslight Square

  gutted storefronts

  crumbling movie theater

  empty picture

  frame wall trick-

  ling brick rubble

  into street

  eerie

  & dimly fluorescent

  uninhabited

  save for one

  solitary

  stocking-capped black man

  bent over

  in loose drab overcoat

  staggering between parked cars

  in the driving rain

  St. Louis Blues Revisited

  Blue is the blues of this town

  Blue as the cold cop

  Who killed Michael Brown

  Blue is the blues of this town

  Blue is the blues of this town

  Blue heat street sign blue core flame

  Gas blue blaze haze glazes a name

  Blue is the blues of this town

  Blue is the rain song, like tears it comes

  From blue whale clouds that rumble like drums

  Blue is the blues of this town

  Blue is the blues of this town

  Blue is the whiskey that gnaws in the gut

  Blue is the uniform makes a man strut

  Blue is the lead in the gun chamber rut

  Blue is the blues of this town

  Blue is the ghetto, blue the stone rubble

  Blue the dope powder, blue the hope bubble

  Blue are the trains, the veins, the migraines

  Blue is the blues of this town

  Blue is the ballpark, blue all the museums

  Blue the caged monkey who swings between screams

  Blue is the Arch & the gateway of dreams

  Blue is the blues of this town

  Blue is the hit man, blue in a bottle

  Blue is the street girl, blue her eye shadow

  Blue is the beat of the street & the news

  Blue is the blues of this town

  Blue is the song, blue the bird songster

  Language as long & as strong as a dinosaur

  The trees’ teeth are chattering—airplane chainsaw

  Blue is the blues of this town

  Blue is the smoke over rims of the stacks

  Blue is the waterfront, blue both sides of tracks

  Blue is the love that is eaten by cracks

  Blue is the blues of this town

  Halloween

  Today all the hungry ghosts

  wail

  all the world’s sorry chains

  creak

  all its light leaks

  into the dark

  where hidden horror lurks

  It’s Halloween!

  Gargoyley guys

  & shrewy witches—

  the underside

  is the scratch we itches

  A parade, in masquerade

  of tiny boys & girls, wide open

  bags & palms, stream through seedy suburbs’

  leaf-mealed lawns

  innocents

  trickling trick-less

  stifling yawns

  gathering more & more

  door to door

  treats

  from shadowed neighbors’ smiles

  sweets & coins

  dispensed straight up or

  with weird & twisted, hidden wiles—

  cold cash &

  bidden fruit they there-

  fore dare not grasp or eat

  without exploratory

  pause

  preferably

  laboratory

  analysis

  Once home

  they sift through eager fingers

  offerings that they sought, & brought

  mull possibilities—

  laced treats & hot pennies

  strained food for thought—

  & later bodiless, near

  nauseous, overwrought

  they wrestle in the bed

  wispy demons of the mind

  reflections of this bitter world of humankind

  whose cool coins’, glad hands’ & twisted smiles’

  impact instead

  may burn, or sicken, or, finally

  kill you dead

  PART III

  THE COUNTY

  A Paler Shade of Death

  by Laura Benedict

  Glendale

  “Hey, can I help you do that?”

  When the boy approached me the first time, I was trying to wrestle a marble-topped plant stand from where it had caught on the corner of an antique mirror. The cargo area of the Suburban was crowded with the objets d’art and detritus I’d thoughtlessly grabbed in my rush to leave the Glendale house. My house. The house I’d been driven from with a restraining order displayed by the fat off-duty cop whom my husband, Gavin, had hired. The August afternoon was stupidly hot, and I was irritated. The last thing I wanted was help.

  “My dad said your kid died.”

  The whole load shifted when I let go of the plant stand and turned to look at the boy standing a couple of feet away in the street.

  He looked about ten, maybe three years older than my Jeremy would’ve been in November, and his face and limbs were brown the way a kid’s skin gets from spending a lot of time outside in the summer. The khaki shorts hanging below his motocross T-shirt were worn, but looked too formal for play. My guess was that they were part of someone’s hand-me-down Catholic school uniform. He wasn’t a bad-looking boy: too skinny, but with widely spaced brown eyes with full lashes, and an awkward, lopsided grin that was almost charming.

  I peered over his shoulder at the brick bungalow across the street where I’d noticed him sitting on the porch the day I’d come to sign the lease on the duplex. All of the curtains and shades were shut tight. A square of plywood filled the tiny attic window in the inverted V of the eaves. It didn’t look like anyone lived there, let alone a boy and his dad. I wondered if there was a mother involved.

  “He drowned.” He said the words matter-of-factly as though he didn’t think I knew.

  Was I going insane? Who would say something like that to a complete stranger? I wondered if something was wrong with him. As far as I knew, my face hadn’t been on the news in the year since the trial had ended. The guy who rented me the duplex must have recognized my name or face and told the neighbors. Shit. Why hadn’t I caught that little flare of recognition and subsequent steeling of the jaw I’d come to expect whenever I told someone my name? But I was out of options. There was nowhere else for me to go, except out of St. Louis. And I wasn’t ready for that.

  “I don�
�t need any help. Thanks.” I quickly redid my loosened ponytail and turned back to dislodging the gilt-framed mirror we’d gotten from one of my great-aunts as a wedding present. Screw the kid’s idiot, nosy father, and the rest of the jerks who were probably this minute peeking out of their JCPenney curtains.

  One by one, I pried things out of the Suburban and carried them into the apartment: the mirror, a piecrust table that now had a massive scratch on its face, a delicate set of antique curio shelves that had held my mother’s teacup collection (the collection was a casualty of one of our disagreements, and I had thrown the first three cups at Gavin’s head, then the remaining ones at the wall because I had—obviously, strangely—felt I needed to finish the job after he crawled out of the room).

  The boy had stepped back into the middle of the street. The way he stood watching, but not saying anything else, creeped me out.

  I’d just deposited a bamboo-patterned umbrella stand that I knew Gavin was particularly fond of on the porch when I saw a red Camaro turn the corner half a block away and accelerate. I glanced from the car to the boy, who was staring blankly at the back of the Suburban, to the car, and back again. The car would hit him straight on, perhaps knocking him up, over its hood, and into the air. And I would be the only witness. I hurried off the porch, shouting and waving at the boy. “Car! Get out of the road!”

  The car’s horn blared, and the boy looked toward the sound. Finally he turned and ran for the curb in front of his house. As he bounded up the porch stairs, I found myself noticing how the bottoms of his feet were gray—almost black—with dust.

  * * *

  The owner of the duplex and his wife lived in the apartment above me, but there’d been a note on my door when I arrived that said they were going out of town to a couple’s retreat for the week, and would I mind watering the flowers in the front yard. The handwriting was loopy and girlish and there was a bloated happy face with big oval eyes at the bottom of the note. The wife, certainly. She’d stood at her husband’s side, her manicured fingers wrapped possessively around his rather flaccid upper arm, while we discussed the rent and their insistence that, no, I couldn’t have a cat. “Allergies,” she’d said, rolling her eyes. “I don’t want to get all puffy!” Her sweater and skirt were carefully matched—surely bought as a set—and her peach lipstick was coordinated with her nails. Though we were both barely thirty, we would never be friends.

  My apartment was long and narrow, not quite a shotgun, but not more than two rooms wide. The ceilings were high and the carpet was new, even if the wallpaper was atrociously floral. Every single wall was covered with flowers or stripes or stripes with flowers sprinkled over them. Again, I suspected the wife. How she had managed to find wallpaper from the 1980s, I couldn’t imagine. But the trim was freshly painted, and despite the noise from the air conditioner laboring in a living room window and the loose bolt on the back door that only worked if you set it just right (I made a mental note to ask Mr. Universe to fix it), the place had a homey feel to it that I didn’t mind. I would be living here alone.

  That morning I had woken up for the last time in the bed that Gavin and I had shared for ten years. The softly worn Frette sheets I’d splurged on for our seventh anniversary had felt delicious against my skin. Tonight I would be sleeping on the cheap futon and frame I’d bought online and had delivered to the new apartment. I hadn’t even thought about sheets for it. Somewhere in the bags of things I’d brought from the house there were two blankets. As long as the air conditioner kept working, I would be all right with one of those.

  I had until three thirty to get what I wanted from the house. I looked at my watch: two. I could just make it there by two thirty.

  Over the phone, Gavin had mocked my plans to carry everything to the apartment using the Suburban. “When are you going to give up this bullshit martyr act, Becca? You should hire a mover. I gave you plenty of money.”

  I hated the sneering tone in his voice—so bizarre and unfamiliar, so different from the calm compassion he’d shown me for so long after Jeremy’s death. This wasn’t the gentle man I’d married, the new law school grad who, five days after we returned from our honeymoon, gave me a photo in a heart-shaped silver frame of the two of us on the beach in Cabo San Lucas. Sometimes it freaked people out how closely we resembled one another: the same brown eyes, thick dark hair, slight, athletic builds. In the photo—it was still on the dresser in the guest bedroom, dusted every week by the conscientious Libby—our heads tilted toward one another, we smiled, a little drunk, a little sunburned, and deeply in love. But it was as if I couldn’t even remember that smiling girl anymore. When I looked in the mirror now I saw lines on my forehead and around my mouth. I was heavier. I’m sure it’s one of the reasons Gavin gave up on me. He’d never be able to accept a size-twelve wife. And when he’d stopped grieving, he’d turned impatient. In my heart I had forgiven him for calling the police on me when I’d lost my temper. I had even told him he could keep his half of the house, even though I had a right to it. It was ridiculous that he was afraid of me.

  I went to the empty Suburban, grabbed my thermal cup, and took it to the kitchen. After filling it with ice and lemonade from the rattling, not-perfectly-clean fridge, I opened the cabinet I’d stocked the afternoon before and stared up at the two bottles of Beefeaters. I felt the inside of my cheeks pucker with desire and the spit gather in my mouth. No. I wouldn’t. Not this afternoon. I could make myself wait.

  * * *

  The off-duty cop had relocated from our front porch to his massive king cab pickup truck. It idled, windows up and surely frigid with A/C, in front of the house, undoubtedly driving our next door neighbor, Mrs. Grable, crazy. She disliked strangers. And noise. And dogs and children.

  When I got out of the Suburban and started up the ivy-guarded walk, he stepped out of the truck. I tried to wave him back, and even made a joke.

  “Hey, I’m allowed to take the silver if I want.”

  He didn’t crack a smile, just locked the truck and hustled up to the door. I’d forgotten that I didn’t have a key anymore.

  Inside the house, where I already felt like a stranger, I gathered . . . things. I had no sentimental list, just a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach. I’d moved all the shoes and clothes that I wanted early that morning. But so many of them didn’t fit me anymore—those I’d left in our custom bedroom closet, clotting the drawers and hanging in disorganized clumps. The disorganization, the sense of disarray, would irritate Gavin. Maybe that’s why I was leaving them. Since there was no way I could ever be the woman I’d been before that horrible afternoon, I was leaving her behind. He could have her.

  The door to Jeremy’s room was closed. I’d said goodbye to it that morning, taking only his second-favorite lovey—a one-eyed lamb—from where it rested on his pillow. If I went inside that room again, my resolve might break. I might beg Gavin to let me stay just because I would be close to Jeremy’s things. But no. I wouldn’t even try. Gavin had humiliated me enough. I had to get the hell out.

  In the kitchen I put the coffee grinder, all the spoons from the flatware drawer, and the set of expensive chef’s knives Gavin’s sister had given us as a wedding gift into a box. Then I took the dishtowels and tucked them around the things in the box. I removed all the tea and spices from the cabinet and spread them over the counter, but I only put the tea in the box.

  Three fifteen.

  I hurried upstairs. Pressed for time as I was, it gave me a small, anxious thrill to stop and unmake the bed I’d reflexively made after getting out of it that morning. Would Gavin sleep tonight on the same sheets I’d slept on without him? I didn’t know. He’d slept at the athletic club downtown all week. We were separated. Officially strangers. What would he do if he came home and found me still at the house? The cops might drag me off in front of the neighbors. Again.

  At the last minute I took Gavin’s pillow, clutching it to me as though it were a small, misshapen child.

  I barely remember
driving back to the apartment. The street was empty, but I missed the turn into the narrow driveway, and so kept driving and turned right at the end of the block to go around. But I didn’t make the next turn. The neighborhood dwindled after five or six blocks and became a commercial area I hadn’t been to before. I passed a Catholic church, a gas station, a hobby shop, and an enormous billboard advertisement for a pain management clinic. But not far from the billboard was a small stone building topped with a worn sign of its own that read, Bridget’s Bide-a-Wee. From the name it sounded like a creepy children’s day care, and for a sliver of a second I was thrown back to Jeremy’s first time at the Methodist church’s Mom’s Morning Out, and the way he had hurried over to the big plastic playhouse, stopping at the door to wave goodbye to me. Then the sun chanced to glint off the unlit neon martini glass balanced on the end of the sign, drawing my attention. I pulled into the lot and parked between a battered Mercedes and a generic blue Chevrolet sedan and rested my head on the steering wheel until the air in the car turned hot and thick. When I couldn’t bear it anymore, I went inside. The first martini hit the spot.

  * * *

  I crouched on a limb of a tree growing beside a dark lake. I listened. Tapping came from beneath the water and I bent forward to hear it better, to try to see what it was. All was blackness except for a few cold shafts of sunlight beating past me through the trees, but they didn’t reach the water’s surface.

  Taptaptap.

  Taptaptap.

  I leaned forward to get a better look until I was forced to stop, my hair nearly yanked from my head. Putting my hands up, I found the branches of the trees had twined themselves into my hair, which had grown far longer than I remembered. I pulled, gently at first, then began to tug. But the tree held fast.