nExUs // v5.16

THE PORTRAIT OF A SLUTPUPPY AND HER SLIDING PIMPCAT AS THE SATIN DOLL GOES DOWN

						
						
San Francisco, 1937 – the year the bay fog learned to wear lipstick and a stiletto...

**1**

The night smelled of diesel, jasmine, and fresh blood. I was drinking the first two 
and wearing the third when the dame found me in the Black Cat Cellar, 
	a basement jazz joint on Grant Avenue where the beards were billy-goat
	thin and the poetry came switch-blade sharp. She drifted across the smoke
	like a wrong note you couldn't stop humming.

	
"Mr. Quill," she purred, "I need a man who can kill a story before the story kills me."

Her voice was bourbon poured over crushed ice and bruised hearts. She wore a black sweater 
	tight as a confession and a skirt that had forgotten how to be decent. 
	The pre-beatniks at the table stopped snapping their fingers; even the saxophone blushed.

I touched the bandage under my collarbone where a .32 had kissed me last week, 
	courtesy of a dock boss who didn't appreciate follow-up questions about the 
	'34 strike.
	
	"Murder's my native tongue, dollface. What's yours?"

"Lust," she said, and slid into the booth. 
	
	"Call me Slutpuppy. Everybody does."

I believed her. Names are just scars we haven't heard of yet.

	

**2**
	

She laid it out between choruses of "Sweet Georgia Brown" played sloppy
	by a pianist who swore he could see tomorrow in the black keys.


Her old man—Silky "Pimpcat" Valiente—was a Spanish-Irish pimp who ran cathouses 
from the Mission to the docks, a tomcat in a zoot suit who slid through alleys
on patent-leather paws. Born Salvador in a Tenderloin boarding house where his
	Irish ma rented rooms by the hour and his Spanish pa showed up every six months 
	with silk scarves and empty promises. He'd learned early: everything's for sale,
everyone's got a price, and the difference between love and business is just bad bookkeeping.

Somebody, somewhere paid the ransom and the song dwindled into a reversing silence 
	that echoedfor some seconds like Salem witches after the hunt.

Three nights ago one of his girls, a Cherokee canary named Lola Lazar, 
turned up in a Chinatown doorway with her throat cut in the shape of a treble clef.
	The cops yawned. The papers screamed. Pimpcat kept sliding, but his eyes had
	started to look like cracked marble.

"Silky's got a ledger," Slutpuppy whispered. "Names, dates, how high the judge was 
	when he bit Lola's shoulder. Somebody wants that book. Somebody wants him dead.
	I want him alive long enough to disappear with me."

"Love or loot?" I asked.

"Both," she said, "and maybe a little revenge on the side, like olives in a martini."

I should have walked. Instead I lit her cigarette and watched the tip glow like the
	last traffic light before hell.

Pondering the corridor of murder I was about to paw with my hound pulse, 
I reckoned maybe too quickly; in for a penny, in for a pound. At least I could bandage my expenses. 

My rate: twenty a day plus expenses and any body bags under size twelve.
	She paid in advance, slipping a roll of tens into my hand with fingers
	that trembled like a virgin on her third honeymoon.
	
	"Real name's Kathleen Valiente," she said, "but that girl died in a Mission
	tenement when her mother coughed herself to death. Fourteen years old, 
	dancing for nickels on the Embarcadero. Silky found me. Taught me."

She didn't finish. She didn't need to.

	
**3**

	
We found Pimpcat at the Elbow Room, a dockside bar where the whiskey was cut with 
	turpentine and the women knew how to disappear when the fleet came in. 
	He wore a chalk-stripe suit the color of cemetery fog, two-tone shoes, 
	and a grin that had sold its soul to the devil for sharp teeth.
	His 1936 Cord 810 sat outside like a sleek metal cat, garnet red 
	with those coffin-nose hidden headlights that popped up like predator eyes, 
	chrome exhaust pipes running down the sides like silver veins.

"Quill, you look like yesterday's obituary," he greeted me.

"Still breathing," I said.

"That can be fixed."

Slutpuppy slid under his arm like she belonged there. His eyes flicked to her, 
	then to me, then to the black satchel I carried. Inside was a Luger and the ledger she'd promised.

We took a corner booth. A ceiling fan chopped the air into nervous pieces.
	Pimpcat laid it out: Lola had been blackmailing City Supervisor Craddock, 
	a family-values crusader who kept a love nest on Russian Hill and a wife in Peoria. 
	The ledger page for Craddock read: "Two hours, French silk, hummingbird tongue,
	$500, photo of him in ladies'lace."

Five hundred dollars—enough to keep a longshoreman's family fed for four months. 
	Lola wanted ten grand to keep the negative. Craddock sent a cutter instead.

"Now the book's hot," Pimpcat said. "Half the board of supervisors, two judges,
	a monsignor, and a lady cartoonist who draws naughty mice are in it. 
	They'll burn Chinatown to cinders to get it."

He tapped my chest with a manicured nail. "You're gonna hide me till I sail to 
	Manila at dawn. In return I give you the book. You sell it back to the 
	marks for fifty grand, split with Puppy here. 
	Everybody wins except the choirboys who sang off-key."

I didn't believe him. Guys like Pimpcat don't sail; they sink and take the ocean 
	with them. But the dame's thigh was warm against mine and the Luger was cold 
	against my ribs, so I nodded.

Outside, foghorns moaned like widows. Inside, the bartender polished a glass
	that never got clean. I felt the night shift its weight, getting ready to pounce.

	
**4**

	
We holed up in a flophouse above a proto-beatnik bookstore on Columbus.
	The walls were papered with poems that smelled of reefer and regret.
	At 2 a.m. the lights went out and the city turned into one big dark mouth.

Slutpuppy changed into a silk slip the color of candle smoke. 
	She poured rye into tooth glasses and sat on the windowsill, 
	legs swinging like a couple of moonlit bridges.

"Ever kill a man, Quill?"

"Only the ones who bored me."

She laughed, a sound like dice on felt. "Silky says you're the last honest guy in town.
	That means you're the most crooked, you just haven't cashed in."

I watched the fog crawl up the brick opposite. Somewhere a siren started, thought better of it, died.

She came over, put her palms on my chest. Her pulse drummed against my scars.

"Make me forget I'm property," she said.

So I did. The slip sighed to the floor. Her skin tasted of salt and panic. 
	We moved like jazz in 5/4 time, off-balance and inevitable.
	Afterward she slept with her mouth open, a small animal exhausted from running.

I stayed awake counting shadows. At 3:17 the door handle turned, 
	slow as cancer in a lumberjack. I rolled off the mattress, Luger first.

A silhouette in the hallway—tall, thin, wearing a fedora like a grave lid. 
	He raised a shotgun cut down to whorehouse length. I fired once. 
	The muzzle flash showed me his face—no face, just a white porcelain
	clown mask cracked down the middle. He staggered back, leaking blackness,
	and fled. No footprints, only playing cards scattered in the corridor: 
	the jack of spades, the queen of hearts, the joker with its tongue cut out.

Slutpuppy didn't wake. I tucked the cards into my coat 
	and listened to the city breathe through broken teeth.

	

**5**


	
Dawn came the color of a nicotine stain. We moved to Pier 39 where
	Pimpcat kept a cruiser named The Satin Doll. The plan: get holed up 
	till night, then slip under the Golden Gate— still a bright orange-red of 
	 optimistism, the past decade seemed not to have dance upon
	that new traverse standing as if time didn't exist,
	—and sell the ledger in Manila where dollars bought more skin.

The boat stank of tuberoses and engine oil. Below deck was a stateroom
	with mirrors on the ceiling and a record player that spun it all but
	glowed like outer space suns when it played Billie Holiday. 
	
	Pimpcat poured champagne and wore sunglasses even in the fog.

"Cheers, suckers," he toasted.
	
	"To the death of innocence—may it rest in pieces."

We raised our glasses. The boat rocked like a rickety candle in a slow earthquake.

	Satan Takes a Holiday whispered below deck "Stop, look, and listen to me..."
	
That's when the second phantom showed.

She climbed out of the forward hatch barefoot, wearing a blood-red cheongsam 
slit to the thigh, hair down to her waist like spilled ink. Lola Lazar. 
	Dead Lola. Her throat was still smiling wide, 
	but no sound came out except the wet drip of memory.

Pimpcat dropped his glass. "You're in the morgue, baby."

She smiled, showed teeth like piano keys.
	
	"Not anymore, cat. Some songs don't know when to quit."

She had a straight razor in one hand, a camera in the other. 
	The camera flashed. White fire. Pimpcat screamed. I fired.
	The bullet went through her and shattered the mirror behind,
	multiplying us into a thousand guilty fragments.

Then she was gone. Only the smell of gardenias and formaldehyde lingered.

Slutpuppy clutched my arm hard enough to bruise. 
	"She was buried yesterday. I saw the ceremony."

"Coffins are cheap," I said. "the spirit worlds are cheaper, dirt cheap."

Pimpcat's cool cracked like cheap varnish. "We sail now."

He gunned the engine. It seem to rattle out names like a stool 
	pidgeon in deep for a fix. The names nodded out 
	like Chinese junkies under opium den smoke. 

Then hummed as names are so prone to do outside. 
	Never rolled out moaning like when they are 
	inside by sweet fireplace flashing the chirp of burning wood.

The dock lines snapped like promises. We slid out into the bay 
	while the city behind us burned daylight savings into counterfeit coins.

	

**6**


	
Mid-channel the fog closed in, thick as courtroom lies. 
	We dropped anchor off Alcatraz. The Rock loomed, empty now but still hungry.

Pimpcat went below to radio his buyer. 
	Slutpuppy and I stayed topside. 
	She shivered though the air was warm.

"He killed her," she said suddenly.

"Who?"

"Silky. Lola was leaving him, taking the book.
	He slit her, then paid the coroner to dig in the wrong Jane Doe.
	Craddock's just the goat."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I needed you to keep him alive long enough for me to kill him."

I stared at her. The wind whipped her hair into Medusa snakes.

"Love or loot?" I asked again. 

"Justice," she said, and pulled a derringer from her garter. 
	It looked like a toy until it pointed at my heart.

Below, the engine coughed and died. Silence bigger than the grave.

Pimpcat reappeared, face fish-belly white. 
	
	"Radio's smashed. Somebody's on board."

Footsteps overhead, soft as cat paws. 
	Then the music started— "Gloomy Sunday" from the record player, 
	though the power was cut.

We were three spectres in a steel coffin, drifting.

Lola stepped out of the companionway again, razor singing. 
	This time she wasn't alone. Behind her came the clown-masked shotgunner,
	leaking a whorehouse's length of blood from the chest wound I'd given him , 
	and a third figure—Craddock in his monsignor collar, face powdered like a corpse at a wake.

"Welcome to the jury," Lola whispered.

Pimpcat backed against the rail. "I can pay."

"Too late," said Craddock, voice dry as old communion wafers.
	
	"The city needs a scapegoat wearing your spots."

Slutpuppy raised the derringer. "He's mine."

Lola laughed, a sound like a record spinning backward. "Share."

The clown lifted the shotgun.

I swung the Luger. Four weapons, one heartbeat.

Then the boat exploded.
	

**7**


	
Not fire—water. A Coast Guard torpedo? No, simpler: somebody had scuttled us. 
	The hull cracked like a bad alibi. Sea poured in.

The spirits didn't care. They kept coming.

I grabbed Slutpuppy, dragged her over the side as the Satin Doll rolled
	and kissed the black deep. The water was ice and ink. 
	She fought me, trying to swim back to the boat where Pimpcat wrestled with phantoms.

"Let me go!" she screamed, swallowing bay.

"Dead is dead," I growled, "but dying takes forever."

A flashbulb popped underwater—Lola's camera, 
	still working. In the phosphor glare I saw Pimpcat
	clinging to the bow rail, Lola's razor at his throat,
	the clown's shotgun in his gut. Craddock held the ledger
	high like a priest with the host. Then the boat slid under,
	taking the whole pornographic Last Supper with it.

I hauled Slutpuppy toward Alcatraz, kicking through kelp and guilt.
	Behind us, effervescence arose like unheard last words. No bodies surfaced.
	

**8**

	
We crawled onto the prison boat landing at dawn, coughing blood and seawater. 
	The island was empty except for gulls that laughed like bad actors.

She sat on the concrete, dress plastered to her skin, eyes holes punched in the sky.

"It's over," I said.

"Nothing's over," she answered. "The book floats."

And it did. A black oilskin bundle bobbed in the rip current, 
	drifting toward us like a message in a bottle from a corrupt god. 
	I fished it out. Pages sodden but readable—names, sins, 
	daguerrotypes of powerful men wearing nothing but shame.

She took it, kissed the salt off my cheek. "We can own this town."

"Or it can own us."

"Same difference."

I looked at her—half witch, half waif, all hunger.
	The sun broke through the fog, painted her gold and ruthless.

"I'll make you a deal," I said.
	
	"We sell the book to the highest bidder,
	take the money, catch the next steamer to Shanghai.
	But first we bury Lola."

"She's already underground."

"Then we bury a prayer for what we did to her."

She thought about it, teeth worrying her lower lip. Finally she nodded.

We tore out the page with Craddock's name,
	folded it into a paper boat, and set it adrift.
	The current carried it toward the Golden Gate and the far Pacific 
	where all dirty stories eventually drown.

The rest of the ledger we wrapped in oilskin again. 
	She tucked it inside her slip, between heart and breast, 
	a black heart beating against her own.

We flagged down a fishing skiff. The French captain took one 
	look at our hollow eyes and asked no questions. 
	As we passed where the Satin Doll went down,
	gulls wheeled over a patch of slick water. 
	No bodies, no ghosts—just the reflection 
	of the city shimmering like a lie 
	that hadn't been invented yet.



	
Back on shore we holed up in my office above a tattoo parlor on Kearny. 
	
She frowned at my Kodak Junior six sixteen series Bellows rusting on the desk.
	
	I phoned a broker who brokered sins for senators.
	He offered thirty grand, meet at midnight, Pier 43.

The vagrants, -scattered like justice - 
	who had cremated their dollars for joyrides only to be crushed
	by the glooom of need, could hardly been seen.

We arrived early. Fog again, cat-quiet. She wore a trench coat two
	sizes too big, hair pinned like a promise she intended to break.


The buyer showed in a Packard Twelve the color of dried blood,
	those vertical chrome grille bars catching the dock lights
	like prison cell doors, whitewall tires gleaming. 
	He was flanked by two boys who looked like they'd 
	been born wearing brass knuckles.

Money changed hands: fat envelope for the ledger,
	thin smile for the future. Then the boys drew.
	Too late. I had the Luger, she had the derringer. 
	Four shots, two bodies, one driver sprinting into the fog
	like a spilled confession. We left the ledger on the pier,
	pages fluttering like dying moths. Let the rats fight over it.

We had the cash. We had each other—whatever was left.

At the train depot she bought two tickets east under the names
	Mr. and Mrs. Holiday. As the locomotive coughed steam, she leaned into me.

"Think we'll make it, Quill?"

"Nobody makes it," I said. "Some just take longer to miss."

She laughed, that dice-on-felt sound, and pulled me into the sleeper. 
	Behind us, San Francisco shrank, a jeweled whore waving goodbye 
	with broken nails. Ahead: every cheap motel between here and eternity.

I closed my eyes and saw Lola's razor, Pimpcat's grin, the clown's
	cracked mask. They rode the rails with us, stowaways in the dark.

But her hand found me under the thin blanket,
	warm and alive and wicked. For now, that was enough.

The train howled into the night, a saxophone solo nobody
	would ever remember except the ones who bled for it.

	The lips that pressed rough kisses upon the reeds...

Outside, the fog kept sliding, slick as a pimpcat
	in patent leather, hungry as a slutpuppy learning new tricks.

The city was gone. The story wasn't.

It never is. 

It has a throat like jazz that cradled and cuddled but always swallowed.


	-end of inky noir book one- read more @ wordstar.nexus/ten