Channeling Raymond Chandler

The sun was just a rumor. It disappeared like a corpse in Edgar Allen Poe's basement. The sky had a battered look as if it got kicked in its vitals. The western sun fought its way through the cloud cover as it was setting, the way a washed-up middleweight let his bling shine as he called it quits fighting youth in slow motion.

Last night was part of that haze. The goon hiding behind the lamp post had been following me since I left Santa Anita. He had a face like the pony that got stuck in the starting gate. I waited for him when I turned the corner at Alvarado and 6^th, pulled the straw hat over his face and frisked him.

The next thing I remember is waking up inside the G.I. rubbish tank in the alley behind Izzy’s Deli smelling from week-old whitefish and pickled herring.

Izzy was a friend of mine since I let him take me at poker. When I paid him off in two-dollar bills, he put me on his menu under lamination. A Norm Levine: Lox and cream cheese on a bagel with heirloom tomato and cucumber for $2.75, including a Schlitz beer.

I staggered home at midnight and took the longest shower since Noah’s flood. When I got to my feet today for another round, my left eye mirrored the bruised sky. The phone rang louder than the buzz in my head.

The voice in my ear warned me to lay off investigating the dame. That’s all I needed to keep going even if there was less to it than met my knuckled eye.

A forgettable man of mediocre mind had popped into my office last week. I was a sucker for his Peter Lorre eyes and Sydney Greenstreet guffaw. When he announced himself as Murray Hill, I already had his number. He said he wanted me to keep an eye on his sister. I knew he was lying behind a bogus smile like William Buckley's and the way he wiped his sweaty palms with his pink tie. But I was getting ten bucks a day plus expenses, and I needed the dough for my rent, due on Monday.  

I trailed his so-called sister to the Spitfire Grill behind a hangar at the Santa Monica airport. The place was swarming with gumshoes, hoods and undercover cops spying on each other. If you had money to launder, you’d come to the right place.

Looking up from behind my Look magazine I started to ponder the meaning of life in a godless world forgetting that I already did that in the shower last night. If I came up with an answer it disappeared into my oatmeal this morning.

But nothing else fits in this cockeyed world, like what I'm doing here with my good eye on the blonde who turned out to be the twin of a redhead that took the rap and did a stretch up the river for packing a rod. Her face curled the bacon in my BLT. She blew me a kiss that could launch a thousand props on Piper Cubs.

I was ready to blow this joint when I felt something heavier than a double cheeseburger landing on my head. The world is spinning, and I'm deciding to quit this racket and enroll in pharmacy school, recalling my mother's words about finding something I can always fall back on.

I was just a soft-boiled guy in a hard-boiled world.