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an old truck tire in a police slicker and rain hat, smoking a cigarette. He tossed you the pack. It was your own. One left. You fumbled for matches but they were wet. Blue came over irritably (you were wasting his time) and let you light your cigarette off his, then he sat down again. So what are you doing down here, dipshit? he asked. They throw you out of your flophouse?
    I had a yearning for the bracing seaside air, you said, and felt your pockets.
    You were lucky, Noir. It wasn’t robbery. When we found you, you still had your bankroll.
    Oh yeah? Where is it?
    I shared it out with the guys. Reward for saving your useless fucked-up life.
    What do you mean, saving my life? What did they do?
    It’s what they didn’t do. Pretty mean old boys, Noir. Now where did that big roll come from?
    Client of mine. At the bottom of an empty pocket, a nearly empty pocket, there was a wrinkled scrap of paper. The name the widow scribbled out for you. You tried to remember that familiar smell you noticed just before they brained you, but your sinuses were clogged now with the odor of dead fish and machine oil.
    Don’t bullshit me, scumbag, your clients don’t have that kinda money. What are you up to?
    You sighed. Even that hurt. So the sigh was more like a groan. You’d smoked the cigarette down to the point where it was burning your lips, and you badly needed another. You flicked the tiny fagend toward the water where rotting pilings from collapsed wooden docks reared up out of the greasy water like ancient stalagmites, black bones, and said: Collecting for police charity.
    I oughta take you over to the station, wiseass, and work you over just for the pleasure of it. But somebody’s already done that for us.
    Who do you think that was?
    I don’t know. My guess is you’ve picked up a tail.
    Is that a guess or inside track?
    Educated guess, let’s say. Out in the dead black water, pimpled with rain, rusting barges with angular bent-neck cranes sat like senile old geezers having a mindless bath. You don’t know why you notice such things. You’re a nosy guy, Noir, Blue said, and nosy guys attract the curiosity of other nosy guys.
    Crushed beer cans. An old shoe. Rusting hubcap. Broken crate slats. Piece of sewer pipe. Bent plastic bottles. Debris of the shore, snuggling in the rocks. Integers. Adding up to nothing. Still, you keep on doing the fucking math. You staggered to your feet, feeling like shit. Think I’m going to have to change the mattress, you said.
    Snark says there’s a woman involved.
    Yeah, my mother. She misses me. Take me home to her.
    You’ve got a head wound, numbnuts. You should go to hospital and have it treated, get an X-ray.
    An X-ray might break it. I’ve got work to do.
    Your funeral, chump. I don’t have a free car, he says, but here. . . . He peeled a tenspot off the roll in his pocket. I’m feeling flush. I’ll pay for your cab.

    BLANCHE WAS UPSET WHEN SHE SAW THE STATE YOU were in. First thing, get out of those wet clothes, Mr. Noir. You’ll catch your death.
    I caught it when I got dropped, Blanche. And I don’t have any dry ones.
    I’ll take those things down to the laundromat and put them in the drier. Hurry up now.
    You felt like you might pass out. You were making squishy noises when you walked and not just in your shoes. You managed to get your tie off while she was brewing up a cup of tea, but she had to take care of the rest. It was like peeling tinfoil off a cigarette pack. You hoped your shorts weren’t dirty. While she was emptying out your pockets, she said: It’s that woman you’re mixed up with, isn’t it? The one with the legs and the fishy story.
    Maybe. I think the cops had something to do with it.
    She sat you down on a stool and bandaged up your head. This wasn’t the first time you’d turned up after a going-over, wouldn’t be the last, it was part of the racket, so Blanche always kept a fully stocked body-repair kit in the office. She used up a whole roll of