Rick Barlowe

"Rick, Rick, you still despise me, don't you?" asked Peabody, the little round-faced minion holding the silver snub-nosed revolver currently pointed at my guts. His wheedling was getting on my last nerve, so I snapped at him more unkindly than I could have: 

"I would if I thought about it," I drawled. I pulled a cigarette from my jacket, leaned against my desk, and scraped a match across the bottom of my shoe. I touched the resulting flame to the fag and took a deep puff, contemplating the ceiling fan that whirred above, undisturbed. 

"Stop mocking me!" Peabody spat, brandishing the gun. "I'll shoot you dead if you don't tell me what I want to know!" 

An ironic chuckle slipped free before I could suppress it. "Kid, if you shoot me dead, you're the one that's going to need answering--to the Slender Man." 

"I'm not scared of him!" Peabody yelled, quivering. "He knows I'm loyal!" 

"Oh sure," I said. "So was Dunwich. He was loyal. Quimby was loyal. They were loyal all the way down to the bottom of the bay." 

Peabody burst into tears, cradling his head in his hands. "Oh, if only that witch hadn't interfered! We didn't care about the inheritance! Only the notes! Only the Steinbrunner notes!" 

"Here's a note for you. Get out of my office and tell the Slender Man to come in person next time. I don't talk to flunkies." 

I thought Peabody's eyes would pop free of their sockets, so great was his rage. But after a moment, he left, stomping his size four feet all the way down the hall. 

I turned off the lights so I could stand in the dark for a while. Hallway light spilling through the glass window on my office door painted my name across the weathered wood floor at my feet. The letters were distorted, angular, like buildings in a German expressionist movie. It was the perfect visual metaphor for my state of mind--questioning who I was and what I was doing mixed up in this mess. A younger, smarter version of me wouldn't have gotten involved. But my hair was silver now, and climbing three flights of stairs up to my office had become an unwelcome chore. 

One way or another, this would be my last case. I wondered if I'd finish it dead or alive. 

 

Slim

She walked into my office that stormy night with neon letters--E-A-T--reflected in eyes of midnight black; her pinched brow finished the sentence with S-H- --

But never mind that. I hadn't had a client in weeks and I was down to my last nickel. When she sat on the edge of my desk and dangled one stiletto heel from her toes, only part of my booze-fogged brain absorbed the details of her case; the other parts were focused on her writhing toes and the curve of that nylon-wrapped foot. Something about an inheritance due her, an inheritance contested by a long-lost supposed black sheep half-sister showing up on her doorstep at a time so inconvenient it beggared belief and buggered up the works. 

Somewhere along the way I caught her name: Slim. Well, slim she was, and so were her cigarettes. Also her patience, because she was snapping her fingers right in front of my eyes. 

"Are you going to take the case, gumshoe, or are you gonna keep staring at my feet?" she barked. Her breath smelled like coffee grounds and tar. I liked it. 

I drew back from her percussive fingers and rose up from my well-worn office chair. 

"My fee is ten bucks a day plus expenses," I said. "Don't ask me to carry a gun or otherwise fool with rough stuff. I'm strictly an investigator. I'm no one's enforcer, no one's goon, no one's gunsel. Get me?" 

She smirked with lips glossy as patent leather. 

"Sure, I get you. How you do your business is--your business," she said. "Besides, if you get yourself killed, no medical expenses. Or any expenses, I suppose." 

"You'll pay my secretary," I growled. She shrugged as if the cash didn't matter at all, then turned on her heel and walked out the door. 

I flicked off the light switch and stood by the window, looking down at the street, the big neon EAT sign flickering on and off, red-yellow, red-yellow. I hoped to see those long legs again, marching off down the sidewalk, but she must have headed west instead of east. 

I thought about going downstairs to the diner to spend my last nickel, but a coffee went for ten cents these days and I hadn't asked for an advance. My mind had still been preoccupied by the sheen of nylon stretched over smooth, uncallused feet. She was the kind of gal who used a pumice stone. 

A little while later I'd find out I was wrong about a lot of things regarding Slim and her case--but not the condition of her feet. 

 

The Chandler Dispatch

Sylvia Noir

Quick Take: Drive a Crooked Road

In Drive a Crooked Road (Richard Quine, 1954), poor Mickey Rooney plays against type as a loser looking for love and finding only betrayal and the collapse of his personal world. At least the femme fatale feels bad about leading him to his doom.

Quick Take: My Name is Julia Ross

Not the first movie about gaslighting and not the last, but screened in 2019 My Name is Julia Ross (Joseph H. Lewis, 1945) takes on a chilling subtext as we all become Julia, trapped in a world where the forces of darkness gaslight us all by insisting that truth isn't truth and all the news is fake. Like Julia, we'll need a miracle to escape before the trap closes.

A Simple Tailor

Pie Stand

Earl Noir

If it were shot on black and white film instead of colour videotape, I'd almost claim that this screen capture from Generous Nature could serve as a legitimate example of film noir, thanks to its claustrophobic composition. I totally meant to do that! 

LEGO Film Noir

How cool would it be if Lego made a Film Noir line, made exclusively of pieces molded in black, white and shades of grey? Plus pieces to make neon signs. There would need to be minifigures of grizzled detectives and life insurance agents, FBI men, femme fatales, girls-next-door, toughs, goons, police officers walking a beat, sleek roadsters, suspicious dives...fun times. 

I Never Claimed to be Cresswell

In the future, critics will look back on a ten to fifteen year period in the late 21st century as the era of Film Blanc, a genre marked by overweening optimism in a period of real-world strife. Critics will point to the overabundance of bright colours, vivid scenery and themes of acceptance, renewal, redemption and love triumphing against inevitable odds. 

LEGO Noir

34 Years Old

Looks like I have some catching up to do. I went out to Pete's birthday party on Saturday night - well, he calls it a "re-birthday," since his real birthday was back in January and this was simply the first chance we've had to celebrate. A dozen or so of us gathered at Hokkaido on 124th street. The food was good - I ordered teriyaki chicken - but I still fail to see the appeal of tempura. Thick, greasy yellow batter surrounding a tiny bit of shrimp or (gak) eggplant or yam. No thanks. Sushi kind of escapes me, too. I have a timid palate.

I caught up on some movies over the weekend...finally saw Sunset Blvd. To me, it's a bizarre mix of Gothic and noir elements, with some old-fashioned melodrama tossed in for good measure. Great film, particularly the opening sequence.

I also watched Undercover Brother, a far less accomplished film, but it was sincere, and had many moments of genuine hilarity. Oh, and my X-Men 1.5 DVD came with a free pass to see Daredevil, so I went to see that, too. Not bad; certainly better than I was expecting.

Hmm - it's February 25th, and now that it's after 7:37 PM, I guess it's my birthday. My 34th birthday, to be precise.

When I was five or six, I saw the Star Trek episode "The Deadly Years" for the first time. In the episode, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy start to age at an accellerated rate, growing old and decrepit before our very eyes. Naturally, Kirk's advancing senility calls his ability to command the Enterprise into question, so the senior crew members call a hearing. An emotional Kirk cries out at one point, in defiance of his condition: "I...am...thirty-four...years...old!"

When I watched that episode for the first time, on the CBC up in the tiny northern town of Leaf Rapids, I thought to myself, "One day, I'll be thirty-four, just like Captain Kirk."

That day has come. Captain Kirk isn't thirty-four anymore, of course, except for the 52 minutes of time preserved in "The Deadly Years." Captain Kirk died on a mountaintop a few years ago - or a few centuries from now, depending on how you count these things.

From a very early age, I've always been keenly aware of my own mortality. Maybe that's why I've always been an atheist. The great void waits for each of us, lacking even darkness, for even that would be something...a presence defined by an absence.

Pretentious enough for one evening? Lighter news tomorrow.