5MD: Noir #001
“Hey, Mickey,” Joe said. The words came out low and slurred.
A moment of silence passed.
“Mick-EY!”
A man looked up from the end of the bar, his head buried in a sea of papers.
“Jesus, Joe, you’re still here? I hoped you would’ve been gone by now,” Mickey said.
“What do ya-what do you mean by that?” Joe said. His head bobbed up and down and his eyes flickered.
“I’m just saying…it’s getting late, pal. I’ve been closed for an hour and want to see you get home safely. Come on, let me call you a cab,” Mickey reached for the phone.
“Mick…one more. For me?” Joe held up an empty glass.
Mickey hesitated before reaching for a new bottle of scotch. He popped the cork and went to pour Joe a fresh one but stopped short.
“Last one, Joey. Besides, you’ve emptied me out of gin for the night.”
Joe let out a low laugh and emptied half the glass the glass in one shot. At this point, it all was the same to him. He looked around the bar, barely anyone in sight.
Mickey started drying the glasses stacked by the sink.
“Joe, I’ve known you since you were barely tall enough to look over this bar. I remember your dad bringing you in here with him. ‘Shirley temple, three cherries, Mick’ he would always call out. Boy oh boy was that your favorite.” He glanced nervously at the corner of the bar. A woman sat there clad in a red trench coat, smoke whispered from the end of a cigarette.
Joe turned to the corner and then looked back at his bartender, his confidant, his friend.
“Who’s the gal?”
“She came in about an hour before you. Ordered a Sazarac. Hasn’t moved since.” Mickey didn’t take his eyes off the woman.
“Well, wouldn’t want to keep a woman sitting by herself, now, would we?” Joe stood up and slicked his hair back not nearly as smoothly as he imagined.
“Joe wait-” Mickey tried to get out the words but Joe’s mind was made up. He walked over to the woman, bumping into several stools on the way there.
“Say now, what’s a dame like you doing in a seedy place, like this?” Mickey asked, a slight smile forming at the corner of his mouth.
The woman drew on the cigarette deeply before slowly exhaling.
“I’m looking for someone,” she said. Her face was partially obscured by the shadows. “A lover…,” she trailed off.
Joe looked around the bar. “Well, the success of that search depends on how you’d like the rest of this conversation to go.”
“A former lover, Mr. Daggett,” the woman said as she looked up and locked eyes with Joe.
His blood ran cold.
“Jessica…”
A single pop illuminated the corner of the bar. Joe looked down to see a pool of red rapidly expanding from his shirt. He stumbled backwards into a group of chairs and fell to the floor. A wisp of smoke carried out the end of a snub nose revolver held by Jessica’s gloved hand.
She walked over to Joe lying on the floor and removed a ring from her pocket. She placed it on Joe’s chest.
“I told you you would see me again,” she whispered into his ear.
She stood up and walked over to Mickey, who was backed up against the bar. Tears streamed down his face.
Jessica pulled a thick envelope out of her purse and placed it on the stack of paper that read, “NOTICE OF INTENT TO REPOSSESS”
“Like what you’ve done with the place, Mick,” Jessica said, as she grabbed a cherry from the fruit tray on the bar.
“See you around,” she said and popped the cherry in her mouth.
Out the door she went, her trench coat as red as the blood on Joe Daggett’s shirt.
