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This is it. This is how he is going to die. A flash from a gun, taste of copper in his mouth, and Dick Booping hit the ground. The cold rain fell in puddles on the greasy and oil slick streets outside the Fandom Bar, worse dive in the city. Booping feels his life bleed out around his hand clutching at his wound. All private dicks die alone and forgotten in the trash filled alley ways of life and Booping is only one of a long line.
He barely hears the soft voice in his ear. It urges him to stay awake. The familiarity tugs at Booping. He knows this voice.
It doesn’t matter. He’s breathing his last. He knows it. Booping can’t escape his fate. Might be a mercy to give up the fight and fade into darkness.
The urgent concerned voice is still there. “Come on, Booping, the ambulance will be here in a minute.”
The voice takes him back to a time long ago when Booping was still shiny and new and so bloody naïve to still think of the world as black and white. A tall drink of water with an angel’s blond hair and eyes as blue as the unclouded sky oozed into his life with a job offer in one hand and disaster in the other. Booping never gave it a second thought. He jumped at the chance to work Pink Whitecock’s case. He followed Whitecock down the twisted paths and dark shadows of his God-forsaken city. The case ended in a hail of bullets and clouds of tears and no winners. Whitecock took the glory and the money and disappeared, leaving Booping a ruin among the empty bourbon bottles.
“Hang in there, Dick,” the voice pleads.
If he could care, he would be ashamed to die over this miserable case. He shouldn’t have taken it. He looked at the teenager through the pain of his hangover as the kid in tears complained about corruption of the system and people framed for crimes. Nothing good could come out of this case. The kid would never get the elusive truth and swift justice she wanted. But Booping had always been a sucker for a good sob story. He found his man and the wrong end of the barrel of a gun.
He shivers from the cold. So cold in the harsh fluorescent of the bar lights and on the rough asphalt of the street. The wind driven rain falls in sheets of sharp needles. Someone puts a coat scented with musk, sandalwood and gunpowder over him.
He can’t hear the voice anymore. Shivers rack his body. Ice is settling into his bones.
“Dick! Dick! Stay with me, damn it.”
Would have been nice to see Whitecock again.
~~~~~
Whitecock opened the door to Booping’s office and found Dick’s gun aimed right at him. “Happy to see me?” he said.
“Oh, it’s you,” Booping said. He stepped back from the door. He tucked the gun into his shoulder holster. “Come in.”
Whitecock had been to this office enough times over the past ten years. Nothing had changed over the years, not the worn wood door, the case files haphazardly heaped on every surface, and the stale scent of despair and damnation in the air.
Doubt crossed Whitecock’s mind. This might be a bad idea. He had heard from the hospital that Booping had checked out against doctor’s orders and was last seen pouring himself into a taxi. He had a passing thought that Booping was holed up in the flop house he called home. No, Booping landed here instead.
“I did want to see if you had lived or died.” Whitecock looked around the unholy mess in the office with a disapproving eye and finally swept a pile of papers and books off the one suitable chair in the place.
“It was just a scratch,” Booping replied, kicking up his feet onto the desk.
Whitecock put two bottles of the most expensive whiskey he could buy on the desk and sat down. “Yes, of course, one treats scratches with a trip to emergency surgery and several stitches and blood transfusions and a stay in ICU. How silly of me.”
“I’m still here.”
“Glasses?” Whitecock asked.
Booping opened a desk and slammed two glasses on the desk. Whitecock poured the whiskey, pushing a full glass over to the skeptical Booping. “You still owe me a drink,” he said.
“Right.” Booping brushed a wayward brown curl out of his eyes. He downed the first glass.
“That’s not like your swill,” Whitecock pointed out to the surprised Booping inspecting one of the bottles. God, Booping could be so – so – so uncivilized. But that didn’t mean that Whitecock couldn’t dream of what Booping with his dark wavy hair, chocolate brown eyes, and olive skin would look like splayed out naked on the crispy white sheets of his hotel room.
The watery light of the settting sun streamed into the room filtered by the plastic blinds. Whitecock leaned back in his creaking chair. Booping poured another glass, but sipped it carefully, clearly savoring it. Whitecock nursed his own glass watching the struggle in Booping’s eyes.
Booping thumped his glass on the desk. “Thanks,” he grunted, not able to look Whitecock in the eye. “Thanks for helping out, Pink.”
Whitecock nodded. Despite the run-down furniture, the stained ceiling, and the strangely sticky floor, Whitecock admitted grudgingly he didn’t have too many other places he’d rather be than right there drinking with Dick.