Noir You Ready?

Here's my "noir" story. Not really my bag, but fun to write anyway.



Pony Tale
By Doc Walton


The sign on the door reads “Peter Malone, Private Investigator.”

Big deal.

I was half drunk, wearing a slept in suit and down to my last sawbuck when she appeared in my doorway like the sun bursting through a cloud. I mean this dame could light up a room better than a 100 watt.

“Hello Pete” she said, “long time no see.”

I eased my chair back a little, clasped my hands behind my head and causally put my feet up on the desk. I was stalling for time, trying to picture where I’d seen her before.

“You don’t remember me do you?” she asked, not really looking for an answer. “I’m Sally Swan, Katie’s little sister.”

It hit me like a sledge. The Brat. The one that followed us around like a lost puppy. See Katie and I had had a thing a couple years back that threatened to get serious. Well, at least on my part. I was this close to popping the question when she tossed me out like last year’s shoes. I apparently didn’t fit her image of “Mr. Right.” Mr. Right, it turned out, was handsome, rich and connected. I couldn’t come up with one out of three. A month after she dumped me she hit the jackpot and was riding polo ponies

“Hello Brat,” I said. “You’ve grown some since I last saw you. Why don’t you pull up a chair and tell me what I can do you for.”

She snaked across the room to my desk with the kind of walk you’d stop everything just to watch. She had more curves than a Gran Prix race course and they all moved…well, you know how they moved, like a slinky on a stairway only without the hiss. She pulled the one other chair in the office around to the side of my desk so there’d be nothing between us. She was close enough I could smell her perfume. It was fragrant and flagrant, nothing subtle about it. Mixed nicely, I thought, with the bourbon stench drifting off my own self.

“So,” I ventured the moment she looked comfortable which was right away. “what brings you knocking on old Pete’s door?” I threw in the “old” as a reminder to myself I had ten years on her, maybe more.

Something troubled passed behind her eyes and she looked a little uncertain for the first time since she entered the room.

“Maybe you ought to offer a lady a drink before we get down to business, she said. “All you…you gumshoes, right?, you keep a bottle handy, doncha?”

I slid the desk drawer open and grabbed the bourbon and a couple of paper cups. I was looking at the Brat while I did so thinking she was what, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one? I poured a short one for her and long one for myself. I said “cheers” and threw mine back. She took a small sip and then went all soft eyed.

“Pete,” she said in a smaller, quieter voice, “Katie’s dead.”

I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this. The booze in my gut went suddenly sour and my chest got tight as a navy knot. There was pain there, a new kind, something I’d never felt before.

“What happened?” I managed to ask with “Katie’s gone, Katie’s gone” screaming like a fresh wound in my head.

“I don’t know… really” the Brat, I mean Sally, said in small voice, something just a notch above a whisper.

She was nearing tears and losing her composure fast. Another man might have reached for her hand at that moment. I reached for the hooch. Poured us both a couple of fingers. This time she gulped, I sipped.

“The police” she went on, “the police say it was an accident. I don’t believe that. They say a horse in Carl’s string…Carl’s her husband…got startled or something, and broke through its stall door. They say it trampled her, Pete. They say they found the horse loose in the paddock outside the stable. It was frightened they said, and there was blood on its hooves. I… I just don’t believe them…It can’t be. You know Katie, Pete. She loved horses. Had a way with them. Katie was too...too…smart about them for this to happen like they said.”

I did know Katie. Horses and riding were her favorite things in life. I figured that’s why she’d left me for the polo putz in the first place. The police were probably right though. I mean it sounded open and shut to me, but this was Katie, my Katie…well almost anyway, and I felt closure, huh, closure, what a stupid word, might be good for both Sally and me.

“Listen Brat, er uh, Sally” I said. I’ll look into this. If something happened different from the police report, I’ll find out what it is. No promises, but you can count on me for that much.”

For a moment she looked reassured.

And then, because it was me…and because of the suit and the sawbuck and all that, I said, “Have you got any money?”


+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


I started with the usual unreliable source, our local news-rag. I’d missed the story first time around. I usually scan the dailies to keep up and all that, but lately I’d had a couple Ray Milland episodes. You know “Lost Weekends.” The news reports told essentially the same story as Sally only with more words. “Society Dame Dies Ugly” was pretty much the gist. One quote though, from a day laborer hired to swab out the stalls, gave me an idea. I got an old bud, Jim Hannifin, on the horn and next morning with a work ticket in hand from Jim’s labor hall, I was on my way to Rocky Top Stables where Carl Bland boarded his string of ponies.

First thing I learned when I got there was polo ponies ain’t ponies, they’re horses. Second thing…manure smells like shit.

The day was a shovel, sweep, mop routine that took me from one end of the stable’s stalls to the other and then back again. I was playing open and friendly as I worked and saying hello to everybody that passed by, mostly trainers, grooms, owners and few rental horse riders. The trainers were all business, but the grooms didn’t mind passing a piece of day with a temp looking for gossip.

“Hey,” I said to each one, “isn’t this the place where that lady got killed by a horse a couple weeks back?”

“Yeah, crying shame that” was the response I got from most of them. Along about mid-afternoon though, when I was leaning on my shovel and wondering how it was possible for a horse to dump out more than it took in, a guy came strolling by I hadn’t seen before. His brow was all wrinkled up and his eyes had that peculiar inward stare a person gets when he’s thinking about something else and barely watching where he’s going.

“Excuse me Buddy” I said as I grabbed his arm to slow his progress. “You wouldn’t happen to have a smoke on ya, would ya?”

The guy’s eyes came back front and center and he looked at me a moment, kind of getting himself together.

“Huh?…yeah… sure,” he said, reaching into a shirt pocket, “but you can’t smoke in here, you hafta go outside.”

I gave him my “isn’t this the place where” spiel as he handed me an Old Gold and his eyes did a whole new thing. They jumped left and right a couple a times before getting still. The guy stopped completely, spun into a quick one eighty and then turned back to me again. Confident then I suppose, that no one else was listening, he said, “Yeah it is… and I was there.”

“No kidding?” I said, all perky with interest “That must have been something. Did you really see it happen?”

“Not the whole thing. I came in this end of the stable just as the horse went out
the other. It was first thing in the morning and it was just getting light. The stable was still kind of dark, but I saw the girl right away. She was lying there real still and there was blood all over the place. The thing is…the thing that bothers me…I mean I can’t be sure, I only got a quick glimpse…and it was dark…but when the horse ran through the doorway and into the light at the other end?... I think I saw someone riding it. You know, hunched over real low like a jockey.”

Guy got nervous after that. Realized he was sounding off to a total stranger. “Just seeing things I guess,” he said with a forced little chuckle. “Too much bracer in the morning cuppa joe” He gave me a little wave, turned, and shuffled off in a flat hurry like a man who just remembered he had something to do.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I put in a couple more days moving manure, but learned nothing further. I wasn’t sure where to go after that, so I called my bosom bud Moynihan down at the fourth precinct. Moyny and I used to run the streets together as kids. He got real straight as we grew up while I just got bent. By the time I got my act together I was pushing thirty and it was too late to get a real badge. Moyny had his gold shield by then. I told him what I’d heard at the stable.

“Ah, you know Petey me lad” he said in his completely affected Irish brogue. The man was fourth generation Mick, but he wouldn’t give it up. “The whole shebang reeks o’ the fish if ye be askin me, but it taint me case, so don’t ye be askin. I’ll not be steppin’ on me fellow coppers toes.”

“The woman killed was Katie, Moyny, my Katie. I have to ask.”

“I’m thinking I can tell ye this much, Petey me boy. Where there be room for a horse to go ‘round, a horse WILL go ‘round. You might think about seein this for your own self.”

I hung up and dialed Hannifin. First light I was back in the stable.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

It was just me and the ponies about an hour later and I quickly turned one of the more skittery nags around in its stall. I shut the door at one end and parked my self in the middle of the aisle between the horse and the other end. I had a rope tied to the stall door and I used it to yank the door open suddenly and loudly. The horse bolted out and charged at me like it was cavalry trained. It was on me so fast I hadn’t time to move even if I wanted to. And truthfully...? I wanted to real bad. Then it was gone. By me and gone in a whoosh of air and an ear shattering clatter of hoof beats. I exhaled…long and loud. Accidental trampling, I thought… not likely.

I’d already asked my self who stood to gain by Katie’s death and come up with a big fat nobody. Her husband had enough dough that Katie’s insurance payoff would be little more than chump change to him To rule out another broad, I tailed Bland twenty-four seven for the next ten days. Man was a monk. I was stumped, clueless, leadless and at the end of the Brat’s per diem. I was reaching for the desk hooch when the phone rang.

“Petey, me Bucko,” - it was Moynihan - “and how will ye be doin this fine day?”

“Not good Moyny” I said. “I’m dead ended. I got nothing solid on Katie’s death and I know damn well it wasn’t an accident. I’m stumped Moyny, and it’s driving me straight to the drink.”

“Aye tis a short drive, that one” he said. “I’ve been thinking of ye Laddie. Thinking you might be wanting to talk to a fella name of Kegler, Max Kegler. Owns a string in the same stable as Bland. One of me lads here at the precinct’s working a horse doping angle and he says auld Maxie’s torn up same as you over Katie’s sudden passin.”

I had seen Max Kegler at the stable, but he’d never deigned to talk to me, a lowly shit shoveler. When I approached him there this time, I was flashing a badge and acting important. The man could not have cared less. He was as hang-dogged and downcast as
anybody I’d ever seen. Answered my questions in grunts and nods and when I’d finished moved off like a man on his way to a funeral, maybe his own. It didn’t take a shrink to see what was wrong with Maxie. The man was hurting. The man was grieving and carrying a heavy torch.

It was time to talk to Bland. I had enough now that I thought I could run a bluff and maybe get him to open up, get him to say something incriminating. I doused a couple of barn lights and folded myself into the shadows of an empty stall and waited. I knew Bland’s usual routine and it had him coming my way in less than ten. My plan was to jump him, pull him into the stall and apply some muscle.

Bad plan.

First part worked all right though. I grabbed him by the lapels as he walked by, spun him into the stall and pinned him to the back wall. I got up in his face and spit words through my teeth. “You killed my Katie, you Bastard. Ran her down like a dog in the street. Give me one reason I shouldn’t break your neck right now.”

I had to hand it to the guy. He stayed cool, real cool. Looked at me a second and then said, “I know you. You’re the low class PI Katie dumped to marry me. What is this, sore loser payback? Aren’t you a little late?”

I ignored that though there was some truth to that sore loser part. If I got nothing here on Katie’s murder, I might still consider taking away a little satisfaction on that score.

I had a nice tight grip on Bland’s lapels and I tugged him upwards a little for emphasis. I said, “I’ve got a guy saw you do it, saw you ride right over her. Wouldn’t talk to the police…too afraid of you. He’ll talk now though, he’s more afraid of me.”

Nothing. Bland’s expression never changed.

My hands and arms were getting tired but I took one last shot. “And I know why you did it,” I said. “Katie was going to drop you for Kegler just like she dropped me for you. That’s it pretty boy, that’s it, isn’t it?”

What happened next happened real fast and most of it I experienced through the haze of a crippling pain. Bland went berserk. I’d heard an adrenalized man can perform feats of strength far beyond the norm, but I hadn’t seen it until now. I had 20 pounds on this creep, but he spun me around like rag doll. He slammed my back into a hay trough and I thought it was broken. He let go of me then and I slumped to the ground like a punctured balloon. I squinted up at him through the pain and saw a man defining rage. His eyes had gone wild and his whole body looked tight enough to snap apart. I knew I was in real trouble.

“That’s right” he said in a voice half snarl, half hiss. “I killed her and the bitch deserved it. I saved her from a crap life with a punk like you, gave her everything and what do I get in return? Nothing, not a goddamn thing. It’s all about what she wants and you know what that is? Kegler. Kegler for Christ’s sake! That sorry sap can’t train a decent pony, he takes my woman? No way I’m letting that happen.”

I was pulling myself to my feet in small increments as he dropped his rant on me. I was almost upright when his expression changed and he got all spooky calm again. He reached into a jacket pocket and pulled out a hypo with something piss colored in it. “Horse doper impaled on own needle” he said, squirting a little of the liquid into the air. “Should make a great story.”

I was trying to bob and weave as he started towards me, but none of my parts were working properly. I knew I couldn’t elude the jab in my present condition and I suddenly began too wonder what was in the needle and how bad it was going to hurt. My eyes were fixed on it as Bland got one step closer and then another, before stopping abruptly no more than a couple inches from me. His face was close and I saw his eyes go weird wide then drop fast to look at his own chest. Blood was spurting from holes in his shirt where the tines of a pitchfork had appeared and disappeared in what seemed an instant. He looked back at me for just a second then dropped like a sack of manure to the stall floor. Standing just beyond him, still as death itself, stood a dull eyed Max Kegler.

Kegler stared at me for a long moment asking something from me with those vapid orbs, forgiveness perhaps, or maybe thanks. I had nothing. I just stared back. Suddenly, like he’d forgotten something, he looked down and a flash of anger brought life back into his eyes. He grabbed the pitchfork with both hands and drove it straight down, hard. It stuck there, neatly protruding from Bland’s back. We looked again at each other and I saw the same unbearable sadness creep back to his face that I’d seen there earlier in the day. There was nothing I could do. Kegler just stood where he was, still as a statue, shoulders slumped, eyes gone dead again.

After a minute, I moved slowly, quietly, carefully, around him. And then I walked away.