Dark Maze

surrounded by an adoring, laughing bevy of bare-chested serving wenches. The truth of the matter was that none of the wenches were laughing and the way they slammed down the beers and shots at the little tables clustered around a stage was not adorable to behold. They had slug-eyed expressions, most of them, and poor posture. The ones with acne on their backs and shoulders did not bother to cover up their zits with pancake and body powder. The last thing you noticed about this sullen fleet was that between the chin and the belt each happened to be naked; from the general pall of the place, I was by no means the only customer who felt deflated.
    Up on stage was a tall waxy-faced gray-haired guy in a tux trying his best to amuse the disillusioned with a magic act. His strawberry-blonde assistant wore silicone breasts that were too high and one of those topless bathing suits from the Sixties that helped usher in the sexual revolution that I myself missed. Several old revolutionaries in the audience had lain their sleepy heads down amid the empty beer bottles on their tables.
    I took a stool at the bar, which was only sparsely populated. One of the glum B-girls scuffed my way on her platform shoes. Her chest looked cold.
    “What’ll you have, Clyde?” she said lazily, her voice full of cigarettes.
    I could not entirely blame her for this insolence. She had no doubt lived a life requiring her to know far too many men far too well. Still, I do not personally enjoy being called a clyde. And after all, I was still a little tender from recently having seen a fresh murder. I was not in a trifling mood.
    So I looked her up and down, thinking uncharitably of what I saw. “You know, you remind me of somebody,” I said.
    “Yeah, and who’s that, Clyde?”
    “My great-aunt out in Canarsie, the one with the boils and the bad knees.”
    “Whatta you, a homo got loose outta the movies next door?”
    “You got me wrong, sister. I am in show business, though. In fact, would you be willing to star in my next picture?”
    “Oh, we got a smart guy.” She turned and screeched at the bartender. “Benny, come on over here and take care of this homo smart mouth we got with us tonight.”
    Then she flipped her head like maybe she had done when she was a miffed little girl and Harry Truman was the president. She scuffed along over to some other clyde down at the end of the bar.
    Benny had a hairless head shaped like a kidney bean and he wore black horn-rimmed glasses. He was very apologetic.
    “It’s real hard to get the good help nowadays, what can I tell you?” he said. “These babes we gotta hire, they think just because they flash hooters they’re all some kinda divas.
    “But I’ll tell you what, buy yourself a nice drink and the second’s on me. How about it?”
    I said all was forgiven. Then in a minute there were two nice reds and rocks sitting in front of me, along with a pair of Molsons in sweaty green bottles. And Benny standing by, in the mood to chat.
    Naturally, I was anxious to ask Benny all about Picasso. But I have now been at the detective trade long enough to listen closely whenever certain bells go off. This time, the bell was the memory of Inspector Neglio on the day he
    promoted me to gold shield rank and gave me his standard lecture for the occasion:

    “Today, Neil Hockaday, you are a detective. Which means you’re an artist among cops. An artist is somebody who knows how to get function by going with form, you follow? In other words, he’s got finesse. From now on, you’re an artist, Hock. In other words, you should try going sideways after what you want, which in this business is answers to questions. Going sideways, you’ll be very surprised how much you can learn. ”

    So I took the oblique route with Benny.
    “Sort of slow tonight, isn’t it?” I asked.
    “Yeah, well, your fleshpots ain’t quite what they used to be.”
    “What is?”
    “Ain’t that the sorry truth?”
    I gazed past Benny through a haze of smoke and fixed on the magician up on stage. His assistant with the silicone shelf was tying a black blindfold over his face. There was a hinged wooden sign off to the side with the magician’s name painted in blue circus letters, but I could not make it out.
    “My eyes don’t work like they used to, that’s for damn sure,” I said.
    Benny tapped his horn-rims. “You and me both, pal. That’s how come I wear these bifocals. Couple of years back, it was just killing me to