As dentists go, Doctor Hopf was OK in Moriarity’s book. And Moriarity had a book on everything – the nature of coincidence, fate, phlebotomy (the replacing of an old phleb with a newer, better one), psychopaths. As he sat down in the dentist’s chair he noticed that Doctor Hopf was a rather quiet, reserved dentist – a clam in the lexicon from where Moriarity came from. Not that that was a bad thing – just abnormal.
“Open wide.”
Moriarity’s jaws went wide open and he closed his eyes. He did not like looking into eyes that were scrutinizing him. Darkness was better. Moriarity preferred darkness most of the time. Darkness for him, darkness for whomever he had dealings with. That included Doctor Hopf, who was now scraping his teeth with what felt like a wood rasp, starting in the lower rear right side and working his way from right to left.
This was normal.
Then there was a sound that didn’t belong. A squeegee. Moriarity tried to duplicate the sound of a squeegee in his mind in case somebody, maybe Victor, maybe Carmine might ask him in the future for him to describe it. He couldn’t, but he did open his eyes. First there was Doctor Hopf’s large hands in front of him, working right to left. Then there was the window,
And in the window was a window washer, squeegeeing the window overlooking Davis Street to an immaculate transparency. A window washer with a bulge in his pocket.
Moriarity tried to remember how many times he’d seen a window washer when he sat in the dentist’s chair in Carmine’s place. Never. So this was a coincidence, something he knew lots about. Moriarity didn’t trust coincidences. They were bad luck. They meant something. Maybe this was the reason Doctor Hopf was so quiet – he and the window washer were possibly in cahoots like Carmine said. The likelihood that they were in cahoots was much greater than the probability that a window washer would magically appear when Moriarity was sitting here plotting. He had a theory, and set out to prove it. He waved.
Outside, hanging from two ropes from some sort of contraption on the roof was a young, skinny guy in a harness with a squeegee and the thing in his pocket. He waved back. Moriarity’s eyes went to the good doctor, who did not wave back. That confirmed his suspicions. They were in cahoots.
“Turn toward me a little.”
Moriarity turned towards the dentist, keeping his eyes open. The rasp stopped going up and down. He still tasted blood in his mouth. The doctor’s hands were no longer in front of him, and Moriarity felt them firmly on his shoulders, holding him back.
“Rinse.”
Moriarity leaned over the sink and spit out what was in his mouth. It was all red and yucky. Moriarity knew blood. He stared into the sink after he spit out. All the phlebs and hemoglobin and yuck swirled around, some of it clinging to the porcelain sink, not wanting to get swept away. It reminded him of a book he read once about how yucky blood was and how hard to clean up. Maybe it wasn’t a book at all. Maybe it was a TV commercial. There was a big strong guy in a tee shirt. He had bald head that made him look a little like Yul Brynner. He smiled. Moriarity remembered his name might have been Mister Clean. Mister Clean said blood is composed of protein suspended in plasma. There is also water and this sticky stuff called hemoglobin, which sticks to basement floors, alleys, bathrooms and wherever you knife someone and just let him lay there. Get Mister Clean and you’ll never have to call the police.
Never was a long, long time. Almost as long as this teeth cleaning was taking. The window washer hung there suspended. Moriarity watched one of his ropes go taut while the other got slack. Then he heard a scream.
At first he thought the window washer fell onto the pavement of Davis Street. Then he looked down, down at the foot of the dentist’s chair, where Doctor Hopf lay in a pool of blood. What had he done?
Moriarity knew blood, psychopaths (the path a psycho takes on the way to his doom), fate, the existential nature of boredom and how it inspires some psychos to flip out and ice people with whatever is handy – a buzz saw, a wood chipper, a wood rasp, an ice pick. He shrugged. Carmine would understand. But that damned window washer was in cahoots with the good doctor. Moriarity would have to act quickly. He was probably on the fourth floor, and from what Moriarity could remember, Curly worked pretty fast, just like the good, dead doctor.
The nurse/assistant/receptionist appeared in the doorway of Moriarity’s little room. “Is anything the matter?” she asked.
“Rinse,” was all he said. Then he beat it to the fourth floor.
Knowing the ins and outs of the building, Moriarity was certain that no one on the fourth floor would let him in to their offices by the window, so he concocted a plan. He extended his arms out to his sides, like he’d seen land surveyors do, and then brought them together in front of him to create a ninety degree angle. He wasn’t sure what to do with it, but he’d seen surveyors do this in the field and it looked pretty neat. He shrugged and went in the office he guessed was below Hopf’s, holding his crotch.
“Got to pee,” said. “Can I have the mens’ room key?”
“Do you have an appointment, sir?” the fourth floor receptionist asked.
“Never mind, can I see your window?” Without waiting for an answer, he pushed past her to where the window washer was descending past the fourth floor window. The window washer waved tentatively. Then Moriarity made a slashing motion across his throat, the universal sign for a dead battery, non-functioning washing machine, or I’m going to slit your lousy throat like I just did to that dentist you’re in cahoots with.
The window washer’s face turned just as white as the fifth floor windows he squeegeed clean. One rope went taut, the other slack. Moriarity buttoned his fly and ran out the door to catch the window washer before he got to the third floor or possibly the street.
But he was late. When Moriarity got to Davis Street all he found was the window washer’s two ropes dangling in the breeze like corpses or porpoises or participles. How was he going to explain this to Carmine?
Ω
“So there was blood everywhere? Good,” Carmine said. “Did you clean up or anything? We gave you a bottle of Mister Clean.”
“There was no time. Besides, Ajax works better. You know – ‘Ajax, boom boom, the Foaming Cleanser. . .”
“Alright, alright. So tell me about the window washer. What was his name?”
“Curly.”
“No.”
“Clarabelle?”
“No.”
Vinny?”
“Yeah, you got a good memory, Moriarity. Go on.”
“So I cornered him on the cornice of the fourth floor and let him know I knew what was going on, That they planned this hit on you and we were wise to the jive.”
“So he’s dead.”
“As a doorknob.”
Carmine laughed. “Dead as a doorknob. You don’t hear that one much anymore.”
Moriarity nodded. He was old school like Carmine. He knew fate, normalcy, things of nature and the nature of things, phlebotomy, scatology (that crazy jazz singing using anything but real words) and coincidence. He also knew Carmine owed him a favor by going to the dentist pretending to look like him and doing such a great job that Doctor Hopf (the late Doctor Hopf) was practically speechless during the teeth cleaning procedure. “Here you go, Carmine,” he said, handing Carmine his dentures.
“Thank you. You’re a good boy. You saved my life. They were in the caboose together.”
“Cahoots.”
“Cohorts.”
“Of course.”
“They’ll grow back, you know.”
Carmine and Moriarity sat in Carmine’s office, watching the sun set over Sedgwick, the sky all orangey like Neutrogena Oil-free Acne Wash. But Moriarity noticed two things – a pair of ropes dangling down from the floor above or possibly the roof and Carmine’s dirty windows. Suddenly one of the ropes went taut and the other slack. A bosun’s chair plopped into view with a familiar window washer and a familiar bulge. Moriarity froze, familiar as he was with faces and windows and coincidence.
‘Of all the dirty windows in this dirty city in this dirty world, why did he have to dangle in front of this one?’ he asked himself.
And then the window washer did the one thing Moriarity hoped he wouldn’t do. He waved.
Carmine’s face fell like a soufflé, a crabapple from the Tree of Knowledge, a body descending from a trap door as it is caught mid-air by a single, taut piece of hemp. He adjusted the dentures he’d lent to Moriarity and reached in his desk for his gun.
Moriarity had come to that proverbial road or path in the forest that diverges or something. One road led to bullets from Carmine’s Glock since Carmine now knew Moriarity had not killed Clarabelle or Vinny or whatever his name was. The other road led to the window washer who had now retrieved the bulge in his pocket, and it turned out to be a Smith & Wesson, pointed either at Moriarity or Carmine.
But maybe there was a third road. Moriarity swung his arms out to his sides and then brought them together to make a ninety degree angle in front of him and see where it pointed. It pointed squarely at the window washer and his squeegee. So he pulled the ice pick out of his pocket, the one he’d iced the good dentist with and waved it in Carmine’s face.
Curly slid down in his bosun’s chair from Carmine’s window to the sidewalk on Sedgwick, ditched the squeegee and hustled to the obscurity of an alley that diverged to a yellow wood where Victor waited. He heard sirens. The police would find both bodies, one full of bullets, the other full of an ice pick. And blood, there was lots of it. Victor would pay him double now that he’s gotten rid of the two bothersome mopes that had driven him nuts with all their stories about fate and normalcy and coincidence and blood.
Back at Carmine’s office, his windows remained un-squeegeed, vile as a glob of hemoglobin.
Ω
Paul Smith writes poetry & fiction. He lives in Skokie, Illinois with his wife Flavia. Sometimes he performs poetry at an open mic in Chicago. He believes that brevity is the soul of something he read about once, and whatever that something is or was, it should be cut in half immediately.