Written for Sunday Whirl Wordle.
Here are Brenda’s prompt words:
show, backbone, beings, believe, bit, storm,
stream, ring, scratch, tempting, devil, hunch
The rain came down on Delancey Street like it had an angry grudge; I sat in my office watching it stream down the glass. The lettering on the door read DIRK MALONE, PRIVATE INVESTIGATION, the “S” having peeled off sometime during The Depression. Nobody noticed. Nobody noticed much down here.
I was nursing two fingers of rye when I heard the scratch of a key that wasn’t mine. Then a knock, polite as a parish priest.
I’d seen plenty of dames walk through that door, but none of them put on a show like this one. Red dress, black gloves, eyes the color of trouble. There was a storm blowing outside, but the real one had just closed my door behind her.
“Mr. Malone,” she said. “They tell me you’ve got backbone.”
“They tell me a lot of things. Most of ’em I don’t believe.”
She set a gent’s diamond ring on my desk. It caught the lamplight and winked at me like an old pal with a scheme. “My husband’s. They pulled him out of the East River on Tuesday. The cops say he slipped.”
“And you say?”
“I say men like Nicky don’t slip. They get pushed.”
I turned the ring over in my hand. A tempting bit of ice, enough to cover three months’ rent and a bottle I couldn’t afford.
“Listen doll, we human beings do all kinds of things for all kinds of reasons. Some of ’em even make sense.”
She leaned in close enough that I caught her perfume: gardenias. “Then find the reason, Mr. Malone.”
I had a hunch she already knew it. I had a bigger hunch I’d take the job anyway.
Some guys sell their soul to the devil. Me, I just rent mine out by the day, plus expenses.
NAR©2026
#Wordle
This is “Diamonds Are Forever” by Shirley Bassey
Everything on The Elephant’s Trunk was created by me, unless otherwise indicated, and may not be used without permission. Thanks for your consideration. NAR©2017-present.
Between Dirk Malone and Minnie Ming, you have the noir genre down to perfection. Kudos!
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