noir bridge

"You owe me money"!
"I don't owe you nothing, fat man".
His luck ran out the moment he shut up right there at the slab edge of the obtuse reflecting lit bridge. The dead guys already sunk underneath with flooded bullet holes might've sighed and rolled their eye sockets knowing the boss hated being called fat. True to form the big man pistol-whipped Charlie's temple and he collapse. Still conscious, he felt the sting of an open wound. And he felt he'd better kill the fat man if he could manage to lift his numbing right arm inside his coat for his 25 caliber blue steel pea shooter. He tried to talk but service was temporarily down, try again later please.

"George said you was no good, and now you're gonna be no good dead", the huge man bellowed, his tiny eyes squinting beneath sunken layers of mash potato fat, the rim of his hat full of lard sweat. He kicked Charlie hard as a car sped past them over the bridge. The kick brought the bleeding man back from the edge of vertigo.

"I can give you two sticks of butter", Charlie's brain ordered his mouth to say as he pulled the little trigger at the big man's chest but misfired and pricked a hole in the shiny forehead, the monster wiping and seeing red on his hand, his eyes gradually becoming white heat spotlights of sheer terror, his mouth a silent scream cavern big enough for two sticks of butter. He back peddled and fell, rolling down the cement edge slow enough to gather moss, and he rested under the bridge over rancid water only dry in a span from his expensive black shoes up to the knees.

Mr. Welles smiled and re-lit his cigar, pleased at the continuous shot he imagined would look beautiful from the ten thousand dollar crane above.


film capture:
Orson Welles in Touch Of Evil