Crud — Robert MacLean

A detective in love with his client tracks her psychotic brother but can't protect her from him. A noir experience.Jerome is a rat-faced little guy with a greasy comb-over-crude, crass and crooked. On a divorce case he gets so involved in spying on a couple in bed he comes in his pants before he realizes she's being strangled. Life sucks, what can you do? But he knows his way around in the pipes and you don't want to let him get behind you.Into his cat-piss office walks Elaine-class stuff, scared but braving it out. Her schizophrenic brother Tommy (no self, no body, all mind-his every move a pattern he's memorized) is missing and she doesn't want the police to put him away where they shuffle down halls with their mouths hanging open and condoms tied to their ankles so they don't piss their pee-jays.Tommy (the opposite of Jerome-handsome, soft-spoken, easy-going) gives his money to a mugger without concern; sits in a bar studying a cockroach on his hand. A sad woman picks him up, drawn by his mix of wonder and neutrality.At Tommy's place in the Bowery Jerome finds a woman's contorted corpse and doesn't let Elaine look. The police can't straighten it out and as they question her it's carried out past her on a stretcher. Jerome takes her to her place on Broadway and goes over it, sniffing her underwear. He gets her drunk and tries to have her but she makes him sleep on the floor; he's happy with that....