Jose checked over his shoulder. Two big, uniformed guys.
Guns. Hands near their holsters. They hadn’t been there before Jose had raised
his voice at the clerk.
Jose threw a little water on his internal fire. He attempted
something approximating a smile to the demon-creature on the other side of the
window. She stared back at him through glasses as thick as hockey rink ice and
showed zero sign of returning even the strained politeness.
“Listen,” Jose said, “I apologize for raising my voice. I
just tend to get a little loud when I’m being anally violated.”
“Excuse me?” said the clerk.
“You’re forgiven,” said Jose. “Now, could you please explain
to me how--when I sent in the renewal for my business license a good two weeks
before the deadline--it’s possible that my license has lapsed?”
The clerk yawned in a way that managed to be snippy and
condescending in equal measure, clacked her bright red fingernails on the
keyboard and asked, “I’m sorry, sir. What was your business, again?”
“I’m a private detective,” said Jose, for the fourth time,
each time through increasingly gritted teeth.
“Is that a real job?” the clerk said with a smirk Jose
desperately wanted to wipe off with a bazooka.
“It is,” Jose said.
“Well, there are real cowboys, I guess, so why not this?”
Jose’s knuckles turned white as he gripped the counter so hard the marble
threatened to crack.
“Listen, miss, once again, I apologize for raising my voice,
but you have to understand that, without that license, I cannot operate my
business, which means that I cannot take money from my clients, which means
their cases will go somewhere else.”
The clerk shrugged, a move which made Jose wish that he
could nail her shoulders down so that it could never be repeated.
Jose took out his emotional spatula and scraped up the very
last, micro-thin layer of patience left in his being. “Miss,” he said through a
jaw clenched enough to turn coal into diamonds, “I would like to speak with
your supervisor, please.”
“My supervisor is off today,” said the clerk with the
tiniest of wicked gleams in her eyes.
Jose felt the rage beginning to well up within him, like the
stomach contents of a poor bastard who just ate a whole plate full of tainted
clams. “Is he,” Jose managed.
“She,” said the clerk as what seemed to be a triumphant
little shiver passed through her body. “So…not your lucky day, I guess.”
Jose thought, “I am about to do something I will almost
certainly regret mere seconds after I do it.” He took a deep breath, but it did
absolutely no good whatsoever. “You trucking punt!” he yelled, or words with a
similar sound. The two security guards made a move. Jose sent his foot into the
closer one’s balls.
The other guy dodged a roundhouse left, was re-joined
quickly by his pal and the two of them wrenched Jose’s arms into positions arms
were not meant to be in and frog-marched him down the hall and through the
lobby.
It was only as Jose was tossed ungently down some cruelly
hard and sharp-edged stairs that an explanation for this occurred to him: the
Broemeling case. Councilman Broemeling’s wife had hired Jose to find out who
the councilman was playing “hide the ordinance” with after hours in council
chambers. This was the week Jose had caught a big break in the case. He was a
day or two away from nailing the councilman’s junk to the wall.
A city councilman would have enough juice to throw a wrench
in someone’s business licensing. Maybe Jose and his two friends, Fist and Rage,
should pay the councilman a visit.
Happy Birthday, Beigey!
