The Beigey in the Ache

Jose’s headache reminded him of a girl he’d dated in high school. Her name was Mina. She’d seemed okay at first, but in the end she slashed his tires, shaved off his eyebrows and left a used tampon in his locker. This headache seemed just as vindictive. (And just as likely to overreact if he got drunk and accepted a handie from her best friend.)

Jose had spent the better part of the afternoon sniffing around for the whereabouts of the guy who’d stolen his client’s pancake collection. Jose had wondered why the client would go to so much trouble for a suitcase full of flapjacks, but the poor sap kept saying one of the larger ones looked like Captain Steubing, so it was somewhat understandable.

Still, four hours of walking the pavement had left his dogs sore and his head pounding.

During his travels in the Orient, Jose had studied under a jiu jitsu master who’d said that headaches were a sign of a weak mind. The master smoked five ounces of opium a week, so Jose took anything the guy said with a grain of salt.

Jose weighed his options and found ‘em a couple of pounds shy. He could ignore his headache and bulldog his way through another three hours of turning over stones to see if his particular worm was excreting some mud down there. Or he could call it an afternoon and see if he could drown his headache in bourbon.

Just then, the sun peeked out from behind a cloud and the light stabbed into Jose’s eyes like a fat lady spearing the last olive in the jar. Screw the hotcakes, then.

Jose staggered a ways down the sidewalk, holding his temples as tightly as a Family Values Republican holds his gay lover’s penis.

After a block and a half, Jose saw a guy stumble out of a doorway and vomit on his shoes. “Looks like a bar to me,” Jose would have thought if his brain had been capable of overcoming the massive pounding long enough to fire off a coherent message.

Jose clawed his way onto the nearest bar stool and tried to bring the old man behind the bar into focus.

“Listen, Cappy,” Jose managed to say, “I need a bourbon like a guy with three balls needs a custom-made jockstrap.”

“You're in luck,” the old man shot back, “we just decided we’d make more money if we stopped not selling booze.” He slid a lowball glass down the bar and Jose did a magic trick and made the liquor disappear.

Jose was just about to send a second glass down his throat to keep the first one company when two guys roughly the size of Saturn waltzed in.

They made a beeline for Jose’s barstool and the bigger one decided to tickle Jose’s side with a .38.

“Get up, Shamus. We got someone wants to talk to you.”

The gun dug into Jose’s ribs like a homeless chick at Tony Roma’s. These two neanderthals meant business. And not a fun business, like a muffin basket delivery service.

“Easy, Hoss,” Jose said. “You keep poking me with that pea-shooter and I’m gonna start thinking you don’t like me.”

“Up,” the other guy said.

“Why, that’s one of my favorite directions,” Jose quipped. He was happy to find that the bourbon seemed to have jumpstarted his inner Noel Coward.

He started to go with the goonasauruses when the old man behind the bar waved him back over. The geezer handed over another glass of brown liquid.

“You look like you’re gonna need this,” the old man said, with that special kind of geriatric twinkle in his eyes that could be a cataract.

“Thanks, pappy,” Jose said. Then he allowed himself to be steered toward the door, wondering just who he’d pissed off this time.



Happy Birthday, Beigey!

Farewell, My Lunchly

Noon. A fall day, brisk like underwear fresh from the salad crisper. Jose sat at his desk and looked out the window at the guy crapping in the alley across the street. This was the world he lived in. One day, you're having tea and scones that your butler serves on a silver tray with doilies; the next day, you're wiping your ass with a stock certificate you found in the trash.

Jose took another bite of his sandwich and washed it down with bourbon. The bourbon was like a three-dollar hooker: it was cheap and toothless, but it did its job. The sandwich was iffier. Stale bread. A hunk of aging tomato. Two mayonnaise packets he'd found in a drawer he hadn't opened since he moved in. Hard times.

Times like these, a man could get desperate. He could start thinking crazy thoughts. Thoughts like, "Look at me! I'm cra-a-a-zy!"

Jose forced another bite of the sandwich down his throat. It went down like a glue-covered ass on a sliding board. It took two swigs of bourbon to dislodge it.

The office door swung open and there she stood. She was a tall dame, with legs and a torso, just the way Jose liked them. Her hair covered her head and her lips looked like they could form words. As she walked toward him, she didn't have a noticeable limp. She was his type all right. And that usually meant danger.

Jose wiped some mayo off his chin. "Pardon the sandwich, doll-face. Normally, I go to the Yacht Club for lunch, but I seem to have misplaced my membership card."

The dame sat down. "Just like a broad," Jose thought. She took off her hat and fixed Jose with a look like one of those velvet paintings of the kids with the big eyes. Or maybe dogs playing poker. Jose wasn't an art critic.

"I need your help, Mr. Amador," she said. He'd been right about her lips.

Jose refilled his glass with bourbon. "You're lucky, sweetheart. My help just happens to be for sale." He'd come up with that line two months ago and this had been his first chance to use it. "I get twenty-five dollars a day, plus expenses."

The dame's eyes fell, like a Twinkie dropped off a roof. "I'm afraid I don't have any money, Mr. Amador. You see, I invested my life savings in a donut farm."

Jose knew this story. It didn't have a happy ending and its character development was spotty. "I'm sorry to hear it, baby. I'm not going to be able to help you." Jose didn't work for free. Not since he got burned by a bunch of orphans with polio.

A single tear raced down the dame's cheek, like a slinky descending a staircase, only wetter. "I'm desperate, Mr. Amador. Would you be willing to accept payment in vaginal intercourse?"

Jose was about to tell the dame that sex was as useless in his office as a Discover card, when all of a sudden, the mayonnaise from his sandwich decided to make an escape attempt from his digestive system. His stomach lurched like a nun on a bender.

The dame saw that something was wrong. "Mr. Amador? Are you okay?"

Jose fought it. He fought like the National Guard on Mississippi River sand-bagging duty, but the tide of vomit was too strong. His sandwich and the booze it had been swimming in burst out of his mouth and landed in a warm splatter on the dame's chest.

She stared at him in numb horror as he picked a chunk of tomato out of his teeth. "You just got lucky, sweetheart. I don't normally take charity cases, but I can't turn down a lady covered in my own puke. Tell me your story."

Looking back on it later, Jose would come to regret accepting the Case of the Regurgitation-Covered Client.

Happy Birthday, Beigey!

The Return of the Son of Beigey, P.I.

The Beige One struggled against the ropes binding his wrists. He knew he wasn't going to able to free himself, but his wrist was itchy and the ropes did a nice job of scratching. He thought back to the Thai prostitute who was responsible for the itching and wondered vaguely why it would have spread to his wrist.

A slap across his face brought him back to the here and now (although he was still itchy). He looked at his captor; took in the twisted scar which divided her face jaggedly in half. If it wasn't for the scar, Beigey thought, she might be worth a dinner and a cheap hotel room.

"So let me get this straight, Mrs. Minniverer," Beigey said, "You're not only the damsel in distress in this little fairy tale, but you're also the big bad wolf."

The dame tossed her hair. Then she caught it and put it back on. "Is it wolfish to want to protect what's yours, Mr. Amador? Is it wolfish to expect one's mate to be monogamous?"

"Yes," Beigey shot back, "Yes it is. In fact, the more I think about it, the more apt I feel my metaphor is."

The broad raised her gun and fired a bullet into Beigey's shoulder.

"That's what I think of metaphors, Mr. Amador," she purred.

Beigey screamed inwardly. He hated getting shot. It was right up there with tobasco enemas on his list of Things to Do Only If Someone's Going to Pay You a Lot of Money or Give You a Steak. And somehow, Mrs. Minniverer didn't look like the kind of gal who knew her way around a T-bone.

The trick, then, was going to be to make sure she didn't shoot him again. Pretty tricky. Beigey figured her for the type of broad who got panicky when the screaming started, so he decided to play this first bullet hole cool as a frozen cucumber. Which is pretty damned cold.

"A bullet? You wound me, Mrs. Minniverer." Beigey grinned at his wordplay.

Her eyes narrowed like a tie from the sixties. "If you'd like another, please, by all means, use a simile."

"No, no," said Beigey, "one will more than suffice. Let's go ahead and dispense with the linguistic gymnastics, then, Mrs. Minniverer. I'm curious as to why a woman such as yourself would want to kill her husband."

The dame's nostrils flared. It was breathtaking. " 'A woman such as myself'? And what kind of woman would that be? You think because I have this scar that you know what I'm thinking because scarred women always think a certain way which is different than they used to think before they got all scarry? Don't presume to know what kind of woman I am, Mr. Amador. When you presume, you make a pre out of you and me."

Beigey blinked. "Huh?"

"It means I'll shoot you. Presumption is right up there with metaphors in the me-hating department." She pouted, which was actually kind of hot in a psychotic and scarred way.

"Mrs. Minniverer," Beigey began, because it's often useful to begin sentences with the name of the person you're addressing, "your husband was obviously a bastard. He got what he deserved. I'm not gonna argue with that. Now I think it's time that you got what you deserve."

"Which would be what, exactly?"

Beigey gave her The Look, for which he had recently filed the paperwork with the Patent Office. "I think you deserve a good three minutes of Beigey-Style."

The dame thought about it as she scratched her ass with the gun. She shrugged, "Okay."

And that was that.

Happy Birthday, Beigey!

To Have and Have Kinda

Jose woke up on the cot in his office. Questions raced through his mind like kids in the Soapbox Derby, only with a better paint job. How had he gotten there? What day was it? Why did he have rice pudding in his underwear? He sat up. If he was going to find the answers to these questions, he needed a cup of coffee. Or at least some bourbon in a cup that might have once held coffee.

As he reached for the bottle, Jose saw that he'd bruised his palms badly. Normally, that only happened when the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue came out, but that wasn't due for another few months, which added to his confusion. Then it hit him. It hit him like the smell of old egg salad hits the nostrils. He'd been playing craps last night. In fact, if memory served him--and it usually just sat behind the counter and ignored him, but this time he was waving a twenty at it--he'd been on the biggest hot streak of his life last night. Bigger than the time he'd found a gold watch up a dead wino's ass during the Case of the Constipated Wino.

His memory was fuzzy, like a moldy peach. He'd gone to the casino with his pal Jonesy in an attempt to cheer Jonesy up a bit after he'd had his testicles lopped off in a freak biscuit-making accident. They'd made straight for the craps table and that's where Jose stayed for the rest of the night, except for one and a half trips to the bathroom. Jonesy had come to the table in tears at one point, whining something about losing his life savings and being spat on by a nun, but Jose had been up a grand at that point, so he hadn't really been paying attention.

Jose couldn't have said what happened after that if you'd paid him in leggy blondes. But he was here in his office now and his wallet didn't feel any thousand dollars heavier. Suddenly, his door was flung open and three thugs walked in. To be fair, Jose just assumed they were thugs. They could have been Mormons, except that they hadn't shaved and weren't wearing backpacks. The one with the nose wart piped up.

"Mr. Amador," the thug/Mormon said in a voice not unlike a young Dom DeLuise, "our employer would like to see you."

Jose sipped his bourbon. "Yeah? Well, I'd like to see another Waltons reunion movie, but that ain't necessarily gonna happen either."

The thug patted a lump in his pocket that was either a gun or a gun-shaped sandwich. Jose was hungry, so he was hoping for the latter. "I don't think I've made myself clear, Mr. Amador. I should apologize." That cut it. He was Mormon. "I'm not asking if you'd like to see him. I'm telling you that you're going to." With that, the Mormon nodded to his two buddies, who looked about as friendly as a PMSing dominatrix.

"Well," Jose said, standing up, "you gentlemen have me outnumbered. Which is a shock, because I pride myself on my numbers."

Jose decided that fighting might not be the best idea right now. He'd just completed his collection of commemorative Princess Diana plates and he'd hate to see them broken. So he'd go with the Mormons. For now.


Happy Birthday, Beigey!

Who's the Beige Private Dick Who's a Sex Machine with All the Chicks?

Jose sat behind his desk, looking at the day's race card. Like almost every other P.I. he knew, the man had a weakness for the ponies. Not just the really pretty ones with the spots, either. He took a drag off his Chesterfield and blew the smoke out in Morse code. That's just the kind of guy he was.

A fifteen year old in the third with the catchy name of "Fuckin' Old Pony" caught his eye. They were giving him three thousand to one. Jose liked those odds. His standard two-bits bet would yield him a cool two grand. Or something like that. Math was never Jose's strong suit, so go to hell. He circled the pony and reached for the phone, dialing a series of numbers that he figured would connect him to his bookie. They did.

"Hey, Mom," he rasped into the phone. (He was a little phlegmy.)

"What the hell do you want?" the lady returned. Jose sighed inwardly. It was his favorite way to sigh. His mother'd been a little difficult to deal with since he helped the cops bust her last year. Money was money, though, and she loved the stuff, so he was pretty sure she wouldn't turn him down.

"I wanna put fifty cents on Fuckin' Old Pony in the third. Will you do that for me?" He tipped the last of the morning's bourbon down his throat, wishing he had a cleaner mug to drink it out of. He almost spit it back out when he heard his mother's reply.

"Get bent. You still owe me a sawbuck from last week." The old lady was playing hardball. And Jose only had a softball mitt.

"Listen, Mom. I'm good for it. I've got a number of irons in the fire right now and I'm pretty sure one of them will get hot enough to do whatever you're supposed to do with hot irons." He said it with his suavest voice, which sounded like pure velvet stapled onto a really soft pillow. No woman could resist it, unless they were gay. His mom was bi, so he figured he could pull it off.

"All right, all right," she relented. "But if you don't get me what you owe me by next week, I'm sending your sister over to break your fuckin' legs." With that, she slammed down the phone.

Jose poured himself some eggnog and turned his attention to his gun, which he'd dropped in the toilet last night after he'd come home a little drunk. He wiped the vomit off of it and began cleaning the spinny part where the bullets go. He used his finest Q-tips.

That's when she came in. Jose didn't know who she was, but he could see that she was built for speed.

"Mr. Amador? I'm Louise Argle." This dame was tall and willowy, like the tree, only without all those leaves that make annoying noise in the slightest goddamn breeze. She slid her fur to the ground, which Jose should have told her not to do, because there was some gum on the floor just there. Her dress clung to her like a drowning man clings to his booze, highlighting her curves and a half-intriguing, half-disturbing lump on her hip that might have been a pair of panties that got stuck in there in the dryer or might have been a goiter. It didn't ruin her beauty, though. Only something like an open wound or finding out she had a penis would have done that.

Jose put down the gun. "What can I do for you, Miss Argle?"

"Actually, it's Mrs." She drooled a bit on her chin.

Jose gestured for her to sit down. "Mrs., then. If you're here in my office, you've got some sort of trouble. The kind only I can solve. So what say we cut to the chase, lady. Let's cut right to it. Just hack away everything else except the chase. I'm saying we should take a pair of scissors or a scalpel, maybe, and remove everything that's not the chase, then what we'll have left will be pure chase. And that's the only kind of chase I like outside of the lounge kind."

"Fine, Mr. Amador. I don't like to waste time, either. My husband is cheating on me."

"Not with me, if that's what you're thinking." Jose wasn't about to be branded a hussy.

"No, Mr. Amador. He's cheating with a singer at his club. They meet in the afternoons at a clown college near our apartment. I began to suspect something last week when I noticed he was wearing another woman's panties, so I, I followed him. I saw them. I saw them together. It was horrible."

Jose knocked back the last of his nog. "What do you want me to do, Mrs. Argle?"

She fixed Jose with a look he'd only seen from wolves in the zoo and from Martin Landau. This dame appeared to have ice cubes floating through her blood stream. Really tiny ones that wouldn't damage the arterial walls.

"I want you to kill him."


Happy Birthday, Beigey!