Trouble Is My Business License

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!