The King in Jello

The smell in the hallway was a mixture of fried bologna and feet. The threadbare carpet and stained walls told their own story, and it was not a jaunty beach read. The people behind these doors had fallen as low as a person could get and still have a door. As José pulled his gun from its holster, he did so with the knowledge that it was definitely not the first--or even the hundredth--gun to be pulled in this place.

#318 was at the end of the corridor, which gave José plenty of time to regret taking this case as he cautiously moved toward it. Somewhere over the last twenty years, he'd lost his hard, cynical edge, only to see it turn soft and gummy. He was like a nice crisp bran flake that turns soggy because you left it in the milk too long.

So, when some poor sap comes along and tells him that they found the face of Elvis in their Jello Salad, and now it's been stolen, naturally, Beigey was going to take the case. Five years ago, José would've laughed this putz right out of his office, and then tossed a water balloon at him out his window for good measure. Five-years-ago José would've laughed derisively at current him. Current him sighed and continued down the hall. 

As he edged closer to #318, the smell in the air shifted. It went from a greasy umami haze to a sickeningly sweet chemical fog. It was overpowering. José felt like he was being suffocated with Willy Wonka's handkerchief. He slowly reached out and carefully pushed the door, which, shockingly, opened.

José took a deep breath and swung into the doorway. The smell was even worse inside the apartment. Trying to suppress a gag reflex that was demanding to have its way, he groped for a light switch, found it and immediately wished he hadn't. 

The walls of the apartment were covered in bloody handprints and words scrawled in blood. The writing appeared to be Elvis lyrics. They were mostly spelled incorrectly and the punctuation was lacking. "'Blue swayed shoes'?" José was appalled. 

Something else seemed to be off. José got up close to one of the bloody handprints. It didn't look right. And it smelled...like...raspberry? This dipshit, José realized, was writing his crazy-words in jello. 

He headed into the kitchen. This was clearly the guy who had stolen his client's Jello Salad Elvis. And if he'd gone to the trouble of stealing it, he probably wanted it preserved. So a quick look in the fridge was in order. The kitchen was even more appalling than the rest of the place. A leaning tower of pizza boxes took up most of one counter. The sink had a stack of dishes that must've dated back to the Eisenhower administration. 

José, a man who had looked death in the face and called it a whiney little bitch, was actually a bit afraid to look in the fridge. But if that's where the pilfered Gelatin King was, he needed to see it. He threw open the door.

Nothing. It was as empty as the My Great Ideas list that Donald Trump keeps on his bedside table. There was a jar of high-end mustard, but that was it. If the King of Ambrosia wasn't here, where was it?

A phone rang in the living room. Normally, José screened his calls. But when you've broken into the lair of a madman, you might as well risk having to speak to a telemarketer. He picked up the receiver.

"Go for Beigey."

The voice on the other end was high-pitched and giggly. "I figured you were coming over, Mr. Amador. So I took Elvis and we left the building."

"That's not your jello salad, creep."

"Tee-hee! Of course it's not, Mr. Amador. It's not my jello salad. It's my GOD! And my god demands that I KILL! KILL! KILL!"

"I think your god needs to ease up on the meth."

"First, Elvis has told me to kill your client, who is a false prophet and not worthy. And then he's told me to kill yooooooou."

The line went dead. 

José didn't feel that much dread. People much more competent than this asshole had tried to kill him. But he was a little pissed that this case kept dragging on.

Happy Birthday, Beigey!

A Corpse Too Far, Chapter 32: Heel Turn

As José rode in the crowded bus, his mind drifted. He thought back to when he and Jefferson Wilkes had been friends. He was, he was certain, about to engage in a flashback. He resisted. He hated flashbacks. They ruined the flow and were almost always unnecessary. Nope, there it was. He was definitely flashing back. 

It had been a good fifteen years ago. He'd met Wilkes when they were both brought in by the Sanphillipos, a family that owned TV and radio stations all over the country. The Sanphillipos' eldest son had turned up missing during a trip to Pittsburgh. Turned out he'd joined up with a cult that worshipped gravy. José and Wilkes had managed to get the kid out. But that's a whole other story.

They'd been friendly after that. The former big city cop and the son of Savannah wealth. Not friends, but friendly. They'd toss each other work every once in awhile, hang out when one of them was in the other's town. They'd met up in Vegas a time or two. Stuff like that. 

Then, one day, Jeff had called because he wanted José's help tracking down a missing accountant. Pretty standard stuff. The kind of case José could do with one hand while making a sandwich with the other. Maybe a BLT with the tomatoes cut real thin, big glob of Japanese mayo on it. Serve it up with some salt-n-vinegar chips. José was hungry, was the point. 

Anyway, José had tracked the guy down to a hotel in Yakima. He waited for Wilkes in a rented Saturn Ion, the radio playing a country station that was José's best option among the sad broadcast choices in the vicinity. 

The passenger door popped open and Wilkes slid inside. 

"Why Beigey, your taste in automobiles runs to the extravagant, doesn't it?" he said.

"My Astin-Martin is in the shop, Wilkes," José replied. 

"Is our friend ensconced within this veritable Taj Mahal?" Wilkes surveyed the hotel like he was looking at a turd with windows.

José gestured with his too-cold-to-drink-now coffee. "Right there. Room 18. He got a pizza delivered half an hour ago and seems to have settled in for an evening of Laguna Beach."

Wilkes looked aghast. "Laguna Beach? The man is in his forties."

José shrugged. "Look, Wilkes, I'm not vouching for his viewing habits, I'm just saying he's in there."

"Fair enough." Wilkes pulled out his phone and began sending a text. José was not, by nature, a nosy person, his occupation notwithstanding, but since Wilkes was right next to him, he couldn't help but notice that the text being written was the address of the hotel and the accountant's room number.

Wilkes put his phone away and clapped his hands together. "Well, now that that's done, what say you and I grab a steak? I have it on good authority that there's a place in town that does a great filet mignon."

Under normal circumstances, José would have been doing seventy toward the steakhouse before Wilkes had finished that sentence. Because steak. Right now, though, something was feeling...off.

"Hey, that sounds great, Wilkes. Real quick, though: it just occurred to me that I don't think I ever got from you exactly who we're working for, here."

"Family. Pretty standard stuff."

"Family? Like, his wife? Parents?"

"Family. The steakhouse is on North 40th. You need directions?"

"No. But, hang on. When you say 'family', you mean this guy's family, right?"

Wilkes finally looked directly in José's eyes. "So, you are well and truly asking?"

José returned the eye contact. "I am well and truly asking."

Wilkes gave a quick nod. "When I say 'family', I am more saying 'La Famiglia.'"

"Goddammit. Wilkes, you son of a--"

The last word caught in José's throat when he saw that Wilkes' gun was out, and not in a "hey, let me show you my cool gun" kind of way.

Wilkes looked unperturbed, like he was engaging in a conversation about the correct way to pronounce "pecan". "Beigey, we're going to be reasonable adults about this. You don't know this man. We know from his viewing habits that he's clearly not a good person."

Through clenched teeth, José managed to say, "Doesn't make this right."

Wilkes shrugged. "Probably not. But the money these people pay puts things in perspective."

"Nope. Sorry, Wilkes. I'm not going to be a part of this. I'm going in there and telling this guy to get the hell outta here. You want to stop me, shoot me."

Wilkes shook his head. "No, no, no, Beigey. There are other options." And he smashed the butt of his gun across José's head. As he lost consciousness, José wished sincerely that they'd just gone for steak.

A Corpse Too Far, Chapter 8: Enema of my Enemy

José gently massaged his wrist and winced. Every time he touched where the handcuffs had been, it was like pouring pickle juice on a paper cut. Which José had done before. He didn't remember the context.

In addition to his wrist, his head was still pounding from whatever had led to his nap in the hotel room. His shirt was also still sticky with the blood of that poor unfortunate in the room with him.

The cops in this locality were not an improvement on the garden variety fascists back home. In fact, on a scale of one to Nazi, he'd give these guys a solid eight. He hadn't had a passport or any cash for them to take, so they'd satisfied themselves with beating the crap out of him and grunt-shouting in whatever the hell language they spoke here. East Moldavian?

José wracked his brain. These assholes didn't seem like the kind to tune in to official channels, so a call to the U.S. embassy wasn't in the offing. He had nothing to offer as a bribe. So that left him with being stuck here until whoever was responsible for this felt like coming along to explain.

As if on cue, a door down the corridor creaked open and several sets of booted footprints came clomping down toward his cell.

Three figures, backlit by fluorescents, hove into view. A clanking of keys. The squeal of a cell door that only likes to be closed. Then the figures stepped inside. Two giant jail-goons...and Jefferson Wilkes.

"Wilkes. You miserable son of a bitch," spat José. "Come to gloat?"

One of the uniformed apes grunted something in East Moldarish or whatever. Then the other one shoved Wilkes forward. Wilkes fell off balance and careened right into José.

The handsomer of the two guards (they were both ugly as hell, but one had fewer warts) spat on the ground where Wilkes had been standing, they slammed the cell door and the uglier one (again, it was a pretty tight contest) picked his nose as they walked back down the hall.

Even with his sore wrists, José managed to shove Wilkes away. "Get off me, you asshole."

Wilkes collapsed on the bunk beside José. "My apologies, Beigey. You understand that I was not in control of my positioning just now."

José jumped up and walked as far away from Wilkes as the cell would allow. "What is this?" he asked. "What are you doing in East Moldavia and why the hell are you in this cell?"

Wilkes pulled out a handkerchief that José would bet fifty bucks was monogrammed. He dabbed at the blood dripping from his nose. "I told you back home, Beigey, that there were other parties interested in the whereabouts of Mrs. Richards."

"Yeah," José countered, "you also said you'd 'positively die for a decent bowl of grits' but you're not dead, so..."

Wilkes stood up and tried to neaten himself up as much as the situation allowed. "I assure you, Beigey, that I am not responsible for your incarceration. Nor, at this point, do I know who is. You and I are very much in the same boat."

"I would much, much rather drown than share a boat with you. If were on the Titanic, I'd have jumped into the Atlantic long before the iceberg."

"I understand the venomous nature of your regard toward me. We have had a...contentious relationship thus far in our careers."

José cackled at that. "I prefer to put it in terms of you're a giant piece of shit."

Wilkes continued, "Be that as it may, Beigey, we find ourselves mired in the same circumstances and it might behoove us to consider setting our differences aside...and working together to escape our predicament." 

At that point, José had to work indescribably hard to keep himself from throttling Wilkes, whose love of multisyllabic words grated on José's nerves like a waiter putting extra parmesan on your rigatoni table-side. As annoying as he was, though, José had to concede the point.

"Fine. But the moment we're out of this country, I'm going to punch you in the balls."

"Fair enough."

To be continued! In podcast form!

Happy Birthday, José!

The Bread Wind

6:00 AM. Still dark. The streets were practically empty. Most decent people never have to see this time of day, thought Beigey. He wouldn't have necessarily put himself in the decent column--he'd been a private eye too long, seen too much--but Beigey tried to avoid 6:00 AM when he could, too.

This morning, it couldn't be helped.

He'd just come off a shift tailing the husband of a client. Classic case. Old wife. Young husband. Tennis instructor. Also, gardener. Also college roommate. Also, weirdly, a circus clown.

Beigey had handed off the tail to his assistant, who'd take the day shift. Now his priority was some nourishment and a long, satisfying visit with his bed. 

He stood outside the door of the Rise and Shine Bakery. It was one of his go-to spots. Good for a morning bun for breakfast or a killer Bahn-Mi for dinner. Mr. and Mrs Tran had all the nutrients a growing detective needed. 

The store wasn't much to look at. A tiny shop that shared a building with a vape store and a pawn shop. But the shop was always filled and there was usually a line. This may have been because of the genius marketing move of placing a fan by the shop's open side door, which assured that the scent of whatever was being baked was blown out onto the street, where passersby would find drool running down their chins before the store registered to their eyes.

Beigey lifted his mask off of his nose for just a moment, breathing in that warm bread smell. Definitely a morning bun, but maybe he'd also grab a baguette for later. Possibly some creampuffs for dessert tonight? He mentally urged the customer in the shop to hurry the hell up. The social-distancing laws meant the tiny shop could hold even fewer people.

A giant pick-up roared to a stop. Giant "Trump" flag. "Fuck your feelings" sign. 

Mr. Fuck-your-feelings hopped out, the guns in his holster clattering as he hit the pavement. From around the passenger side, a second asshole, this one with different guns and a super-timely "Hillary for Jail" shirt, sporting some impressive mustard stains. Two dicks, no masks.

The driver took a moment to note the line, smirked and walked toward the door. His copilot pulled out a phone and started filming. 

Douchebag #1 pulled open the door and stepped inside; the Ethel Mertz to his Redneck Lucy hung back in the doorway. 

Mr. Tran's voice, angry, above the fan: "Hey! I told you, you need a mask in here."

Beigey couldn't see him, but he could feel the veins bulging on the asshole's neck as he replied, "Fuck your rules! I ain't a fucking coward and I ain't a fucking sheep. I go where I want because this is A-mer-ica!"

Through the window, Beigey saw Mrs. Tran whip aside the curtain that separated the front of the shop from the back. She advanced on the asshole, not threatening him with the rolling pin in her hand, but absolutely letting him know it was there.

"You heard him. You want to buy something, get in the line and wear a mask."

The dick with the phone giggled. His pal placed his hand on the handle of one of his sidearms. "I got a whole bunch of bullets here that say I don't."

Beigey shook his head. All he'd wanted was some baked goods. His right hand found the brass knuckles in his pocket. He quietly stepped toward the videographer. He tapped him on the shoulder.

The guy turned his stupid, stupid face toward Beigey. "What do you want, asshole?" Beigey dropped him with a jab to the head. At the same time, the schmuck in the shop turned to see what was happening and Mrs. Tran swung her rolling pin into the guy's nads. He let out what Beigey had to say was a very satisfying "ooof" as he fell to the ground. Beigey grabbed him by the hair and pulled him out of the shop, where he lay in a heap on the sidewalk next to his friend.

Someone behind Beigey in the line had apparently just come from the grocery store and opened up a carton of eggs, which several people then hurled at the downed dumbasses.

There followed a brief moment of tension as the crowd stared them down. The men picked themselves up and limped back to their truck, tails between their legs, guns staying in holsters. As they pulled away from the curb, there was no celebration from the group who had sent them packing, just a sad, shared resignation that this was where the world was. 

Beigey wiped the blood from his brass knuckles, stepped into the shop and bought his breakfast.

The Bong Goodbye

"Is there a reason," José pondered, "that all pawn shops have the exact same olfactory stew of piss, body odor and smoked trout?"

He had occasion to consider this question because he was currently standing in his third pawn shop in as many hours, all in service of possibly the least urgent, most ridiculous job he'd ever taken.

The previous afternoon, he'd been about to close up the office and head home, maybe have a fun, spontaneous bourbon taste-test. As he was putting on his jacket, a couple of Jedi walked in.

José had no proof they were Jedi; just, earth-tone robes and light-sabers hanging from a belt looks more Lucasfilm than lumberjack. The couple introduced themselves as Vhiran Un-Haku and Grepf Sei'rag of the Kaleesh Resistance. Their checkbook introduced them as Herbert and Connie Schmidlapp of 37th Ave. South.

Their story was one he'd heard a thousand times: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy marries girl, girl's brother buys them a glass sculpture of BB8, girl's brother subsequently dies while performing complicated light-whip fight choreography in the bus lane outside of a Chipotle.

The sculpture, they told José, had been a wedding present. They showed him a picture. José looked at the picture. He looked at the two earnest nerds in front of him. He looked at the picture.

"It was limited edition," said Vhiran Un-Haku.

"I see," replied José.

"My brother loved that little droid," said Grepf Sei'rag, holding back tears.

José decided some things at that moment. He decided he'd take the case. He didn't need the work. He was incredibly busy at the moment. He was juggling three divorces, two missing person cases and a small supporting role in a local theater's production of the female version of The Odd Couple. But, overloaded though he was, his heart went out to these super-sincere cosplayers. And so he also decided not to point out the part of the "sculpture" where you were supposed to put your mouth or the other part of the "sculpture" where your weed went.

Instead, he set about checking out any of the three dozen places in town where someone might have sold a stolen bong.

In the third such place, where he was currently standing, José watched a greasy-haired trashbasket in a No Fat Chicks t-shirt haggling with an old woman who was trying to hock a necklace. The trashbasket was telling her he could only give her four bucks because the market for sapphires was in the toilet right now. The old lady cried, so the trashbasket bumped it up to four and a quarter.

As the old lady, still sobbing, steered her walker out the front door and down the street toward the OTB, José approached the counter. He flashed the guy the picture of the bong.

"Nah," said the trashbasket eloquently. "I ain't seen nothin' like that. I'd'a remembered that."

"Are you a fan?" José asked, caring as little as it is possible for a human being to care.

"Are you fucking kidding? The new trilogy?"

"Sure," responded José, "I guess."

"What a fucking pile of shit," the trashbasket spat. "They kill off Han. And Luke. And all so a black guy and a chick can be the stars. Bullshit."

Normally, this is the kind of thing that would force José, without any synapses firing in the rational decision part of his brain, to put this guy's face through his glass countertop. But, given how little time he had to be thrown in jail for assault, he let this slide, with nothing more than an almost-imperceptible narrowing of the eyes and a terse, "Right."

"And don't even get me started on that Chinese girl who isn't even fucking skinny," the trashbasket said.

José's jaw was clenched tighter than Mike Pence's asscheeks. His hands could've squeezed coal into diamonds. But he managed to nod his head and walk out the door.

The fact that a garbage can was thrown through the pawn shop window seconds later as a male voice yelled, "Fucking entitled dickhead!" may have been coincidence.

Happy Birthday, Beigey!

No Mime in the Crountains

José walked from his car toward the mansion. As mansions go, it was only okay. There were times in his life when being summoned to a rich guy's house late at night would have been incredibly intimidating, but this wasn't his first time at the Philharmonic's Concert Performance of Aaron Copeland's Rodeo.

The door opened before he had a chance to knock, because butlers enjoy letting private eyes know that they've been watching them. This butler was the platonic ideal of "manservant." If you took every butler ever and pureed them, then simmered them over medium heat for two hours to get a butler reduction to pour over your flapjacks, it would taste like this guy.

"Senator Crountain is waiting in the south wing office," said the ur-butler. "He requests that you leave your firearm here in the entryway."

"Is he planning on pissing me off so severely that I might pistol-whip him?"

Jeeves/Alfred let out a brief sigh that carried a metric ton of weary condescension. "Senator Crountain abhors violence and the knowledge that someone is armed makes it difficult for him to focus on the business at hand."

"And what business does the senator have his hands in tonight?" José enjoyed irritating butlers the way some people enjoy popping zits. Just, irritating butlers was far easier to understand the appeal of.

The butler started down a long hall off of the entryway. The walls were hung with dead animals of all sorts; sad deer, morose moose, former pheasants had been stuffed and mounted everywhere. Definitely someone who hated violence.

After more twists and turns than an episode of Guiding Light, the hallway eventually lead to a cavernous office. At the far side, at a giant oak desk flanked by two stuffed grizzly bears, sat the Senator. He was a large man. He had the look of a man who might have a turkey drumstick in his hand at any time, even outside of a Ren Faire.

As José got closer, he realized the two stuffed grizzly bears were actually two bodyguards so beefy you could cook a bourguignon with them. José wondered if the Senator had hired them so he'd feel svelte.

"Mr. Amador," said the senator, sounding for all the world like a walrus had learned to speak, "I know my home is somewhat remote. Thank you for making the trip."

"Why, a trip is my favorite thing to make, Senator," José replied. "Much easier than a baked Alaska."

"I'm not a man who likes wasting time, so I'll get right to business," spake the Walrus.

"Sounds good," José answered. "I don't like wasting time, either. But I do like a good egg salad."

The senator opened an envelope in front of him, pulled out a picture and slid it across the desk to José. "This is my grandson."

The image was of a slight young man, the sort one wouldn't be surprised to find hung up in a gym locker or with his head being shoved into a toilet or with his underwear jerked up to his shoulders. If this kid had any of the senator's genes in him, they were doing a great job of hiding.

José figured he knew where this was going. "Is he missing?"

"No, Mr. Amador. I know exactly where he is. He's taking classes at a school for mimes."

José was unsure of the importance of this knowledge. "Congratulations?" he managed.

"Bah!" spat the senator. He actually used the word, "bah." His guard-bears recognized that their trainer was upset and made the smallest of moves toward the person who had done the upsetting. The senator gave a casual wave with his hand and the guards resumed their quiet hulking. The senator elaborated on his bah, saying, "Mr. Amador, Crountains do not make a career of pretending to be trapped in a box. The men in my family do men's work. Important work. Work that builds empires. Work that amasses fortunes. Work that is worthy of the Crountain name."

"So, no belly-dancers, then?" José enjoyed pissing off butlers and old rich white guys.

The look on the senator's face told José he'd hit his mark. "When I was referred to you, Mr. Amador, by an associate of mine, he mentioned your irreverent streak. He also said that, in spite of that, you could be trusted to be effective and discreet."

José put his irreverent streak on hold and said, "What is it you are hiring me to do, Senator?"

The senator leaned forward, with a look on his face so serious, it would make Nixon look like Ruth Buzzi. "I want you to convince my grandson to give up this ridiculous career and go to law school. If that proves impossible, I want you to kill him."

Happy Birthday, Beigey!

The Man Who Diked Logs

The rain pounding on the roof of Beigey's car sounded like a bad jazz drummer on his twelfth bump of coke; it was loud, arrhythmic and annoying. Of course, the mood he was in, Beigey would probably be annoyed if the spirit of Abraham Lincoln came by with a warm apple pie and a pint of twelve-year-old scotch.

Beigey was sitting in his car in a growing puddle, water still running off of him though he'd been out of the rain for a good five minutes. There was a full half-inch of water in his shoes and his pant legs were clinging to him like a Republican senator clings to his "values voters".

To top it off, the low profile he was meant to be keeping as he snooped on his client's wife meant that running the engine--and thus the heater--was a non-starter. So Beigey sat there shivering, cursing his non-water-resistant shoes and deeply regretting the choices that had lead to his career taking pictures of 42-year-old soon-to-be-divorcees giving sloppy blow jobs in trailer parks.

Speaking of said giver of blow jobs, as Beigey wiped the condensation from the inside of his windshield, he noticed her emerging from the double-wide across the road, a newspaper shielding her hair from the downpour. She ran to her car, opened the door, turned around and blew a kiss at the cro magnon man filling the trailer's doorway. Then she hopped in her car and pulled out. Beigey turned his key, counted to ten, hit the wipers and followed.

With the amount of rain hitting his windshield, Beigey might have had a malevolent toddler standing on the roof of his car, aiming a water cannon straight down. "It's a fucking cruel irony," Beigey thought, "that you only ever really think about the fact that you need to get new wipers when it's raining." The passenger-side wiper had split and was whipping one thin piece of rubber around like the world's worst rhythmic gymnast doing her shittiest floor show.

The rain was coming down thicker than 70s porn bush. Beigey couldn't see twenty feet in front of him. His target's tail-lights had been just ahead of him a moment ago; now, she could be anywhere.

The wheel jerked in Beigey's hand as he hit a large puddle. He kept the car going more or less straight, but decided to slow it down. Just as his foot hit the brake, the front wheel sank into another puddle, this one roughly the size of Lake Champlain. The car lurched like Beigey's stomach after consuming a liver and rocky-road sundae. In the time it took for him to ponder whether you're meant to steer into a skid or out of it, the car had left the road and slid down a hill, stopping only when it found a tree it liked and wrapped itself around it like cheese that you wrap around a raw hot dog and then you eat it because sometimes people get desperate, okay?

It took him a moment, but Beigey regained his senses and began taking stock of his situation. He couldn't move his leg; it appeared to be pinned. Water was now pouring into the car through the shattered windows. It was now getting deep enough to cover his ankle. He was going to drown in this piece of shit Datsun.

Unless. Unless he could tear enough branches off the wrecked tree to dam the water up. He gritted his teeth. "Good thing I've got crazy-good Lincoln Log experience," he thought.

Happy Birthday, Beigey!

The Simple Art of the Murderous Deal

José was aghast. He'd been aghast before, but he'd never been this kind of seriously huge ghast. 

The dame in his office was telling him a story too awful to be true. José poured himself a shot. He tossed the bourbon down his throat and then poured himself a second one because the first one had clearly been just a warm-up. The bourbon had made him a little less ghast and he was ready to proceed.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Clanton. Can we back up just a moment? This orange-faced creep..."

"Danald."

"Right. So Danald has threatened to have you thrown in jail...why?"

Mrs. Clanton's eyes turned moist, like that weird sponge you used to use at the post office to wet stamps. She pulled a handkerchief from her purse and dabbed her eyes. "That's the thing, Mr. Amador: he never has a coherent justification. He just keeps babbling and making up nonsense reasons."

"Right." The next part made as much sense to José as ghost pepper lubricant. "And, and he has people who listen to this horseshit?" José really felt like a third shot might be the ticket here.

"Many," Mrs. Clanton responded. "Enough that I am getting nervous."

"Mrs. Clanton, this guy sounds like the biggest piece of shit since King Kong ate tainted clams. What can I do to help?"

Mrs. Clanton's eyes turned steely, like a ball-peen hammer you'd use to crack someone's skull open. "Beat the crap out of him."

So José beat the crap out of Danald and felt much better about everything and slept like a baby. Seriously, if everybody could beat the crap out of this guy, the whole country would feel a lot better. Yup.

Happy Birthday, Beigey!

Nut Job on Noon Street

"A poem is rhyming words," the old man said to José.

José had been hesitant to take this seat on the bus, as there was a woman with a screaming baby in the seat on the other side of the gap from the man who'd just spoken. The thing was, though, that José's feet were killing him. He'd chased a murderer into a lightbulb factory two weeks ago as he'd wrapped up The Case of the Blah Blah Blah Something. (José had come up snake-eyes on titles as he'd sat down with his case files.)

As a result of the lightbulb factory chase, José had spent a good three hours in the E.R., having a squeaky-voiced intern pick shards out of his soles with a pair of tweezers. A pint of bourbon a day had, it turned out, not been the prescription he should have used and, two weeks later, his feet still hurt as bad as his heart had the time Mary Jane Kresky had turned down his request for a handie outside the junior prom.

Because of his pedal discomfort, José had decided that grabbing a bus was the best way to cover the four blocks between him and the spot where he was supposed to be meeting a guy with some information about Cheating Husband #3,795, who José was being paid to photograph with the 21-year-old phlebotomist his client believed he was presently banging.

Standing on the bus was torturous at the best of times. Invariably, you got stepped on, shoved and bashed in the crotch by whatever back-pack-wearing cretin decided that it was utterly crucial to the survival of the species that he/she needed to get past you immediately, your inability to move and the Laws of Physics notwithstanding. But standing on the bus when you were lugging a camera around and your feet felt like two exposed nerves slapping up against a dental drill was a whole other level of impossible.

So José sat. He saw the open seat and he took it, a mere pico-second ahead of some aged nun who smelt of lentils. He'd taken the seat despite the screaming baby, because he felt a little ear-drum rupturing was maybe preferable to having his feet explode below the ankle, which would take a good three inches off of his height.

He hadn't figured on any further misery-inducing factors. But here was Captain Chatty, offering his thoughts on the lyrical arts.

José gave an affirmative grunt, laden with enough terseness to clue in even the most determined gabster that he didn't wish to converse. The old man was undeterred.

"I keep a slice of baloney in my back pocket for emergencies," he informed the universe.

And that's when José experienced the moment that every urbanite dreads. That instant when you realize that you've sat down next to someone crazy.

There are signs, you see, that can mean multiple things. Perhaps the person is arguing with the passenger seated on their other side and not with the ghost of Charles Nelson Reilly. Perhaps they're moving in that strange way because they've got some odd, atonal orchestral piece on their headphones and not because that particular rhythmic pattern keeps the demons at bay. And you sit there, hoping against hope that the behavior that's set your hackles on edge rests on the non-crazy side of the Venn diagram. But then there's that one little extra thing that sends the whole thing cascading down the Hill of Lunacy. Maybe the person starts directing his rant at more than just one person. Maybe the person's movement shifts from "possible interpretive dance" to "bull getting ready to charge." When that happens, you need to make a determination: Is this person so batshit that I need to move the hell away from them? Or are they just kind of cooky and I can safely occupy this bonkers-adjacent space until my stop?

José's instinct told him to move. Then his feet told instinct to shut the hell up and that they would move only when there was absolutely no choice.

So he gritted his inner teeth and settled in for the long haul.

The old man looked right at José. "I once snatched a duck out of mid-air and ate him while he was still flapping," the old man boasted.

José looked harder at the racing form in his hand.

"The President has been replaced by a gay Plutonian and I have proof. Wanna see?"

José pretended to search out the window for street signs.

The old man leaned closer. His next words wafted moistly directly into José's ear canal: "Alpacas are gentle, considerate lovers."

This finally proved too much for José. He pulled the "stop" cord, deftly elbowed the old man in the throat and hopped off the bus. As his feet began to dully throb, he thought, not for the first time, "Man, it would be so nice if I could just photograph people cheating on their spouses from my office."

Happy Birthday, Beigey!

Buzz-Killer in the Rain

José wiped the rain from his eyes and tried to pick out which damp blur down the block was carrying a handgun. The possible concussion, along with the one bite he'd taken of the cookie, was making concentration just a little bit harder. "To hell with that," he thought. "I'm not letting this son of a bitch get away. It's so weird that people think of vanilla as an absence of flavor when it's a flavor of it's own. Oh, right. The gunman."

José had been picking up his weekly supply of edibles from Safflower and Rainbow's Hempatorium when he'd noticed the squidgy guy jittering things up by the hacky-sack display. Safflower was ringing up José's usual package of Budder, assortment of Ganja-Pops and a baker's dozen of Kush Krispy treats. Rainbow had treated José to a complimentary Hazy-o sandwich cookie when Captain Twitchy made his move.

First, he did his best to turn José's skull from convex to concave with the butt of his gun, which dropped José to the floor like a sack of wet cat turds. Then he reached across the counter and snatched the cash from the register. Safflower made a grab for him--most likely while saying, "Dude!" or something similar; José was too busy bleeding from his scalp to notice--and caught a bullet in her shoulder in response. The guy raced to the door like a sinister, armed gazelle. And he was gone.

Which was why José was running flat-out in the drizzle, chasing after a guy who'd already shown that he found shooting people morally acceptable. Normally, this level of exertion/danger would come with a paycheck attached. This time, José was doing it gratis.

He'd first walked into the Hempatorium six months ago, when a bulging disk sent him scrambling for a way to be able to lie down without simultaneously shitting his pants. José had never been much for the chronic. He'd always preferred an intoxicant that came with a distinct possibility of vomiting.

Safflower and Rainbow had showed him that weed could get him just as plowed as bourbon, but not make him take a swing at every third person he saw. They'd introduced him to pot that you eat, which meant he never had to slow up on his cigarette smoking. But most importantly, they'd showed him that not every hippie deserved to be drown in a bathtub filled with patchouli.

José had been a regular at the store ever since. He'd grown very fond of Safflower and Rainbow and they'd taken a shine to him as well. In fact, they'd given him his first hippie nickname, "Windshear." José had no idea what the hell that was meant to convey, but he'd been utterly baked when they did it, so he'd been touched.

His rage that this prick shot a friend of his helped José focus on staying on the guy's tail instead of pursuing the question of whether the rain that was falling on him right now maybe was once part of the river that carried Washington across the Delaware. The water cycle takes those droplets everywhere, man. No! The son of a bitch ducked down that alley. Get your ass in gear!

The gunman tripped and went skidding in the filth on his chest. José was nearly on him now. If he had a utility belt like Batman, he could have thrown some kind of bola to entangle the guy and keep him on the ground. How did Batman manage to keep all that shit on one little belt? Never mind that! The bastard was about to get up.

As the guy raised himself to his knee, José leapt at him and knocked him back down. "Why is Dave Brubeck my groove!?! Answer me, motherfucker!"

The gunman had no response to that. José cuffed him and dragged him back to the Hempatorium to wait for the cops. The EMTs were loading Safflower into the ambulance when José and the scumbag arrived. Safflower looked like she'd gained a bullet's-worth of weight, but nobody acted like she was going to croak.

José called to her. "Safflower!"

The EMTs paused in their loading as Safflower lifted the oxygen mask from her face and responded, "What, man?"

José looked at her solemnly. "I forget what I was going to say."

Happy Birthday, Beigey!

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!

A Corpse Too Far

-->

Jose’s head was pounding, like a kangaroo was stomping a thousand cockroaches to death inside his skull.  Pounding so loud, he could actually hear it.

Usually, it took a bottle of gin or a cross-country flight next to a chatty evangelical to make Jose’s head hurt like this, but he didn’t remember coming within a thousand yards of either recently.  In fact, speaking of memory, Jose was having a little trouble remembering much of anything that would explain the pounding.

Adding to his problems, it was pitch black and there was some sticky dampness in the vicinity of his head. 

Upon further assessment, Jose discovered that the darkness was due to the closure of his eyes.  Once he’d opened them, though, he immediately regretted it.  If he’d had access to a time machine, he’d definitely have traveled back to that happy period of time when his eyes had been shut.

The dampness he’d been feeling was due to the fact that he’d been lying in a pool of blood.  “Pool” was an understatement.  There was enough blood on the floor to fill Lake Superior, or, at the very least, two Eries and a Champlain.

Given the level of his cranial discomfort, Jose thought for a moment that the blood might have poured forth from this own skull.  That notion was instantly dispelled when he saw the old man lying on the bed and the gaping head wound the man was sporting.

Adding to veritable nightly news broadcast of information that the opening of his eyes had brought with it, Jose realized that the pounding was coming not solely from his own brain, but also from the door on the other side of the room.

The thing that really brought this home was the realization that a pounding head rarely bellows, “Policia!  Policia!  Abre la puerta!”

The reality of the situation slammed into Jose’s head with the force of a pageant mother slapping her daughter.  The voice on the other side of the door was hollering in Spanish because he was in Guadalajara.  He was in Guadalajara because he’d traced the missing father of his gorgeous blonde client here.  He was tracing the missing father of a gorgeous blonde because that was the sort of thing private detectives do and because he was hoping to get the chance to play a few rounds of Naked Yahtzee with her after he’d found her daddy.

Given the large, drippy hole in the head of said father, Jose was guessing that a Naked Yahtzee session was a long shot.  Of more immediate concern was what would happen if the men on the other side of the door were to find him there when they eventually gained entry.

Jose made a quick assessment of his options.  None of them seemed even as appealing as a handjob from a Teamster. 

He could hide in the closet.  Which would work, but only if the city of Guadalajara routinely employed lobotomized cops.  He could try to run past the police when they opened the door and hope he’d be too fast for them to see.  Seeing as how he lacked superpowers, that one seemed tricky.

Which left the window. 

Jose crossed the room, tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.  He peeked his head over the ledge and nearly puked on the pigeon that was sitting there.  The room was eight floors up, which was not as bad a fall as, say, thirty floors, but nowhere near as survivable as a trip through a ground-floor window would be.  Jose made a mental note to only trace missing people to first-floor rooms from now on.

The hotel pool looked to be maybe two yards from the base of the building, but Jose had usually shown up drunk to his high school physics class, so he had no idea if he’d be able to jump far enough.

Now there were added voices in the hall.  Jose’s Spanish was rusty, so this new conversation could be the police demanding that the manager unlock the door with his key or two people arguing over a coconut cream pie recipe.

Either way, his time was running out. 

Jose took a few deep breaths, heaved himself up onto the ledge, said a silent prayer to Thor, God of Thunder and leapt out into the warm Guadalajara night.

Happy Birthday, Beigey!

The High Widow

Jose knocked back the shot the way a sprinter takes those first steps off of the starting blocks: with purpose and determination. He was going to get drunk or die trying. Not that he’d ever heard of anyone who’d died trying to get drunk. Maybe. If you count that guy in Tukwilla who’d accidentally slit his jugular with a broken bottle of Thunderbird, then yeah, sure.

But Jose had enough experience getting alcohol from bottles into his gullet that he wasn’t worried about any kind of mishap. And he didn’t foresee any complications that might prevent him from getting lit. Good and lit. Lit like a klieg light at the premiere of the movie “Beigey Gets Drunk.”

He called the bartender over. “Listen, Jonesy,” he said, slapping a hundred dollar bill on the bar like a man killing a very expensive mosquito, “I don’t want this shot glass empty for more than five seconds at a time, hear me?”

Jonesy knew he meant business. “You got it, Beigey.”

He refilled the glass. Jose emptied it. This happened a few more times without much variation.

A dame sat on the stool next to Jose and watched, impressed, as he downed the shot like a lion downs an old, fat water buffalo.

“My,” said the dame, lighting a cigarette in that sexy way that makes a man forget about the word “carcinogens”, “we certainly are in a hurry to get sauced, aren’t we?”

“If you’re going to do something, why waste time?” Jose shot back and then belched in a way that was actually kind of charming.

The dame had two shots in front of her. She slid one in Jose’s direction. “Well, let me help you speed yourself along, then, Mr. …”

Jose took the proffered drink. “Amador. Jose Amador. And thank you.”

“You're welcome, Mr. Amador.” The dame said. She gave him a slight nod of her head as she put the shot glass to her ruby red lips and took the alcohol into her mouth in a way that made Jose wonder if she took other things into her mouth. Y’know, like penises.

She put the shot glass back on the bar and then it was Jose’s turn. He tossed the liquor back and then looked at the dame. She looked like a gal who’d been around the block. But a block in a good neighborhood. No tattoo parlors or OTBs on her block.

Parked on top of some stellar cheek bones were blue-grey eyes that punched a hole in the back of a man’s head. Her face was framed by jet-black hair with one defiant streak of white; just enough to say, “I’m not a college girl anymore, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t still experiment with bisexuality.”

Jose was just pondering his next move when three things hit him. The first was the realization that he’d met this particular dame before. The second was the disturbing feeling that he was a whole lot drunker than eight puny shots should’ve made him. The third was the floor.

Jose woke up feeling like the Rockettes had done two matinees on his skull. An attempt to wipe the vomit off his chin brought with it the revelation that his hands were tied. That was never a good sign.

He opened his eyes to find himself in one of those tiny, dimly-lit rooms he hated so much. Behind him, he could hear an inhalation of breath and thin paper crackling as it burned. Someone had a cigarette and was not sharing. The sign of an inconsiderate kidnapper.

When the smoke was blown in his direction, though, it was definitely not tobacco he was smelling.

“Okay, I give,” said Jose. “What the hell did I do to piss of the Jamaican mafia?”

“This isn’t business, Mr. Amador. It’s personal.” Her voice slid into his ear like a knife wrapped in velvet.

“Mrs. Flart, wasn’t it?”

The dame stepped around the chair and stood in front of him. The eyes were a touch blood-shot now, but still just as icy.

“That’s right, Mr Amador. I’m glad you remember. Do you also remember how you killed my husband?”

“Well, Mrs. Flart, I’m going to go ahead and assume that that grass you’re smoking has done more damage to your brain cells than my scotch has done to mine. Because my recollection is that Johnny died at the hands of his cell mate after he declined an invitation to toss said cell mate’s salad.”

“You’re partially correct, Mr. Amador, but you’re conveniently omitting the fact that Johnny would not have been in the aforementioned cell if you hadn’t gotten him arrested.”

“I’ve always lived by the rule that people who don’t want to be forced to toss someone’s salad shouldn’t kill their business partners, Mrs. Flart.”

“That’s a good rule, Mr. Amador. I’ve got another rule in which you might be interested.”

“Do share, Mrs. Flart.”

“My rule goes something like this: detectives who stick their nose where it doesn’t belong deserve to be shot in the head.” She pulled a .22 out of her purse, by way of illustration.

“I’d say that’s less of a rule and more of a point of view, Mrs. Flart.”

The Widow Flart brought a fresh match up to the joint in her gloved fingers and took another hit.

“Be that as it may, Mr. Amador,” the words left her mouth accompanied by a good deal of pungent smoke, “I’m going to go ahead and kill you.”

The beginnings of an idea touched down in Jose’s mind. As he had nothing else going, he picked it up and ran with it.

“That’s fine, Mrs. Flart. But before I go, could I ask one thing?”

“You can ask.”

“Do you have a Ho-Ho?”

“A Ho-Ho?”

“That’s right, Mrs. Flart. A Ho-Ho. Moist chocolate cake and fluffy whipped cream, rolled up together and coated in chocolate. One of those would really hit the spot right now, don’t you think?”

Did Jose detect the slightest of wavers in the widow’s cool steel gaze? He pressed ahead.

“I could really go for that or maybe a pizza. Chewy crust with some garlicky, basil-tinged sauce and nice, fresh mozzarella melted in pools all over.”

He could see the widow’s jaw working involuntarily. She licked her lips.

“Or maybe there’s a place around here to get some good fries. Nothing like a basket of hot, salty fries, fresh out of the fryer, maybe with a little malt vinegar sprinkled on top.”

The gun was still pointed at Jose, but the hand not holding a gun was wiping drool away from the widow’s mouth. “Yes. That all sounds pretty good. I think I actually want a milkshake. But, hey man, I’m still going to shoot you. Just, I think maybe I’ll run next door and get some onion rings first. I’ll be right back.”

With that, the widow ducked out of the room, then came back in and took five minutes to find her wallet.

When she’d left the room a second time, Jose jumped into action.

“Ten minutes, tops, to get these handcuffs off,” he thought. He smiled. “I can do it in four.”

Happy Birthday, Beigey!

The Not-Nearly-Big-Enough Sleep

2:00 AM. The neon sign outside Jose’s window was doing its never-ending dance. And the sign would’ve been kicked off Dancing with the Stars in the season’s first episode.

Normally, he’d be watching this show from behind closed eyelids, but tonight, the air was as heavy as late-career Marlon Brando and Jose’s sheets were sticking to him like a PLU sticker sticks to a red pepper and you can’t peel it off and then you then have to figure out how to scrub the remaining sticky shit off and you can’t quite get it and you just say fuck it and end up eating most of the glue in your stir fry.

Jose threw the top sheet off of himself and swung his feet to the floor, where his feet encountered a grilled cheese sandwich he’d left there days before, probably just in case he woke up needing dairy. It was also possible he’d left it there after passing out drunk.

He grabbed a pack of Camels off the nightstand and introduced one to a lit match. They hit it off pretty well. Sometimes a cigarette helped Jose kick the shit out of insomnia and then sometimes he just wound up with a scorched sheet.

He used to have a tape of old Reagan economic speeches he’d play to help him drop off, but then they went and stopped making VHS players and Jose’d never gotten the hang of the Google.

He was just about to test his theory that a fifth of scotch might be enough to summon forth the sandman when someone started banging on his front door. Jose wasn’t a fan of unexpected guests and hadn’t been since The Case of the Guy Who Showed Up out of Nowhere and Beat the Shit out of Me. That was not a fun case.

Even if he’d enjoyed folks dropping by, a visitor at 2:00 AM meant that vomit would be involved in the proceedings at some point. So he was wary.

Jose padded across the room because just plain walking wasn’t going to cut it. On the way, he stopped to grab his gun. It was either that or a bottle of mustard and the gun just seemed more useful.

A look through the peephole got him a view of a bald guy with his finger knuckle-deep in his left nostril, as unsteady on his feet as the housing market. The guy’s shirt was spotted with what was either blood, vomit or bloody vomit. Jose knew that opening the door would invite in a flatulent rhino-worth of bad smells, so he left it closed and put on his special door-buster voice.

“Jesus, Jonesy. It’s two in the goddamn morning!”

“M’sorry, Beigey. I got, it’s a thing. Y’gotta help me.”

Jose sighed and opened the door. The smell was like what you’d think Ernest Borgnine’s colostomy bag might smell like. Jose waved it off. “What the hell’s going on, Jonesy?”

Jonesy pitched forward, which was not the direction Jose would’ve requested him to pitch. He fell into where Jose’s arms might have been if Jose had had any intention of catching him. As Jose knelt down beside his--for lack of a better term--friend, Jonesy thrust a matchbook into his hand.

“My cigarette’s already lit, Jonesy.”

Jonesy wiped some vomit/blood off his mouth and sputtered, “Find Carla. She’s in trouble. Can’t…can’t… blehhhhh.” The last word meant nothing to Jose, but then Jonesy never had much of a vocabulary.

“Well,” thought Jose, “I guess I can give up on sleep for the night. Too bad. I was hoping to dream of a tall blonde with a built-in kegerator.” He looked at Jonesy’s body on the floor. This was tragic. Bloody vomit was hell to clean out of carpeting.

Happy Birthday, Beigey!

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!