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!