A Corpse Too Far

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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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beigey blinked. "Huh?"

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

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

"Which would be what, exactly?"

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

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

And that was that.

Happy Birthday, Beigey!

To Have and Have Kinda

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Happy Birthday, Beigey!