2004-02-23 10:19 p.m. Tried running a private eye joint, but my clients run in bigger circles than I ever have. I used to just sort the mail downstairs, but an office opened up, and I had been saving up, so my name gets painted on the door and a gun gets slipped into my pocket. Only the first corpse I'm hired to look at turns out to have been killed by a foreign power. I solve the case and use the proceeds to hire a secretary. In the middle of the second case, the secretary surprises me by popping off a few rounds at me. I turn on the waterworks and tell her about how my mother committed suicide when I was a child and my father never spoke again. So of course I try to get people to talk for a living? It's not politics, it just makes the hurt go away for a few hours. And she's sobbing and I get her gun off her and she goes back to the motherland where they probably pack her off to a nunnery for ex-spies-turned-religious-weeping-future-saints. Next corpse I was looking at was my father's. The clues around the body seemed to indicate that it was my mom who killed him, which is crazy, she's been dead for decades. So who would want to frame my mother for murder? I talked to practicioners of voodoo to explore the zombie angle. It came to nothing. "So these zombies, can they shoot?" "Please leave our store if you're not going to at least by some chicken blood." "I'm all for capitalism, pal, but they've gone and made it personal. Now make with the colorful religion already. I understand there's some rum-drinking involved." "We're very serious about our religion," the guy says and I can practically smell the rum on his breath, "and we resent the fact that detectives stop by to talk to us just to spice up their investigations. We are not exotic. We are sincere. Would you like to buy a candle?" I never found my father's killer. I couldn't bring myself to stake out my mother's grave. I never got another secretary. Too many painful memories. I never put plaster over the bullet holes in my office wall. I never forgot how to sort mail. So if this mystery thing doesn't work out... What I'm hoping is that one day, some creep will get the drop on me, right? And he'll make me drop my gun and he'll think he's got me at his mercy. And he'll tell me where the kidnapped girl is and where the bomb is hidden and he'll tell me that my mother may be dead but her love was pure and my father's last thoughts were of my happy childhood and the joy it brought him and that it's too bad the jerk has to drill me and as he starts to pull the trigger, I'll grab one of those Have You Seen Me? pieces of bulk mail and with a snap of the wrist send it flipping through the air and into his eye. The gun will drop, my parents in heaven will smile and I will kick the criminal so hard that he will walk hunched over for the entirety of his tenure in jail. They may even throw a parade for me. I'll ask the voodoo guys to make a float. |
1. today is nice 3. happy yesterdays 8. thanks for hosting 4. doing other things |
(Proof that I am the only one reading.) |