Posted By:
Booker (stargate.mtel.com)
Date: Friday August 06 [03:11:51 PM]
Scene 1; Act 1
**
It was two o’clock in the afternoon on another incredibly hot and muggy day in the big city. They say that heat waves come and go, but this one seems to have just come. It may be a hundred and one outside, but it feels like double that in here. No doubt about it. You could cut this air with a butter knife.
I was picking off crows on the telephone wire across the street. Yeh, if business were as good as my aim – it’d be on easy street. Instead, I’m on 52nd street. Holed up in a tiny third floor office not even big enough for me to have cock roaches. The smoke from my cigarette mixed with the smoke from my .38. Yeh, me and the boys – Smith and Wesson – go way back. I’ve got six slugs in me….five are whiskey….one’s lead.
My name is Lance Steele……I’m a private eye.
Around 2:15 there was a knock at my door. (cue sound effects) *knock, knock, knock*
“Its open!”, I yelled. To this day I think to myself – I should never have uttered those words. Because the moment I did…in walked trouble…a brunette,…as usual. She said that her name was Mrs. Andi Baritchi,….but I doubted it. She also said that she thought her old man had been kidnapped,….but I doubted that too. If I had a nickel for every woman who thought her man had been nabbed, but later turned out to be shacking up somewhere with the neighbor’s, cousin’s, gardener’s, dog groomer – I’d be a gazillionaire for sure.
She was a pushy dame,…but she had a case. Frankly, I hadn’t seen a square meal in nearly three weeks, and I wasn’t about to let this ticket to t-bone sashay back out that door.
I told her that missing persons is really for the cops & that I couldn’t help her. She said that she’d been there,…done that,…bought the t-shirt. They’ve turned up nutt’n.
“What’s it all about, lady? How can you be so sure he’s been kidnapped?”
She said that her husband had come to The Apple last Friday to “take care of some personal business”. He was with some other guys. He disappeared that day and hasn’t been heard from since. She was sure that someone named Eben was involved, but wasn’t sure who he was, or how he was involved. ….a real winner of a case this one’s starting out to be.
Of course I asked if she thought she knew who did it. She went off on some cockamamie story about a fireball,…and a day planner,…and something about a lawyer here in town. Downtown. Manhattan.
She started using all kinds of crazy names, like out of a Dick Tracy comic book or something. Mr. Swoop, Insomniac, Antknee, Froman, Wizeguy and a bunch of other giberish.
I was about to dismiss the whole affair as a farce. Then she threw it down on the desk. The note. It was pieced together from letters cut out from various newspapers and magazines. It looked like a team of trained monkeys had put it together.
“WE HAVE HIM. AND WE ARE TIRED OF THE NONSENSE WE ARE PROPOSING A SERIES OF MANLY GAMES, TO DETERMINE CONTROL OF THE BBS. THEIR BEST AGAINST OUR BEST. IF YOU EVER WANT TO SEE HIM AGAIN, YOU’D BETTER GET THOSE GUYS ON THE BBS TO AGREE”
I asked her if she knew who “they” were. She said that she thought something called Jambo might be involved. I asked her about these “manly games”,…and got a blank stare. This was going to be a strange one…that’s for sure.
Signed by - theBooker, Master of the dramatic; creator/author/editor-in-cheif of the hit series, "As the BBS Turns"; Shing's friend; loving husband; dedicated father, and all around good guy. Often seen driving a 96 Pebble Beige 5-spd SE.
|
This message should be removed:
|
|
|