Flint Strikes His Match

The second the dame walked into my office with gams that went up to her chin and eyes that would drown a man if they had arms to hold him under water, I knew she was trouble – not the type of trouble that starts with T that rhymes with P that stands for pool, even though my office isn't really in River City, but easy enough to get there if you take the interstate instead of surface streets and don't try a shortcut on the toll road, because that takes you to Sloughville (which is just a backwater) – no, this dame was trouble that starts off smelling like roses but leaves you with fake lilies on a grave; trouble that brews like cheap coffee in a leaky percolator; trouble that makes men howl at the moon on nights that you can see the moon, because howling at a cloudy night doesn't make much sense. But trouble is my business, my paycheck, my north, south, east, and west, my raison de vivre, my joie de vie, and what paid for my night French phrase classes at the Y, so I knew that I could handle this dollface like a redneck handles his fifth beer on the opening day of hunting season.

“Toots, how did you get in here?” I growled. “Didn't my secretary tell you I was busy?”

“You mean the bottle-blond with the 5 o'clock shadow and the overbite that makes you kind of want to ask her if her aunt's a gerbil, reading back-issues of 'Modern Science'?” she frowned, creasing that porcelain jaw of hers like a pair of delicate underwear being folded by a toddler.

“That would be her,” I shrugged with a shoulder.

“Didn't see her,” she shrugged, too.

“Well, then, you won't mind if I use this,” I hissed as I yanked out my trusty iron.

“I'm sorry I disturbed your laundry day,” she purred like a freight train in labor.

“Just the shirts,” I spat. The iron hissed like a cat at a Rin Tin-Tin look-a-like convention.“Pull up a chair and hand me the starch.”

She slinked over to my ratty desk and pulled up a chair --not my comfy, ergonomically-designed swivel recliner with built-in heat and massage, guaranteed for four years, that I won off a bet with a one-legged Serbian midget with garlic breath and poor judgment, but the straight-back Duskämtar chair from Ikea I put together over the course of three days and two bottles of good Scotch. “Oh Mr. Flint, I am in desperate need of your services,” she wailed as she pulled out a handkerchief.

“I can tell,” I groused. “That's quite a stain on that snotrag. Blood?”

“No, chocolate,” she sobbed, her mascara running not unlike melted crayons down her already-mentioned porcelain skin, making her face look like a Japanese print done by a preschooler who missed his dose of Ritalin.

“Nothing worse than chocolate. Classy bit of work like you, I'm going to guess it ain't milk.”

“No, it's Belgian, just like Hercule,” she trembled. I could feel the Seismographs perk up.

“This ain't that kind of detective agency,” I spat again. “You want a Golden Age British mystery within a closed social group so that the suspects are easy to find, go watch PBS. I got laundry to sort.”

“Oh no, Mr. Flint, you have me all wrong,” she simpered like a puppy that's been caught with a no-no. “I know I look like trouble, but that's because we're in River City, and my name is Pool.”

“You don't say,” I said aloud, because she couldn't hear me if I said it in my head. “There's usually trouble with Pools right here in River City.”

“So you've read about my family in the papers?” she sniffled.

“I thought your family was in the Chinese laundry racket, not the news business,” I frowned. “I think one of us is confused.”

“It's my Belgian boyfriend, Hercule de Faiblement,” she wailed again, making the dentist down the hall duck and cover in preparation to survive the Commies' A-Bomb.

“And what's confusing him?” I grunted, because a grunt seemed the appropriate action.

“That's the thing,” she whispered. “I'm Ina, Ina Pool. You've probably seen me in all the best society pages. Hercule and I are to be married, but now, now...” She trailed off into more sobs and an occasional snort that sounded like a goose with a hangover.

“He's cheating on you, Ina?” I hazarded a guess because guesses are like trouble to me – part of the gig, along with the flow, butter to me bread, the cream to my coffee.

She stopped long enough between sobs to give me a look that would shrivel the innards of any self-respecting guy. Lucky for me, I avoid the Self Help section of the bookstore. There isn't much call for sensitive guys in my line of work.

“Your guts did not shrivel,” Ina said coldly.

“I'm a tough guy, dollface,” I said. “Plus, I decided to do the kale salad instead of the blue plate special for lunch. My guts are in pretty good condition.”

“For the record, Hercule is not with another woman,” Ina sniffed. “I am more than enough woman for any man.”

“In that skirt, anyone would be, including my Uncle Carl,” I observed, because it was quite true -- Uncle Carl has great legs. “You ever consider Spanx?”

“Hercule has disappeared!” Ina wailed again, sending Dr. Gum once more to a turtle-like stance, though we couldn't see it, but it would be part of his complaint to me later in the elevator when we clocked out. But I am literally getting ahead of the story, and you don't need to worry about him.

“Look, Toots,” I said, “Guys disappear all the time. They're like that ink, you know. The stuff that disappears.”

“You mean, Disappearing Ink?” she sniffled.

“Yeah, that's the stuff,” I said. “And when you you hold it to the light, it comes back. But like all ink, it's a stain that's a pain to get out.”

“That's very metaphoric, but that doesn't explain this,” she declared as she thrust the handkerchief back at me. “It's a ransom note.”

I put down my iron, careful not to leave it on the shirt I had been ironing but had neglected to describe – a broadcloth dress shirt with button-down collar and French cuffs in a pale blue – and took up the linen square.

“You'll notice the the monogram,” she instructed as if I didn't already notice the embroidery. I knew those initials like I knew the back of my hand, and they were the abbreviation of a name only a mother could love.

"'JLH,'” I read aloud, because reading to myself wouldn't make much sense, unless this was a third-person omnipotent story. Ina was a lot of things, but this wasn't the time for her to become a mind reader. “It's an old-fashioned monogram, with the last initial in the center, making it confusing. What's your boyfriend doing tied up with Juan Hung Lo?”

“That scum of the earth!” She wailed again. “That Mexican Chinese mobster is out to ruin my family, with his chain of upscale restaurants that pay waiters to spill the salsa so his laundries conveniently located next door can clean the messes up at a mark-up!”

“You got to stop acting like a siren,” I sighed. “Dr. Gum's nerves are shot as it is.”

“Is that the dentist down the hall with the tic in his left eye and the sign advertising 'Venetian Rutabagas' because that sounds classier than root canals?” Ina asked.

“One and the same, kid,” I unplugged the iron.

“Don't know him,” she shrugged with an upwards movement of her shoulders.

“Hold it right there, Flint,” drawled a new voice, this one from the figure in the doorway that was conveniently backlit so we couldn't see his face right away, because it was so much more dramatic that way. “Reach for the sky.”

“Well, well, well,” I repeated. “Speak of the devil. I thought I smelled bleach and cilantro. Miss Pool, meet Juan Hun Lo.”

“Why, I'm taken aback,” Ina gasped as she backed away.

“You know, this is convenient enough for me to make a wild assumption that will end up making me seem prophetic,” I mused. “You two are both here, and probably for the same reason, which probably has nothing to do with a missing boyfriend.”

“That's absurd!” gasped the dame.

“No, that's a cliché,” I countered like the boxer I never was. “I wondered when you two would come sniffing around here like a couple of dogs being trained to find cadavers, only I'm not dead and that's a bit of a creepy analogy. No, this all has to do with the case I'm really working on, the one that I knew was going to bring a Pool here from River City, because 'P' rhymes with 'T' and that stands for trouble.”

“And what case is that, Mr. Flint?” sneered Juan Hun Lo, his trench coat bulging like there was a gun in his hand in his pocket, which probably there was, because it would be perverted if it was something else.

“The Case of the Counterfeit Detergent,” I triumphed, because triumphing is never done enough in my line of work.

“What's that?” Ina asked conveniently.

“Juan here is under investigation for tax evasion for bringing in fake laundry soap and selling it without paying taxes. It's money laundering in a whole new light.”

“It's just to tide me over until I bounce back from the restaurant racket,” Lo explained. “I put all into that gig, and the gain wasn't as good anymore. Once it was a breeze, and now, that era has passed.”

“But what about Hercule?” cried Pool.

“You're lookin' at him, Toots,” I said.

“Good one, Mr. Flint,” Lo sneered because he loved sneering as he pulled off the hat he was conveniently wearing to reveal a face that was neither Hispanic or Asian, but sort of French in a not-really sort of way. “I am really Hercule de Faiblement, and Juan Hun Lo is an alias.”

“Is it descriptive at least?” I asked curiously, because curiosity is part of the job, which is why I have no cats.

“I'll never tell!” declared the dame as she went dramatically to her lover's side. “Yes, Mr. Flint. My coming here today was to throw you off the scent of Hercule's plot. We though that you would go after a society job that would possibly pay more.”

“Why do this to your family?” I asked as Lo pulled the gun out of his pocket and pointed it at me in a more direct sort of way.

“Because I'm a Pool, Mr. Flint,” she declared. She was in a mood to declare.

“Fair enough,” I shrugged, using my shoulders, moving them not unlike an elevator. I like elevators.

“So, Mr. Flint, this is where you die,” Lo pointed the gun as he pointedly said that.

Before I could close my eyes or soil myself, there were two bangs that sounded like gunshots, because they were shots from a gun. Both Lo and Pool lay dead at my feet.

“Thanks, my favorite gal,” I said to the new figure standing in the doorway, brandishing a smoking pistol like it had just been fired, which is had.

“Anytime, sugar,” purred my secretary in all her rodenty, bleached glory.

“Not bad shooting for a plot device that must have seemed like a throwaway joke at the beginning,” I said, sweeping her into my arms.

Word count: 1933