Sam Similie Private Dick: Double-D Danger

It was Monday, a sleeting Monday. No, wait a minute, it might of been a Friday. Yeah, Friday, a sizzling Friday. It was`a scorcher; people were spontaneously combusting all over town. No, shit--that was Wednesday. It was Tuesday. Yeah, Tuesday, a blank Tuesday. I'd logged in a night of bill dipping at the local watering hole. I had a fin riding on the Redskins to take the Cowboys, but the spread was too thin so I was pickling my gizzard while the redmen fumbled away my fin with flopping around on the field like a pack of primates trying to pork a pigskin.

It was only a fin and it was Monday so I shoulda left after the game and caught up on some sleep like a good little boy, but there was a dame at the end of the bar throwing down shots of Chivas like a steamshovel, and I had the feeling she might be the type who likes a good detective story––without the plot, if you get my drift. So now it was Tuesday and I'd had to sell my Elvis on velvet painting to pay my bar bill. I had a new gap in my dental work and a flock of woodpeckers inside my skull beakin' on my brain like it was a gourmet grub. I was at my desk with half the days of the week printed on my face from my desk calender and I was holding the stub of a raw weiner in one hand and a cigarette filter in the other when the earthquake started and the day turned to night.

Turned out to be a black bodyguard with stylish shoes walking across my office and shaking me by my shoulder.

"You Sam Simile?" he said.

I had to think for a moment. I gave the happy birthday song a quick mental humming and nodded. The movement sent the woodpeckers in my head into the spin cycle at the Speed Queen birdbath in my brain. There was a big flock of 'em in there. My brain felt like a stale stump of swiss cheese.

"What if I am?" I quipped

"If you are, I mean if you is, youse about to meet my boss."

"Mmmmpph," I said. The woodpeckers had sucked all the water off my tongue.

He got down on his knees and put his face next to mine. He was a large man; I could tell by his size.

"Lay one hand on her and I'll break your neck," he said.

"Oh yeah?" I said, raising my head up off my desk calender.

"Yeah," he said and strode out of my office. The peckers were chorusing with his footsteps. I watched him walk out my window and down my fire escape.

Break my neck. That was a laugh, I thought to myself. He'd be lucky to cause massive internal hemorrhaging and vertebrae stress fractures by the look of him.

I wheeled myself away from my desk and put a pot of joe on my gas camp cookstove. The power company had cut my juice last month for nonpayment, but I was doing just fine without 'em.

I turned on the gas and was looking for a match when she walked in.

I could see right away why her bodyguard had threatened to squeeze my spine. This babe was built like a brick greenhouse; solid class and no glass. She had a pair of feet that never saw the sun and a set of stems that mighta made Michelangelo paint porno. She was wearing a low–cut sweater that was landscaped like a wool zepplin net and a skirt that musta been manufactured by midgets.

She sat down and took out an ivory cigarette holder, fitted one of those expensive French fags in the end of it and looked at me.

She had eyes like weeping puppies.

I lit a match and the woodpeckers in my head all exploded!

When I came to, she was bending over me with a concerned look on her face. The explosion had killed all the woodpeckers except one, but he was a big one. More like a woodpounder.

There was a hole in my ceiling about the size of my coffee pot, and I was lying on the floor. I rolled over and glanced down her sweater, but the landscape made me dizzy.

"Are you all right?" she said. She had the kind of lips that could scare a popsicle right off its stick.

"Just another day," I said, jumping to my feet and leaping onto my office chair to retrieve the coffee pot that was blown through my ceiling.

"How about some expresso?" I said, grabbing the pot and giving a pull so it made contact with the frayed wiring in the space above my ceiling.

I lit up like an eel biting a fusebox and went down for the count again.

This time when I came to the woodpeckers were gone but there was a kind of hum inside my head like an old Kelvinator door was open somewhere .

The little light was off.

I crawled into my chair and rifled through my bottom drawer for my bottle and poured a couple stiff ones. I handed her a glass.

"Top of the morning," I said, throwing down my Burger King star wars collectable tumbler in one gulp. The reefer door slammed shut inside my head and the little light fizzed out like a flashbulb. I smiled at her, showing her the space where my top right canine had been just last night, and wiped a few days of the week and some soot off my cheek. She was looking at me with that look people get at the zoo near the African anteater cage during mating season.

She took a sip of her drink, got a light off my coffee pot and inhaled deeply. Her massive mammaries expanded to the size of sea lions inside her sweater.

This woman would never drown.

I could see this dame needed impressing. I pulled open my drawer, poured myself another blast and grabbed the little b.b. puzzle with the picture of the naked broad with no nipples and expertly rolled both b.b.s to the noses of her knockers with a quick flick of my wrist.

I threw down my second snort and gave her a suave look. I could tell she was impressed. Her eyes were still at the zoo, but now they were in front of the monkey cage.

She took another drag off her fag. If this broad was on the face of my b.b. puzzle, it would have been a two man job.

"My husband's been kidnapped ," she blurted out with a cloud of smoke, crossing her

legs.

"Snatch, eh?" I said, lighting the middle of a Lucky and fumbling for my bottle again.

"They warned me not to go to the police," she sighed, leaning forward in her chair.

"They usually do," I said, leaning my chair over backwards against the wall and raising a knot the size of a porpoise pecker on my noggin.

"They sent this," she said, handing me a typewritten sheet of expensive stationery.

I gave the note a quick going–over and shoved it in my pocket. I had a hunch the snatchers were foreign. I hadn't understood a word of what it said.

"I'll take it from here," I said, standing up, taking out my piece and doing a quick field cleaning.

"What should I do?" she asked, standing with an effort. The sight of my roscoe had her swooning.

"Go home," I said, flipping the wheel of my revolver shut. "Get some shut eye. Take a shower. Relax. Read a good book. Put some smooth music on the stereo. Maybe order out for some Chinese food. Stay away from the MSG. I'll be in touch."

She turned and began to walk out, then stopped and turned around.

"But you don't have my phone number," she said.

"I'll follow your scent," I said, scratching the lump on my head with the business end of my rod.

"Oh," she said, giving her mouth a pout you could have blown bubbles with. She took another deep breath and I could feel the air in the room growing thin.

"Well, I'm in the book," she said seductively and swayed out of my office.

"Don't worry," I said. "I can't read," I joked, waving my heater and squeezing off a round that plugged a pipe in my sprinkler system, turning my office into a sponge fest. I held my glass up, trickled a little H20 into my drink, and threw it down.

I had a feeling I was gonna like this case, especially if I didn't find her old man. I needed time to drain my office and my lizard, not exactly in that order, and have a lingo expert take a long look at the snatch note. I threw down the rest of my drink and fell down the three flights of my fire escape into the alley.

It was the kind of morning that makes three-pack-a-day smokers want to take up jogging. There were a few of 'em flopping around on the pavement at the mouth of the alley. The air had that clean bite to it that makes you think that the city might not be a bad place to stay. The sun was coming up under the skyline like a limpid lightbulb, beaming the streets steam clean as hot waxed whistle. The whole city was covered with a warm morning mist that made the steam from my whizz rise so slow and majestically skyward into the picture perfect pale of the pastel eggshell streetside skyscape that for a second I was transfixed, so that I soaked my sock and shoe.

The warm wetness creeping down my dogs brought me out of my reverie and I zipped up and shifted my brain from park to drive. I wasn't getting paid to paint pretty word pictures, or spend half the morning tapping my root. Besides, a crowd had gathered at the end of the alley and some of them were starting to point. I brushed past 'em, flashing my private investigator monogramed pen. "Private dick business," I mumbled and headed on out into the street.

It was just a short stroll down Derogatory to my office annex and private booth in Bulbo's Seafood Grotto. I came in the back way and headed for the tank room where Bulbs lived in a constant stupor behind the bar. I was sneaking past the soup urns when she popped up with a pan outa one of the urns like an ugly can of Campells Cream of Surprize. I saw the number twelve fry pan too late and she caught me a glancing blow on the brainpan that sent me on a quick tour of skillet city after dark.

When I came to she was standing over me rifling my wallet and checking the seating section on my midget wrestling tickets. She had that familar face that someone who was really drunk might find attractive just before last call. I gave her a weak smile and rubbed my head; it was beginning to feel like the lab section on a phrenology final.

"Morning, Babe," I croaked.

"Little Sam Jr. wonders where daddy's support check might be," she said, taking the snatch note out of its envelope and unfolding it in front of her protruding peepers.

"What is this?" she said with a suspicious squint.

"It's a case I'm working on," I groaned.

"Stop lying," she snapped, giving me a quick paddling about the head and shoulders with the soup urn oar. I managed to fend off the worst of them with my elbows and arms, but she managed to crack Mickey's minute hand off at the roots and send it slumping to the bottom of my timeteller like an amputated arrow.

"It's true," I said, spitting out a piece of crystal,"It's a ransom note, foreigners, big money!" She stopped stroking me with the oar and fixed me with a stern look.

"How do ya figure foreigners?" she said, giving the note a quick read. "This looks more like a business memo." I jumped to my feet, plucked the note from her hand and sprinted for the door to the tank room, scooping up my wallet off the floor as I ran. Business memo, I laughed to myself, turning the doorknob. Funny what some dames thought they knew.

"Check's in the mail," I shouted back over my shoulder as she winged me with a saucepan.

Bulbo was passed out behind the bar as usual while I eased myself into my private booth and spread the snatch note out on the table in front of me. It was written on expensive office stationary from a place called The Twincups Foundation Garment Company, and it was adressed to my curvacious client. Her name, it turns out, was Beal, Curweena Beal.

That meant only one thing; her husband's name must be something Beal too! Now I was getting some place. I decided to celebrate my sluething savvy with a drink.

I concked Bulbo with a table candle from my booth and called for my usual. He stumbled over wiping the wax off his head and set me up with a schooner of scotch.

"Your ex was looking for you," he said, setting my drink down and sliding into the seat across from me.

"I met her in the kitchen," I said, rubbing the garden of lumps on my noggin and taking a dip of my drink.

"You speak a couple languages," I said, sliding the snatch note across the table to him, "What do ya make a this?" He took the note and gave it a quick glance.

"It's hard to translate something like this without the proper currency," he said, arching an eyebrow knowingly. I winced, feeling the bite coming on. I reached down and snatched a sawbuck out of my soaked sock and slid it across the table.

"Eeeeuugh! What'd you do--piss on this?" he said, holding it up at arms length.

"It'll spend," I said cracking my massive knuckles in his general direction. He took a long hard look at my popping pincers and wrapped the sawbuck in a napkin with a shrug. He cleared his throat and began to read out loud.

"To Curweena Beal Fm Anon. Re 50000 Financial Enhancement /Transfer FundsFmAccts/EffecuateImmeadiate/UponReciept/MissivePolice=Decease/Repeat/Police=Decease/Instrucs Pending."

Listening to it out loud, it sounded almost like English I thought to myself, but it could be an obscure dialect too. I took a long pull on my drink . This FmAnon character sounded more like a middle easterner to me. They could be tough nuts to crack. I pulled at the bite mark in my right ear that served as a reminder of my run in with the Moslems in my days as a pork caterer and that wedding feast they tried to stiff me on.

"So whatdaya think, Bulbs?" I said, throwing down the rest of my drink and lighting a Lucky. "Maybe Moslems, eh?" I queryed , exhaling a plume of smoke that sent him into a coughing fit. He gave me one of those looks I'd seen in nature specials on T.V. that rodents get in their eyes just before king cobras eat them, kinda beady and glazed with an incredulousness in 'em. Bulbo looked at me a moment longer then cleared his throat.

"This is a telex message from someone obviously inside The Twincups Foundation Garment Company, Kerwin Beal, President. Looks like they want fifty grand for him," he said, flipping the note aside.

"Wait a minute--how do you know his name?" I asked suspiciously.

"One of my waitresses used to work part time for him modeling brassieres."

"That's swell," I snarled, "but what about these Atelexes--where they from, Iran?" I stubbed out my Lucky and checked my roscoe for full lead. Bulbo gave me another one of those rodent lunchmeat looks and smacked his head with his fist.

"Look," he said exasperatedly,"this Beal guy, I remember this waitress telling me he used to hang out a lot down at the Old Atlas Health Spa. Why don't you go check around down there."

"Health nut, eh?" I said, snatching the note and standing up. "Thanks for the tip," I said, flipping him another soggy fin and heading out the door. My hunch about Bulbo had paid off, the man was a genius when it came to foreign languages. This case was beginning to come together. I was whistling through the new hole in my teeth when I hit the pavement and started for The Old Atlas.

The Old Atlas Health Spa was quite a ways from Bulbo's, but since my drivers license had been pulled more times than a preteen's pud, and I couldn't read a bus schedule, I decided to hoof it.

Traffic was heating up so I decided to stop in at my office for a quick shower and to pick up a few numbers from my Deluxe Master of Disguise Kit that might make my snooping at the spa a little less obtrusive.

I left my office on the corner of North Zygote with a gymbag and started up South Ovum towards the spa. Traffic was heavy and it was hot. The cars were swimming up and down the steamy streets like salmon in a speed spawner, and the sidewalks were jammed as well. It was all I could do to wade through the throngs out into Fillopian then wade to Roe and Embryo.

As usual, the "walk, don't walk" lights were on the blink so I took a chance and sprinted through traffic as thick as the paint on my apartment light fixture for the other side of Embryo.

I began to turn the facts of the case over in my head as one of those new Yugoslavian rust buckets winged my right thigh. First, Beal was the President of a brassiere company--that explained his wife. I wondered whether it was just professional curiosity or if he really saw the woman behind the support structure as a black BMW full of kids rolled me across its hood and into the side of one of those new vans that looks like it belongs on another planet. The van got one of my feet, but I managed to pull free in time to make a last desperate dive for the curb, where some poor sap on a moped happened to be waiting. Luckily he was Japanese, so he couldn't hurt me much and I couldn't understand anything he was saying except "whiprash."

"Try some cortizone cream," I quipped, leaving the nip in a snit and limping to the corner. There was a phone booth there and I figured it was about time I checked in with my client. I found her number and gave her a ring. She answered on the first canary-like chirp those new phones have all atwitter. The sound of her voice sent the morning's memories of her massive mammeries smothering though the pay phone and knocking my mug against the back of the booth like a fatman being crushed with a pair of pillows in a pill pantry.

"How's tricks?" I said, giving her my best hard boiled detective growl.

"Who is this?" She asked breathlessly. The fag I had been smoking was sucked into the receiver like a cinder in a shopvac.

"Sam Similie, your private dick," I crooned, lighting the end of my monogramed pen and spitting out a wad of ink. This broad and her provocative pachyderm proportioned pom poms really had me rattled.

"Oh! I'm so glad you called," she oozed all soft like jello in 30 weight."The kidnappers called me not ten minutes ago and they want me to take fifty thousand dollars cash in a gymbag to the Old Atlas Health Spa."

"Do tell," I quipped, spiting some ink out of my mouth.

"Yes, and they want it left in room 38 D on the second floor."

"Thirty Eight D, eh?" I said, using my memory assiciation techniques and instantly commiting it to mammery.

"Sam, oh Sam, what should I do?" she chirped in a voice that was all pillows , plummage and Las Vegas billboards.

"Do just what they say, babe," I drawled spitting out some ink and torching a real fag suavely. "I'm outside the Old Atlas now," I said exhaling expert private dick style.

"But Sam, how did you know?" she cooed.

" I'm a private dick, babe.It's my business to know. I wouldn't last long in this racket if I only knew what everybady else knows." "Oh.!" she cooed. I took another slow drag. I let my little speech settle in and then went on. "Listen," I said, squashing out my Lucky in the coin return, "I'll see ya in room38 D, don't worry. But you might not recognize me. I'll be, as the French say, incognito."

"What?" she said with a sigh.

"Don't worry. Catch ya later," I said expertly throwing the receiver into its cradle on the first try and heading for the alley to change into my disguise.

My disguise consisted of my Tarzan type single arm tards made of real racoon skin, and an old Davy Crocket coon skin cap to kind of balance out the look. I swung the tail of my cap over my shoulder at a jaunty angle and marched through the doors of The Old Atlas and up to the front desk.

There was one of those major-appliance-sized steroid stooges standing in front of a mirror behind the front desk doing biceps curls with twin fifty-pound dumbells. He was so busy snorting and snuffling and smiling at himself in the mirror that he didn't even see me rifling the counter for the private elevator key. I found the vator key just as he turned around to look at me. His body looked like it was stuffed with little epeleptic animals having seizures.

"You look good," I said stroking my tail.

"No pain, no gain," he replied, turning towards me and getting a gander at my workout suit that sent him into a laughing fit so violent he dropped a fifty-pound dumbell on one of his tanned tootsies. I grabbed the key and raced for the elevator. He was hugging his foot in pain as I keyed the private vator.