Black Cat Weekly #38

Chapter 5

byCletus “Birddog” Culpepper stretched out his ungainly bulk in the big leather chair he called home and yawned, gazing out at the busy downtown street directly below his dirty window. He pulled a bag of sunflower seeds out of his right shirt pocket, started chewing, spitting.

And five minutes into his athletic pastime, he heard the outer door of his office creak open. He sprang up out of his chair and pressed his ear to the frosted glass separating his inner office from the outer, desperate to hear anyone breathing on the other side.

He heard someone and smiled the smile of a man finally called back to work.

Birddog opened the door and casually strolled out and over to what would’ve been his secretary’s desk had he a secretary, began sorting through week-old junk mail he’d sorted through many times before. He stopped, when he feigned first noticing the woman standing in the room, staring at him.

“Well, I’ll be,” he said, doffing his pork-pie Stetson. “Didn’t know anyone was out here.”

“Oh, don’t let me stop your cleaning up,” the woman said. “You wouldn’t happen to know when Mr. Culpepper is coming back, though, would you?”

Birddog grimaced. “Ma’am, I am Culpepper. How may I be of service?”

“Oh, hello, Mr. Culpepper. I’d like to hire you.”

“Please, call me Birddog. Just don’t call me collect.” Birddog grinned expectantly, but it wasn’t reciprocated. “I’ll tell you what, I was just moseying on out to visit a couple of my operatives in the field working on other cases, but—”

“Oh, if you’re busy, I’ll find someone else.” The woman turned to leave.

“Now, hold on there!” Birddog interjected hastily. “No need to settle for crawfish when you got lobster on the menu. I think I can see my way clear to freeing up a little time to ponder your dilemma. How ’bout that?”

“Thank you,” the woman replied.

They stood there sizing up one another for a moment.

Cletus “Birddog” Culpepper was fighting a losing battle with gravity on two fronts—height and width. He stood about five-foot-nine and tipped the Toledos at around two-twenty. His appearance from a distance was that of a walking pear. He sported a red brushcut you could clean your golf shoes on, heavy jowls, and clear, sparkling blue eyes that said, “Beware of Brain.” He was dressed in a pair of brown slacks, snakeskin cowboy boots, and a white, open-necked, long-sleeved shirt. To stretch a tie around his bull-neck would’ve constituted lynching in most States. His face and hands were the color and texture of tanned hide.

The woman was around thirty years of age, with long black hair, a pale oval face, and large brown eyes. She was petite, her dress a simple white summer one that accentuated a well-tended physique. She strummed her fingers on a small black handbag, thinking, perhaps, that Birddog wasn’t quite the man she’d envisioned solving her problems. But PI pickings were slim in Fargo, North Dakota; figuratively, not literally.

Birddog sucked in his gut, emptying the stuffy room of what little air there was, and spoke: “Step right into my office, Miss…?”

“Hubert. Mrs. Chloe Hubert.”

His gut sagged back out. “Well, let’s take ourselves a seat, Mrs. Hubert.”

A thin cloud of dust arose around the woman when she sat down in the padded metal folding chair directly in front of Birddog’s teachers’ surplus desk. He fitted himself back into his leather chair, cleared his throat. “Now why is it you want to hire me, Mrs. Hubert? Not for my good looks, I bet?” He raised his eyebrows and chuckled.

“No.”

He lowered his eyebrows and frowned.

“My husband is missing, Mr. Culpepper. Abraham Hubert is his name. He’s the program director at WJAX—the local television station.”

“Right,” Birddog responded, pulling a couple of sheets of Hotel Donaldson stationary out of his desk and jotting down notes with an Edgewood Golf and Country Club pencil.

“He didn’t come home from work last night, and he hasn’t returned this morning. He’s always home for dinner—he prides himself on punctuality.”

“The police?”

“Oh, they said they’ll look into it, but it sounded like they wanted to give him more time to turn up. They don’t know my husband.”

After another two minutes of thorough interrogation, Birddog had established all of the existing facts. Abraham Hubert had been missing for at least fifteen hours, highly unusual for a devoted family man with an accountant-like demeanor; his disappearance might or might not be linked to his work, as he had no enemies—and few friends—on the personal front; he had no girlfriends that Mrs. Hubert was aware of. His photograph confirmed that last fact.

“Will you find my husband?” Mrs. Hubert asked, getting almost emotional.

“Yep, that I will,” Birddog replied confidently.

After seeing Mrs. Hubert off, Birddog ambled down the creaky stairs of his office building and out onto the sun-drenched sidewalk. He strolled through the dusty parking lot in back towards his black, 1975 Cadillac. He worked the door open, planted himself inside to a chorus of rusty springs, and fired up the antique. It was a warm day for September, the huge blue sky clear as a bell. A man couldn’t hide for long in this kind of weather, Birddog mused. He’d want to get out and enjoy it before winter set in.

Birddog drove over to the squat, one-story red brick building that housed the WJAX station. He wasn’t a big fan of the station—too much local programming, in his opinion: hog reports, sugar beet price updates, sewer plant christenings, that sort of thing. Birddog eyeballed the boob tube for two things only—football and country music videos.

He parked his car and got out, slammed his Stetson onto his head and stuck a big, black cigar into the corner of his mouth. Then he authoritatively tore open the station-house door and strode up to the receptionist womanning the tiny lobby. “Tex R. Kansas, ma’am!” he bellowed, slapping his cowpie-sized mitts down on the wooden counter. “Rupe Murdoch’s right-hand man in the U.S. West. Lookin’ to buy!”

The receptionist quickly closed out her game of computer solitaire and pushed her thick-framed glasses back up her nose. “Uh, yes, how may I help you…Mr. Kansas?”

“Lookin’ for a man named Hubert. Heard tell?”

“Uh, yes, sir, he’s our program director. But he’s not in at the—”

“Office?”

“First door on the right. But as I said—”

“I’ll set awhile!”

Birddog blew down the hall like a Kansas twister, through the first door on the right. He slammed it closed behind him, then rapidly went to work systematically stripping the bus shelter-sized office of any information it could provide regarding the case at hand.

Ten minutes into his paper chase, Birddog triumphantly held up a piece of grimy stationary with typewriting on it. The typewriter must have been as old and cheap as the paper, because the letters jumped up and down, faded in and out. But the message was clear enough. And so was the byline at the bottom: “Colonel Saunders.”

“Time to pluck me a chicken,” Birddog muttered, folding the angry missive and stuffing it into his shirt pocket. He wrenched the office door open and stampeded out.

“Can’t wait all day! Got a Concorde to Topeka in five minutes!” he hollered over his shoulder at the receptionist.

“I’ll tell Mr. Hubert you called, Mr. Kansas!” she yelled back at the portly figure already squeezing into the big black Caddy.

“Australians,” she sighed wistfully, shaking her head.

Birddog drove over to a Piggly Wiggly and picked up some fresh sunflower seeds, then checked for “Saunders” in the phone book dangling off the payphone outside. There were nineteen of them listed, but only one with the first name “Col.” That bird roosted at 1115 32nd Avenue North.

Birddog located the small, Air Force-designed cubicle masquerading as a house in short order. The whole block was a reunion of cheap construction. After the Air Force had shuttered half the ICBM silos in the area, the support staff houses had been sold off to the public, or to now ex-Air Force personnel, like Colonel Saunders, perhaps.

There was barely room in the w**d-strewn driveway for Birddog to berth his automobile. He rapped on the screen door of the house, and a woman appeared almost immediately.

“What y’all want?” she challenged, a twang in her voice akin to a Kentucky hillbilly’s banjo. Close kin.

“You from the South, ma’am?” Birddog inquired politely. He took off his Stetson and smiled, crewcut twinkling in the sun.

“Yeah, Tennessee. Law ’gainst it?”

“Should be a law for it, in my opinion.” The grin on Birddog’s face widened.

The woman at the door smiled shyly and brushed a stray piece of graying hair out of her tired face. “What can I do for y’all?” she asked, less vinegar in her voice now.

“Well, ma’am, I’ll tell you. I’m looking for Colonel Saunders.”

The smile faded like the wallpaper in back. “He ain’t here. And he ain’t no Colonel, neither!”

“He ain’t no Colonel?”

The woman snorted, wiped her nose on her apron. “That’s just his nickname. Like Colonel Sanders, y’know. He didn’t get no higher than Warrant Officer before the base closed. You think I’d be livin’ in this dump if Elmo was a Colonel? What you want with him, anyway?”

“Are you his wife, or daughter?” Birddog asked with a straight face.

The woman adjusted a frayed b*a strap, smiling again. “I’m Jesse Saunders, Elmo’s wife. What y’all want?”

“Well, ma’am, I’m right pleased to meet you. The name’s Cletus Culpepper and I’m looking for a man named Abraham Hubert. I have reason to believe your husband might know something about his whereabouts.”

“Why you think that? And keep it short, Kingfish, I got a meatloaf in the oven that ain’t gettin’ any younger.”

“Yes, ma’am, I do appreciate that fine Southern cooking myself. See, Jesse, I found a threatening note from the Colonel—Elmo to Mr. Hubert in Mr. Hubert’s office. It says,” Birddog plucked the piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it, “‘We had a deal! You welched!! Give me money or bad things will happen!!! Yours truly, Colonel Saunders. PS: More Dukes of Hazzard’.” Birddog refolded and pocketed the paper. “You have any idea what this note is all about?”

“Nope.”

“Any idea where Elmo is right now?”

“Nope.”

“Did Mr. Hubert owe Elmo money?”

“Yeah, right!” The sarcasm was as thick as the woman’s thighs.

“What does Elmo do for a living?”

“He calls himself an inventor. I call him a bum. I’ve told him to invent a decent job for himself, but he’s havin’ all kinds of trouble with that one.”

“What’s he been working on lately?”

Jesse groaned. “I don’t know. Or care. He was runnin’ off at the mouth about some sort of “Battle Kite” or somethin’—a kite that shoots bean pellets at other kites. For kids five and up and mothers with IQs of eighty and down.”

Birddog frowned, already envisioning the sparrow and squirrel casualties, the reddened and blinded eyes. “Who finances his inventions?”

“The taxpayers of the United States. At least until his disability pension ran out, that is. I know he was into them Sowbellies for some money.”

“Them what?”

“That motorcycle g**g—the Sowbellies. Look, Tex, I’m gonna haveta cut this Dixie revival short, okay. Oprah’s only five minutes away.”

Birddog grinned, gestured with his Stetson. “Well, thanks for all your Southern—”

The door slammed in his face.

Birddog phoned his friend, Deputy Sangster, at the Highway Patrol station, got a good laugh at the mere mention of the Sowbellies, then the information he was looking for. He drove out a mile north of the city, hooked left at Highway 10, and spotted the old, burnt-out barn he was looking for a hundred yards up a dirt road. Everything was clear to see, thanks to terrain flatter than Birddog’s singing voice.

A pair of pimply-faced, leather-jacketed grease monkeys were lounging out on lawn chairs in front of the barn doors. The barn was in better physical shape than the motorheads. Birddog exited his vehicle and walked up to the teenaged beer swillers. The air was full of insolence and phony toughness, undigested burritos.

“Hi, fellas,” Birddog said amicably.

“Get bent,” one of the chunky punks replied, before taking another chug.

Birddog folded up his lawn chair—with the punk in it. The other punk fell out of his chair and retreated to the wall of the barn, before he too became a human accordion. The back of the tough guys’ fake leather jackets boasted “Sowbellies M.C.” in big, red letters, the head of a red-eyed, pink-faced pig underneath the iron-on lettering. The pig bore more than a passing resemblance to Porky.

“Hey, what’d you do that for?” the guy in the lawn chair whined.

Birddog unfolded him, shoved him up against the barn with his shorter, even-fatter playmate. “You boys have a thing or two to learn about hospitality. Don’t they teach you manners down in Juvie anymore?”

The tubby two-wheel enthusiasts looked at one another, swallowed simultaneously.

“You aren’t gonna tell my mom I’ve been drinking beer, are you, Mister?” the taller one pleaded. “Or about the lawn chairs we stole?”

“Shut up, Lenny!” the other punk yelled. “Are you with the law, Mister?”

“Private law, sonny. Look, I know you boys got a ton of nails to chew between now and when you’re tucked into bed, so I’ll get to the point. You lend any money to Colonel Saunders?”

“Yeah, darn right we did!” Lenny yelped. “He owes us a hundred bucks, that no-good nutwad! You seen him?”

“I’m looking for him. Where’d you larded tots get a hundred beans?”

“I work at Taco Chicken on weekends,” Lenny replied. “We’re trying to get set up in loan-sharking.” He looked proudly at his buddy, who nodded.

“Did Saunders tell you grease urchins why he needed the money?”

“Yeah, he said he had invented some great new toy—a kite that fights with other kites…or something—and he needed the money to buy advertising. He’s our Uncle, right, so what could we do? Why’re you looking for him?”

“The Governor needs him for a special task force on air defense,” Birddog deadpanned. “So where does he hide out when he’s not swapping Shakespearean soliloquies with the Missus?”

“Aw, he’s got a hunting shack up by Brereton Lake,” Lenny answered.

Suddenly, short and chunky began advancing on Birddog, his flabby body shaking, a look of fatal attraction on his pepperoni kisser.

Birddog calmly popped him in the eye, and the punk hit the ground with a thud.

“Thanks, man,” he said, feeling his eye. “And say hi to the Governor for us.”

Birddog drove off in a cloud of dust, as Lenny squatted down to admire the ripening shiner on his pal’s face. They both thought he looked tough with the new tattoo.

The sun was thinking of setting by the time Birddog made it to Brereton Lake—the manmade backwater formed by damming up the Whitefish River. The owner of the local Mom and Pop gave him directions to Colonel Saunders’ shack.

Birddog parked his car at the main campground and trudged a mile north into the bush. His short hike stirred up enough bugs to fill a Hellstrom Chronicle, and a pouring sweat rained down his face.

“He better be here,” Birddog muttered, when he finally spotted the dilapidated shack in a clearing. Walden’s Pond it wasn’t.

Eschewing courtesy for timeliness, Birddog kicked in the front door of the mangy wooden structure. The force of the blow almost brought the whole building down.

“Hands where I can see ’em, boys!” he ordered.

Two men jumped up from a warped checkerboard and jerked shocked faces Birddog’s way. One of the men clutched a rusty shotgun.

“You all right, Mr. Hubert?” Birddog asked the black-haired man in the blue business suit and brown, owl-framed glasses. He had his hands up in the air like he’d gotten used to it in the last little while. Birddog recognized him from the photo his wife had provided.

“F-fine, fine,” Hubert gulped.

“Colonel Saunders, I presume?” Birddog addressed the lanky lunk in overalls with the all-skin hairdo, and the blunderbuss.

Saunders made a move like he was going to bring the g*n up and around. But Birddog quickly dissuaded him with a pudgy, blocking hand, a flat foot in between the bony man’s bony legs. Saunders gave out a strangled grunt and folded over like a cheap suit, hitting the dirt floor on his knees, his shotgun securely in Birddog’s hands now.

“How ’bout you telling me what’s going on here, Saunders?” Birddog said, after the clipped-wing Colonel had swallowed his marbles back down.

“C-Cousin H-Hubert wouldn’t put my Battle Kite on M-Molly’s Merry-Go-Round, like he promised,” Saunders gasped. “I w-woulda been able to sell product if he had.”

“You want to run that by me again? This time with some sense in it.”

“Allow me to explain,” Hubert spoke up. “I had promised to place Elmo’s new…toy in a scene in the morning Emmy-award winning, locally-produced children’s show “Molly’s Merry-Go-Round”—for a certain consideration. But, unfortunately, the FCC forbade me. Elmo thought I had cheated him, so he abducted me in the station parking lot at gunpoint.”

Birddog blinked. “Let me get this straight, Saunders. You kidn*pped Mr. Hubert over misplaced product placement?”

“Yes, sir,” Saunders gulped. “I just wanted to scare him, m-maybe get a few bucks from his wife.”

“But his wife didn’t know where he was.”

“Well, there ain’t no telephone up here.”

Birddog gave his head a shake. “And just what were you planning to do with Mr. Hubert? He could identify you.”

Saunders licked his fishy lips. “Well, uh, I was gonna skip town with the money I got. Take my Battle Kite down to M-Mexico where the safety standards ain’t so high.”

“Well, don’t that beat all,” Birddog grimaced.

“You takin’ me to jail, Mister?” Saunders asked.

Birddog looked at Hubert. The man sighed and shook his head, saying, “He’s family.”

“No such luck,” Birddog informed the invented Colonel. “I’m taking you home—to your wife.”

Laird Long pounds out fiction in all genres. Big guy, sense of humor. Writing credits include many magazines, ezines, anthologies, audio recordings, and one book.