The Black Llama Caper

2

2I awoke with the taste of fried anchovies in my mouth. Maybe it was the effects of the chow I had gulped down at Ma's last evening or maybe just the dim recollection of what had transpired at what's-her- face's. Yeah. I couldn't forget that. No dame had ever eaten sugar-coated peanuts without offering me any.

But that was yesterday and today is … I reached under the covers and pulled out my calendar. I keep it there because I like to sleep with dates. It was Saturday. An early November Saturday. And it was chilly. The landlord never gave me heat except when I was late paying rent, which was not more than once a month. I thought about staying in bed and keeping warm under the covers, but I knew that the early worm catches birds, and this worm needed some clients fast. I had a slight hunch, very slight, that today might be my lucky day and that a well-heeled client would show. And I knew that as long as there are shoemakers in this town, there'll always be a well-heeled client walking the streets.

I pulled off the covers and my Dr. Dentons and stumbled to the bathroom. I thought hard and long about brushing my teeth but thought better of it. Too much brushing would take the enamel off those bright lights. I showered quickly, lathered my face, and shaved off three days of stubble, along with some skin. Then I carefully chose the underwear, socks, suit, shirt and tie that I had been wearing since Tuesday. Looking into the mirror, I told myself that I could do worse.

I decided to fix breakfast today. Usually I eat on the run, but too many food and coffee stains on my clothes and endless cases of acute indigestion had told me something, although I can't recall exactly what. In any case, I made myself of pot of java and gulped most of it down along with a peanut butter and salami sandwich like the ones my mom used to give me as a special treat. I left the dirty plate for later, figuring that the roaches needed to eat too. Careful not to step in the puddles, I picked up my coat and fedora from the floor and left my small but cozy abode.

The rain had stopped and the sun had begun to wink at the city. Maybe today is the day, I thought, and Lady Luck's big blue ones might fix on me. Yeah, I even began to whistle as I walked to my office. I was half way there when I felt something strange. Hell! I had forgotten to put on my shoes. I thought of going back for them but realized that I had lost one shoe in last night's downpour and the other was still drying in my oven. So I pressed on, remembering that I had an old pair of sneakers in my office that went with everything.

I reached my office building, said good morning to Joe the elevator man, and walked up the eight stories to my place of business. I glanced at the sign painted on my door: “d**k DeWitt, Privates Investigator.” I had long ago demanded that the landord get rid of the extra letter, but the scuzzbag hadn't. Each time I saw the sign I recalled how mad Mom had been when I legally changed my name, which had seemed too long and ungainly. After all, who would want to hire a tec named “Richard DeWitt”? Come to think of it, who'd want to hire me at all, I pondered as I opened the door, switched on the light, and prepared for another day of being closer to the grave. This sort of gloominess sometimes stuck in my craw the way this morning's peanut butter and salami sandwich was doing.

The office was a mess. Dotty's fingernail bits were all over the place, and her b*a was hanging from the old Remington on which she could type a nifty ten or twelve words a minute. As typists go that ain't much, but Dotty was a good girl and plenty loyal. She had had an offer to work in her cousin Elmer's glue factory but had turned it down to stay with me. “I've been with you almost three years, Mr. DeWitt,” she had said, “and another three or so won't hurt, although I do wish you'd pay me more than a few times a year.” Pay her? Huh! With business the way it was during these hard times, I was lucky I could pay myself occasionally. And with that dark thought in mind I sat down behind my battered secretary—the desk, that is, not Dotty—remembering just in the nick of time that I needed a chair.

10:45. No calls, no clients. I kept reading the newspaper I had swiped from the office across the way. “President says the worst is over and that good times lie ahead.” Sure, sure. “Unemployment still high.” “Society matron breaks leg tripping over bum in gutter.” I turned to the racing section and noticed that the horse I had been thinking of betting on came in at 30 to 1 odds. It's a dog's world, I thought, and promised myself that I'd switch to greyhounds the next time I had a shekel or two.

Suddenly I heard a tapping at the door. I knew it wasn't a raven. A raven's tap is lighter because its claws are turned slightly inward during the fall and winter seasons. Reaching into the file drawer for my trusty .38, I told whoever it was to come in.

He was slightly under average height, maybe five-four or so, and slightly above average weight, maybe 210. There was nothing unusual about his face either, save for the monocle he wore in each eye. Nor about his garb: brown slacks, blue blazer, orange tie, Philadelphia Phillies baseball cap.

I pointed to the chair that faced me across the desk and told him to sit down and take a load off his toes, all ten of them.

He seemed nervous, maybe because he couldn't remove the load from his toes or maybe because there were more than ten of them. “Sir,” he squeaked, “I need help bad, and I hear that while you're not the best gumshoe in the city—far from it, they tell me—you're probably the cheapest.” He looked at me pleadingly through his monocles. They were wet, either from his tears or from the water that had begun to drip from the ceiling as a result of yesterday's rain.

A natty dresser who also wears monocles must have a lot of dough, I figured. Whatever his problem, I couldn't afford to lose this Beau Brummell.

“Well you've come to the right place, Mr…er…”

“Baker,” replied the monocles.

“And what do you do, if I may ask, Mr. Baker?”

“I bake.”

My instincts, as usual, were right on the money. He does have a lot of dough.

I knew I had to grill him hard if I wanted to get the case. “Can you be more specific? What exactly do you bake? Bread? Cupcakes? Sacher tortes? Blackbirds in a pie?”

“A little of this and a little of that. But it's not about my work that I've come to see you. It's about my girl Mona. I think that there's something going on.”

You can always cherchez the femme, I thought, and also look for her.

“Mr. Baker, what exactly do you think is going on?” I eyed the poor chump and could tell that he would have difficulty giving me the low-down, unless he removed the monocle that had slipped into his mouth.

“I think Mona Tuvachevsky-Smith—that's her name—has been kidn*pped and is being held for ransom,” he sputtered.

I looked across the desk straight into his monocle. The one that still seemed glued to his eye. “What makes you think that she's been kidn*pped, Mr. Baker? Have you received a ransom note?”

“No, but I did receive a call last evening. No one spoke. Only there was a lot of heavy breathing.”

“Hold on,” I told him. “That's not proof of any foul play. Maybe Ma Bell gave you a bad connection or maybe the caller was only trying to stop his hiccups.” But deep down in my brain I knew Baker was right: foul play had taken place, and the damsel was in distress.

“I'll tell you what I'm gonna do. I'm really tied up with plenty of work these days, but you seem like such a nice guy, I'm going to take the case and find little Mona for you.”

The poor man turned ashen. “There's something you ought to know, Mr. DimWitt. Mona's not so little. She's six-five in her stocking feet.”

I didn't like that and I told him so. First of all, the little twerp had got my name wrong. And second, who's he kidding? What kind of dame that size can't take care of herself?

“I'm sorry, Mr. DeWitt, but she can't fend for herself. You see, she's so tall that she gets dizzy every time she looks down, which is pretty much all the time.”

“Well, she's sort of a horse of a different color then,” I said as I tried to soothe his ruffian feathers. “Any leads for me to go by? Any enemies? Maybe someone who'd like to cut her down to size? Do you think some basketball team wanted her? How about the Harlem Globetrotters? Did she have a tan? Or maybe the House of David. Did she have a beard?”

The poor bastard just shook his head. “No, she's a fair-skinned blonde. She did used to have a beard, but it kept scratching my monocles when she stooped to kiss me and so she shaved it off about a month ago without my having to ask. Oh, she was special, my poor lost Mona.”

“Okay, okay. I get the picture. What about work or places she liked to frequent?”

“She used to work as a bouncer at Happy Hooligan's over on 10th and Boozer Boulevard but had to quit and lay low after some guy hit on her and she stuck a martini, glass and all, up his … well, you know.” His brows began to furrow and I could see that the monocle was causing some blood to flow. “She did go to the museum a lot, especially after she lost her job. I know that she adored the moderns. She said that seeing their paintings made her feel ten feet tall, although why she needed to feel taller than she is I don't know.”

I looked up from the pad on which I had been furiously doodling as he spoke. “I'll check this out,” I promised. “Anything else you can think of?”

He scratched his head vigorously, and I ducked as the dandruff flew my way. “Well, as of late she has been going to a certain Chinese restaurant, the Jaded Pavilion over on Shadow Lane. But whenever I asked if we could go there together, she'd give some excuse, like she'd been there just a few days ago or that she heard it was closed by order of the Board of Health.” He paused. “Does that sound a little suspicious to you, Mr. DeWitt?”

“Not in the least,” I lied to reassure him. I hadn't had c***k food in a cat's age, and that was as good a reason as any—better, in fact—to follow up on the lead. “Mr. Baker, I'm your man. Now as for my fees and expenses…”

He cut me off faster than my ex-wife had when I tried to explain the traces of lipstick on my trousers. “Please, sir,” he began to sob, “I'm not a wealthy man, although I make a living, but—and I'll tell you this if you can keep a secret—I'm due to come into a lot of moolah as soon as they read the will that my dear departed Uncle Ebeneezer Baker left when he died a few days ago in Perth, Australia. He made his money in sheep rustling and swindling aborigines out of their seashells.” He paused. “And you can be sure, Mr. DeWitt, that you'll share in my good fortune once you find little Mona.”

“I know that your word is as good as the next man's, Mr. Baker, and I'm sure you'll do the right thing.” We shook hands on our gentlemen's agreement and exchanged good-byes.

Had I made a mistake, I wondered, by not demanding some money right then and there or at least getting him to sign a chit? Maybe. But beggars can't be choosy, and this worm had his bird in hand. Besides, I had quietly picked up the monocle that had fallen to the floor and was holding it as collateral.