FRIDAY, APRIL 16, 2010

The little man bent closer to the table; so close that his nose was almost touching it. The light was dim, but even if it had been blasting down on him like the newly installed banks of lights in Wrigley Field (actually installed in 1988), Lil' Abner wouldn't have been able to see very well. With his clumsy, stubby fingers he was toiling over some empty capsules that looked like prescription medicine. He had dumped out the original contents and was trying to refill the capsules with an alternate substance.

For the tenth time he dropped one of the capsule halves on the table. "God Damn it!" he growled, and pounded his fist on the table - inadvertently crushing a couple of the empty capsules. This was not the job for Arturus, and he knew it.

Dominic Plato Arturus, aka "Lil' Abner", was a man with a long criminal background. He had pretty much done it all, so long as it was small time - petty theft, stealing cars, picking pockets, breaking and entering, grifting, even one or two armed robberies. He always got caught. When he wasn't in jail, chances were strong that he was doing something to get himself back there ASAP.

Right now he was emptying out the prescription meds that belonged to Irene Charlemagne, and replacing the contents with something which better served the purpose of he and his cohorts. If Lil' Abner could just keep the piles of white powder straight, he would have his victim fixed up good for at least another two weeks. This whole business was probably the most elaborate scheme he had ever been involved in, and he was proud to be doing his part. He felt a sense of accomplishment whenever he imagined her popping some pills, metabolizing the hallucinogens, and flipping off to Bizarro Land on his dime. He only wished he could see it happening.

But that part of the operation wasn't within his jurisdiction. There were several people involved in the plot to send Charlemagne off the deep end - including her supposed partner, Corg, who was the one who routinely filched the medicine bottles from her bungalow, brought them to Arturus, and then replaced them with the doctored substitutes. The goal was to torpedo whatever the mysterious experiment was that these erstwhile gumshoes were trying to perfect. Supposedly, if this experiment succeeded, it would result in it being even harder for guys like Lil' Abner to stay on the sunny side of the prison walls. Corg apparently knew what was going on, but the crazy bastard wasn't telling Abner anything about it. He didn't know why. He had given up trying to find out. He wasn't the brains of this operation (it wasn't really a brains type of operation anyway, he thought). He was just trying to do his part.

"Daisy Mae! You little bitch, did you piss on that door frame again? For Christ's sake, tell me if you need to go out!"

Lil' Abner was yelling at his constant companion Daisy Mae, who was never seen without Arturus at her side, or vice versa. Daisy Mae was a Miniature Schnauzer. The little dog tipped the scales at about eleven pounds, and had a rather wiry salt and pepper coat. Lil' Abner loved his Daisy Mae. Even though he was usually cursing at his companion or trying to chase the animal away from one thing or another. But many days, Daisy was the only one he had to talk to. And he was the only one the mutt had to converse with, as well.

"Listen, Hillbilly, I can piss anywhere I damn well feel like it," the little dog yapped at him. "You never let me out anyway. Has it ever occurred to you maybe I'd like to go out on a date? Maybe get laid? There's a cute dachshund down the street that's built like a brick doghouse! I suppose you haven't noticed."

Lil' Abner shook his head, with resignation. Everybody gave him trouble, even his dog. He tried again to get the powder into the tiny capsules. It was a nice little concoction that included a number of goodies, including what he liked to call "weapons grade" lysergic acid diethylamide (known to Timothy Leary and many others simply as LSD, of course), cut with ground up stink beetle shell, and baby powder.

Trying to keep the whole plan running smoothly required a fair amount of scratch. In order to finance it all, another of the "master criminals" involved, Balthazar Blazeek, had set up some false businesses used mostly to launder the counterfeit bills that the group was printing. Blazeek, or "Bo" as he was known, had opened a chain of fly-by-night dives in various seedy locations. They all had one thing in common: they sold total crap to people who just didn't know any better, and paid out all their change using phony greenbacks. There was Bo's Tuna-Fish Pie Emporium; Bo's Gourmet Ice Cream Bazaar; Bo's Sewer-Rooter Service, and a couple others that Abner couldn't remember the names of. Whenever he saw Blazeek, which wasn't often, he would try to strike up a conversation, but mostly the guy just hollered out a bunch of non-words like "Hoy!" and "Booyrah!", pounded his hairy chest, and galloped out the door. Somebody told him that Bo slept every night in a gorilla suit, winter or summer, didn't matter. If it's not one damn thing it's another, he thought.

Finally Lil' Abner had the correct powder put into the capsules. Carefully he replaced them in the prescription bottle and sat them on a shelf by the door. He never knew exactly when Corg would come by, but at least they were ready for him to pick up. Usually he could smell Corg before he came through the door anyway. What a wretch, he thought. And bug-fuck crazy besides.

"So do you want to go for a walk?" Lil' Abner asked Daisy Mae, who was still standing near the dripping door frame.

"Why don't you stick it in your ass, Cowboy Copas?" was the response. "And why in hell did you name me 'Daisy Mae' in the first place? Can't you even see I ain't female?" barked Daisy Mae, raising his back leg to reveal his pink doggie weiner sticking out of its sheath.

She threw a wadded up fifty at the hyena head and lurched to the first open seat as the bus left the curb. The stench of the city in her nose, the worms on the floor of the dilapidated bus, the catcalls and whistles from the punks in the back - it all backed up on her and began to seep out of the corners of her mouth and eyes.

"Too much cold medicine," she thought. Slowly the scraggly flea-bitten head of the driver morphed back into the traditional human head with thinning gray hair. The worms on the floor wriggled back into their tile patterns. The morons in the back seats, however, remained the same.

Irene had been fighting the same cold for several weeks, and kept adding to the daily intake of decongestants and antihistamines. Long ago she stopped reading the labels and paying attention to the dosages. She would just tip the bottle up, let four or five of the capsules fall and slosh them down with soy milk.

There had been a few nights of sweats and tremors, and more than one occasion when she arrived somewhere in her car, but was unable to remember driving. Her complexion was turning chalky, her fingernails were brittle and yellow and she was developing a bumpy rash on her torso. But at least she had been able to keep working. And with Ed Loftus and the Nevada Project bearing down on her, that was "job one".

As Irene walked the last blocks from the bus stop to her bungalow, she could see the dark green shine of Ed Loftus' sedan in front of her house. "Ah, crap... what else, huh?" she muttered. Ed had a habit of knowing exactly when the worst time to show up was.

As she crossed the lawn, her left Louis V. sunk into a pile of something soft and wet - dog shit. From the Great Dane next door. Great. Fine. "Okay! Okay!" Irene screamed at no one in particular. "I get it!! It's just not my day! Anything else?!?!?"

Before her last syllable faded, Clancy and Fedaro came smoking around the corner in Fedaro's Saab. Slamming the brake and forsaking the clutch, Fedaro brought the ugly blue box to rattletrap stop just inches from Ed's BMW. She saw Loftus jerk her living room curtain aside and could read his lips, but was glad she couldn't hear him.

"This is going to be great," she thought, and sat on the wooden step to remove her once-lovely lime green stiletto. "Hi boys. Your just in time for supper." The bungalow door nearly came off the hinges as Ed Loftus jerked it open and took the sidewalk to his car in four long lunging steps.

"Come on, Ed. It's fine," she called lightly. She needed this meeting to go well, and Ed was sometimes easy to soothe. She hoped there was still some Johnny Walker Green in the cupboard. "Let's go in. I'll fix you a drink," Irene said in her sweetest hostess tones.

Ed stormed past the smirking Fedaro and glared at Irene. "Yeah, you do that," he said through his angry straight line of a mouth. She tiptoed in to the house after him in pantyhose feet, shutting the door on Clancy and Fedaro. She knew they would sit on the porch and smoke a joint before coming in.

"Ed, Ed, you gotta calm down," Irene said. "You know they're just messing with you. Here, let me take your jacket. Loosen up that tie and sit down."

"Irene, don't try to pull this shit on me," Loftus spit out. "You want to hire those two flat-dicks and I'm not going to sign off on that. I've been very clear on that."

Irene brought his highball and handed it to him. "Look, Ed. Can't we discuss this? Sit down, right here," she said, patting the sofa next to her skirt clad legs. "You're upset. What's happened? Tell me what's going on?"

She learned a long time ago that sex is not necessary when coercing men. What most men want, she had discovered by trial and error, is to be adored. For Ed Loftus, that meant soothing with alcohol, a tender voice and a little bit of proximity.

Ed was a happily married man, as happy as any man in this business could be. He would never cheat on Leslie. But being pampered by the exotic and lovely Irene, sitting next to those warm thighs, looking into the deep brown eyes, sipping the JWG, feeling her small warm hand on his bicep... this was too much to withstand.

Slowly and like an unwinding clock, Ed Loftus relaxed and Irene knew she would have all she needed by the time Ed left that night.

She gingerly slid the soiled shoe back onto her elegant foot. There was a smudge near the toe so she buffed that out with her finger. The shoe was still not as elegant as the foot it caressed, but it was better than before.

She continued to think about Corg. She had to begrudgingly admit that she did like him. And it was even harder to admit - she liked him much more since she started sleeping with him. It was a bizarre relationship to say the least. There was, logically, no reason for it. She was a "hottie" and could catch the eye of almost any man she chose to (not to mention the frothing lesbians in the office). She had to work with this guy but facts are facts -- he was a creep and that's the relevant fact here. The bad hygiene, the detached muttering under his breath that sometimes escalated almost to a scream, the constant preoccupation with repetitive actions and motions (that one, by the way, definitely had some positive aspects in certain situations) - all these things indicated that he was almost certainly schizophrenic. Ed Loftus had laid out the symptoms and characteristics for her, and it was spot on. She, on the other hand, was very precise, meticulous, and linear in her thought patterns. Yes, she was like oil, floating on top of his water. But somehow he made her petroleum parts burst into flames, just at the thought . . .

Abruptly she stood up. I've got to get moving, she thought, and get my mind out of this particular gutter - there are things that must be done. She began pacing back and forth in front of the bus stop. Damn it all, she thought, I wish I was driving myself - I wish I was in control. But her car was in the body shop and would probably be there for some time. Her last "job" had resulted in a huge Slurpee machine falling (actually, it had been pushed) from a 3rd story window and landing on the hood of her SUV. It crumpled the hood, wrecked the fenders and basically the entire front end, and smashed out a few windows. Right behind it came the 400 pound Sumo wrestler, so hopped up on "goof balls" he couldn't even tell his diaper was on backwards. He landed on the roof of her vehicle and polished that off pretty much completely. Son of a bitch didn't even have the good grace to stay alive through all this, so she could have some modicum of revenge (for example, by re-diapering the bastard with some barbed wire).

Finally the bus pulled up. The door opened with a "whoosh" and she looked up into the driver's seat of the bus. The bus driver had no legs, and instead of a human head, the noggin of a hyena sat atop his shoulders. "Hop in, Toots!" the driver cackled, his snout glistening. "Irene," she mumbled bitterly to herself, "you should have never given up your old job as a rock and roll meter maid."

She stepped off the curb and right into the big glob of blueberry gum. The way it stuck to her 3 inch heel reminded her of the experiment that had gone so horribly wrong last night. She and Corg disagreed sharply on how to handle the legal aspect. He thought they should just cover it all up, but she wanted to call in Clancy and his team. Clancy would be fast and thorough, but cut deeply into their profit margin.

After picking up the special cheese danish she'd ordered from the fat lady's bakery, she sat down on a bus stop bench to remove the disgusting germ ball from her Louis Vittones. Her cell phone vibrated, pulsating a little too appealingly in her pocket, and looking down she noticed it was Corg. The hiccups started instantly, and her fingers started to itch. "Damn," she breathed, "why can't the little bastard just wait til I get there?!"

Corg was the original lab-rat-geek that all the girls at Quantico bristled over. His thick spectacles and sweaty upper lip upset even the hardiest lesbian cadets. No one knew how old Corg was, and no one wanted to. He wore draggy-ass tan polyester slacks and armpit stained short-sleeved white shirts every day. He drove an 88 Chevy Citation, snot brown and broken to hell. He smelled like feta cheese and sewing machine oil, and his teeth were the shade of hard-boiled egg yolks.

But she liked him.