The rains had stopped, and the people who still owned houses were foreclosed by fire and arson.I exaggerate, as everyone who knows me is aware.I was going to teach EngLit. Now I'm a private eye, and I look for rich guy's kids. No exaggeration. Straight dope. My name is Mark Justinian, and I have two partners, Joey Catalina and Bobby Kikero. We work out of South Park. There's good money in finding rich people's kids. There's a lot better money in kidnapping them in the first place. We run down the kidnappers, rescue kids, and get paid like 1/40th of the ransom demand. Agrippina, my squeeze, bitches I should go bad, and make some long green. I swore to my grandfather in the nursing home - the dive where they pushed all those Boomers who had lost their stash back in 2008 - that I'd stay legal. Boomers mess up everything.
Port Huron is on the border with Canada. So when things got tight for the rich guys and their offspring that screwed up the banks and the rest of the economy, they wanted to run for it. They didn't want to go south, to Mexico, because it was too hot. No one wanted hot. No tans. No UV rays. White, white skin was the emerald of the rich folks desire: go to Canada where it is still sunny and 70 by Hudson's Bay. But even if you're rich, there are only so many visas. So the rich guys and their families parked it here - like a clutch of snakes - until they could go north. That's why it's good harvest for kidnappers. I'm good. We're good. We worked for the kids of the Merril Lynch guys, and the Lehmann Brothers mob. They say the sins of the fathers aren't visited on their sons, but you couldn't tell from their haunted eyes. Ask the CitiGroup Gang. Baby John Thain III did not see many years. Sometimes the kids don't make it. Everything goes hurrycane katrina, and death stalks the border. I wish I hadn't promised that old man nothing. It's a living, and I have to pretend that I make a difference. The clock on the Clarence Thomas Federal Bank building said 1300 hours.
All the banks were government, and I'd owe them tax for checking the time. Exaggerating. A little. They sucked us all drier than the wind.
This is my place, the Domus Aurea; Gold House.
I get to have a house, since the time travellers say it's cursed - or, they say it will be cursed: it'll come to a bad end. But they're not clear when.
And anyway, it coulda already "come to a bad end"; it could be the past they seeing. It could be Nero's house, or Domitian's. It coulda been a catacomb...in the past.
I spend my time off the job in my garden, tending my collection of succulents, or cacti. Agrippina says I spend too much time loving those plants:
Agrippina has something to say about everything. She doesn't understand why they're called succulents. She says you can't suck them. Me, I don't say nothing. I like the desert. I like desert plants. They're survivors. Today I was taking the sun, as we say. I drove to the Temple of Fortune and parked in a handicapped spot, flipped the official a Jackson - not worth much these days - and walked on.
As I was walking by the Club of 36 Parrots,Dicky Tiberius, the 2nd in command to Georgie Caligula ("little boots"), grabbed my lapel and pulled me through an architrave. "I've been waiting for you," he said. That's too bad. Dicky's waiting for you; Death in all his dreaful panoply is waiting for you; take your pick. I waited for Dicky to spill his guts...not mine.
Then he got all quiet and relaxed. He stamped that sneer on his puss that passed for feel-good, but only made kids run to the other side of the street when they saw him coming. "We need a job done" he grinned, looking like a chubby death's head, bald and evilly sensuous. We walked back outside, and walked past the Jewish section of town. Nowadays, it was Gittel's Hardware Store & Deli.
We went to Dickey's favorite: Mr. Yum Yum. Yum Yum used to be a sushi shop of pisces incocti called Edo Edo. So, Yum Yum...Edo Edo is Mangia Mangia. Agrippina says the old name meant "I eat (old) Tokyo." Agrippina does crosswords; she knows the sensual power of words. There was Yum Yum's.
What passed for a maitre d' steered us to a little out of the way booth, and he did it with an alacrity that bordered on panic, like when you see a cockroach. We squeezed into the booth, and Dickey exhaled.
Dickey Tiberius' breath smelled of blood. He always had a scent of the slaughterhouse. He tried to fancy it up by calling it the scent of the abbatoir, but...and here is where it gets scarey and poeticky together...his tongue still looked like a sausage falling from a wound.
We got some nosh and zu trinken, and I tried not to gag too much. A certain amount of gagging, though, is manners. If the food was too good, if the meat was tender, if the milk was fresh...or if the booze was full strength, you might get shot over lunch. The heat does strange things.
So Dickey says there's been a kidnap. Another Dick, too, only this one spells it "Dickie". Dickey Tiberius spells this with a twist of a pantomime limp wrist, and a sneer he wipes with that blood sausage tongue. "Dickie Fuld IV is gone." The great-grandkid of Dick Fuld who cooked Banu Lehmann - the Lehmann Brothers. A good pay day. Before I left, I asked what Georgie Caligula was up to these days. "Still livin' in Texas?", I asked. Blood sausage quivers. "Yeah." Then he laughs to himself. "He's organizing his museum. He's - get this - trying to organize his own holocaust." I shook my head. "I don't get it." Dickey laughed to himself alone. "His own hollycaust.Hee-hee-hee." He looked at me vaudeville like, "Yah got any pix of dead people? He could use 'em. Hee-hee." He told me that Georgie Caligula had purchased what he had been assured was Albert Anastasia's barbershop chair. "Hee-hee-heee..." They had both gone insane a long time ago. They were like MacBeth and Wife - only they didn't live together anymore.
I went home and grabbed the anti-bacterial soap from the utility room, and jumped in the shower. >>>>> to be continued <<<<<
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