Chapter 1

As much as Fuzz enjoyed being with me, going for a ride, nosing into things, he got really suspicious whenever he found me filling my two big pump-action vacuum carafes with coffee. To his experienced and jaundiced eye, that meant nothing like hot-diggety-damn, a picnic, it meant the always-dreaded stakeout -- the most boring occupation ever devised by Old Nick himself.

Picture if you will the sheer exhilaration in spending about a year or three counting the tiny holes in a square acre of acoustical ceiling tiles, one block at a miserable time; multiple that by forty, and you have the faintest glimmering of the untrammeled joy I displayed dragging around the kitchen in my loft, gathering bags and packages of anything to stuff in my mouth that was noisy on this otherwise beautiful late fall Denver evening.

You see, merely staying conscious is the first problem facing the would-be snoop. Reading is a no-no; you just might get so caught up in the juicy part that the bad-guy -- or -gal, as in this case -- could execute an authentic can-can on the hood of your car, you wouldn't miss so much as a comma.

Playing a little Shostakovich at the proper volume for old Dimitri is another option not to be considered. Most people tend to get a mite testy at midnight or so when crashing cymbals or rolling kettledrums assault their wax-laden ears. It's hard to be an unobtrusive little bump on the street with some harridan shrieking unmentionable and scarcely possible suggestions at you from the third floor front.

Ergo, lots of strong black coffee, things that snap, crackle and pop when you bite into them, and last but not least, insufficient clothing to keep warm enough. Warm enough is too warm; you're comfortable, and sleep tiptoes up behind you and knocks you flat. Under this scenario, she/he/it just waltzes right by your steamed-over windows and, like Dorothy Parker once said she spent her life, "Inseparable my nose and thumb." Bye-bye, dummy -- missed me again!"

Let me assure you, it's damned hard to explain to a client just how the Rhode Island Red flew from the coop when your car was plastered all over the only exit from the coop and you didn't see or hear diddley -- most difficult, indeed.

Fuzz had disappeared by the time I had my junk in one canvas carry-all, and since he had already been taken for his late walk among the weeds and gravel of my minuscule parking lot, I just trudged off down the back stairs to the garage and my AMX Piranha for the third night in as many nights, watching bleary-eyed for the appearance of Blondie and Her Bag of Tricks.

After extricating my beloved little bomb from its nest, I headed out on Colfax Avenue, my final destination a relatively new apartment complex in Aurora, many blocks to the east.

Blondie was a pip, she was. Her boss and my client, Herb Scott, was an electronics wizard who epitomized the absent-minded professor nomenclature perfectly. He had innovations and outright electronic miracles just falling all over themselves to burst forth full-blown from his seething brain, but he was generally incredibly lucky to find his way home without a collar and lead attached to some helpful friend.

Enter Angela Dixon, twenty-two years of age, five-foot-one, ninety-eight pounds soaking wet, at least four of those pounds on each side of her upper ribcage, a bushel of fluffy blond hair wafting around her green-eyed, cleft-chinned, pearly-toothed -- well, you do get the picture, don't you? Someone to be studiously avoided by my gender, my girth, my age, and my ego.

Add to that, behind those same long-lashed eyeballs is a brain no one should be ashamed possessing. One smart cookie, is our Angela, and no self-respecting alley cat would be caught dead in the vicinity of such a conniving woman as she.. Now, poor old Herb -- old in years, an infant when it comes to women -- pushed his bulging eyes back into their sockets, picked his tongue off the desk, threw it over his shoulder, and simply beamed the day she flounced into his office. She smiled at him, breathed deeply, riveting his full attention, and announced she was there to fill the position he had advertised for general factotum, errand-runner, appointment-reminder, where-is-it finder, clutter-straightener, and whatever else he deemed necessary which would allow him to maintain full attention on the important things, such as making lots of money.

Before Herb could so much as utter a single question or simple remark, such as, "Golly, gee," she had whipped out a teensy notebook from her teensy purse, clicked down the point of a teensy gold ballpoint, hoisted her perfectly penciled eyebrows prettily upward, perched her teensy buns daintily on the edge of a chair, and chirped, "What do you want me to do first, boss?"

At that point could Herb have suddenly become Mr. Hyde and throttled Angel -- as she was called, obviously -- his life would have been cluttered and messy, but a hell of a lot safer and wealthier. But being the ignoramus he was about the "gentler sex," he hemmed and hawed, and finally told her what he wanted her to do first.

He never had to tell her another thing; she saw to his correspondence, made sure his clients paid him in full and on time, and with surprising rapidity wormed her way into his life to the extent of seeing to his cleaning, picking out his wardrobe, making appointments for him to have a manicure, his hair styled, visits to a masseur, and so on. And at the same time she robbed his files and him blind.

Herb had 'way too many things going all at the same time. He was forever getting some new gadget -- and in later years, some new dandy bit of software every computer-addict simply had to have -- almost to the point of patent or sale, and "misplacing" it somewhere. He always lost interest as soon as he knew how it was going to come out and would put it aside as some brand new fascinating puzzle attracted him, demanding to be solved immediately.

Angel always reminded him of trivial details that needed attending to, so he never seemed to remember these little hidden gems by himself; the ones with suspected true worth were oddly enough never mentioned again by her.

Even though Herb seldom bothered to read the newspapers, he did find time now and again to glance through the trade journals. Once in a while he was mildly startled to read of some new gizmo appearing on the scene in his field which reminded him vaguely of something he too had worked on, but until the fourth or fifth instance, he didn't think much about it. The additional fact that it always seemed to be the same fellow who was coming out with these "new and revolutionary" inventions simply escaped him.

For a while, that is.

Herb had been absolutely buried in the complexities of a truly -- according to him -- remarkable computer program he knew would turn the industry on its ear. Now, you can't prove it by me, you realize, for other than being able to find my way in general around my IBM, and having followed carefully a few magazine articles to enter something useful in complexities, I know virtually nothing about programming. What's more, I already know all I care to know about it, too. So there.

Anyway, this was to be Herb's finest creation so far, and he one fine morning had an unreasoning urge to not answer any more of Angel's pretty little questions, such as, "How is it coming, bossman?" or "Found that glitch you were talking about yet?" or anything at all.

That's where I came in, after some pawing around in the phone book to see if he could find anybody willing to spy on the probably totally innocent girl. He did and I most certainly was, Stanley.

The apartment complex was where the very talented young male inventor, whom nobody had ever heard of before his sudden rush to prominence, lived. And guess what? Our beautiful, cunning, and adorable Angel lived just three blocks away.

When casually asked by Herb, she professed, of course, never to have heard of one Jeffrey Mathers, the new wunderkind of the electronics world.

By the time I had rehashed the whole sorry mess in my mind, it was nine o'clock, getting right chilly, and I was backing my car into a happily convenient empty space two doors down and across the street, at the same time praying fervently that Angela would pick tonight to visit this man she never met.

You see, Herb had laid a trap -- albeit reluctantly, still not really believing that such a sweet little button could be clawing into his head and his pocketbook like he knew she was. But I chided and pushed and cajoled him until I got him to devise a needlessly elaborate plan to prove it once and for all. It was all that elaborate because that's what intrigued him -- the sheer machinations of getting something so convoluted to work.

Well into my second cup of coffee and down to the bottom of my first bag of chips, a small red Miata purred down the street, taking an idiotically long time to parallel park in front of the apartment building. Herb had told me the only thing she couldn't do with nonchalance apparently was to park a car; and watching this bucking and winging she was engaged in, I believed him.

Blondie -- ahah! -- bobbed up from behind the open driver's door, dipped gracefully to remove something from behind the seat and, after snapping down the button to lock her little car from predators -- a subject on which she was fully conversant -- she and her briefcase tripped trippingly over the curb straight up to and through the door to the building!

How about that? No waiting for someone to open the door for her! Do you suppose she has her own teensy key to a place she's never been? Interesting, what?

Now me, on the other hand -- I had to hotfoot it across the street and ring the super's bell. This had been arranged in advance, accompanied by a couple of rather large bills and a promise that no one would ever know how I got in, assuming the near-impossibility that entrance became of especial interest to anyone.

I was practically hopping up and down by the time the door buzzed me in, and I fairly flew -- but quietly -- up the uncarpeted stairs to the third floor where one Mr. Jeffrey Mathers dwelled and worked his magic-wand legerdemain.

Back on the street my car was locked against intruders as well. My grubby carry-all, my handbag, my snacks were still there. Two items I had left home with were not, however, those being one small black box with a two-inch antenna and red plastic button, and a larger black device with lens, flashgun and chrome button.

When I placed my shell-like ear to the door of Apartment 3-B, this being someplace our friend Jeffrey would no doubt soon shake off like an outgrown cocoon, I was delighted to hear one perfectly-timed sentence: "What is this green balloon-like thing?"

"It is a balloon, stupid, and it's just for you, you prick," I muttered with deep satisfaction as my meaty thumb crunched down on the red button. There was a faint pop, a moment's deafening silence, and then roars of male rage and screams of female outrage showered over me like manna from heaven. I smiled with true inventor's glee at a job well done while I pounded with all my might on the door, shouting "Open up in there! Open this door immediately!" You'll note, at no time did I give them any reason why they should do what I told them to, I just counted on their present shocked condition and my awful racket to drive them to comply without first thinking it over.

And, lo, the door opened. Confronting the lens of my camera, equipped with a battery-operated rapid advance and kerchunking away as fast as it would go, was the bright mint green front half of a little creature I believed to be Angela Dixon, thief of much talent, and in the background another virulent green front half of some well-built young stud with clenched fists whom I took to be Jeffrey Mathers. Both personages were slack-jawed with shock as well vividly decorated.

In fact, as we all stood there frozen, excluding for my trigger finger mashing the button, I noted a fairly large portion of the room was decorated in various intensities of green. Powdered water-soluble paint tends to make a mess when encased in a small inflated rubber balloon along with even a minute explosive device to rupture it.

That Herb could put anything together, given enough of an incentive and an always-suspicious broad to prod him.

The camera finally clicked its last, I thanked them both warmly for the entertainment, told Angela it would go easier on her if she took herself right down to the police station, paint job and all, and I left, savoring their open mouths and streaming eyes -- couldn't have happened to a nicer pair of nogoodniks.

Well, now that I think on it, sometimes stakeouts can be rather enjoyable at that.

I made two phone calls the minute I got home, no matter how late it was. The first was to Herb, telling him it was over. He was both happy and sad, and I understood both sentiments.

The second call was to my old friend Sergeant Whitey Morales of the Denver Police, filling him in on the names, places and crimes of these two little green people, and suggesting that since Herb was more than willing to press charges -- well, at least where Jeffrey was concerned -- he should pick up the two of them before they hit for the hills.