"So will you help me or not?" Everything about the woman seated across my desk from me irritated me, almost mandating that I reply, "No, sorry, I don’t think I can. You’ll have to beat your surly attitude about some other sucker’s head." Of course, I just couldn’t do that, no matter how much the provocation. It’s always been a source of wonder to me how some people comport themselves in absolutely the worst way they can to achieve an end they desire. I mean, after all, as my sainted mother used to regularly intone when I was being as stubborn and recalcitrant as I could be as a child -- and that was pretty damned mulish, if I may say so -- "You can’t draw flies with vinegar, Sheila, only with honey." Now, why anybody in his or her right mind actually cared to draw flies was beside the point; I knew what she meant even when I seldom followed her advice, preferring to plant my foot upside the head of the neighborhood bully rather than simper and bat my stubby lashes at the little -- yech! My visitor had stomped into my office about fifteen minutes ago, sans an appointment, walking briskly right over the top of my long-suffering Sergeant-at-Arms Barbara Fox when she tried to slow this one-woman parade down. Without so much as a glance at her, she marched up to my desk where I was deep into a new treatise on criminal investigation, catching me in a hoot of derision over a description of the best way to examine a room that was possibly booby-trapped. I had just voiced the opinion to the back of Barbara’s carrot top that "The best way to examine a room that is possibly booby-trapped is to damned well peer carefully in the window before calling the long, well-armored arm of the law. Anybody literally entering such a room thoroughly deserves getting blown to smithereens." And she said -- the "she" being Mrs. Pearl S. Clymer from, so help me, Smackover, Arkansas -- she said, "Young woman, I want you to find my son, and I want it done right now. If you’ll just put down your novel and pay attention to me, we can get this settled quickly, without a lot of fuss. I haven’t any time to waste with answering any fool questions, so just sit there quietly and listen to me, and you’ll see what I mean. My name is --" "Hold it just a minute right there, madam," I said, but not loudly enough to earn the harridan’s attention. "-- Mrs. Earl P. Clymer, Pearl, and my son’s name is Harold, named after my father. He has been kidnapped by the Whore of Babylon, is totally besotted with the harlot, and you must locate him, wrest him from her foul clutches, and return him to me at once. You will have to drop anything else and tend to this immediately. I’m not a wealthy woman, but I’ll pay any reasonable expenses you might incur so long as they’re fully itemized and explained." These statements were blared right over the top of my attempt at halting her flow of words, and she didn’t pause for breath until she was done. In the meantime she’d planted her skinny butt smartly in the leather chair she correctly assumed was for clients, her unblinking bulgy yellowish eyes never leaving my own startled blue ones protruding above my dropped jaw. And before I could try one more time to control the situation in my own office, she was running off at the mouth again. However, this time I didn’t listen. This time I simply placed a bookmark between the pages of my novel, snapped it smartly closed, rose to my feet and walked out of the office, presenting a cross-eyed-tonguetip-out grimace to Barbara as I passed. From behind me I heard as I entered the elevator and pushed the button to soar to my loft, "Well, I never! How rude!" from Mrs. Earl P. Clymer. Exerting considerable self-control, I resisted the urge to holler back my own definition of rudeness. With any luck, the woman would decide my services were not precisely those for which she searched, and leave my office forthwith before I descended again with small guard Chihuahua on the end of a leash for his morning pitstop. Luck was not with me. You can’t see directly into my office proper from the little wrought iron cage of the elevator, and I made no attempt to detour to where I actually could see whether or not the woman was still on the premises before I headed straight for the front door with Fuzz straining his six-pound frame mightily against the leash, his highness as usual ready for a trip to the gravel area he calls his own beside my old building at 2251 Nelson, near-downtown Denver. I thought I was making a clean getaway, but no such thing. "See here now, Mrs. Casey!" bugled a strident voice behind me, causing me to flinch but not to turn. I just kept going, pulled the door shut behind me, turned to my left, and hotfooted it around the edge of the building where I hoped to simply vanish from view should she go so far as to follow me. She did not, thank the powers that be, and Fuzz and I wandered around for nearly ten minutes in the lot which to me is small and to Fuzz much of the known outside world. Surely that would be long enough for Mrs. Earl P. -- Pearl, no less -- to give it up as a bad job. I mean, the coffers are in pretty good shape these days, and I can afford to pick and choose my clients with a little more care to retaining my equanimity to say nothing of sanity than was once the case. And under those circumstances I should have any further contact with Mrs. Earl P. Clymer? Not bloody likely. Nossir. Hah. Once Fuzz had sniffed each newly-risen weed and blade of grass to his heart’s content and left behind various markings to warn any local canines that this was his territory, and woe to any four-footed beastie who even thought about trespassing on his territory, we returned to the office. I’d nearly succeeded by then in forgetting about Mrs. Earl P. Clymer. Hah, again. Planted stiffly on the bench just inside my building’s heavy old front door, rigid as a post, sat Mrs. Earl P. Clymer, flushed of face, every tendon in her scrawny neck distended, her bony hands worrying the spine of a worn, obviously well-used old leather King James’ Bible, her chin thrust in my direction below the angry eyes -- they really are yellow, I thought in amazement. But this time, the trap of a mouth was shut, no screechy voice spewing venom all over me from its thin-lipped crevasse. However, there was something in her very rigidity that, to my self-disgust, touched a resonant chord somewhere inside me. She was working so hard with this tough manner and her harsh demeanor to disguise her pain, her real anguish, I suddenly realized I had to at least listen to her -- assuming, of course, she could possibly manage to tell me what the precise problem was without resorting to demands and orders, and also that she would find it possible to allow me to ask all the fool questions I damned well pleased. I assure you, I would make sure to have more than a few fool questions. So on that note, I sighed, hoisted Fuzz to ride on my hip by slipping a palm under his hot belly, walked past her to my office door, motioned Mrs. Earl P. Clymer to follow me, and tried to enter. I couldn’t budge the door, locked as it was. And, I might add, Barbara Fox took her own sweet time getting to her feet and unlocking it. When she did so, ignoring the grim and now somewhat subdued woman looming behind me, she said in her crisp and boy-am-I-ever-irritated voice, "Is she coming back in here, or do I have to put her out of your office again?" Hard put not to laugh aloud, I said merely, "She’s coming back in, Barbara. Thank you." Barbara looked totally unconvinced, but she stepped aside and allowed us both to come in, pointedly ignoring the presence of anybody other than myself. Fuzz kept a wary eye on Mrs. Earl P. Clymer, bless him. I handed him to Barbara as I passed, nodding to the hall in an unspoken request that she return Fuzz to the living quarters on the second floor. I only said one word aloud, "Tea." At that Barbara transferred her glare to me, but set about doing as I demanded, huffing and sighing at the awfulness of it all. Making no effort to hurry it along, I returned to my chair behind the desk, watched Mrs. Earl P. Clymer occupy the client’s chair again, folded my hands in my lap, and just looked expectantly at her, waiting to hear what she’d begin with this time. "Could I start again?" she asked, much quieter, almost nicely. "Please do, Mrs. Clymer. I’m not saying whether or not I can or will help you, but I will at least listen to you." After a moment’s pause, reluctantly, "Thank you." And she told me the story of the Whore of Babylon, the living, breathing harlot described luridly in Revelations so far as she was concerned, and her darling baby boy, one Harold Clymer, a forty-four-year-old -- some baby boy, our Harold -- who’d never been off the farm until he fell under the sway of Millicent Swopes, librarian and practicing demon, witch, pervert and kidnapper of the innocent and helpless. By the time Barbara grudgingly returned with tea and a niggardly plate of shortbread to go with it, I’d heard in all its unsavory details the story of the worldly Millicent who hailed from that den of inequity known as Aspen who swooped -- Swopes swooped; I like that -- down on Pearl’s unsuspecting child, divested him of all his worldly wits, making him forget mother, father, mother, home, mother, God, mother, his responsibilities, and most of all, mother. Now, let me say, the passing thought tickled my mind that if I’d had to put up with this self-righteous, abrasive, bossy woman for a single year much less forty-plus of them -- well, I’d have run like a gazelle, too. Still, my mental ears did come slightly erect when Pearl Clymer told me that Harold -- known as Hal only to the whore Millicent -- was his father’s sole heir, one day to inherit at the minimum a cool two-million bucks, barring he didn’t end up disowned by said pillar of respectability. "How is Mr. Clymer’s health?" She looked at me with an expression saying clearly, "None of your business," so I hastened to explain my nosy question. "I mean, is there any reason to hurry particularly regarding this? Is Mr. Clymer very ill, for instance, which would make the search much more urgent?" "It is already urgent, young woman! I mean, who knows what’s happening to his immortal soul, living in sin as he is with that harlot!" Her voice was rising with each succeeding word, taking on all the melodiousness charm of an untended whistling tea kettle under full steam. "Mrs. Clymer, calm down --" I began. "I will not calm down, young --" "Hold it! Be quiet, woman!" "How dare you," she began, only to slam her jaws together with an audible click of loose dentures when she saw me rise to my feet once again, more than ready to walk out of my own office yet one more time. Barbara had disappeared after bringing us the tea, so I didn’t have her to guard the valuables from this hysteric, the only reason I even hesitated following up on my threat to walk out. It wasn’t necessary, however, for Mrs. Clymer had indeed shut her mouth, so I sat back down to reason with her. "What I’m saying to you, Mrs. Clymer, is that your ranting and raving is in no way helpful. Just answer me simply without all the hyperbole. Is your husband in good health?" "As far as I know, last time I saw him." Now that answer was more -- or less -- than I expected. "Has he wandered off, too?" That was an unfortunate choice of phrase, but I couldn’t resist it; the expression on Mrs. Clymer’s face telegraphed that she got the insult, but was for now going to let it pass. I’d probably find her dentures in the back of my neck later on, I was sure. "He has gone into the snakepit to look for his only son, and I haven’t heard from him in nearly two weeks." "By ‘snakepit’ you mean -- "Las Vegas," she answered with a visible shudder. As Alice said, "It gets curiouser and curiouser." "I’m getting confused, Mrs. Clymer," I said, trying not to whine. "How did Las Vegas get into the picture? I understood the Swopes woman was from Aspen, not Las Vegas." "She lives in Aspen," she grated with ill-concealed disdain for my lack of wit to read between her lines, "but that’s not where they went. Harold said she was going to show him the ‘high life,’ is the way he put it, and the harlot was going to go to take him -- I think he put it -- ‘to places he couldn’t imagine.’ From Las Vegas they were going to Hollywood, then ‘Frisco, and then back to live together in sin in Aspen. He’s doomed for all eternity, doomed to burn in the fiery furnace for all time, the devil’s toy, if we don’t rescue him immediately!" She looked so wretched, I worked hard at not being disgusted with her. Sounded to me like old Harold had fallen into a pit of ambrosia and was probably having the first fling of his sorry life. Try as I did to feel otherwise, I could honestly only wish him well. However, that attitude was neither here nor there. Like I said in the beginning, I really wanted to tell her no, I couldn’t take her case. But for some reason or another, I ended up telling her I’d check on a few things, think about it, and call her the next day if she’d tell me where she was staying. To my surprise, she told me she had taken rooms in one of the pricier of our downtown hotels, and offered to write a retainer on the spot. I repeated I hadn’t agreed yet, and though obviously disgruntled by that, she said she’d wait for my call. But still she didn’t just go. She elaborated a bit more after some prying and poking on my part, answering reluctantly a few of my fool questions about Earl and Harold and their normal relationship to one another, and to her. She didn’t like answering me, but she did it, nonetheless. And still she stayed. It was obvious she wanted to hang around to get me to commit myself before she left, but I remained firm, assuring her I would let her know right away. After a short period of dawdling and dithering, she finally understood that she couldn’t steamroller me into a snap decision, sighed theatrically, clutched her bible and dowdy coat, and without a word of farewell, at long, happy last left my office. I ended up taking her on as a client, but the whole shebang developed into just one miserable mess after another and bodies lying about everywhere I turned. |