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Flash Pulp 056 – Mulligan Smith and A Little Luc, Part 2 of 3
Welcome to Flash Pulp, Episode Fifty-Six.
Tonight, we present Mulligan Smith and A Little Luc, Part 2 of 3
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Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.
In this, the second chapter of our current serialization, Private Investigator Mulligan Smith makes unpleasant headway in his search for the French child he last saw being carried away from a public library.
Flash Pulp 056 – Mulligan Smith and A Little Luc, Part 2 of 3
Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May
Mulligan had to tell Billy to wait in the Tercel.
“Why can’t I come in?” the big man asked, his face drooping with puppy-dog disappointment.
“Because the last time I took you out in public, you nearly beat a man to death.”
“Hey – he was a kiddy-fiddler, he deserved it.”
“One: you weren’t sure of that until I made some calls – for all you knew, you could have been pummeling the slower half of a high strung gay couple having trouble with their lippy eight year old. Two: if you had just stopped him, instead of stomping him, we might have been able to actually ask him some questions. Now he’s got a uniform sitting in front of his room, and who knows what he’ll have to say when he wakes up.”
“I’ll stay quiet.”
“No, you’ll stay in the car. Here, you can play hangman on my phone. Maybe your Mom will call back with news from your lawyer.” Mulligan had been attempting to reach the woman for two days, without luck.
Stepping from the car, Smith moved down the cracked stone path of the shabby two floor apartment building. Ignoring the buzzer system, he busied himself with his watch until a gray haired woman pushed through the locked door. By the smell of her passing, Mulligan guessed she was likely heading out for more gin.
Walking by the broken elevator, he entered the building’s stairwell. The short climb required fortitude, and by the mid-point he’d taken to pinching his nostrils against the smell of musky urine.
He was glad when he finally arrived at the flat brown paint of apartment 204’s door.
He gave a police-style knock.
Shuffling noises came from the interior, but after a long five minutes, his summons remained unanswered.
“Timothy Mustard,” he said, although he still thought of Mustard as Mr Slug, a mental tag he’d given him when he’d first encountered the man giving young girls inappropriate glances in a battered Denny’s, “open, or I’ll start pounding doors up and down the hall while singing your biography like a wandering minstrel.”
There was a muffled curse, and Smith heard the rattle of a chain lock being disengaged. The entrance swung wide, and there stood the pot-bellied man in a gray bathrobe.
“I wasn’t ignoring you, I was just having a nap.”
“Fine.”
Mulligan followed Slug through a barren entry area, and into a living room populated only by a card table, three mismatched folding chairs, and a TV atop a plywood side-table. The Scooby-Doo theme drifted from the battered set.
“You’ll excuse me if I get down to business before you’ve had your post-nap coffee, but I think we’ll both feel better when I’m gone.” After inspecting the cleanliness of the nearest chair, the PI sat.
Mustard motioned for him to continue with his left hand, as his right poured the cold dregs of a stained coffee pot into a spotty mug. He set the cup inside his small microwave.
“I’m looking for a guy you knew, Bryce Edwards – he managed to walk on charges from the same picture ring that brought you down,” said Smith.
“Yeah, I knew Bryce. Is he still hanging out with that jerk, Mitchell?”
“Maybe – short guy, kind of heavy?” Mulligan hoped the man didn’t watch the news.
“Yeah. That guy is a jackass.”
“Where can I find Bryce?”
“I don’t know.” As he spoke, Timothy kept his eyes locked on the microwave’s descending timer. “It’s not like we have a secret club house or anything.”
“Remember that I know your parole officer, and we could have a chat.”
Mustard cracked a thin smile.
“Oh yeah? Going to go have a chat with him about what you know regarding two men seen fleeing a library, one wearing a black hoodie and driving a baby blue Tercel? Going to have a chat about how a guy who looked a lot like Mitchell was left bleeding and in a mild coma?”
Mulligan frowned.
“All right, maybe the knowledge that I let one of your friends make off with that french kid means I’m not feeling conversational, but I’ve got someone waiting in the car, and he’s a chatty bugger – got us kicked out of the library for being too loud, in fact. Wait here, I’ll bring him up.”
Mulligan stood, his gaze locked on Slug’s, his head tilted, to play up the dark creases his lack of sleep had left beneath his eyes. He made his way towards the door.
The microwave beeped.
“Did you say French?” asked Timothy.
Mulligan’s stomach churned as he nodded.
“Two weeks ago, I was checking out an online forum, and there was a listing I thought was a little strange. It was something like, uh,” Slug licked his lips, “”Little” Luc Bessard, 8, for sale – slightly used. Speaks no English. Buyer responsible for shipping. Please contact Jean Marco at – uh, whatever the number was. I looked it up, and it was in Montreal.”
The PI had frozen in the entry area, and Mustard, noting the look on his face, quickly continued.
“There are hundreds of people who probably saw that post, but I happen to know for a fact that Bryce visits the site pretty regularly, he, uh, introduced me to it. Frankly, I thought something that crazy would have the police crawling all over it, or that it was some sort of “To Catch A Predator” setup.” The man took a slurp of his coffee, the heat steaming his over-sized glasses. “Mitchell was never too bright though.”
Mulligan made for the exit.
Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm. The audio and text formats of Flash Pulp are released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.
A Rake In The Grass
Ah, so that’s where that was.
Bill Pickett Took No Lip
Recently, BMJ2k, (of Mr Blog’s Tepid Ride,) and I, were discussing stetsons and social status, when he made the excellent point that most famous cowboys weren’t cowboys at all, they were largely lawmen, murderers, or thieves.
Not so of Bill Pickett, however. He may have become a leading light of the wild west shows, but, according to his brother at least, he got his start at home:
Dora Scarbrough, in her book “Land of Good Water” relates […] On moonlit nights he would go out there and get on a horse and bulldog. {His parents} caught him at it and brought those cattle {nearer the house} to practice bulldogging so the younger children could see it.” – Texas Escapes
A romantic beginning to an event that would make Pickett famous, but what exactly does Bulldogging entail?
Even if someone else got the bright idea to subdue an unruly steer by jumping on it and biting its lip, that person never admitted it. History gives the distinction to Bill Pickett[…] – Texas Escapes
There’s an authenticity to chomping down on the frothing mouth of a rampaging cow that you don’t often see in today’s spectacles.
Getting It
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9wRxW7v1LA]
It may well be the case that the intelligentsia are far ahead of me, but I wanted to take a moment to complain about something I perceive as an oversimplification in popular science.
Why did dinosaurs have feathers and giant skin-sails? Mating.
Why do birds sing and dance? Mating.
Why does a Hippo spin its tail at high speeds while using it to fling poop everywhere? Mating.
Extrapolating from that kind of thinking, Straight Edgers are just self-milking bull teets, which strikes me as an unfair characterization.
Why do folks shave their hair into a Mohawk?
Why do people choose to drive Escalades?
Why does a married man wear too much cologne to the office?
I think mating is often the easy answer to a more socially complex question.
Flash Pulp 055 – Mulligan Smith and A Little Luc, Part 1 of 3
Welcome to Flash Pulp, Episode Fifty-Five.
Tonight, we present Mulligan Smith and A Little Luc, Part 1 of 3
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This week’s episodes are brought to you by the Flash Pulp page on Facebook.
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Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.
Tonight we present the first in a week’s worth of stories involving Mulligan Smith, PI. In this opening entry, we find Smith, with a friend in tow, attempting to locate some low-cost entertainment.
Flash Pulp 055 – Mulligan Smith and A Little Luc, Part 1 of 3
Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May
“This sucks,” said Billy.
“Look,” replied Mulligan, “this is cheap. I doubt I’m going to get expenses paid on any of the gas I’ve burned through, or any of the food you keep tossing down your maw, so you can stow the complaints and expand your mind a little.”
Billy Winnipeg was holding a copy of Ken Dryden’s The Game, in large print, and, as he waited, he continuously tapped the hardback against his coat zipper.
Gently resting a hand over the painted goaltender on the cover, Mulligan brought the motion to a stop.
“You spent three hours hovering over every book in this place: you can have some patience until this lady gets my card sorted.”
Ten minutes earlier, the woman, who Mulligan guessed to be twenty-eight, and likely fresh out of school, had taken the PI’s driver’s license and begun hammering at the Library computer’s ancient keyboard. Failing to make headway, she’d given the pair a quick apology and disappeared into a rear area, calling after a “Nolan”.
“The old woman in front of us was out of here in like twenty seconds,” said Winnipeg.
“Yeah, and she probably comes by and picks up a half-dozen Harlequins every week, where as you -” pausing, Smith dropped his voice, “- you are a foreigner on the run from the law in two nations, and, I might remind you, we wouldn’t be stuck at the library if you hadn’t Godzilla’d your way through the most popular cop beer-joint in town. You owe me for dragging you out before they found their nightsticks, and I’d appreciate it if you’d just give me a few minutes of observing the building’s primary rule.”
Winnipeg raised a questioning eyebrow, and the PI pointed at a sign instructing “Quiet, Please.”
“I’m just saying this sucks, is all,” Billy muttered, pretending to re-read the teaser text on the book’s jacket.
Mulligan’s attention was no longer focused on his client’s son however. There was an argument brewing in the children’s reading room, which lay up a short flight of stairs at the north end of the building, and although it sounded like a three-way debate, Smith could only make out two-thirds of it.
The librarian reappeared, her triumphant smile cut short by the noise of the squabble.
Her brow furrowing, her eyes darted between her long waiting customers, and the quarrel emanating from down the hallway.
A look of decision took her face, and she grabbed the Graham Greene novel from Mulligan’s fingers. The PI took little notice as, with tilted head, he was concentrating on deciphering the alien portion of the conversation.
Noting his interest, the librarian – whose training had taught her to grope for small talk – asked if the unknown language might be French.
“I think so,” Smith replied.
“Man, that ain’t Français, that’s Quebecois,” Billy said, his eyes still locked on his book.
“There’s a difference?” the librarian asked.
“Yeah, I’ll tell ya all about it after I take the lift back to your flat so I can use the loo.”
“Ah, I see,” replied the librarian.
Noting the woman was mildly impressed, he added: “Aluminium.”
“Yeah, I get it,” she said.
Mulligan had left the conversation, and was now standing by the stairs. His new position allowed him a clear view down the hall, and into the room full of Children’s books.
“Hey! Put that kid down!” he shouted, moving up the first step.
A tall man in a white bucket hat came charging down. He held a denim-jumpered child in an awkward bear-hug, and the risk of injuring the boy prevented Mulligan from properly leveraging the pair to a stop. As the PI set out an arm to block the staircase, the man threw a shoulder into his ribs, sending him over backwards.
The escapee hit the landing at a run, and bolted through the front door.
The last of the raised voices had lagged behind, his ill-fitting pants tripping him up as he ran, and he now entered the scene at a sloppy trot.
“Kiddy fiddlers!” Billy said, his face sliding from comprehension to rage.
The man cleared Mulligan like a hurdle, both hands at his sagging waist. From his position on the floor, Smith managed to grab a snatch of pant leg, but it did little to slow the man’s rush.
The runner had just cracked the door when Billy’s massive right hand lay heavily upon his shoulder, spinning him around with the ease of a greased gas station sunglasses rack.
The first fist set the man’s jaw askew, and, as his forgotten pants slid to his knees, the second fist forced all of the air, and a little of his salmon lunch, up and out his windpipe.
The PI had regained his feet, and winced at the Canadian’s handiwork – there was little doubt that bones were broken, and if it weren’t for the man’s ragged, unconscious breathing, Mulligan would have thought it even worse.
Picking Winnipeg’s reading selection off the floor, he set it down on the desk.
“Never mind, thanks,” he said, turning to hustle his outlaw obligation over the crumpled form, and through the exit.
Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm. The audio and text formats of Flash Pulp are released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.
Flash Pulp 054 – Life & Limb, Part 1 of 1
Welcome to Flash Pulp, Episode Fifty-Four.
Tonight, we present Life & Limb, Part 1 of 1
[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp054.mp3]Download MP3
(RSS / iTunes)
This evening’s episode is brought to you by tardiness – and we apologize.
Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.
Tonight we present a rumination on the human, and inhuman, of the future.
Flash Pulp 054 – Life & Limb, Part 1 of 1
Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May
Manny Espinoza was 19, and sweating heavily under his combat gear while watching a goat wander a barren yard. To his eye, the house he was guarding looked like little more than a pile of sun baked mud that had had some rogue lumber laid across it. The poverty of the shanty wore at him, so he instead turned to the surrounding scrub-land, in an effort to ignore it. Depressingly, the alternative only forced him into mental comparisons with the lush forests surrounding his parents’ home in Maine.
A chicken scrambled from a shadow at the corner of the building, heedless of Manny’s weapon pointed in its direction.
The bird was followed by a boy of eight, who glanced nervously at the American, and attempted to shoo the fowl away from the gathered assault rifles and watchful glances. Manny once again put the hard question to himself: would these people be better served if he had instead opted to become a teacher? His mother would have said yes, his father no. As the boy finally hustled the hen away, Manny took comfort in the knowledge that he’d have plenty of time to teach his own child after he’d made it home – and after he and Angela had tired themselves sufficiently in the efforts leading to conception.
He smiled at this bright spot in his imagination.
There was a shout from inside the house, and Manny turned, suddenly aware that this wouldn’t be just another door knock.
* * *
He awoke in Germany, only vaguely aware of the trip, and not at all able to recall the explosion that everyone had insisted on telling him about when he’d occasionally manage to swim out of unconsciousness.
He cried hard at the loss of his legs, but damned the loss of his manhood.
* * *
By the age of 27, Manny had largely put himself back together.
After physiotherapy, he’d found himself behind the front desk at his father’s construction company. At first he’d longed to be on site with the old man, but he soon found he had a knack for working the phones, and, being able to sit all day, most of the folks who came through the office didn’t even realize he’d been injured.
Veteran’s Affairs had also played a large part in his recovery – while there would never be a replacement for his ability to have children, nor for Angela, who had left him before he was even fully weaned from morphine, his carbon-fibre legs allowed him to move with nearly the same agility he’d had before the incident.
The explosion was forever lost to his memory, but he’d read the details: how he’d responded to Lipski’s shouting; how he’d somehow clobbered the two guys who’d been hiding in the house, even as they were tossing a grenade after his hastily departing Sergeant; how his attempt to dive out of the way had left only his lower half shredded by shrapnel.
The medals were nice, but did little to increase his mobility, nor to ease the looks of terror he saw creeping into young children’s eyes at his approach – usually seconds before being scooped up by a soccer mom who would then give him a polite smile of apology while being sure to maintain eye contact.
* * *
Manny, now 32, was on a bench in the small park across from the office, eating his lunch. He’d spent most of October on the oak planks, the chill having given him an excuse to lay a blanket across his lap. The covering meant that the children romping around the play structure took no notice of him, and he could spend his midday meal daydreaming over a variety of sons and daughters he would never have.
This was especially a relief, as he’d spent three hot and painful weeks in August having his simple prosthesis replaced with appendages that whirred like a television robot as he moved, but otherwise allowed him to run twice as fast as he’d ever managed. The development was so new they hadn’t had time to work out proper cosmetics for it, and, even when covered by pants, his limbs had an odd, chicken-leg appearance as he moved. Jumping to the top of the list for the experimental procedure had been the first advantage his medals had ever really brought him, and he’d celebrated the whole affair by spending the majority of September on an extended hiking vacation.
A breeze carrying the scent of late-season barbecue brought him back from memories of the Appalachian trail, and he wiped sandwich crumbs form his lap, still surprised by the coldness of the titanium beneath.
From the corner of his left eye, he noted a red pickup jump the curb.
It had entered from the furthest point of the park, meaning it had to cross over the baseball diamond before reaching the play structure. For a moment, Manny thought it would likely stop, but by the time it had obliterated the chalk line between second and third base, it had plenty of momentum and time was short.
He stood, sprinting towards the slide.
“Get out of the way!” came from his mouth, but the children needed no words. Their parents had long warned them to keep half an eye on the man with skeleton legs who spent long afternoons watching them at play.
One such mother looked at him in surprise, her back to the rapidly closing truck, and Manny pointed past the woman, still running at the structure.
“Ed!” the woman said as she turned. She dove from the Ford’s path.
Manny attempted to stop short of the truck’s trajectory, but there had been little reason to practice stopping suddenly from a full tilt run, and he went over sideways, landing directly in the trucks path.
He didn’t feel the tire roll over his neck.
* * *
It was a coincidence that the letter arrived on his 35th birthday. His Mother had come to the small white room regularly, and she often brought his mail to read to him aloud, as it was tough to maintain proper conversation with a man who could only blink to communicate.
Usually their time was spent rambling through junk fliers, but Manny was still grateful for the effort.
It was hard to understand what the terms of the thick envelope were attempting to imply, but Manny’s mother had wept during its reading, and when the trio of lab technicians arrived a week later, he could do little but blink yes to their barrage of questions and release forms.
Before he’d turned 37, he found himself standing in front of a full length mirror, in a room that seemed half surgery theatre and half mechanic’s shop. He was flexing arms and legs made entirely of lightweight composite materials, materials he was assured would have been capable of shrugging off even the impact of the Ford.
He was impressed by every aspect but his face. His jaw had been torn away in Ed’s third attempt at running down his ex-wife, who’d survived the attack by using the play structure as a shield. The pink triangular flap that acted as the mouth for his digitized voice disturbed him with its jerky clockwork motions.
Two months after his release from the hospital, at the insistence of his mother, he slunk into a mall food court, in his first public appearance since the new surgery. His heavy coat and broad hat allowed him to pass with only the looks afforded any man wearing clothing inappropriate for the season, at least until a five year old had rushed by in an attempt to chase down his slightly older sister. The girl had been careful to give a wide berth, but the boy had seen the shortest path as running alongside Manny’s table, and had taken it.
A flailing arm knocked away the hat, and, after hearing an admonishing name call from his mother, the boy turned to apologize, even as Manny stooped to pick it up.
“It’s OK,” Manny said, not looking at the boy.
He could feel his pseudo-chin sagging as it clicked open and shut.
The boy, suddenly caught up in terror, began to shriek and weep.
As the vet slammed his hand down in frustration, the cheap plywood table cracked. The attention of the gathered having already been drawn by the screaming, the shattering wood sent a panic through the crowd.
An hour later, cautious police led Manny, still leaking tears, from a side entrance.
* * *
At 42, he finally found his calling. It had started eighteen months previous, after he’d had what he called “The Idea” while wasting away another afternoon in his shuttered bungalow, watching cartoons.
A flurry of emails had followed his inspiration, and now, having argued his case and won, he stood in a large change room, his ears filled with the hum of the sea of people outside. The presentation was taking place in a high school gym, but children of every age had been bussed in to assemble cross legged on the hardwood floor.
Pushing open the door, he peeked at the brightly lit platform. Principal Ebert had taken the stage, smoothly entering into the spiel that Manny, and the team who maintained him, had put together.
His final modifications hadn’t added any new functionality – if anything, they’d subtracted, although Manny didn’t count the removal of the nightmare-jaw as any sort of loss. His face was now a smooth chrome surface, broken only by the holes that allowed for vision and a small grate approximating where his mouth would be, and from which his voice projected.
In fact, every visible surface that extended from beneath his crisp white t-shirt and khaki shorts gleamed, even in the low lighting of the sweat smelling room.
Ebert finished, and Manny took his cue, entering the A/V club’s spotlight to a swell of music.
The speakers faded away, and there was a hush.
After they’d subsided, Manny began his practiced speech decrying discrimination, occasionally emphasising his point with a demonstration of inhuman physical prowess.
With the glare in his eyes, it was hard for him to know how well he was being taken, but at least there was applause every time he lifted something heavy.
As he concluded his talk, he stepped down to the left side of the platform, butterflies rising in the remainder of his stomach as he opened himself to being approached by the gathered.
It would be hours before the line of children, all waiting for a photo of themselves resting atop Manny’s tirelessly flexing biceps, would let up.
Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm. The audio and text formats of Flash Pulp are released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.
The Grumbling Of A Paranoiac Bound For Vacation
This is likely to end up in Mulligan’s mouth at some point, but I just wanted to briefly touch on my distaste for hotel rooms with mag card locking systems. I don’t know what standards hotels hold themselves to regarding the security of the cards, but it seems to me that any 8 year old can buy a mag card encoder off of ebay and, if the general sloppiness surrounding hotel internet access is any indication, I have a bad feeling that the protection depends heavily on the supposed exotic nature of a system developed in the late ‘60s.
FP: Life & Limb
Our brains are drooling goo bags – one more day till Life & Limb, and you’ll get a Mulligan on Monday for being so patient.