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Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode three hundred and thirty-one.

Tonight we present Mulligan Smith in Can’t Live with Them, Part 3 of 3
[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp331.mp3]Download MP3
(RSS / iTunes)
(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)

This week’s episodes are brought to you by Nutty Bites

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, Mulligan Smith, PI, stumbles upon a pair of missing women – and much more.

Mulligan Smith in Can’t Live with Them, Part 3 of 3

Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May

“Maxwell!” said Mulligan, as he stepped from the Tercel.

It was Smith’s third early morning in a row, though this time he’d volunteered for the duty. He had news he was eager to deliver, and a paycheck he was even more eager to collect.

He found his client in much the same position as their initial meeting, though the dachshund was no longer roaming Dougherty’s yellowing front lawn.

Mulligan felt it was best not to mention the dog.

Instead, he said, “so, as I told you on the phone, I’ve got some good news for you.”

Maxwell nodded, but continued to fuss with his maroon tie.

The detective’s break had come almost exactly twenty-four hours earlier, though the questioning phone calls necessary to confirm what he’d discovered had absorbed the rest of his day. The first domino had dropped when when the blue-and-red haired crossing guard had intercepted Smith on the way back to his car.

“You’re looking for Mrs. Carver?” she asked. “I used to say good morning to her everyday.”

“Huh,” replied Smith, his hands in his black hoodie’s pockets.

“I mean, I try to help everyone, but generally Mayfield would make her cross the street a little ways down.” The woman twirled her sign as she spoke, rolling the red octagon’s handle with well practiced fingers.

Clearing the lingering sleep from his eyes, the private investigator took a second look at the twenty-something.

He asked, “were they always that creepy?”

The safety worker couldn’t help but smile.

“Lita was nice. I think she knew that it was weird to walk her teenage son to school, but it seemed like she was made to. Her husband, Marshall, is – well, you’ve met him.”

Smith nodded, it being only moments after the man’s speech on human butchery.

Despite the early hour, his mind slipped into the habits of his occupation. First names and familial opinions had piqued the PI’s interest.

“Mulligan,” he said.

“Caitlin,” she replied.

“You been working here long, Caitlin?”

She motioned to the grade school on her left and the high school on her right.

“I spent way longer at both of those than I was supposed to, and I’ve been working this job the five years since. I guess I’d burrowed deep enough into the hearts that mattered, and they let me stay. It doesn’t pay big, but there’s a weird sense of power to it. Some tiny wristed kid wanders up to me and I have this magic shield I can use to carry them safely past the line of snarling F-150s and revving Civics.

“For the thirty seconds we walk the pavement together it feels like I’m doing some good.”

She shrugged, but Smith was suddenly awake.

That’s when he’d asked, “you must’ve also known Monika Dougherty then?”

From there it had taken only the implication that he knew some uniformed men who’d be interested in talking to Caitlin and he’d had the full story.

Now, however, all he said was “I spent most of yesterday making calls and running down leads. I’ve found your wife.”

Generally Smith would back his statement with an explanation of his methodology – especially in a situation like this one, where his client might opt to avoid payment – but the circumstances were such that he felt it was best to keep the specifics fuzzy.

The PI was right to be concerned.

“She’s in Texas, and it seems she isn’t coming back,” he said, though he didn’t mention the tale of brutal slaps in her sleep, or the constant insults that were the apparent result of Maxwell’s perpetual drunkenness. Both details had come to light during Smith’s telephone interview with the woman.

If the dachshund had been at hand, Mulligan felt sure Dougherty would have kicked it. As it was, the red-faced man still seemed to be searching the yard for something to injure.

“That bitch,” he finally said, his Windsor knot forgotten.

“She’s in a program for – uh – women in her situation. It wasn’t easy to even confirm she was alive,” replied Smith, not adding that those same difficulties were exactly why he should be paid. “You would have known when her lawyer contacted you for the divorce, but I guess they like to save that for the final step of her recovery.”

Maxwell had taken the end of his tie in his right fist, and was squeezing it while staring at the horizon.

There was something in the violence of the wasted motion that made Smith glad he hadn’t mentioned the crossing guard with the dual-toned hair, or the role the woman had played in facilitating the flight of both Lita and Monika. It had been she who’d planted the idea and passed along the appropriate phone numbers.

“Well,” asked the husband, “where is she?”

“I already told you: Texas,” answered Smith. “Don’t worry though: I’ve notified the officer working her missing person’s case. That’s what you really wanted, isn’t it?”

Maxwell snorted, and for a moment the morning air contained nothing but bird song and distant car engines.

“Well you ain’t been much fucking help at all, have you,” Dougherty finally announced.

“I did what you asked, I found your wife,” replied Mulligan.

“Yeah, but you just said she would have contacted me when she was ready, so what the fuck did you really do? I’ll give you half the price you asked for.”

Smith noted that if the tie could have changed colours as it was choked, it would have become royal purple. His lips tightened, but he held his tongue.

Maxwell, however, didn’t. “No, fuck it. I ain’t paying you shit. Why should I?”

Smiths’ business sense told him to keep his mouth shut till his client had had time to cool, but there was only so much he could take from a dog-kicking drunk with a taste for hitting his wife.

“I advise you reconsider, Max. I happen to be friendly with a law firm which is familiar enough with my work to let me ride free until you’ve paid. If you’ve never heard of them, think of Solomon & Woodard as the legal equivalent of a nuclear bomb strapped to a rabid bear.”

He zipped his hoodie then, adding, “I’d appreciate it if you pony’d up quick, frankly, as Monika’s hired on half the office to extract her alimony.

“I know because I’m the one who recommended them to her.”

(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Freesound.org credits:

Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode three hundred and thirty.

Tonight we present Mulligan Smith in Can’t Live with Them, Part 2 of 3
[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp330.mp3]Download MP3
(RSS / iTunes)
(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)

This week’s episodes are brought to you by Nutty Bites

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, Mulligan Smith, PI, finds himself face-to-face with a surly client, and the man’s nervous dachshund.

Mulligan Smith in Can’t Live with Them, Part 2 of 3

Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May

Mulligan’s morning had largely consisted of asking neighbours and friends about the disappearance of his client’s wife, Monika.

It had been a short process.

After he’d run through the houses that flanked the Dougherty home, and the single set of parents who used her day care services, Smith knew that the woman had seemed kind but distant, loved children, and was very forgiving about being paid late. They had little else to offer but questions and conjecture.

The mother of Julian, the boy Monika had been walking to school on behalf of his steel worker parents, had suggested that things were perhaps not always great between the missing and her husband, but that she’d felt it was none of her business. Later, as he’d stood to leave the Dunkin’ Donuts at which they’d met, she’d also asked if the situation was at all connected to the vanishing of Lita Carver.

“Who?” Mulligan had replied.

His afternoon had subsequently been spent online, at a small desk beside the non-fiction autobiographical S’s of the Capital City Public Library.

There were three references to Lita: The first was a quick mention in her father’s obituary, and the second a quote from a schoolyard hot dog sale she happened to have visited. Both items were years old and likely entirely unrelated to the matter at hand. The third, however, intensified Julian’s mother’s question.

Lita had been married to a Marshall Carver nearly two decades, producing a single son, Mayfield. The boy’s birth announcement in the Capital City Daily, and a bit of math, told Mulligan that the youth was now seventeen. Mrs. Carver had gone missing on May 18th of the previous year, after having walked the teen to school, as reported when Marshall arrived home from work that evening. Lita’s history of – as her husband put it – “dramatics” had convinced the police to conduct an immediate search.

Creeping further through the records for follow-ups had provided the PI only frustration.

A phone call to Marshall forced Smith to be up for the second early morning in a row. The man had insisted – much as his client had, though in a more even tone – that Mulligan conduct his interview before business hours.

“- and what is it that you do, Mr. Carver,” Smith had asked ten minutes after snaring a prime parking space on the road alongside Eastern High School.

“I sell knives,” replied Marshall, “High-end custom kitchen blades. Everything you’d need to peel an apple or a pig.”

Upon his arrival he’d told Mulligan that he’d taken over his wife’s duty of escorting their son in the year since her disappearance, and the investigator had had a brief opportunity to meet the teen.

The Carvers had been dressed identically – light green polo shirts, well-pressed khaki slacks, chrome Breitling watches, and a pair of carefully parted haircuts, both swept to the left – and, following an exchange of hellos with the detective, Mayfield had moved to kiss his father and depart.

As such, the discovery of Marshall’s occupation had simply unsettled the already fatigued Mulligan further.

“How did Lita spend her time?” he asked, letting his interviewee trail ahead a step as they began walking towards the man’s residence. Mulligan had little interest in allowing Marshall’s cutting experience and dead smile behind him, but it was necessary to share the sidewalk with a sharp-elbowed crossing guard and her merrily swinging stop sign.

“Why is a private investigator looking into my lost wife?” Carver responded.

Smith could detect no difference between this question’s tone of delivery and the earlier mention of butchery, but the school employee did cease her unthinking waving.

Noting her blue and red hair, Mulligan gave her a nod as he passed, but held his tongue till he was out of her earshot.

Finally he said, “another woman, Monika Dougherty, has gone missing. She lived three blocks away, and it has the same sort of feel as Lita’s case. I was wondering if you might have some insight into the situation.”

Carver stopped then, turning back towards Smith and locking his eyes on the detective’s.

This was close to a show of emotion as he came before explaining, “I do not know where my wife is, but, when I do find her, I will lock whoever is responsible in a very small room. In that room I will place a single hotplate. I own a pair of gloves – I bought them on the internet – that are amazingly resistant to heat, but provide enough flexibility to use your fingers with precision. I’ve also purchased the entire Carbon series of knives, a product I myself sell. I invested in them because I know, from experience and from the literature, that the line is heat resistant up to 800 degrees.

“I will arrange the set – from paring knife to butcher’s blade – on the burners, and, once the steel is glowing, I will use them to shave away the person in question. I’ll start with their toes, then their feet – don’t worry, there’s a Japanese Deba knife in there that’ll easily handle the bone – and I’ll just keep working my way up. I may not be able to go through their shins, but I bet I can cut and cauterize some solid turkey slices from their calves.

“Once the accountable party has clarified their actions, and apologized, I’ll allow them to die. I know a pig farmer who’d trade almost anything for some of our out-of-stock product.”

Marshall ended the statement with a dry “ha,” as if he’d intended the whole thing as a bit of joking bravado.

Mulligan, however, had no further questions.

(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Freesound.org credits:

Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.