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Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode two hundred and twenty one.

Tonight we present, Mulligan Smith in The Pinch, Part 3 of 3.
(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)
[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp221.mp3]Download MP3
(RSS / iTunes)

This week’s episodes are brought to you by Dunesteef.

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, ends an uncomfortable case with an awkward conversation.

Mulligan Smith in The Pinch, Part 3 of 3

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

Smith had returned to his client’s house, on the west-side of Capital City, to find a black sedan parked on the paved lawn. Although Mulligan expected the carefully generic vehicle, he hadn’t anticipated a sudden thunderstorm, and slowed traffic had cost him the opportunity to intercept the stranger before they’d entered the home.

Killing the Tercel’s engine, he hopped a puddle and vaulted the short row of steps which lead onto the porch. He didn’t bother knocking.

“My apologies,” said Mulligan, as he slung back his damp hood.

The Givens had gathered on the leather couch in their living room, and McCrumb, the driver of the Ford and the police detective who’d first taken Jarrod’s account, was sitting alongside in a lazy boy. Stuart and Susan appeared to be drinking scotch over ice as their stiff-limbed son sat silently between them.

Smith didn’t know the cop personally, but he took it as a reassuring sign that the man was at the cusp of his chair, and leaning hard across the tidily arranged coffee table, instead of resting comfortably with a glass in his hand.

“All right,” said Mulligan, “you folks look pretty settled, so let’s just cut to the chase – I’d like to play a little something for you, if I may. You’ve probably already seen it, but I figure it’s best if we all refresh ourselves. Mrs. Givens, you said you had it on your PVR?”

Without responding, the woman dipped her hand into a wooden box filled with black plastic slabs and selected the proper remote from the half-dozen competitors.

The emblem of Capital City’s leading local news organization flashed across the screen. Susan was forced into a second excavation to adjust the volume to an audible level.

A female reporter was delivering the piece’s overview as a slightly out-of-focus camera watched a group of teenagers loiter outside of Acadia High School.

“The student body is shocked, and many parents are outraged, as word of the allegations has spread.” The image became that of Ms. Lacy, its graininess betraying the fact that it was likely snatched from a social network profile. “Arrested last night upon arriving at her home from a trip to unknown locations, Rebbecca Lacy, thirty-five, stands accused of having molested a local teen. Although the woman refuses to meet with the press, the boy’s lawyer provided the following statement.”

A mustachioed man, seated at a desk backed by bookshelves, came onscreen.

“Three days ago, on Friday, my client was lead into the backseat of the car owned by Ms. Lacy, where she proceeded to perform oral sex on a minor – er, him.”

The view moved to a blond reporter, microphone in hand, positioned before the high school, but Smith punched the TV’s power button.

“Funny thing, to get a lawyer for a criminal case. Have you got a call from above yet? I can’t imagine the government fellow handling your case is terribly excited about your statement,” he said.

“Well, it was also unusual to hire a private investigator,” said Susan. “We’re thorough people.”

“Uh huh. It’s too bad you and Stu weren’t so thorough in your parenting. Sorry – it’s sweet of Officer McCrumb to have given you the benefit of the doubt this long, but he mentioned an odd detail to me earlier, and, since I’m probably going to have to fight for my payday, I’m a bit touchy.”

In truth, the pair had not conferred, but Mulligan had no interest in making an enemy. He was glad to discover the bull had a solid poker face.

Smith moved close to the low table, so that he dominated Jarrod’s view. The PI paid no attention to the droplets which rolled from his hoodie and spattered a variety of nature scenes across a fan of National Geographic magazines.

“So, which is it then?” he asked.

The youth slumped, as the lawman began to rifle through his notebook in search of a half-remembered detail.

“I’m going to be honest,” said Mulligan, “I’m hard pressed to think of a person I dislike more than you, and you’ve only been working at it for fifteen years. There are a lot of kids that don’t get an opportunity to be believed – a lot of kids who never get a chance to say anything.”

McCrumb’s eyes widened, then shuttered into slits, which pleased Smith, who was rapidly running short of material to stall with.

“Was it the parking lot, or was it the track?” asked the flushed officer.

“I – I got confused. It was the parking lot,” said Jarrod.

“It was the parking lot,” Smith interrupted, “only once I let slip to your dance-date that your story didn’t make sense. If she was returning after convincing her dad to let her back out with the car, what was she doing at the rear of the building, by the track? You know what, save whatever idiotic excuse you’re about to make. When I discovered you were selling coke to your classmates, my life became considerably easier – also, your chums became considerably more conversational.

“Talk wasn’t what I needed, though.

“Given the air of paranoia you’ve created, I couldn’t go and friend a bunch of them online, so I did the next best thing: I blackmailed them for access to their cellphone pictures; nearly seven thousand photos of overly made-up teenage girls making duck-lipped faces.” Mulligan reached into the interior of his sweater and retrieved a trio of printouts. “Over the left shoulder of the pouter in red, you’ll notice a familiar wild-eyed partier. Then, here, same merrymaker, left of this peace sign. Saved the best for last though.”

The final image showed Jarrod’s crazed smile up close, and his bleeding nose was plainly visible.

“My guess,” said Smith, “Is that she caught you coming back from the bathroom with a blizzard on your face, and she took you outside to talk. You panicked, and told her you’d cry junk-toucher if she said anything. The next day she took off to ponder her moral dilemma with her crippled mother. Maybe you couldn’t find her and it freaked you out, maybe you’re a pansy, but, whatever the case, you pushed the red button and ended that poor woman’s career.

“It was never going to work though, McCrumb was always going to notice the problems once her story was known.”

The boy said nothing.

“Blackmail won’t stand in court,” said Stuart, pushing back the pictures.

“A drug test will do just fine though,” replied Mulligan.

McCrumb nodded. “Even if you argue that you were snorting at some other time, its going to be a tough case to make on behalf of a coke-head with bad memory.”

“You – you’re bluffing,” said Jarrod, “even if I had done it – which I didn’t – everyone knows cocaine is out of your system in like the first twenty-four hours.”

The policeman’s carefully maintained neutrality dropped into a frown. “Actually, a hair test is good for quite a lot longer. It’s more expensive, but I think I can convince the boys to spring for it.”

Susan pointed an accusing finger at Mulligan. “You bastard! Why would you do this?”

“I’ve done you a favour, though I know you’ll deny it. Frankly, I thought you should hear everything before the press at your doorstep: At least then you might feel like you got some use from my fees. Which I plan on collecting in full – and I’m very thorough.”

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.

Freesound.org credits:

Text and audio commentaries can be sent to skinner@skinner.fm, or the voicemail line at (206) 338-2792 – 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 two hundred and twenty.

Tonight we present, Mulligan Smith in The Pinch, Part 2 of 3.
(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)
[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp220.mp3]Download MP3
(RSS / iTunes)

This week’s episodes are brought to you by Dunesteef.

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, takes on an unpleasant case on behalf of a concerned mother.

Mulligan Smith in The Pinch, Part 2 of 3

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

Mulligan had hated high school. Worse still, by having never left Capital City, he had found himself once again in the same halls he’d walked as a student.

The mustard yellow lockers appeared unchanged since his youth.

Smith had come to a halt just outside the building’s main office – a long bench faced the monolithic front desk, behind which a colony of administrative staff worked in a frenzy to bring a Monday’s worth of affairs in order. Even from his distance, the private detective could hear snatches of conversation relating to Ms. Lacy, and her young victim, Jarrod Givens.

Although the boy had come forth to his parents on Saturday, the police had been unable to locate Ms. Lacy until Sunday, when she was found while returning to her apartment, supposedly after a road trip to her ailing mother’s nursing home. Smith knew this much to be true, as he’d had it confirmed in the papers, and by a few friends at the department – but that was extent of the information that was available.

“I heard she was actually visiting some kid she met on the Internet,” said a sharp-faced woman, from behind her glasses.

“It would make sense,” replied an man in a tie-less blue dress shirt, “I heard her and Jarrod have actually been together since the start of the year, so maybe he’s bringing it up now out of revenge.”

Mulligan had spent a sizable portion of his morning asking around regarding any such possibilities, but none of the student body had noticed anything awry with the woman – though many of the male students claimed to have often kept a close eye on her.

The most they would say about Jarrod was that he was a “good guy.”

The PI was intimate with the term: Too often it was the label given to any miscreant who’d avoided having his crimes or perversions noticed simply by remembering to wave and smile when they passed others in the hallway, or on the sidewalk.

Before his on-the-spot interviews, however, he’d taken Ms. Lacy’s incarceration as an opportunity to rifle through her trash. She lived in a small house, formerly her mother’s, and he’d discovered the cans neatly arranged under her flimsy carport. The contents were everything he’d expect of a woman living alone, and nothing more. The worst of it was a bottle of wine which he located in a recycling bin, but it was a slim bottle, and stood as the only alcohol beside a mountain of used cans and tissue boxes which might have been collecting dust for weeks.

Smith had also scrounged through the desk in her homeroom class, moments before her bewildered replacement arrived to take attendance, but all he’d uncovered was a mechanical Bic pencil, a mummified eraser, and a confiscated note from one Jeannie Simms, to a Matty, which might have been written at any point since the invention of pink-inked pens, and contained information useful only to the apparently adored Matthew.

Having turned up little, he’d finally approached the office. At a time he’d been too familiar with the place, and he knew there to be a honeycomb of teachers’ mailboxes just beyond the door which separated students and staff, but, in crossing the threshold, he would expose himself as something more than just a sloppily dressed visitor.

Left no option, he squared his shoulders, and marched through the entrance. The PI had found a purposeful stride was often enough to mollify those interested in minding their own business – not so on this occasion.

As his fingers walked along the plastic labels indicating the owner of each cubby, Smith was interrupted by a voice of bottomless authority.

“Excuse, what do you think you’re doing back here,” asked the man behind him. Mulligan’s hand had stopped at Ms. Lacy’s letter drop, but the hollow was empty. His interrogator noted the detective’s interest in the location. “Are you some kind of pervert looking for souvenirs? The press? Either way, I’m calling the police – you’re trespassing.”

“No, I’m -” said Smith.

“Save it,” was the reply.

Turning, Mulligan took in the tall suit’s thick shoulders, and shaved head. He recognized the speaker as the school’s principal, although he now appeared much angrier than the portrait which hung at the front entrance, and the painting had not made clear that the man had obviously once been a boxer.

The former fighter’s flat-lipped expression clearly announced that he’d heard a lifetime of excuses already, and had no intention of burdening himself with more.

Although the investigator now knew he was likely to be escorted off the property by some of his uniformed friends from downtown, he could see no way to avoid it.

Then, from the far side of the desk, a teenage voice said, “Mulligan! Hey – I was wondering where you were.”

The broad-faced ex-pugilist raised an eyebrow.

“You know this man?” he asked.

“Yeah, sure, he’s sort of like my uncle. Not actually related or anything, just close with the family. I forgot my wallet at home. I texted Mom, but her and Dad are at work, so they sent him down with a twenty.”

The intruding boy rounded on Smith, and the detective became convinced he’d seen the lad somewhere before – perhaps the son of a client? Hopefully not the son of a former subject.

Whatever the case, Mulligan dutifully handed over a hard-earned bill.

“I’ll walk with you while you go,” said the recipient.

As he pushed against the chromed bar and swung wide the door, Smith let out a sigh of relief, and zipped his hoodie against the chill October air.

“I’ve been sort of following you around all morning,” said the teen. ”I thought it was you, but I wasn’t sure at first. Don’t blame you for not recognizing me – I’ve changed a lot.

“I’m Lucas – we met downtown. You spilled gin on me.”

Smith had encountered the lad four years earlier, while looking for a fellow who would later turn out dead. The last time he’d seen him, Lucas had been ten, and bleary eyed with drink. “You’re looking a lot better these days,” he said, “though I recall you were wearing some fancy private school duds last time, not rubbing elbows with the public.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve sort of thought about calling you a few times. Always seemed like it would be weird – it wasn’t like I got clean right away when you screwed me, but it was a huge step along the road. You got me kicked out of Ashbury Academy, and that eventually lead me to a summer camp full of idiots with similar problems. Some days are tougher than others, but you were a big help.

“I’m glad to hear it – and thanks for the save back there.”

“Old man Turnbull isn’t so bad, he’s just excitable.”

“Understood. You know Ms. Lacy at all?”

“I’ve heard the rumours, but I never had a class with her.”

Mulligan nodded, and his thoughts drifted to his Tercel, parked alongside the nearby road. He tightened his collar against the cold. “Sure. Look, you SHOULD call me sometime, but I’m sort of in the middle of something, you know how it is.”

“Yeah,” replied Lucas.

As he stepped from the curb, a sudden thought came to Smith.

“Hey, do you know Jarrod Givens at all?”

The boy paused the door open before him. “Bah, that jackass is always giving me guff.”

“Huh. Most of the kids in his class really seem to like him.”

“You’ve obviously missed talking to the junior geeks and goths – can’t blame you though, they make themselves pretty invisible. Those senior a-holes only like him because he’s the cheapest dealer in the school.”

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.

Freesound.org credits:

Text and audio commentaries can be sent to skinner@skinner.fm, or the voicemail line at (206) 338-2792 – 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 two hundred and nineteen.

Tonight we present, Mulligan Smith in The Pinch, Part 1 of 3.
(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)
[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp219.mp3]Download MP3
(RSS / iTunes)

This week’s episodes are brought to you by Dunesteef.

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, takes on an unpleasant case on behalf of a concerned mother.

Mulligan Smith in The Pinch, Part 1 of 3

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

The house sat slightly to the right of the center of its block, and was flanked on either side by nearly identical replicas of its brick facade and wooden porch. The neighbourhood, on the west-side of Capital City, had been claimed by the somberly dressed office dwellers of the downtown core, and many of the small front yards had been smothered in pavement, to make space for extra parking.

Stepping from his baby-blue Tercel, Mulligan engaged the recording application on his phone, and dropped it into his hoodie’s breast pocket.

The house had no visible bell, so he opted to use the red door’s ringed knocker. Given the resistance he encountered in moving it, however, he concluded the thing was likely only intended as ornamentation – nonetheless, he gave it three heavy swings.

Selina Givens, his client, answered the summons.

She wore her dyed hair well, and, if the alteration hadn’t been made obvious by her highlights, he would be hard pressed to guess she needed it coloured.

Mrs. Givens reached out a hand, and her shake was firm, and dry.

Mulligan asked about the boy.

“He’s upstairs, and expecting you, but he’s having another talk with Stuart,” she said. “I wish that man would take this situation more seriously, I’m concerned that harpy might have permanently scarred Jarrod – might have made him some sort of pervert or something – but his father can’t stop winking and nudging.”

Smith nodded. He knew Ms. Lacy’s garbage cans were his likely next visit, and he held little excitement for the appointment: Digging through a sex offender’s trash was rarely a pleasant experience.

“I understand,” he replied, “I’ll do my best to be gentle while we’re chatting.”

The woman’s eyes filled with flame.

“I didn’t hire you to be gentle. You find that harlot’s secrets, and you air them. You find out how many more there are, you find their names, and you make her confess. I want her fired, I want her shamed, I want her burned at the goddamned stake – whatever it takes.”

The private investigator could only continue to nod. He was relieved to hear a door click shut on the floor above.

“I’ll, uh, just head on up,” he said.

As he topped the flight of stairs, Smith caught his first view of Mr. Givens, a stocky man in a tie-less dress shirt and gray slacks. The man stood, legs set in a wide stance upon the beige carpet which ran along the hall.

“Listen,” said Stuart, “Jarrod’s a good kid, but he’s fifteen, and needed to learn some life lessons at some point anyway. I’m not saying I condone what she did, but who better to learn from than a social studies teacher?”

Smith had no response for the father’s half-smirk, and, instead, simply moved past the man and into his son’s room.

The teen seemed surprised at his entrance.

“Sorry to bust in, your mom said I was expected.”

The boy’s shaggy haircut made it difficult to identify his reaction. Without waiting for a proper welcome, Mulligan took a seat in the wheeled chair beside a desk cluttered with homework, and surveyed the area. Band posters, largely unrecognizable to Smith, covered the three of the walls, and the fourth was adorned with a thick layer of photos, which appeared to be the product of a cheap printer, on even cheaper paper.

Although the furthest corner was dominated by a large flat panel television resting atop a dresser, the device had been muted, leaving the overhead ceiling-fan as the chamber’s only source of background noise.

“Yeah, come on in,” Jarrod said, after the PI had made himself at home, “I was just going to run down the street and grab a bag of chips anyhow.”

Biting at his upper lip, Smith gave a sticker-covered binder a staccato drumroll with his fingers, and stared at the TV, but he found no help in the silent insurance commercial that was currently playing out across the screen.

He sighed. “How many people have you told?”

“Mom and Stu had me tell the police, and I’m about to tell you, so that’ll be four. What you really want to ask, though, is what happened? Last Friday there was a dance at the school. I was there with a few people I know. I’m not graceful, but when it gets late enough, and everyone is sweating in the dark, no one notices how bad I am. I was there with Ashely – we’re just friends – but she had to go home early, as her dad’s a real prick. She actually came back though. She’s the one who found us.

“I was coming out of the bathroom when I saw Ms. Lacy. She was wearing a black skirt and a blue blouse, and she was giving me a funny look. She stopped me in the hall, and I remember thinking that I’d never seen her with her hair not in a ponytail. It was just a little messy – she looked pretty fierce.

“”Come here,” she said.

“So I did. She put her hand on my shoulder, and it smelled like she’d had a bit to drink or something – sort of a sweet, wine smell.

“We went past the caf, which’s usually closed during after-school events, and she brought me outside, but behind the school, where the running track is.

“It was dark.”

Jarrod’s voice broke.

“It – I mean, no one’s ever done that to me. It felt good, while it was happening. Her mouth was so warm.”

For a time the only sound in the room was the electric whine that moved the fan’s faux-wood blades.

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.

Freesound.org credits:

Text and audio commentaries can be sent to skinner@skinner.fm, or the voicemail line at (206) 338-2792 – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

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