Tales Of Goldberg's: At Midnight All The Agents...

Tales Of Goldberg’s
At Midnight, All The Agents….
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Stupendous Man’s Journal, Oct. 12, 2015
Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. Also, the dog was wearing goggles and a scarf. The doghouse’s wings and propeller were all shot up too.
Weird.
This city is afraid of me. For I have seen it’s true face. And it is ugly. And slimy. Like girls. But I digress.
Soon, the accumulated filth of all their sex and murder and meanness will foam up about their waists….the city will shout “Save me.”
And I will stick my thumbs in my ears, wiggle my fingers and say “ Nyah,, nyah, nyah, nyah,, nyahhhhh.”
Then I will make a funny face and say, “ This is you. Oooogg, ooogg ooogga, ooogga..” Maybe even cross my eyes.
They had a choice. All of them. They could have followed in the footsteps of good men. Like my father. He understood character. He used to take me out to the woods, because it built character. Made me chop wood, make tents, go fishing with the deerflies. God, I hated fishing. Maybe that’s a bad example. Let me start over…..
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The ol’ detective was looking over the edge of the broken window where the body dropped . A good twenty stories. He said nothing, but let out a low whistle, took out his flask, and raised it to the sky.
Slylock Fox was in the apartment dusting for fingerprints. “ Wow. Twenty stories. That’s a real drop. Say, Dick, if you’re thrown out of an apartment building window, and you’re twenty stories up, and let’s further assume that you’re plummeting down at a rate of five stories a second, are you likely to stay conscious all the way down, or will the air pressure kill you before that?”
Dick didn’t answer right away. He knew the victim. An individual of conservative values. He liked him. They worked together before. Also, he could really put away his gin. Sadly, he liked to go out and practice his drunk driving afterwards.
“ Dick?”
“ Hm? Oh…yeah, yeah , Fox. Despite what you may have heard before, you’re likely to stay conscious all the way down, yeah…”
Slylock walked over to the detective. “ I’m sorry, Dick. You knew the guy, didn’t you?”
Dick nodded.
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Seven hours later, a small dark figure came out of the shadows below the apartment building where the body fell. There were still some black feathers on the street. The figure wore a full red face mask, a cape, and a jacket and wool hat because his mom made him wear it.
He picked up what looked like a small badge. It was worn by the murder victim. Proudly.
It said, “ McCain/ Palin ‘08”
The figure took a grappling gun out of his coat. Hobbes made it for him. He wasn’t sure if it would work. He took aim and fired at floor twenty.
It worked. Just like in Batman.
As Stupendous Man climbed through the window, he tore down the police tape and made his way to the closet of the murder victim. There were pictures of the victim on all the walls. Glamour shots.
After a quick search, he found what he was looking for. A secret button which opened the secret closet of Mallard Fillmore, alias The Conservative.
It was all there. The leather armor, the gunbelt and grenades…..and a picture of the duck’s past. A picture of the JGMM. The “ Just a Goddamn Minute, Man” group.
Stupendous Man cleared his throat.
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It was the bi-weekly meeting of the Funny Ladies of the Comics. Held at Charterstone, naturally, Chairperson Mary Worth, presiding.
“ Virtue is it’s own reward. The early bird gets the worm. A friend indeed, is a friend, indeed.. And, furthermore, “ Mary stopped to add a jigger of whiskey to her tea, “ If it ain’t broke, get in there and be sure, because you may have missed a chance to meddle the first time around.”
Everyone broke out into applause.
Vice President Thelma Keane added, :” Just let me add to that. A hug is the best present, because it comes in all sizes, and no one minds when you return it.”
More applause.
Secretary/Treasurer Elly Patterson nodded, “ And I’ll add this to boot. It’s all well and good to go off into the wilderness and find yourself, and have new experiences, but…..you’ve gotta grow up sometime and give me some fucking grandchildren, dammit !! Oh, Christ, did I spill my tea….”
New member Katina Furr handed Elly a napkin to clean herself. She was new to the Funny Ladies Of The Comics, and was having second thoughts. All they seemed to do was sit around and drink tea laced with alcohol. Not that she was a prude about such things, but it got boring after awhile.
Christ, she missed Goldberg’s.
And a certain bartender.
After making polite excuses and goodbyes, Katina put on her jacket and scarf and made her way back to her apartment. There was a chill in the air. She walked past a rich drunk guy whose wallet was right there for the taking, he’d never know who pulled it…
Then she remembers that those days were over.
A rich dowager with pearls walked past. Just had to stumble across her….but. No. No. Have to keep naughty kitty inside.
Aw, c’mon.
No!
No one’s ever gonna know…
Dammit, I said No! I don’t do that anymore. It’s wrong.
Chickenshit.
Stop it, Cassandra….
Katina stopped into a nearby tavern for a glass of water. She cleaned off her square rimmed glasses, made sure her hair was pulled back, and headed out into the street again.
You’re gonna let me out, we both know that.
“ Shut up, Cassandra, “ Katina murmured to herself, feeling a deep burning shame. Mostly because even though the name on her driver’s license and her McGuffin Inc. Security Consultant pass said Katina Furr, that was not the name given to her when she was born at the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm.
For a second, she thought she could see Cassandra reflected in a nearby windowpane.
“ I wonder how Jamus and Edda are doing…”
After she put her fist through the glass, one or two passersby came to see if she needed help.
Not the kind you can offer, she thought.
After offering to pay the renter for damages, she ran back to her brownstone, paid for with a lifetime of ill gotten gains. Spectacularly ill gotten, she had to admit.
As she came up to her doorway, she noticed that someone had broken in ahead of her.
A lifetime of instinct took over. Katina treaded quietly to the kitchen, where she noticed a small figure seated at her kitchen table, eating and slurping what looked like this morning’s leftover oatmeal.
Slurp. Slurp.
“ Hello Cassandra. Got hungry waiting. Helped myself to some leftover oatmeal. Hope you don’t mind…”
Katina whispered Calvin’s name. “No…no, of course I don’t mind. And please…call me Katina. Um…do you want that heated up or anything?”
“ No need. Still slimy. Looks like it’s attacking me.”
Katina hung up her coat, never taking her eye off of Calvin, or Stupendous Man as he called himself. Christ, I’m gonna have to call Hobbes, she thought.
“So. Long time, no see, Calvin. I mean, Stupendous Man. How….how are you keeping?”
Stupendous Man tossed the badge on the kitchen table. “ Keeping from being grounded. So far. Take a look at this.”
Katina picked up the McCain badge. “ What’s this on the badge, is that some kind of sauce or something…”
“That’s right. Duck with orange sauce. Badge belonged to The Conservative. Blood too. He’s dead”
Katina looked back in horror. “Wait, you mean someone killed him?”
Stupendous Man pocketed some Oreo cookies from a cookie jar. “ Investigated routine homicide. Right wing political pundit named Mallard Fillmore. Seems he was The Conservative. Someone threw him out of a window. Twenty stories. “
Katina did the math, just like Slylock had. “ Let’s…let’s go down to my basement where we can talk this over. And you can use the rear exit. When you leave.” she said pointedly.
Katina and Calvin made their way down rickety stairs, to a basement which held more treasures than Arsene Lupin’s Needle Hollow. She claimed to have some Mapplethorpes and a few Warhols down here.
And two starships. Dick Tracy’s retired Space Coupe….and the infamous Tarzana Nights. Dust was everywhere.
“ Listen, about The Conservative….might it have been a political killing? He had enemies everywhere…”
Calvin sniffed. “ A normal human? Kill a special ops duck like The Conservative? Ridiculous. I think there’s a toon killer out there. How’s your friend Jamus doing these days?”
Katina’s eyes narrowed.
( OOooo…girl, he’s talkin’ shit about your man.)
“What does he have to do with this?”
“ Was a regular at Goldberg’s. Wrote the biography of the JGMM. Wrote bad things about The Conservative in it. References to his drinking habit.”
Katina got a little angry. “ Calvin, I don’t like what you’re implying…”
“ Just an observation. Anyway, must go now. People to see, thumbs to break”
Katina showed Stupendous Man to the basement door. “Yeah, it was good seeing you again , Calvin. We had some great times. Whatever happened to them?”
Calvin growled, “You quit.”
Katina sat down, badge in hand, and shuddered.
(Yaayy...we gonna par-taayyy)
End Of Chapter One