Aachoo Voo, Private Eye Episode Twenty-One Solved and Unsolved Mysteries

https://aachoovooprivateeye2024.blogspot.com/2024/07/aachoo-voo-private-eye-episode-twenty.html           link to Episode 20

 

 

 

Aachoo Voo, Private Eye

Episode 21

Solved and Unsolved Mysteries

My life was relatively quite quiet for a few months which gave me time to think about things and work on my files and still open cases. I closed some minor cases that were run-of-the-mill things that were almost too boring to deal with but I needed to put them to bed and get paid so I gritted my teeth and closed them. Cases like The Missing Cases of Shoelaces from Griffin's Shoe Store. Yawn. (It had been the gang of feral cats that still hung out in the alleys in our neighborhood. The one I had saved Weiner from.) 

What is it with cats and strings and stringy things? They certainly were sly and sophisticated in their thefts though. We found flashlights and floor plans of shoe stores as well as delivery schedules and small red wagons in their hideout. Hundreds of opened packages of shoe strings. balls of yarn big enough to choke a goat and dozens of half nibbled mouse carcasses and donuts of every variety. There was a poster of a cartoon mouse hanging on a wall inside the wall of McDo's Muffin and Doughnut Shop where I traced them to that had a bullseye drawn on it peppered with many little darts.

There were lots of cat beds made out of newspapers and old and new clothes all lined up in a row with little Persian rugs beside the beds and little teddy bears lying on them.  (Aha! Not so tough, eh Kitty Cats?) I took loads of photographs because who would have believed me otherwise? Griffin's got their shoelaces back in good condition except for the ones that had been braided into ladders and utility ropes. It took a full day to clean the stuff out and nail all the holes shut. That place looked like a luxury hotel for felines! I swear some of those beds had mink coverlets! And matching pillow shams!

Then there was the case of The Missing False Teeth (which I found under an old lady's bed for crying out loud, along with a Bible and six unpaired pink socks.) And there was the case that had baffled me to no end because I had been given absolutely no clues, no identifying pictures, no descriptions and had never even been told what it was that was missing!  I finally told the second elderly man who'd hired me to find something lost or stolen that I'd found his beloved but ancient missing whatchamacallit and put it back on his living room shelf and he seemed quite pleased with that news, paid me generously and commenced to search for something else gone missing that he could hire me to find. (New York City is a lonely place.) Bless his heart.

I'd also been contacted by Nick's friend Clyde who informed me that Nick had disappeared quite suddenly after his release from the last hospital. He had tended bar a few times but was not his old self. He seemed kind of depressed that all the kinks hadn't been worked out of his legs yet.  He put on a happy face but Clyde could tell that something just wasn't right. I felt terrible for him. He had been alright until I'd ruined his life. I hadn't meant to but I never meant to ruin any man's life, I just did in one way or another. I investigated things as best I could and spent many days and nights at Nick's Place talking to his friends and customers and following up leads. There were lots of lonely women around who missed him and his unique way of communicating telepathically. Eventually, I talked to someone who had talked to someone who had seen someone happen to see Nick down by the warehouse where his Grandfather Resko's magic equipment had been stored. 

I remembered Nick's stories about his grandparents and the way they appeared to vanish in that magic show cabinet and wondered if perhaps Nick had utilized it. So I set out to see if it could be found. Clyde and I searched every inch of that warehouse discovering all sorts of wondrous and magical and spooky things. At last we found the Vanishing Cabinet under layers of dusty sheets and magic show posters starring Nick's maternal grandfather and his lovely assistant/wife, Joy. We uncovered the 4x6 box and stood open mouthed in amazement. There was a shirt sleeve, a pant's leg and a shoe stuck in the door of the cabinet. We finally got the thing opened but that was all that was in it. Not the left sleeve or the left pant's leg or the left shoe, just the right ones. We looked at one another in fear as those items slid down and hit the floor. We then noticed a piece of white paper that said simply in Nick's flowery, unusual handwriting...............

 Gone to find my grandparents. But I'll be back. 

Nick never came back from parts unknown that anyone knows about and he was never seen again. Clyde took over running the club and made Jack Knife James his partner until Nick returned. So I didn't really solve that mystery or close that case but I darned sure tried! And just like in poor Andy's case, I never forgave myself. (Rest In Peace/Pieces, Nick! I'll save your shoe for you!) Then I took a break and went on vacation and came back with a lemur that I decided to named Popeye and he joined our happy menagerie at Lefevre Arms and  I loved him dearly. The parrot on the other hand, no. He stayed on his worst behavior with the lemur. He loved to startle the cute little critter at all hours of the day and night. One day I was afraid he'd actually make Popeye's big petrified eyes...well, pop out.

Then the most horrible thing happened. I was arrested, hauled down to Headquarters and charged with the unsolved murder of Si, the Shellac salesman!! After all that time I had almost forgotten about him and he barely crossed my mind except when I shopped for Shellac and refinishing products at Marshall's Hardware and Hat Emporium. I was still working on furniture in my spare time on occasion but only occasionally. There was a new guy working there that wore black horn rimmed glasses, a bow tie and seemed to know nothing about the business whatsoever. His name was Eugene. He kept his considerable nose buried in a bird watching book and let dishonest stealthy shoplifters walk out with coat pockets full of sandpaper, putty and hats. At least I didn't have to fend him off like I did Si but could shop and come and go unmolested. He didn't seem interested in anything that wasn't covered in feathers. I did miss the free delivery that Si had provided though.

"What is wrong with you guys?" I shouted as the cops half carried me out of my apartment that late Friday morning just as I was feeding my pets their brunch and making coffee. "At least let me put on some clothes!" But they were impatient and rustled me out to the patrol car in my bunny slippers and pink bathrobe. I bent to get in and looked up and there was the smiling face of the bleached blonde down the hallway. She waved her plump fingers at me and slammed the window. Things began to click into place. I was being framed. Out of petty jealousy and meanness. Framed! Like a third rate print of a badly executed imitation Picasso painting of a shoe on a sailboat.

Oh, I would fix her wagon!!!! "Just you wait, Missy!" I mumbled as the car sped down the street, sirens blasting. Of course everyone watching recognized me and I ducked my head in shame while the cop beside me patted my knee and smiled. I jerked away and said through clenched teeth, "I did not murder that salesman! You know I didn't! You have no evidence whatsoever!"  "We got circumstantial, baby. Lots of circumstantial. And rumors and witnesses and documents and photographs and a very angry wife!" Aha! I knew it!

I called MiMi and she hurried down and brought me some clothes and things I would need. Along with some things I would not need like a negligee and jewelry and perfume. "Take this back home right now MiMi, please." I pleaded in exasperation. "Why?" she drawled in her Cajun/Hillbilly accent. "Don't ye wanna look purty for ye mugshots?" "No, I do not!" I shouted. "In fact, I want you to bring me a pair of overalls, braid my hair up in pigtails and black my front teeth out!" I was so tired of law enforcement attention and side and full frontal mugshots! "Oh, I can't do that, babette." she said. "But don't worry about these coppers, honey, I'll protect ye from them critters! They won't lay an eyeball on ye when I get through with 'em!"

 And they didn't because MiMi had put the fear of God, Beelzebub and Hell Fire in them before she left, very disappointed that they would not allow her to bail me out. This time. "Please don't tell Mother!" I begged as they escorted her away. "I won't, Cherie." she promised but it was too late. It was all over the mid afternoon news, the papers, the television, the radio, on the streets and the tongues of gossipers everywhere by the time she hurried herself back home.  EXTRA!!! NEWS FLASH!!  Aachoo Voo Private Eye  Arrested for Murder  the headlines screamed and the cops said they were afraid she was gonna fry for it! Fry! And not in a cast iron skillet with gravy and potatoes and homemade biscuits and fresh corn and peach cobbler. My Lord! I had only been arrested for twenty minutes and already I was starving for MiMi's good ole down home homemade sweet Southern Cajun cooking and sick of prison food! I would have to ask her to cook me up a mess of something with nail files in it so I could break out of there. Geez Louise!!  Rotting in jail sure made a girl go crazy, I kid you not!

After they had fingerprinted me from head to toe, they then took my fingerprints and twenty two mug shots, including several of me with the arresting officers, their bosses and their bosses' bosses. Then they lectured me, read me some scriptures, tried to get me to confess to that crime and several other unsolved crimes and just before actually taking me to a jail cell, they looked it up in their cop manuals to see if there was any such thing as an official legalized standard procedure allowing them to spank me. Thankfully there was not. I clutched my black lace negligee to my chest (they had let me keep it when MiMi wouldn't take it home.) (They had tried to make me wear it but I'd refused.) The girls of the night in the cell next to mine offered me all kinds of costume jewelry and hose and used lipsticks, etc for the thing but I put my hands over my ears and shut them out.

 I climbed into the bottom bunk of the bunk bed screwed to the wall and covered myself with my lace gown and a thin gray blanket. I cried a little bit because although I had been brought in on false charges many times before, I had never been actually jailed. I worried about my pets though MiMi would take care of them. I especially worried about facing the parrot if I ever got out of there after all the times he had taunted me and prophesied that I would one day end up in prison. I couldn't bear the thought of that. I couldn't bear the thought of my mother 'fainting' an average of ten times with her well manicured finger pointing at me and the multitudinous (?) scoldings and threats and the "Oh my Heavens! oh my Goodness! We're ruined! I can never show my face in public agains!" that I knew were coming.

Much to her surprise though, my arrest and notoriety brought her great popularity and an air of glamour and intrigue. As well as dozens of Society Page photographs going and coming from balls and charity events, stepping out of limos to the flashbulbs of news hungry photogs. 'The Mother of Notorious Private Investigator Aachoo Voo'  they called her, 'Arrested on Charges of Cold Blooded Murder in The Gruesome Death of Well-Known Shellac Salesman' etc etc etc. She was invited to all the best soirees, parties, banquets and gallery openings but never once did they ever film her coming out of a grocery store or a dry cleaners! Patricia Paramore Voo had her moment in the spotlight at last, her fifteen minutes of fame as someone would later coin the phrase and her hour of misguided glory as it were...and all because of me. The perpetual black sheep of the family. (Not counting MiMi and my brother.)

As I laid on the hard bunk pondering my misfortune, I thought about Tom B. and T Wayne and all of my friends who would be disappointed that I had been arrested but not shocked. I thought about my father and Poppi Voo and how they would probably blame themselves for never discipling me when I was a child but had only encouraged my hi-jinks. I felt bad for them. I thought about Nick and Andy and Lance. Especially Lance. A week before my arrest, Lance had taken me out on the town for dinner, dancing and a show. It was Lee Lee's closing night before she headed off to Hollywood and we had gone to see her and celebrate her success and frankly, we had painted the town red. And purple. We got back to Lance's place at three in the morning and slow danced for an hour or so and fell asleep in each other's arms. (Which can be hazardous if you're standing up and still dancing.) 

We capped the night off with lots of kisses and sighs and as I made my way off the elevator and past the bleached blonde's apartment at five, her door opened. I tried uselessly to straighten my hair and un-smear my lipstick as she asked sleepily "Have you seen Lancey? I haven't seen him in ages and I need to tell him...." And that's where I messed up. I was half asleep and I said to her, "He's gone to sleep. Don't wake him up." She glared at me with pure hatred and slammed the door in my face. And I was convinced as I lay there on that awful, hard bunk bed crying in my pink bathrobe and bunny slippers that that was the reason I was here in the slammer right now! I would get to the bottom of this, I vowed. I would get out of here and strangle that woman and I would clear my name! So help me.......I......!  But then the top bunk of that bed came crashing down on me holding a large still sleeping female felon, which gave me a  concussion, knocked me out and I was off to la-la-land. A place I knew intimately.

To be continued in Episode 22...............

👇💚  link to Episode 22

https://aachoovooprivateeye2024.blogspot.com/2024/07/aachoo-voo-private-eye-episode-22-tom-b.html

Special recognition goes out to...

James Ray aka Jack Knife James

Tom B. and T Wayne Elliott    

P McDo

Clyde Miraculous

Resko the Great and Joy

Eugene

Nick and Andy

S. Griffin

Lee Lee, the Blue Flame

and Weiner the cat 

(Why? Because I felt like it) 

Professor Lance Strait

                         as Lance (Tony Curtis)

               

Cleo Moore as The Bleached blonde

   Marjorie Main as MiMi Voo

                                       Patricia Paramore Voo, my mother

                                       played by Phyllis Calvert

Si, the Shellac salesman

                                               Craig Stevens playing the part of Si

P McDo Muffin Man

and DoNUT maker

                         And me........me  me  me  me! Always.... Me  

as Aachoo Voo, Private Eye

innocent though incarcerated prisoner

Aachoo Voo, Private Eye Episode Fifteen..Mobsters, Moola and All That Jazz.....Another point of view

https://aachoovooprivateeye2024.blogspot.com/2024/07/aachoo-voo-private-eye-episode-fourteen.html   link to Episode 14

Aachoo Voo, Private Eye

Episode 15

Mobsters, Moola and All That Jazz

Nick was still in rehab. He was going to be in there for quite some time. His body still looked like an accordion just beginning to unfold. His handsome face was unscarred, unblemished. Thank God for that. I felt just about as low as a snake's belly as MiMi would say, for the part I had played in his un-foreseen accident with the folding stairs outside my apartment building. Of all the crazy things that had happened to my dates and love interests, that had been the craziest! If only I could go back to that night and had just waited two hours for the elevator to start running and then given up and walked up the inside stairs to my apartment like I usually did! If only! Nick had been so nice to walk me home in the rain from his pub. It had been romantic and sweet in a mystifying way because he was simply a mystifying man.

I had been semi-infatuated with him for some time as had every woman who'd laid eyes on him or imbibed one of his special concoctions or been the target of his unvoiced seductions. As far as I knew, he had played with the affections of many hopeful young/old/still breathing dames but hadn't walked any of them home but me. I think he wanted to see if my dangerous reputation was half as exciting as he'd heard it was. He was curious. Especially after that historic Saturday night when approximately twenty-eight of my past dates and one day or one night boyfriends had shown up at his place all nursing broken hearts or ribs or whatnots and looking to get sauced. 

They were probably also hoping to get a glimpse of me (from afar) as they knew I sometimes ended up there after a case or a perplexing run in with detectives who were always trying to find me guilty of something stupid. Which I was, but I didn't think being stupid was illegal, just stupid. I couldn't help it. For the most part I think they just liked taking and looking at my mugshots. I finally got suspicious after they started asking me to put on fresh lipstick and unbutton my blouse. And I ask you, how many cops did it take to take a side shot and a face forward? Plus, they never asked me to hold a sign in front of me! (Mugshot taking was followed by a doughnut and coffee reception in the precinct meeting room. Invitation only.) Sheesh!

The other gumshoes in my circle of gumshoes thought it was funny that the girl that was only out to solve crimes usually ended up being charged with crimes. At least until they fingerprinted me and took some new photos. They usually let me go after long, tedious interrogations that only ended with them learning new swear words I had picked up from the parrot or MiMi and me learning how loudly their wives could scream on the phone at half past midnight as their pot roasts dried out on the stove. Johnny, (we called him "Ooh, Johnny" because that's how dames usually addressed him, made it his goal in life to tease and torment me about my love life, arrest record and the fact that I had solved every case he'd ever been hired to work on while sitting behind my desk and just putting the facts together while filing my nails and reading notes on his unsolved mysteries. I didn't even have to try. And he couldn't stand it. 

He couldn't find a clue if it jumped into his lap. And believe me, lots of them had. He was darkly handsome, suave in a way not easily defined and thought he was God's gift to women. Some thought he was. (I thought he was a toad I'd never kiss.) George usually took my side and defended me the best he could but most of the P.I.s cajoled me cruelly or good-naturedly when we met in bars or Gumshoe Conventions. The mean ones who treated me cruelly were either guys I had not given any kind of chance or were guys I had given a chance and they had taken it. And I refuse to go into detail about that. There were good private dicks and there were lousy private dicks. I just wish they'd come up with a new word for private detectives. I was all grown up and my mother still washed my mouth out with soap if I said that word in her presence. I had never dared date or bring any guy home to meet my parents named Dick for that reason alone. It would have been humiliating for all concerned.

After my experience working for Big david or rather his sister Prudence, word had gotten round that I was "the dame to deal with" in both crime solving and crime commiting circles. Mobsters loved me, which made me nervous and cops loved me, which made me nervous but they kept me busy and employed in between mundane everyday cases like finding lost cats and wayward husbands or wives and solving mysteries that entailed "who did what to whom and who stole what from where." Crimes and mysteries always involved the letter "W." That was just a fact. Like mobsters involved money and the other "M" word, you know the one............ Malarkey.

The thing about detectives and mobsters that I found fascinating was how they tended to dress alike. Sharp suits, fancy hats and trench coats. I don't know who started the trend but the mobsters' suits tended to be sharper and more expensive. They were usually custom made by tailors bought and paid for and petrified to make mistakes like crooked seams and buttonless button holes. I supposed they added in all sorts of hidden pockets and places to hide guns, knives and phone numbers of public officials. I daresay not too many detectives could afford private tailors or found themselves in the good graces of any pubic officials worth knowing or calling. 

The police detectives tended to look down upon private detectives for several reasons, none of which I shall go into here. Okay, maybe one. Most of us worked alone. We didn't have angry sergeants or supervisors breathing down our necks, we could sleep till noon and we could wear evening gowns to work if the occasion called for it. Well, I did anyway. There weren't a lot of female private you-know-whats. I had heard rumors about a cop that worked out of Burglary and Stick-em-Ups who wore evening gowns and favored gold lame' but he claimed it was only when he was working undercover in a private club for extremely ugly women. I don't know. Who knows? And I don't care to know.

Mobsters were a special breed of men. They loved their mothers, they went to church and they did reprehensible, despicable things without thinking twice about it. There were all sorts of mobsters or gangsters if you prefer that word. White ones, black ones, Oriental, Italian, you name it. We had them in the Big Apple. They were celebrities of sorts. Like Lipps, the movie monster mobster  (say that four times fast) I had found in the alley. People loved him. Well, except for maybe two people. I had never liked him but that's just me. I hated movie monsters. They scared me. Why I went to see them at theaters I'll never know but I did. And I always went straight over to MiMi Voo's to sleep in her guest room for a week with Beulah until I stopped having nightmares. I felt safe with Beulah. A chicken for Pete's Sakes! My deepest, darkest most humiliating secret that no one will ever pry out of me under the hottest lights and the most tortuous long interrogations or threats to call my mother. I would sooner die than reveal that.

Big david was at the top of the mobster heap. He and an equally scary but equally smooth talker with the un-pronounceable moniker of (you might want to sit down and take a drink of something while I prepare my brain and tongue for this.) Giovanni Alphonso LaMacho Giancarlo Genovia Luciano Bonnano de Flippi, Jr. (I think I spelled that correctly.) Aka Uncle Alph. He was nobody's uncle but everybody called him that because when Giovanni Alphonso LaMacho...etc etc etc told you to do something, you just did it. He thought it was cute so everybody thought it was cute. And you could continue with your breathing and so forth. In fact, in order to become a bonafide member of Uncle Alph's gang, you had to either be born into the family or go through an extensive initiation that included saying and spelling Uncle Alph's full name as written on his abnormally long birth certificate. He came from a very large family and his parents didn't want to leave anyone out when they named their first born son. Both maternal and paternal sides of the family were known to hold centuries old grudges and they didn't settle feuds with fist fights or name calling. 

One of the toughest gangsters in New York City was a darker skinned fellow called Jack Knife James otherwise known in various circles as Evil Genius and The Horn Man. He was sharper than the blade he carried in style and dress and smarter than Einstein on his best day. He also played jazz trumpet and could disguise himself and sneak in and play in any club with any band in the world. Benny Goodman's, for example. Once for kicks, he'd played the annual Policemen's Ball with an all policeman jazz ensemble even though he had approximately thirty-six current warrants against him at the time. As per his name:  Genius. He could make a trumpet cry, they said of him. He could make a big man cry. He could make a big man cry while playing the trumpet. He could make a...well, you get the picture. He was big and bad but he loved kids and kittens and a pretty brunette named Zelma Lee. Word was that she didn't love him back and that's what made him mean but he never gave up pursuing her or rescuing kittens or let that interfere with his mobstering.

Which brings me back around to....wherever I was when I started this whole thing. Nick's Pub! Poor Nick had been lying in bed worrying about his famous/infamous watering hole and what to do about it while he recovered. He was at his wit's end when an old friend named Clyde Miraculous showed up with a solution. Clyde had retired... er ..been fired from running a famous club up in Harlem for a few months on a trial basis and was on his way to sunnier shores when he'd heard about Nick's accident. Wanting to help out his old army buddy, he agreed to run Nick's place until he got back on his feet. Nick was delighted. Clyde was one of those people that you never could tell where he hailed from....... Alabama, Argentina or Africa. He was multi-cultural and multi-talented. He could do anything, fit in anywhere and he loved smoky blue jazz music more than anything in the world. Except for his favorite cousin who was the sole supporter and pride of the whole Miraculous family and all of it's branches. His cousin was Jack Knife James. 

Nick was laid up for months. I sent him flowers and cheese sandwiches but I kept my distance. I tried to visit once but the look on his handsome face stopped me in my tracks so I blew him a kiss and left the gifts with a nurse. In the long interim, strange things happened to him that he never foresaw. He lost his magical abilities and propensities. He lost his power to seduce women with his thoughts. He lost his mind reading and mind controlling and he also lost his grandfather's pocket watch. The one young Grandpa Resko had used in his vaudeville magic show to hypnotize his wife, Joy into marrying him and grown men into believing they were cows in the Foreign Legion. The name of the act was The Riveting Reskos. (After his sudden marriage to the lovely audience member.) Before that, it was just Resko. His grandparents had vanished on stage one evening in the old Vanishing Cabinet act the day after Nick turned 21, never to be seen again. Nick cherished the watch and kept it with him always. But somewhere between the ambulance and the emergency hospital, it had disappeared just like his mother's amazing parents. 

That vanishing act had made headlines all around the world and the mystery had never been solved. Nick kept his grandfather's tools of the magic trade in a secure location and studied the tricks and illusions in his spare time, mastering most of them. However, he had yet to learn the secret of and to the Vanishing Cabinet. That one appeared to be true magic.

Before his release to leave, Nick had been hearing things about the "hot new jazz club" in town. The-Place-To-Be. The bar everyone wanted to be caught dead in. He was worried because it sounded like it was in his small pub's neighborhood. He didn't need the competition. He couldn't wait to get the run down from Clyde. Clyde had promised to pick him up the afternoon the doctors had determined he had recovered enough to walk again and chew gum. He was cautioned sternly to stay away from stairs and to keep off his feet for a while. That wouldn't be too difficult since he mostly just sat on a stool behind the bar and had stimulating mental conversations with attractive women. But there would be no more of that. He'd tried his best mind control and silent seduction on all the nurses at the various facilities he'd been recuperating in to no avail. No avail at all!!! It was frustrating and a little bit horrifying. 

Few people knew how extremely shy and introverted Nick really was and what had led him to learn his grandfather's magic tricks and mental manipulations in his awkward teenage years. He had become so adept at it that it frightened him sometimes but he kept a cool exterior. His grandfather had seen him in action before he'd entered that cabinet and dematerialized for the last time and he'd been amazed, amused and a little bit jealous. Nick wondered if it were possible to one day find a girlfriend without resorting to mentalism and magic beans. He didn't know. He could only hope. Women seemed to find him boring when he tried to talk to them verbally. Except for Aachoo Voo. But that woman scared the living daylights out of him! She was the reason for all of this. Losing his health, job, tan, paranormal powers and very nearly, his will to live. Did he dare go near her again? That had been an incredible kiss and she fascinated him but was she worth dying for? 

Clyde was late. It was getting dark and Nick was getting impatient and about to go back inside and attempt to call him when he saw that flashy car Clyde loved to brag about pull up to the curb. "My man!" Clyde greeted him as he hopped out, opened the passenger side door and hurried to help Nick into the car.  It was slow going. His bones were still crunchy. "So sorry I'm running late." he said, "But I had some last minute things to take care of." "That's okay." Nick assured him and cleared his throat to begin asking questions about the pub and the new place everyone was buzzing about but Clyde waved them off and said in a low voice, "Listen, Nick. I got some things I need to tell you, man. I don't know how you're gonna take 'em but man, things have been happening!" Nick held his breath and steeled himself for some bad news. Like, the pub had burned down bad news. Like, the pub had been quarantined because of Black Plague bad news. Clyde kept quiet like he was trying to find the words to spill the bad news but couldn't find any so they drove on in silence. There didn't seem to be any thoughts in Clyde's mind to read so Nick just leaned back and fell asleep, fearing the worst.

 He was awakened by bright lights, the sound of loud music and the giggles of happy women. He rubbed his eyes and tried to get his bearings but the scene seemed a little bit too surreal to be real. Still dreaming, evidently. "Nick, my friend, welcome home!" Clyde beamed, throwing open the car door and helping Nick to his hesitant feet. There was a red carpet there for him to walk on, lined on both sides by excited people of all shapes, sizes and colors. There was a doorman in uniform holding the door open to a freshly painted and newly remodeled building that boasted flashing NICK'S signs all over it. But that was nothing! When he stumbled inside in total disbelief, there was a stage and a packed house and the best bluesy jazz band he'd ever heard in his life, fronted by none other than the man himself, Jack Knife James, The Horn Man, Evil Genius and second cousin to Clyde Miraculous, up there making grown men cry with his moaning trumpet! He couldn't believe it! It was too much to handle for a crumpled man. But it appeared to be true! The Hottest New Place In Town was his own former lowly, lonely little pub! Nick had no idea what to do or say so he just folded up and fainted. 

It was one of the happiest moments of Clyde's life even though he had no idea what Nick was going to say when he came to. He had certainly been surprised at all the changes. Whether he was thrilled or not was another matter. Maybe he should have prepared his friend but he'd just been so excited to be given responsibility for something again. Like the Cotton Club. Up in Harlem. Oh, my Lord, the changes he had made to that place! The absolutely unappreciated changes he had made to that place!!!! Threatened and beaten to within an inch of his life by angry owners and investors! And fired like a dishwasher with a mound of broken plates! (That he had previously been.) He wondered if he should wait for Nick to wake up or just go get in his car and leave town right then.

And introducing Jack Knife James, the mobster

being played by James Ray.......

who is being played by.......Rex Ingram, great actor from the 40s

 

    James Ray, brilliant writer, former military,

    comedian, chef, father and big truck

    driving son of a gun............

            

                                                  The beautiful Dona Drake as.....

                                                   the lovely Zelma Lee

Special mentions and thanks for playing along to: 

Uncle Alph, Nick, David "Big david"... Prudence, Resko

Clyde Miracle    James Ray,  Dona Drake , Rex Ingram

Aunt Zelma Lee (in memory of) Joy, Ooh Johnny

any poor slob named Dick (sorry)    Beulah, Marjorie Main,

Benny Goodman, The Cotton Club, Johnny/George 

and of course Pete. (of for Pete's Sakes fame) whoever the heck he is....

and mobsters everywhere!!!!!! (Don't hurt me!) 

                Smoky Jazz by Matthew Pablo

 

To be continued in Episode 16.......

https://aachoovooprivateeye2024.blogspot.com/2024/07/aachoo-voo-private-eye-episode-sixteen.html     link to Episode 16

Aachoo Voo, Private Eye Episode 11 Lipps (now with 99% fewer typos.......edited)

https://aachoovooprivateeye2024.blogspot.com/2024/07/aachoo-voo-private-eye-episode-ten.html

link to Episode 10

Aachoo Voo, Private Eye

Episode Eleven

Lipps💋     

He was a tough looking hombre. On the flashy, fleshy side. He wore a cheap looking expensive suit that hadn't come with the twelve bullet holes so artistically embroidered into it's fabric. He wore a bad guy hat pulled low over his wide forehead and had three chins. He didn't appear to be anybody anybody could love until I fished a wallet out of his pocket that had eleven hundred dollars in it, a piece of gum and a picture of an older woman that looked just like him only meaner. She also had three chins. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he had been loved. There was no ID, no name to go with the face. There was a tattoo on his upper right arm that said "Mother" and one below it that I couldn't quite make out but looked like a pair of lips. (Turns out, it was the notorious "Lipps" Lipperson, one of Big david's mobster pals and part time movie monster. He was known for scaring little kids and old ladies by pressing his lips against random windows when he wasn't busy extorting and cracking skulls and partying with Lon Chaney and the monster crowd. The only monster among them that didn't have to wear makeup.)

I had gone out to the alley to shoo off the gang of loudly caterwauling cats that were driving me crazy that late afternoon as I was organizing my files into four separate piles. There was the Closed Cases File, the Open Cases File, The six inch thick Misc. Hospital/ And or Medical Bill File and the Former Boyfriends File that in all too many cases overlapped with the Misc. Hospital/And or Medical Bill File. Which was sad, really but not unusual for me. It was an all too common theme that had run throughout my life. Starting back with my first date, a double date with my friend Nina and her Junior High romeo, Jeffrey. We had gone ice skating and then to get hot chestnuts roasting over an open fire and well, let's just say cold sharp skate blades and open fire and leave it at that, shall we? My date, P. J. Jamison- Herkimer, Jr. (of the Jamison-Herkimer Country Club for The Snobbish) went on to become a soprano in an all male chorus and an inveterate life long hater of women. Oops! I digressed again, didn't I? 

As twilight began to fall on the city and the hoodlum cats scattered in all directions, I stumbled upon the body lying between a deserted fire barrel and several emptied bottles of alcohol in assorted flavors all lined up just so. I was used to stumbling but not over bodies wearing hats and Mother tattoos and still under suspicion in the Si the Shellac salesman case, I groaned and beat a hasty retreat. Little did I know that I was being spied upon from an upper floor window covered with gaudy purple and pink curtains or that I would soon be questioned by Yettiman and Coyote, the Homicide detectives who seemed to delight in trying to connect me to every unsolved case in seven states. One bum rap after another. (Thank goodness my parents never found out. MiMi made sure of that.) I was a detective myself for crying out loud, not a perpetrator! Well, not on purpose.

But murder? I'd never intentionally tried to hurt anyone in my life! And I certainly didn't perpetrate on Si (though a little assault and battery had sometimes crossed my mind) and I didn't even know this palooka! Why did these things continue to happen to me? Why did the coppers love to haul me in and take hundreds of mugshots of me, grill me forever under hot lights and then let me go in the wee hours to wearily make my way down to Nick's Pub to drown my sorrows in one of his concoctions that were delicious but lowered the I.Q. instantly upon the partaking? And who the hell am I talking to?!

"How you doing, Miss Voo?" Nick murmured seductively without moving his lips as he poured burgundy colored liquid into a tall glass and added something that had been boiling in a cauldron under the bar. He threw in a lime wedge and a vanilla bean for good measure and handed it to me, never taking his eyes off mine as I draped myself over a bar stool and buried my left hand in a bowl of peanuts without being aware of it. He cleared his throat and I withdrew the hand, blushing and threw back half of the glass's contents without stopping.

"Careful, Cheri," he cautioned as his eyebrows danced across his forehead. "That's a mighty powerful brew there. We wouldn't want you losing your inhibitions, now would we?" I looked to see if the words had come out of his mouth or out of my imagination but could not discern the source in my exhausted state. "Don't worry about it." I sighed, "I don't have any left. They extracted every emotion I had down at Homicide." The eyebrows shot up. "Homicide? Not again, surely!" "Oh, yeah," I answered. " I made the mistake of discovering a famous body this afternoon and they took me in again." "Not as famous as your body. I'll bet." he smiled and refilled my glass. On impulse, I made myself think of alligators down in Voo Bayou and "see you later" and he wrote down "After a while, Crocodile." on a napkin and pushed it toward me and I tried not to faint. 

"Let me call you a cab." I thought I heard him say just as I was thinking, "I need to call a cab. I'm beat, And these drinks have gone to my head, down to my tummy, across to my kidneys and down to my toes." I knew that because they had gone numb and I couldn't stand up. The muscular barman caught me just as I fell and swooped me up like an eagle on the wing catching a bunny. I looked up into his curious eyes and suddenly heard the sound of jungle drums and had a vision of myself dancing wildly around a blazing fire wearing nothing but bone ankle bracelets and a loin cloth. It soon passed and he grinned at me and sat me down upon the bar and began turning off lights. "Better yet, let me take you home." he whispered. In fact, I was positive he had whispered because I'd felt his hot breath on my neck. But when I looked up, he was clear across the room pulling on a trench coat and locking up the back door that led to the alley. 

My brows knitted together in puzzlement. Was this guy a magician? How did he do that? Where was he from? I made a mental note to do some deep research on this character as soon as I could. He was inexplicable. A mystery. And I loved mysteries. (But later I discovered that I could not read the handwriting on the mental note and shelved the project at least until I knew if he was going to survive.) Andy had recovered from me somewhat but had gone to Tennessee to live with a relative that he refused to name. I wished him well but I missed his sweet, innocent face and the way he called me Ducky. For the rest of my life, I couldn't look at a high heel shoe or a Marx Brother without thinking of him. But I'm getting ahead or is that behind myself. Sometimes my suitors' faces just became one big blur covered in bandages.

"You wanna go get some hen fruit and Joe? You look hungry." He crossed the room and pulled me down off the bar into his arms. I eyed him hard and said, "You're the one that looks hungry. I'm just....hiccup...sleepy. I have to check on the menagerie. Hiccup." He looked amused and I suddenly had a mental image of the parrot tucking all the critters into bed and shushing them and turning off the lights before settling down on the little chaise lounge in his messy birdcage. I rubbed my eyes and yawned. "What was in that drink?" I gasped, laying my head against his shoulder. " I'm seeing things."  He squeezed me and slow walked me to the door of the bar. "Would you like to see me?" he asked or didn't ask. I didn't know. I was hearing voices too.

"I don't wanna hurt you." I slurred softly as we stepped out into the gently falling rain accented by distant thunder. "You won't hurt me." he intoned, opening up an umbrella. "Let's walk. Do you good." And we headed off towards my apartment/office/laundry mat/cafe/charity/inner city zoo complex. "No, seriously, I might hurt you, kill you, even. I'm a dangerous woman." I yawned. And I said no more as his lips shut my mouth with a kiss. Time passed. Clocks chimed. The sun rose and set and rose again. It snowed. Then it rained harder. There was music. Violins, I think. And somewhere in the distance, a rooster crowed. (A rooster? In New York City?) 

But then I remembered MiMi's pet chicken, Beulah that she'd smuggled into her and Poppi's little apartment after they'd gone "Damned Yankee" as she put it. Anything was possible, I supposed. Especially if there was a Cajun involved. "Are you Cajun or Creole?" I asked Nick as I caught my breath. "Are you from voodoo country down south?" "No. Not that I'm aware of." he answered softly. "But you never know." He put one arm around my waist and pulled me closer as we sauntered toward the dawn. It was a sweet unexpected interlude and I was happily, sleepily enjoying it until we made the mistake of climbing up to my apartment using the outside stairs, avoiding the broken elevator and trying in vain to be quiet.

And all was fine until I handed Nick my keys in the rain and they slid out of his wet fingers still holding onto the umbrella and he valiantly tried to catch them before they plunged through the metal steps. Fortunately....oh, but always followed by unfortunately...I grabbed for them at the same time, stomping down on the key fob with my shoe and saving the day. Throwing my key filled hand up in the air in victory, I struck Nick on the side of the head. He lost his balance and went rolling down the wet three part metal staircase which decided to fold itself up as they have the capacity to do and there I was on the small landing on the top part and there he was on the folded up second part with his head and shoulders protruding from one side and the rest of his body protruding from the other. A man just arriving at his early morning news stand saw the commotion and hurried to jump and pull down the bottom half of the staircase but he was just too short so he rushed off to find a policeman while I rushed inside to call an ambulance.

"I tried to warn you!" I cried as they unfolded him and put him on a gurney and rolled him over to the back of the hospital vehicle. He just stared up at me, tears forming in his eyes and I heard him say quite clearly in a voice that had an odd sort of indecipherable accent, "So, it's true. Everything they've told me about you. It's all true!" And he burst into tears, crying, "You are dangerous! You have powers! Great powers!  My God, you're wonderful!" And they took him away babbling loud enough to be heard three blocks away. I guess you could say he finally found his voice. The seduction of the female would have to be done the old fashioned way, not by the mental but by the vocal. Gee, I hoped they could get him sorted out. I so enjoyed his creative libations and especially that kiss. Sigh. The parrot snickered as I walked in the side door for he'd witnessed the whole thing. Then he softened and muttered, "Poor kid. You're gonna die an old maid."

Special thanks to the following:

Lon Chaney, Sr. and Jr.

Bela Lugosi

and

Nina G

Jeffrey Chatham, and Nick Trevnor

from MeWe. GPlus, etc

To be continued in Episode 12