Posted 05-07-23
THE BIG SWITCH
By Christopher Leeson
Chapter 10
The Narrative of D.C. Callahan, continued
Martin and me burned rubber all the way to Hotel Franco. I ran into the lobby, leaving Martin to drive around looking for a free parking space. Fred, the old man tending the desk, gave me the fish eye when I came in. It was his job to keep hookers off the premises, except for those who paid him five dollars per trick. I guess it was the handcuffs I wearing that immediately gave him the wrong idea about me.
"Has D.C. Callahan come in yet?" I asked breathlessly.
He was giving me that kind of look. "You just missed him."
"Just missed him? Was anyone with him?"
He must have been in a good mood, since he offered me a little info on the house.
"Two lady friends."
"Did did he leave with someone else, a young black lady?"
He looked impatient when he said, "He came in and went out with the same two."
Martin must have found free parking in record time because just then he came in through the street door. "Are we too late?" he asked, winded.
"They've already been here and gone," I told him. "It sounds like they didn't get Schitz -- or she's still up there, minus a few quarts of blood."
That had been a joke, but it made me realize that any murder committed in my room might be pinned on me!
"Might Schitz be that black girl in the red dress?" Fred asked.
I leaned forward over his desk. "Do you know where she is?"
"I have to keep the guests' confidences," he said.
He was speaking a language I understood. Freddy boy was chiseling for a bribe.
"She wasn't a hotel guest," I pointed out. "She was Mr. Callahan's personal guest."
That distinction didn’t seem to hacked it and Fred went back to sorting the hotel mail.
"Give him a fin," I told Martin.
"A fin?" Pard echoed. "What am I going to eat on tonight?"
When I shot him my "Don't be such a tightwad" look, he saw reason.
"Oh, all right," he sighed and a few seconds later slapped his endangered specie down on the counter top.
The clerk stuffed the bill into his shirt pocket and said: "She went out two hours ago -- just a little after Mr. Callahan left. She was accompanied by a gentleman named B.J. Waters."
"Blackjack Waters, the pimp?" Martin asked perplexedly.
The old man sniffed. "I don't think he ever mentioned his occupation, and I never put much stock in gossip."
"Did Callahan say anything before he left?" I asked.
“When?”
“The last time you saw him.”
"He asked where the black girl went."
"And you told him?"
"Of course. She was his guest."
"Do you know where B.J. lives?"
"Sorry, no," replied the clerk.
I shifted toward Martin. "What do we do now?"
"Check the phone book?" he suggested.
“Phone books? What are you, an archaeologist? Phone books were buried in the same grave where the deep-sixed the public phone!”
I glanced back to Fred. "May I have the key to 314."
He frowned. "I can't do that without Mr. Callahan's permission."
"I'm --" Again, I clammed up just in time. "I'm...Mr. Callahan's personal secretary. Martin can vouch for that."
Old Fred took another gander at my legs and cleavage. "Is that so?" he asked coolly.
"I know what you're thinking," I said stiffly, "but I'm wearing a disguise for an undercover assignment."
“That’s the honest truth, Fred," Martin pipped in.
Fred turned his skeptical eye upon my pard. "I'd like to help, sir, but it would be a highly irregular."
That excuse didn’t cut it. "Martin, do you have another fiver?" I asked.
"No, just chump change."
"How much?"
He dug about a dollar and a quarter from his pants pocket. The clerk appeared unimpressed.
But I’m a P.I. and that means I know how to think on my feet. Leaning in closer to give Fred a good look at my credentials, I whispered: "I like being looked at,” I said, doing a Marilyn. “If you loan us the key very temporarily, you can do more than just look."
"Sheila!" Martin blurted.
"Stifle it, Dewitt! This is an emergency."
Without going into detail, what happened next wasn't exactly the sort of thing that I’d like to put into my diary, but taking one for the team was the right way to make the creep fork over my the room key.
Once upstairs, I saw no sign that Schitz had ever been there. There was quite a bit of disorder, but I could blame the three rhinoceroses from Beyond the Rim for that. It was my hunch that the pimp must have intercepted the Congressman even before she'd reached my door. That left the question as to why she’d ducked out with him? Had she been forced?
If I was going to catch up with my missing body, Martin and I had to beat the aliens to Blackjack's place because otherwise Schitz was dead meat. She was my only link we had to the aliens. Besides, I belong to the World Class Booty Protection agency and I wouldn’t like to see that kind of body go bye-bye. But before I could play the action hero part I had to get the cuffs off. I knew where I kept the key, but I had to put on an act so that Martin wouldn’t figure out my real identity. I pretended to search randomly before "luckily" finding them in a drawer.
Martin meanwhile, was looking for evidence my refrigerator. "What’s the matter?” I asked. “You hungry? There's a pack of beef jerky in there."
He eyed me curiously. "How did you know that?"
A tough question, but I used to watch Topper reruns so I knew what to say. "Because -- Because D.C. mentioned this morning that...that he had a pack of beef jerky in the fridge. What did you suppose? That I'm a mind reader? Or that I've been here before?"
As soon as those words were out, I was sorry. I should have made Sheila confess that she’d been having a torrid affair with me. That would have been status, man. But I couldn’t worry about one little slip up; I had more important things on my mind.
Martin grabbed the dried meat and the two of us chowed down. I also did a number on my box of crackers, downing their every glorious crumb with Coke chaser before digging into my address book. B.J. had a reputation as a dunker and so I figured that some of the mugs running floating crap games locally would know how to reach him. Otherwise, that girl in the mirror was going to be keeping watch on me for a long, long time. The odds were that after the aliens wrapped up their woman hunt, they’d probably go deep undercover and that would be all she wrote, at least as far as I was concerned.
Chapter 11
The General Narrative, continued
Suspended with her nipple clamps still in place, Ginger Spice Schitz could only stand suspended in the laundry room with gritted teeth, toughing things out. While she was feeling miserable, that sleazy music kept blaring into her brain and was actually starting to sound like one hell of a song. Also, she was beginning to think that B.J. looked awfully cute – in manly sort of way.
I'm a ho,
Ho Ho Ho!
I'm a ho,
Ho Ho Ho!
All these young businesswomen wearing black clothes and gray,
They never seem happy when they get their own way.
This one chick's called Sammy and another's Carrie;
Not a woman among 'em doesn't wish she were me!
Suddenly Schitz heard someone yelling: "B.J.! Take these things off me! I can't stand it! You can be my sweet man! I don't care!"
It took a couple of seconds for the Congressman to realized that the shouting had come out of her own mouth. What, exactly, had she just consented to?
Ginger heard the pimp's approaching footsteps and, groaning, started fighting to escape her manacles again, but it was too late. The doorknob turned and, when the portal swung open, Blackjack was standing there. But he wasn't alone this time. Behind him stood a man and a woman -- and she knew the man!
"Callahan!" Schitz blurted. "Get me out of here!"
The P.I., wearing a rumpled trench coat, stepped around the pimp, saying, "It wasn't easy finding you, Miss Schitz, but you'll be all right now. We're taking you with us." He scowled at Blackjack. "Get her loose, you bum, and make it snappy!"
"Okay, okay, sir," B.J. sniveled, all his brashness gone. He came up to the nude girl and plucked the alligator clamps off her nipples and, afterwards, freed her wrists. The black beauty was casting a puzzled look at the svelte blonde.
"Leigh here is my associate," Callahan explained. "Leigh, take the lady into the bedrooms and find her some clothes."
"Will do," replied Spielman. The ersatz Leigh put her arm around Ginger, saying, "Come on, honey. We'll get you decent."
Ginger looked back at Callahan. "I thought it was that brunette, Sheila, who worked for you."
"Sheila's minding the office," Callahan explained tersely. "It’s Miss Spielman who works with me and Martin when the mean street needs the feminine touch."
Schitz nodded blankly. When the women were out of earshot, Callahan shifted toward B.J, asking, "Will you be taking that old body of yours along with us?"
The black man shook his head. "It’s not old. But, since you ask, I want to have B.J.’s equipment when Schitz wakes up. I want to give her the full treatment in the sack before I switch back."
"I've never gotten all that attached to any body I've had so far!"
"Doing the dirty in that bod is so crazy hot you wouldn't believe it! But to cover our tracks I need to stay as Waters until the real Callahan shows up, if she shows up. Then I'm going to make it look like the pimp and Callahan's secretary killed one another."
The Callahan-alien nodded. "Good thiinking, Gerrog! But how about the rest of us staying to give you some back up?"
"No. Schitz is too important. It’s going to look bad enough that we haven’t gotten her over to the techs already. Djomni can hang with me, but I need you and Roissar to deliver Schitz for processing. Once she’s been given a new attitude, there’s one babe who won’t be witnessing against us."
The Callahan frowned. "I don't like it. You’re underestimating Callahan. I know every thought in that dick's head and he isn't as dumb as he acts. Don’t take him for granted."
The false B.J. shook his head. “We have to chance it. The Committee will have our heads if they find out how we let Schitz slip away. Even as things are going, we’ll be lucky they don’t find out about our screw up somehow."
Leigh and Ginger reappeared a few minutes later, with Ginger looking fine, having been squeezed into a bright green minidress. "Why didn't you give me a chance to dig out something less provocative?" Schitz was complaining.
"Stop bitching, Congressman," Leigh replied harshly. "Dressed like that, you can go into the Capitol building with nobody giving you a second glance. Besides, we have to take the high road before those low-roading aliens show up."
This was a scary thought and it made sense to Ginger.
Callahan took the black girl by the arm. "This way, Congressman."
"Is there any way I can get my body back?" the politician asked in a wavering tone of desperation.
"Hard question, sir,” the phony dick said. “We’ll brainstorm about that possibility later."
Once the bogus B.J. was left alone in the apartment, he made for the bedroom to check on the real pimp. B.J. was still lying dead-to-the-world in the body of a redheaded working girl.
Just then, Djomni, the alien who usually did the team's driving, now shuffled out from the kitchen. He’d been a low profile so that the others wouldn't have to explain to Schitz why Callahan was keeping company with a ragged derelict.
Gerrog filled in his subordinate on the developing plan and then the two of them sat in front of the TV to wait for something to happen. There was a raunchy Disney movie playing and Djomni was really getting into it; he was always a prime audience that degenerate Hollywood stuff.
But his team leader wasn’t wasn’t paying attention to the boob tube; instead in was sorting through Blackjack's thoughts and memories looking for details that would improve his impersonation. The pimp’s mind held little of interest but, yet, there was something knocking around in the back of it -- something that was hard to get at. Gerrog was guessing that it was something that the player didn’t want to remember. The alien finally shrugged and put the mystery out of his mind. With any luck, he'd be ditching this body soon and the real B.J. would be dead.
About twenty minutes later, the door knocked and Gerrog ordered Djomni to hide in the kitchen with his gun ready. Then the false mackman crossed the room to peer through the door’s security lens. His heartbeat quickened to see Callahan’s secretary standing on the other side. Behind her was a young man whom Blackjack’s memory vaguely recognized as Callahan's partner, Dewitt.
The alien felt the automatic in his pocket. He was going to make this visit short and sweet. . . .
To be Continued in Chapter 12
