01-07-24
THE BIG SWITCH
By Christopher Leeson
Chapter 22
I had a lot of explaining to do, so I gave Martin some crapola about being victimized by alien mind-control. Telling him the truth was absolutely out of the question. I didn’t want him to find out that I was somebody weird.
"Did you mean what you said, Princess?" he suddenly asked.
"Mean what?"
"About loving me."
An awful question! I almost said I didn’t mean it, but I was tired of pretending to feel things that I didn't feel. And vice versa. "Yeah," I said, "I guess I meant it. So what?"
He showed me so what. Before I could say, "Hold your horses," he was lip-smacking me, clawing at my naked body, reducing me to a helpless, groaning victim of an unnatural, all-consuming lust. . . .
No, scratch that. That was what I was doing to him. It was more he was a hare trying to get away from a wildcat.
#
Well, that was then and this is now. Here I sit writing a letter. I've always hated to write letters with feeling, but never so much as I hate writing this one:
Dear Jack,
If you've gotten this letter, it means that I've bought the farm. By now you’ve probably heard that I’ve been neck deep into some bad stuff. That’s not exactly the straight skinny. Before I step through the last door, I want to set the record straight.
The prospect of dying isn't what scares me most. The real hurts comes from knowing that my name is going to be Mudd for a while. It'll hurt you, too, I know, but I think you’re the kind of man who can stand up and take it on the chin. I just want you to know that the stories you’ll be hearing aren't going to be true. What happened is that I have to take a bad rap so that decent people won’t be hurt. I became a detective because I wanted to be a knight in shining armor and this is my big chance to take my final bow the right way.
Things didn't work out for me because those are the breaks. Plenty's gone wrong around my gopher hole lately, but I don't think it's because I've been a bad guy. I hope that you’ll eventually believe that, too.
I'm glad that Mom and Dad aren't around these days to have to face the neighbors at church. There’s just me and your family now. I love your kids, but the way it’s turned out, I'm glad that they've never had a chance to know their uncle very well. What a stranger does can’t disappoint them very much. And I'm especially glad that your wife never liked me. That will keep her from feeling too badly about what’s going down.
Maybe you won't be all that busted up about it, either, Jack. We've grown apart lately and I've been sorry about that, but in the present situation that’s for the best. You always thought I was a chump for giving up my shoe job, but my time in Iraq helped me to understand that a man only has so much time, and while he's between stage left and stage right, he needs to move quickly if he's going to get around to doing what he really wants to do.
It’s true that my P.I. job in Washington hasn't been very remunerative, and I can't say that it's been all that exciting – except to some person who considers that dodging creditors is exciting. On the other hand, if things had stayed dull I wouldn't have to be writing a letter like this one. Excitement can carry a hefty tab. I wish I could tell you the whole story, but I can't. To say too much is to create collateral damage. When the Chinese curse you, they wish that you have "interesting times." I feel like I've been zapped by that Chinese curse.
The one thing that I don’t regret it going out as a real life detective. My becoming a P.I. was all about job satisfaction. I've made plenty of mistakes, but putting up my private investigator shingle was the high point of my life. How can I explain to some everyday Joe what a life of crime-detection means to a guy like me? When somebody says, "I'm a plumber," does he ever feel the same sense of pride as I did when I was finally able to say, "I'm private eye"?
You’re not going to be privy to the whole story until you’re with me in Heaven. When you finally get served the full meal, you’re going to stop feeling sad. You'll feel more like giving me the hee-haw than punching me in the jaw. And it actually is a funny story when you come right down to it.
Maybe, when you read this letter, you'll just toss it in the can and say, "What a jerk!" The trouble is, Jack, I don't think you’re going to have such an easy time of it. I'm awfully sorry that the good name we share is going to be crapped by the news services. But life has its speed bumps and we just have to get over them, Bro. Feeling good and loving life is all that you need to do to keep me happy in Cloud City.
Before I check out, I'm passing this letter over to a friend. She’s a wonderful girl who loves the detective business as much as I do. I told her to send it to you if I don't make it though the next couple days. And the odds are that I won't.
That's about it. I guess this is goodbye.
Your brother,
Dennis Charles Callahan
I'd only gotten about halfway through the first paragraph before I started bawling. What is it about the way women are wired that makes them so emotional?
It almost killed me to have to sign off with Jack, but I couldn't have it both ways. I had to make a clean break with my old life before I could start living my new one. I chose to put Callahan away because his life didn't have any deep roots. Sheila, on the other hand, has a big family and there’s a lot of people who would miss her. She has a mother, dad, brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, cousins, uncles, aunts, and grandparents -- the works.
They're all still strangers to me, but as far as I know, none of them are bad people. I've found some really nice letters and Christmas cards in Sheila's keepsake box. I’ve never been part of a large family and having one for a change might be fun. I'm thinking about dropping in on the Coffin clan over the Holidays and getting to know them. I'm not sure how I'll pull off the impersonation, but I'll probably take Martin along and introduce him to all and sundry. That will be the clincher. If the family crowd knows that Sheila is having a love affair, it will go a long way toward explaining why their little girl suddenly is talking like she has some screws loose.
It's time for the summing up.
When the ersatz D.C. died, the alien threat to the Callahan and Dewitt Detective Agency ended. They're still a menace to the world at large, of course, but I'll be damned if I know what I can do about it. It’s a toss up whether the aliens are worse than the people who are running the country now. And if they get the reign of terror they want, it can't possibly go on for long. The aliens seem to be the same boneheaded mob that took over the old U.S.S.R. When they fouled their nest so much that they themselves couldn’t stand the smell of it, they moved west. After they’ve sucked the marrow out of the bones of the old USA, maybe they’ll pull up stakes and head out to Japan. In that case, Sayonara.
The one good gob of good news came in is this: A week after the phony Callahan bought it, I checked the mail and found a letter addressed to my "deceased boss." It turned out to be a contract offer for one of my "Nick Baxter" novels. Three thousand smackers and the promise of royalties! Wow!
Martin was less than ecstatic.
"That's nice," he said, "but the money has to go to D.C.'s brother Jack. I suppose he can use it, but wouldn't it have been great if Callahan could still be here to enjoy this? Having a book in print would have meant even more to him than money in the bank."
I must have looked like the cat that swallowed the canary.
"What?" Martin asked.
"It's not Jack's money."
He looked puzzled. "What do you mean?"
"Check Callahan's will, sweetie. I happen to know what's in it -- ah, because I typed it out for D.C."
"Well, what's in it?"
"He left everything to his company, including his copyrights, and you're the company now."
"Why would he do a fool thing like that?"
I threw up my hands. "Give the guy a break, Marty! When D.C. was drawing up his will, he didn't have two sticks of gum to rub together. He had no legacy except a debt-ridden agency and a stack of manuscripts that no editor would touch! He didn't suppose that he was doing you much of a favor by leaving the whole disaster to you."
Pard lost his gloomy look and glanced up hopefully. "Do you think that the publisher would want any more of D.C.'s novels?"
I shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. Anyway, Callahan's success really encourages me. If he can do it, so can I. I'd like to try my hand at doing one of those Nick Baxter adventures, in fact. I guess I'll have to license the rights to the character from you."
Martin laughed.
"What's tickling your funny bone?" I asked.
"No girl in the world can write like a tough guy!"
"Oh, yeah?"
"Yeah."
"You're such a chauvinist. Just watch my smoke, buddy!"
And since then I've been as good as my word. I'm pecking away at my latest N.B. adventure. Practice makes perfect and I can only get better. Anyway, what publisher wouldn't love to have my picture on the jacket of a book he's trying to sell? If it’s a full-body shot it will sell even better.
By the way, I think my recent experiences have made my female characters realistic. I mean, I’m writing less about feminists committing robberies and committing murder and featuring more likable women, such as cocktail waitresses and insatiable nymphomaniacs. Erotica is something that women writers can get away with without drawing critical scorn. I haven’t sold a second book yet, but I won't sweat it. When the publisher starts making millions off the first one, opportunities will come knocking. Both Martin and me are keeping our fingers crossed.
Now for the bad stuff.
During the inquest, Martin and I did our best to smear as much muck as possible on Callahan's coattails. According to our spiel, D.C. got involved with a bad woman from across the hall, Leigh Spielman. The two of them started killing for thrills. We told the cops that D.C. died in an attempt to murder Dewitt and me after we found out what he was up to, a fact that Latisha Jones could more or less corroborate. Unfortunately, because Latisha had such a big mouth, I had to confess that I was the one who'd hit Spielman with the snow shovel. But that was dismissed as unintentional and justifiable homicide.
As for the stiffs drawing flies in B.J.'s apartment, well, we lucked out there, too. We claimed that Blackjack's dying words accused Callahan and a blonde woman of killing the wino in the kitchen. As for B.J., the coroner decided that he'd died of natural causes. Witnesses placed Callahan and the dame at the scene of the crime not once but twice, and the dead wino had, in fact, been seen entering the building in their company.
The stiffs in the dumpster have been chalked up to the deadly duo, too. It was a big help that the false Callahan had shoved D.C.’s business cards into both of their pockets. Right on cue, the boys in blue had a new Bonny and Clyde to saddle to the with the bum killings. The papers took the thrill-killer story and ran with it, calling Callahan and Spielman the "Death Wish" assassins. The woke Fake News used the angle that they were a White Privilege couple with a vendetta against the city's poor and disadvantaged. By the time Gina and Evelyn surfaced, the whole affair was an open-and-shut case and nobody was much interested in what they had to add to the matter. Because the police had been defunded, they had too few investigators to be wasting them on closed cases, and the reporters wanted to keep pushing the racially-charged angle that they already had.
But it was Adam Schitz or -- more precisely, Latisha Jones -- who gave the crucial testimony that saved both our necks. By the way, a little research confirmed that there really had been a Latisha Jones, one with a long rap sheet for soliciting. We suppose that the real Latisha must have been the hooker who had been originally born into that knockout body of hers. The aliens must have kept her data and fed it into Schitz’s head when they brainwashed him – or is that her?
After the investigation, social services tried to sequester Miss Jones inside a home for troubled women, but she was just too restless and kept running away. Martin and me found her back in the “life,” doing what she liked best. We didn't want to leave the deluded dolly working for a lousy pimp on the mean streets, so we fixed her up with one of my -- one of Callahan's -- old contacts in the West. He was managing a posh Nevada ranch, one called the Corral 69. It was a business, not a criminal operation, and the girls there were treated more or less decently. It was the best we could do, since Latisha was determined to keep on selling sex.
But the fact is that Jones stayed bunked at the Corral for only six weeks. She’d never really settled in, too much missing the exciting interplay that goes on between a ho and her pimp. Also, the wide-open spaces of the desert bored her stiff. One day, she hitched a ride into Las Vegas and never came back.
I’ve wondered since then what might happen to Latisha Jones, aka Adam Schitz, if the brainwashing ever wears off.
As for the aliens' secret war on the U.S.A., I’ve been checking the voting record of the space monkey who switched with Schitz and it's amazing. What he's been doing so far is indistinguishable from the nutty votes that the original Schitz used to make. Considering that the old Schitz was pretty much like everyone else in Congress, I wonder why the aliens think they need to take over Congress. Things seem to have been going their way ever since the New Deal.
A funny accident happened to me lately. I turned a corner and almost stepped on the high-heeled pumps of a red-haired hottie wearing dark glasses -- and not much else.
The girl sitting on the edge of a street fountain recognized me, too.
"You is that secretary from the Callahan agency!" the girl declared in liquid Black English tones. I could only stare at her. It was B.J. and he – she – had on a barely-legal black lycra-spandex, ladder-cut job with a hemline worth writing home about. I have to say that her outfit was sinful enough to keep a mega-church minister up all night praying. What exactly he’d be praying for I’d blush to say!
"Hi, Shiela gal,” she called out. “Has anyone turned y’out yet, sugah?"
I winced and replied, "Ah, no. I'm still doing the same old job."
Her moue told me that she didn't approve. "You're in a rut, gal. A real woman needs a sweet man."
"The man I already have is sweet enough for me," I let her know.
"That handsome dick in the leather coat? He'd make a good pin-up, honey pie, but for serious lovin', his sort don’t rate. He's not a player."
"I'm glad he's not," I replied stiffly. "I don't want to be played with."
She shrugged, as if she thought I was stupid.
"How -- ah -- how are Evelyn and Gina?" I asked.
She smiled. "The wife-in-laws are both fine. We're working for this new mack man, the one that Evelyn found for us -- Bogota Rico."
"I've heard of him," I said. Rico was a Columbian, a nasty up-and-comer making his way skyward on the mean street. "Is Rico one of your old friends?" I asked carefully.
A tinkly laugh floated from her pipes. "Not hardly! We always hated each other's guts and were always trying to take one another's girls away. Well, a couple days after I last saw you, Evelyn brought Rico over to our motel. He said he was taking over my operation and me with it."
"And Evelyn set that up?" I asked.
"Yeah. At first, I thought she'd double-crossed me, but it turned out that she was doing me a favor. Lordy, is that man ever good in bed!"
"Then you're making it all right as a woman?"
"As right as rain, honey. I only wish I’d had the chance to start sooner!”
I asked my next question delicately. "Do you really like -- the work?"
She frowned. “Not at first, but after a couple days of Rico giving me all his attention, I realized that there was nothing not to like about it. I’m cool."
"Cool? You’re sure?"
Her cheaters flashed the autumn sun into my eyes. "Yeah, cool. I got a sweet man taking care of me, treating me like I'm something special. The outfits are incredible and I'm taking hour-long bubble baths every day. What’s not to like?"
"I’m not in a position to say," I told her.
The air went out of the conversation about then. Hoes and non-hoes really don’t have very much to talk about. After a few minutes, B.J. stood up.
"Well, gotta rush, Baby-o. Rico is on my back for a thousand dollars a day. "At the start, he only expected five hundred dollars, but now he knows how much I can pull down when I try."
"He raised your quota? The greedy rat!"
She smiled in a superior way. "No, you still don't see! Upping my tally shows how much he respects me. To be one of his top girls is a big honor!”
“By the way,” I asked, “what do you call yourself now?”
“I’m Betty Jo." Then she added, "My friends still call me B.J."
It didn't take a genius to guess why.
"Good luck!" I said as she started away. I stood there for a long minute, watching her firm bottom swivel away into the distance, listening to that nutty song she’d started to sing:
"Some say that I'm tacky, that I wallow in sleaze,
But I'm earning a living and I do what I please.
Most wives don't respect me, them that's happily wed,
But I know all their husbands, 'cause I met them in bed!"
#
That being said, let’s get back to the important part of my story.
Martin and I were told not to leave town after our first police grilling, Martin drove me to my -- to Sheila's -- apartment in Falls Church and put me to bed. He stayed overnight, bunking down in the living room.
When I woke up the next morning, I felt more depressed than ever. I just lay there staring at the ceiling, not knowing what to do with myself, confused about what my life was supposed to be from now on. I had two choices. I could either mix myself a strychnine cocktail or start learning how to sing, “I Enjoy Being a Girl.”
I felt bummed out, big time.
Suddenly there came a rapping-tapping on my chamber door. It was Martin, and no one more.
"Sheila, are you all right?" he asked in that incredible baritone of his. "You sound like you're crying."
"I don't cry!" I yelled back. "I wouldn't know how to cry even if I tried. Go away, you big dumb Belgian! I don't want to talk!" Along with all my other problems, I’d been saddled with a partner who was having auditory hallucinations.
Martin opened the door carefully, as if expecting that I would throw something at him. I saw that he was wearing just his shorts and so I rolled over, refusing to look at his six-pack abs. My cheek touched a clammy wet spot on the pillow that hadn't been there before. I could only think that I must have been drooling.
"I can see that you're taking it hard, Princess. Well, I'm pretty busted up myself," he said softly. "The worst thing is, I miss Callahan."
I sniffed. "Yeah, well, you can't miss D.C. half as much as I do. He was something special to me."
"To me, too. I feel like I have to do something special for him."
"D.C. wasn't a sentimental guy,” I said. “He'd be glad to let you take over the business. You were his buddy and pal. To a manly man, that's as good as being a brother."
"Yeah? And how do you know so much about manly men?"
I extemporized. "I -- I read romance novels."
He laughed softly. "Well, that's nice. Every guy wants a girl who understands his kind of man."
I didn't answer.
"I wouldn't blame you if you feel like taking off after all we've been through, but I hope you don't. You've got grit. I think you have the makings of a good detective. I also can't imagine wanting to go back to that office without you there."
I shut my eyes, not wanting any pep talk. I'm the type who gives out the pep talks. I don't like listening to them.
"For a while it'll be just you and me," he went on.
"Yeah," I said with a snort, "it'll be hard for you to find a new partner. Most people aren’t dumb enough to take on half of an agency’s debt with no prospects of a livable income!"
"It's not that. It wouldn't feel right bringing in an outsider, not for a while anyway. I wouldn't want to make Callahan's ghost feel crowded."
I shifted uncomfortably. "Yeah, that's a pretty good description of what Callahan is right now."
To Be Continued in Chapter 23
