Shoulda Kept 'Em Up

Rob Wellner was satisfied, even smug, about his life until the day God reached down and plucked the back of his head.  That hurts, especially when the middle finger that does it is backed by divine force.  As the tile floor rushed up to meet his face, he shouted but the words sounded like gibberish to his ears.

---

Detective Len Muller stepped carefully into the hotel room, nodding to the corporal standing guard next to the door. "The victim is just inside, lieutenant," the youngish looking officer said, "and we have his, uh, companion in the next room down. She said she was just keeping him company."

Muller allowed himself a twitch of a grin. "Thanks, Smitty" he replied.  The lieutenant reckoned she had been keeping Wellner company.  That, and the stack of bills the detective could see on the dresser further back into the room.  It was a the typical high-end corporate suite, all gloss and dark wood without being freaky flashy.  Muller figured that Wellner wouldn't have been that type even in his indiscretions.

The television was on, the volume low.  Even without looking, the lieutenant could tell it must have been some rent-a-porno from the hotel services.  He glanced over just in time to see some heavy-breasted woman wearing a gold thong rubbing oil all over a soft-looking, slightly flabby man handcuffed to a bed.  Oh, hell, Muller thought, yet again with the porn.

The detective took two steps forward, looking down and through the bathroom door.  Wellner's left hand was down on the carpet, at the end of his outstretched arm jutting from the bathroom. He was laying face down on the tile, his right arm pointing towards the toilet, his torso twisted and legs splayed as much as his stained slacks would allow.  The hair, Muller noted, was still perfect.  He stifled a laugh; the position the dead man was laying in reminded Muller of John Travolta in those posters for Saturday Night Fever, a notion he couldn't shake given the white pants Wellner was wearing.

There was a faint scent of urine on the air, and without stepping into the bathroom Muller could see the puddle of liquid at the man's waist.  The dead man's pale buttocks stood out in sharp contrast to the mottled beige of the ceramic. The white pants were bunched around his feet.  Muller saw he was wearing black wool socks, one of which had a small hole in the big toe.  He noted, too, the small blot of blood pooled in front of Wellner's mouth.  Muller sucked air through his teeth and stepped back out into the hall.  Turning to the corporal, he asked "Smitty, has his staff been alerted?"

The corporal said "Yes, sir. They said someone would be here soon.  Coroner's on his way, too, should be here in five."

"Thanks.  I'm going to talk to the woman, what's her name?" Muller said.
"Imelda, she said.  Wasn't carrying any ID, and she didn't tell us much except she didn't do anything."

Muller considered that, then strode to the suite door just down the hall.  He knocked. "Detective Muller, coming in," announcing his presence as he opened the door, nearly hitting the officer who had come to open it.  It was someone Muller didn't recognize, but he smiled and said "Thanks" by way of introduction.  Beyond him, sitting in the chair at a small desk up against the wall, was a voluptuous woman dressed in a carmine-colored evening dress.  She was pretty in a feline way, chestnut hair piled high over a heart shaped face.  Muller noticed that her dress was slit up the sides, and she appeared nervous.

"Officer, would you excuse us for a moment?  If you could wait outside the door?  And if any of his staff or the coroner should show up, please keep them in the hall, and let me know. Okay?"  The officer said yes and stepped into the hall, closing the door behind himself. Muller turned to the woman.  She stared back at him, trembling slightly but with a "Fuck you" gaze won of many nights deflecting strangers advances until the money hit the hand.  Muller conjured up his best friendly smile and said "Good evening, ma'am. I'm Lieutenant Muller.  May I ask you a few questions?"

She sighed, boredom and nervousness quavering out through her nostrils. "Sure," clipping the word.

"What's your name?"

"Imelda."

"Imelda...?" Muller let the question hang.

She rolled her eyes. "Just Imelda.  Like Cher, she only has one name?"

Muller nodded, writing in his notebook. "What do you do, Imelda?"

She sighed again, shifting her legs.  The dress fell open some, and he struggled to not notice the expanse of calf and thigh that was shining against the deep red fabric.  "I keep people company."

The detective looked up from his notes.  "Keep people company? What, like a professional friend?"  He was being deliberately thick, and by the look of her raised eyebrows, she knew he was being thick. Her eyes narrowed a bit, and she said through slightly gritted teeth, "I'm an escort, detective."

"Escort? To where were you escorting the senator this evening, if I may ask?" he said.

Upon hearing the word 'senator', Imelda's eyes widened and she started up off the chair.  She blinked rapidly at the detective, swallowing hard. Her long lashes fluttered like a trapped moth.

"S-s-senator?" she stammered.  "I didn't know he was a senator!"

Muller was about to reply, but was interrupted by a knock on the door. "Come in!" he barked.  Corporal Smith poked his head into the room.  "Lebowski from the examiner's office is here, looking at the deceased. You want to talk to him?" the officer said.

"Not at the moment, Smitty. Let him know I'll be there in a minute or two." Smitty nodded assent and shut the door.  Muller turned back to Imelda. "Yes, Senator Wellner.  What were you two doing, where were you going?" he asked.

Imelda hesitated, still a little stunned by what she had heard. "I didn't know he was a senator," she began, "he never really said what he was.  We were downstairs in the ballroom, some convention thing or fundraiser, I don't know.  He did seem to know a lot of people.  Me and the other...escorts...we were doing the usual look pretty and smile for the guys in the silk suits routine.  Mark asked me..."

Muller held up a hand. "Mark? Who is Mark?"  Imelda looked puzzled for an instant.

"The...senator.  He told me his name was Mark," she said.  The lieutenant raised an eyebrow, was about to tell her Rob's real name, then waved her on to continue.

"We had drinks, then dinner and some boring speeches.  He kept looking at me the entire time, and finally he leaned over and asked me if I would watch a movie with him.  I said sure, because its part of the contract to go along if it isn't something bad.  So he told me he was going to go to the restroom for me, and for me to wait about five minutes, then come up to his room.  He gave me a key."  Imelda was talking faster, and a flush was creeping up her graceful neck.  Muller could tell she was really nervous now.  He remained silent in hopes of keeping her talking.  Imelda gulped and started in again.  "So he left.  I sat there a while longer, then got up and went straight to his room.  I let myself in and he was there messing with the television, and he told me to lock the door."  She put her head into her hands, breathing slow.

"He asked me to sit on the bed, he was going to go to the toilet, he'd be right back..."

"You touch him in any way, give him anything?" Muller asked.

"N-n-oo, no way! I wasn't paid to do anything!"  Imelda slapped a hand to her mouth, turning bright red.  "I sat down, he went to the bathroom, and the next thing I hear is him yelling 'I better pull up my pants!'.  It was then I heard a thump and he sounded like he was gargling or something."  She was on the verge of tears. "That's when the door opened and I saw his arm on the floor.  I ran over, he was on the floor, and he pissed himself, and I was shaking him, but I got nothing!" Muller scratched his head, wondering how to calm her down, when there was another knock on the door.  He sighed, reached into his pocket for a tissue and handed it to Imelda.  She snuffled into it as Muller went to the door.

It was Stan Lebowski, from the medical examiner's office.  He looked bored as he always did, but slightly amused.  He was looking past Muller, eyeballing Imelda in a way that was not quite professional.  Muller cleared his throat.  "Stan, good to see you.  What's up, what do we know so far?" he said softly, trying not to disturb Imelda.

Stan tore his eyes off the escort, grinning at Muller. "Never a dull moment, eh, Len?" said Stan, "Man, must be the busy season for the pols.  Wellner is the third one this summer to kick off!"

Muller sighed.  "I know, Stan, but what can you tell me about the why and the how?  She says she didn't do anything, I didn't see anything weird, so what's your take?  Poison? Falling and breaking something, what?"  He nodded significantly behind him, towards Imelda.

She continued to cry quietly.  Stan softened his look, raised his eyebrows in an 'aha' moment, then said "Oh, man, no, nothing exotic.  We'll have to get him back to the morgue to be sure, but as near as I can tell, the poor bastard had a stroke or something like it."  Muller blinked slow, as if he wasn't sure he had heard the coroner correctly.

"So no evidence of needles or knife marks or any of that shit?  No drugs or anything?" he asked Stan.

"Nope.  None that I could see. You want to take another look before we move the sti---,er, deceased?"

Muller shook his head. "No, just make sure we got all the images we need."  Stan nodded and turned down the hall.  Muller leaned against the door frame, looking at the poor woman crying in the chair.  If what Stan said was true, then this was probably Imelda's lucky day.  He shook his head, moving over to give her the news that she was probably home free.  Just another day on the job, he thought, tidying up after another chump with his pants down around his ankles.

--
By Irish Gumbo

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Amanda challenged me with "His pants were down around his ankles" and I challenged jamelah with "I whispered prayers to you, on my tongue the mineral tang of salt and sea and the currents that carried you away."

Deep Blue (IndieInk Writing Challenge)

Esteban awoke to the wet slap of water against the wood. Again. Hot as hell, it felt like, and his lips cracked as he laughed sourly."Am I blue?" he sang to himself. "I sure as hell feel like it out here!" he near as yelled out over the ultramarine landscape.

Blue. Goddamn it, he hated blue. That he had spent this much time out on the water only to realize after decades that he hated the color blue was nearly too much to bear. Why have I never noticed this before? the old fisherman wondered. His only audience was the swiftly-drying carcasses of a pair of flying fish stuck to the bench not far from his head. Esteban stared at them, wishing that instead of them a pair of nice, fat bluefins had sacrificed themselves to his boat.

But he knew better. Deep blue didn't work that way.

The fisherman shifted his legs. His back had never been the same since the great wave that had lifted him up and slammed his sun-dried body hard against the gunwales of his barco, those many seasons ago. It had been a bright, hot, and blue day then, he recalled. The rogue wave came without warning and left without trace. No trace except scars on my back and ache within my bones, Esteban thought.

His eyes began to droop shut. He squeezed them tightly, then opened them wide like a bigeye tuna in an effort to revive. Stars danced before his eye, and he considered the sheer amount of hardship involved watching the blood in one's veins be slowly replaced with salt water. Water the color of sapphires and cobalt. Even the sky taunted him, clear and unmarred without even the apostrophe of a seabird to mar the vast cerulean pages unfolding overhead. The argentine disk of the sun was just past sext, although Esteban had no prayers of his own to cast out into the azure cathedral surrounding the barco.

Weariness crept back in, little feathers caressing his muscles and aching back. His head spun in dizziness. The thought occurred to him that the blueness was invading his body, supplanting the air in his lungs and blood in his veins with gelatinous shades of lapis and turquoise. Never in all his years on the sea had such a thing happened, and the old fisherman began to panic. "This heat, it is roasting my brain," he croaked. The flying fish continued their slow desiccative journey, offering no counsel of their own.

Esteban's hands fluttered, grasping for the gaff and the net. He was worried that he had no success this day. A flaccid net and empty live well bode ill for his return. Esteban decided he would rest a while longer. Patience was his virtue, and no fisherman was going to prosper without it. He closed his one good eye.

The sun burned its way slowly down the sky. The azure bowl began to darken around the low eastern edges. Esteban opened his eye a crack to see it, and to pass the time he amused himself by recalling all the shades of blue he had ever seen.

The azure of the Galician sky of his boyhood. The deep, arid cerulean he witnessed in an early spring in Madrid. The lapis and turquoise of an early morning sky off the coast, making the dawn run with his uncle in search of anchovies. Deep indigo nights and days of liquid ultramarine as he grew into manhood more on the water than he did back in Vigo. He remembered a sapphire-colored scallop shell his uncle had kept on his own boat.

Esteban coughed, his head suddenly split apart in a flash of cobalt-infused silver. The headaches seemed particularly tricky, now. The pain made his head so heavy he could not lift it off the deck. In spite of the pain, he laughed again as he thought of that scallop shell. "You and me both, St. James, have lost our heads," he whispered, "and I shall sup tonight on the blue that has come to kill me." The fisherman closed his eye again, the stinging of salt water becoming too much for even his sea-stained eyes to handle.

The flying fish remained deaf, deep blue saw fit to hold its tongue, and the waves continued their slow march over the remains of the barco slipping into the water. The carcasses of the flying fish came unstuck from the wood, drifting languidly away from Esteban on water the color of indigo spattered with azure. Behind the fisherman, his boat came undone in a swirl of splintered planks, while his body gave itself up to the deep blue sea.

--
By Irish Gumbo

For the IndieInk Writing Challenge this week, Bewildered Bug challenged me with "The lone fisherman floating on the deep blue sea" and I challenged Sherree with "The past was where it was, up to its hubs in rocks and mud, and there was no going back to try a different road."

I Got (Indie) Ink on My Fingers!

Good morning, one and all!  And isn't it a fine morning?  I am so pleased to announce that I have been honored once again with a feature on Indie Ink!  Today they are posting my poem "Kudzu", and I would be tickled pink if you would visit and drop some comment luv on it.  Please do browse the posts while you are there, some mighty fine stuff to be found.  And let them know what you think!

Indie Ink

C'est bon, c'est tout!

Gumbo gets Inked!

Get It Here!

What a fine way to get Wednesday going!  My story "Running Lights" is featured today at Indie Ink!  Please take a few moments and check it out.  While you are there, browse the other writers and artists, drop some comment love.  Good stuff, people, good stuff!