The Muffin Man - Chapter 4

by E. Coli

The next one came on Tuesday. Lucky me. I hated waiting.

I was surprised that I hadn’t heard from my dainty employer but I was sure she’d be checking in soon enough. Maybe this next one was my chance to get this thing over with so I could get back on the road where I liked it. Despite the sweet and heavenly sight of Tamika Jones swaying hips, I wanted out of here.

This one wasn’t just a Gluten freak, she was also a Lipid Lover. I could tell by the white mustache and the cheesy froth that dribbled from the edge of her lips. Her blank eyes stared wide and lifeless at the cheap popcorn ceiling, like there was something she’d seen in the quirky plaster ridges and felt compelled to leave her body to get to know better. Her kidneys, on the other hand, bloody and ruptured, respectfully disagreed. You could see the bruising and bleeding on her naked hips. A few days later, the MEs report confirmed the kidney damage and the brain loss.

In bed and shivering in fear was a man who looked to be in his late fifties, overweight with a small fleshy apron and naked. He had salt and paper hair and his face had enough sun damage to hint that he’d once had an easy, pudgy life on a beautiful beach somewhere. Detective Ross and one of his underlings was doing a Bad Cop-Bad Cop on the guy and it looked like it was working. Mr. Beachcomber was obviously scared shitless. Ross motioned me over with a pair of Donald Trump sized, well-manicured fingers. Condescending sonofabitch. I wondered what he had in mind.

This is Detective Wiseguy. We all like to call him Peewee.
Shit, the bastard knew who I was. No doubt he was on Ray’s payroll so it didn’t matter. Still, I felt as naked as the man in front of us. And just a little bit afraid. “Like this is a surprise?”, a voice sounding like my dead grandmother echoed in my skull. She had a Yiddish accent and a crackling, guilt infused whine. Even in death she was good at what she did. Installing a conscience with a rasp file and a crowbar.

Mr. Beachcomber looked at me like he was trying to decide if I were salvation or the welcome wagon from Dante’s Inferno. OK, bad cop-bad cop-good cop. I guess I knew which one I was supposed to be.

Why don’t you talk to the good Detective PeeWee” – he half laughed and half snarled when he said it – “and maybe we can all get this cleared up. Oh, and you should know, we found these on the coffee table.” He threw a box at me with a picture on it. A picture I knew well. An old fashioned colorized painting of a redhead (weren’t they always?) with a 1940’s look to her short curly hair and a friendly, freckled smile that said “Eat me. I won’t bite.” She wore a wide brimmed hat and a blue and white checkered shirt. She looked like she’d just taken a break from the small town cotillion to stop off at the house with the white picket fence to get a nice cold glass of fresh squeezed lemonade. I knew her as “Little” Debbie McKee. She liked the name about as much as I like being called Pee Wee. The last time I saw her freckled face was way before she was anybody in the major rackets. She was digging her pink pee wee heels into my lower back and her complexion was about as red as it was in that picture of her on the box. I used to love it when she started breathing like that. It let me know I was doing a good job.

Maybe they really were all rebels at heart. Every “brand” of the Gluten Cartel, and it was only the gluten cartel because except for those crazy Indians that ran the Land O Lakes thing, the Lipid pushers didn’t do it, they loved to put their little logos and pictures on the Product. And let me tell you, as a courier for those idiots, it didn’t make things any easier for me. Amanda Baird who we all called Bimbo because she liked to disarm people by acting as if she were just another dumb blonde, she had her pictures of gold, pink and blue award winning ribbons on her stuff, while Aunt Jemima, the crazy bitch, put her actual picture on the boxes of her pancakes and waffles and even the flour. I heard someone asked her why she did it and she supposedly replied “It’s just my way o’ sayin’ Fuck You to da man. Plus I proud o’ my product.” Then she shot him in the chest and laughed her ass off watching him die, like he was there as part of her entertainment. I had no doubt the story was at least partially true.

“Little Debbies, huh”, I said to the man, shaking my head somberly from side to side. From what I heard, she wasn’t so little any more. That’s what happens when a big time dealer becomes a big time user.

I heard Jones whisper a long “Sheeeet” underneath her breath. “You got family?”, I asked the man, who was now sobbing like a six year old who’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar and was about to git a whoopin’. He nodded and gave me a quiet “No”.

“OK, look”, I said, “we’re just here to get the truth. I want to help you but to do that you gotta help me. Now I know these other officers have questioned you, but I need to question you too because I am the detective that’s in charge of this case. This is my partner Tamika Jones.” Jones gave him a slight nod. Cold hearted and carpet munching that she was, she couldn’t help looking incredibly pretty and it was obvious that our boy had a thing for that. Deep in my mind, I shook my imaginary head. I felt bad for him, Gluten junkie though he was. I glanced at Jones and she took the hint, sitting at the edge of the bed and offering his leg a light, brief touch that said ‘I care’. I walked over to Ross and we played a game of eye chicken for about a minute. Without turning away, he smiled slightly and nodded. “Peewee, huh?”
“I’m assuming you read him his rights, right?”.
“Wow, you’re good. Been watching a lot of TV, Detective?”
“Just doing my job, Detective”. I saw him smile for a second. Then there was a brief look of fear. Real fear.He tried to hide it by looking down. I’d won.
“Well just for shits and giggles, Detective, why don’t you fill me in. That way we can both move on to other places where we’d both rather be.”
“Single, Caucasian, probably grew up around money, no ID. Nothing on the prints yet but we’ll let you know. Also pulling the footage from all cams in a two mile spread.”
Wow, this dumb Yeast Whore must be important. What wasn’t he telling me?
“Tell me something I don’t know. Yet.”, I asked him.
Ross shrugged. “We’ll be sure to keep you first on the list when we get the results. According to her – uhm - companion here, he picked her up outside of a shoe store on Kiest and Illinois, then took her back here for the festivities.

Jones butted in. She liked Ross about as much as I did.
“They partied a bit, smoked some dope and by the looks of that box and those crumbs on the table decided to do a bit of the old Muffin Munching before getting down.” She picked up a crumb and held it to his nose. “Fucking cinnamon”, she spat. “I hate cinnamon.”
“Good to know”, I said.

My conversation with Ray was like a feral cat with a ball of yarn. You can guess which one I was.
“Why the hell did you have to tell Ross who I was?”, I asked her.
“He’s an asshole but he’s also a good detective. I heard he was digging into your shit so I gave him a call. I explained that I didn’t want to lose an asset but I had you down there to get to the bottom of this for me and if he was going to make himself expendable, too bad so sad but he wasn’t getting in the way. There’s more than just me that’s wanting to know about all this. I think the big thing that’s pissing him off the most is that I brought you in instead of having him do the job.”
“Yeah, why did you do that?”
“He’s a rental. You I own. Plus, I trust you baby. And I thought it would be fun. Like old times, you know?”
Great. Nothing like hearing an ugly truth that you spent part of every day trying to forget. My mind went in two or three different directions trying to defend my autonomy. All ended up in dead ends. I could call them cul de sacs but the only sacs that had been culled were mine.
“So you find out anything? I can fly down there and give you a soft, steady hand if you think that’ll help. You know how good I am at that.”

“Keep your hands to yourself”, I replied. Even though Ray scared the crap out of me the only way to handle her was to get back in her face when she tried to bully you. It was a weird, silent cult of fake respect.
“This last one they found. I don’t know why but I feel like there’s something there. It was different from the others. Either someone got sloppy or there’s something with the others that I didn’t pick up on. The pros was all torn up in that Oak Cliff motel room, just like the others. But she had a John and he was alive. Sitting in a pile of crumbs and an empty box of Little Debbies.”
“Motherfuckin’ cow. I’ll kill the bitch.”
Ooops. I shouldn’t have mentioned that part. The two hated each other. I was under no illusions as to why.
“Yeah Ray but here’s the thing. With the others, we weren’t sure. Any evidence we found, it was all your shit or pointing to you. That, I assume, is why you got me in on this to begin with.”
“That and the fact that I really missed hearing your voice.” She said the words like a coy insincere drunk in a confessional wondering how long it would take for her to seduce a priest. I kept moving. Going there could be bad for my health. Both of our health.
“Whoever it is, they’re not just targeting Sara Lee. It’s going in to everything.”
“Get to the bottom of it. Soon.” The ice was back and I almost felt relieved. My left hand cramped as I hung up the phone.