Nick was in a holding pattern. He was parked beside his suspect’s car (a Beamer, of course) in the parking lot outside the office building. After all his legwork to find it, he had the address and license plate saved in his cell phone, so he knew he was at the right place. It had already been an hour, but hopefully, someone would show soon. Nick’s client only wanted him to talk to the person at first. That might be enough to make the problem go away without further effort. Nick preferred to make contact in the parking lot rather than inside the building, where things could get messy. Outside, though, it was mid-August, and hot and humid, a real Missouri mugger, so he had every window in the car open. Even then, he could feel the sweat at the back of his neck.

There were trees along one side of the parking lot next to the street, and Nick had parked his old Corolla as far under one as he could, but not far enough to get much shade. Nick could see some of the round, spiky balls from the trees on the ground, so he knew they were Sweet Gums. People didn’t like to rake up the Gum balls in their yards, but Gums were native to Missouri, and they would turn pretty colors in the fall. Right now, Nick just wished he was further in the shade.

Something brushed the side of his face, a fly, maybe, and the first time, Nick merely shook his head to make it go away. The second time, though, he heard the sound it made, and it wasn’t a fly. He glanced sideways for a better look. It was a wasp and a big one!

Nick hated wasps, and he began waving both hands frantically around his head. Even then, he could hear its buzz, and it bounced again on the side of his face. Now, he was completely freaked out.

“GE-E-ET AWAY!” he cried.

Now, it had all his attention. He flapped his hands around his head and looked for the wasp, but he couldn’t see it. Just as he spied it hovering around the rear view mirror next to the windshield, it made a beeline straight for him.

“OUCH!” he cried again, looking at the small red spot on the back of his hand. “You stung me!”

Don’t bother them, and they won’t bother you? Wasn’t that the deal? Well, forget that shit!

The sting was already beginning to burn, but it would have to wait. Nick couldn’t waste time, or the crazy thing might sting him again. The wasp was still buzzing around in the front seat, and he tried to shoo it out the window. Of course, it didn’t go out, but flew into the back seat instead.

“All right, goddammit!” he swore, oblivious to everything but his dive-bombing attacker.

He twisted his legs from underneath the steering wheel so he could get on his knees to lean into the back of the car. He didn’t see it at first, but then he spotted it in the back window behind the headrest.

“Game on, bitch!” mumbled Nick under his breath.

Nick was all over it. He grabbed a paper from the nightmare in the back seat that he called his filing system, and attempted to dislodge the wasp from the base of the window.

“Is everything all right?” came a woman’s voice from outside the car.

Nick twisted his head to look out the window. The woman stood beside Nick’s car watching him. Great, he thought! Good first impression with his butt sticking out the car window. Hard telling how long she had been there!

“Yes, everything’s okay,” Nick muttered. “Just after a wasp.”

Nick collected himself and got out of his car to stand near the woman, straightening his sport coat and tie as he did so in an attempt to restore a semblance of dignity.

“Is this your car?” he asked.

“Ye-e-es,” she answered slowly, seemingly on the defensive now that Nick was next to her.

Nick fished in his pocket and handed her a business card with Nick Sword, Private Investigator in simple print along with his cell number. As she read it, Nick looked her up and down, not just because she was good looking, but because he did that with everybody. She was a brunette with short hair that was kind of spiky on top, and she didn’t wear much makeup. She was a few inches shorter than Nick, but still rather tall. Nick was 6’ 2”. She wore an over-sized top that came down past her waist, and a faded pair of blue jeans. Nick couldn’t see her eyes behind her dark sunglasses.

“You’re a Private Investigator?” she asked. “What do you want with me?”

“One of my clients is a large employer that has had several job applicants with resumes I have traced to you,” Nick began.

“Okay,” she countered. “One thing I do is write resumes. So what?”

“Well, one thing I do is check them out,” continued Nick. “My clients want to be sure their prospective employees have actually done the things they claim. In the past few months, several of the applicants’ resumes have turned out to be completely bogus, and the resumes have all come from your office. I mean, almost everything on them was total bullshit, from college degrees, to job histories, down to families and kids.”

Nick paused to give her a chance to reply, but she just stood watching him, her mouth in a straight line, arms folded across her chest.

“Oh, you’re good with the resumes, I’ll give you that,” Nick started again. “You weren’t easy to locate. Most of your people were loyal. They didn’t want to give you up. And a lot of the stuff you come up with for their histories is hard to poke holes in. Phone numbers, names, addresses, universities, they all check out on the surface. You’re good.”

A small smile had formed on her lips, although the sunglasses continued to hide her eyes.

“I do a service for people,” she stated firmly. “They all come to me willing to pay whatever I charge,”

“Yes, but it’s all lies!” Nick said, his arms outstretched from his sides, his fingers doing weird things like trying to form words.

Stop that, Nick reprimanded himself! He talked too much with his hands. His girlfriend told him that all the time.

“Most of the people who come to me have been looking for jobs for months and months and months!” she went on, warming to the subject, “some of them since they lost their previous jobs in the Great Recession. Being on the open job market, you know, is a big equalizer. Have you ever been on the open job market?”

“Actually, I have,” retorted Nick.

“Of course, you have,” she continued, almost without a pause, “and apparently without much success. That would be why you’re a private eye.”

Nick bristled at the slur, but he had to admit, she wasn’t far from wrong.

“Most of my clients are very smart,” she pressed. “If they don’t have the qualifications I give them, they could, if they ever got a break!”

Nick had his mouth open to comment, but she was really on a roll.

“To tell you the truth,” she added, “you are the first person that has ever followed up on one of my resumes! Now, what does that tell you? It says that employers either don’t give a shit, or they’re afraid of a law suit. Either reason is pathetic! That’s a pretty sad commentary on our business community, don’t you think?”

What Nick thought was that she really didn’t want an answer, since she didn’t pause long enough to give time for one.

“Anyway,” she said with a smile, “if you ever want a real job, and you need a resume, let me know, okay? Otherwise, in the event that never becomes a reality for you, just buzz off! Right now, I need to go for a dinner date!”

Dinner date! Nick looked instinctively at his watch.

“Oh, crap!” he thought out loud.

“You’ll think crap!” she burst out, stopping halfway into her car.

“No, not you!” Nick said.

The woman raised the middle finger of her right hand as a parting gesture before she disappeared into the BMW.

How did he allow this to happen again, Nick thought to himself, as he hurriedly started his car and screeched out of the parking lot, at least as much as a Corolla could screech? Kiki was cooking dinner for him tonight, and he was already late! He ran a red light to get onto the Interstate. Naturally,(it was Murphy’s Law when you were in a hurry to get stuck in traffic) the brake lights were coming on ahead of him, and the cars were slowing to a stop. Probably a wreck. Nick swerved off on the next exit ramp to try his luck on the city streets. By the time he parked in front of Kiki’s apartment building, after all the stop lights and the Friday night traffic, he was really late. He skipped the elevator and took the stairs two at a time.

As soon as Nick let himself into the apartment, he could feel the oppressive weight of doom in the air. The lights were off and the blinds were shut, leaving only thin ribbons of light on the floor beneath the windows. The drape was pulled across the balcony door, shutting out most of the late afternoon sun. Sid Caesar, Kiki’s dog, a cross between a Chihuahua and a Jack Russell Terrier, that was about the size of a small wharf rat, and who always seemed to mirror Kiki’s moods, darted out of the shadows and attacked him, growling and tugging at the bottom of one leg of his jeans.

“Stop it, Caesar,” Nick said, hobbling forward, shaking his leg and dragging the dog with him.

In the dining room, the food was still on the table, but the hostess candles, Kiki’s idea of a candlelight dinner, were blown out. The food was lasagna, most likely Lean Cuisine, since Kiki was not exactly a gourmet cook.What must have been Nick’s had an upside-down cigar stuck in the top of it like someone’s twisted idea of a birthday candle. Nick knew the message. If there was one thing that was a deal-breaker for him with a woman, besides not having a job and living with her mother, it was smoking. Kiki knew that. Nick hated cigars worst of all, which Kiki also knew, so it was the ultimate insult. This stogy had been lit, too, for added effect, even though Kiki didn’t smoke, andt it stunk in the lasagna. She had also gotten cheesecake for dessert, and the slice next to Nick’s plate had what looked like cat litter dumped on it, cat litter straight from Rosey’s cat box with none of the “gold” sifted out. Nice touch.

All in all, she had left a string of clues that didn’t take a private detective to figure out they spelled deep doodoo. If there was any doubt, the Asshole! sign on her bedroom door took care of that. Nick knocked on the door.

Her name was Kathleen, which she hated, and she called herself Kate, although no one else did, but everyone knew her as Kiki, which she also hated.

“Come on, Taft,” he said. “Open the door, please. I’m sorry I was late, but I was on a job for a client.”

Kiki’s favorite action hero was Steven Seagal, and Nick could hear her in there listening to “Under Siege”. She listened to Seagal movies all the time, and Nick had them memorized. His nickname for her was Taft for Seagal’s character, Forrest Taft, in “On Deadly Ground”, Kiki’s all-time favorite. Nick could imagine her right now sitting on her bed with Roseanne Roseannadanna, her cat that she kept shut up in the bedroom to keep peace with Sid Caesar, curled up beside her, the movie poster hanging on the wall behind her with Seagal, aka Forrest Taft, dressed in his fringed and beaded cowhide jacket.

“Will you open the door, please?” Nick pleaded.

Nick’s text message tone, the opening notes of the music from Dragnet that went   du-u-um da dum dum, went off, and he dug the cell phone from his pocket. What now? He had all he could handle at the moment. It was from Kiki.

“Not just no, but HELL NO!!!!!” it read.

He started to reply to the text, but stopped, not wanting to play her game.

“Will you at least talk to me?” Nick said to the door.

A few minutes later when she answered, it was again in a text.

“Wait for me on the couch,” it read.

Nick sighed and went to the couch, dragging Sid Caesar along with him. The little bastard was tenacious. Nick couldn’t blame Kiki, since he was the one who screwed up in the first place. The cigar in the lasagna continued to fill the air with its stench, and Nick could hear the denim of his jeans tearing as the dog’s attack, if you could call it that, gained intensity.

After about ten minutes, a length of time that was probably either what she deemed as suitable punishment or just where there was a lull in the Under Siege action, Taft emerged from the bedroom dressed in her knee-length, multi-colored blue cape she had bought on the internet that was supposed to be a replica of one of Seagal’s outfits he had worn to the Oscars, accompanied by bright purple knee socks. Nick thought the cape was hideous, but he wasn’t about to tell her that, especially not at the moment. She perched on the opposite end of the couch, and Sid Caesar let go of Nick’s pants to hop onto her lap.

“Yes, him is my little Caesar man, isn’t him?” she baby talked to the dog as she rubbed his ears. “Always protecting mommy. Yes, him is! Oh, yes, him is!”

“My suspect took forever to come out of her building, and I totally forgot about the time,” Nick apologized. “Can you forgive me, baby?”

Kiki punched both thumbs on her phone, and Nick’s text tone went off again.

“Don’t you baby me!” Nick read.

“Come on, Taft,” Nick tried again. “Can’t we at least talk to each other?”

The dog lay on his back on Kiki’s lap as she rubbed his belly.

“Tell your doggy daddy that mommy found a good Aikido teacher.” Kiki said to Caesar.  “His name is Master Cho, and mommy has already been to one lesson.”

Aikido was the school of martial arts that, who else, Seagal practiced. Nick had been taking Karate lessons for a couple of years, just in case he ever needed it, so he considered himself an expert of sorts.

“That’s great!” responded Nick, glad that Kiki was at least speaking now, even if it wasn’t directly to him.

Caesar looked like he was asleep on Kiki’s lap.

“Tell your daddy that mommy will show him what Master Cho teaches her after a few more lessons,” cooed Kiki.

Nick started to talk to the dog, but caught himself.

“Seriously, I want you to catch me off guard with it any time you want,” said Nick, just to make her feel good. “It will help me work on my moves and give me a little bit of a workout. I mean, I wouldn’t hurt you or anything. Just for fun.”

Kiki didn’t say anything. She didn’t even look up, but just kept petting the sleeping Caesar’s belly.

“Don’t get me wrong,” said Nick. “I realize that it will probably be quite a while before you feel comfortable enough to try any kicks or any of that stuff. It took me a while, although I’m over that now. I mean, I’m into some pretty advanced stuff.”

Enough said, thought Nick. It would probably never happen, anyway. Taft would most likely be intimidated by Nick’s experience. After all, he had a couple of years under his belt (a white one, as a matter of fact). She would find that watching Seagal do his martial arts stuff in the movies was a far cry from actually performing it against real competition.

Nick’s text tone went off again. What now, he thought, looking at his phone. It wasn’t Taft this time.

“I need you. Urgent. Meet me at my office parking lot in about an hour?”

The sending number looked familiar, and he checked it in his phone. It was the resume lady! Now, what was that all about?

“I’ve got to go, Taft,” he said, rising from the couch.. “I don’t know what this is, but it could be important.”

Nick didn’t figure that his leaving would make the situation with Kiki any worse. He wanted to see what this woman wanted that could be so urgent. And what was with the text? Why didn’t she call? Was there some kind of a conspiracy all of a sudden with women texting and not talking?

As soon as Nick began moving toward the door, Sid Caesar hopped off Kiki’s lap and started humping Nick’s leg, his front paws locked around Nick’s calf.

“Caesar, ask your daddy if he’ll take you for a walk before he goes,” said Taft. “And stop doing that. You know mommy doesn’t like it.”

“Yeh, sure,” answered Nick. “I’ll take him out.”

After screwing up dinner, he couldn’t refuse. With the dog still doing his thing, Nick limped stiff legged toward the door and picked up Sid Ceasar’s leash from the wall hook. He could do doggy duty. Whatever! It didn’t appear that Nick would be getting any with Kiki in the near future, but that didn’t mean everybody had to do without. The dog could have sex with Nick’s leg.

Yes, him could. Oh, yes, him could, Nick thought to himself as he waited for the elevator.

 

TO BE CONTINUED