It was the jazz side of midnight. I was working the business end of a bottle of Bunions Bourbon when a dame cast a shadow as curvaceous as a Le Mans track my doorway.
“Are you Mr. Schmildlap?” she interrogated.
“What’s it to you?” I snapped.
She stepped forward and purred, “Kiss me. Now.”
I looked her up and down. She was a tall one, a thick mane of auburn hair framed a face angels would kill for. She had lips as lush as maraschino cherries puckering to kiss the sun, skin like porcelain (and probably easier to clean), and legs that went all the way to the floor capped with petite pups housed in a red stilettos that could double for murder weapons in the right hands.
“Sorry,” I said. “I don’t play hanky or panky until I know what I’m getting into.”
“Too bad,” she said, striding across the room. “I thought you could handle it.” She reared back her wing to give me a roundhouse open fist when I stopped her midair.
“Play nice, kitten,” I said. “Or I won’t put out a saucer of milk.”
She recoiled and tried her best to strike a gallant pose, then she began shaking like a bowl of Jell-O in an earthquake and put on a water show.
“Oh, Mr. Schmildlap, I need your help desperately,” she warbled. “I’m at my wit’s end.”
“Then you better start yapping, or I’ll call a plumber to shut down your water works. This suit ain’t wash ‘n wear, doll face.”
She sat in the chair as I went behind my desk, popped my Florsheims on the desk, and torched a Pall Mall.
“It’s President Trump,” she blurted. “Do you know him?”
“Trump?” I ran the name through my memory bank, and it came back like a bad penny. “What’s his beef?”
“The presidential election,” she said. “It was stolen from him.”
“Stolen?”
“Yes. That mean socialist Joe Biden cheated President Trump out of his re-election,” she dabbed her baby blues with tissues, sopping tears like a thirsty sponge. “The president wants you to find the missing 11,780 votes for him so he can win the state of Georgia and stay in the White House.”
“Missing votes?” I asked, pushing my fedora back on my brain cage. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Trump says 11,780 of his votes are missing. He needs them. Senators Josh Hawley, Ron Johnson, Ted Cruz, and other congressional GOP patriots also think a crime’s been committed. Oh, Mr. Schmidlap, won’t you help us save democracy from a tyrant like the notorious radical Joe Biden? He wants to destroy America. Only Donald Trump can save it!”
“Lemme get this straight, dish. You say there’s a mystery…”
“Yes.”
“11,780 missing Trump votes…”
“That’s right. They were shredded, or the Dominion voting machines were rigged to make Trump votes say Biden, or dead people voted, or the dog ate the ballots, or aliens from Mars landed and––”
“Okay, okay, I catch the drift.” I snubbed the cigarette out on my face and blew a plume of smoke. “There’s no mystery here, doll,” I said planting my feet on the floor and standing. “There are no missing 11,780 votes.”
“But there are!”
“Nope. And there never were.”
What do you mean?”
“Haven’t you seen the news? There have been three election counts and recounts in Georgia. Everything adds up. It’s all jake. Trump’s toast. The big galoot lost fair and square. Joltin’ Joe took him down.”
“But what about the 11,780 votes?” she gasped. “Where did they go?”
“It’s bullshit. Trump lied. Made up the entire cockamamie story. He’s a complete bullshitter. Avoids the truth like it’s playing tag. Trump’s a pathological liar, babe. Mystery solved. Case closed.”
“But Mr. Schmildlap, he said he was cheated, and the deep state is out to get him, and the liberal elite media hates him, and dry cleaners have a plot against him by not removing his stubborn gravy stains, and…”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I comforted the dish as I walked her to the door and gave her the air. “Cry me a river, sister. And tell Trump he better get packing. He’s getting evicted January 20th and then it’s not long until he take up residency in the crossbar motel.”
The dame ran down the stairs angry as a hen that’s been refused a small business loan with an impeccable FICO score. I returned to my Bunion’s bottle and maybe the elusive search to discover what the insides of my eyelids looked like.
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Enjoy PD Scullin’s debut novel “SAWDUST: Love is wilder than a circus,” a humorous romp across America with a circus in the early ’80s. You’re a click away from a helluva fun ride. Buckle up and go.
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