Bendouski pages nine & ten

A cup of espresso later, Scott examined and hung the wet negative to dry, then left the office.

A short distance away was the restaurant, Sushi Mas. Scott described it as the best little sushi restaurant in all of L.A. He sat down at the counter and the sushi chef, Mas, came over.

“Hey there, Mas, can I get two California rolls to go, please?”

“Why you not let me make you something else? Always California roll, California roll.”

“It’s what I like, Mas. And you make the best. I’m kind of in a hurry, can you do them fast?”

Mas scowled and growled at him. “California roll. Fast, fast. This is art, not McDonald’s. If you want fast, you go get French fry.”

“I really appreciate it, thanks,” Scott said.

As he started the rolls, Mas grumbled, “Two fast California roll for peeping Tom.”

“I’m not a peeping Tom, Dammit!”

Mas furiously yelled, “And this art . . . not fast, Dammit!”

Scott threw his hands up in surrender.

~~~~~~~~~~

At the house where Scott heard the gunshot, two burly men wrestled a large black plastic bundle into the trunk of a car. An even bigger man stood in the doorway smoking a cigarette and watching. As the trunk slammed, he flicked the smoke out toward the street, handed one of the men a gun, sighed heavily, and went back inside.

One of the men tossed the gun into the glove box, picked up the hose, and squirted the driveway. The other thug washed his hands off under the spray. When they were finished cleaning up, they drove down the hill.

Bendouski page eight & nine

A little later, Scott entered his L-shaped office. The quarters were small but very modern, sporting a reception desk, a computer, and two phones. Two leather chairs nestled inside the door. Scott’s desk, the twin of his reception desk, was tucked around the corner, hiding behind a retro-style, aluminum- inlaid, folding screen.

Behind the desk was a closet door. Scott opened it to reveal his mini-darkroom. He clicked the long lens off his camera, left it on the credenza, stepped into the darkroom with the camera body, and closed a black curtain.

In total darkness he removed the negative, spooled it in the developing canister, closed the lid, set the timer, and flipped on the red light.

A cup of coffee was next, from the beautiful espresso machine hidden in his credenza.

He made a cup, put his feet up on his desk, and pondered the gunshot, the big hairy guy, Lester, and his own near trip off the embankment and down the steep hillside.

Getting almost pushed off the road was no big deal to private detectives. It came with the territory. The heart attack was disturbing and guilt inducing. But Lester had brought it on himself, so Scott managed to put it out of his mind.

The gunshot, on the other hand, was extremely interesting. Glancing back at his closet darkroom, he wondered if anything would show up on film.

Bendouski page six & seven

 “A spider. Just get the blanket or something, I’ll go back to him.” Scott pointed and ran back down the driveway.

The sister brought Lester a blanket in less than a minute. “Oh God, Les. Are you all right? This man said a spider bit you.”

All Lester could do was gasp and point at Scott.

His sister nodded. “Yes, I know. He saved your life. Where did you get bit?”

Lester continued to gasp and shook his head no.

She tried to sound reassuring. “No, you’re not going to die. What kind of spider was it, could you tell? The paramedics are on their way.”

Scott anxiously stared down the road and said, “I don’t think the spider actually bit him. I’m pretty sure it’s his heart.”

Grabbing for Scott, Lester wheezed, “You . . . eeehhh . . . you . . .”

Scott eased his arm away. “There’s no need to thank me, my friend. I’m just doing what any Good Samaritan would do.”

Wheezing badly, Lester angrily looked at his sister, back to Scott. She nodded encouragingly. “Don’t try to talk, Les. The ambulance will be here very soon.”

“Yeah, Les. Don’t excite yourself. You’ll only make it worse.”

Lester clutched at his chest, tried to speak, but all he could manage was another tortured groan.

“Just calm down.” Scott nodded to the big guy’s sister. “I’m sure he’s gonna be okay.”

She stroked Lester’s forehead. “See? You’ll be okay, Les. Don’t worry.”

Lester managed to wheeze out a few words. “He’s (gasp) the one (gasp) who, who . . .”

“Yes, we know.” She patted his shoulder. “Take it easy. You’re going to be okay.”

“Yeah, don’t excite yourself, Les. Try to stay calm.” Scott nodded reassuringly at him, which made Lester even madder.

“He’s right. Calm down, Lester.” Turning to Scott, she said, “He’s not normally like this.”

“Try to relax, big guy.” Down the road, blinking red and yellow lights were tearing up the street toward them. “I can see the ambulance. That’s a nice surprise—they made it up here pretty fast.” Scott started to back away.

“Where are you going?”

“I have to get my car out of the way. You’ll be okay now, they’re almost here.”

“But wait! How can we ever thank you? What’s your name?”

“My name’s not important. I’m just glad I could help. Take care of your brother.” Scott climbed in his Mustang as the ambulance drove up and the paramedics leaped out.

He watched for a moment as they hooked up an oxygen mask to Lester and started checking his vitals. Lester continued to point in Scott’s direction. His sister kept nodding and patting his shoulder.

Once Lester was on a stretcher and things were under control, Scott rolled his Mustang down thestreet in reverse, backed into the driveway of the next house, whipped the car around, and drove off.

Bendouski page five

Scott pointed up the road. “Do you live alone?”

The guy gasped again, tried to speak, whined even more intensely, and finally shook his head no.

“Don’t move, pal.” Scott patted the big guy’s shoulder. “Like that’s gonna happen.”

He sprinted to the driveway that the Hummer had roared down, charged up to the house, and pounded on the front door. “Hello, hello! Anybody home?”

“Go away or I’ll call the police,” a frightened female voice yelled from the other side of the door.

“Your husband’s had a heart attack. He’s lying in the middle of the street.”

“I don’t have a husband, I have a gun.”

“Hey, lady, he came down your driveway.”

“Go away! I’m calling the police.”

“Big guy! Drives a Hummer?”

After a short pause the woman said, “Les? Oh my God.” She opened the door. “He’s my brother.”

“I’ve called 911. Do you have a blanket?”

The woman’s hands trembled. “What’s he doing out in the street? He was just . . . I thought he was working in the garage.”

“That blanket? We should keep him warm until the paramedics get here.”

“It’s August!”

“Oh, right, we’ll use it as a pillow, to keep him comfortable.”

She stared at Scott in confusion. “But, how did this happen?”

“He got excited about a spider on his sleeve.”

“What?”

Bendouski page four

  “Oh holy crap!” Scott frantically started the car, slammed it in reverse, and backed out of the way just as the Hummer cleared the driveway and roared across the road. The big guy’s Hummer skidded to a stop, almost careening over the edge.

Scott yelled out the window at the guy from about thirty feet away. “Now that is a felony, you jerk. You tried to kill me.”

Enraged, the big guy came flying out of his Hummer and charged down the road. As he closed in, Scott backed up twenty more feet and hollered out his window, “You’re making a big mistake, buddy. This won’t end well for either one of us.”

The guy stopped for a breath and charged Scott again.  Scott threw the car into reverse and backed up a little more. He saw the guy run a few more feet, grab his chest, choke out a horrible whine, stagger three more steps, and stumble to his knees.

 The guy gasped, clutched his left arm, and fell face first on the pavement.

“Ahh jeez.” Scott ran to the guy. “Take it easy, Rambo. Just lie still, I’ll call the paramedics.” Scott dialed 911 on his cell phone.

After a beat, 911 answered. “Yeah, heart attack, Canyon Road, at the top.” He patted the big guy. “What’s your address?”

All the big guy could do was gasp.

“He’s lying in the street, you can’t miss him. At the very top, yes, right at the switchback. We need an ambulance up here fast. He looks really bad. Yeah, yeah, I’ll wait.”

Bendouski Page three

“Inside joke.” Scott tugged lightly at his camera, but it didn’t move in the big guy’s grip. “Sam Spade had a partner named Archer and he . . .”

“Get the hell out of here, you son of a bitch!” The man flipped the card back in Scott’s lap. “Or I’ll get in my Hummer and push your ass right off this road.”

Scott mumbled under his breath, “A Hummer, coulda guessed.” He said, “Take it easy, friend, there’s no need for any ass-pushing.” Scott tried once more, to bring the camera inside his car. “You know, friend, I can’t get the hell out of here if you don’t let go of my lens.”

The man wouldn’t loosen his grip. “Maybe I’ll just keep this to teach you a lesson.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t do that. It’s a felony.”

“A felony? I don’t think so.”

Scott blinked and stared at the man’s sleeve. “Oh Jeez. Is that a spider?”

“What? Ahhh!” The man jerked his hand back and frantically swatted at his sleeve.

Scott quickly retrieved his camera, laid it on the seat, and turned back to the window. “Did you get it? The spider?”

The big guy was gone. Scott searched the street. “Where the hell did he go?”

In the driveway across the road from where Scott was parked, the Hummer’s engine growled to life. Brights, fog lamps, and roof lights all came on at once as it roared down the driveway, directly at his Mustang.

Bendouski—page 2

As he started to take the lens off his camera, he saw a flash and heard the muffled sound of a gunshot next door. “Whoa!”

Scott clicked the lens back in place and fired off three motor-drive shots of a dimly lit room in the house next door. He waited a second and saw some shadowy movement in the room. “Uh-oh.” Still using the motor drive, he finished off the frames on the roll. “Gotcha! I think.”

Then he noticed a burly guy sitting in a chair at the edge of the bushes. “What the hell?”

The man didn’t seem to be affected by the gunshot. He turned back from the window, took a drag off his cigarette, and went back to staring up and down the street.

Scott put a new roll in his camera and was about to record the disinterested witness when suddenly a big hairy hand came down on the camera lens. 

Startled, Scott jumped. “Whoa! Hi.”

He was staring up at a big angry man. “What the hell are you doing out here, you peeping Tom?”

“Ahhh, man.” Scott glanced down at the hairy ham-hock gripping his lens and said, “Ease off tough guy. It’s really okay, I’m a licensed detective. I was hired by a guy’s wife to see if he’s cheating on her. Wait.” Scott fumbled through his pockets with his free hand. “Juuust one second.” He handed his card to the man. “Here’s my card, see?”

The man took the card, studied it, but never let go of the camera lens. “Moss and Archer?”

Where’s Mrs. Bendouski? Page one.

Chapter 1

Bang, Bang, You’re Dead

Detective Scott Moss sat in his Mustang, parked at the top of Canyon Road in the Hollywood Hills, just past the switchback. It gave him a perfect view, straight into the bedroom of the expensive home across the narrow divide. He zoomed his camera’s telephoto lens in on the master bedroom window.

Through the lens, Scott could see a man and a woman in bed. The man was standing, buck-naked on the bed doing a Tarzan yell, while the woman was lying beneath him, laughing.

He could see the woman completely, but from his angle the top of the window obscured the man’s head and shoulders. “Come on you jerk. I need to see if it’s you.”

As the mystery man dropped on his bed partner, Scott took a shot and groaned, “Ah, rats, it is you, Upton. I was actually hoping your wife was wrong about you for her sake, you jackass.”

He shot, zoomed out, shot another frame, took a final shot, and rested the big telephoto lens on the window frame. “Mrs. Upton is going to be just so thrilled to see these pictures.” Scott dropped his head and muttered, “And I have to show them to her. Damn this sucks.”

What’s with Chinese cardboard?

It’s different, isn’t it?

It seems lighter and a tad more brittle than American cardboard.

It feels different too. Kinda gritty, right?

It seems a little thinner, too.

The wavy little piece in the middle has teeny-tiny little waves, doesn’t it?

But I guess it does the job. God knows we get enough stuff from China boxed in their weird, gritty cardboard. And I’ve never gotten anything from there (China) that was broken. Not yet anyway.

I wonder how it blends with American cardboard in our recycling grinders? Does our supple, thicker cardboard make the gruel smoother? Or does the Chinese brittle, thinner, cardboard make the gruel grittier?

Anybody?

Exploring without boats

I know people who spend all day on their computers—looking up stuff, reading other people’s stuff—and I thought it was a nutty waste of time.

Then I realized they’re doing in seconds—on computers—what Ponce de Leon And Amerigo Vespucci took years to do—in boats.

Hats off to you; the new explorers. You don’t even get seasick.

And.

Back then, I’m sure a lot of people thought they were just as nutty as some people think you are today.

I’m not saying me, but some people.

Why our Galaxy may be safe from invasion—forever

I wrote about a giant ball of deleted propa-sales-ganda-pitch-special-e-gook floating out in space a while ago.

It occurred to me that it might possibly be as large as Earth by now. Perhaps it’s surrounding our planet completely.

Any other life-form searching the Universe for signs of life could stumble on to it and shudder at the content. Our Galaxy would be immediately be marked on star charts and labeled “Off limits” to all other reasonable forms of life.

Could you blame them? The horror would be palpable. Erectile dysfunction alone would scare most other life-forms away.

So, we’d be safe—forever. Unless we ourselves stumble on to another life-form out there, somewhere.

If we do, we can only hope they have found a better, more permanent way to dispose of their e-gook.

Ours is out there.

How to open your safe when you’re drunk

When I was a kid, my dad put me to work in a little engineering shop. My jobs were to cut steel jackets on a lathe, and run the semi-automatic hacksaw.

Friday night everyone left on time. I waited for the owner to come by and give me my first paycheck.

He showed up very drunk, and couldn’t remember the combination to the safe. So, he called his wife; “Hey, Doris! What the hell is the combination? I need to get into the safe,” he yelled. He was so drunk he sat on the floor with his legs splayed out, leaning on the safe, yelling.

The office was in front, on a fairly busy street, and the front door was wide open. But I was so paralyzed I didn’t think to close it.

“Four to the left.” He yelled. “Then back around to, what? Seven? Okay then what?” He yelled. “fifteen?”

Two shots of yelling out the numbers, the safe opened, and he handed me a twenty.

I had earned twelve dollars that first week, not bad money for a fifteen year-old kid in the early Fifties. Anyway, I thought I’d hit the jackpot. I hoped he’d come in drunk every Friday night.

The next Friday, he wasn’t drunk. I had earned fourteen dollars that week.

He handed me my pay. Six bucks, minus the extra eight he’d given me the week before. I must have had quite a look on my face, because he said, “That’s right, isn’t it? Fourteen—minus the eight I gave you last week?”

I nodded yes, and left broken-hearted.

Life gives us lemons—we know what to do

I’m getting some macular degeneration in my right eye.

When I close my left eye and look, it’s like looking at a fun mirror.

Everything is distorted through my right eye. And the distortion moves around when I move my head. Eyes, lips, and foreheads wiggle around.

Watching the talking heads on the news is the most entertaining. They’re saying serious things, but they look like rubber people. “A Senator was arrested today,” sounds even funnier when a rubber person is saying it.

There are others. 

With just my right eye Conan’s head looks even weirder. Same thing with Kelsey Grammer’s head. It’s the most fun with people with large foreheads—and for some reason, John Boehner.

I’m guessing people who smoke pot and have macular degeneration must have really wild visions.

I know, I know. I wrote “visions” on purpose.

When I’m sculpting, I don’t have to wonder what a shape might look like if it were a little more curved. I just use my right eye and move my head around until I see the shape that’s most attractive, then open my left eye and carve it. That’s making lemonade out of lemons, right?   

And sometimes there’s a little dark spot in the middle of my vision.

I saw a little bug on the brick floor in our living room today, so I stepped on it.

It wasn’t there.

A little later I came back and there it was again, the same little dark bug. So I stepped on it again.

Same result.

What’s with the British?

They serve their beer warm and their toast cold.

What’s that all about? Does anybody know?

And while we’re on the subject, who invented toast?

There should be a national holiday in his or her name.

It should be on a Saturday.

What’s better than warm toast with butter in the morning?

You got that, Brits?

Vivé La Albuquerque

We went to a French Bistro the other evening. The food was wonderful.

The atmosphere was charming. The music was wartime French—WWII.

And the man who waited on us spoke with a lovely French accent.

We’re pretty sure he’s the owner.

“Where are you from?” my wife asked.

“From Paris,” he answered.

“You came to Albuquerque from Paris. Why did you leave Paris?” she asked.

“Too many French,” he replied.

Well, I thought it was funny.

Corporate morals

Do major universities have a morals course for business majors?

If they do, it sure doesn’t seem to stick with them.

When these future captains of industry were children, their parents and teachers taught them not to hit other children; not to be mean; not to steal, and most other ‘not to do’s’ to help them through their young lives.

It seems that’s where it ended.

It would appear, from the outside at least, that Wall Street and the banking business are only about making money.

When did the moral part of the equation break down?

Did it disappear when these young people left home and went to college?

Right after college?

Does it disappear on the first spreadsheet in business?

There’s probably no box on a spreadsheet to mark for “moral.”

Maybe it’s the first business plan, the first year in the corporate world.

Shouldn’t there be a moral compass beyond what parents can give their kids?

Vince Lombardy said, “Wining isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” Or something close to that. He was celebrated for saying it, and he never cheated, that we know of.

Other coaches took it to the business level; winning at any cost.

One in particular won by cheating. I didn’t give a crap; it was football.

But is Gordon Gecko the business standard?

“Making money isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” Is that it?

Whatever happened to “enlightened self interest?”

I know Gordon said, “Greed is good,” or something close to that. You get the drift.

The point is; the lack of morals in business and banking affects more than football fans; it affects us all.

Sorry, didn’t mean to be unfunny.       

New Deli—not New York

We went to a new deli yesterday, to see if it was anything like a New York deli.

I ordered a corned beef sandwich on rye, with mustard, and a pickle.

The guy at the counter asked; “Would you like lettuce and tomato on it?”

“No thank you. Just corned beef and mustard, on rye, thanks.”

“Would you like cheese?” he asked.

“No. Just corned beef and mustard, thanks.”

“Would you like some mayonnaise on that?” he inquired.

“No. Just Mustard. No mayo.”

“And cheese?”

“No. No thank you. Just corned beef and a little mustard.”       

“Something to drink?” he inquired.

“A Dr. Brown’s Cream Soda.” I answered. (Very New York.)

“We don’t have that.”

“Fine. A Diet Coke.”

“No cheese?”

“Just corned beef.” I said.

“Okay.”

“On rye, with mustard. And a pickle.”

“You got it,” he said.

I sat down and waited. It came toasted.