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.