Blind Justice by Jon Wesick

Blind Justice by Jon Wesick

I was looking at a pile of dirty snow, shaped like the Great Buddha at Kamakura, outside my office window when I wondered what would happen if I used rye whisky in my coffee maker instead of water. I had just enough to try so I inserted a filter, emptied my bottle into the reservoir, and added some grounds. When I pushed the brew button, a red light flashed and my office lights went out. Before resetting the circuit breaker, I upended the coffee machine to rescue the remaining whiskey from the reservoir, spilling half on the counter and a third on my khaki slacks. I grabbed a paper towel and as I was wringing whiskey into my cup, she walked in. Her blouse was cut so low that she’d need a podiatrist to undo the top button and her fishnet stockings were so tight that zooplankton would get caught in the weave.

 “Are you Morris Pillbottle?”

“At your service.”

“I could come back if you’re busy.”

“No, I was just storing this device in the evidence locker.” I stashed the coffee machine in the closet. “Mongolians have been using them to smuggle fermented mare’s milk past customs.”

“Fermented mare’s milk?”

“How else would Genghis Khan conquer half the world.” I sat and put my feet on the desk. “Now, what can a do for you?”

“My name is Helen Kimble. I suspect my husband Richard is having an affair. He’s supposed to be working late but has a reservation at the Road Kill Grill, across from that breatharian place on the corner of Euclid and Pythagoras. He only has one arm so he should be easy to spot.” She showed me the photo of a man with a titanium fist. “I could pay you a pretty penny if you got pictures of him with that floozy.”

“Just how pretty are we talking about?”

“Thirty dollars.”

“Don’t make me laugh. That fee needs a nose job and a gallon of zit cream.”

“Fifty.”

“Could use a trip to the hair stylist.”

“One hundred dollars for an easy hour’s work.”

“Deal.” I’d fought villains with stainless-steel jaws and depleted-uranium boots but the thought of confronting a man with an aerospace-alloy fist made my guts squirm as if freshwater eels were wriggling in my duodenum. Nevertheless, a hundred bucks would buy a new coffee machine with enough left over for a fifth of rotgut. I shook her hand.

“You drive a hard bargain, Mr. Pillbottle.” She gave me her business card. “Be there at seven.”

Like everyone else, she got that wrong. I drove a Hyundai.

& & &

Traffic was backed up on Pythagoras so I took the Riemann Cutoff and even through the GPS said the distance was two miles, my odometer read five. I turned right on Euclid and spotted neon lights showing a fawn crushed under an eighteen-wheeler. I circled the block looking for a place to park but all spots were taken by patrons of Woozy’s Nitrogen Cafe. I found a place three blocks away and hauled by bucket of quarters to the pay station. After the greedy machine gobbled enough coin to hold me until 9:00 PM, I placed the receipt on my dash and entered the restaurant.

 “May I help you?” The hostess rested her orchid-like hand on a display case containing rabbits’ feet, skunk-skin caps, and bongs made out of deer bones.

“Yeah.” I scanned the diners, who looked like their clothing survived an explosion at the dye factory, but didn’t see a one-armed man. “Table for one.”

The Road Kill Grill catered to vegan-adjacent carnivores who objected to killing animals for food but made exceptions for acts of God. As such, the grill had no fixed menu but only daily specials. On a good day, you could enjoy a venison steak. On bad days you were stuck with rodent ragout. I glanced at the menu board mounted under a moose head with a broken antler. It was a bad day.

“What are we having, today?” the waiter asked.

“Guess we’ll have the Great Stone Dam bouillabaisse.” Since I needed to wait for Richard, I chose this least-worst option.

“Would we care for a Windfall Cabernet with that?”

“No, how about a Coke?”

“Great, we have some that fell off a truck.”

I spent ninety minutes picking at my fish stew but the one-armed man never showed. At 8:40, I paid the bill and left with a porcupine-quill toothpick. When I returned to the parking spot, my Hyundai was gone. I dialed the phone number under the sign.

“Hammer Tow. What can I do for you?”

“You towed my Hyundai.”

“What’s the license plate?”

“It’s a personalized plate. Rybelto.” I spelled it out.

“Isn’t that the drug I see on TV?”

“They paid for my registration in return for some advertising.”

“What’s it do?”

“Treats psoriasis while helping you lose weight and doubling your chance of liver cancer.”

“I got it here. That’ll be two-hundred-forty dollars cash to get it back. We’re on the corner of Hilbert and Poincaré.”

“There must be a mistake. I left the parking receipt on the dash.”

“I’ve heard that one before. Better get here soon. We tack on an extra hundred a day for storage until the vehicle reaches its blue-book value. Then we sell it for parts. Your junker won’t last a week.”

The circumstances smelled fishier than a Great Stone Dam bouillabaisse. Someone set me up and I intended to find out who. I dialed Helen Kimble’s number and a computer-altered voice answered.

“You fell into my trap, Morris Pillbottle. Soon your precious Hyundai will be a pile of scrap metal. Ha! Ha! Ha!”

The line disconnected and I heard a dial tone, which was odd on a smart phone. I didn’t have enough cash for a rideshare so I hoofed it home. There was nothing more noir than a guy in a trench coat walking past strip joints, pool halls, and neon-lit nightclubs. I played some saxophone music on my smart phone and decided I needed to do this more often. Since I was on foot, there was no reason to risk the Riemann Cutoff so I continued on Pythagoras past a woolly mammoth smoking a cigarette in a doorway and an S&M Root Beer. After that lousy fish stew, a hot dog smothered in chili called to me but my wallet was empty as a politician’s promise. The sidewalk ended at an onramp for the Euler Highway. I was half way across when flashing red lights lit up the night.

“Jaywalker, stop right there!” an amplified voice shouted from the police car.

I’d never rescue my Hyundai if I got stuck in pedestrian lockup so I dived into the bushes beneath the overpass.

“Come back here!” A cop fired a warning shot that downed an ivory-billed woodpecker but I was already in the forsythia.

I tossed my saxophone-playing phone as a distraction and hid behind a flowering dogwood. Seconds passed like millipedes until the cops left to investigate a donkey sleeping in a bathtub.

& & &

“Morris!” Paige Turner looked up from the monitor at the circulation desk. “You look different.”

I’d swapped out my fedora and trench coat for a Greek sea captain’s cap and navy peacoat at the Goodwill before fleeing to the public library.

“Cops are after me, my Hyundai is in the impound lot, and I need your help.”

“Want me to cut through the fence, shoot the guard dog, and disable the night watchman with a choke hold while you drive away?” She stepped away from the desk and embraced me. Her hair smelled like gunpowder and her perfume like a brass knuckles’ kiss. “I could troll graveyards to find a boy who died in childhood and get you a false identity.”

“No, nothing like that.” Most of the criminals, who had it in for me, were behind bars or in the morgue. I handed Paige a list of those who weren’t. “Just get me the addresses of these miscreants, wrongdoers, lowlifes, and reprobates.”

She went to the computer and returned with the information.

“Thanks, babe. Now, forget you ever saw me. If this goes south, I don’t want the cops to drag you into this sardine can of false accusations so they mustn’t find any connection between us. Oh, yeah. Can I borrow your car?”

& & &

Secure in the knowledge that the flatfoots would never look for a manly private detective in a pink Fiat 500, I started Paige’s car and pulled out on to Legendre Boulevard. My first visit was to a sleazy weasel right here in River City. Gilbert Giza lived in a thirty-two-story walkup on Cantor Court. Careful to avoid another tow, I parked in a visitor’s space and followed a group of drunk party girls through the front entrance. After a grueling climb in a dingy stairwell, I knocked at apartment 3213.

“Pizza delivery!”

“I did not order a pizza,” Giza shouted in a bad, Dusseldorf accent from behind the door.

“UPS. I need you to sign for a delivery from INCELS R Us.”

“Go away!”

“Candygram.”

“I got a candygram!” The door opened and a man in a smoking jacket, Homburg hat, and white gloves peaked through the crack.

I put one foot in the door and the other in Giza’s crotch. He went down like an airliner after the FAA laid off half its air-traffic controllers.

“My car’s in the impound lot and the cops are jamming me up for jaywalking, so I have nothing to lose.” I peppered Giza’s nose with jabs to emphasize each syllable. “Why’d you set me up?”

“Set you up? I run a nice business helping Nigerian princes recover looted gold from Swiss banks. Why would I set you up?”

“Then where’s the fat man?” I backhanded him as if I were Bjorn Borg returning a six-year-old’s serve at a USTA Junior Tournament.

“Syndey Greengrocer?” Giza’s eyes were as pleading as a spaniel’s begging for a cheese curl. “He’s in Egypt looking for the Sicilian Hummingbird.”

“Then who’s the other guy you used to work with?” I shoved Giza into the kitchen and smooshed his face into a sweet-potato pie. When he choked, I let him up. “Want another?” I shoved his face into the mixture of sweet potatoes, butter, sugar, milk, eggs, and vanilla again to soften him up before dusting him with cinnamon and nutmeg.

“You mean Waldo?” Giza caught his breath and wiped the goo off his face with a handkerchief embroidered with camels, pyramids, and flying saucers.

“Yeah. Where’s Waldo?”

& & &

My bicep strained to lift a turkey leg the size of a whole ham to my lips as I wandered among souvenir stands selling chainmail, pointy shoes, and chastity belts. The Centerville Dark Ages Faire was like a renaissance fair but without the sanitation. I kept my eyes out for Waldo but it’s nearly impossible to find a slouching hoodlum chewing a toothpick in a sea of knights, wizards, elves, and pterodactyls.

“Good sir, try your luck at archery for a farthing?”

“Why not?” I let the squire hold my turkey leg and grabbed a bow.

After knocking an arrow, I fired at a straw figure atop and a fake castle. The arrow went wide.

“Hail, sir knight, slayer of castles.”

Then I glanced Waldo wearing a horned helmet. Clearly, he didn’t know those were falsely attributed to Vikings but why would a criminal care about historical accuracy? I knocked another arrow and let fly but it landed harmlessly in the belly of a Franciscan friar.

“Have at you!” Brandishing my turkey leg like great sword, odachi, or kriegsmesser, I pursued my quarry through quarries, jousting fields, straw shacks, and medieval inns but stopped when he dashed onto the trebuchet range.

 “Lookout!”

My warning came too late as a grand piano thrown by a siege machine crashed into Waldo with a cacophony sounding like a dirge written by John Cage. I followed an ambulance to the hospital and found Waldo in a semi-private room on the fourth floor.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Name’s Pillbottle. You and I have unfinished business having to do with the fat man and a whole lot of broccolis.”

“Fat man? How could anyone get fat eating broccoli?”

“Cut the cheese, Waldo. I’m feta up with your deception. I know you had my car towed.”

“Waldo, is that my name?”

I wasn’t getting any answers so I questioned an attending physician.

“I’m afraid the patient is suffering from acute amnesia. It’s a rare condition that only occurs when writers run out of original plots.” He looked me over. “I see from your shoulder holster that you may be susceptible to the same condition. Any memory loss lately?”

“No.”

“Do you have a teenaged daughter who’s been kidnapped by gun runners?”

I shook my head.

“How about getting framed for a crime you didn’t commit and having to solve the case before the cops put you behind bars?”

“Well, I suppose just a little.”

“Read two Italo Calvino stories each night before bed.” He scribbled a prescription. “If your condition doesn’t clear up in a month, call me.”

If Waldo hadn’t set me up, I had one last suspect to try.

& & &

Elizabeth Huffington-Huffington lived on a mansion the size of the Grand Canyon on an estate as big as Tanzania. Fortunately for me, she was too cheap to hire security, relying instead on lions and cape buffalo to discourage intruders. Two metric ton of ketamine-laced alfalfa and hamburger got me to the front door. My library card got me through its lock and into a foyer the size of a zeppelin hanger that looked like it hadn’t been dusted since 1937. I crept up the carpeted stairs to catch the old biddy in her study. I heard a thud and looked down at the narcotic dart in my thigh. I passed out before I could remove it.

I woke up on a doggy bed in a ten-by-ten room. As I lifted my head off the stuffed monkey, I saw a Great Pyrenees dog wearing an eyepatch and leaning on a silver-tipped cane in the doorway.

“Grantham Snooterbox, I thought you were…”

“Dead? I should have died when you left me on that mountainside but I crawled for miles until I found refuge in a Shaolin monastery.”

Like many dogs, Snooterbox considered himself human. In his case, he considered himself a super villain who tried to murder an heiress to collect her inheritance.

“What do you want, Snooterbox?”

“Revenge! I spent six painful months waking at the break of dawn to practice flying kicks, somersaults, and punching through concrete blocks. All I could think about is how I’d make you pay. By the way, I have something of yours.” He picked up a document from the hallway with his mouth and laid it outside the doorway.

“My parking receipt!” I rushed toward it and my muscles spasmed from two-thousand volts before I could leave the room. “You fiend!”

“Shock collar. I programmed the electric fence while you were unconscious. There’s no escape but don’t worry. I left you kibble and a bowl of water. In three days, your precious Hyundai will be reduced to a block of scrap iron.” Snooterbox limped away laughing.

Being a dog, he must have forgotten that humans have hands. I gave him fifteen minutes before removing the shock collar, collecting my parking receipt, and leaving.

& & &

“Lieutenant Filefolder, call off the manhunt!” I slapped my parking receipt on the metal desk beside a hat stand and corkboard covered with photos of missing cheese wheels. “Here’s the evidence that proves my innocence!”

“Manhunt? What are you talking about?”

“For jaywalking. Sure, I admit it. I dodged the cops who were trying to bring me in but it was for the greater good. A talking dog got my car impounded because I left him for dead on a Wyoming mountainside…”

Filefolder stared at me.

“You mean, there’s no manhunt?”

“Pillbottle, I’ve got thirty officers staking out delicatessens and another twenty looking for a missing donkey. I don’t have time for you or your broken-down Hyundai. Now, get out of my office and for God’s sake get some help.”

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Jon Wesick 2025