Post by greenbeing on Aug 14, 2006 19:43:53 GMT -5
Pond Justice
Starring:
Ron Elduck as Jim Duckbar
Mallard Nichols as Karen Bettanquack
Frankly Grilled as Marinated “Marty” Russo
Flytoreno Wilson as Tomturkey Selway
Michael Gastric as Gravy Fisk
“We got us a DOA,” Lt. Fisk said, waddling out of his office with a post-it note clenched in his beak. “Went out a sixth story window.”
“Who?” Karen asked.
“Some duck, goes by the name of Flighty LaFlur. Looks like she was hooked up as a hooker.”
“Isn’t that a little redundant?” Karen asked.
“Wait a second, boss,” Jim Duckbar said, his large webbed feet flapping over the side of his comfortable office chair. “A duck went out a window? But ducks can fly. You sure someone’s not trying to put one over on us?”
“So good at what he does, he doesn’t even have to leave the squad anymore,” Russo muttered to himself. “Duck. James Duck,” he imitated.
“Ha ha, Marty,” Karen said. “Grow up.”
“What, Jim needs you to speak for him now? What, cat got his tongue?” Russo glanced at Hank the dog. “Or maybe a dog? He can’t stand up for himself?”
“Drop it, Marty,” Karen said.
“What are you, Karen, his seeing-eye duck?”
“Leave her alone, Marty,” Jim finally spoke up, his fashionable sunglasses perched on his bill.
“Congratulations, Duckbar, you’ve turned this squad into a circus.”
Tomturkey snorted. “No, he didn’t, Marty,” Tom objected. “It’s much more like a zoo.”
***
Jim shuffled behind Hank down the sidewalk, following Karen’s trail of Eau de Canard. It reminded him of the lunch buffet over at Wong’s Chinese.
He could hear the quacking a block before Karen alerted him to the building. “Here we are, Jim.” He stopped right behind her. “Looks like we’re not the first ones on the scene. The off-duty corrections officer who called it in is leaning out the window waving at us.”
“Let’s go.” He prodded the dog forward.
“What’s going on?” a little old duck asked at the top of the stairs before the entered the building.
“We’re looking for some pond scum,” Jim informed her.
“Oh, good luck, young man,” she said.
He followed Karen and Hank up the stairs. It was odd, before he’d gotten shot during duck hunting season, he’d always been the first up the stairs, the first through the door. Nowadays, he felt like second fiddle. Third fiddle if he included the dog.
“Quack, quack! Quack-quack-quack!” The screaming grew louder as they approached the third floor walk-up.
“What’s his name?” Karen asked loudly.
“Howard!” the quacking duck yelled back. “Howard the Duck! And I retain my dignity!”
“Right, Mr. the Duck. What’s this all about?”
“Quack, quack, quack!” He fluttered around, his feathers loudly beating the air. One landed on Jim’s nose. “Ducks quack.”
“Right, Mr. the Duck. Ducks quack. Thanks.”
Jim stayed back in the doorway, cutting off any escape the duck might take to mind about flight. Just what he wanted, a noise ordinance violation. “If you calm down and tell us what the problem is, maybe we can help you,” Jim said reasonably.
“Ducks quack!”
“Yes, they do, Howard.”
“Ducks don’t squeak.”
“Right you are,” Karen said.
“I’m sick and tired of those humans mistaking me for a rubber ducky. I don’t mistake them for a little orange puppet. So what’s their problem? I don’t sing and I don’t squeak.” He opened his beak wide and yelled, “Quack, quack, quack! Real ducks don’t squeak!”
***
Hank barked again. Jim leaned closer. “Timmy fell in the well?” He felt himself blushing, then suddenly all blood left his face and he felt his feathers turn white. It wasn’t worry over Timmy falling in the well, it was—Hank telling him that Timmy fell in the well. “Well, shit,” Jim said to his dog, “I’m going to have a hard time explaining this one to the guys.”
Hank rolled his eyes. Once he’d been trained as a guide dog and realized that he’d be around ducks who couldn’t see, he’d given into his instincts to do some un-doggy gestures.
Jim spurred the dog forward. “We have to go tell Karen.”
“Tell Karen what?” she asked, the door to the precinct slamming shut behind her.
“Timmy fell in the well.”
“Timmy who?”
“Uh…”
“What well?”
He could tell she was looking around, trying to figure out what she was talking about. “Uh…”
“Jim, what’re you talking about?”
Hank snickered to himself.
***
Hank barked. Jim wanted to walk away and leave the dog, but halfway to the subway was not a good place to abandon his guide. “I’m not falling for that again, Hank.”
The entire subway ride home, Hank pondered for an idea Duckbar would fall for.
***
Despite the call to the precinct to respond to a DOA, Jim found himself shivering in the sun outside the building. It felt empty. He couldn’t hear any patrol cars or uniformed officers around. Where was everybody? Had Hank drug him to the wrong building?
He prodded the dog to find the door, and found himself mounting a flight of stairs. The dispatcher had said the address was for an old warehouse. The steps were some sort of stone or concrete. The sun disappeared behind either a cloud or a building. Jim opened the door and stepped into the building, his ducksteps echoing, which meant the building was completely empty, devoid of rooms, without furniture. There was a ramp leading down from the door. Something scuttled in the corner and Jim froze again.
“Duck! Jim, duck!” Marty yelled.
Jim turned to tell him to back off when he was hit in the head with something that felt conspicuously like breadcrumbs and tasted like a red wine baste. He coughed. Flour. Then he lost consciousness.
When he came to, his mind was spinning. Flour. Flour. Flur. LaFlur. Flighty LaFlur.
The name sounded familiar.
Someone was nuzzling his neck. A female beak nuzzled him. He smiled. “Christie?”
A female laughed, but it was a harsh laugh, definitely not Christie.
“Marty?” He struggled to sit up. The last thing he remembered was Marty playing that stupid James Bond game with him. And then… flour. He’d been coated liberally with flour and bread crumbs. Or were they cracker crumbs? He couldn’t sit up, but he could taste. He got a beakful of the crunchy substance, but spit it out immediately. Formaldehyde wasn’t exactly an ingredient he liked to use when cooking. “Hank?” The dog whimpered. The sound echoed in the building. It sounded like the same empty warehouse where he’d responded to the call of the DOA.
DOA?
He panicked. He wasn’t supposed to become the DOA, was he? And what about the woman who’d woken him up?
“Good morning, detective,” she said.
“Who are you?” His wings were tied to his body and he still hadn’t managed to sit up.
“Can’t you guess?” Her voice sounded like she’d been smoking for years, and was no stranger to hard liquors. The cheap perfume was stale, like she’d been wearing it a couple days without a thorough dip in the old pond waters. And the way she’d nuzzled him awake, she was an expert, a professional.
“Flighty LaFlur?” he took a stab, wishing he had a knife so he could saw his way out of his bonds.
“Right you are, detective.”
“What do you want?”
“You wouldn’t respond to my call for help this morning.”
“You tried to fake your own death. That’s a felony.”
“Then arrest me, detective.” She started to undo his bonds.
“Why? What do you want?”
“I just wanted a new lease on life. Or a new leash on life, if you ask your dog. But no one gets out of this business. Once a pimp’s got his meathooks in you, you’re done for.”
“So you wanted us to declare you dead so you could start over?”
“Right you are.”
“What about Marty?”
“The other detective? Had to tie him to the slow roaster. He should be coming to any minute, but he’s not exactly the sympathetic type. Must have intercepted my call to you. You’re the one I wanted. No one would question a blind duck finding a dead prostitute and then forgetting where he found the body. As long as you returned to your squad with blood on your feathers and my ID, I’d be as good as a death certificate.”
“It’s still a felony to fake your own death.”
“You want me to fake someone else’s death? Felonies are for felines, Jimmy Duckbar. All I’m asking is one little favor.”
Jim hesitated. The rope disappeared from around his hand and the unquenchable taste of stale perfume on his beak lightened as she moved out of his immediate space.
“Jim!” Marty yelled suddenly.
He pushed himself into a sitting position. “Marty, I’m okay,” he called back.
“They’re cooking me, Jim! Help!”
Jim turned on Flighty. “You said you just tied him up.”
“I’m getting dizzy over here, Duckbar!”
Her voice lowered seductively as she leaned in to get a peck in on his cheek. “I just turned on the spinny-thing. I didn’t turn up the heat.” She waddled away, obviously wearing high heels, the way they tapped on the concrete floor. “I’m sorry about the breading. It was meant to be a coating to slip up my pimp, slow him down so I could get away if he found me.”
“Jim! Duckbar! I think I’m gonna be sick…” Marty continued unabated.
“Look, how’s about a deal?”
“What do you have in mind? I’m already married.”
“Not that kind of favor. Seems to me, this guy doesn’t have much respect for you.”
“You got that right.”
“Help me escape, I’ll let you rescue him. He’ll think he’s indebted to you.”
Jim smiled. That’d certainly get Marinated Russo off his back. The other duck would avoid him, shamed, for months, if he thought he really owed Jim his life. “It’s a deal.”
***
“Marty’s certainly quiet,” Karen observed the next week. “You think he’s okay?”
“Yeah, I bet he’s just ducky,” Jim said and leaned back in his chair.
Hank barked and ran into the room.
Jim groaned. “Hank, Timmy did not fall down the well.”
Hank barked repeatedly.
“Come on, Jim, this is a respectable squad. Can’t you keep the dog quiet?” Karen pleaded.
Jim reached into his bottom desk drawer for a length of rope. “Timmy fell down the well?” He reached forward and placed the coil in Hank’s mouth. “Go rescue him. Pretend you’re one of those Saint Bernards.”
Hank growled, but took the rope and haughtily walked out of the squad.
“He left,” Karen said.
“That’s weird,” Jim replied. But he shrugged it off and got back to work. As long as Hank was back before he had to leave for the evening, he’d let the dog go have his fun.
***
“Hey, mister!” a young voice called from the gate of the squad. “Thanks for sending your dog to help me. That was a real neat trick he did with the rope, just like a Saint Bernard.”
Jim looked up from his computer. He pushed the headphones off his head; it’d be easier if ducks had ears so he could get one of those neat little earpieces. “What?”
“Your dog.” The kid sneezed.
“Bless you,” Karen said.
“Thanks, ma’am. Well, I better get home for dinner or my mom’ll tan my hide.”
Jim thought he heard squeaking as the kid walked off, but the sound was masked by Hank’s claws on the linoleum. “Hank? Where you been?”
And the wet dog shook himself, spraying them both with water.
“Uh, Jim?” Karen said.
“Yeah?”
“I think Timmy really did fall in the well.”
“But ducks can swim.”
“That’s why he didn’t drown, being down there all day.”
“Oh.”
“Too bad water doesn’t slide right off a dog’s back,” Karen grumbled, swiping at the wet spots on her jacket. Some days she was glad to be a duck.
Starring:
Ron Elduck as Jim Duckbar
Mallard Nichols as Karen Bettanquack
Frankly Grilled as Marinated “Marty” Russo
Flytoreno Wilson as Tomturkey Selway
Michael Gastric as Gravy Fisk
“We got us a DOA,” Lt. Fisk said, waddling out of his office with a post-it note clenched in his beak. “Went out a sixth story window.”
“Who?” Karen asked.
“Some duck, goes by the name of Flighty LaFlur. Looks like she was hooked up as a hooker.”
“Isn’t that a little redundant?” Karen asked.
“Wait a second, boss,” Jim Duckbar said, his large webbed feet flapping over the side of his comfortable office chair. “A duck went out a window? But ducks can fly. You sure someone’s not trying to put one over on us?”
“So good at what he does, he doesn’t even have to leave the squad anymore,” Russo muttered to himself. “Duck. James Duck,” he imitated.
“Ha ha, Marty,” Karen said. “Grow up.”
“What, Jim needs you to speak for him now? What, cat got his tongue?” Russo glanced at Hank the dog. “Or maybe a dog? He can’t stand up for himself?”
“Drop it, Marty,” Karen said.
“What are you, Karen, his seeing-eye duck?”
“Leave her alone, Marty,” Jim finally spoke up, his fashionable sunglasses perched on his bill.
“Congratulations, Duckbar, you’ve turned this squad into a circus.”
Tomturkey snorted. “No, he didn’t, Marty,” Tom objected. “It’s much more like a zoo.”
***
Jim shuffled behind Hank down the sidewalk, following Karen’s trail of Eau de Canard. It reminded him of the lunch buffet over at Wong’s Chinese.
He could hear the quacking a block before Karen alerted him to the building. “Here we are, Jim.” He stopped right behind her. “Looks like we’re not the first ones on the scene. The off-duty corrections officer who called it in is leaning out the window waving at us.”
“Let’s go.” He prodded the dog forward.
“What’s going on?” a little old duck asked at the top of the stairs before the entered the building.
“We’re looking for some pond scum,” Jim informed her.
“Oh, good luck, young man,” she said.
He followed Karen and Hank up the stairs. It was odd, before he’d gotten shot during duck hunting season, he’d always been the first up the stairs, the first through the door. Nowadays, he felt like second fiddle. Third fiddle if he included the dog.
“Quack, quack! Quack-quack-quack!” The screaming grew louder as they approached the third floor walk-up.
“What’s his name?” Karen asked loudly.
“Howard!” the quacking duck yelled back. “Howard the Duck! And I retain my dignity!”
“Right, Mr. the Duck. What’s this all about?”
“Quack, quack, quack!” He fluttered around, his feathers loudly beating the air. One landed on Jim’s nose. “Ducks quack.”
“Right, Mr. the Duck. Ducks quack. Thanks.”
Jim stayed back in the doorway, cutting off any escape the duck might take to mind about flight. Just what he wanted, a noise ordinance violation. “If you calm down and tell us what the problem is, maybe we can help you,” Jim said reasonably.
“Ducks quack!”
“Yes, they do, Howard.”
“Ducks don’t squeak.”
“Right you are,” Karen said.
“I’m sick and tired of those humans mistaking me for a rubber ducky. I don’t mistake them for a little orange puppet. So what’s their problem? I don’t sing and I don’t squeak.” He opened his beak wide and yelled, “Quack, quack, quack! Real ducks don’t squeak!”
***
Hank barked again. Jim leaned closer. “Timmy fell in the well?” He felt himself blushing, then suddenly all blood left his face and he felt his feathers turn white. It wasn’t worry over Timmy falling in the well, it was—Hank telling him that Timmy fell in the well. “Well, shit,” Jim said to his dog, “I’m going to have a hard time explaining this one to the guys.”
Hank rolled his eyes. Once he’d been trained as a guide dog and realized that he’d be around ducks who couldn’t see, he’d given into his instincts to do some un-doggy gestures.
Jim spurred the dog forward. “We have to go tell Karen.”
“Tell Karen what?” she asked, the door to the precinct slamming shut behind her.
“Timmy fell in the well.”
“Timmy who?”
“Uh…”
“What well?”
He could tell she was looking around, trying to figure out what she was talking about. “Uh…”
“Jim, what’re you talking about?”
Hank snickered to himself.
***
Hank barked. Jim wanted to walk away and leave the dog, but halfway to the subway was not a good place to abandon his guide. “I’m not falling for that again, Hank.”
The entire subway ride home, Hank pondered for an idea Duckbar would fall for.
***
Despite the call to the precinct to respond to a DOA, Jim found himself shivering in the sun outside the building. It felt empty. He couldn’t hear any patrol cars or uniformed officers around. Where was everybody? Had Hank drug him to the wrong building?
He prodded the dog to find the door, and found himself mounting a flight of stairs. The dispatcher had said the address was for an old warehouse. The steps were some sort of stone or concrete. The sun disappeared behind either a cloud or a building. Jim opened the door and stepped into the building, his ducksteps echoing, which meant the building was completely empty, devoid of rooms, without furniture. There was a ramp leading down from the door. Something scuttled in the corner and Jim froze again.
“Duck! Jim, duck!” Marty yelled.
Jim turned to tell him to back off when he was hit in the head with something that felt conspicuously like breadcrumbs and tasted like a red wine baste. He coughed. Flour. Then he lost consciousness.
When he came to, his mind was spinning. Flour. Flour. Flur. LaFlur. Flighty LaFlur.
The name sounded familiar.
Someone was nuzzling his neck. A female beak nuzzled him. He smiled. “Christie?”
A female laughed, but it was a harsh laugh, definitely not Christie.
“Marty?” He struggled to sit up. The last thing he remembered was Marty playing that stupid James Bond game with him. And then… flour. He’d been coated liberally with flour and bread crumbs. Or were they cracker crumbs? He couldn’t sit up, but he could taste. He got a beakful of the crunchy substance, but spit it out immediately. Formaldehyde wasn’t exactly an ingredient he liked to use when cooking. “Hank?” The dog whimpered. The sound echoed in the building. It sounded like the same empty warehouse where he’d responded to the call of the DOA.
DOA?
He panicked. He wasn’t supposed to become the DOA, was he? And what about the woman who’d woken him up?
“Good morning, detective,” she said.
“Who are you?” His wings were tied to his body and he still hadn’t managed to sit up.
“Can’t you guess?” Her voice sounded like she’d been smoking for years, and was no stranger to hard liquors. The cheap perfume was stale, like she’d been wearing it a couple days without a thorough dip in the old pond waters. And the way she’d nuzzled him awake, she was an expert, a professional.
“Flighty LaFlur?” he took a stab, wishing he had a knife so he could saw his way out of his bonds.
“Right you are, detective.”
“What do you want?”
“You wouldn’t respond to my call for help this morning.”
“You tried to fake your own death. That’s a felony.”
“Then arrest me, detective.” She started to undo his bonds.
“Why? What do you want?”
“I just wanted a new lease on life. Or a new leash on life, if you ask your dog. But no one gets out of this business. Once a pimp’s got his meathooks in you, you’re done for.”
“So you wanted us to declare you dead so you could start over?”
“Right you are.”
“What about Marty?”
“The other detective? Had to tie him to the slow roaster. He should be coming to any minute, but he’s not exactly the sympathetic type. Must have intercepted my call to you. You’re the one I wanted. No one would question a blind duck finding a dead prostitute and then forgetting where he found the body. As long as you returned to your squad with blood on your feathers and my ID, I’d be as good as a death certificate.”
“It’s still a felony to fake your own death.”
“You want me to fake someone else’s death? Felonies are for felines, Jimmy Duckbar. All I’m asking is one little favor.”
Jim hesitated. The rope disappeared from around his hand and the unquenchable taste of stale perfume on his beak lightened as she moved out of his immediate space.
“Jim!” Marty yelled suddenly.
He pushed himself into a sitting position. “Marty, I’m okay,” he called back.
“They’re cooking me, Jim! Help!”
Jim turned on Flighty. “You said you just tied him up.”
“I’m getting dizzy over here, Duckbar!”
Her voice lowered seductively as she leaned in to get a peck in on his cheek. “I just turned on the spinny-thing. I didn’t turn up the heat.” She waddled away, obviously wearing high heels, the way they tapped on the concrete floor. “I’m sorry about the breading. It was meant to be a coating to slip up my pimp, slow him down so I could get away if he found me.”
“Jim! Duckbar! I think I’m gonna be sick…” Marty continued unabated.
“Look, how’s about a deal?”
“What do you have in mind? I’m already married.”
“Not that kind of favor. Seems to me, this guy doesn’t have much respect for you.”
“You got that right.”
“Help me escape, I’ll let you rescue him. He’ll think he’s indebted to you.”
Jim smiled. That’d certainly get Marinated Russo off his back. The other duck would avoid him, shamed, for months, if he thought he really owed Jim his life. “It’s a deal.”
***
“Marty’s certainly quiet,” Karen observed the next week. “You think he’s okay?”
“Yeah, I bet he’s just ducky,” Jim said and leaned back in his chair.
Hank barked and ran into the room.
Jim groaned. “Hank, Timmy did not fall down the well.”
Hank barked repeatedly.
“Come on, Jim, this is a respectable squad. Can’t you keep the dog quiet?” Karen pleaded.
Jim reached into his bottom desk drawer for a length of rope. “Timmy fell down the well?” He reached forward and placed the coil in Hank’s mouth. “Go rescue him. Pretend you’re one of those Saint Bernards.”
Hank growled, but took the rope and haughtily walked out of the squad.
“He left,” Karen said.
“That’s weird,” Jim replied. But he shrugged it off and got back to work. As long as Hank was back before he had to leave for the evening, he’d let the dog go have his fun.
***
“Hey, mister!” a young voice called from the gate of the squad. “Thanks for sending your dog to help me. That was a real neat trick he did with the rope, just like a Saint Bernard.”
Jim looked up from his computer. He pushed the headphones off his head; it’d be easier if ducks had ears so he could get one of those neat little earpieces. “What?”
“Your dog.” The kid sneezed.
“Bless you,” Karen said.
“Thanks, ma’am. Well, I better get home for dinner or my mom’ll tan my hide.”
Jim thought he heard squeaking as the kid walked off, but the sound was masked by Hank’s claws on the linoleum. “Hank? Where you been?”
And the wet dog shook himself, spraying them both with water.
“Uh, Jim?” Karen said.
“Yeah?”
“I think Timmy really did fall in the well.”
“But ducks can swim.”
“That’s why he didn’t drown, being down there all day.”
“Oh.”
“Too bad water doesn’t slide right off a dog’s back,” Karen grumbled, swiping at the wet spots on her jacket. Some days she was glad to be a duck.
