
Evil on the Rocks
Chapter 15 – Enter the Pindar
Velna followed me back into the bedroom. “You worry me. You always think you know what you're doing, but you're too slick for your own good. Someday you're going to find it out.”
“I found it out years ago,” I confessed, “but we’ve got to play this one slimy and slick. Nobody knows what might happen; it’s as if a drunken writer was making this up as he went along. It’s as confusing as that television mini-series you like.”
“I wasn’t talking about that, I was worried about hiding in a house filled with scantily-clad women surrounded by Australian sheepherders who have been too long in the outback.”
I smiled at my wife’s concern, but knew that without sexual tension this mystery would be as boring as a something mind-numbing. I kissed her sweetly, had a couple hours of rabidly-deviant coitus, and then fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.
I awoke refreshed, but bound and gagged! So Schultz was a quadruple agent, and was turning us into the NWO, police, the local HOA, or worse! Then I recognized the handcuffs and remembered Velna begging for more before I passed out the night before. My suspicions were confirmed when my bondage-friendly wife came in and gave the antique four-poster a workout it hadn’t seen since Hurricane Frances. It was late afternoon when we finally sat down for breakfast, and strangely, everything was normal. The Slice Girls were binge-watching Game of Thrones, and patrolling the inside of the house armed with dual swords but wearing little else. Sgt. Schultz and Brigid were playing kissy-face and hide the pickle in the parlor. Everything outside was quiet, but not too quiet, if you know what I mean. It was as if our ploy had worked, that nobody had followed or betrayed us. This was a first for my adventures, having your advisory close on your heels is a cheap way to keep the action moving at a fast pace. Without such ploys, these adventures would turn tedious and glacially slow, the mark of death to a fast-paced operative like me.
I turned on the news and listened to the story of a world moving towards a cliff and oblivious to the drop. Rumors of massive currency revaluations, FedEx trucks breaking down due to overloading with gold bars, Leo Wanta being invited to testify before congress, and the reinstatement of the missing 13th amendment were woven into the headlines stories of major presidential candidates calling each other’s wife “ugly.” I knew that PB&J (Powers that Be and Jam) would be in full panic mode, which along with the budget cuts might explain the calm around us. That dreadful calm that seemed to engulf us.
I decided to throw caution to the wind, and confer openly and honestly with our partners, an idea just crazy enough that it might work. “What do you know about the ‘Pindar,’ who or what is he and is he a he?” I had been running across this crazy name since chapter 1, intentionally neglecting to mention it just to mess with my readers.
“He’s a shadowy shape-shifting Reptilian,” replied Sgt. Schultz, “I understand the name is a title that means ‘penis of the dragon.’ I suppose it means he’s either got a very high, or a very low, rank, depending on how you look at it.”
“It’s also more-or-less the name of a vineyard on Long Island that we audited because it belongs to the NWO,” added Brigid, “I always thought the name described the rather odd flavor of the wine.”
I passed on asking how she knew, and went on to my next point. “That ‘e-dabs’ you mentioned was my second clue, your mistake was that you heard the name whispered. It wasn’t ‘e-dabs’ but, ‘edaps.’ Spelled backwards, it becomes Brigid’s old playmate, Sam Spade, only without the ‘Sam!’”
Brigid dropped her mojito in raw surprise and let out the gasp of a woman compromised by ill-advised intimacies. I quickly got her a new glass, filled it with straight rum, and continued. “You might think that’s kind of thin, but remember ‘Pindar?’ If you substitute ‘s’ for the ‘r,’ ‘e’ for the ‘I,’ and get rid of the ‘n’ it’s an anagram for ‘Spade!’ That can’t be a coincidence!”
“Enough talk,” advised my beautiful-but-deadly wife. “Let’s get out there and kill or chase someone. We need some action, and except for the B&D, it’s been people lounging around the house and talking. I could think up a better story with my eyes closed.”
“If it’s fireworks you want, I’m ready to accommodate you right here and now,” I said smugly, “there will be so much that’s exciting you’ll get tired of being excited. But you’ll have to give me a couple days to get to the next chapter, because this one is drawing to a close. Until then, what do you say to watching some golf or fishing on TV?”
To be continued…