My heart hammered like a caged falcon against the Parker Lucky
Curve in my breast pocket as the stung-lipped little vixen hiked
up a corner of her South Seas Blue silk skirt and settled a
prime-grade haunch on the ink blotter hiding my scarred old desk.
"So, Hotshot", she purred through her ruby-rouged bee-stung pout,
"is that a 1959 Mont Blanc Diplomat 149 with a medium-flex
left-oblique broad nib and the white gold triple cap bands in
your pocket or are you just glad to see me?" My stained teeth
worried nervously at my section-chapped lips like furry little
rats in trash. Oh, Lawzy Mama - I had dem Ol' Roma 2000 Blues.
The Case of the Haunted Pen: Chapter I
Starring: Molly Penn, one hot popsie with a taste for fine pens,
good times, cheap champagne, bad men and a serious knack for
trouble. Pens are being kidnapped and held up for ransom all over
the Big City, and it's up to Pen Moll to get to the bottom of it
before the well runs dry - and somebody gets hurt.
Also featuring: Pinkie the Hapless Pen Fence, Phuc Choo the
Inscrutable Oriental Houseboy, Rev. Bobo and a cast of
thousands....
The Pen Moll leaned wa-aay back on my desk, took a de-eep breath,
then decided to seize... (gulp!)... seize the initiative. "So,
Pinkie", her voice like the hiss of ink through a vintage
Vacumatic, fully engorged, "There's been a whole lot of choice
merchandise gone missing the past few months." One plucked-fine
eyebrow arched to a Visconti clip, the emerald cat-eyes glittered
dangerously in the fading twilight and I knew I was in the worse
trouble of my life. "Hearrr-d anything, Pinkie-Poo?"
I'm a penman, see. One of the best. Thing is, I specialize in
OPP's - Other People's Pens. They call me "Pinky" cause I'm a
lefty, see, and lefties got blue pinkies from all of the ink,
see? I spoze they coulda called me "Lefty", instead, but that
wouldn't of explained the blue pinkie. Hey, sometimes a little
notoriety is just what a man needs, eh?
Right now my notoriety wasn't doing me any good. Pen Moll was on
me like Omas Purple on a white bearskin rug. She hitched up one
sleek firm glee-eaming copper calf, flick-lit a farmer's match on
the sole of her Eyetalian CFMP and fired up a man-sized stogie.
"Look, Pinks", she snarled, sweetly, smoke curling up around like
Medusa's dreadlocks, "One of those pens that got boosted out on
the Heights last weekend could cause someone an uncommon amount
of trouble." I just shrugged, but something about the way she
looked had the sweatdrops rollin' down my spine. "Trouble,
shmouble," I managed. "I been trouble all my life." The sharp
SLAP caught me off guard, kinda shocked me, to tell the truth.
Damn but that chick hit hard. "Dammit, Pinkie", she said now in a
kind of clenched up voice, I could see she was scared now, as
scared as mad, "I'm, I'm trying to HELP you, Pinkie, that pen -
the silver/blue Vacumatic Major with the flex fine nib and slight
brassing on the top of the clip and the capband, that pen is...
HAUNTED...."
to be continued....
