Rebar for Tootsie Rolls: Chapter .38 Special - The Drippings of Angels

These were some fancy digs alright. Not only was there a restroom attendant with an monogrammed ascot, but the solid gold urinal also had it's own ascot, changed hourly by superbutlers with monogrammed capes. I tipped a superbutler with a sawbuck and he thanked me with a disdainful grunt before returning to the blower to renegotiate his currency futures with some joe in Melborne named Cecil. I headed back out past the hot towels, taking a swipe to brush the distracting chandilier out of the way. Dardenella was waiting back at the Louis the XIV dining room table, drinking champagne so old the label read "Le Tres Ancien Jus-de-Grape Bubblie," because the French region of "Champagne" had not yet risen from the sea-floor.

My diplomatic sash began to ride up. This white tie monkey suit was a rental. So was Dardenella, at least as far as dashing Prince Olaf of Norwegia was concerned. I walked up to the table, my fists tightened up in balls of fury, ready to send Olaf back across the Baltic. Sensing trouble, a couple of superbutlers made the mistake of leaping at me only to have me bat them from the air like a couple of helpful bleeding shuttlecocks. Olaf looked up from Dardenella's mesmerizingly poofy cleavage just long enough to watch his teeth land appropriately in a punchbowl.

"Jeez, Brain, why'd ya have to do that? He was just making conversation." Olaf was stuck boots out in an enormous blanc-mange.

I casually plucked the broken monocle from her decolletage and put it in my pocket for later analysis. "Sorry, Tootsie, I got firsties and we gotta blow this popsicle stand now. We got a meet with Losie the Bookie."

The Rolls let us out on Dockwater Street. I tipped the guy with a suggestion to to get the hell out of there, and punched him to make sure he got the idea. It's a neighborhood so rough the kittens are packing heat. I adjusted my top hat. Normally it's not a great idea to wander around a place at night where the gutters are full of discarded police badges, not to mention wearing a white tie and tails with a foxy dame on your arm dolled up for an Academy Award with a 2 million dollar pink diamond broach, but Losie was the only person who knew anything about the use of floss for dental violence, and he didn't hang around the Waldorf counting his Canadian nickels. There was a reason he was called "Losie."

I had one arm mostly around Dardenella's little waist and one on my piece, and one eye on the alleys, windows and doors, and another eye helpless sucked into Dardenella like a baby duck in a whirlpool.

We followed a couple of depressed rats as they shuffled along the applicance repair and remaindered sandwich shops, and then there was the sign and stairs leading up to "Losie's For-Real Pawn and Danish Furniture," possibly the least believable front since Hitler sent a division of wood-pixies to stop the Russians in Berlin.

Dardenella stepped in something sticky, and it wasn't saltwater taffy. I should have guessed. There was poor Losie's body lying at the bottom of the stairs. More disturbingly, his head just then tumbled down each step and rolled out into the street where it was run over by an ice cream truck.

Dardenella was unflappable. "Guess Losie's had his last Orangesicle. Sorry about your friend." She opened up a hydrant with a firehouse wrench she kept in her bag and soaked her shoe in cold water to get the stain out.

"Well, he wasn't much of a friend. Or a bookie. Or really a very good informant. He never graduated from middle school, or knew the sweet love of a woman, and the Danish furniture was mostly styrofoam, and usually, he was wrong about the bus schedule, and what day it was, and the name of the state he lived in. He once lost 35 large betting that the Miami Dolphins would take the NBA title. He also smelled poorly, and had to replace his full set of house and car keys three times a week, and as you can see he never met a bucket he didn't like as long as it was full of chicken. "

Dardenella picked up something from the stairwell. "Hey, Honey-brain, check out the envelope."

It was a large envelope marked "INVALOPE." It was exactly what I was looking for. I planted a fast one on Dardenella's lips.

"I was wondering if those worked," I said.

"Only when they're moist and squishy."