Today was a bit busy, as I needed to find a new place to live — perhaps a story for another day.  However, as long promised, I have provided another Dirk Danger story, this one written while I was in college, and undoubtedly the best (actually I quite like it, unlike… some of the others), and shortest (hooray!).  If you think the rest of the DD stories are boring and stupid (I don’t blame you!), I suggest you read…

 

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DIRK DANGER

in

A Keen Sense of Destiny

Flora Heartwood walked through the halls in the downtown office building, checking each door for a stenciled “DIRK DANGER, P.I.”  Walking past such notables as “ARCH TARSAL, Foot Inspector” and “SUE HEMMINGWAY, Seamstress,” Flora couldn’t help but wonder where these names came from.  She paused outside Dirk’s door, applying more scarlet lipstick to her plump lips.  She fluffed her long, wavy brown hair, unbuttoned another button on her blouse, and knocked.

“Enter,” came a dark, deep voice from inside the room.  She pushed open the door and saw a man of dark complexion and five o’clock shadow sitting behind a mahogany desk, slouching in his chair with his feet on the desk.  The room was trimmed in the same dark wood, and in the corner stood a hat rack with a beige fedora perched on top, and beneath it a matching trench coat.  “What can I do for you, Miss…”

“Heartwood.  Mrs. Flora Heartwood,” she said.  “My husband has gone missing, and I hear you’re the best in the business.”

“Mrs. Heartwood, you hear right.”  He took his feet down from the desk and sat up.  “I presume you are referring to flooring magnate Mr. Edward Heartwood, who was last reported seen some twelve days ago?  What took you so long to see me, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I thought I should see how the authorities would do.  Needless to say, they haven’t done very well,” she said, frowning slightly.  “I was hoping you could do better.”

“Well ma’am, I probably could, but you’ll have to wait to find out.  It’s almost five o’clock.  And it’s Friday,” said Dirk, checking his watch.  “I’m afraid I can’t do anything for you until Monday.”

“But sir, I saw your advertisement in the paper, it said you’d solve any case if it intrigued you enough or the money was there.  I assure you the case is interesting and the compensation is great.  What can I do to persuade you?”

“Mrs. Heartwood, if you saw that ad then you know it listed my hours.”  To her disappointed look he added, “Ma’am, I take my work seriously.  But I seriously don’t work on weekends.  Come back Monday.”  And with that he put his feet back on the desk and motioned toward the door.

Flora Heartwood redid her button and walked angrily toward the door.  As she left, she turned around to see Dirk one last time.  “Maybe I will.  Or maybe I’ll just go down to Arch Tarsal and get a foot massage.  How is it that everyone in this God damned office building has such ridiculous fake names?  Could you be any more stereotypical?”  Needless to say, she closed the door just a little too hard as she left.

It is a matter of course that as a private investigator, Dirk Danger is assumed to have changed his name to better suit his profession.  In fact, it is largely assumed that most of what Dirk does is an act, and Mrs. Flora Heartwood was probably thinking this as she walked down the hall.  No one in this day and age works in a darkly lit mahogany office with a half-finished cigar in the mahogany ashtray, a green lamp on a mahogany desk, a trench coat and a fedora on a mahogany coat rack and their name in all caps stenciled on the large frosted glass window in their mahogany door.  Nobody still wore suits to work, much less a trench coat or a hat.  This was the twenty-tens, for goodness sake.  And yet Dirk Danger had all those things, and the name to go with them.

It is, of course, true that most of what Dirk Danger does is an act.  He does not, for instance, smoke cigars.  Nor does he drink whiskey during work hours, yet there is a decanter filled with the finest bourbon sitting in his office. But he always solves the case.  Always.  Because someone who was born into the name Dirk Danger doesn’t become a janitor.  Nor a lawyer, nor a doctor, nor a dentist for that matter.  If your father named you Dirk Danger, you’d be the best damn private I in the city, because someone who’s name is Dirk Danger needs to be; and Dirk Danger is exactly that.  So how did Dirk get the name that led him down this inevitable career path?

Our story commences in the late 1920s, in Bavaria. There lived a young banker, Georg von Stirpitz, whose father, and owner of the bank, had recently passed away.  Georg von Stirpitz had, some ten years previously, been stationed on the eastern front as a boy of sixteen and had played a quiet and largely unimpressive role in defeating the Russians, but before he could be redeployed to the west the war was lost.  Upon his return home, he married his sweetheart, Maria-Magdalena, and settled down to his father’s business, where he plodded along for quite some time.

However, by 1928 things were starting to turn south for the young banker.  He was twenty-eight years old, had been married for almost ten years, and had yet to produce a single child.  What’s more, his father had just died and his job was no longer secure.  His father had left the bank to his older brother, Wilhelm, and there were rumors that Wilhelm was about to sell the bank to the highest bidder, then keep all the money for himself.  When Wilhelm did exactly this, the highest bidder released young Georg to fend for himself, leaving only a tiny severance package.  (Little did they know it at the time, but within a year that severance package would be worth more than the bank itself.)

Georg knew not what to do.  His father was dead, his sole inheritance lost and his brother had skipped town with a wad of cash.  Georg was jobless and would soon lose his home, but he had a wife to think about and was still hoping to start a family.  There was nothing for Georg in Germany anymore.  He decided to move to America.

Georg was a hapless man, but not a dumb one. He had spent several summers in England as a child, and could speak the King’s English; in fact he had quite an affinity for Anglo-Saxon civilization, which was one of the reasons that he had been stationed on the eastern front instead of in the west.  Yet, however anti-German were the States in the wake of the Great War, the British were far worse, so Georg decided that America was the place to be.  Of course, when he arrived he had decided that he and his wife would change their names from the almost comically German “Georg and Maria-Magdalena von Stirpitz” to something similar, but more American or British, in the hopes that the Yanks would mistake him for British wherever he went.

Georg spent the last of his severance pay to purchase tickets on a steam ship leaving from Amsterdam in May 1929, and arrived in New York City in June.  He knew that his relative youth and education would probably allow him to stay in the country, and it did.  He was handed the immigration forms at Ellis Island, and there lay the first step toward what would become Dirk Danger.

Georg filled out the form as best he could; there were some small lies here and there and some bigger ones elsewhere.  He used the names he had arrived at, George Striper for himself and Mary for his wife, and filled in Country of Origin as England.  He was unsure of his ability to land a job as a banker, but had been pretty handy with automobiles in Germany and during the war so filled in his occupation as “Meckanik.”  Spelling was not his strong suit.

The immigrations officer looked over the paperwork, looked over the couple arriving, and nodded them forward.  “Cheerio, old chap,” said the new George Striper.

“Right then, Mr…” began the officer, further perusing the paperwork.  The paperwork seemed to have been designed especially poorly, as though it was purposefully hard to fill out or read.  “Meckanik.”  He said.  It was then that George realized he had made a mistake.  “I see here that it says you are a . . .” the officer looked puzzled.  “Stripper?”

George was too embarrassed to say anything other than to mumble “…striper…” and look away sheepishly.  He took a new identification card upon which had been written George Meckanik and one for his wife.  Luckily, the card did not list an occupation, and perhaps even more luckily his wife spoke almost no English, and so Mary Meckanik, formerly Mary Striper, and even more formerly Maria-Magdalena von Stirpitz, was entirely ignorant of the embarrassment she and her husband had just undergone, and it was with no reluctance whatsoever that she later expanded the Meckanik family with a son and a daughter, George Meckanik, Jr. and Barbara (respectively).

The remainder of George, Sr.’s life was spent in New York State working as a mechanic.  He and his family went through some rough times over the next decade, but emerged relatively unscathed from the Depression, and during the war that followed he was sent off to work as a mechanic in the Pacific. (He couldn’t be sent to Europe due to a rumor that his wife was German, not English.)  He worked to repair airplanes that were coming back from missions, and eventually was promoted to chief mechanic for an entire airbase. Once the war was over, his business took off as automobile purchases soared, and by the time he died in 1956 his business was profitable, and George, Jr. was perfectly happy to carry it on in the family name.

At this point, Junior was about the age his father was when he had come to America, and his mother pestered him in German frequently about finding a nice girl and settling down.  George managed to fulfill his mother’s wishes when he finally met a young blonde named Martha Titely.  The couple met at an “All-American Pie Tasting,” when George tasted Martha’s Famous New England Apple Pie and knew right then and there that he wanted that pie for the rest of his life.  His stable salary and neat little house with a white picket fence that he had been able to buy when his father died were more than enough for her, and the two were married within months of meeting.  Her days were spent using exciting new gadgets like the refrigerator and the washing machine, and she cooked dinner every night and hung out the laundry to dry during the day.  (These were simpler times.)  Every Friday morning, Martha would bake her famous apple pie and leave it on the windowsill to cool for when George, Jr. came home; and later for when their only son Holden came home after school.

Holden Titely Meckanik was equipped with what can only be termed a keen sense of destiny.  He understood that it was perfectly acceptable, and possibly necessary, for a person named Meckanik to work as a mechanic.  In fact, he quite liked how his father’s customers could pretty much guess his dad’s name: “Hey, mechanic, I’ve got something wrong with my truck!” was perfectly acceptable to him.

There were, however, a number of things he did not see as right.  To begin, by the age of ten he knew that his mother was a dying breed.  Quite simply, no one was content to do the wash and the cooking anymore, and he told his mother this.  The idea that, as his friends and his friends’ parents marched around for women’s rights, his mother was having a grand old time ironing, drove him nuts.  And what was even worse was his name.  His father had named him Holden after a character in his favorite book.  But Holden Meckanik was not a great name. It was boring.  It was weird.  It wasn’t funny, and it lent itself to absolutely nothing.

Holden grew up despite this and moved on with his life.  He decided not to be a mechanic, because by that day and age mechanics were not as revered as once they had been.  His father’s business was falling on hard times, and the idea of inheriting it or even working for his father after a few summers in his teenage years didn’t sit too well with him. Holden decided that New York wasn’t the place for him, and when the time came he went to college down south.  It was there that he met a young girl named Maria, a girl whose parents had fled the revolution in Cuba and had settled in Florida.  (In an odd twist of fate, by 1957 the immigration forms had gotten only so much better that when her parents, Emilio and Catalina Colón, left Santiago, they inadvertently became Emilio and Catalina Santiago from Colón.)   In any event, after college the two were married, and they settled in Florida near Maria’s parents.

Soon after moving away from his father’s garage to avoid life as a mechanic and to begin his life as, ironically, a used car salesman, Holden received word from his crying mother that his father had died of a heart attack.  It seemed that Martha’s famous apple pie had eventually caught up with the man and finished him off.  Holden immediately made plans to drive up to New York in a brand new used car (Holden’s favorite phrase) and a court date for when he returned.  He was going to change his name.

He could have settled for any number of great, telling names.  He could have gone with his old standby, Otto, or something more exotic, like Aero.  He could have abandoned everything and come up with his own name, something like Gun Smith or Hida Waye or Pay No Moore, which might have even helped out his business.  But that wasn’t Holden’s style.  When the day came, after much deliberation, and because of his bottled up resentment over his father’s effort at naming him, he scrapped the Meckanik name but kept the rest, and became Holden Titely Danger.  He relished his choice every time he introduced himself to someone as “Danger, Holden Titely.”

It was only a few weeks after the death of George, Jr. that Maria Danger, formerly Maria Meckanik, née Santiago (but very nearly Colón), informed her husband that they would be welcoming a new member of the family. Holden thought long and hard about what to name their child, and had even considered naming the boy after himself, but Danger, Holden Titely, Jr. wasn’t quite as clever, and it certainly wasn’t original anymore.  He decided to name his child Leigh Dusphrom Danger if it was a girl, or simply Dirk for a son.  In the late months of 1987 they gave birth to a bouncing baby boy.

Dirk’s childhood was essentially a normal one.  He went to school like everyone else, played outside, enjoyed going to the beach, and was generally amicable with the other children.  He had plenty of friends and, to all observers, was blossoming into a levelheaded, well-liked young man, destined not necessarily for greatness, but likely to make something of himself as a doctor, or a lawyer, or a dentist.

Yet he and his father knew different.  For all of Dirk’s childhood, Holden passed on to his son much of the wisdom he had accrued in his years.  “Son,” he would say, “It’s great to set your own hours.  But there’s a reason people set them from 9 to 5.”  Or he would say, “Son, appearances can be deceiving, but people can be morons.  Appear to be what you want others to perceive you to be.”

But most importantly, Holden passed on that same sense of destiny that he felt had betrayed him.  “Son,” he would say, “I have given you the greatest gift that a man can give.  I have blessed you with a name that has purpose, a name that has reason.  Your mother has given you a dark complexion and the hint of mystery.  The day will come when you must put down all that you love, and you must answer your true calling.”  And so it was that, growing up, Dirk knew that a man named Dirk Danger would one day have to drop the baseball cleats and playground shorts he was wearing and don a trench coat and a fedora; that Dirk Danger was destined to be a gumshoe.

Mrs. Flora Heartwood, wife of a missing floor specialist, knew none of this.  But if she had, she’d probably be angry just the same.

THE END

As repeatedly promised, I’ve spent the last few weeks finishing up a new short story, which is posted below.  It’s probably not the greatest thing I’ve ever written — it’s probably not even the second greatest thing, if I’m being perfectly honest.  Well, if I’m being perfectly honest, it’s unreadable garbage, which doesn’t say a whole lot about its relative value compared to my other work.  But it is part of a larger collection of Dirk Danger stories that I began writing back in college (the first of which can be found here), which was the real reason that I resolved to write more this year.  As I’ve mentioned before, the real reason I’m even writing this blog is because I used to write terrible stories, and I missed doing it, so bear with me here as I pop out a new terrible story every few months.  I promise that next week I’ll get back to posting my stupid opinions on stupid things, which I’ll support stupidly.

In the meantime, please enjoy this story, which takes place during a lull in the investigation of the disappearance of flooring magnate Ed Heartwood; Dirk Danger has recently brought his childhood friend Sam O’Leary on board to aid in the investigation, and the pair are discovering that money’s as tight as the leads are scarce.  I don’t want to give too much away (God forbid, amiright), so without further ado, here’s the continuing story of …

Dirk Danger

in

Murder Most Fowl

At 11 on Thursday morning, Sam O’Leary sat in the altogether-too-spacious office adjoining Dirk’s, leaning forward in his leather chair with his forehead propped against his palms, his elbows on his mahogany desk, as he had been all week.  Through the frosted glass, he could see his boss’s outline, reclining in his own leather chair, and could envision his coat and hat sitting on the mahogany hat rack, as they had all week, and the half-smoked cigar sitting cold in the ashtray, as it had all week.  And the frosted glass door leading to their offices, bearing Dirk’s name in capital letters sitting unshadowed, as it had all week.

All-in-all, he reflected, it had not been an exciting week.

Nominally, the week had been spent on the Heartwood case, but they had run out of leads when the warehouse excursion turned out to be a dead end.  After that, Dirk had called up Detective McNally for further leads in the case, but the cops were busily looking into a string of recent robberies they were tying to an unknown perp (or perps) they were calling, somewhat over-dramatically, the “Cat Burglar,” due to the acrobatic nature of the crimes and the telltale image of Felix the Cat found at the various crime scenes.  Instead of making progress on the case, for the past three days the pair of private investigators been sitting in their offices, reading the paper and searching in vain for stories leading to the disappearance of the flooring magnate.  Each day O’Leary finished reading the paper by ten and would spend the rest of the day in the office thinking about whether they could charge their time to the case.  On the one hand, he was thinking about the case — or at least whether he could charge their time to it — but on the other hand it was a bit meta to charge Mrs. Heartwood for sitting in the office working out whether he could charge Mrs. Heartwood.  Too meta.  Granted, it was all moot anyway, since they weren’t going to solve the case, so they couldn’t charge her anything — the Dirk Danger guarantee stipulated that their services were free until the case was solved, but then Dirk had never failed to solve a case… yet.

Normally they’d have a few cases going that they could fall back on when one went cold, but the fee Dirk had extracted from Mrs. Heartwood when she’d come back that Monday, not to mention the absurd hourly rate they’d managed to negotiate, had been large enough — if solved — that he had decided to tie up his other cases as quickly as he could and even turned down a few new ones to clear time to devote to the disappearance of the flooring magnate.  Now it had been over a month since Ed Heartwood had last been seen, and word had gotten out that Dirk Danger wasn’t taking cases — or worse, that he was taking cases, but he couldn’t solve them.  What had seemed like a brilliant plan to clear their calendar, and therefore their heads, had backfired, and now O’Leary, in charge of the books, was staring down the rent on the office, his salary, and essentially no revenue.  They couldn’t even charge for incidentals related to the case (a.k.a., “lunch”), since they weren’t really working on it — it’d be like charging the Heartwood case for Dirk’s poor business acumen.  It wasn’t just the business, it was personal; O’Leary had just bought a place and was staring down a mortgage, and as far as he could tell Dirk was in the same boat — he was pretty sure he was getting paid in Dirk’s personal winnings from fluffy dog competitions.

Looking at the books, they were running out of cash, and fast.  O’Leary was thinking, for the third time that morning, about how they’d just spent the fee from the last case they’d wrapped up as part of their case close-out extravaganza — a hundred bucks from some poor kid trying to find out who ran over his bike, 3 weeks ago (spoiler alert: it was the mom) — to pay the stencil guy to stencil Sam’s name in capital letters onto the frosted glass window of the mahogany side door that led to his office (Why does everything have to be mahogany? It’s, like, the most expensive wood!) as the shadow beyond the door of his window, bearing his name in freshly-stenciled capital letters, stirred.

On the other side of the door, Dirk Danger had seen a shadow darkening his own window.  He pulled his feet off of his desk as the shadow grew, then knocked.

“One moment!” Dirk said in the slightly-too-loud, emotionless voice one reserves for speaking to people behind doors when it’s not clear how muffled the transmission will be.  He opened a drawer and pulled their most recent case file, then spread the contents across his empty desk — best to look busy.  He started to gather them back up from his desk before adding, “It’s unlocked, come in.”

The door opened, revealing a short, kindly-looking elderly woman with soft features and gray hair rolled into a loose bun on the top of her head.  She was wearing a white sweater and a high-wasted purple skirt that went down to the floor, with a locket about her neck and eyeglasses set low on her nose over which she peered with caring blue eyes.

“Excuse me,” she said in a soft, aged voice tinged with grandmotherly warmheartedness, “I’m looking for a Mr. Danger?”

Dirk was still busily gathering the files as he made his reply.  “What can I do for you, ma’am?  As you can see, I’m quite busy.”  He had brought the files into a big pile and was straightening them out on the desk when he realized which file he’d dumped out; the grisly pictures from the Voteri murder case were on top.  The old woman’s expression turned to one of kindly shock and he quickly put the files back into their folder.

“I can see that!  I didn’t mean to intrude.  It looks like you have far better things to do than to be caught up in the whims of a little old lady like myself,” she said, eyes twinkling.  “Have a wonderful day,” she finished, and with that she turned to let herself out.

Behind the side door, O’Leary experienced a wave of panic (oh God how could he turn her down) as he heard the conversation behind the door, but Dirk calmly reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone as she walked through the doorway.  He pressed 2 on speed dial and muted his cell phone as the office landline rang.

“One moment, ma’am, before you go — I’m expecting a break in this case and this might be it.”  She turned around as he answered the phone.  “Yes?”  Pause.  “Yes?”  Pause.  “Sam — that’s excellent!  It was the Cat Burglar all along? Great work!  Now that that’s wrapped up, we should have a bit more time for new cases.  Keep it up,” and he hung up the phone.  On his cell phone, the call ended.

To the elderly woman about to leave his office he said, “That was my assistant Sam O’Leary, he’s been working this case for me,” he waved the file fodler in his hand before dropping it back into his desk drawer.  “It looks like we’ve just about wrapped it up. I think we may have time to take on additional work.  Now, if you’ll just have a seat we can discuss what you came here to talk about.”

“Oh, how wonderful!” said the woman as she came back into the office, closing the door behind her.  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to keep this conversation behind closed doors — I don’t know who’s around, but this is quite sensitive business!”  Her eyes sparkled again as she said this, and she said it in the way that little old ladies say everything: slowly, endearingly, and with a bit of mischief, pausing after each word at the end of the sentence: quite. Sensitive. Business!

Dirk nodded and motioned to the seat across from his desk, as if to say, “Yes, yes, that’s fine, take a seat,” but what he actually said was “Just give me one moment to notify the proper authorities about that last case and we’ll be ready to go.”  He picked his cell phone up from the chair before sitting down and quickly shot off a text to Sam: Stay in office.  Make no sound.  If any little old ladies ask, you were wrapping up a very important case today — Cat Burglar.

“Now, that’s done,” he said, as he put his cell phone back into his pants pocket.  “I’m Dirk Danger.  Please, ma’am, what can we do for you?”

 —

An hour later, the pair of P.I.s were eating fish tacos at a picnic table next to the El Fishy Tacos food truck.  In between bites of hot, salty fried cod and cabbage, they were discussing the case the little old lady had presented.

“So, what you’re telling me is, this little old lady comes in, claiming she has a case that is, and I’m quoting, ‘quite serious.’  She then proceeds to tell you the cops won’t hear her case, and again I’m quoting, ‘probably because it is too dangerous to investigate,’ and that she’s willing to pay good money to anyone who will?  And this case, this ‘quite serious’ case that is ‘too dangerous to investigate’ is … her bird is missing?” O’Leary inquired skeptically.

 “First, she’s not some ‘little old lady,’ her name is Mrs. Webster and she seemed very nice.  Second, it’s not just a bird, it’s a canary.”  O’Leary was still pretty new to the job, and it was important for him to learn how to act professionally — including how to talk about clients.  It wasn’t the most important aspect of the job, but appearances mattered, even if you thought no one was watching.  “Also, she was quite sincere.  We’re going to help her out on this.”  He intended that to sound final.

O’Leary pressed the issue anyway.  “Fine, it’s not like we’re doing anything else, but what’s this gonna do for us in the long run?  This is no better than the kid with the bike — we’ll get another hundred bucks, and for what?  To find out that her bird flew out a window?  Then we’re back where we started.  We’ll barely cover these tacos and the gas we’ll use to drive out there.  We should be using this time to look for other work — whether that’s better cases or a new job entirely.”

“No, no, no, Sam, you’re missing the point.  ‘Canary,’ not ‘bird.’  And she was quite sincere.  Whether or not the cops tossed the case because it sounds ridiculous — which they did, I called Tyler, he apparently laughed her out of the station — she honestly believes something fishy-” Dirk looked at his taco and raised an eyebrow- “is going on.  And she is willing to pay good money — money you of all people know we need — to take the case.  Besides, you know that we can’t look for other cases; we might as well hang around our necks saying ‘Stumped by the Heartwood Case.’  Lady Heartwood will take her case, and her money, elsewhere.”

“Maybe she should.  We’re obviously getting nowhere on it,” O’Leary rebutted.

“She shouldn’t, and we can’t let her think she should.  We’re getting nowhere now, but I’ve never lost a case and I’m not going to fail on this one.  We’ll get there eventually.”

Sam rolled his eyes at this display of optimism.  “Yeah, but when? And what do we do in the meantime?”

As usual, Dirk seized the teaching moment.  “Exactly!  What we do in the meantime is take this case.  It was a misstep to clear our caseload; things have a way of tying together in ways you don’t expect, and staying busy stops you from getting caught thinking in a certain way for too long.  But if word gets out we’re taking cases again — not looking for them, just taking them — then we’ll start to see some more clients rolling in, and we can work on getting a break in the Heartwood case as we have time.  We won’t take a full caseload, but, hell, even this one case is enough to cover our bills through the end of the month.”

O’Leary was about to take another bite of his last fish taco, but at this he set it back down on his plate. “Wait, how much, exactly, is this little old — er, Mrs. Webster — how much is she paying us to find this … canary?”  Their bills for the month were considerable; after all, they had had to take out a loan for all the extra mahogany in O’Leary’s office.

“She’s agreed to pay five thousand for conclusive proof of how the canary got out, and double if we can locate it.  Regardless of our ultimate opinion as to the bird’s whereabouts, she’s agreed to incidentals for the duration of the case.”

Sam’s eyes lit up as he scarfed down the rest of his taco.  “This is gonna be the easiest money we’ve made,” he opined, his mouth full. He swallowed and finished, “We go in, point to an open window, and say ‘That’s how your bird escaped.’  We walk out with a brick of cash.  Worst case, she has a cat, and we have to figure out if the bird escaped or got eaten — but if it got eaten it’ll be a helluva lot easier to track down!  I’m gonna go grab a soda on this rich old lady’s dime.”

Dirk held up his hand to slow his partner down.  “Again, ‘canary,’ not ‘bird.’  And not exactly.  She confessed that what she really wants is proof that the canary was taken, rather than escaped.  I told her we’d arrive at an opinion based on the facts presented and the scene of the event, but we wouldn’t allow our judgment to be clouded by perverse incentives.”

At this fresh demonstration of professional integrity, Sam rolled his eyes, but Dirk continued.  “But what I really want to know is, why is the canary so important?  Who’s willing to pay thousands of dollars to prove that someone stole a canary — and for that matter, who steals a canary?  There has to be more to this than meets the eye, don’t you think?”  Dirk raised one eyebrow knowingly at his partner and finished his last taco.  “Maybe if we find it it’ll shed some light on the situation.”

“I don’t care, man, I’m just thinking about that cash.”  Ten large would go a long way.  “Maybe you do know what you’re doing, taking this case.”

“Of course I do. I was born for this.”  Dirk looked at his watch and wiped the last crumbs of fried breading from the corners of his mouth with a napkin.  “Now let’s go — I told her we’d be meet her at her apartment in half an hour to check out the scene.”

 —

Half an hour later, they pulled up to the address that Dirk had written on a slip of paper placed on the dashboard and parked out front next to a sign, which read “Palm Woods Apartments,” the letters in white raised off of a brown background and surrounded by two crudely-drawn cartoon palm trees.  The building didn’t look particularly nice from the outside, but was typical of many apartment complexes or condos in suburban Miami, with a central area dominated by a swimming pool, surrounded on three sides by three-story buildings arranged in a U, each with green-painted doors that opened to a concrete walkway with railings overlooking the pool area.  The roofs was covered in green, wavy terra-cotta tiles.  It wasn’t decrepit, nor did it seem particularly low-rent, but not even the most generous Brit would describe it as “posh.”  To its credit, the outside of the U had a number of shade trees ringing the property, and although Dirk knew nothing of civil codes, in places they seemed like they might be a bit too close to the building.  All-in-all, it looked like a nicer version of a Motel 6.

“I don’t see how anyone who lives here has ten thousand bucks to spare,” O’Leary offered, as he closed the door to Dirk’s brown 1986 Ford LTD Crown Vic.

Dirk shrugged and set off through the main gate, heading around the pool area.  “We’re looking for unit 2315 — looks like that one,” he said, pointing to the third floor of  the center building, which made the bottom crossbar on the U surrounding the pool.  “I know you think this whole thing is ridiculous, but let’s try to keep an open mind on this one, OK?”

They made their way up the concrete stairs to the third floor.  “I make no promises.”

“Yeah, and I can’t promise to pay you this month if this case doesn’t work out, so I guess we’re even,” Dirk replied as they reached the door to the unit, “2315” stuck onto the lime green door in separate stickers with black background and gold, serifed numerals.  He gave three solid knocks on the unit door.

The dim light of the peephole went dark for a second, then the door opened, revealing Mrs. Webster, who was wearing the same high-waisted skirt and white sweater she had been wearing in the office.  “Mr. Danger!  So kind of you to come here and entertain the flighty fantasies of an old lady!”

“Of course.  And this is my partner, Sam O’Leary, he’ll be helping me out here today,” Dirk said by way of introduction.

“Mr. O’Leary!  I hear you had a busy morning!  So glad to meet you!”  Her eyes sparkled with kindness over her glasses as she shook his hand.

“Yes, it was uh…” O’Leary gave an inquiring look at Dirk for a second, then continued, “the Cat Burglar all along?  It was a very important case.”  His statement lacked conviction.

“So exciting!”

The pair of detectives was still standing on the concrete walkway outside her door, wearing suits in the sweltering Miami heat.  “Oh, do come in!” she exclaimed delightedly, motioning them inside.  “But mind your shoes, please!  I do try to keep the place tidy.”

She did more than try; she succeeded.  Her apartment was small and sparsely furnished.  To the right as they walked in was a pink throw rug in front of a small gray sofa, more of a love seat, really, which was pushed back against the wall in the main room.  To the right of the sofa was a single end table, more a pedestal, upon which was perched a round brass birdcage, the kind with thin vertical bars that meet at the top, like a whisk turned upside down, with a closed door on the side and a small wooden perch hanging from the top like a trapeze in the center of the cage.  To the left was the kitchen, a simple U-shaped countertop with a sink against the left wall and a stove against the exterior wall.  Opposite the kitchen sat a small, round wooden table set with placemats and surrounded by 4 high-backed chairs; in the center of the table sat a half-eaten blueberry pie covered with a glass dome.  In the wall, in between the sofa and the kitchen, sat a single window looking out into a shade tree outside the apartment, and along the right-hand wall of the apartment was a closed door, presumably leading to the bedroom, and another door opening into an immaculate bathroom, tile gleaming in the natural light from the window.  In the entire apartment, not a single thing was out of place — the rug squared perfectly with the sofa, the kitchen counter free and clear of clutter, the hardwood floor sparkling and scratch-free, practically brand new.  Even the pie tin was devoid of crumbs — the pie just stopped halfway through, a perfect cross-section of pie, as though the other half had never even been there.  In fact, the only thing that didn’t seem exactly where it should be was the canary, the birdcage sitting empty on its pedestal.

The investigators were taking this in as they removed their shoes, placing them neatly by the front door, Dirk removing his hat and setting it on the table next to the half-eaten pie, as a muffled, other-worldly cry escaped the closed door.

“Mrrrrrooowwlll!”

O’Leary looked quizzically at Dirk, who forwarded on the emotion in the form of a question.  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Webster, but what, exactly, was that?”

Her eyes sparkled above her glasses as she clasped her hands in front of her waist.  “Oh, that’s just my little Sylvie.  He hears people and doesn’t like to be alone, but I wanted to keep him from untidying the place.  After all, you told me to keep the place exactly as I found it!”

“And Sylvie is…?” O’Leary prodded, uncertain whether to expect something sinister behind the closed door as the little old lady moved to open it.

“Why, my cat, of course!” she cooed, and with that she swung the door open, revealing a rather large tomcat with tuxedo coloring, mostly black, with white stretching from just underneath its eyes all the way through its underbelly.  Its paws were white, as was the tip to its long black tail. The only color on the cat, including its black eyes, was its nose, which was a dark pink bordering on red.  The cat looked up at Sam, standing behind Mrs. Webster, and gave a long hiss: “Hhhhhhttthhhhh!”  With that, it scampered back into the room and disappeared under Mrs. Webster’s impeccably-made bed.

“Sylvie!” admonished Mrs. Webster.  “Oh, he’s a sweetie underneath it all, he’s just upset I locked him in this room,” she said, apologizing to Sam and closing the door again.

O’Leary made a move to comment, but Dirk cut him off.  “Mrs. Webster, are you indicating that the cat was stuck in your room at the time of the incident?”

“Oh, no!  Sylvie was out and about all night last night.  I usually leave the window open for him to scamper about outside; there’s a tree branch just outside the window that’s perfect for him to climb out on.  He fancies himself a hunter, but he’s too big to really hide himself and most everything gets away.”

O’Leary continued the inquiry, “So you’re saying that the window, which is now closed, was open last night?”

“Oh, certainly!  I closed it this morning so the wind wouldn’t blow away any clues.”  The investigators gave each other a questioning look — yes, look at the footprints on your immaculate hardwood floor and the trail of breadcrumbs leading back to the canary that might have blown away had you not closed the window.  “I had left the pie on the windowsill last night to cool and Sylvie had gone out, so I couldn’t close the window and lock him out all night.  No, the window was certainly open overnight, and little Twitters was in her cage when I went to bed.  Then, when I woke up, she was gone!  I contacted the police, but of course they have more important things to think about than the kidnapping of some little old lady’s bird.  At least, I hope it was a kidnapping — it could have been worse…” her eyes sparkled mischievously.  “Perhaps it was murder!  Murder most foul!”

“Isn’t that what cats do?  Murder most fowl?” quipped O’Leary, under his breath.  Dirk shot him a cutting glare.  The junior investigator surveyed the room once more, with a look of mock focus, as though he was taking it all in and compiling it in his head.  “Boss,” he said, turning to Dirk, “I have a theory I’d like to run by you.”

Mrs. Webster’s eyes gleamed.  “Oooooh!” she squealed.

“Outside,” finished O’Leary, smiling in mock kindness at the grandmotherly figure bouncing in excitement.

The pair stepped back outside the unit, leaving Dirk’s hat and their shoes inside.  O’Leary spoke in a hushed voice, so that Mrs. Webster wouldn’t hear.

“This is the worst situation we could have hoped for — both a cat and an open window.  I’d love the extra money, but what say we just tell her it flew away and that’s that?  Then at least she doesn’t have to blame that enormous cat.  Although, hell, that cat practically burped up a big yellow feather when it hissed at me.  Speaking of which, was it just me, or did that cat have a lisp?”

“Can’t say I noticed, Sam.”

Dirk Danger’s mind was elsewhere.  Admittedly, a cursory glance suggested that the bird met its end in a conventional fashion, but something else was clearly going on here.  O’Leary had said it himself before — there was no way a little old lady living in this place had ten grand to spend on a wild goose chase like this (or a wild canary chase, as the case may be), especially not if the case was so open and shut.  She knew more than she was letting on.

“The birdcage,” started Dirk.  “Check it out — the latch on the birdcage was shut.  Find out if it was like that when she discovered the bird was missing.  Actually, find out everything — I want to know why this is so important to her.  Grab my shoes when you go back in, would you?  I have a theory — you may be on to something with that open window.”

Sam rolled his eyes and opened the apartment door to Mrs. Webster hopping up and down excitedly and clapping her hands.  “What do you gentlemen think?” she demanded expectantly.

“Unfortunately, ma’am, we’re not sure yet. I have a few more questions to ask you, while my partner canvasses the surrounding environs for clues.”  He was sure he had heard a TV detective say that.  As Dirk set off outside, O’Leary pulled out a small, top-bound spiral notepad and a pen from his jacket pocket and as she sat down on her sofa.

He began his line of inquiry with the birdcage, as the boss had suggested.  The cage had indeed been found latched in the morning — in fact, Mrs. Webster hadn’t touched it since the night prior, when she had fed the canary.  When pressed for details on what had happened, she had fed the canary as she did every night at 6 o’clock.  At 8 she had baked a pie, and by 9 set it on the ledge to cool while she knitted — of course she knitted — then at 10 she had retired for the night.  She woke up late this morning, since she was usually awakened by the canary singing, but this morning it was silent.  When she investigated, it was gone.

And what had she done for the rest of the day? She had called the police (“the non-emergency number, mind you!”), who had been unhelpful.  Then she had gone to the station to see if they wouldn’t help anyway, where she had been directed by one Officer McNally to Mr. Danger.

And what about the pie?  There was no way she had eaten half the pie herself.  It turned out that after Mr. Danger had agreed to help she had come back and sequestered Sylvie so as not to contaminate the scene of the “crime,” then gone to her weekly bridge club meeting, which was why she had baked the pie in the first place.

Maybe she could tell him a little bit about the canary?  This line of questioning was similarly unfruitful (“Twitters was small and yellow, with a  little band on one of her legs, I think carrying her registration.  I would feed her twice a day and occasionally, only when the window was closed and Sylvie was in my room, I would take her out of the cage and give her a few strokes on the head.”), until…

“And how old was Twitters?”

“Hmm, now that you mention it, I haven’t the foggiest!”

“OK, then how long have you had her?”

Her brows furrowed and she looked sideways toward the bird cage from where she was sitting on the love seat.  “Oh, she’s been with me for, for a little over a month now, almost a month and a half I’d say.”

Sam couldn’t help but notice that she seemed to be offering this information reluctantly.  She didn’t seem to be lying, but her mannerisms and her sudden uncertainty in something that had happened so recently tipped him off to press the issue.

“Where did you get her?”

“Oh, a friend of mine gave her to me.”  This she seemed much more certain of.  “Can I get you anything, dear?  Perhaps some iced tea, or a slice of pie,” she offered, rising from her seat.

She was obviously trying to change the subject — another sign to keep pressing.  “No thank you, I’m fine.  Which friend, ma’am?”

“Which friend, which?  I don’t follow.  Are you certain I can’t get you anything?  You look quite parched — and your partner, wearing that coat and hat out in all this heat!  Certainly he could use some of my homemade sweet tea?  Where did he get off to?”

“He’ll be fine.  Which friend gave you Twitters?”

“Oh, well, as it were, I’d … rather not say.  As I told your partner, this is quite sensitive business!”  quite.  Sensitive.  Business!

 —

As Sam was inside getting stonewalled by the very person who had hired them for the case, Dirk Danger stood outside the complex, examining the shade tree abutting the structure that Sylvie used to get in and out of the unit.  The tree was massive — towering above the building, but planted about 30 feet away, with thick hardwood branches that wound their way like oaken tendrils, just brushing against the building’s exterior, though in many places they appeared to have been cut back.  From its size, the tree must have predated the building by several years.  It looked to have done some damage to the building, including an area on the roof above and to the left of Mrs. Webster’s window, where the tiling was a slightly darker green, belying its youth compared to the surrounding tile, which had been bleached by the Miami sun.  The trunk of the tree was marked with scars, some deep cuts accumulated over the tree’s lifetime, others the result of day-to-day activities, acute and transient, perhaps the product of a squirrel’s or Sylvie’s climbing, that would heal within the week but be replaced hundreds of times over.

The lowest branch was a good ten feet off the ground, but there was what looked like the dried remains of a dead branch extending about eight inches out of the trunk some seven feet off the ground.  If someone was strong enough to pull themselves up and light enough that they didn’t break it, it might be possible to grab onto it and use it to get themselves up to the first living branch.  It would be difficult, but certainly not impossible.  Once they were into the branches, the climbing would be easy until they got near the building, where the branches got thinner, but here again, if a person was light enough they might be able to make it pretty close to the window.  After all, Sylvie walked right out onto the branch by the window, and the cat probably weighed 30 pounds.

No, someone small enough and nimble enough could definitely make their way up that tree and into one of the windows.  Probably not a child — a child wouldn’t be strong enough to pull themselves up — but who else would want to climb a tree and steal some lady’s pet canary?  O’Leary had a point, that pretty much had cat written all over it.  But then…

Dirk shook his head, turned back and headed toward the front of the building.  Before he knew it, he was opening the door on his exasperated-looking partner, who was holding a glass of iced tea in one hand and pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration with the other.  Mrs. Webster was sitting on the couch, blue eyes sparkling as ever, looking up at him over her glasses.

“All right boss, get this,” started O’Leary, as Dirk removed his shoes so as not to damage or dirty the spic-and-span flooring.  “I found out she got the bird a little over a month ago, from a friend.  She won’t tell me who gave it to her – ” he shot an exasperated look at her; her eyes sparkled mischievously – “and she don’t know a thing about what happened last night.  I got nothin’ out of her.”

“All right.  Mrs. Webster, if you don’t mind, I’d like to examine the cage,” said Dirk, who made his way to the pedestal next to the couch.  The latching mechanism on the cage door was fairly complex, with a pin that slid into a housing, not unlike a smaller version of the kind of latch you might find on a bathroom stall door.  There was no way that the cat or the canary had managed to get it open, much less shut again.

The bottom of the cage was lined with newspapers, which certainly hadn’t been changed since the discovery of the bird’s absence.  Although, looking closely, it appeared they had been moved — whether by the bird itself or something else was hard to say — but where two newspapers overlapped, the droppings had cracked rather than gluing the papers together.  Opening the cage and reaching in, careful to avoid the nastier sections of newspaper, like the Living section, Dirk lifted the papers up to peer at the bottom of the cage, where he was met with a tiny, minimalist cartoon caricature of none other than Felix the Cat.

Dirk replaced the papers and calmly closed the cage door, re-latching it.  O’Leary gave him a quizzical look as he purposefully made his way to the love seat and sat down gently next to the grandmotherly figure.

“Mrs. Webster,” he began softly, “Sam here has been asking you some questions, and I understand that you want to protect your privacy, and we respect that.  But right now, we need you to tell us exactly why the Cat Burglar would steal your pet canary.”

Mrs. Webster put on a playful smile.  “There’s more to people than meets the eye,” she began, eyes twinkling.  “Even little old ladies.”

O’Leary looked at her, incredulous.  “Who the hell gave you that bird!?”

“Watch your language, young man!” came the grandmotherly reprimand.  But then she softened, though her eyes continued their preternatural twinkling.

“Very well, I suppose there is some further information I could give,” she said, adjusting her position on the sofa to face Dirk, sitting beside her.  “Some time ago, probably two months, the ceiling in my apartment began to leak.  At first I thought it was a burst pipe, but on one of my daily walks outside I noticed that the tree outside the apartment was growing into the roof.  Now, I don’t need to tell you boys about civil codes,” she said knowingly, though being regular human people, neither knew the last thing about civil codes, “but it is certainly most illegal to have a tree branch in such close proximity to the building!  What if it fell down in a storm?  Imagine the damage it would cause!”

O’Leary gave Dirk an impatient look — where is this going? — but Dirk offered a patient, “Indeed.  Please, continue.”

“Well, I certainly didn’t want the apartment complex to be getting into trouble, and of course that tree is so old and beautiful, not to mention how convenient it is for little Sylvie.  But at the same time I had a problem!  I had a leak in my roof, and it looked so dreadful!  I do try to keep a clean home.”  Her eyes sparkled again.

“Well, I went into the office and told them that it would be fine, just fine, if they would go ahead and cut back that one branch and deal with the damage from the leak.  They dragged their feet and told me they’d do what they could, but they weren’t sure they could be held responsible for the leak — in fact, they implied it was my fault for not reporting the proximity of the tree branch, can you imagine!  So I told them that if my plan sounded disagreeable, I would feel compelled to take my business elsewhere, but, being old and frail, moving was simply not an option for me, so I would have no choice but to press charges for their blatant violation of civil codes.”  With this revelation came again the mischievous smile.

“Well, naturally they saw the error of their ways and promised to rectify the situation immediately; the branch was cut back, and the roofing redone.  They even repaired the ceiling damage and the damage to the walls, and they repainted the whole room to make sure the repairs matched the rest of the room.  They even paid for new flooring, since my carpet had gotten soaked and musty along the wall.  Since they were paying for the repairs anyway, I had them put in a nice new hardwood floor, which is so much easier to keep up than a messy carpet — much less vacuuming!  It looks quite nice, too, don’t you think?”

“It looks great, ma’am.”  Dirk liked where this was going.

“Well, the young man who put in my new floor — well, I say ‘young,’ but he was probably in his 40s, which I suppose to you must seem quite old — the man who put in my flooring seemed a nice fellow, and told me he was so thankful for the business — after seeing my floor, you see, the apartment decided to opt for hardwood in all third floor units — he was so happy that he would even compensate me for the referral.  However, he would require just one service of me; I’d have to take care of his pet canary for awhile.  If I took care of it while he was out of town over the next month or so, he’d give me twenty thousand dollars; all I had to do was keep it while he was away, and he would pay me when the canary had been collected upon his return.  That was a little over a month ago.”

O’Leary, still standing, stared down at her incredulously.  “Ma’am, a man offered to give you twenty thousand dollars” twenty. thousand. dollars. “to take care of a canary?  And you thought this seemed completely reasonable?”

Dirk egged her on.   “It does seem like something of a red flag.  Have you heard from him recently?”

“I’ll admit it,” she began, the twinkle fading from her eye, “I needed the money.  I’m getting older, and my late husband’s pension is running out, and here’s me trying to pay for my medicine and my rent with little to no income.  I assumed the man was up to something suspicious, although I really couldn’t tell what harm I ever thought would come from holding onto a canary; I’m still unsure, although with this Cat Burglar business I believe I may now be in over my head, so perhaps it is best to get it all out on the table.”

“So, ma’am, if you need the money, how are you going to pay for our services if we can’t locate the canary?” asked O’Leary bluntly.

“Well, that’s just the thing!  I received a wire transfer this morning for the full twenty thousand dollars.  I thought it would only be appropriate that I spend some of it trying to relocate Twitters, you know, paying it forward if you will; the very least I can do is try to help out after the grief that I’ve caused!  I thought that if I could prove that losing the bird wasn’t my fault, maybe I could at least keep some of the money.  You must admit I can’t be blamed for the Cat Burglar, but still, maybe I’d best do the right thing.  If the bird truly can’t be located, I’ll give back the money, but I attempted to contact the man today to let him know there had been a mistake, and he had wired the money too soon, but I couldn’t contact him.  The number he had given me had been disconnected, and his office says they haven’t seen hide nor hair of him since he left over a month ago.”

“I wouldn’t worry about trying to find him.  Who was this man, ma’am?” asked Dirk, though he already new the answer.

“Why, the very owner of the flooring company himself — again, it was so nice of him to come out to visit the worksite of a little old lady like myself.”  Her eyes sparkled.  “He said his name was Ed, Ed Heartwood.”

Dirk’s knowing look offset O’Leary’s astonished grin.  “I told you, Sam, I was born for this.”  Just like that, they were back in the game.

The End

DIRK DANGER WILL RETURN

IN

A Keen Sense of Destiny

What can I say?  Dialogue: it’s not my strong suit.  I promise the next DD story I publish will be both shorter and better (I wrote it in college, but I’ll publish it next month sometime).  In the meantime, please enjoy my continued ramblings on unimportant stuff, including the hipster garbage, the art of conversation (according to me), and the podcast review you didn’t know you needed, and while it turns out you were right, I’ll give it to you anyway.

Hey team,

Back again, this time with something a little new.  Below is a slightly-touched-up version of a story I wrote in college for funzies that was a riff on the Fluffy Dog Joke (which, if you haven’t heard it, I link to after the story).  It’s replete with dumb jokes that only I find funny, so I think its value is more as a window into my soul than as an entertaining story.  

Now, I know a lot of you are thinking, “posting something you wrote in college shouldn’t count for your resolution this week!” but not to worry — I’m spending the rest of the day writing another DD story, which I should have ready to post in the next few weeks.

Without further ado, please enjoy…

Dirk Danger

in

The Joke’s on You

 

It was eleven o’clock on a Saturday morning in late March, the kind of Saturday morning that comes in like a lion, but, luckily, you can sleep in and by eleven all that’s left of the lion are a few puffy white clouds against a pure blue sky.  Dirk Danger groggily rolled over to check the clock.  He could only go back to sleep so many times, and eventually he would have to overcome his personal inertia and get out of bed.  Wiping the sleep from his eyes and running a hand through his unkempt hair, he decided it was time.  After all, he had a big day ahead of him.  Today, Dirk Danger would make a new friend.  

His feet touched the cold hardwood floor, and he hesitated.  But hesitation was not Dirk’s strong suit, and he had soon finished his morning routine and was sitting down to a brunch of black coffee, bacon, and soft, not-too-toasted toast, covered with butter and jam.  He needed a good, strong foundation for his day, for today was a day of important decisions and unbounded potential, like all days in which Dirk Danger took part.  Finishing his meal, he placed the dishes in the dishwasher and breathed in the heady air of anticipation.  It was time.  

Dirk grabbed his keys off of the rack by the door and walked outside, locking the door behind him.  He crossed his springy green lawn and made his way to the driveway.  Climbing into his car, he wondered how his life might change after this journey.  He supposed it would be less lonely.  Not that it was lonely now, but sometimes a little… companionship could be nice.  He stuck the key in the ignition and turned, listening to the motor turn over and spring to life.  Without a second thought, he backed the car out of the driveway and proceeded south down North Street.  

He got stuck in traffic on the interstate, which was perhaps a little odd for a Saturday afternoon.  But they were always doing construction on Saturdays, and the radio  informed him there had been a minor accident that had been unable to remove itself from the road due to the construction (AM 1170 has traffic on the 1s and 6s).  He cleared the fender-bender and sped on to his exit, heading out of town and farther into the suburbs.

At half past noon he spotted the run-down sign that said “Animal Shelter.”  It was one of those signs that probably had all of its vowels burned out, so that at night it read “ n m l Sh lt r,” although he doubted it was ever turned on after dark, since the shelter closed at 5 o’clock.  It was, after all, a non-profit organization, and they had to keep from profiting somehow.  He pulled into the parking lot, and, as men are wont to due in such places and times, parked his car.  

An animal shelter is one of those places that is at once heartwarming and heartrending.  The shelter usually consists of one public room, which is inevitably painted a bizarre shade of off-white specifically designed to bring out animal-related stains.  It’s never a complicated shape — typically a rectangle, as in this case — and the walls are lined with cages, stacked floor-to-ceiling, each containing a single cat or dog (or a few kittens or puppies).  There’s always one weird animal in a cage that the staff shrugs about, as if to say, “Hey, what would you do if someone brought in an alligator?”  This is the room that makes children squeal with delight and parents wonder when their children will be old enough to understand what’s really happening.

That’s the public room, but the filled cages, the mysterious door labeled “Employees Only,” and the sounds coming from behind it belie a darker, grittier place — the Christopher Nolan version to the Tim Burton front room.  Behind the shelter is a small fenced area where, in theory, animals could go outside for some fresh air, but they never do.  The paid staff, emerging from behind the mysterious door, is composed of people who can’t stand animals because they are forced to clean up after them in their tiny cages every day, while the volunteers are just a little too into the creatures.  And although the place is called a shelter, no one is confused as to the stipulations attached to the title.  Sure it’s a shelter, but only for a limited time.  The lease agreement states that you have two weeks to get yourself into a home, and after that your time is up.  The whole concept of the shelter is just brimming with hope, but it’s largely a false hope and, don’t kid yourself, you know it when you walk in.  

Dirk Danger was thinking, if not exactly these thoughts, then riffs on the theme, but probably less bitter, for today he could be a source of real hope, and he knew it.  

He was greeted by a young, rather all-too-cheery looking brunette, who introduced herself as Jane.  Dirk could tell by her all-to-cheeriness that she was a volunteer, which was confirmed as she explained that she was in college down the road, but volunteered here on the weekends because she missed her dog Muffins back home so much, and they don’t let you have dogs on campus, but if they did let you have dogs on campus she wasn’t sure her parents would part with Muffins, but maybe she could get another Muffins, Muffins II (or maybe she could come up with a better name, haha), after all there sure were a lot of sweeties here that could use a good home, and, well, if she could be of any help he should just let her know.  She knew he could make one of these poor creatures’ day, and maybe some poor creature could make his day too, she was just sure of it.  

At this point, since there were no quotation marks yet in the story, Dirk answered, “Well, actually Jane, I was hoping you could show me what you might have in, say, the dog section?”  

“Oh certainly!” exclaimed Jane.  Dirk got the feeling she exclaimed a lot.  “We have just the cutest little guys right over here!  What were you looking for exactly?”  She led him to a wall with cages that were, you had to notice, too small for animals of any size, much less the animals contained within — pups and pooches of all types; Rovers and Rexes sat next to Mollies and Maxes, separated by thin walls of plastic or cross-hatched metal.  

Dirk examined the potential playmates.  “Well Jane, I was looking for something in a Beagle, really,” he offered.  

“Oh!  Well, let’s see, we usually keep the middle-sized dogs over on the end here, in these cages,” she explained exclamatorily.  (Excplaimned?)  Dirk noted that the cages were actually the same size; they just looked different because they were black, while the smaller dogs were housed in beige cages and the larger ones in green.  “Oh, dear!” she said.  “It seems we don’t have any beagles here today, mister…” She rose slightly on at the end, and Dirk became embarrassedly aware that he had failed to introduce himself amidst her exclamations.

“Danger.  Call me Dirk.  That’s okay Jane,” he added, noting her genuine disappointment at having let him down.  Then a rather peculiar dog caught his eye.  “How about that little guy there?” 

The dog was, in a word, fluffy.  It had shock white hair that accounted for at least two thirds of its apparent volume, hair that was actually sticking out of four of the six sides of the cage.  Yet when Jane removed the dog from its crate, Dirk was surprised to feel that it was a good-sized dog, not one of those toy Pekinese fluffy nonsense dogs, for which he had no truck. Nor was it a monster sheep dog or a St. Bernard.  It was roughly the proportion of, well, a Beagle, it was just covered in fluffy white hair.  It looked deep into Dirk’s eyes with an expression of unbounded hope and peered into his soul, practically begging “Adopt me!  Feel how fluffy I am!  Rub me right behind my ears, I’ll wag my tail and twitch my leg in appreciation!  It’ll be great!  Have I mentioned that I’m fluffy?” 

Not even Dirk Danger could resist.  “Aw, little fella, what’s your name?” he asked.  

“Well, he doesn’t have a name, but here at the shelter we call him–” Dirk cut her off with a wave of his hand.

“Let me guess,” he finished for her: “Fluffy.”  

“Exactly!  How did you ever know?” she asked incredulously.  

“Just a hunch.”  Dirk scratched Fluffy behind his ears, and Fluffy’s tail wagged and his leg twitched appreciatively.  That sealed the deal.  “Well, I’m not a man to call a dog ‘Fluffy,’ but I think I’ll have to go with it on this one.  Ma’am, I do believe I’m going to take Fluffy home with me today.”  Dirk found himself being down-homier than usual.

“Oh swell!” she exclaimed, as though this had all happened at a diner in the ’50s.  Maybe it was something in the hopefulness of this fluffy dog that brought it out in both of them.  “That’s so great!  He’s been here since the Monday before last, so we were really hoping he’d be taken soon!” The darker side of the animal shelter world creeped into her expression for a moment, then the fluffy hopefulness took back over.  “He’ll make a great friend, I know he will!  Look at him wagging his little tail.  It just makes me miss my Muffins back home so much!”  The girl was so full of exclamation points they were flinging themselves out through her mouth, Dirk remarked to himself.

“Well, Jane,” Dirk said, “it’s just a few short weeks until you see your Muffins again all summer long.  And until then, you have these friends to keep you company.  And I have Fluffy.  And for that, I thank you.”  

They chatted for a few more minutes while Dirk filled out the necessary paperwork.  Then he loaded Fluffy into his car, and the pair drove off to begin their life together.  

 —

A few weeks later, Fluffy was settling into the Danger household.  As it happened, all of those most difficult aspects of dog raising had already been taken care of by Fluffy’s previous caretaker.  He was house-trained, and in fact well trained in general; he could sit, stay, lie down, roll over, and shake hands.  All Dirk had to do was feed him and walk him, and it is on one of these walks that we rejoin our tale.  

Dirk was walking with Fluffy at a brisk pace on a Sunday afternoon.  It was one of those late April days that starts off nice and lulls you into a sense of complacency, then turns up the heat and leaves you parched and wearing too many clothes.  They rounded the corner of North Street, and paused near a telephone pole for Fluffy to take care of his business.  Dirk wiped the sweat from his brow and averted his gaze, thinking to himself that if he was hot, at least he didn’t have a ridiculous and permanent fluffy coat.  He’d leave Fluffy a couple of ice cubes in his water dish when they got back.  

Dirk felt the tug on the leash that meant Fluffy was done and started to head back to his house, but something caught his eye.  He noticed a peculiar sign on the very telephone pole Fluffy had recently, er, used.  It advertised the “ANNUAL FLUFFY DOG COMPETITION!  CASH PRIZES!” the very next Saturday.  Why not? thought Dirk.  He made a mental note to visit the website listed at the bottom of the flier.  

Arriving at the house, Dirk wiped his shoes extra carefully before entering, then prepared a dish of cold water for Fluffy, who lapped it up graciously.  Dirk pulled out his computer and signed Fluffy up for the competition, only a fifteen-minute drive away.  

“Who’s a good boy?  Who’s the fluffiest dog in the city?” he asked with a babying lilt, while scratching the appreciative Fluffy behind the ears.  “Who’s gonna win this competition?”

 —

Predictably, the competition rolled around the next week.  As they drove over, Dirk figured he really didn’t have all that much at stake in a fluffy dog competition, and he certainly wasn’t about to go out and hire a trainer or a groomer or anything.  This was a fluffy dog competition, nothing more — just some innocent fun with a chance for a little bit of the CASH PRIZES and a chance to bond with dog that happened to be unbelievably fluffy.  He pulled over to a street corner drug store to buy a brush, but that was all.  

They pulled up to the competition at half past ten; it was scheduled to start at eleven o’clock sharp.  The competition was held in a sort of outdoor meeting place, not quite a barn but not exactly a normal building.  The roof, if you could call it that, since it was actually just a series of crossbeams, was painted green and left the floor, if you could call it that, since it was actually just a pile of woodchips, completely uncovered.  Dirk walked in with Fluffy on a leash through a doorway, if you could call it that, since it was really just two posts and a crossbeam.  Inside, if you could call it that, since it wasn’t really a building, was a maze of cubicle-like stalls, about waist-high, each with a small wooden table, off of which dangled a number.  Dirk checked in and proceeded to his table, number 17.

Being a newcomer to the annual competition, Dirk hadn’t realized how seriously most people took it.  Dirk and Fluffy were easily the last pair to arrive at the competition; most other dogs had been there for well over an hour and were being given last minute groom-overs by anxious owners and impatient trainers.  Dirk had read the rules and knew there was no reason to hire a trainer.  The only criterion judged was fluffiness, and from the looks the other owners were giving him, he knew Fluffy had it in spades.  

When they arrived at stall 17 to await the commencement of the competition, Dirk idly brushed Fluffy up and made small talk with the nearby owners, who were friendly enough, even if somewhat miffed at this newcomer’s disrespect for the sanctity of the Fluffy Dog Competition.

“Dirk Danger, nice to meet you.”

“Hi Mr. Danger, I’m Holly!  Coming in a little late, I see.  What’s your dog’s name?  He sure is fluffy!”

“His name is Fluffy.”

“Oh my God!  So is hers!” Holly would say, pointing to her dog.  All of his conversations were the same, with women who were of a … certain age… and whose names were all Holly or Molly or Jolly.  This led Dirk to believe, perhaps correctly, that he should have named his dog anything other than Fluffy, if only for the sake of originality.  

Presently, the judge of the fluffy dog competition began working his way through the stalls housing the other fluffy dogs.  The Hollys and Mollys and Jollys whose dogs he was judging would put their best effort into looking presentable and might, if they were particularly confident in themselves, but not so much in their dogs, try to distract the judge from the matter at hand by donning looks that were anything but fluffy.  The judge would make brief comments along the lines of “well ma’am, that sure is a fluffy looking dog you have there,” write something on a clipboard, and move on to the next fur ball.

When he reached Dirk’s stall, the judge stopped, a look of utter disbelief on his face.   He looked back at the last dog, as if to check and see if his eyes were playing tricks on him and perhaps all dogs appeared twice as fluffy as they actually were, then back at Fluffy.  He poked and prodded Fluffy, pulled at some of his fluff to see if he was really that fluffy or if he was somehow cheating — evidently they had problems with people gluing cotton to their dogs.  

“Well, I say now,” began the judge, “I do declare that is the fluffiest gol’ durn dog I do believe I’ve ever seen!”  Dirk pondered whether the judge was putting on a ridiculous southern drawl simply because he had “judge” affixed to his name.  It seemed that no one who was actually from the south would put the word “do” before every verb, or else no one would ever finish saying anything.  He pulled Dirk close and said quietly, but excitedly, “I do have to judge the rest, y’see, but I’ll be a flappin’ Jack if this here dog don’t win the competition.” Then he circled something on his clipboard and hurried on to examine some more, less fluffy dogs.  

An hour after the judging commenced, an announcement was made that the award ceremony would begin. The contestants huddled into the center of the assembly area, away from the stalls in which they had been judged, in which stood a small clear space with a podium at one end.  The judge walked up to the podium and announced the third and second place dogs, which went to Holly and Molly.  There was much applause and general approval upon the sight of their two dogs, which were indeed quite fluffy.  

Then the judge paused and announced, drawling harder than ever before, “And the fuhst place, I do say the fuhst place dawg is the fluffiest flea-bitten lil’ mongrel eva to grace these fine halls, and hI’ve been a-doin’ this fo’ no less’n twenny-fow ye-uhs.  The winna, I say, the winna is Mister Dirk Dangea and his dawg Fluffa.”  He paused and added, drawl-less and to the side as Dirk approached the podium, “It is Fluffy, isn’t it Mr. Danger?” and nodded, as if to say, “It always is.”  

Dirk stepped forward to applause and disbelief from the crowd.  He could hear murmurs along the lines of “ooooooh look it’s sooooo fluffy,” and from somewhere in the back he heard the phrase “must be cheating.”  He couldn’t help but feel a tinge of pride.  

As he accepted his first place blue ribbon, the judge went on to the rest of the crowd, in his ridiculous drawl, “And it is with great honor, great honor I say, that I announce that Mr. Danger and Fluffy will be representing us at the State’s Fluffiest Dog Competition in one month’s time, I say four weeks from today.  With a dog like that one there, I see no reason why our fine city should not have the fluffiest dog in the entire state — the state, I say!”  

Dirk had been unaware of any State’s Fluffiest Dog Competition, but he was okay with going.  Fluffy seemed to be enjoying himself at any rate; Dirk couldn’t tell but he thought he could detect a newfound pride in the dog’s demeanor, and perhaps even a smile across the pooch’s face, though it was hidden behind a fair amount of fluff.  He decided to spend the CASH PRIZES, which it turned out were only $25, on a new fluffing brush to prepare for the next round.  

 —

The next few weeks passed by in a flash.  Business continued as usual during the weeks, but on the weekends Dirk paid extra attention to Fluffy, brushing him almost incessantly until his next competition.  And it came as no surprise to him that Fluffy won the competition in April, besting Hollys and Mollys and Jollys at the state level before advancing on to the United States Regional Fluffy Dog Competition and besting Hollys and Mollys and Jollys there.  Three weeks later he advanced to the United States National Fluffy Dog Competition, and won that on network television (broadcast at three in the morning, but re-broadcast at two AM the next night) with flying colors.  And then it was the World Northwest Quadrisphere Fluffy Dog Competition, and Fluffy won that too.  By September, Dirk’s weekends were solely devoted to Fluffy, who had become an increasing proportion, albeit still a small one, of his income. (The WNQFDC had a cash prize of a thousand dollars.)  He was preparing to enter the World’s Fluffiest Dog Competition in Paris. 

Dirk felt an incalculable pride in Fluffy.  The luck of finding him — officially the fluffiest dog in the northwestern quadrisphere! — plus the time invested in brushing him and traveling had built a sort of commitment – by – investment to the project.  And at this point, Fluffy had yet to see any real competition.  If Fluffy wasn’t the fluffiest dog in the entire world, then Dirk was prepared to see a dog that was actually made entirely of Egyptian cotton.  

—

When it finally came time, he stepped out of the plane in Paris with Fluffy in an extra soft cage, which Dirk had designed specially so as not to remove excess fluffiness from Fluffy’s coat during the long flight.  They had arrived an entire week early to ensure that Fluffy wouldn’t react poorly to the new atmosphere.  Frizziness would get points deducted from Fluffy.  The ten thousand Euro in prize money was good, but Dirk wasn’t about to let Fluffy or himself down by losing the competition, regardless of the prize.  He was playing for pride, now. 

Dirk continued to work as normal in Paris; after all, he had a case there.  But when the weekend rolled around, he was all business.  Fluffy business.  

The competition was held under the Eiffel Tower.  Not a tiny replica Eiffel Tower, or even a pretty big one, like in Vegas.  The real deal.  They only had an hour to get it over with since it was, let’s face it, a fluffy dog competition and the Eiffel Tower was a pretty important place.  But still, it was held under the most recognizable iron structure ever built.  And Fluffy seemed thrilled to be there.

As they walked underneath the arches, Dirk couldn’t help but remark on how the competition was stiffer than before.  Dirk expected there to be only 4 contestants, one from each of the World Quadrisphere Competitions, but local tie-ins and back-door deals brought the competition to over 50 dogs, most of them European. Still, Fluffy was clearly the fluffiest dog in the place.  His conversations, in whatever other languages he could understand, were all exactly as they had been before.  Some woman, now usually named “Fifi” instead of “Holly,” would invariably tell him that her dog was named “Fluffi” and that his dog was “extremement Fluffi aussi.”  

Dirk was getting a little bit nervous, and he didn’t like it.  He didn’t usually get nervous, and this seemed like a particularly ridiculous time for that to happen.  This was a competition to see whose dog was fluffier, not a fight to the death.  Only a few thousand dollars were on the line.  Still, Fluffy looked so confident, and Dirk had been feeding on that confidence.  He didn’t really know what would happen if that confidence disappeared or what would happen to Fluffy if he didn’t get the award.  That was unlikely, he told himself, Fluffy was by far the fluffiest dog here.  And if he was the fluffiest dog here, then he was certainly the fluffiest dog in the world.  Dirk Danger took a deep breath and reminded himself that he had the World’s Fluffiest Dog.  

As the judges began making their way around the base of the tower, Dirk’s nervousness eased.  The judges were moving quickly, yet taking painstaking care to judge each dog based on the criteria of fluffiness — volume, rebound, density, and fineness. Dirk watched calmly as dogs were checked three times each by three separate judges, who worked efficiently yet thoroughly.  They were rapidly approaching Fluffy.  

When the first judge arrived, Dirk put on his best smile.  And Fluffy did, if you could believe it, the same thing.  The judge gave Fluffy one look and called over the nearest of the other two judges — a huge breach in protocol, as the judges were required to give their marks completely independently.  Dirk smiled confidently as they began speaking rapidly in a language he didn’t understand.  He was used to this.  “This is the fluffiest dog in the world!” they were saying.

The first two judges motioned the third judge over.  He held up his hands in protest, then continued to examine his current subject.  The first two judges put on looks of exasperation.  Dirk knew they were thinking this contest was over.  Fluffy would win in a landslide.  

Finally, the third judge made his way over.  The three judges convened by Fluffy, casting glances in his direction and speaking rapidly and heatedly.  Dirk couldn’t help but notice how excited they seemed.  

Finally, the third judge addressed Dirk.

“Sir,” he began in a voice with a thick Eastern European accent.  “I am sorry to inform you that your dog?  He is just not that fluffy.”

The first two judges nodded and continued on their way.  Dirk put on a big smile, gave Fluffy a thumbs up, and walked him out of the competition.  Fluffy would never know; as far as he knew he was the Fluffiest Dog in the World.  But Dirk privately decided to change the dog’s name as soon as possible, and definitely give him a haircut.  

The End

HAHAHA I made you read that long story and there was no punchline! Joke’s on you!  As promised, here’s a link to the first rendition I could find of the Fluffy Dog Joke.