1: A YANKEE DOODLE DANDY
The great secret of life lies in choosing the right woman. It's a mother's job to tell you not to play with fire. Marry the girl who tells you, "Go ahead."
—Memoirs of Lucille G. Kropotkin
Whoooooosh…Bang!
The pop-bottle rocket, fired past me from across the street, damn near singed my eyebrows.
Offering some unseen neighbor the middle-finger salute, I backed off the balcony, through the sliding transparent doors, and into the relative security of my living room. Even if things got out of hand and something made it through the doors, the glass would heal itself by morning—which was more than could be said for me.
Sometime tomorrow I'd remind myself to have a word with an overly zealous patriot.
On second thought, he (or she) could hardly be blamed for his (or her) enthusiasm. I'd probably just remind myself to skip the whole thing. Nearly having my beezer Francis-Scott-Keyed off was certainly no more than I deserved for having foolishly poked it outdoors on this night of nights.
After all, it was July Second, 220 A.L., and across the vast, twilit metropolis that was Greater LaPorte, sprawled from the Cache la Poudre River to Pistol Sight Mountain between the toes of the Rocky Mountain foothills (in a region many another culture labels "northern Colorado"), hundreds of city neighborhoods had already begun twinkling, sparkling, and sputtering, snapping, crackling, and popping! in blissful commemoration of the signing of a certain illegal document that had made young Tommy Jefferson and his little playmates terrorists in the eyes of the British Crown.
Yes indeed, it was high summer once again on the High Plains, and—perhaps just a little high themselves by now—the good ladies and gentlemen of the North American Confederacy were celebrating their favorite occasion: Independence Day. Here in the Confederacy, it actually still meant something. And it probably helped that there wasn't a building in all of Greater LaPorte that would burn any longer than thirty seconds, even if you dropped napalm on it.
For the first time in a long while, I glanced down at my left hand where I had a place-keeping finger stuck between the pages of a freshly imported hardcover I'd just brought home that afternoon: Al Franken Is a Pathetic Little Wannabe by Rush H. Limbaugh. I hadn't gotten past the introduction so far. Turning my back to the colorful display outside, crossing a living room carpet the size of a small basketball court to the wet bar, I poured myself a scotch and scotch, adding a dash of scotch for flavor.
It smelled wonderful. I'd tried Irish whiskey once, Bushmill's. It smells even better, but it tastes too damned good, and for someone who has a little trouble in that direction already, it's a gold-plated invitation to alcoholism.
The fact is, I'd have enjoyed celebrating, too, especially here, in the heart of one of the Confederacy's great cities. But my heart's companion (and the most luscious female I've ever met), Healer Clarissa MacDougall Olson-Bear, was busy making housecalls—as she always was on July Second—attending to such seasonal calamities as scorched fingers, ruptured eardrums, and dittoed eyeballs. For what is there worthwhile in life that doesn't involve some hazard?
Back where I came from originally, such a ruggedly Darwinistic sentiment would likely have soiled the lace unmentionables of the whole Volvo-driving, wine-and-cheese gobbling, no-sparrow-shall-hiccup set of what the author I was reading called "lifestyle Nazis." But I ask you, what's left of the meaning of Independence Day, if you let some jumped-up city council, some upstart county commission, or some state legislature that doesn't know its place, confiscate your Roman candles, your M-80s, or your pop-bottle rockets? North American Confederates would laugh out loud at such a contradiction—once the gunsmoke had cleared and the politicians' bleeding carcasses had been hauled away.
Leaving the book facedown on the bar, I found a comfy chair to sit in near the big glass doors and started to offer a lonely toast to my sad reflection. But just as you're really beginning to enjoy feeling sorry for yourself, there's always somebody who comes along and spoils it for you. This time it was my wife's cat Silvertip—now where had she come from?—who hopped up into my lap and settled down, purring like a contented meatloaf. I say my wife's cat. From the moment Clarissa had brought the little gray and white feline home, she'd decided she was mine—or rather, I was hers. Okay, then, happy July Second, kittycat. And happy July Second, private detective Edward William "Win" Bear. What the hell. Clarissa would be back sometime during the wee, small hours, and she'd be here tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that…What more can a middle-aged fat man ask for?
Silvertip wasn't any help; she looked up at me and asked, "Eww?"
As if in answer to my unasked question, the doorbell chose that moment to ring. Silvertip jumped off my lap, leaving poke-marks in my trousers—not to mention the flesh inside them—and headed upstairs. She doesn't really like anybody but Clarissa and me.
Grudgingly, I rose to answer the door, not even bothering to glance at the monitor on my way over to the half-flight of steps that led down to the front door. I'd seriously considered not answering it at all, but only for a moment. My guess was that I was about to have some Independence Day customers, myself.
Understand that it had taken me years to acquire any kind of professional reputation in the virtually crime-free Confederacy, where Captain Sam Colt had made everybody equal and President Albert Gallatin had kept 'em that way (not necessarily in that order). People tend to mind their own business as a consequence, and have very little use for detectives, private or otherwise. If I wanted to hold on to that living room that you could land small aircraft in, and all the rest of 626 Genet Place that went with it (not to mention my own self-respect in a culture where absolutely nobody rushes to protect you from feeling ashamed of being a bum), I couldn't afford to lose any live ones—even if it meant going to work on the Glorious Second.
I did make sure that my trusty old .41 Magnum Model 58 Military & Police revolver was still hanging where it was supposed to be, from beneath my left armpit, underneath my tunic. I'd made one or two—hundred—folks a bit unhappy with me over the nine years since I'd come to the Confederacy. Now was not the time—with my personal physician out of the house—to get careless.
The front hall monitor was considerably less easy to ignore than its upstairs equivalent; it took up the whole front door. Turned out there were two of them, standing out there in the fireworks-light; I could see them (with the technology behind that monitor I could have seen them if it'd been a pitch-black overcast night and Mount Colfax was filling the air with volcanic ash) but they couldn't see me. Which may be the reason I gasped and stumbled on the last step, fetching up against the wall of the stairwell and damn near spilling the drink I'd forgotten I was holding.
Mindful of making a good first impression on new clients, I opened the coat closet at the bottom of the stairs, stuck the drink on the top shelf between a couple of hats, shut the closet door with one hand, summoned up my Grade-Two Professional Smile, and opened the front door with the other.
The monitor hadn't lied.
The couple apparently seeking my services this holiday evening had seemed familiar from the first moment I'd seen their images at the top of the stairs. No less so now. He was perpetually fiftyish-looking and of medium height, with a uniquely textured voice, broad shoulders, compelling eyes, a bristly salt-and-pepper mustache, and rather conspicuous ears. Several strands of his hair fell sort of boyishly across his forehead and into his eyes.
She was a thin, not-quite-pretty, fortyish platinum blond ("Better living through chemistry," I quoted to myself before I could stop me) with nervous mannerisms and what I was soon to discover was an exceptionally sharp tongue.
Together they informed me they'd been referred by an old mutual friend, one Lucille Gallegos Kropotkin—a former neighbor of mine who was presently out exploring the Asteroid Belt—and introduced themselves as Carole and Clark.
As in Carole Lombard.
And Clark Gable.
Whah, Ah do beeleeve, ef Ah'd been Scarlett O'Hara, Ah would hev jist swooned.
You-all, honeychile.
Copyright © 2001 by L. Neil Smith
