Part 1 of 1
Read the full text, as well as the show notes, at http://flashpulp.com
Tonight, Mulligan Smith, private investigator, finds himself chasing a cheating husband while listening to a tale of betrayal amongst thieves.
The Skinner Co. Network
FP315 - Mulligan Smith and The Peacock, Part 1 of 1
Some days, gloomy, my hours are slumberless Dearest, the shadows I live with by nonetheless Little white flowers will never awaken you Not where the bright coach of sorrow ends taking you Angels have no fire of evolution in you Or they may angry if I sort of join in you Welcome to Flashpulp, episode 315 This evening we present Mulligan Smith and Peacock, part one of one This week's episodes are brought to you by Janja.net In 2005, the crack unit of the bloggers were banned by a web administrator for spam they didn't send These men promptly created their own website in the cyberspace underground Today, still wanting the place to discuss their fandom They survived the bloggers of sci-fi View of a favorite show or movie, if no one else can understand you And if you can type J-O-N-J-A on your keyboard, maybe you can find Janja.net At Janja.net, you can find discussions and reviews in sci-fi, fantasy, horror and everything in between, as well as exclusive interviews with some of your favorite celebrities and filmmakers Join our forums now and subscribe to the Janja.net podcast Everything is free and everything is fun We'll see you online at Janja.net Flashpulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories on the modern age. Three to ten minutes of fiction Brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings Tonight, Mulligan Smith, private investigator Finds himself chasing a cheating husband while listening to a tale of betrayal amongst thieves Mulligan Smith and Peacock Written by Jaredie Skinner Art and narration by Pope Dax Audio produced by Jessica May It was the third and final day of the Fisher stake out and Mulligan had nothing Emil Fisher, his current assignment, was likely sweaty and grunting within the 15-story high condo building, Soho Lofts But Smith was stuck in his baby-blooter cell on the street below A zoom lens Nikon sat on his lap and beside him, Walmart Mike was doing his best to provide encouragement. The sharp jawed old store-grader was saying Everyone falls off the horse. You just gotta get back up, dust yourself off Then break that horse's fucking knees for being such a goddamn smart ass I mean metaphorically Smith could only nod Bad luck had hounded him every turn and he knew his sad-eyed client Karine, a part-time florist and full-time mother of three couldn't afford an extension The first day's fees were blown after an hour's drive when a FedEx truck had cut him off and the cheating husband's red meata was able to zip away He decided to switch to poking at the paper trail but the hour spent staring at receipts had yielded few answers The second day's effort, a week later, had begun more smoothly Smith had easily trailed the fiery vehicle through lazy Thursday afternoon traffic but when the meata pulled into Soho Lofts underground parking he'd had little option but to wait and hope Emil came out of the building with his sweetheart on hand. He did not. What interested the lech was within not without. The third day, the red light indicating the full lot had Mulligan thinking he might have caught a break, at least, until Fisher exited his vehicle while wearing a pristine Tampa Bay lightning jersey Smith had spent the previous night cross-referencing the building's tenant list which he'd found simply by using his phone to take photos of the lobby's buzzer system listings and an inventory of Emil's email contacts that had been provided by Corrine Smith knew that he was parked in full view of Mallory Banks' 14th floor balcony but he also knew that a level up on the opposite side of the high rise lived Bert Glass, a member of Emil's fantasy hockey league and, at least by the tone of his emails, an ass kissing subordinate to Fisher the PI had no doubt that Glass would provide an alibi if touched for one or that Emil would bury Corrine in a divorce without the truth on the table Mulligan had come to hate the Miata thinking of its bright coloring and convertible roof as a poke in the eye after his string of defeats finally he turned to Mike and said "I don't know what pisses me off more that this amateur is accidentally outwitting me or that he might have burned me without my knowing it now he's just rubbing my face in it he was annoyed enough to consider working an extra day pro bono the ex-contruged I knew a guy once two years Tim who always thought he was one step ahead Tim kneeled me for months well not only me all the guys hanging at least in dives I couldn't pull a sucker through a pool table without two years stepping in and convincing them to haul their money over their game of dice instead one time I almost had Little Pike's Cadillac in the kitty I'd managed to hook him for a couple hundred nothing much but there was a man of pride and I teased the righteous anger out of him all he had to wage you was 200 in the keys but Tim slides up and offers to eat the dead if Dil is willing to race the caddy against him for the slips now Dil hated Tim as much as anyone else and the thought of taking the green monster the two years was driving must have been mighty tempted I made my franklince but no one covered the drinks I've been feeding my mark wasn't much of a silver lining when he wrecked the caddy 20 feet off the starting line anyhow one day me and butter fingers another fella I was acquainted with got a word that a certain gin joints on it always carried the weekend's earnings from his back room safe to the bank first thing Monday morning this wasn't a sort of place I hung around mind you it was a three-story me market full of college kids in high school dropouts you couldn't walk by on a Saturday without losing 10% of your hearing and it was likely you'd have some overachiever puke a bit of his trust fund on your shoes as well we knocked together a plan nothing complicated simply threaten the guy hand cut from to a set of stair railings he'd be passing on his way then run like hell around the corner we'll wait and call things started smoothly it was a quiet part of town on a monday and I wouldn't have been surprised to learn that the only other folk awake with the unlucky manager and the bank is waiting for him we pulled into the alley with school beforehand and there's a goddamn all-of-ford falcon sitting there biggest life pff I knew the car well it turned out after a brief below conversation that my companion had been drinking with two years and I previous and good old thing is somehow match tell Tim the whole thing he was doing it exactly as we planned just 10 minutes earlier it was already down the street strong arm in our guy two years thought he knew everything had his windows down and the stones coming out of the stereo while he was away like he was running into a store to buy a pack of smokes and be right back what an asshole we sat there and watched him stroll up bag full of cash in his hand no one was excited to start chuckin bullets and visiting hospitals though so he gave us a wave and a smile then got into the falcons driver's seat didn't care if he pissed us off I guess because the school would have been solid enough to spend a month cooling in Florida I swear you rev the engine and peel the way with a honk you didn't notice that I dropped my stolen shooter under the white leather bench in the back to be fair though on the highway south the town the cops did notice that I'd made off with his license plates what I'm saying is you gotta face these problems directly I never had trouble two years after that smith looked at the block numbers on the chisels clock he looked at the building he looked at the meata retrieving the ice scraper he'd forgotten in the back seat the previous spring he got out of the car with an icon still in his left hand mulligan swung the extendable metal bar hard with his right a webbed fan spread across Fisher's rear window and the glass collapsed under the insult the vehicle's anti-theft alarm began to bleed its dismay many lights came on within Soho lots but it was only on the 14th floor that anyone moved to stop the clatter Emil stepped onto the fern-filled space with a laughing face brunette beside him and the Nikon clattered to life capturing Fisher fumbling for the key fob in his pocket smith wondered briefly if the man might have had better luck in his search if he'd actually been wearing the pants then he rejoined Mike in the tercel the old man had started in on another story before they'd even pulled away from the curb flashpulp is presented by flashpulp.com and is released under the creative commons attribution non-commercial 3.0 imported license text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com but be aware that they may appear in a future flash cast we'd also like to thank the freesound project found at freesound.org for a full listing of effects used during the show as well as credits for the users who provided them check this episode's notes at flashpulp.com and thanks to you for listening if you enjoyed the show 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