Part Two Of Three
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Tonight we rejoin private investigator Mulligan Smith, hot on the trail of the woman alleged to be blackmailing his client.
The Skinner Co. Network
017 - Mulligan Smith and The Digital Digit: The Baroness, Part 2 of 3
[ Music ] Welcome to FlashPulp Episode 17. Tonight's story, Mulligan Smith and the Digital Digit, part 2 of 3, The Baroness. This episode is brought to you by FlashPulp on iTunes. Wouldn't you like to break up the chain of Ray Parker Jr. songs constantly repeating on your iPod? Just gotten enough into Depeche Mode? My Chemical Romance have you all cried out? Why not subscribe to FlashPulp on iTunes? Crank your playlist up to 11. You can find the feed at skinner.fm or via the iTunes podcast search. [ Music ] Sunday is gloomy, my hours are number left. Here is the shadows I live with are number left. [ Music ] FlashPulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age. 400 to 600 words brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings. Tonight we rejoin private investigator Mulligan Smith, caught on the trail of the women alleged to be blackmailing his client. First though, we'd like to send out a quick note to those who have subscribed via iTunes and join the FlashPulp Facebook page. Many thanks. Mulligan Smith and the Digital Digit, part 2 of 3, The Baroness. Written by J.R.D. Skinner, Art and Variation by Opoponax and Audio Produced by Jessica May. Mulligan found the girl in a trailer park on the outskirts of capital city. He had spent the bottom of his morning in a Starbucks with his laptop researching Baroness Ludmila Anastasia and attempting to shield his results from other customers. There had been no personal information available which, given her vocation, the PI had expected. Eventually he had located a contact number for the company that maintained her website, Melto Productions. After name-dropping a police captain, he'd eaten his lunch while waiting out the hold music, until finally an aggravated man had come on the line and barked out her agent's phone number. Mulligan hadn't bothered to call. The reverse directory gave up the address easily, and surely thereafter he'd scoop the keys to the tercel and snap shut his notebook. Twenty-five minutes of driving later, he'd found himself nosing the baby blue clunker along the uneven pavement of Elm Terrace. As he'd pulled up to his destination, he'd notice a rangey twenty-something and read Adidas track pants had stepped up to the double-wides screen door. "Yeah?" the man in the bright pants asked. "Name Smith," Mulligan, weighing his approach, opted to apply some angular momentum to the truth. "I work with the police. I need to speak with your girlfriend." He stepped onto the homemade porch. Immediately. It wasn't the inclusion of the police that the investigator thought of as a gamble. He was on first-name terms with most of the uniforms working in the east side of the city. The real risk was in assuming the guy was so small time he was living and sleeping with the talent. "Hold on," the agent boyfriend said, disappearing into the darkened interior. Her website had largely featured pencil skirts and crisp, rimmed glasses, so when a teen in a white tank top and sagging gray sweat pants bounced down the iron step and onto the plywood patio, Smith had to take a moment to reimagine her and work attire. "Hey, Billy," her raspy voice rocketed into the shadows behind the screen. "You want to get me some smokes?" Mulligan momentarily wondered if Billy, no doubt eavesdropping, had any eardrums left. "The hell, why don't you go get him yourself? You know that douche can you counter jockey all was cards me?" There was a pause from within. Fine. Agent boyfriend slammed through the door, across the deck, and into his Honda Civic. After a moment of fighting with the ignition, the hatchback roared away from the cement slab that made up the home's front yard. "Now that he's gone, we can talk," she said, pulling a cigarette from the elastic depths of her cotton pockets. His fingers plucked a lighter from his jeans, sparking the flint and applying it to the girl's dangling addiction. She continued. "You're here about the pictures, right? I'll tell you straight up that I don't have them. I don't want any trouble, and I don't want to hear any whining about your wife or boss either. I can't help what you did." "I'm actually a private dick here on behalf of a client," Smith replied. "Oh, things must be getting serious. You don't really look like the kind of guy who takes pictures of his junks and mails them to people anyhow. If people are emailing you pictures of, uh, their junks, but you're not getting them, who is? Your agent?" "Filly? Hell no. That jackass still uses a pager. A friend of mine got us all set up with the agency and our site. Maybe it's old Theo, the guy who owns the whole thing, who's actually getting the money." Mulligan nodded, thanked the girl for being so forthcoming, and turned back to the tricell. "Hey," the girl said, "that was some pretty big help I just handed you. If you managed to find the one running the scam, will you let me know?" She took a long drag, exhaling through her nose and mouth simultaneously. Her eyes took on some of the hard countenance that was so familiar to her fans. I figure I deserve a cut." Flashpulp is presented by http colon slash slash Skinner dot FM. The audio and text formats of Flashpulp are released under the Canadian Creative Commons attribution non-commercial 2.5 license. the the