THE MONKEYSHINES CASE, ENTRY 1
The word ‘monkeyshines’ was handed to me on a crumpled piece of paper while I was scratching a definitive M over the previously definitive P—and the equally definitive F—in that morning’s crossword, interrupting the fine coffee I had been enjoying and setting a tone of slapdash nonchalance that would permeate the rest of the morning.
I turned to the one who brought me the note, asking from where it had originated, and if ‘mang’ was a word. He informed me that it had just come in on the Lost Detective Agency website, that he had printed and pulled it off the dot-matrix printer because I didn’t listen to him and always needed something tangible to scowl at when something something . . . so I asked him who he was to go on and on about Lost Detective Agency protocols. He said he was Randy and that ‘mang’ was only a word in Spanish. I assured him that neither his sexual appetite nor his cultural acumen changed the fact that my adjoining word was ‘meats’ and that there was very little in my wordly experience that would make me second guess a pluralization of meat.
He said ‘bang’ and I said ‘gesundheit’, quickly changing the subject away from his odd sneeze and into why said paper had been handed to me all crumpled and torn like it had been fed through a squirrel’s nest before making its way to me. He explained that if said casefile wasn’t given to me in this particular manner I wouldn’t handle said case with my usual aplomb; and when I attempted to interject, he continued with the assertion that all previous casefiles had been handled in a similar fashion, and that it had been decided that this conceit was the only way to get me excited about anything anymore.
How this had been ‘decided’ was a mystery, considering that this was my namesake Detective Agency, with this ‘Randy’ character and I the lone sentries at this reasonably-priced gate of truth and justice, but I took his point and nodded, making a mental note to get to work early the next morning to see if it was this ‘Randy’ who was making coffee and not a crew of benevolent bandits as I had supposed.
Lost in thought, I looked up to find Randy staring hard at me, flitting his eyes toward my desk and repeating the word ‘bang’ with increasing volume and irritation. I wondered aloud about the origins of this strange affectation, theorizing on the mystery of allergens and what strange bedfellows they and our immune system make, when I all of a sudden caught on to what he had been insinuating . . . and, smacking myself lightly on the forehead in a show of embarrassment, I explained that the tissues he was looking for had been relocated to the shelf under the plumbing supplies. Disbelief reddened his face, but I met his concern with a swift description of how difficult it would be for even the most kind-hearted thieves to abscond with said tissues should their fingers prove stickier than they had been to that point, thus allowing them to focus on taking other less-important office materials while leaving behind that welcome pot of delicious coffee every morning.
I checked out my crossword in the ensuing silence, tapping the word ‘meats’ with my pen and wondering what it was about certain decisions that made them seem so unequivocally rock-solid, and Randy took that opportunity to drop a bomb on me: it was he, he claimed, who made the coffee in the morning.
Despite having my suspicions, this information still shook me sideways, and as he walked away sneezing loudly, I realized there was more to this Randy than just blunt commentary and note-handing—he was also a master of the burgling arts, and one to be watched should I find myself in the office at a decent hour.
It was a hard lesson, one I was likely to forget post-haste, and a tough start to the case.
