Speed Racer Fan Fiction / Fan Fiction / Crossover Fan Fiction ❯ Dangerous Curves ❯ Clues and Confession ( Chapter 4 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Disclaimer: Speed Racerand Angelare the property of their respective copyright holders, not me.

Chapter 4: Clues and Confession

by Raven Dhancer

This is the boring part of my job, so I'll skip over to Lorne. Here's what he was doing, excerpted from his latest roman-a-clef / pot-boiler. “Everybody had a Solo - A Mac Lind Mystery”

I was hanging out in the club with a buddy, killing time. He was a Marduk-spawn, maundering on about his usual obsession, middle-east politics. He had thought things were looking up, had hoped his people could maybe gain some power. Now he was depressed again and all the guys who had promised him big time were gone. I told him what I always do, "Don't mess with these guys. They're sharks and you're trying to be their chum". He never listens. I sat and watched the club floor, nodding from time to time so my friend didn't realize I was ignoring him.

I had been there a couple of hours when Vorsicht showed. He sauntered in, a vision in leather, accompanied by the translator from the news conference, some other guy I didn't know and a woman I knew well. The pink would have been enough if I didn't. The four took a table across from me, too far away to hear.

I managed to pass by their table on the way to the bar. Bourbon straight and a Singapore Sling for my bud. I filched a few ice cubes from his drink and dropped them in mine and waited for them to melt. You can't order bourbon and rocks in a place like this; you just get rocks. The guy I didn't know had been speaking spanish, or portuguese maybe. I sat and watched them talk. It was kind of fun, like watching a three way tennis match. Trixie would talk to the translator and the translator would talk to the drivers, then a driver would say something and the translator would lean over to repeat it back to Trixie and the other driver. Poor guy was looked like his neck was going to twist off, and then the drivers wandered off to the can and everyone took a break.

After a while the drivers came back, but they only said a couple of words and the party headed for the door. I said bye to my friend and fell in behind, left and wandered down to the cab stand; I saw a driver I knew and went over to say hi. The foursome stood waiting for the valet driver to fetch the cars, chatting quietly.

I watched them for a bit and realized Trixie and the translator weren't talking. The drivers were each babbling away to each other. So had the brazilian suddenly learned german in the can? Trixie left in a pink convertible, yakking on a Pink RAZR. I got the number, that would make Speed happy. The drivers and the translator left in a black SUV. I got that number too. I headed back inside.

The bathroom was dark and damp, but I didn't smell any blood. A door was broken, but it looked old. I started to dig in the trash can, stopped, pulled the whole thing into a stall and locked the door. With a bit of privacy I started to search the damn thing in earnest. Disgusting? Maybe, but I see worse things when people sing. I found the electric cord about halfway down, the knot still in. I wondered what the brazilian's neck looked like.

-- excerpt ends.

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It was during my search of the bathroom that I found my first clue. It was sitting next to a used prophylactic. The prophylactic had been there for months but my clue hadn't. I could tell, no hairs were adhering to the kitchen grease and there were none of those dried-on blue streaks that you get from custodial-grade cleansers.

I knew the bathroom had been cleaned in the not too distant past because the place had been closed down briefly by the board of health. I looked around as I thought that; you could not tell all that clearly as demons tend to leave a lot of hair but I was pretty sure.

Fished around in my breast pocket and came up with a pencil I had stolen from the liquor store guy and used the end of it to lift up my find.

It was a rather chipped and greasy old kitchen timer in the shape of a coffee cup complete with cloudy Lucite coffee in it. It had the logo of Joe's Diner on the front. It was a Joe's Diner Timer. I had my clue and was ready to roll just after I hit the head.

The old “Evil Hand” never fails. Sparky confessed like it was his last hope of redemption before the Rapture but there wasn't much to it. His dear sister told him I was a threat and handed him the blunt instrument. I left him on ice while I searched the rest of the garage.

I took the timer back to Sparky. “What do you know about Joe's Diner?”

But Sparky wasn't attending. I followed his line of vision. No wonder he was distracted. A chimpanzee, no that was Rex's kid, Chum, and another boy, both dressed in white tie and wearing comic opera beards, were sneaking up on me. Well, sneaking if you ignore they were in plain view and taking exaggerated, silent movie-esque steps. I wondered what the hell those brats had been watching and where they had come from.

“K-k-keep him away from me!” gibbered Sparky.

“Whatcha doin', Mister?” asked Chum.

“Yeah, Mister, whatcha doin'?” asked the boy next to him. “Why's that man tied up?”

“He's a very bad man,” I said.

“What'd he do?” asked Chum going over to peer more closely at Sparky, mustache askew.

Sparky shrank back, “No! no!” His eyes rolled up in his head and he fainted. Ol' Sparky had such tiny cojones he made eunuchs look macho.

“He whacked me on the head with a wrench. Who's your friend?” I nodded at the other brat.

Smile lighting his homely face, Chum explained, “He's not my friend, silly. He's Spud, my twin brother.”

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Another excerpt from the Rex Racer's memoirs "Rx: Prescription for Danger!":

At the hospital, the front desk was no help. Yes, Suppe had been checked in. No, he wasn't here now. Yes, he'd been released. No, they wouldn't tell me anymore.

I had better luck with an off duty nurse I found at the curb, waiting for her bus. She looked like she had had a long shift, and probably resented the time it was going to take her to get home. She remembered Suppe.

"That was weird." was all she would say at first. I explained I was a fellow driver, and she opened up a bit more. In fact, she got talking quite a bit.

"It was weird." she repeated. "Afterwards they said he was just unconscious, and maybe so. All that safety gear they wear, maybe. But I tell you..."

"Look, about two years ago, we need the roof repaired, right? I was going to hire roofers, when I could save up enough, but no, my sister, she's going to have her husband and his buddies do it. Oh. my. god. Took them all morning to get up there, puts a big hole in and then has lunch. Fine. Then he takes a nap. On the roof, can you believe it? So what happens? Two floors straight down lands on his head in the driveway!"

"That's awful!"

"Yeah, and me with a sheet of plastic for a roof from March till May. Do you know how much it rains around here from March till May? And my sister, well he had insurance, but even after all that she didn't want to hire roofers! I can't wait for you get married again, I told her! I want my bedroom back! So anyway, Suppe was dead."

I didn't follow and said so.

"My brother-in-law was dead when he hit the ground and he didn't look half as bad as Suppe." She explained. "And then... ping."

"Ping?"

"Ping. They said he was asleep."

“Was he?”

“No. Pay attention! He was dead. I see dead people all the time. Sometimes, like if they don't want to make a fuss on the scene, so the corpse gets a nice ride in the ambulance with all the pretty lights flashing and then he 'dies' at the hospital. That's what I thought when I saw him, but they put him an alcove and drew the curtain and then … ping.”

“Why ping?”

“There was a ping. Ping and then he's up and walking and talking. And talking and talking, wouldn't shut up!”

“The trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised?”

“Didn't sound like no trumpet. Sounded more like … an egg timer?”

“Weird”.

-- excerpt ends

TBC

AN: If you are Speed Racer challenged, there's a link in my profile for basic character info.