The Case of the Blue Flamingo – 4 by in 1889 / August 30th, 2006
Gare landed in the limo so hard he was sure he’d broken a few ribs. It wasn’t that Fandetti was trying to beat him up anymore, he just didn’t seem to have a keen grasp of what “reasonable force” was like. He plunked himself down into the seat next to Gare and immediately grabbed a glass of scotch from the minibar.
“Want one?” he asked, taking a sip.
“No thanks,” said Gare, “I try not to drink heavily before nine thirty on Mondays.”
“Pansy,” said Fandetti, and swallowed the rest in one gulp. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and stared seriously at Gare. “So what’s your partner told you about Mr Fandetti’s problem?”
Gare wanted to make a crack about speaking about oneself in the third person, but decided against it. He was going to admit to knowing nothing at all about Mr Fandetti’s problem, but realized by the twitch in the heavy man’s eye that that would be a tragic mistake.
“We find that it works best if you start from the beginning,” he bluffed, “because sometimes important clues come out each time you tell it.”
Fandetti gritted his teeth a bit, then leaned forward and dumped another very full glass of scotch into the glass. He swallowed half of it in one go, and then rested his lolling head on his fist as he launched into the story.
“Mr Fandetti had a girl, okay? A real classy one. Eyes like sapphires and a body he killed for. He’d'a done anything for her. Hell, he probably did. She was that kinda girl, you know?”
Gare nodded, though he really didn’t know. For all he knew, Fandetti could have been talking about a chihuahua dressed in a tutu. It was generally hard to take him seriously.
“So one day,” Fandetti continued drunkenly, “one day the girl, Maggie, she comes to Mr Fandetti and says she wants a pet or she’s gonna leave him. Leave him! Just like that! Can you believe it? So anyway, Mr Fandetti, he knows a good thing when he’s got one, so he says to Maggie, he says ‘Listen, if you want a pet, you got it, babe. Ain’t no need to go threatening things over a pet’. So he says to her, what kinda pet do you want? And you know what she says?”
Gare knew it was his turn to speak, but he really didn’t want to.
“A puppy?” he offered.
Mr Fandetti slapped a hand down on Gare’s knee so fast it made his bones crack. He bit his lip to keep from squeaking, tried to smile as Fandetti broke into laughter.
“That’s a good one! That’s what Mr Fandetti figured, too! But you know…” and then his face went dead serious, and Gare stopped smiling immediately, “… you know, that’s not what she wanted. She wanted a flamingo.”
“A flamingo?”
“Yeah. Long neck and all that.”
“I don’t think that’d make a very good pet,” muttered Gare.
“Nah, and it didn’t either. But what made Mr Fandetti really crazy…” (Gare tried not to laugh at this) “… was that she didn’t want just none regular flamingo, she wanted a BLUE flamingo!”
Dead stare. Gare was having a hard time coming up with something to say.
“I’m not finding you a blue flamingo, am I?”
Mr Fandetti started laughing again, but this time he grabbed Gare by the ear and pulled him very close, the smell of scotch mixed with searing pain and the realization that this might be a better moment than he would have after he told Fandetti that there’s no such thing as a blue flamingo.
“You’re finding the blue flamingo,” Fandetti growled, “and you’re findin’ Maggie too. I didn’t get her that bird just to have her run off anyway. You’re gettin’ them both back. And fast.”
