A Detective Paco Rerun - Detective Paco and the Girl from the EU

This one requires some context. Tim Blair once did a post poking fun at the European Union’s attempt to interest young people in the EU by means of comic books. One of the comics featured a sexy member of the European Parliament. I brought her to life for this very short skit.

It was the hottest day of the year. I looked out of my office window and saw a dog chasing a squirrel and they were both walking. I took a Dixie cup from the dispenser and turned to pour myself a short cold one from the water cooler, when I heard a light, almost timid rapping on the opaque glass of my office door. I issued my usual gracious invitation.

“Yeah?”

The door opened and she stepped in. She was a brunette with eyes like expertly cut amethyst and skin the color of caramel and her second story was loosely wrapped in an ultra-sheer black blouse that made her breasts look like two golden-brown loaves of French bread glimpsed through the smoked glass of an oven door. I was speechless. And not just because I had swallowed my Dixie cup. It was the EU gal. But not the badly-drawn, two-dimensional figure from the comic book; this was the genuine three-dimensional thing, very much in the flesh - about 125 luscious pounds of it.

“Ah! You are Monsieur Paqeau, the famous American detecteeve, no?”

I choked down the Dixie cup and managed a reply. “Yes, ma’am”.

“Oh, Monsieur Paqeau! We are having the major crisis in Europe because the yutes, they are not taking the European Union seriously! What can we do?”

“Lady, in this age of IPods, DVD’s and special effects, the average kid is going to find a comic book about as interesting as the U.S. tax code. Make a movie, throw in some mutants, some aliens and a killer sound track - American music, mind you, none of that lame French ballad crap - and you’ll get their attention. Case solved. That’ll be a hundred euros”.

She beamed. “Oh, merci, Monsieur Paqeau! By the way, the cabs, they are so hard to . . . how do you say, ‘flag down’? Would you be so kind as to take me back to my hotel?”

"Sure thing, ma’am. Wait downstairs by the entrance and I’ll get my car from the garage and swing around front. You can’t miss it: it’s a canary-yellow, 1938 Packard roadster. And say, have you had lunch yet? I know this great little continental place around the corner, and for some reason I’ve got this real craving for French bread.”