A Detective Paco Rerun - Let Me Off Uptown

The canary-yellow 1938 Packard roadster needed some work (oil and lube, and check the walnut dashboard for termites, will ya?), so after dropping it off at Jimmy’s service station, I decided to take a cab back to the office. I was feeling cocky after solving another case: the Lancet had published a suspiciously high mortality figure for Iraq in its latest edition, and after reviewing the film from security cameras in their offices, I was able to determine that their statistician had fallen asleep with his finger on the ‘zero’ key of his calculator. But you get cocky, you get careless, and you get too careless you can get hurt – as I was about to find out.

I hailed a cab, got in, and casually noted that the driver was Muslim (no great detective work involved; the fez, burnoose and plastic dashboard Osama Bin Laden were a dead giveaway). I gave him the address and we moved into the stream of traffic.

I could have waited. I was hungry, but we were now only a few blocks from the office, so I could have waited. But the awareness of that big pork barbecue sandwich in my briefcase was preying on my mind, plus, as I said, I was feeling exultant about showing up those pill-pushers at the Lancet, so I took the sandwich out, pulled the wrapper off and took a bite.

At this precise moment, Abdullah glanced in his rearview mirror. He did a double take, glaring at me like he had just caught me in the act of cutting the hamstrings on his camel five minutes before the big race. He swerved over to the curb, where two similarly attired goons were loitering on the sidewalk.

He jumped out of the car and shouted something in what I took to be Arabic at the goons. All of a sudden they became visibly incensed and began doing that middle eastern version of the rebel yell (“ovulating”, I think it’s called). I got out to see what the problem was, and the two goons grabbed me and slammed me into the cab, one of them slapping me, hard, knocking my fedora into the gutter. By this time, I saw where they were going with this, so I brought my heel down on the instep of one goon, and then turned and delivered a right cross to jaw of the other. But the cab driver, moving like he had an IDF platoon behind him, rushed around the cab, grabbed my arms and pinned them behind my back. His buddies then began pounding me in the gut with their fists; in a few minutes it felt like Michael Moore, after a heavy meal, had been using my stomach as a trampoline. They threw me to the ground, and the cabbie began screaming. “Son of a Dhimmi whore! How dare you defile my cab with your unclean pork barbecue sandwich!”. He sniffed the air. “Western Carolina style, wasn’t it? Er, well, that’s beside the point! You will whistle a different tune now, won’t you?”

I pulled myself into a half-sitting position, wiped some of the blood off my lips with the back of my hand, and managed a grim smile. “Is that all you want, Sinbad? For me to whistle a different tune? Well, try this one.” I put two fingers in my mouth and whistled a couple of loud, short notes. Almost instantly, there was a blur of legs, fangs and gray fur shooting out of the alley located behind my office. It was Bogan.

Half German shepherd, half Tasmanian wolf, and a hundred percent savagely protective, Bogan lit into the thugs like some kind of cartoon Tasmanian devil. He knocked the cabbie down, then whirled and took a bite out of one goon’s calf. The other goon took off running down the alley, with Bogan turning the corner, hot on his heels. A moment later, there was a vicious snarl and a human scream. Bogan came trotting back, tail wagging, holding the remains of a back pocket in his mouth.
I reached up and patted him on the head. “Good boy! Let’s you and me go up to the office. I think Sheila has some Milk-Bones up there, and you’ve sure earned ‘em!”