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Filth, Gore, and Awesome Sauce
S. Cucuy Payaso
These are the exploits of Sanchez and S. Cucuy Payaso...detectives in the Order of Amateur Plumbers and Baby Oil Wrestlers. My office used to be an auto parts store. Nowβ¦I run a Home Improvement store...as a front for my detective agency.
There is a retro fan near the window.
Most nights, I sleep on my Murphy bed in a room adjacent to my office. It looks just like another office, but itβs my bedroom. I greet clients, suspects, and other members of the Order of Amateur Plumbers and Baby Oil Wrestlers in the office with the pullout couch. I have three or four guys who work the store. In their break room is a table and chairs, and behind the fridge is a Japanese futon mattress to sleep on the floor.
I live here alone.
The air conditioner is hardly sufficient to keep things cool. I manage the store and do the investigations alone. One of the former employees is my accountant.
βI donβt do that,β she says when I first hired her. βYou said something about that Maggie Gyllenhaal movie, The Secretaryβ¦β
She saw the DVD on my entertainment center.
βOf all the DVDs I have in my office, you focus on that particular movie. I have Godzilla, Wes Anderson, andβ¦β I also have plumbing, law, and fictional books...but she was focusing on the naughty, sexy-tary movie.
βIβm taking accounting classes at East LA Collegeβ¦β
βDo you know anything about plumbing or any of the products we sell?β
She does that...the whole...and sheβs coming on to me like some stereotype ofβ¦
βI need someoneβ¦β
She gets up from the chair in front of my desk. βI bet you need someone,β she says likeβ¦
βHonestly, whoever referred youβ¦β I adjust myself as she walks behind my desk. Turning my chair to face her as sheβ¦ βI donβt need you for lap dances...orβ¦β I noticed on her resumeβ¦ An associate of mine was doing some work at a Gentlemanβs club, and thatβs their phone number. They would answer the phone and make their job sound more like a bar and grill. She stopped part of theβ¦
βTwerking isnβtβ¦β
She straightened up, returning to her seat with the air of embarrassment and amusement. She sat down and picked up her purse and cup of coffee off the floor. Silentlyβ¦
βExcuse meβ¦β I tried to stop her without getting up. She stopped at the closed office door. βIf you could start on Monday. You could practice some of what you are learning at E L A Cβ¦β
She opened the door and paused for some dramatic effectβ¦
βIβm also studying theater,β she turned. βIβll see you an hour before the store opens on Monday. I have a good feeling about you, Payaso.β She said the words good feeling tossing her right hand up to her shoulder, throwing her black purse over her shoulder, and walking out the office door.
βAwesome sauceβ¦β I whispered to myself. The humming of the oscillating desk fan concealed my words.
I got up and followed her out of the store. I locked the door and turned the open sign so it read closed.
It was a hardware store...not just a plumbing supplies store, but the Order of Amateur Plumbers and Baby Oil Wrestlers requires that members...there are specific words and phrases we use on our signage so a fellow Sloth...no, not sleuth but Sloth. We have to have a stuffed Sloth or a picture and the wordsβ¦
βWe specialize in Copper Pipesβ¦β
These signs say to the initiated that the owner is in the Order.
She was just a normal girl since I also have a plushie of Detective Teleportation Sloth, and the whole series plays during business hours.
I guess because her name was Margaret...Margaret Chisholm. I sat looking at her resume.
I locked up the shop and my apartment and drove to this weekend's convention of The Order-of-Amateur-Plumbers-and-Baby-Oil-Wrestlers. I was told to put a sale on the garbage disposals. Although they are quality garbage disposals, they are marked down because they conceal listening devices. The people who buy them have no idea that seventy percent of the garbage disposals have microphones and transmit via a radio frequency. Most people talk and have conversations in the kitchen and never think...what is so important about my family or my work thatβ¦ White House-style plumbing was going on in their community, and I made it easy toβ¦
The Order has its own agenda in these affairs and serves as a third party. Most of the people who buy my hardware donβt know the home espionage...and no one ever listens to the anonymous conversations of most of the people nationwide until someone complains about...suspicious activity, but either the police or a private investigator have no real evidence. Nothing is admissible in court, but the garbage disposals provide leads and are sort of like dowsing rods.
All of these things go through my mind as I drive to Pomona...for our convention.
