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Filth, Gore, and Awesome Sauce
S. Pelota Payaso
These are the exploits of Sanchez and S. Pelota Payaso...detectives in the Order of Amateur Plumbers and Baby Oil Wrestlers. My office used to be an auto parts store. Now…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 it’s 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.
“I don’t do that,” she says when I first hired her. “You said something about that Maggie Gyllenhaal movie, The Secretary…”
She saw the DVD on my entertainment center.
“Of all the DVDs I have in my office, you focus on that particular movie. I have Godzilla, Wes Anderson, and…” I also have plumbing, law, and fictional books...but she was focusing on the naughty, sexy-tary movie.
“I’m taking accounting classes at East LA College…”
“Do you know anything about plumbing or any of the products we sell?”
She does that...the whole...and she’s coming on to me like some stereotype of…
“I need someone…”
She gets up from the chair in front of my desk. “I bet you need someone,” she says like…
“Honestly, whoever referred you…” I adjust myself as she walks behind my desk. Turning my chair to face her as she… “I don’t need you for lap dances...or…” I noticed on her resume… An associate of mine was doing some work at a Gentleman’s club, and that’s their phone number. They would answer the phone and make their job sound more like a bar and grill. She stopped part of the…
“Twerking isn’t…”
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. Silently…
“Excuse me…” I tried to stop her without getting up. She stopped at the closed office door. “If you could start on Monday. You could practice some of what you are learning at E L A C…”
She opened the door and paused for some dramatic effect…
“I’m also studying theater,” she turned. “I’ll see you an hour before the store opens on Monday. I have a good feeling about you, Payaso.” 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.
“Awesome sauce…” 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 words…
“We specialize in Copper Pipes…”
These signs say to the initiated, 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.
