Our hero was holding his trusty .38 to Possum’s wrinkled, drooping 96-year-old face when Francis and Johnny arrived. Ace’s headquarters was really just his garage, modified with a small radio, a police scanner and a makeshift waterboarding station.
“Tell me what you know!” Ace yelled.
“I don’t know anything, Ace,” Possum said. “I haven’t swung a possum since 1949. Not until just now at least.”
“Horsefeathers!” Ace said. “I got your calling card.”
Ace put down his gun and reached into his pocket, handed his prisoner a crumpled piece of paper. Possum looked over the note, and began laughing. “This is a fake,” he said. “I’m afraid someone’s trying to frame me.”
“Oh, you’re all wet,” Ace said. “You’ve wanted me dead since ’19.”
“It is true,” Possum admitted. “I did want you dead, but that was a long, long time ago. Truth is, when you went missing with that Russian broad, we thought you were already dead. We had a little party in honor of the occasion. But trust me, Ace: I have neither the lung capacity or the hip function to be a criminal anymore. For Chrissakes, look at me.”
Possum made a fair point. In the sixty odd years Ace spent frozen in the Moscow Kremlin, his old nemeses were aging. And aging. And, in many cases, dying. Now, when he looked at Possum Jones, he didn’t see a despicable criminal, but a kind of sad- but mostly funny-looking old man.
“Tell me this Possum,” Ace barked. “What do you Pussy Cats do in your hideout? Play friendly games of Monopoly?”
“No,” Possum said. “We lost the car, the shoe and the thimble, so only a couple of us can play at a time, and that’s no fun. No, we mostly just talk about the weather, how kids these days bother us, and how the designated hitter rule is confusing and vaguely insulting to us--well, that, and we like to take pictures of ourselves with our faces pressed together, and smiling. Some of us like to give the peace sign, but I don’t. Then we like to put those pictures on Facebook with cute captions, and talk about how our hair looks.”
“And what of your cronies? Muskrat? Nutria? The Cats, House- and Jungle-?”
“Dead, nursing home, dead, wheelchair-bound--diabetes.”
“Fair enough,” Ace said, defeat in his voice. “Untie him Francis. Johnny, you go to the bureau and grab my consolation whiskey.” Ace lit another cigarette, and moaned in pleasure as he took the first drag. “You sure Jungle Cat Baker’s pushing up daisies?”
“Dead as a doornail, honest,” Possum said. “He had cancer... The pain, it got so bad, one day, we came home, and...”
“He passed.”
“Yeah, mauled to death by a panther.”
“That’s ironic.”
“Yeah, yeah it is. What’s with the interest in Baker?”
“The fellows who are trying to rub me out. They used a lion.”
“Hm.”
“What?”
“I said, ‘hm’” Possum said. “Fella came to my store a couple weeks ago, looking for a lion.”
“What’d he look like, Possum?”
“Well, he was your average Joe. He wore a striped shirt, a beret. He might have been an albino.”
“Anything else? Anything out of the ordinary?”
“Oh, yeah. He had a mustache.”
Ace’s eyes lit up, when he saw Johnny bringing his delicious consolation whiskey. After a couple sips though, they lit up again, a little brighter than before. “Johnny, go put away my consolation whiskey. Bring me my accomplishment whiskey and fire up the car.
“We’re going to pay a visit to ‘Mustache’ Duchamp.”
Mustache Duchamp lived in an abandoned train car down near the quarry, emerging only to occasionally frighten the townspeople with his requests to be treated like a normal human being. Mothers would hold their children a little tighter when they saw “Ol Mustache” coming down the street, and gasp dramatically as he tipped his hat and offered up a “Good morning to you, ma’am.”
It was near midnight when mustache heard a rapping at the door of his train car. Confused and pale with terror, or lack of pigment, Mustache slid open the train car door. “Can I help you?” he asked.
Ace grabbed mustache by his stained, tattered collar. “You there, Mustache--what do you know about lions? Start singin’!”
“Nothing,” Mustache said, “I swear. And please, don’t call me ‘Mustache!’ My name is Clarence.”
“Yeah, well my man Possum here says different, see,” Ace said, nodding at the old man behind him. “You callin’ ‘im a liar?”
“No!” Mustache said. “But what would I know about lions? I live in a train car!”
“Time was, Mustache, folks that knew the most about lions lived in train cars!”
Confused, Mustache shrugged. Ace wound up to sock Mustache in the mustache, but Possum caught his hand. “Ace--” he said. “This isn’t the man you’s looking for. Fellow we saw,” he continued, gesturing toward the possum on the end of the leash, “was whiter than this fellow--Isn’t that right, Darrell?”
The possum nodded confidently.
“Whiter than him?” Ace said incredulously. “No, no, that don’t add up. Look at this freak!”
“Please,” Mustache pleaded, “My name is Musta--Clarence. My name is Clarence.”
“Why should I believe you, Possum?” Ace said.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Possum said, gesturing at his possum. “But we know what we seen, and this ghostly creeper isn’t him.”
Mustache started to demur to the “ghostly” crack, but Ace spoke over him.
“I don’t know why,” he said, “But I believe you.
“Sorry, Mustache.”
“Let me ask you, Possum,” Ace said back at Headquarters. “Why are you such a help all of the sudden?”
“Dunno,” Possum said. “I guess it’s just nice to have someone to talk to again, something to do. Like I said, most of the old gang is long dead. Mabel passed, must’ve been ten years ago, now. It’s just--it’s nice to have a friend, outside of Darren here.”
When Possum ended his soliloquy, Ace was slumped on the couch snoring. Possum shook him awake.
“...Guh?” Ace said. “Oh, hey Possum. You think you could identify that fellow if you saw him again?”
“Sure,” Possum said.
“Good. Go home and get some sleep. We’ve got some work to do tomorrow.”
“Sounds good... friend.”
“What? Oh yes, good, see you tomorrow.”
The next morning, Ace had a burger for breakfast, some sliders for desert and grabbed a patty melt for the road. He tipped his hat to a woman as he stepped into the street outside of his house, and the woman grimaced because she was really a man with long hair. Ace shrugged his shoulders and kept on.
Our hero arrived at the old folks’ home at a quarter past nine, and asked to see Possum Jones. The woman at the desk said, “Oh, you must mean Alfred,” she said. “He’s expecting you. It’s room 316.”
Ace took the stairs up to the third floor, because he read that little things like that can sometimes be a big help when it comes to burning calories. On the last step, he stubbed his toe, and yelled, “Dammit!”
When he looked up, a nun was shaking her head in disappointment.
When Ace finally made it to room 316, he lit a cigarette and knocked on Possum’s door. It smelled a little like pee in there. Wait, no--a lot like pee. “Come on Possum,” Ace yelled. “We’ve got work to do.”
Frustrated by the silence, Ace tried the door. It was unlocked.
Possum was nowhere to be seen. The TV was on a golf tournament. The door to Darren’s cage was ajar. For a moment, Ace thought that, perhaps, Possum had forgotten their appointment and taken Darren for a stroll. He was pretty old, after all. Then he saw Darren’s leash on the counter next to the colorful bottles of pills, and--even more curiously--a note written in blood. Wait, no, that was just red ink.
“Dear Ace, or random nursing home employee,” the note read. “I have kidnapped Alfred and his beloved possum, Darren. If you wish to see them alive again, have Ace Chandler--yes you, Ace--at the old typewriter factory at midnight. Bring no one. Actually, bring some gin. We have tonic and limes but no gin, so it’s like, what do we do with that, right? Okay, so bring gin. But no people. Cheers--the kidnapper.”
Ace would guess later that Possum left his oxygen tank on. Because just after he finished reading the letter, as the nurse turned to him and told him, in stern tones, that he wasn’t allowed to smoke in there, the third floor of the Happy Hills Retirement home exploded in a prodigious blast.
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