Or, The Ferret Connection, Part 3, continued…
The medical unit had come and gone, taking a half-dead Jack Step with it.
The well-built older man says:
Check Step’s computer, Smith. Make it talk.
The last thing Step was working on, Smith says, is The Lost Interviews of Welsh Losser, Part 17. Looks complete to me. I’m reading it quickly, and in this one, Losser confuses “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison with “The Invisible Man” by H.G. Wells.
Quite a difference; wouldn’t you say, Smith?
Yeah, well, I doubt Losser’s ever read anything.
Painstaking work, that, piecing those damn interviews together again. Good man, Step. If I’m not mistaken, those hark back to the days, stretching over a period of years, just after Losser had made that contract with Satan back in 2003 to become a famous writer. He was so confident about his prospects, he must have done 100 of those interviews – funny they’re lost. I wonder how that happened and why. Hey, even you’re in one of them, aren’t you, Smith?
Yeah, kind of in the background. I was really young back then. Think it’s Part 88, according to Step’s methodology and system in the Commix section of this website. Having a sandwich or something back in the kitchen as an intern when the interviewer starts giving Losser all this verbal abuse for claiming to be a writer, and Losser was taking it, and –
Yeah, says the older man, and he was going to take it, because he had this contract with Satan he thought was foolproof. Thought it made him impervious to damage. But he’s found out otherwise; hasn’t’ he? And so then what happened?
Well, so then the interviewer got so steamed with Losser, he starts calling back to me for the big kitchen knife, sort of to scare Losser with.
And did it?
Oh, Losser shat his pants. Said he suddenly had to leave the studio, cut the interview short, something came up he had to deal with that he forgot about, and so on. In fact, he was screaming bloody murder, and no one had even touched him. We were rolling on the floor, hysterical with laughter, and –
And what did you say, Smith – ah, in answer to the knife.
Oh, I told the interviewer to come get it himself.
Ha, ha, ha!!! Yeah, it’s too bad that interviewer’s now dead. And I wonder how that happened… and why…??? Okay, Smith, back to work. Why don’t you put Part 17 of The Lost Interviews of Welsh Losser up on Kyiv Unedited, as a record of the truth, which is what we’re after, when you get the chance, since Step’s not here.
Okay, will do.
What else, Smith? How about that contract. Last time I heard, it wasn’t on the website; went missing or something.
I don’t know where any of that comes from, Chief. It’s right here, both in hard copy Word original and up on the website, right where it should be. But then, those agents sent by The Infernal One…
You mean Boris and Heinrich, Smith?
Yes.
We got word back from Manny Face in The Checkout that they didn’t find it.
But that’s just it! The contract’s right here! They told Face they were here. Said they turned the place upside down and couldn’t find it. Maybe they did this to Step…
Yeah, Smith, those clowns were up and about looking for the thing, but if it’s here, that means they didn’t take it, and if that was their objective, they failed. Hell-thugs aren’t the brightest abominations in the Universe.
But that doesn’t mean they didn’t do this to Step.
I don’t know, Smith. Why would they try to kill him with a bottle of Walker without getting what they came for? Wouldn’t it be more logical to get him to give them what they wanted first, and then kill him?
I don’t know, Smith says. Maybe, Step being tough the way he is, they couldn’t get anything out of him, and then they forced the Johnnie down his throat out of spite. I mean, after all, they’re goons… sent by Satan. Not the brightest in the world. You said so yourself. What do they care? It’s not like they give every issue careful consideration and then –
No, Smith, something still doesn’t quite add up here. Look at this place. Do you see any sign that two demons had been here, much less ransacked the joint?
Ah, no, I can’t say I do. But maybe things were put back in order after they’d –
Believe me, Smith. I’ve been in this business long enough to know. If two demons have been anywhere on this Earth, they always leave some scars behind. And no amount of cleanup work can ever make a place quite the same after them again.
But what does that mean? I mean, they told Manny Face that –
Smith, Smith, Smith – they’re devils… Don’t you think it’s just possible they lied?
Oh.
Any idea how Face got out of that one, Smith?
Yeah, he enticed them into dancing Argentine Tango, and they left his loft like they were the best of friends, demanding he give them more lessons.
That slick son of a bitch.
Yeah, and The Hunched Cornish had me take photos through Face’s skylight.
Better be careful with that Cornish, Smith. That’s another breed of evil altogether. You know he hates Face and Step.
Don’t worry, I’ll be okay.
I sure hope so, kid. Any more leads?
Yeah. While you were busy talking to the medical unit as they were carting Step out, I got a hold of the secretary –
You mean the receptionist with the pineapples under her blouse in the foyer as you walk in?
Yeah.
I like that one.
Clearly. Anyway, she said someone going nyooxgaweolaoeurn gkelgiqweoprtm k made his way up here claiming he had urgent business with Step, but she didn’t let him through. Said he looked like some creepy Porky Pig pedophile with walleyes who used to sell ice cream giving her this nasty red-faced shaking urgent look that belied the cool debonair worldly jet-setting spy-writer exterior he was trying to pull with an expensive-looking watch and slate-blue PR and human vices consulting suit that he was too fat to button, causing his severely outdated paisley tie, which he wore to apparently announce his artistic side, to skew off sloppily to the side. A scraggly greasy gray goatee only added to the perversity and repulsiveness of the already grotesque and freakish image.
Losser.
Most probably yes. But then she said, as she was putting her makeup back into her purse ready to leave her workstation for the day and go home, on her way out the door, she thought she heard a couple of thumps from way down the other end of the hall coming from the emergency stairwell off to the left, possibly followed by something that sounded like heh-heh-heh-heh, but then it stopped and she simply figured she had had a long day and was hearing things. She then exited the building by the usual way and went home.
That’s chump change, Smith. It wasn’t who, or what, you think it was.
How do you know?
I just do. What else you find on that computer, Smith?
Well, the last piece before this one was the one about Dickerson at Doctor Wu’s, for some reason signed by Step writing as Dickerson.*
Hmmm… Hey, Smith, the power of association has just made me really hungry. What do you say to some Chink food?
Maybe we should ask Dickerson, Smith says, a corner of his mouth lifting in a barely perceptible smile.
The older man looks at Smith fondly, unable to stop the spreading of a broad grin.
Filed by Jack Step, June 8, 2013
* That piece is now simply signed Dirk Dickerson, although historically, it was exactly as Smith says.