MANHUNT @ BENNY'S RESTAURANTE Y CANTINA (Sturgis Trilogy Part 1) Bobby is gone. The words rang through my head as I sat in shock. I couldn't believe the star columnist had just up and disappeared; no review, no word, no trace. The publisher explained the situation again with a solemn expression, in a slow monotone: "Bobby is gone. We don't know where he is. He isn't answering his cell or home phone. There's no Tattooed Food Critic for the Dining Guide." On the exterior, I'm sure he only saw the skinny, mild-mannered editor that shows up every day for work at 6 am and toils away in his three-piece suit until 8 pm, when he goes home with proofs shoved in his Italian leather briefcase. But that's only the surface of me, the me I let the office see. Underneath is an ex-Green Beret who has seen horrors unimaginable to the average entertainment journalist. And every pint of my Green Beret blood was pumping. I knew what I had to do. I took an immediate leave of absence, peddling the lame excuse that my sister needed help moving to Phoenix. They bought it. Nobody even questioned why anyone in their right mind would move to Arizona in August. With a three-day reprieve granted in the heat of deadline week, I called my old friend from Special Ops in Washington, Colonel Grimm. "Any enemies or suspect political connections?" Grimm inquired once I briefed him on the emergency. "He's grumbled in a paranoid way about enemies, but nothing concrete. All I have is a scrawled note we found in his trash can: 'Sigruts' it says, in blood." "Sigruts?" "We thought at first it might be code for 'cigarettes' since he just quit smoking. Then an old friend in the LAPD mentioned a small town south of the border called Sigrettez. He might be there. Bobby was never much of a speller." "Hm," Grimm grunted. "Assemble the old team and go after him. Terminate enemies with extreme prejudice." And so it was that I got back together with Juan Barracuda, John "Mad Dog" Murdoch, and Jean-Luc "Frenchy" Lessoir. We piled in Barracuda's hum-vee and drove south. It wasn't long before I spotted a hangout notorious for trapping diners with large appetites: Benny's. Word on the street was that Benny held big eaters in a locked room in the back, where he fed them delicious burritos, tacos, rellenos, and tortilla chips until they were too weak to do anything but siesta and turn over top secret food critic information. Mad Dog ran point with his Colt Python drawn. Frenchy and Barracuda scouted the exterior for snipers. I served back-up, holding my finger to the trigger of my loaded Heckler & Koch PSP 9mm pistol. All was clear. The team waved me in. We were seated right away. Mad Dog held the host's eye contact for three seconds. It was his Commie test: if a man could stand his gaze for three seconds without squinting, he wasn't a Commie. Just one reason we called him Mad Dog. We all dropped into our seats except Frenchy, who went to scout the bathrooms. Barracuda rigged up a small listening device with a straw and one of the comment cards on the table. He wanted to listen to the conversations of the numerous diners around us, just in case a mole dropped a clue. The waitress approached our table. She passed Mad Dog's Commie test, so we ordered a pitcher of sangria, tacos al carbon (steak), and three plates of something called Combination H (beef taco, relleno, smothered bean burrito). Mad Dog laughed. 'Combination H' reminded him of a nerve gas that gave him the shits in 'Nam. Frenchy returned. "Bathroom eez clean. No bugs." People nearby might have assumed Frenchy meant the restroom was merely sanitary (which it was), but we knew what he was really saying. The food came quickly, right on the heels of our drinks. This made Barracuda nervous; had the staff intuited our hurried nature?; Were they on to our mission? No, it turned out everyone's food was served right away, without the usual interminable wait found at other area restaurants. Just one reason Benny's had the reputation for trapping eaters. The meals were fantastic and filling. We were soon ordering another pitcher of sangria and baskets of sopapillas. Even Barracuda let down his guard. Before long, we were all leaning back in our chairs, watching the pre-season football game and loosening our belts. It was time for a siesta. Mad Dog snapped us out of it. When we didn't respond to his barked orders, he decided to take matters a step further, and yanked me out of my chair by the collar. Then he slammed me against the wall. "Wake up, man! Don't forget our mission! If we don't find Bobby and get him back to Go-Go, you'll be printing some other Communist fancy-pants food critic like all the other Red freedom-hating rags in this rat-infested metropolis!" He was right. We all sat at attention while we paid the bill. Clearly Bobby wasn't here, but Benny's had lived up to its reputation. The place was dangerously hard to get out of ... even an old Green Beret like myself wasn't guaranteed to make it out alive. On the way out, a bus boy failed Mad Dog's eye contact test. He was immediately slammed against the wall, just like I had been. We showed him the scrap of paper -- "Sigruts" -- and threatened to beat a confession out of him. He choked, "It's backwards. It says 'Sturgis' ... that's where the bigs have planned a rendezvous." Clever bastards. Who'd have suspected Sturgis as a Commie headquarters? Just before we climbed back in the vehicle, I wired the Go-Go office: "NO BOBBY STOP GOING TO STURGIS STOP RUN ISSUE WITHOUT ME STOP." I could only hope it wasn't too late NARCOLEPSY @ ROAD KILL CAFE (Sturgis Trilogy Part 2) It was 4 am as we pulled out of Denver onto the on-ramp of I-25. It had been 24 hours since I had slept last but I knew I could pull this off. Sturgis was only about 400 miles from here and the cool night air would keep me somewhat awake. I brought our speed up to about 85 and set the cruise control. Yes cruise control! You didn't think I was going to load all this stuff on a bike and head up there did you? Where would I put my laptop, tattoo equipment, or my espresso machine for that matter? Okay, so I didn't take my espresso machine but still I had a SUV fulla stuff and I wasn't about to leave any of it behind. As we kicked into cruise control, I looked over at my co-pilot Wayne and said, "We've got a full tank of gas, a half a pack of cigarettes, and we're wearing our sunglasses at night." He never broke his forward gaze but quietly responded, "We're on a mission from God!" It was around Cheyenne somewhere that the road started looking a lot like a black licorice whip with lines of white powdered sugar along its edges. I started leaning out the window to get a better look at the confectionary miracle unfolding before us and the shock of the cold night air brought me back to consciousness. Ahhhhh! I had been asleep at the wheel! "Hey man!" I shouted at Wayne. "You're supposed to make sure I stay awake!" Never taking his eyes away from the road ahead of us he said simply, "I thought you said you had the cruise control on." I thought about it a minute but I was too loopy to try to figure out why that shouldn't make sense. We stopped in Cheyenne at some little stop and rob for gas and to re-up on Blue Ox and smokes. Once I had a few cans of the Ox we resumed our voyage. Although I was much more awake I was still suffering from low-grade hallucinations, but nothing that would impede my driving (I hoped). We drove through the night without incident, other than hitting a bat and some sort of bird, as well as every bug in Wyoming. Hey, you know what the last thing is to go through a bug's mind when it hits your windshield? Its sphincter! HA! I kill me! Anyway, we hit Sturgis at about 10 am, the smell of exhaust, fried food and sour beer floated through the air, and there were bikes, beers and boobs EVERYWHERE! We were both starved so we went into the first place we saw, The World Famous Road Kill Café. Normally the words road kill and café in the same sentence wouldn't entice me to hunger but I hadn't slept in over 30 hours and I had just driven 400 miles. The place looked like your basic biker-filled greasy spoon with a couple of exceptions. One was that the menu boasted "from your grill to ours" with selections like Poodles and Noodles, Rack of Raccoon, Swirl of Squirrel, and Thumper on a Bumper to name a few. The other exception was that the place smelled of absolute heaven! Something was cooking that made my mouth water and my stom-ach growl! The breakfast buffet consisted of eggs, bacon, sausage, biscuits and gravy, hash browns, fruit of every kind and was served with my favorite four words: "all you can eat." We ate and ate and ate. I haven't had a buffet like that in years, and everything was awesome! I went out back in the camo net-covered beer garden where I laid down on a table and immediately went to sleep. Before long I awoke to the drunken whooping and hollering going on due to an impromptu wet t-shirt contest that had erupted around me. I headed out into the street and began to wander aimlessly through the never-ending parade of bikes, beers and boobs. I found my way to our hotel where Wayne had already unpacked most of the gear. A few more cans of Blue Ox and I was ready to go again. We headed back toward Main Street but got immediately separated after being swept up into the midst of some beer-crazed boob fest. After wandering about for most of the day I had seen enough weirdness to last a lifetime. I even saw a sheep dog wearing purple riding chaps! Finally I found my way back to the Road Kill ... just in time for the baby back rib dinner buffet! Just like breakfast, the food was awesome: meat so tender it fell off the bone, sauce so sweet I licked my fingers, my face, the plate, even the counter top. (I tried to lick the waitress but she ran.) And of course served in all you can eat style. And just like breakfast I fell asleep in the beer garden out back. I awoke as before to whooping and general sounds of alcohol induced merriment and wandered out into the throng of bikes beers and boobs once again. I spent the next few days prowling up and down the crowded streets eating with both hands. Things like Indian tacos consisting of fry bread heaped with a mile high mound of taco fixins. Deep fried catfish on a stick, Gyros, sausage sandwiches, hamburgers, fries, it went on and on. Everything there to drink besides beer was a study in hypo-glycemic madness. The grease congealed in my stomach while the sugar solidified in my brain until one day blended into the next. My mind reeled questioning my reality: "How long have I been here? How did I get here? When did I shower last? Whose voice is this in my head anyway?" I remember thinking that if I could just lie down for a minute maybe the world would stop spinning, and then everything went black. I woke up on a bench somewhere on Main Street as the sun was coming up; Wayne was shaking me saying something about getting some breakfast. I shambled along behind him heading once again for the Road Kill. Once we were inside, the waitress told me that there were some paramilitary guys asking about my whereabouts. "They were a pretty creepy bunch, even for this place!" she said while looking around. Then leaning foreword in a conspiratorial way she continued. "One of them was kind of a weasely little guy wearing an old beat up green beret and had a news print picture of you. The guy he referred to as Frenchy kept sniffing his fingers and smiling, while the big quiet one just mumbled about the clowns eating him." I looked over at Wayne, he just gave me a quick nod and we were headed for the door in a flash. Although I wasn't sure what I could have done to get a spook and a couple of ghouls on my tail, I knew I didn't want to hang around to find out. We loaded up the Explorer in record time and I threw Wayne the keys. I had to get this all down in writing before they caught up to us. So here I am pecking away on my laptop as Wayne speeds us into the distance. At least now if I come up missing you'll know why. Thank God for cellular modems! FULL OF POTENTIAL @ FAT FENDERS (Sturgis Trilogy Part 3) I had been back in town for a few days since my quick exit stage left from South Dakota. It turns out these paramilitary creepers that had almost nabbed me in Sturgis had been asking around Denver about me before heading out that way. That meant only one thing; it wouldn't be long before they were coming back through here. I decided to go underground until I found out exactly who and what I was up against. "Consider all the facts," I thought as I looked over my notes in the dim light of the basement I was holed up in. OK there are three total in the team that I know of, one is a weasely little guy in a green beret. "Why does that sound so familiar?" I asked aloud as I thumbed through the pages I had compiled. Then there was a guy he referred to as Frenchy, a weird finger sniffer of some sort. I used to know an explosives expert that sniffed his fingers a lot because he loved the smell of C-4; he said it smelled like victory or something like that. I also know a perv that does it for other reasons, so who knows? Finally there was the big guy mumbling about clowns eating him; I had no frame of reference for that ... clowns don't eat you! They generally just wrap you in a cocoon of a cotton candy-like substance and drink your blood through crazy straws. This guy had obviously lost his grip on reality. The more I pondered the 'facts' the less I knew, and then it hit me! If these guys had been looking for me here before they left they would have been sniffing around the tattoo shop. I called Big Paul the Prez and ran the whole thing down to him. He said he would get back to me after doing a little sniffing around of his own. I made a few other calls, one of which was to Go-Go. They acted like nothing was going on, just like I suspected, and told me that the editor wanted to talk to me then put me on hold. I hung up the phone immediately because it was obvious they had been gotten to and had started a trace on my phone. As soon as I hung up my phone rang, I thought sure they had completed the trace but it was Big Paul. He said he had nailed down the info I was looking for and had paper on it for me. We decided to meet in an hour out on old Hampden at a place he knew. I called Wayne and brought him up to speed, telling him where to meet us. I thought by the outward appearance of Fat Fenders that it was very small, but looks can be deceiving. Once inside, it was huge! Aside from a sizable restaurant and bar, it had a big dance floor, a pool room, a game room, a stage, and even a 12-foot TV! The whole place smelled of sweet succulent barbecue because this, like every Friday, was all-you-can-eat barbecue buffet day. There was barbecue ribs, barbecue chicken, barbecue pork, barbecue beef, and barbecue beans. The ribs and chicken practically fell off the bone, the beef and pork was so tender that silverware was strictly for aesthetics. And the beans, oh my God the beans ... beans of epic proportions, to which there will be songs sung for ten generations to come! I looked up from my third plateful, barbecue sauce from my eyebrows to my elbows, and asked Wayne how his food was. He had ordered something from the menu while I was doing the barbecue backstroke up at the buffet. "Uh, what is that you're eating anyway?" I asked, suspiciously eying the breaded something or other on his plate. Then he said something that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up! Very matter of factly without the slightest hint of shame he said three words that froze the lymph in my glands: "Rocky Mountain Oysters." Before I could offer any form of a reply he continued. "I had some in South Dakota last week but they were nowhere near this good." Not only had my bro turned out to be one of that rare breed known as gonadus ingestus, but it turns out he had been doing it all along, right under my very nose! As I was weighing the ramifications of this new info I suddenly remembered why we were here. It wasn't to have some of the best barbecue known to man, though we had. It wasn't to eat things that are much more precious to a bull than I care to know, though some of us had. It wasn't even to learn frightening new things about my friend's habits, though I had. No, it was to get the necessary info about these paramilitary creepers that were on my tail. "So Paul what did ya find out?" I asked while still suspiciously eyeing the stuff on Wayne's plate. The Prez pushed a back issue of Go-Go across the table toward me. It was folded back to my column, so I started to read. "I didn't write this," I protested. Paul just nodded and motioned for me to read on. The story outlined how my editor, fearing that I had been abducted, had donned his green beret, got together with a couple of his buddies and had mounted a search for me. An image of a tattered green beret hanging on the wall in the editorial office started coming into focus. How many times had I had stared right at it while listening to allegations and reprimands? That's it! The little guy in the beret was my editor! Then it all started falling together right before me. Frenchy was really Delbert, our copy guy. And he is the perv that I know, always sniffing his fingers. The big quiet guy was Sol, the delivery driver. They brought him for two obvious reasons. The first, because he is the only one who can get the 1952 delivery van in and out of second gear without a hammer. The second, and more important reason was because none of them had a car. All this meant something I had never even dared dream of! Maybe the reason I'm always being called on the carpet isn't because the editor hates me! Maybe it's more like the teacher being hard on a particular student because of seeing wasted potential. That's it! I'm like some sort of unrealized literary prodigy. He has just been trying to inspire me to the greatness I've been meant for all along! When I called Go-Go back to thank all involved, my editor got on the phone and began in with the usual rant. "Who do you think you are? Where the hell are you? Where's my review?" Then there was something about irresponsibility, lackadaisical attitude, poor excuse for ... it went on, but all I could hear was the roar of the crowd as I gave my Writer Of The Year acceptance speech. It was all I could do to fight back the tears as I said, "You're the best, man, and my first Pulitzer is dedicated to you." As I hung up I thought could hear him saying, "Hello, who is this?" All Rights Reserved © 2001 Go-Go Media, LLC