This was originally intended to be a two-week feature, but in these uncertain times it's difficult to know when one might be called upon to apply a bit of emergency satire to banish dull care or, as it were, outright stark terror. But I was reluctant to subject you, the Thoughtful Reader (TR), to both parts at once, intuiting how preoccupied you must be with such questions as: "Hey! Was that a car backfiring?" or "Hey! Does this water taste funny to you?"
 
Then I thought: "Why not publish both parts, so that the TR can read one now (thoughtfully) and save the other for later or the next day--AND PRETEND THAT IT'S NEXT WEEK!" So I did.
 
That is the way my mind works, and there is nothing to be done about it.
 
 
Fetlock, P.I: The case of the Spurious Spine
Another from the files of Calvin E. Fetlock, Political Investigator!
 
PART ONE
 
It was a hot night in D.C., my prehistoric air conditioner was singing its last death song in the cramped rat's nest I call an office. A faint ray of moonlight stabbed through the dusty windows, which made me uneasy, because my office is located in the third sub-basement of the Washington Monument. Uneasy, yeah.
 
I sat in the sultry darkness, with no one to talk to except my friend. I opened my friend and poured out a toast to absent companions and dead dreams; and then another to absent dreams and dead companions. Then I ran out of combinations, and I drank to that as well.
 
After a while in this rotten business you find life looks better the closer you get to the bottom of the bottle. Yeah.
 
I'm a PI--a Political Investigator. Some call me "shamus," and I guess if I knew what it meant I might be offended, but they can call me "Susie," as long as they get my name right on the check. I like checks. They give me a cozy, warm feeling, like a cat under a pot-bellied stove. I like checks. Yeah.
 
Most of my checks come from a select group of desperadoes who inhabit the National Capital area: hopped-up baby-faced legislative aides, tired old political hacks going down for the third time in an incompetent campaign, frantic administration officials whose wives have just discovered unfamiliar panty hose in the washing machine. Yeah, like that. I guess you could call me a kind of repairman: whatever gets broken I'm the guy they call to fix it.
 
Back in the days, when I was punch-drunk from terminal acne, I figured I'd turn out better than this--be a doctor or an astronaut, or something good like that. But somewhere I took a wrong turn. Could've been worse, I guess. I could've turned car thief or stickup artist, or network war correspondent.
 
Whatever, long as it keeps a sub-basement over my head.
 
I was about to consult my friend again when there was a knock at the door. Being the gregarious type I put my friend down and got up to greet my unexpected visitor. As I opened the door I knew I'd made a mistake: it was Boxer.
 
"Well, well, Babs," I said, "What brings you to my little emporium: Senator business not the thrill it once was?"
 
"Very amusing" she said, walking past me just as if I'd asked her in. "Actually, I was going to the zoo, but I got mixed up and wound up here." She looked around my little festival of squalor. "But this'll do," she said.
 
This remark was followed by peals of girlish laughter--mine, unfortunately. But the look she gave me stopped the laughter like a knife across the throat, like sighting an axe in Donald Rumsfeld's hands. I folded up my smile and put it in my pocket next to my buddies, Smith & Wesson. Now we would have some serious.
 
"I got a job for you, shamus," she said. (I gotta remember to look that up).
 
"Spill it, baby," I said, "I'm all ears."
 
"Modern medicine can fix that now," she sneered, "Listen, I just left a Senate conference at the DNC. We got a problem. We lost something we need to get back"
 
"What made itself scarce, Babs? What took the run-out powder, baby? What--"
 
"--Our spine," she interrupted, "Somebody stole it."
 
I thought that over for a minute. "A spine is a terrible thing to waste, sweetheart," I said, "how long's it been missing?"
 
"Two years...maybe more...."
 
"Two years, and you waited this long to tell me?"
 
"Well," she said, "We didn't need it 'til now."
 
I pretended to think it over while I silently calculated the fee and wondered how many new friends it would buy.
 
"I'll take it," I said.
 
 
* * * *
 
When your watch disappears, the first guy to look for is the one who knows what time it is. I started checking up on the competition. My first port of call was Lynne Cheney, current Second Lady and former head of the National Endowment for the Humanities, which she'd tried and failed to turn into a national habitat for weasels. Lately she'd taken to wearing a fright wig and a red nose, and I wondered what she had up her sleeve besides the usual extra ace. As always she was the soul of gentility and grace.
 
"Stand over dere, Shamus," she snarled, pointing a broom at a distant corner of the room, "I'm tryin' a sweep up the trash, and I wouldn't wanna make a mistake."
 
I pushed my hat back and gave her The Look, "The Dems' spine has gone missing and I bet you could write me a book about it, sister."
 
"I ain't got it, gumshoe," she said, "Search me."
 
"Not even with some other guy's hands, baby."
 
"Funny boy!" she barked, "Get this, snooper, I don't know nothin' about no spine, see? I been too busy settin' fire to pictures at the National Gallery, see?" And she held up the charred remains of a Picasso.
 
"All right," I said, but see to it you keep your little red nose clean, get me?"
 
"I ain't got nothin' to hide, Sherlock" she said, as I turned and walked out.
 
"At least nothing I wanna see," I said.
 
* * * *
 
The rest of the day didn't even turn out that well. I chatted up the usual gallery of neocon fanatics and survivalist enablers, but by the end of the day all I'd done was put my Florsheim salesman's kids through college. I was just reaching the end of my list--and my hopes--when I hit pay dirt in the person of one Kasper Gutman, preeminent backer of conservative causes.
 
Gutman was fat like fish are wet. His sparse hair, watery blue eyes and monstrous jowls made him look like a malevolent kewpie doll. His low voice made you think of bodies being dragged across gravel. His genial, almost solicitous expression unaccountably reminded you of burning sulfur.
 
I sat down and gave him one of my best raffish smiles. "The Dem's spine ain't called home lately, fat man," I said, "and right now I'm liking you for the job."
 
Gutman's shoulders suddenly started shaking. Several times his mouth opened and shut like an asthmatic fish, emitting a coarse wheezing like a seal on a respirator. I thought he was going into convulsions until I realized he was laughing uncontrollably.
 
When he stopped he mopped his forehead with a large white handkerchief. "Oh my," he wheezed, "by Jove, sir, you are the one, and no mistake. I like a man who gets straightaway to his business without folderol or hesitation; directness is a most admirable quality, sir, most admirable. You are a man after my own heart," His expression returned to one of crocodilian benevolence, "Which, sir, is why it pains me to inform you that I can be of little or no assistance to you in your investigation. It saddens me, for it is my belief that there is not enough kindness in the world." He paused and looked at me speculatively, "Still, sir, I wonder if it might not be of benefit to inquire as to your certainty that you are looking in the correct direction."
 
That's when it clicked. I got up and walked to the door, and as I opened it, turned and said, "You're good, fat man, you're awful good."
 
Back in my office I dialed Boxer, told her to round up her gang of 50 and meet me at the Senate building. Then I did some of the things you do in this business.
 
 
PART TWO
 
When I arrived at the Senate building the Dems were seated around the conference table, waiting for me. Before I walked into the room, I gave it a quick once-over. The Johns, Kerry and Edwards, were playing "War;" each slapping his card down with increasing ferocity. Lieberman was eagerly thumbing through an album of photographs of himself, smiling the smile reserved to loved ones. Daschle was reading an autobiography of Neville Chamberlain; and Clinton was casually carving her name in the table--with her fingernails. When I walked in, the room went as quiet as a Buddhist shouting match.
 
I set the black bag I was carrying down on the table and gave them The Look. "All right," I said, "Here's how it plays: I was supposed to find out who helped himself to your backbone; a simple job--yeah, like making sense out of a Bush adlib. But that didn't matter, I had a job to do," I paused, "and I did it." The room erupted with a sound like a cattle herd in a thunderstorm.
 
"Thing that made it so hard," I continued, "was I wasn't sure at first it was missing. It looked to me like all of you still had your spines. You were fighting the good fight: human rights, social justice, education and health--all the knee-jerk things you card-carrying heartbleeds like to do. But then I flashed that those things were just your job--you win, you lose, no big whoop; you just start over again the next day--don't need a spine for that, just perseverance."
 
I ratcheted up The Look another notch. "But sticking your thumb in a popular President's eye; telling the voters they've been snookered into another phony war; making the fat cats take our liberties out of their back pockets and put 'em back on the table; that's different; that takes guts--and folks, I don't see much of that in this room."
 
The room was now as quiet as a gambler's prayer. "But it wasn't until I talked to a smart fat man that I realized I was missing something. Then I remembered Senate Resolution 95." Several of them had the grace to turn ashen, while others began fidgeting in their seats.
 
"Yeah," I said, "That Senate Resolution 95: the one where you praised our troops in Iraq, which would've been fine, except, you didn't stop there. No, you went on to declare the war legitimate, and tell the President he was doing a great job--things not one of you believed a word of!" Most of them had their heads down now. Daschele tried to cover the Chamberlain book.
 
"That's when I got it; it was an inside job. After that it was easy. All I had to do was ask myself where a bunch of panicky wimps would hide something that important; and it didn't take long to find..." I reached into the bag, "...THIS!" I pulled out a heavy beige spinal column and tossed it to Boxer, who like the rest was staring at me wide-eyed.
 
"See, folks, support is one thing, capitulation is another. You let them march so many sheep past you you couldn't see the wolf in the middle. But ladies and gentlemen," I said, leaning forward on my knuckles, "You get paid to see the wolf!
 
No one would look at me directly. My voice was the only sound in the room.
 
"If the American public had any sense you'd all be leaving town on a rail, wearing tar and feather pinafores, but," I said, wondering if I looked as depressed as I felt, "Things being as they are I don't guess that'll happen."
 
Boxer had finished examining the spine. "Where'd you find this, Fetlock?" she said.
 
"Right where the bunch of you hid it," I said, "In the storeroom, behind an unopened box of copies of Profiles in Courage."
 
"Very clever, gumshoe," she said, "I ain't saying you got us dead to rights and I ain't saying you ain't. But I'll tell you what you don't have..." she said, tossing the bones back to me, "you don't have the goods. This ain't ours!"
 
Then I saw what I'd missed: a metal ID tag attached to the lumbar segment. As I read it I felt the blood drain from my face. She was right, it wasn't theirs.
 
It was the media's.