The "Monkeyshines" Case - Entry 9

I tried to convince the elder Sheppenwastein to come back with me to my home so I could keep him within my sights as I got my New Zealand Powder-Keg coffee percolating, but he was having none of it. I needed the coffee, as it was the maniac-tolerating blend, but that tittering jackass Sean wanted a neutral location in which to sit and talk to me about the Master Plan of his that he had already set in motion, so I had to settle for a French Vanilla at One Duke.

Once seated, Sean became a non sequitur machine; he was digressing to the point where he began speaking in different languages, and I’m willing to bet that he didn’t make much sense in any of them...I say "willing to bet" because I wasn’t paying much attention. I was looking him over and imagining all the wedgies & kidney shots his pear-shaped body must have endured throughout high school; I was on the verge of making him use his nose to push a penny down a hallway myself, but I realized quickly enough that it wasn’t this freak’s fault that I had such a crappy adolescence...no, that was all Tony Cappasigliano, and he would get his.

Oh, yes.

Snapping myself out of my ill-timed reverie, but still bored to tears by the constant muttering of this nutty nougat-bar of probable criminality, I scanned the bar’s selection of bourbons. I was settling nicely on a bottle a Haitian Dark Kentucky Bourbon when I heard the phrase "monkeyshines" jump out of his blather, like an un-hammered nail sticking up from a mostly-secured plank of wood, and almost dismissed it as the coincidental noise of an endlessly-talking jackanape, before aggressively spinning towards him, attempting to shake that last word out of his mouth again. He stared at me with the vacant face of a mentally-challenged donkey, but I knew that, though mostly unintelligible, there were thoughts being processed behind that extravagant eyebrow, and I needed them if I was ever going to be done with this case. The Haitian Dark shots came fast & furious, as I attempted to unlock the steel-trap of this moron’s mind with bourbon...though the only thing I unlocked was my small-bladder’s inherent inability to hold liquor.

I spent the following hour taking Sean with me to the bathroom, lest I miss some case-solving information he might mutter, while taking my myriad "pee" breaks. Chastising myself for what I considered to be poor Detective Reasoning in believing that any Kentucky Bourbon would make a person less crazy, I had just about given up on shaking anything loose, information-wise, from Sean, when he inexplicably handed me a detail that I would be able to actually use: He was letting all of the monkeys at the zoo loose in exactly 1 hour.

That’s it.

The zoo was situated directly across the street from the Channel 12 News station, and any scared and confused monkeys that sprang from that zoo were to no doubt be enthralled by the multi-coloured spotlights surrounding Channel 12, the spotlights originally installed to give the station more "presence", but roundly ridiculed since for, instead, transforming said station into the Most Boring Dance-Club in the World. I deftly called his sister to take Sean in & hold for police, as Bernice must have had 5 feet and some 200-pounds on her disturbed sibling, and shot over to Channel 12. We had history, that TV station and I, but I wasn’t about to allow the building to be torn asunder by rabid primates...no, their News-Staff were more than capable of that without outside intervention, and my slow-roasting revenge on Channel 12 was not to be interrupted by the machinations of some half-bright videographer.

I just hoped that I would get there in time, and that my all-purpose monkey-net could handle the strain.

Entry 10