There is a knock at the door.

“Come in at your own risk,” says the private eye as he takes one last slurp from a bottle of Southern Comfort stashed in the upper left draw of his beaten up desk.

The lights in his office are off. The only light is a thin ray of a fast setting red sun. A fan spins overhead creating a breeze but still the heat has just turned up a few notches: There she was. Tall. Slender. A figure right out of one of those South American porno mags.

“Are we alone?” she says.

“Why, yes,” he says with a shrug suggesting her question was silly because the room was small enough to notice even a small intruding fly.

“Good. I need your help, Mr….Mr..” she stumbles searching her brain for his name in the heat of his office.

He helps her out generously. “Mr. Bonanoschwartz sweety,” says he. “But my enemies call me Bonanoschwartz for short.”

“That’s not any shorter,” she quickly points out.

“Whatever,” says the private dick.

“Cup of joe?” he asks.

“Don’t touch the stuff,” she says as the departing sunlight in the room shimmers off her moist lips.

“Well then, let’s get down to business, shall we?”

“Lets.”

They stare at one another. She reminds him of an old flame. He reminds her of nothing.

“I need your help because of my brother.”

“Okay. What sort of help,” he says lighting a Kent from a half crushed pack on his desk.

“Well, he was arrested this morning for eating a jelly bean.”

“Eating a jelly bean? What’s that? Some kinda L.A. gang lingo for swallowing the dope before the coppers arrive?”

“No. He just ate a jelly bean. It was at an Albertson’s. He was walking past some and he decided to try one…”

“Was it the cherry one? I always go for the cherry one,” he says, cutting her off.

“I don’t know what flavor. All I know is, he pops a bean, an alarm goes off and the next thing he knows, he’s been cuffed by a bluecoat and rammed into a black and white. And now, he staring down 15 to life for sure.  Please. You gotta help him.”

With that plea, she reaches into her purse and extracts an elegant white silk cloth hiding a small treasure inside it.

She opens it.

She thrusts  it at the dick’s head.

“What the hell is that?” he demands to know.

“It a Maltese Jelly Bean of the highest quaility. Only to be found in the Orient but smuggled into the states by an Albertson’s employee. My brother grabbed it, hid it up his ass and managed to get an envelope at the jail, convincing a kind guard to mail it to me. That is what the Albertson managers were after. This Maltese Jelly Bean.”

“Shit,” he says. “Excuse my language ,mamm,” he quickly adds. “So they think he ate the Maltese Jelly Bean and….”

“Yes, yes. And they put him in jail figuring in a few days’ time, the Maltese Jelly Bean will be theirs.”

“Then what happens to your brother,”

“They kill him. They don’t want anyone taking a jelly bean from their store to live. So you see, you have to find the true owner of the Maltese Jelly bean so he might claim what is his and releasing my brother in the process.”

“And, I suppose you have a suggestion where I might look for this dude?” he asks.

“Yes. As a matter of fact, I do.”

A long pause. The humidity in the room is drenching.

“Well. Are you going to tell me or do we both stay in this office and sweat to death?”

“I’ll tell you. But, not in this blog!”

To be continued…………………………