My Criminal Memoir, Part Two. The Great Filter Queen Caper. Louis Shalako.

Photo is in the public domain.

Louis Shalako

All the names in this story have been changed, to protect the guilty as well as the innocent. These are real people, many of whom have been apprehended, for one thing or another, and, over the course of time, been charged, convicted, sentenced and incarcerated, presumably paying some penalty for their crimes. In those cases, they have paid their debt to society, which of course leaves out the fact that they really only got popped for about one in a thousand of their petty little crimes—and some not so petty.

People also have the right to forget, and to be forgotten. We also have the right to forgive, to forget, and maybe move forward and make something more positive out of the shambles of our lives. The statute of limitations has run out long ago, and some of us, at least, finally did grow up.

So much for the disclaimer.

***

McNuggets was a thief, a con-man, and a fraud artist. Like many a fraud, he was personable enough. Good looks, a good brain, a bit of charm was very useful in his line of work.

Poor old McNuggets was on the prowl one day, whether on foot or on a bicycle is unknown. One of his little specialties was theft from automobiles. Back in the day, not every vehicle had an onboard security system. A bent coat hanger was enough to enter most locked vehicles. Some of these guys had plenty of practice. In the occasional case, where a vehicle had an alarm system, when the blaring horn went off, thieves either grabbed what they could—what they could see, or they would just take off at a dead run, or, as often as not, grab the bike and try and cover as much ground as possible. A wallet sitting in the console, or a woman who leaves her purse in the car while she just ran into the store for a minute, were bread and butter to these guys.

On this particular occasion, McNuggets found a set of keys laying on the ground, behind a commercial building. Someone had dropped their keys. A fairly bright guy, McNuggets stopped and picked them up. Two keys were from a Ford automobile, there were house and other keys on there as well. With a bit of traffic coming and going, McNuggets pocketed the keys and kept going. Back then, he would have been thinking about breaking and entering as much as anything else. The problem with the house would be to find out where it was. The problem with a business, would be to unlock and then kill the alarm within a very short time-frame. I’m sure he would have thought all of that. Yes, McNuggets had a very good, if slightly-criminal, brain.

He came back later, possibly even days later. It was dark this time, not broad daylight.  

And there it sat.

This was a medium blue, Ford Taurus station wagon, off the street, behind the building, and it was locked. He could see boxes in the back of the vehicle, which had the rear seat folded flat. Script on the sides of the boxes said Filter Queen and McNuggets had hit the jackpot; if only he had a plan. One, very expensive vacuum-cleaner would be a pretty good score. Sure enough, one key fit the lock. If he had a bike, he might have just abandoned it, (it would likely be a stolen bike anyways), but he was most likely on foot—he had a set of car keys after all.

He wasn’t really known as a car thief, and one wonders if he even had any contacts for the disposal of such a vehicle, probably not in my opinion. He would have gone straight there. Otherwise, one has to hide a stolen car, and you really can’t do that at your folk’s house. So, knowing the salesman or manager must be in the building, he hops in, fires her up and gets the machine out of there with a minimum of fuss and bother.

His problems were not over. He only has so much time. He grabs one vacuum cleaner, an upright or something fairly light and portable, parking on a side-street, half a block or more away, and he sells it to a buddy for a hundred bucks and a gram of coke. Or whatever. When he comes out, there’s no one around and the car is still sitting there. And in a move of sheer, fucking brilliance, he takes it to the Bluewater Health parking lot. He pulls up to the drop-bar, pushes the button, and gets a little ticket to put on the dashboard of the vehicle. The bar raises, and he drives on in. He locks her up, takes the keys and walks away.

Once he has a little time to think about it, he gets spooked—he’s done time before, and this is grand theft auto. And he never goes back. What he did do, which is typical for these guys, was to tell someone about it. That’s a funny thing about cocaine—a couple little tokes on the crack pipe and you’re paranoid as all fucking hell.

***

So, this is where I come in. Swimmy, calls me up. We hung out back then. Swimmy had a good source of red and black Lebanese hash. We went back years.

And he had this idea. What he did not have was a car. You can probably see where this is going. All I had to do was to pick him up and drive him. Let him out, where he is just one of many people, coming and going from the hospital. Right during visiting hours, right? He opens the Ford with a coat hanger, grabs a vacuum, locks her up again, chucks it into the trunk, very large and capacious, of my old man’s Volvo. Off we go to sell the vacuum to his brother-in-law or somebody. Swimmy had clearly been doing a bit of fast-talking of his own. With free parking for two hours, it didn’t cost me a cent to go in, park, wait three minutes. You could unlock the trunk but leave it closed. Swimmy was quick, I will give him that. Back in a jiffy. I take a quick look and head for the exit. No one gave us a second glance, but then everyone has their own problems.

Bad as that sounds, even stupid, really, we actually went back two or three times. There were a hell of a lot of vacuum cleaners in that Taurus. My mother had one of the floor type models, (some of those guys had some high-pressure sales tactics), and while it had a lifetime warranty, the price of a Filter Queen was astronomical.

One day the Taurus was gone, and the party was over.

And that, was the great Filter Queen caper of somewhere in the late eighties or early nineties.

***

One of the issues with smoking pot back then, was that you had to go to a criminal to get it. Some of those guys worked harder at not working than they ever did at working at anything useful, or anything that might represent something with a future. Some of them were real wheelers and dealers.

McNuggets, oddly enough, had a trade, one which he’d learned in jail. It took some time to learn that you simply cannot maintain a household on the proceeds of petty crime. Some of them guys never learned it, and some of them are either dead, missing, or doing hard time for something somewhere. They didn't know when to quit. They just kept getting in, deeper and deeper...

That’s their problem, as far as I am concerned.

Interestingly, more than one of them eventually realized that you could just leave the $28.97 in cash in a wallet or purse. Why not take an exclusive credit card, American Express, Diner’s Club or something, one the victim did not use every day? And what about this tiny slip of paper, with four digits written on it, and gee, I wonder if that isn’t the PIN number for this here debit card. You don’t have to go into the bank, just find a bank machine and give it a try. With the cash still there, folks might not know they’d been had for days—and by then, it would be too late.

...just a bug on the wall, sometimes...

This is when guys like McNuggets learned to dress well but casual, shave, be polite, say yes, sir, no, sir, and thank you, Ma’am. This is when they learned to lease a car with one stolen credit card and then head two or three hundred kilometres up the road and do some real shopping with a handful, literally a handful, of stolen credit cards under different names. Back then you had to sign a slip. Human nature being what it is, retail staff virtually never looked at the signature. A sale is a sale, as the salesmen say. It was no skin off their nose.

What with food, booze, cocaine, pot, anything they wanted, really, I reckon McNuggets and one or two others (there is nothing like teamwork, eh), burned through several hundred thousand dollars in a year. Sheer madness, when you realize all the money that went through their hands and yet they never had a fucking thing to show for it. It was a little too easy come, and a little too easy, go. They’d make the most amazing score, two days later, they didn’t have a pot to piss in.

And it was only a matter of time, before there came the knock at the door and sure enough, they’re looking at another bit of time in the county bucket, or a provincial or federal prison.

To be a bug on the wall, and to just listen to the conversation was interesting as all hell, possibly even educational.

That’s not to say that I have an excuse, because I don’t. I was just young, ladies and gentlemen. And maybe just a little bit desperate.

For someone who wanted to write, even back then, it really was fascinating.

END

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My Criminal Memoir. Louis Shalako.

 

Stolen image, which is par for the course around here...

Louis Shalako

Don't fall asleep. My buddy's dad had the '66 Cadillac, with the four doors and the 512 cubic inch engine up front. Bob borrowed it one night, we grabbed a six-pack of Brador or something. A malt liquor, 6.6 % alcohol, which was more than sufficient for a couple of sixteen, seventeen year-olds. We headed out of town, on paved roads all the way, which was better than giving it a wash when we got home. Fifty cents is fifty cents, after all. At some point, Bob let me drive it. Coming home, we headed north out of Wallaceburg, eleven o'clock at night, on Kimball Road.

That's 80 kilometres per hour these days...I took her up. I took her up all right, she's floating along like a cloud, with that soft suspension and the long wheelbase. I had her at a hundred and ten miles per hour when poor old Bob woke up on the passenger side, so I had to let off and bring it on into town at a more reasonable speed. I kind of feel sorry for Bob—even more so for his dad, who had to pay the bill, but within a very short time, a day or two later, the thing was knocking and sputtering. I don't know if we burnt a valve or spun a bearing, but that was pretty much it for what had once been a pretty nice car.

Fuck, I wanted to drive Formula One, something awful it seems looking back. Which would almost be safer on some level, much more professional than a couple of kids in daddy's car...some of us were just plain dangerous. Quite frankly, it affected my judgement sometimes.

***

Okay, let’s say we were thinking of writing our criminal memoirs. One, you’re talking about your friends here, and two, now you got to think up a whole bunch of fake names…for people who were often known by nicknames and various handles to begin with. Some of those names are pretty colourful. It’s not like they read books anyways. And I can use a fake name of my own. And where would I start? At the beginning I suppose.

***

My first scam was the old Puss ‘N Boots free roll of film scam. This was a popular brand of tinned cat food at the time, late sixties, early seventies at the latest. If you cut on the dotted line, and peeled off the paper label, there was a coupon. You filled that in, mailed it to the company, and you would receive a free roll of colour film in the format of your choice, whether it be 120, 126 cartridge, or 35-mm format. Limit one per family or household, and of course here is where the scam comes in. I sent in at least three coupons, also borrowing stamps and envelopes from my mother’s stash. Stamps cost money you know. There comes a time when they go to pay the bills and there are no envelopes, no stamps and of course they sort of wonder where all that went. Right up until the point when you, a nine or ten year-old kid; gets a mysterious package in the mail and you sort of come home from school one day to find they simply could not help themselves, but had no choice but to open up that fucking package…and now they’re starting to catch on.

Then they get two or three more, but by now they know it’s just a roll of film, and oh, yes, you’ve borrowed dad’s Baby Brownie from the 1950s and also, your brother and sister and the kid next door and the family down the street and your buddy Willy three blocks away are getting free rolls of film in the mail, and while mom and dad are sort of appalled at the thought of all those rolls of film, and firecrackers, and model planes and rockets and small explosions going off in the backyard, they are also sort of marvelling at your enterprise and quite frankly, your imagination. This is what you get for having a cat, and of course they have to eat pretty regular and stuff like that.

The cat, I mean—

Also, you want to be a photographer someday and you can always take over camera duties on Christmas day, right. As I recall, that was the year my folks made the serious tactical and strategic error of giving me a cheap-ass Kodak Instamatic 126-cartridge camera, complete with a couple more fucking packs of film and those all-important flash bulbs. Which you can short out with a bit of metal across the electrodes, or even just use an empty camera to send short, brilliant light signals across Germain Park in the middle of the night, (when you really should have been in bed or doing your homework); assuming one of your friends’ parents have been thoughtful enough to give them such a camera for Christmas as well…

Right?

**

So there you are, ladies and gentlemen, when sometime later, (after all of this logical progression of events), ah, you find yourself laying on a sheet of plywood, up in the rafters of my old man’s garage, sheets we picked up out of a local park, after some guy got drunk, stole a Datsun 240-Z and took it through Germain Park, yet forgetting the sort of green plywood enclosure for lacrosse of all things, smashing through it and tossing bits and pieces all over, and trying to get a good picture as your buddy snipes at plastic ship models with a .177 calibre pellet rifle. Someday, I will tell you all about filling them up with fireworks, solid stuff from model rocket engines, Christmas bulbs with gasoline and firing pins and the powder from dismantled shotgun shells and how, ah…Bob, (not his real name), lit that up, and how the battleship Yamato went up with a series of big bangs as we sort of sheltered in my 1969 Austin Mini, which I bought for $50.00, dragging it up and out from the weeds behind H & S Sports Cars, which was on the corner of Ontario Street and Russell, (I think). My old man and I dragged it home on the end of a rope, one end of which was attached to his old Volvo and the other end attached to me and that Mini. I was only fifteen, and I suppose we putted along about twenty miles an hour on back streets…The Hood, the Bismarck and the Rodney didn’t fare much better, looking back through the mists of time. I’ve been towed once or twice since then, to be honest with you. I remember, we opened up the garage door and this big black cloud came out.

He (Willy, not his real name), once shot some Chinese girl in a plastic raincoat, right in the ass with that thing. The range was short, and we figured it went right through the raincoat. She swatted at her ass and turned to look, right. The front room in his folks’ place had these really old-fashioned windows, where there were three holes drilled along the bottom for ventilation, and a hinged wooden bar you lifted to let a little air in. There wasn’t even a fucking screen. He fired the shot, and dropped the stick, and we crouched there, giggling like schoolboys, which we were at the time.

I swear to God, that place must have been built by a Newfie.

Willy blew me up one day. He called, and he said, ‘come on over’. He was out in the garage, one of our hangouts. Yes, back then, you weren’t nothing if you didn’t have a garage to hang out in. I get off my bike, and he’s watching, literally timing it from the time of his call. He hits a little switch, a little electrical model rocket engine igniter goes off, and about three rocket engines, all taken apart and just powder and blocks of propellant, goes off right between my feet, right in front of the side door of his garage. I was wearing shorts, I had a few singed leg hairs but nothing real serious. You know me: I had to phone my brother straight away. I told him to get on over to Willy’s place.

I couldn’t really talk on the phone, but there was something he just had to see.

END

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Moving On to the Next Phase. Louis Shalako.

This is an Ootek boat.

Louis Shalako

I am moving on to a new phase of my life.

It's about time, too.

After almost thirty years, my life on ODSP, the Ontario Disability Support Program pension, will end. I will have my freedom from restrictive guidelines, and never have to report my income, mileage and expenses, insofar as it relates to employment or business or any other form of income, ever again. I will still have to do income tax returns, but I am doing that now—and they don’t ask to look into your bank account each and every month, either.

As far as that goes, I have some basic skills in book-keeping and accounting, hanging onto all relevant receipts and stuff like that. I was already running it like a business.

Within a month of my 64^th birthday, an envelope landed in the mailbox. It was a handful of forms and a few sheets of instructions. It was not real dense and there was minimal fine print. The social workers downtown had the forms mostly filled out—there were some options, a few questions, and a date and a signature.

...yes, I am sure they'll be glad to see me go.

I have applied for the Canada Pension Plan. Over the years, I did make contributions, although not so much while on disability. I applied for Old Age Security, and then there is GIS, the Guaranteed Income Supplement. There is also ‘GAINS’, which I take to be the Guaranteed Annual Income Supplement, which you do not have to actually apply for.

Okay, I already get the Trillium Benefit, a provincial benefit. I already get the HST rebate, a combined federal/provincial sales tax rebate. I am already getting the Climate Action Incentive benefit. Last year I got a one-time housing top-up benefit of $500.00. I wouldn’t mind seeing more of that from any and all levels of government. There is some kind of Canadian Workers Benefit, but so far I haven’t seen anything from that. The government has at least been talking about dental benefits for seniors, I don't know too much about that, but almost anything is good, right...

I do still have a part-time job, making pizza dough, and the minimum wage will rise up to $16.65 per hour on October 1, 2023.

There is a labour shortage, and I do have other skills, including construction and demolition, stuff like that. A person could drive cab or work private security, where the wages and benefits are not that good, but having some kind of existing base income is very helpful in this regard.

If I’m not careful, I’ll end up making twenty-five bucks an hour, making myself indispensable in pretty short order, and probably running the place before long…a local weekly news outlet recently advertised for a full-time journalist. I have to admit I thought about it, but I did not apply.

The family business comes first, essentially, whether it's much of a choice, that is a good question which I cannot really answer, not even to my own satisfaction sometimes.

***

I suppose I have a few options and that is always good—my mother just bought an old camper trailer for what, six grand or so. Her and the step-dad have already taken it camping up at the Pinery, although I don’t know about living in such a thing year-round.

For that, you might be better off to consider Florida…as far as all these pensions and supplements go, we will find out in due time.

There is some uncertainty, and no one knows when the landlord will get a brainstorm and try and get a few of us out of here due to rent control and their own natural inclinations.

I have no control over that, but running out and buying a new car, a trip to Mexico, or buying a fucking sea kayak or something dumb like that, will just have to wait for a while…right? Let’s see what happens first. Okay, so the plan is to do nothing...just sit and wait and see what happens for a while.

We're not making any sudden moves here, ladies and gentlemen.

Odds are, it will all add up to roughly the same as the ODSP pension, and in that sense it represents a basic income, in terms of myself and other senior citizens, who presumably have earned it in some way, shape or form.

I figure I have, that is for sure.

 

END

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Lenny Lays an Egg. Louis Shalako.

Poor old Lenny...

Louis Shalako

 

“Is he prepped?” asked Doctor Rolf Ludwig, duty intern on the night shift in this busy metropolitan hospital.

“Yes, doctor,” replied Nurse Betty-Ann Genomi, a tall, brown-haired woman in her mid-forties with large, cone-shaped breasts.

Saint Athelstan’s was only a stones-throw from the police station, so they got all kinds of winners in here.

“He’s complaining about abdominal pain and the x-rays…well,” she said.

“Yeah. It’s real, all right,” he agreed, hands up in the air as he stared at the shots clipped into the light box.

“Wow,” he said.

The patient was face down, sedated but conscious. His frizzy red hair, rheumy, bloodshot blue eyes and swollen red nose bespoke a life-long love affair with the sauce. The bedclothes, steamy warm after coming out of the cubby, were pulled back to reveal the patient’s pale and globular gluteus maxima.

A nurse reached up and adjusted the light, and the rays of brilliant white reflected back up from the patient’s heinie.

“What’s your name, buddy?” asked Doctor Rolf.

“Lenny,” said the Caucasian male, who was about five-foot seven and approximately a hundred and forty-five pounds.

“How are you doing?” asked Betty-Ann, right there at his side.

She held onto Lenny’s hand with an open and sympathetic look.

“Am I going to die, doctor?” asked Lenny in a slurred manner.

“Nah,” assured the doctor. “We’ll have that nasty old thing out of there in a jiffy.”

“All righty then,” he noted. “Put a little petroleum jelly on there for me? We’re going in, ladies and gentlemen.”

A small titter went through the assembled class. This was a teaching hospital, and no opportunity was too small to pass up.

“Okay. We’re going to be doing a manual dis-impaction of what looks like a hard and compacted stool. Whether it is from compression during anal intercourse or some other cause is no concern right now.”

The doctor heard a few more gasps and giggles and he looked up for a moment.

“Pay attention,” he said. “The odds are you will have to do this sooner or later. I’m just grateful, but it doesn’t look like a light bulb, which I have also done.”

He patted the patient on the shoulder, but Lenny was pretty much out of it.

“Give me the retractor,” he muttered, and then the doctor got on with the job at hand.

“That’s strange,” he said. “Lenny?”

“Uh…yeah…?” said the patient and everyone laughed, even the doctor. “Whaddya want?”

“Well, I would kind of like to know what this is, if you have any idea,” said Doctor Rolf pleasantly.

Lenny stared wild-eyed and desperate at the floor.

“You mean you don’t know?” he gasped, and tears sprung into his eyes.

“Do you feel any pain, Lenny?” asked the Senior Nurse, Betty-Ann.

“No…?” said Lenny.

The room was silent.

“It’s not a stool,” said the doctor.

He watched on the screen as the forceps slid gently alongside the foreign object.

“It’s hard,” said Rolf. “But not too hard. It’s not metal or glass.”

Relief was apparent in his voice and what little they could see of his demeanor behind the cap and mask.

“Well, what have we got here?” he mused, pulling what looked like an ostrich egg from the long-suffering patient, one Lenny Bonsalvo.

“Was he drunk when he was brought in?” asked the doctor.

“No,” Betty-Ann shook her head. “But he admits to problems with alcohol.”

“It’s hard to believe he could swallow that, drunk or sober. I find it hard to believe he could do that, shove it so far up there,” he muttered.

"It's not a stool..."

***

“He must have had help, Doctor,” she murmured neutrally and in a non-committed tone.

“I tend to agree,” said Rolf. “Well, I guess you can’t blame the man for not wanting to talk about it too much.”

“Do me a favour, nurse?” he asked.

“Of course, what is it?” she replied.

“Clean that thing up for me. I want to show it to George. You know what! I think I’m going to show it to poor old Lenny, too.”

***

Lenny stared up from the bed in dismay.

“That thing—that thing was inside me?” he gaped.

“Yeah,” agreed Doctor Rolf. “I have to be completely honest with you, Lenny. I was sort of wondering if someone put it there. Did you have help? I am a doctor, and I’m not judging you, Lenny, but…”

“What! But what?” bellowed Lenny.

“Hey, hey, hey, calm down,” said the doctor. “I was just asking! It’s my job, you know? But I was kind of wondering if somebody did this to you? You know, like maybe as a joke, or even some kind of abusive situation—”

Lenny clambered up and out of the bed, staying on the far side from Doctor Rolf.

“Lenny, Lenny!” the doctor tried reassurance. “No one is judging you, Lenny. Honestly, I’m more curious than anything. I sort of wondered if you were in some kind of trouble.”

Lenny’s arm shot out and he pointed an accusing finger, seemingly at a loss for words.

“What’s the matter, Lenny, why are you so upset? I’m just trying to help you,” soothed Doctor Rolf.

“Ah! Ah! Ah,” screeched Lenny.

“Whoa! Simmer down,” said the doctor.

“It’s hatching! It’s hatching, that thing is hatching, doctor!” shouted Lenny, then he fell over backwards, hitting the adjacent bed and the patient in that one began screaming too.

Rolf took a quick look at the thing in the jar and his eyes almost bugged out of his head.

***

Doctors Rolf and George Malassori stared at the apparition in the jar.

They had it in a workroom off to one side of the internal medicine lab.

“What the hell?” muttered the normally soft-spoken George.

He straightened up, shaking his head in disbelief.

“It’s like a gecko, all covered in ketchup,” he marveled. “Let me get a sample of the fluid.”

“Yeah,” breathed Rolf. “It’s like a baby alligator or something. This is amazing…just nuts.”

“I won’t contradict an expert,” noted Doctor Malassori. “You’ve just made medical history, incidentally.”

“Huh,” said Rolf. “Lenny did. Not me.”

Malassori laughed in agreement.

“Can’t say as I blame you,” he said.

"Don't worry, gentlemen. Just another object up the bum."

***

Rolf had other emergencies, and the usual rounds, and he was asleep behind his computer when screams and thumps awoke him with a distinct nervous shock. You could read about adrenalin, and you could dissect the human body, and you could listen to witnesses. But this was real adrenalin and he had no objectivity.

The doctor ran sliding out into the hallway, to be confronted by a small wave of green-clad nurses and screaming people.

They almost bowled him over as he hurriedly stepped back into the room. He reached out and tried to grab an arm as they sped past.

“Nurse!” he yelled but she gave him a frightened glance and just kept going, looking back nervously and sobbing.

“What’s going on?” he asked, but she was clearly hysterical.

She spurted off again, shaking her head and moaning incoherently. Rolf thought about declaring a lockdown. His heart pounded in a moment of indecision. He needed more information.

As Doctor Rolf rounded the corner at a dead run, he ran smack into a hellish scene, the likes of which he would never forget for the rest of his life. Their floor security, Mister Nicholby, lay dead on the floor with his chest torn open and a black cavity exposed, and a thick trail of blood smeared in a path along the floor.

Nurse Betty-Ann had the gun up and was drawing a careful bead.

The sound of a shot, quickly followed by another, was shockingly loud in the now-quiet corridor.

The doctor flinched and covered his head, as a little fall of dust came down from the ceiling tiles.

Rolf stood there, open-mouthed, taking in the bizarre scene.

“Got the little bastard,” she said, looking calmly into Rolf’s eyes and blowing smoke from the end of the barrel.

“Nurse…?”

Doctor Rolf swallowed. His unbelieving eyes found a huddled, dirty dishrag-like form up the hallway.

“What the hell is going on around here?” he asked in shock. “What—”

The strident call of the overhead speakers broke into his state of mental inertia.

“Doctor Ludwig to emergency, Doctor Ludwig to emergency,” he heard, in a kind of relief.

Finally, something he could understand. Something that made sense. He was tempted to give his head a shake, or pinch himself or something.

He stepped over to the nursing station, reached over and grabbed a phone. Awkwardly, he put in the number, making sure to get it right first time. His hands were shaking.

“Yes? Doctor Ludwig here,” he reported. “What have you got?”

“Please get down here right away, Doctor Ludwig,” came the breathless voice of Nurse Helga Slovodnik. “We have another Lenny. Doctor George thinks we may have another one of those things.”

END

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Grey Poupon, a short story. Louis Shalako.

"Would you have a little Grey Poupon, my good fellow...???

Louis Shalako

Derek Kane watched the view plate as the unidentified ship made a quick corkscrew turn to port/x-negative pitch/y-zero yaw and headed his way.

The ship’s alarm had alerted him to its presence, but there weren’t too many people out there and the maneuver was immediately suspicious.

There was a signal coming in, fairly strong but the machine language didn’t match. The computer was looking for software to decode it and he would have to wait.

The voice didn’t seem strident or unfriendly. The tonal register was similar to human, and his impression was of polite inquiry—but assumptions about alien mores and cultural norms, courtesies and polite forms of address varied considerably from region to region.

For no good reason he did up the lap belt but left the others. Now a picture came up. A being sat in a flight chair, with no helmet on, so that was good. He waved in what Derek interpreted as a cheerful fashion.

The fellow had two slits where his nose should have been, and the slightly orange tint to his skin revealed him to be from a white-dwarf planetary system. Two eyes and a mouth, that was helpful. The real eebie-jeebies were harder to talk to. He looked lightly built as well, and that was one of the hallmarks of inhabitants who had evolved on the small, lower-mass planets that were often found there. If he wanted to come aboard, that would be a bit of a giveaway.

There was a beep from the console.

“Got it.”

“Take your time.”

“Running translation. One moment please.”

“Put his voice up on real time when you crack it.”

“Roger.”

He might as well give the other ship’s computer a little lead time on their own translation, assuming they needed one. He keyed the microphone.

“Hello. I’m Derek Kane, skipper of the Hornet. Over.”

Let them work on that for a while, as the other skipper’s face lit up and he leaned forward to make some kind of an input.

His own bridge speakers crackled and then it came in.

“Excuse me, my good fellow. Do you speak English?”

“Yes. Go ahead.”

“I do so hate to trouble you.”

“No, you’re quite welcome, go ahead.” He was getting curious.

The being held up what looked like a half-metre long hoagie, or perhaps a Ruben sandwich made out of something like the cultural equivalent of a baguette, with slices of pinkish mottled reel-meet and green leafy stuff hanging out all along it…maybe even what looked like some kind of alien cheese.

“Do you have any Grey Poupon?”

So that’s what it was all about. The idiot just wanted some mustard.

END

This story is included in Engines of Creation, a collection of stories long and short by Louis Shalako. You can find theaudiobook here on Google Play.

See his works on ArtPal.

Check out this story here.

 

Thank you for reading.