The Toilet Paper Caper: Chapter 11

A Stark Mystery

Meadows-Corona Park, in Queens. Flushing, no less.

I was close to flushing, all right. Washing my hands of the whole thing and heading back to self-quarantine. Definitely washing my hands. One look round the decaying, abandoned theme park was enough to guarantee that.

But I’d never forgive myself if I gave up now. And neither would Helen, dammit.

But, I desperately needed a time-out from Larry, Moe, and Cutie. Jimmy, Thad, and Darling, my very own, larcenous little Bobbsey triplets.

I mumbled an excuse to Whipple out of the side of my mouth and headed for the nearest can.

All the public facilities were closed. Deserted. But what’s a boarded-up washroom door to any self-respecting man-in-need? You got that right, sonny. That “Do Not Enter” sign’s just another way to say “Welcome”.

I felt better once I kicked the door down. I’d needed to kick something.

Safe inside a cubicle, I dug the crumpled scrap of reefer roller out of my pocket. I stared at the enigmatic letters printed on the paper as if by sheer force of will I could divine their meaning.

FU…X? SVFX. FU…M? SVFM. OKLFMNX.

Nothing divine there that I could see, though. Maybe only something as bonkers as this caper could decipher it.

I tried again. After all, if a gumshoe isn’t ready to doggedly pursue a conclusion, he’s got no business in the business. If you catch my drift.

Could it be a simple replacement cipher? Hmm…

My mind raced as I considered the possibilities.

Okay. You got me. My mind was moving slower than Atom Ant slogging uphill through a melted Caravelle bar, but it’s been a rough few chapters…and I have a concussion, remember?

Thankfully, my trusty hip flask was still well-supplied. Or had been magically refilled in some previous chapter. Wanna check? Didn’t think so. Onward…

The first slug went down fine as frog’s hair. The second tasted even better — a perfect lubricant for some serious rumination.

Any private dick can tell you, the process of elimination dictates you start with the usual suspects first — usually the biggest dick-heads. A useful thing to remember when you’re trying to crack a case.

In this case, it meant going through the Who’s Who of cipher-ology…

Let’s see… It wasn’t a Caesar shift. Nor an Alberti’s disk, or the Vigenère square. And no one would ever confuse it for the Shugborourgh Inscription. Not enough “D”s, though there were plenty of “M”s. It’s a code thing. Google it.

But the ultimate prize here was certainly our Holy Grail.

Crap.

No, for real. I needed to take a dump, and there was no TP in the stall. I hunkered down and reached an arm into the next stall, groping for the dispenser.

And dropped the slip of paper.

It fluttered down and changed color as it hit a suspicious damp spot on the grimy floor.

Shit.

Or something. I wasn’t sure exactly what the paper’d fallen into.

I gingerly retrieved it between thumb and forefinger, vowing to double dip the hand-sanitizer, and flapped the paper carefully.

Wait a minute.

I held the paper closer, ignoring the patchouli-scented fumes. Though the scent of the fumes couldn’t really have been patchouli, because my head was starting to swim.

The papers were for rolling after all. Clarabelle probably kept them with his stash.

Maybe I was seeing things, but more letters were appearing on the stained scrap. In the empty spaces in the first and third words. You’re gonna check that too, aren’t you?

They now read “F U N E X?” and “F U N E M?”

Really? Roll the credits, boys, we’ve got her aced — we have solved the mystery.

Talk about a red herring. The code had turned out to be the reddest. In spades. Just to mix another metaphor.

It was pretty clear I’d have to drag Marty McWhipple back to Jolly Olde England for Turing’s Enigma Machine to crack this devilish message. And that kind of foolishness was not about to happen. Not in my segment.

Time travel moves us in time, not from place to place, as much as my aching back and sorry ass would be happier if it did. But I was resolved to continue the caper, or at least get the plot moving again.

Wait — was I hearing music? I didn’t remember seeing a Jukebox nearby. Was that…? No! I should never have left him alone!

“One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do Two can be as bad as one It’s the loneliest number since the number one”

When I was finally spat out of the gyrating light-tunnel the little boys’ room had been turned into, I wasn’t sure if we were on the highway to hell or we’d got stuck in some giant dust-bowl by accident.

At least, I hoped it was an accident — a fixable one.

All I could see was miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles. Wheat fields and dust devils. And one almighty monster of a tornado on the horizon.

I glared at Whipple. “What the flux?”

He stared back, all sad, puppy-dog eyes. “I thought you wanted to go to Kansas.”

“That was a cultural reference… oh, never mind.” No point in trying to explain. It would just hurt his feelings, and we were already dealing with too much family fall-out.

I tried again. “Whipple, we’ve gotta get outta here before that storm hits.”

“We gotta get outta this place?”

“Yeah, that too.”

“Huh? Yeah, yeah. That storm sure is a doozie.” He giggled. The pressure was clearly getting to him.

“But the good thing is, see, Rebecca just got swept up in it.” Whipple sounded excited. And more than a little pleased.

I stared at the whirl-wind hurtling towards us. Sure enough, a pair of thigh-high, clunky-heeled boots stuck out of the cloud, rotating in time with the twister’s mad gyrations.

A carousel horse spun out of the sky, straight for our heads. I pulled Whipple to the ground shouting, “Hang onto something.”

I felt his hand grab my belt. “Not me, you damn fool.”

Too late.

We whirled away in the funnel cloud, heading straight, well, straight-ish, for an old woman, peddling her bike hell-bent-for-election towards a farmhouse that’d seen better days.

I remember thinking, “Son, this ain’t no way to have fun.” Then everything went black. But, just before I lost consciousness, I thought I heard something.

Whipple’s voice…

“Oh God,” he groaned. “Momma told me not to come.”

Continues in Chapter 12:

Previous Chapters:

Chapter 1 • Chapter 2 • Chapter 3 • Chapter 4 • Chapter 5 • Chapter 6 • Chapter 7 • Chapter 8 • Chapter 9 • Chapter 10