Tasker Volt

Sunday, July 29, 2007

Part 1 A Rain Check on Key Largo

By Dan Zak, Washington Post Staff Writer

The flight to Miami was leaving in two hours. A brown leather suitcase was packed and waiting at the door of Tasker Volt's office. He watched the suitcase and willed the phone to ring. After he got the call, he'd fly to Miami, take a charter to Key Largo and empty his brain for a solid month. He'd be willfully ignorant of the double-crossing and cuckolding that defined his job as a private investigator in Washington, D.C. He would be in Key Largo.

With Lyla.

If she showed up at the airport.

He pulled open his desk drawer and fished for a cigarette, but instead his fingers found the photo. Her satiny red hair glistened.

They had not parted on great terms last week. "See you at the airport," he hissed.

"We'll see," she said, cold as iced tea on Neptune.

Lyla Hoover was the ex-wife of Sy Sugarman, a smug three-term congressman from Georgia and, worse, a former client of Volt's. He'd hired Volt to spy on Lyla, whom he suspected of having an affair. She was. With Volt.

Needless to say, it made for an interesting case. Volt followed himself for a good two months -- collecting checks from Sugarman and swan-diving into alcoholism -- before the congressman found out what was going on. Sugarman threatened to sue, but Volt only needed to wave a hint of the man's dirty laundry (bribe taking, intern chasing) to shut him up. Sugarman was still stewing, no doubt.

It wouldn't matter. The phone lit up. He let it go for two rings.

"Hello?" he said, expecting to hear the voice of P.T. Doberman, his latest client, a banana and mango lobbyist who owed him a heap of cash for a job that involved tapping the phone of the U.S. attorney general and swimming half a mile up the Potomac. (Personal peril surcharge: $1,500 per hour of danger.) "Tasker Volt?" the voice on the other end of the line asked. It was a deep, gravelly voice. Seagulls squawked in the background. At least, it sounded like seagulls.

"Yes, this is he." The phone clicked. "Hello? Hello? Gladys, did you happen to screen that call?"

Volt's secretary popped into the room. "No, sir, I was signing for this package at the front door," said Gladys, depositing a brown box on Volt's desk. He cut through the packing tape with a razor and unfolded the edges of the box. Gladys gasped.

Volt looked at the contents of the box, then at the phone, then at the suitcase. "Gladys," he said, gritting his teeth, "I'm not going to Key Largo just yet."

Part 2 The Sugar Skull

By Ben Miller, McLean

He hit the road. Pavement gave way to cobblestones, and before long he rumbled up to a whitewashed Georgetown townhouse. Three-quarters of an hour later, he found a parking space and hustled up the walkway. Rose blossoms flanked the path, bobbing their heads like congressmen approving earmarks. He grabbed one and took a long sniff -- that's what you do when you're a marked man.

"A tisket, a Tasker," a voice called from the second-story window.

The face of P.T. Doberman grinned from above. "Hold on, I'll get the door."

"Listen," Doberman said as the front door swung open. "About that money I owe you . . ."

"Save it. I've got a problem."

"Nothing a mid-morning mojito won't solve, Hound of the Taskervilles. I'll meet you on the patio."

Doberman brought out the drinks a few minutes later. A "loafers, hold the socks" kind of guy, he had been born with so many silver spoons in his mouth he could pick up talk radio from Ontario.

"I thought I had scared Sugarman off my case," said Volt, "but then I got a special delivery."

Out of the nondescript package he had received in the morning, he pulled a football-size lump of sugar sculpted into the form of a human skull.

"Sugarman called me from that ferret farm of his right before it was delivered. Those squealing vermin in the background made it sound like Ocean City."

Doberman's expression changed from shock to puzzlement, and he asked, "What do you mean?"

"The ferrets. They sound like seagulls."

"What?"

"Ferrets sound like seagulls."

"So what's your plan?" Doberman asked, changing the subject. He chiseled a chunk of sugar off the skull and dropped it into his mojito.

"I'm going to get into that ferret farm, and you're going to help me."

Part 3: Of Mangoes and Ferrets

By Bob Seraphin, Annandale

The lemon-yellow Hummer rolled up to Popeye Dugan's guard post at the end of a long dirt track. Noting the gun ports in the doors, he raised his AK-47. The driver's window immediately rolled down, and Doberman smiled and nodded to the hideous sentry.

"Evening, friend."

Popeye saw a fat face with a dab of butter on its chin. He knew a K Street lobbyist when he saw one. "I ain't your friend. What you want?"

"Delivery for the congressman."

"He ain't here."

They knew that, of course. Volt had sent a bogus text message that summoned Sugarman to the Capitol for a dead-of-night vote on ethics reform.

"It's a load of overripe mangoes."

"Mangoes?"

"Yep. Great ferret food."

Popeye checked the back. They were mangoes, all right.

"Well, I'm not supposed to let anyone in . . . but if they'll shut them damn squawky ferrets up . . . " He hesitated, then swung open the gate.

"Thanks, friend. Next time, I'll bring you some bananas."

"Make sure they're unmarked. None of them little Chiquita stickers."

The Hummer blundered forward, Volt playing the searchlight over the ferret coops.

"Stop!"

Off to the right stood a FEMA trailer. Volt easily forced the door, revealing stainless-steel tables and cabinets, electronic devices and racks of chemical containers.

"It smells bad in here, Volt."

"Well, open the windows."

"What the hell is all this?"

"It's a lab, Doberman."

"For what?"

Volt peered into microscopes and inspected cabinets and chemical bottles. Satisfied, he straightened up. "Stem cell research."

" What? Are you sure?"

Volt had the smug look of a 22-year-old public policy analyst. "Of course. They're using ferret embryos."

"But that's against administration policy!"

"Ain't they awful?" sighed a bedroom voice. In the door stood Lyla. Beside her was Popeye Dugan, covering them with his AK-47.

Part 4: Family Plots

By Lawrence P. McGuire, Waldorf

Tasker Volt gritted his 28 undamaged teeth, three crowns and one chipped lateral incisor. To his right,

K Street lobbyist and sidekick P.T. Doberman dripped a water torture of sweat on the FEMA trailer's floor. The illegal stem cell research lab stank of dissected ferrets.

The muzzle of Popeye Dugan's AK-47 seemed to Volt as immense and life-ending as an interstellar black hole. Hanging on the watchman's shoulder, her smile a razor, Lyla Hoover tossed her salsa-colored hair.

"Surprised to see me, Tasker?" she said.

Volt glanced around at test tubes clinking in wire racks and saw an opening. "How long has vain old Sy hidden his Parkinson's?"

Lyla blinked as if slapped. "You knew."

"Not until now," Volt said.

"You fire that Moscow typewriter in here, it'll destroy her husband's work. He'll grind you into ferret food," Doberman warned Popeye.

Mockingly, Popeye said, "I thought ferrets ate mangoes."

With Popeye covering them, Lyla marched Doberman and Volt away from the trailer through a field. The quartet passed a backhoe slumbering in the dark like a dragon. When they reached a hilltop, Lyla's flashlight beam picked out crosses, obelisks and angels.

"Sugarman family plot?" Volt asked.

"It came with the property," she said. "What better place to hide two bodies?"

Volt's mind wove escape plans like the president's press secretary spinning excuses. "I was just a toy, Lyla?"

"My husband and I have an arrangement. I play around. He plays tough. You're the first of my playthings not to take the hint. Our game makes Sy feel healthy and strong -- "

"Instead of sick and weak," Volt said. "You're twisted, sister."

"Actually, I prefer Marilyn Manson." She traded Popeye her flashlight for his AK-47. Then she hooked her finger on its trigger, and squeezed.

Part 5: The Sweet and Low Surrender of Sy Sugarman

By Kenneth McLeod, Washington

Volt dived for one of the graves, pushing Doberman down. Lyla was a good shot, but that wasn't why he was taking cover. He had seen the plug of tar in the barrel of the Kalashnikov and, as it exploded in her arms, there was enough flak in the air to fill a congressional hearing.

When the sound of metal embers sprinkling on marble died down, Volt rose from behind a headstone. Sy Sugarman was slowly approaching the top of the hill, stopping to stand over the bodies of Popeye and Lyla, who both lay smoking like U Street chili.

"That AK was a collector's item," he said. "I swore that anyone who pilfered it would be sorry. It's our anniversary, you know."

"You and Lyla?" Volt said.

"Me and Flicka, the AK. The '47 model is 60 years old this year."

"Looks like your game's over," the shamus shrugged.

"And see the consequences," Sugarman sighed. "I look upon my works and despair. I shall return to Washington and surrender myself to the Justice Department, ere my family plot's legacy be defamed any further."

"What about the ferrets?" said Doberman, blowing a wisp of charred red hair off his shoulder.

"I've opened all the pens and will use my fortune to convert the area into a natural preserve. A testament to man's folly. Vaya con Dios, gentlemen."

As the nicotined fingers of dawn struggled for a grip on the horizon, Volt and Doberman climbed into the banana-colored Hummer. Without looking back, they left Sugarman to dial the DOJ to place an order for penance, left the graveyard hill to its uninvited dead and left the open fields to the sound of ferrets, running wild, running free.

THE END