CHAPTER 3 - CIGARETTES AND SCANDAL

Mallory removed her olive trench coat and laid it carefully across the stool at Gigot’s gin joint. Sam’s stool, she thought. She pulled slightly at the hem of her pale blue pleated skirt and slowly sat. She sat on her stool, next to Sam’s.

Gigot’ Tavern was dark and only Gigot and the twins, sitting at the far end of the bar near the only working toilet, were there. It was mid morning and Mallory had been working all night following a blond bimbo from club to dive and back to club. Her hubby thought she was cheating on him. She was. They always cheat in Second Life.

Gigot stepped forward from the shadows and began wiping the worn bar top with a dirty rag.

“Usual?” Gigot asked.

“Sure, make it a double,” responded Mallory.

Gigot reached for a bottle of 160 proof Candolini, and two glasses. The glasses were dirty and smudged. Gigot held them up to the dim light leaking in through one high window in the back. He took his dirty rag and wiped Mallory’s glass. The glass looked worse for his effort. Gigot poured a double in Mallory’s glass and a small shot for himself. He drank the grappa fast, in one glug.

“Sheesh,” said Gigot, “I don’t know what you see in this stuff.”

One of the twins, Dopy or perhaps Stupid, was laughing. They sat at the far end of the bar eating peanuts and nursing flat beers. Mallory could smell the cheap oil of oli and stale peanut odor from her end of the bar. Working girls Mallory knew. Dopy and Stupid, Gigot called them. Mallory called them the twins. The twins rented a small flat above the dive and Mallory knew they paid the rent on time, or gave Gigot favors when times were tough.

Times must have been bad this week because the Twins were usually asleep at this time of day. They were waiting for the martini crowd that usually appeared around lunch time. Perhaps they might hook a businessman or a bus driver who was in a hurry.

Mallory pulled a pale blue pack of cigarettes from her once fashionable purse. The cigarette was the last in the pack and after placing the cig between her still beautiful pouty lips, she crushed the pack and dropped it onto Gigot’s filthy floor. She looked in her purse for a light. She pulled out an old matchbook with two matches left. The match book cover was purple and advertised Madam Sandhose’s Bordello on Au-pair street. They had closed down that place years ago. Mallory had lifted the match book from Sydney Mobile, the famed jeweler and stone cutter, on Au Street the week before.

She lit the match and placed the flame to her last cigarette. She puffed twice, which accentuated her ruby red lips. She paused looking at the painting above the bar, and then she drew in a deep deep drag. The cigarette tip glowed intensely. She shook out the match and dropped it to the floor. A thin spiral of smoke rose from the match before it hissed and died in a beer soaked newspaper. The paper was The Times.

Madam Sandhose, now there was a character thought, Mallory. She remembered the night when she and her partner Sam Strong closed up the joint. She was still a detective on the force then, Goodword had not yet happened, and they raided the place with a half dozen street cops. The Governor had decided to clean up the ‘fashion’ district of Capital City, but everyone knew the real reason. Sandhose had been late in paying her maintenance and the Governor, who spent a lot of time there, was pissed for some personal slight or offense. Probably that Paris girl Sam had said.

Sandhose was a decent madam. She treated her girls well knew Mallory. But the blow up with the Governor was the final insult in her life. She caught a serious case of AFK the following spring and then she was gone.

“Life is short and then you die,” said Mallory.

Gigot nodded.

Gigot slid a filthy ash tray in Mallory’s direction. A formality, the ash tray, nothing more.

Mallory laughed to herself. The whole place is an ashtray she thought. In fact this entire city is nothing but a grimy ugly smelly ash tray.

The door swung open and a stream of light from outside blinded Mallory. Gigot squinted.

It was a beat cop. Some guy Mallory almost recognized. Cantwell or Canter thought Mallory. He joined the force about a year before Mallory retired. Retired, Mallory laughed an ugly laugh. Some retirement.

Gigot grabbed a bottle of his cheapest gin and walked to the end of the counter where the beat cop was standing. He poured a tall drink. The cop looked about and downed the gin quickly. He pulled out a one linden note and Gigot gave the cop twenty in change.

Nothing changes in Second Life, nothing, thought Mallory.

The cop should have left by now. He had five dives on his beat and two bordellos. But he didn’t leave. Mallory looked up and saw that Cantwell or Canter was looking at her. Something on his mind thought Mallory. Something important.

In few moments the beat cop walked over to Mallory. He was full of himself, as beat cops are, but he was also drunk. Ugly drunk thought Mallory.

“You Mallory?” asked the cop. His badge was tarnished and his trousers dirty.

“Yup,” replied Mallory.

“There asking for you,” said the cop.

Mallory said nothing but looked down at her drink.

“There asking for you,” the cop repeated. “Someone big is looking for you.”

Mallory said nothing but looked up at the cop as if to ask, who?

“A big shot over at the bank. I’m supposed to give you this,” said the cop fishing into his trouser pocket for something. He pulled out a wad of bills, perhaps 500 lindens, and then a crumpled blue envelope. He put it on the wet bar near Mallory’s drink. The cop turned looked at the twins for a moment. Dopy or Stupid smiled toward the cop. Then he left.

Mallory looked down at the envelope. The return address she recognized. Chris Llanfair, President of the Reserve Bank and Counting House of Second Life on Beast Street.

Mallory reached for her purse and stood. She walked to the cigarette machine and dropped in three coins into a rusty slot. The coins rattled down a shoot somewhere and a faint ding sounded as each coin entered a lock box. She reached for the pull lever on the extreme right. The lever was grimy. She pulled. A gentle fall of soft pack cigs could be heard and she fished out a pack of Galois from the dark hole at the bottom of the machine.

She walked back to her drink. With years of practice she tapped the pack on the bar top and then tore the cellophane and tax stamp loose with her straight white teeth. She shook the pack vigorously and two cigs popped up a bit. The higher one she placed to her lips and pulled if from the pack. The envelope lay on the bar and one edge was already soaked in stale beer. The cheap government printing on the return address began to run and smear into a pale grey stain.

Mallory lit the one remaining match. It flared, then sputtered, and went out with a sulpherous odor. She shrugged, reached for her trench coat, and rose from her seat. The cold cigarette dangling from her lip Mallory walked to the door and left. Her drink untouched and the envelope unopened.

Sindy Blazer, Society Editor for the most important newspaper in all of Second Life, The Times, sat in her office reading her spam. Jimmy Whashisname, the copy boy, stood malingering in the doorway. Sindy was working on her society gossip column ‘Bits and Bites.’ Early fall was the slow season for the society pages and it was always difficult to fill the column with vindictive wit and slander at this time of year. Most of the nobs were still on vacation in the south. Jersey or France, it didn’t matter, they always were south in the early fall. She reached for her blackburry and drilled down into her list of scandal, dirt, and shocking rumor. She was looking for someone that was likely to still be in town and therefore buy multiple copies of the paper if they saw their name mentioned. Sindy laughed. They always bought multiple copies when they saw their name. If the comment was nice they wanted to show their friends. If the item as bad, the bought all the copies at the local kiosk to keep their friends from reading it. If the item was really atrocious, and possibly true, then circulation would spike.

Sindy thought about the time that Prissy Plumblossom, of the founding family of Plumblossoms, and Sindy’s hated rival at the School for Wayward Girls, purchased more than two thousand copies of The Times in a vain attempt to keep her three way with Barron Thundergast’s son Bumpy and his bunny Thumper, out of the hands of her friends and family. She objected to the photo spread. She thought that Sleepy Urchin, lapsed child star, and now very successful paparazzi, as well as loathed avatar, had taken too many pictures of her left cheek. Not her best angle Prissy thought. The right cheek was much much better Prissy knew. In any event it didn’t do any good for Prissy, but it did spike circulation of The Times momentarily. Sindy made sure that they ran a retrospective on Sissy in the Sunday supplement Feeble Magazine. The photo spread was a hit with the curious pre-teen set and kiosk copies had been sold out before Sissy could grab them for herself. Bunny’s always sell well laughed Sindy.

Sindy looked up at Jimmy. “Hear anything juicy?” she asked Jimmy.

“no,” he responded in lower case. Jimmy Washisname was insecure, although filled with ambition, and he simply could not speak in anything but lower case. “no, not a thing,” he continued. “i did see tanner gunst and lilly long snogging in the janitor’s closet yesterday.”

Tanner and Lilly were interns, free slave labor to Murdstone’s Lupine News Corporation owner of The Times and Sindy’s nominal boss, and they were not nobs and not blue bloods. They didn’t matter.

Sindy returned to her spam. She noticed that one of the horrible Cerberus Club from the School for Wayward Girls, Ashley Plantegent-Plantegent, was getting married before the Governor’s Inauguration to Bumpy Thundergast. “Hmm,” mumbled Sindy. “This is grist for the mill,” she said to herself. The she noticed that the wedding announcement was followed by a second, third and fourth. Must be a broken spam generator, or perhaps a newer more efficient one she thought. She was about to delete the duplicates when she decided to open the second. There was the announcement, Ashley Plantegent-Plantegent was to wed Donny Thump, of the famed Thump Real Estate Syndicate and Fraud, at the same day and time as the previous announcement.

“Ah, now this is interesting,” said Sindy. “Copy boy!” Sindy yelled in her best journalistic voice.

“yes mam, Jimmy, reporting mam,” replied Jimmy who was already standing there.

“Go to the achieve and get me everything in the last two years about Ashley Plantegent-Plantegent, Bumpy Thundergast, and Donny Thump.”

“now?” asked Jimmy.

“Yes now!” shouted Sindy.

Jimmy started breathing hard to get his hyperventilation started. He always did this when on an errand for Sindy, or when he wanted others to think he was on an errand for her.

Sindy opened the third spam wedding announcement and was surprised by its contents. The fourth was equally surprising.

“Wait,” she shouted. The shout was not needed because Jimmy had not yet reached the stage of breathlessness he was seeking.

“Get me everything on Filbert Onus, and Albrecht Loon.”

This is simply amazing thought Sindy and the announcements were going to make great copy in ‘Bits and Bites.’ How is Ashley going to marry four different men on the same day, at the same time, and in different places. Sindy laughed. “Well this is Second Life,” she said to herself. “And just about anything is possible.”