Hazards (27 page)

“I’ll bring them spiritual comfort like they ain’t never had before,” I told her.

“I knew I could count on you,” she said.

“It’s the least I can do for them poor fallen flowers,” I said. “I’ll comfort the bejabbers out of ’em!”

“Try to keep your enthusiasm under control,” she said. “And remember, this is Mother McCree’s House of Fallen Flowers. If any strangers ask about it, be sure to give her the credit.”

“Helps with the donations, huh?” I said knowingly.

“Precisely,” she said. “And now, if you’ll forgive me, I really must be off to the station.”

She walked toward the front door, but along the way she stopped to speak to a couple of more fallen flowers, turned an pointed toward me, and then she was gone.

I was torn between examining my new office or my new parishioners, when suddenly a brunette approached me, wearing naught but her unmentionables.

“Hi, Big Boy,” she said. “You see anything you like?”

“Ma’am,” I said, “I got to tell you that as flowers, fallen and otherwise, go, you got two of the lovelier stems I ever seen—and there ain’t nothing wrong with your petals, neither.”

“So are you going to introduce your stamen to my pistil?” she said with a wink.

This made me back off a few feet, because if a flower had fallen so far that she was toting a pistol in a nice friendly place like this, who knew what she might do with it? But the more I looked at her, the more I could see that she didn’t have enough clothes on to hide no pistol.

“I do believe you’re having fun with me, ma’am,” I said at last.

“That comes later,” she said. “Are you ready for some cross-pollination?”

“I ain’t cross at no one, ma’am,” I said, “and especially not a frail fallen flower like yourself.

She giggled. “Fifi
likes
you.”

I looked around. “Is Fifi joining us, ma’am?” I asked.

“I
am
Fifi,” she said.

“And I’m the Right Reverend Honorable Doctor Lucifer Jones, at your service.”

She giggled again. “There are so many of you I should charge double.”

“Just how many of me do you see, ma’am?” I asked, wondering if there was time to get her to an optician before they all closed up shop for the day.

“Cut the talk, Big Boy,” she said. “Time is money.”

“Now ain’t that interesting?” I said. “I always thunk Time was a measurement of how long it takes to get from one place to another.”

Well, I could tell she was a real intellectual what had studied Time and flowers and all kinds of things, and I couldn’t wait to see what we’d talk about next, but just then a trio of the local gendarmes arrived, and they flashed their badges, pinched a couple of fallen flowers on the way in, spotted Fifi, and announced that she was under arrest.

“Now hold on just a doggone minute here!” I said, standing between them and the door. “What’s this here sweet innocent little frail flower done that you think you got a right to come in here and arrest her?”

I thunk two of them was going fall down, they was laughing so hard. The third just limited himself to six or seven guffaws, and finally caught his breath long enough to talk to me.

“This particular frail flower has been selling her favors all over the city,” he said.

“I’m her minister, and I find that difficult to believe,” I told him.

The second I said it I heard a bunch of high-pitched giggles from behind closed doors.

“You’re the minister to
all
these girls?” he asked.

“That’s right,” I said.

“It must be an exhausting job,” he said.

There was another burst of giggling.

“I’m up to it,” I said.

“I have nothing but admiration for you,” he said. “Many men might be up to the job at the beginning, but I suspect most of them wouldn’t be up to it for long.”

He looked mighty smug, like he’d just said something George Bernard Somebody-or-other, that English writer what ain’t Shakespeare, would want to swipe for one of his plays.

“Take your low humor and your dirty-minded friends elsewhere,” I said. “The women who depend on the Mother McCree House of Fallen Flowers for their sustenance are under the protection of me and the Lord.”

“These flowers have fallen a little farther and a little more often than you think, Reverend,” he said. “Interpol has been trying to get the goods on the Scorpion Lady for years. It will be a real feather in our caps if we can nail her for running the biggest whorehouse in Chile.”

“You got the wrong idea,” I told him. “The Scorpion Lady herself hired me to bring the power and the glory to these poor downtrodden women.”

“And you’ve never touched one of them?” he said.

I raised my right hand. “As God is my witness, I ain’t never touched a one of ’em in the whole time I been employed here.” And while I was invoking my Silent Partner, I also thanked Him for not requiring me to answer that question the next morning.

He shrugged. “Well, you can’t say you haven’t been warned.” He turned to his partners. “Okay, let’s take her in.”

They drug poor little Fifi off. Just as she reached the door she turned and shot me a great big smile, and flashed some of the girls one of them V-for-victory signs the way politicians do right before they lose an election. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out what was so all-fired victorious about getting tossed in the calaboose, but I didn’t have no time to worry about it, because it struck me that there were dozens of demure young ladies in need of both clothing and comforting.

But before I could do anything about it, a middle-aged man with dark eyes and some kind of accent walked in the door and said he had a donation for the Mother McCree House of Fallen Flowers, and handed me a package what was maybe a foot on each side. I thanked him and stuck it behind the counter of the desk.

He moseyed back out into the night, and then three more men came in, and each of ’em announced that he’d be making his donation in private to a particular fallen flower, and off they went with the flowers of their choosing, and suddenly the place was bustling with private and public donaters, and the interesting thing was that the public donaters always brought a neatly-wrapped package which I figured contained food or champagne, or, if they was really thoughtful, ladies’ clothing for chilly nights, but the private donators all knew which of the frail flowers they wanted to make their donation to and they was an exceptionally shy lot because none of them wanted to do it in public.

The Scorpion Lady wandered in around midnight, and plumped herself down in an easy chair.

“How did it go?” I asked.

“I failed,” she said without much show of remorse. “Poor Mitzi is already on a ship bound for Malaya.”

“While you was gone, they came by and arrested poor innocent little Fifi,” I said.

“Yes, I know,” she said. “I saw her there.”

“Are you gonna be able to get her off the hook so she can come back here?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I doubt it, Lucifer. I’ll try, of course, but it’s my guess that she’ll be on the next boat to Hong Kong.”

“Boy, when the police in these here parts label you an undesirable they don’t waste no time doing something about it,” I said.

“We just have to put up with it,” she said.

“But your Home for Fallen Flowers must be emptying out at record speed,” I said.

“I have four more moving in tomorrow,” said the Dragon Lady.

“You sure got your ear to the ground to be able to hear that many flowers falling,” I said admiringly.

“One does what one can,” she said. “And now,” she added, getting to her feet, “I think I’ll take a hot bath before retiring to my bed.”

“I hate to think of you getting lonely all by yourself in that tub, Scorpion Lady sweetie,” I said.

“Why don’t you avail yourself of one of the perks I mentioned earlier?”

“They’re getting deported almost faster than I can avail myself,” I replied.

“Then there’s no time to waste, is there?”

But then I got to thinking about it, and I realized that there wasn’t an endless supply of fallen flowers, and somebody had to do something to make sure that these poor frail critters weren’t all shipped off to godless lands, so instead of introducing myself to the rest of the young ladies and helping them ease the terrible tension they must have felt living alone in strange surroundings, I decided that the thing to do was go right down to the police station and plead their case for ’em.

I walked in and asked to speak to the head man. They told me that would be Captain Miguel Rodriguez, and they ushered me into this large office, where I found this gray-haired guy with a captain’s uniform sitting behind a desk.

“Howdy,” I said. “I’m the Right Reverend Honorable Doctor Lucifer Jones, here on a mission of mercy.”

“I gave at the office,” he said.

“This
is
the office,” I pointed out.

“I gave at home,” he amended.

“I ain’t after no donation, Captain Rodriquez,” I assured him.

“Oh?” he said, leaning forward.

“No, sir,” I said. “I’m after something bigger.”

“How many tickets do I have to buy?” he asked.

“Don’t go understanding me so fast,” I said. “I’m here to plead for the young ladies from Mother McCree’s House of Fallen Flowers.”

“You don’t have to negotiate with
me
,” he said. “That Oriental villainess is their…shall we say…business manager?”

“But you keep chuckin’ ’em onto boats and shipping ’em out of here,” I said.

“It’s my duty to clean up Valparaiso,” he said, “and that’s what I intend to do.”

“Let’s talk man to man, Miguel,” I said. “You don’t mind if I call you Miguel, do you?”

“Call me Captain Rodriguez,” he said.

“Let’s talk man to man, Captain Rodriguez,” I said. “These frail flowers are bringing in donations to the cause every two or three minutes. I’m sure the Scorpion Lady would be happy to pay you ten or even fifteen percent of them donations if you’d just stop shipping all these poor girls off to other countries.”

“You’re wasting my time, Padre,” he said.

“That’s Reverend,” I corrected him.

“Whatever the hell you are, leave police business to the police. This interview is over.”

Well, I’d done my best, and I’d have let it go at that, the Lord being the understanding critter that He is, but on my way out the door I saw Fifi being led off to the docks, and I knew they were deporting her even before the Scorpion Lady could argue in her defense, and that got my good Christian blood boiling, so instead of going back to the Castille de Oro I walked across the street to the Church of the Ascension where I found some local church ladies’ club in progress, and I asked if they’d mind if a visiting man of the cloth spoke to ’em, and they seemed flattered as all get-out.

I got up there, and pointed out that every person deserves a second chance, especially them that publicly admitted their past indiscretions by living in Mother McCree’s Home for Fallen Flowers, and there was an enormous injustice going on, because unbeknownst to all the good, God-fearing populace the police force was deporting these poor, sweet, penniless girls at a rate of maybe two a day, forcing them to seek asylum in strange countries what they’ve never been to before.

I explained and I ranted and I roared and I demanded justice, and before long the outraged ladies of the church marched across the street and started tearing the jail apart. They released all the women prisoners, since it’s harder to tell a fallen flower from the outside than you might think, and then they refused to leave until they got a written promise from Captain Rodriguez that he was all through deporting the residents of Mother McCree’s.

I went back to the hotel, and figgered the least I could do was make a donation to the nice ladies of the church, so I grabbed a few of the boxes what was behind the front desk and carted them back to the church with my compliments.

Then I returned to the Castille de Oro, woke the Scorpion Lady, and told her the good news.

“Fool!” she screamed. “You’ve ruined everything!”

“You’re letting your joy get the better of you,” I told her. “Anyone who didn’t know you would think you were mad.”

“Idiot!” she yelled.

“What’s the matter, my love?” I said. “Have I done something to upset you?”

“Of all the gin joints in all the world, why did you have to choose mine?” she snapped. “Why couldn’t you have just kept on walking?”

She pulled a suitcase out from under the bed, went to her closet, and started throwing her clothes in it. She’d just about finished when a squad of police came to the door.

“Madame,” said the leader, “I regret to inform you that you are under arrest.”

“For running a bawdy house?” I said. “I already explained to your Captain Rodriguez that this is a house for fallen flowers.”

“For smuggling,” he answered. “And Captain Rodriguez is already in jail.”

“Smuggling?” I said, as they cuffed the Scorpion Lady. “What in tarnation are you talking about?”

“It was a fiendishly clever operation, run in tandem with a bawdy house,” explained the officer. “We never minded the bawdy house. In fact, the police of Valparaiso were among its best customers. But it was just a front. The
real
business was smuggling jewelry and contraband out of South America.” He smiled at the Scorpion Lady. “She was the mastermind, of course, but she required a confederate, and that was Captain Rodriguez. She would run the Home for Fallen Women—”

“Fallen Flowers,” I corrected him.

“Whatever,” he said. “And he would arrest each willing confederate and ship her off to the country where the contraband had been purchased. The women, who were each allowed to leave with a single bag or package, were actually the delivery agents. And we never would have discovered this foul scheme if it weren’t for you, Reverend Jones!”

“Me?” I said, over the sound of the Scorpion Lady gnashing her teeth.

“If you hadn’t delivered those packages containing drugs and stolen jewels to the good ladies of the Church of the Ascension, the plot would have gone unnoticed for who knows how long?”

“I guess I
did
break it up, didn’t I?” I said. “Do I get a medal for this?”