The Devil and the Inkwell
Barely aware of the movement he still managed to duck with ease, nonetheless. The pen swooshed past his right earlobe and hit the wall behind him.
"Detective!" he exclaimed perplexed, not anguished or troubled. Never that, for he was the Devil with capital D. "You almost ruined my white silk cotton shirt! Why would you do that!?" He pushed his office chair a bit further away from the scratched desk where the Detective glared at him with open hostility, just as detective Douche grinned to add insult to almost injury.
"You really have no sense when to shut up, dude!" The callous hands of the Dimwit were moving for his shoulders and Lucifer pushed himself just out of his reach.
"Because you know your former wife much better than I do, right?" he replied making quotation marks with his hands while stressing the word wife.
"Exactly!" Daniel Espinoza pushed his hands with an unexpected smooth movement into his leather jacket and a superiority face he was definitely not allowed to project.
This was almost a déja vu! But he wouldn't be discouraged this time. He turned back to the Detective and tried to ignore the man beside him.
"I was merely suggesting not going out with the stupid muscle mountain of Cai…ierce. He is such a bore and not up to par at all!" He shrugged, but observed the slim, twitching fingers of the gorgeous blonde typing along at the desk.
"Lucifer, I am warning you! You need to stop before I send you home or…" Det. Decker's right hand reached for the mug Daniel Espinoza had put on one of the documents, staining it with a precinct coffee rim in the process, but her ex snatched it just a millisecond faster.
"Chlo, I must say, I don't really like to second Lucifer, but he is right this time." Dan remarked after a sip.
"And you two know what I need, right?!"
"Of course, Detective! You deserve someone better! Far better than the Incredible Hulk over there!" The Devil pointed his large aquiline nose toward the lieutenant's office.
"You need more than a pen thrown at your head. He has simply invited me to another concert."
"Where to?" Dan asked as blunt as ever, but at least Lucifer was half out of the woods.
"Hollywood Bowl. Backstreet Boys." Chloe answered happily.
"Of course! He's so cheap, he'll grab the picnic box!" Lucifer hissed, and this time the flying stapler flew straight onto its target right between the eyes.
"Ouch!"
"This for sure will become a terrific bruise." Dan remarked dryly, though the Devil could see the twinkle in the eyes immediately. "Come on, man, let's leave Chloe alone before she shoots you for real."
Slightly defeated Lucifer Morningstar followed Espinoza to the kitchenette and for the third time in his life he accepted a steaming mug of dubious content and ownership.
"This is worse than the inkwell." He carefully touched his nose and forehead to assess the damage.
"Inkwell? Chloe threw an inkwell at you? When? At your place? I mean, where would she get one?"
"Not the Detective! Junker Jörg!"
"Who?" Daniel gaped at him, not understanding.
"You are a Catholic, in this case your lack of insight is forgivable." Lucifer sighed and pulled him to an empty table nearby. "Well, let me enlighten you…" To add a bit of drama he harrumphed and walked to a small bar table where he left the scorching black pick-me-up.
"The year is 1521. Hernán Cortés had barely created New Spain for the glory of king Carlos I., also known as Charles V., Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire of German Nation. He, Charles V. that is, was deeply indebted to the Fugger and the Welser families in Augsburg, Bavaria. That was the financial center of the Old World at the time and a free city, FYI, and even if the caravels and naus coming from the wondrous land in the West were already bringing loads and loads of gold onto the Iberic Peninsula, the emperor had invested far too many reales, gold dollars and doubloons into warfare. He actually had to give parts of nowadays Venezuela to the Welser family and sign over some acquisitions to Jacob Fugger. The last one, also known as the Rich, was much wealthier than Bezos and Gates together. By today's standards that is."
"Oh, is this one of the backstories for your character?"
"Miss López! How lovely to join us! Please have a seat!" The Devil jumped up and offered his stool to his favorite tiny forensic scientist with the anime sized eyes, and another to her companion, a quite lovely brunette on impossible high heels. "I was just telling detective Dou…niel about the one time I got thrown an inkwell at, just out of spite. But I dodged it on time, unlike today. The Detective has a very good aim. I have to acknowledge that."
Having found an interested audience, the tall, darkhaired consultant to the LAPD turned around like a peacock and served some doughnuts he snatched from a box on the scratched counter.
"Decker hit you with an inkwell?" Saucer sized eyes stared at him, and a wide grin bloomed on Ella López' face. She was adorable looking like the pussinboots cartoon character.
"No, no, with a stapler. Completely out of the blue! Probably this Pierce is to blame for her bad mood. He burdens the Detective with far too much filing duty!"
"Sure dude…" The Douche interjected. Why couldn't just keep his mouth shut and listen?
"Well, as I said before I was so charmingly interrupted, it was 1521 and I had been a spectator at the Diet of Worms earlier that year where this intense Augustine monk, who actually thought Dad was forgiving and benevolent, was told to renounce, but did not. The emperor fumed and declared him an outlaw but on the way back home the monk was kidnapped, and the problem seemed to have disappeared for everybody's sake."
"And the inkwell?"
"Getting there, my dear Miss López. You need the backstory in order to understand my issue with that monk." Lucifer stood tall and sipped some of the horrible, somewhat cooled down coffee, the small finger standing out as if he was having tea with the Windsors. "The kidnapping had been orchestrated by Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, a refined man with quite a sense of fashion I must say. He had his own agenda, of course. When I had that eventful dinner with Jacob the Rich in June of the same year that made him built the Fuggerei for his entry to Heaven, I heard a rumor that the little monk was in hiding in one of the properties of Frederick."
"Fouggeray?" There it was: the goldfish-on-the-floor-face.
"Oh my, Daniel! It is the first social housing project in the world, and the people living there are asked to pray to Dad in order to ensure that Jacob's soul is not South bent. Might have scared him a little when I lost my countenance when he cheated playing cards."
"No kidding, man…" Daniel almost swore that the consultant's eye glimmered like hot coals in a barbecue grill.
"Obviously not." Lucifer scoffed offended. The way the ignorant douche slurped his coffee and muttered at the same time while he was trying to tell his story, was utterly disgusting.
"Please continue, Mr. Morningstar. It sounds fascinating." The brunette woman fluttered her thick lashes while moistening her crimson lips, and that placated him somewhat.
"Not to worry, my dear. I needed to get to that man and set him straight. It's already bad when people spread lies about me, but it's worse when they turn Dad into a magical teddy bear. No offence, Miss López."
"No offense taken, Lucifer. Cada quién cuenta cómo le va en la feria. And it's history, right?" Ella flashed another two hundred-watt-smile before she took another cheerfully colored cranberry orange doughnut and handed him the only Dutch apple pie ring, which he gracefully accepted.
"Thank you ever so much." He bit into the sweet cinnamon streusels before he reached the savory apple filling. Truly a seasonal delight! The he saw the blue-eyed man beside him grinning widely. "What is it, detective Espinoza?", he asked.
"No wonder you are getting chubbier!"
"I am certainly not."
"Yes, you are! Even your shirts agree with me."
Lucifer Morningstar stared down at himself before he shot daggers to the Douche. He needed to change the Chinese laundry, his shirts were shrinking, that was it.
"Just because you have no sense of fashion and fitting…" he was not falling for it this time, no! "Anyway my dear ladies, after some months I finally found out where the Elector had hidden his protégé."
"Okay, I get it. You found him and set him straight." Daniel Espinoza was definitely more that a pain in the butt.
"Correct, detective Espinoza. He got so angry when I told him that Dad is certainly not forgiving and taking responsibility isn't a straight ticket to the Silver City because nobody judges you but yourself, he threw that writing utensil at me. A hothead if you ask me."
"Lucifer, get going! We have a case!" The Detective's loud voice left no room for argument.
He smiled apologetically to his lovely audience, said his goodbyes, trying to keep up with his partner and making a mental note to ask Ella López for the name of the brunette in the hot red suit.
"Seeeeeeee, I told you he never breaks character!" he overheard Miss López before he rounded the corner.