The Star-Spangled Band Whore

No sooner had Flint and Bernie finished their meandering conversation on collegiate aspirations when the two music journalists found themselves their very first client. Fortunately for Flint, she was a ravishing young blonde thing clad in apple bottom jeans or whatever the Southern Baptist belle equivalent is. In the clutches of her prehensile pink nails resided a Rubenesque tome entitled Viva Le Conspiracie! which seemed frankly more Spanish than Flint was accustomed to in such a close-knit Caucasian community.

"Fellas, my name's Klytemnestra Reid," she spoke in an anticipated flirtatious drawl not unlike the one her Greek Orthodox namesake Clytemnestra may have had. "And in my dire situation, it's you guys' help I need."

"Ms. Reid, I'm music journalist Flintward Paper," he said, shaking her nearest hand eagerly as he unwittingly parroted her infectious method of speaking. "And please spill the beans about this nasty little caper."

Ms. Reid felt her way through the gargantuan hunk of lumber that now sat upon her knees as she took a seat on the former detective agency's most Appalachian leather sofa. It didn't seem long before she reached page 37, which contained the image of a crocodilian biped with webbed fish fingers and an overbite which could gobble Conway Twitty's music career whole. "This here's a Reptilian," she said, "pesky alien critter from the planet Clambake on Star Priscilla. I reckon it was one of these here Reptilians which snatched my hubby and renowned country music singer Hart Pisces from our oh-so cozy living suite."

"Hart Pisces? Sounds a wee tad familiar," Flint uttered, thinking back to all the country music singers he had grown upon in the too few years which made up his personal living suite while lighting a Lucky Strike in their collective honor. "Did he not deliver Track 5, 'American God,' on the soundtrack to Even Cowgirls Get the Dudes?"

"Why yes, yes he did!" chirped Ms. Reid, averting her gaze from the windowsill. "Though I never did think it was much of a shock that us cowgirls had our ways with them dudes, if you catch my drift, mister. And it's a darned shame Graceland Records went out of business, 'cuz everything else he did went out of print. For all we know, them Reptilians who stole my Hart away also engaged in that so-called 'payola' practice that couldn't keep the record company afloat no more."

"Well, I'm gonna show them Reptilians a thing or two about playing such cruel games with a young lady's Hart. Mark my words, Flint Paper's gonna pick up the Pisces and bring him home to his girl's lovin' arms. And maybe afterwards, my man-boy wonder Bernie Watson will scoop up some words into a brand new Flint paperback on the matter, which will indubiously turn out to be a good read, Ms. Reid."

Just then, the same old Bernie came out of the office with his nose pressed in a tome of his own. Our Band Could Beat Your Life, it was called, not that you'd care, dear reader. "My surname isn't Watson, it's Wattenmaker," he nebbishly affirmed.

"Yeah, whatever," was Ms. Reid and the recently discharged private dick's simultaneous reply. In a tenth of a second, Flint knew that if the Reptilians couldn't bring back Ms. Reid's Hart to its rightful owner, it was bound to be true love between Reid and Paper.

Now down by the banks of Brixton Falls lies a twenty-foot ravine where many a green Reptilian has been seen, so says the book of Ms. Reid. Flint took little Bernie and the attractive young Ms. to the grisly scene, often taking time aside to respectfully glance at the Polaroid photos of all the falls' former casualties in mournful awe.

It was there that the threesome, resentfully including the third wheel that was Bernie, came across an unexpected fourth arrival to their party to even things out. He was a seventy-something man with a demeanor so disheveled that all the waters of Brixton Falls could not cleanse the poor sucker up. And as he sat upon the banks in the Indian position, Flint knew he fancied himself a guru. Well, how about that.

"Lady and gentlemen," he spoke in an articulate post-British voice that in this case Flint did not anticipate, "welcome to Brixton Falls. I will be your tour guide upon this experience, for am the sagely Ace Materialman and can grant you true enlightenment, if that is what you wish for."

"All I want is my Hart back," cried Ms. Reid, extending a lovelorn look to this "enlightened" gentleman. "I have already found peace in the teachings of the Good Book, so don't waste your time with that voodoo mumbo jumbo. But I have found war in the teachings of Richard Alton Weinstein, author of this here book, Viva Le Conspiracie!, pardon my French."

"Ah, young belle, but I am Richard Alton Weinstein. You simply have an earlier edition, one from the days before I wised up and chose a dishonest-to-God pseudonym to protect the identity you have just squandered. So be it."

"I done say," said Ms. Reid. "My daddy picked up that there book in '69 from the Corralberg Swap Meet to give to his little girl for her twelfth day of Christmas present. He said we Reids usually didn't buy books by such people, but that we'd make a rare exception in such seasons of giving. So, my curious girl mind got me wondering, have you seen any of your slimy Lizard Person pals take any country music stars to the stars beyond?"

"My belle, as you may know, I have been observing Reptilian abductions of innocent human beings for the past sixty-eight years, and not once has the human being in question been one who you might see performing at the Grand Ole Opry, or any ole opry for that matter. Sure, there's been plenty of white trash, but these white trash don't have the brain capacity to play even a four-stringed banjo if you threatened them with the opportunity to squeal like a pig." Ms. Reid sighed and signaled at us to turn back from the falls.

"But don't you go away all disappointed like that, missy," spoke Ace Materialman before realizing that even he was taking on the speech patterns of a Southerner. Seems her charms were too great for this world. "Y'all come back now, ya hear." In a second's notice, Ms. Reid, Flint, and even the skeptic's skeptic who was Bernie drew in closer.

Ace Materialman grinned. "In the past sixty-eight years, the Reptilians have refused to utter even the slightest a word to me. But if their signals in the sky are to be believed, tonight's the night the Reptilians will finally speak to not only me, but three other lucky human beings. And as I'm sensing you probably have not guessed, I'm talking about the three of you!"

And wouldn't you know it, the sky grew dim as a flying saucer rolled out of the sky like a radioactive green cigar from a bright blue cigar box. But with an unexpected kerplunk, the unanticipated spacecraft plunged down into the falls and upon a two-minute wait, Flint and Ms. Reid decided that the Reptilians had drowned and would not be coming up again.

"My Hart has been broken in two," Ms. Reid wailed as she looked toward the inevitable radioactive green wreckage containing the only man she had ever married.

"Ms. Reid," said Flint, "I cannot bear to see you with an inoperative Hart. A girl like you deserves the finest of transplants." Their lips and tongues alike became entwined in a passionate embrace of saliva, mouthwash, whiskey, and lipstick which extended itself onto the rocks overlooking Brixton Falls.

"True love's a funny thing," said Ace Materialman, taking Bernie's hand as the young brainiac gaped at a sight his narrow mind naturally attempted to keep him from believing.

"I'll take it from here," snapped a familiar voice. Out from behind adjacent rocks emerged Officer Laura Palmhair of the Brixton Police Department, who shot a series of angry looks at Flint and Ms. Reid.

"Music journalism, eh?" Laura asked her ex-lover. Flint arrogantly nodded as he stroked his new partner's bosom. "More like music prostitution."

"I can explain," said another familiar voice, as Sergeant Nick Palmhair clumsily pulled himself out of a hollow tree and stood next to his sister, oblivious to the fact that he was covered from hat to shoe in tree sap. "If you had done the research all legitimate policemen are expected to do, Mr. Paper, you'd know Klytemnestra Reid is the most well-paid escorts for country musicians and bands in the entire state. And now it appears her work has extended itself to phony 'music journalists.' Laura, let's take these dogs in heat to the pound for some legal euthanasia."

"But no monetary exchanges went on between the two of them!" cried Bernie, defending his employer as he attempted to free his hand from the old man's grip.

"Pedophilia in the first degree," said Officer Laura, as her brother turned to her in agreement.

"I'm not a minor anymore!" exclaimed Bernie. "Oh Lord, this is worse than that time back in Hebrew school when those zombies…"

"Leave the Lord out of it!" Ms. Reid squealed. "It's not His fault you chose to get yourself entangled in a sinful relationship with a Satan-worshipping septuagenarian, no matter how truthful his Reptilian revelations may have been!"

Laura smiled at her brother Nick. "Four arrests in one day. Not bad!"

"You're on your way up to sergeant," said Nick. The two officers of the law decided to do some escorting of their own as they led all four detectives and accomplices to their paddy wagon over the falls.

Thirty minutes after the officers drove away, that very same flying saucer emerged from the waters, neatly landing on the shore. Three crocodilian creatures who stood on two legs stepped onto land, their webbed hands clutching the lifeless body of a young man who wore nothing but a ten gallon hat with the words "Hart Pisces" stitched around the middle. Without a word uttered between the three of them, they dumped the body on the very same spot where one Richard Alton Weinstein, better known as Ace Materialman, had spent the better portion of the past sixty-eight years of his life waiting for the very same crocodilian creatures. And it was in that hasty way that the Reptilians concluded their final voyage to Brixton City, just another unlivable metropolis in the state of Calpurnia.