Trench Phillips and the English Muffin McGuffin

By Douglas Parker

Poor Lou! He could never catch a break - even after he was dead!

Buffalo Police Detective Trench Phillips has the responsibility of tracking down the brutal executioner who ripped Lou’s head from his body! While clashing with his boss, the Sheriff’s Office, and a refrigerator full of Budweiser Light Platinums that frequently call his name, Phillips attacks the case using his wildly unorthodox methods, his cutting, sarcastic humor, and his loyal Kia Sportage named Daisy.

Once the FBI becomes involved, Phillips’ world really turns into a firestorm - from armed predator drone attacks, to lethal doses of a heavy metal poison being dumped into the country’s water supplies, to catastrophes at The Civilian Interstellar Test Center. As the dangers climb and the bodies drop, Phillips becomes the only player left on the field in a very unsporting high stakes game between treachery and triumph that will both delight and dare fans of gritty, hardboiled detective action!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jul 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312378520

Book preview

Trench Phillips and the English Muffin McGuffin

Trench Phillips and the English Muffin McGuffin

A Novel

Douglas Parker

Copyright © 2014, Douglas Parker

This is a work of fiction. Although it is informally based on actual names, characters, companies and corporations, places and incidents - all are products of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual companies, municipal politicians or governmental professions, drugs, beverages, muffins, minions, events or locales, radio or television shows, movies or books, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental, and all incidents are pure invention. All of the characters, things, and events in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author. Trust this disclosure, or Trench Phillips will fracture your pencil-neck like snapping a strawberry yogurt-dipped hard pretzel after he had consumed more than a few Light Platinum Buds at a Renaissance Faire on a broiling summer’s midafternoon in South Florida.

All intellectual rights reserved. Douglas Parker; Miami, Florida. July, 2014.

ISBN: 978-1-312-37852-0

About the author:

Douglas Parker holds dual Masters Degrees in both Education and Counseling. He is a lifelong educator, veteran language arts teacher, coach, and school administrator. As a regular contributor to numerous magazines, newspapers and online blogs, Mr. Parker has authored three communication textbooks and one science fiction novel. He currently teaches literature, composition, public speaking, and journalism in South Florida.

Dedication

For all of my students over all of my years of learning from them.

Chapter One:  Who Slew Lou?

Personal Journal - Thursday, March 21. 5:15 AM; chronicled on my private account with the almighty Siri cranking the recorder. (Really, really a damn smart bitch of an app she (it?) is!)

(BTW: As always, should I or any of my Impossible Missions Force be caught or killed, the Secretary won’t give a shit and this recollection is to be left to any of my whelping who actually in fact might give a flying fig after I had gone off to meet the Wizard. Plus, isn’t it such an odd occurrence that the term ‘app’ just happens to be the first three letters in the word ‘Apple’? I wonder if Bill Gates would be tickled with that.)

Come on. Really? Okay, so I just learned a valuable life lesson. You know those warnings that they put on the blue part of the labels on pill bottles that you read and generally ignore? It’s like picking up a prescription at a ‘We never close, CVS’ and they ask, Would you like to speak with a pharmacist?

Umm, no.

I had stood in line for over thirty minutes while some all-star Alzheimer's old fart couldn’t find his insurance card, couldn’t remember his birthdate or his damn PIN number (which I know is redundant), but miraculously could remember after they finally got him checked out that he needed to order another prescription.

There was a long line at the drop-off window, so he bitched and moaned until the poor pharmacy tech finally said, Fine, and took his script while the rest of us in the queue slapped our foreheads in exasperated futility; particularly that odd-looking little guy in a long, fuzzy black wool coat over by the Hallmark Hoops and Yoyo cards.

Big mistake taking the order.

That single act of human charity led to a lengthy series of calls to a 24-hour urgent care clinic’s various nurses to confirm that Mr. Potato (no shit!) had in fact been examined and a that prescription was in fact ordered since in fact the handwriting on the Rx slip was in fact so freakily scribbled that in fact Bletchley Park and that cursed Limey, Alan Turing, couldn’t in fact decipher it!

As a veteran cop, I can say in fact as many times as I feel like; as in, Just the in facts, bitch.

Apologies, Joe Friday. No disrespect intended to police badge ‘714.’

Anyway, being Polish myself, I would like to set the record straight that in fact it was not the British that cracked the encryptions of the Nazis' Enigma machine; but rather, a band of cryptologists from the Polish Cipher Bureau that made it happen. Turing got all the credit and got all those hot London babes, too.

Draniu!

So, after an interminable amount of time while gawking at the specials on the ‘Family Planning’ aisle (I didn’t know those came in purple… hmmm!) I finally got to trundle up to the alcove and plead for my prescription.

Name and birthdate, please, the obviously frazzled tech asked. Not that her fatigue would gain any sympathy from me.

Still ruminating about the whole Enigma thing, I said, Ian Lancaster Fleming; May 28, 1908.

The woman stared at me as if I had suddenly grown a giraffe’s neck, and said, I beg your pardon, sir. But you do not look over 100 years of age to me.

Oh, silly me. Sorry. It’s really Bond. James Bond.

There’s an old saying, ‘that if looks could kill,’ a Walther PPK had just smacked me down between the eyes.

Okay, I am sorry, I said, I was just trying to brighten up your whole day. I lied.

Name and birthdate, please, Pussy Galore demanded.

Okay. My name is Trench Phillips, and my birthday is a week from today, I said with a very pleased smile on my face. Although, I am quite sure that my from-the-netherworld-ex-wife, Dellah, will yet again disremember to send me a cheerful birthday card unless it has ricin in it.

She so loves castor beans, you know!

Just give me your fucking birthdate. Sir. Please.

I didn’t know that the human eye could turn blood-red so quickly, so I figured that it was time to stop goofing on her. I gave her the correct info and off I went with my Benzodiazepine tucked safely into my pocket. At first I had paid the big bucks for Xanax, but then along came the generic version and hence I could once again afford to stock up on the expensive, on-line purchased Anheuser-Busch Light Platinums while paying alimony and child support, thus striking a perfect harmonic balance between booze and barbiturates.

Life can be so honeyed!

Being a cop, well, actually a homicide detective, is a really, really, really stressful job, even in a jerkwater small city like Buffalo, New York. I found that after I hit the age of forty I got slightly anxious about little things like shooting dead some dumb-ass punks after they trashed a 7-Eleven, wasted the owner, and ravaged the teenage checkout girl.

I know; I’m getting old and soft.

So, my doctor put me on this anxiety relief pill and it seemed to be doing the trick as I could once again cap any desperado with my faithful handgun (turned sideways) with no worries, just like George Clooney playing Seth Gecko.

Oh, sweet bliss!

But.

Back to the warnings. It seems that the May cause drowsiness. Alcohol intensifies effect, things in the blue part of the label may be, might just be true.

Okay, background. I just do not trust anything that comes from the federal government, Best Buy, or especially the Food and Drug Administration (which, I guess goes along with paranoia number one.) I mean, please hit me with a brick. Hard. Medical and recreational marijuana use is now officially permissible? Geez, I guess Red Dice Holdings must have greased a few senators’ wallets big on that one.

I had once actually tried to fake glaucoma so I could go on disability and smoke my ass off. 

Yet, I digress.

I had been working a twenty-hour shift, which is always a delight, only to come back to my filthy apartment to find my drug-challenged roommate, Joey, prostrate on the ex-dog’s futon, snoring colossally (the dude; not the ex-dog or the futon.) I had to be back for an ‘important’ briefing in eight hours, and I figured, What the hell. So, two Light Platinum Buds, three Benadryl (allergies, you know) and one of my newly-acquired generic Benzodiazepine pills later, I was ready to watch some early news and just chillax. If my eyeballs could speak, they would have said, What in the unholy-hell have you done to yourself, you dizzy nutcase?

Professional Journal - Thursday, March 21. 1:22 PM. Chitty-chat time, with Siri the omnipotent kicking ass and commanding my phone to record!

Lights out until now, as I was dictating this ill-advised story to my beloved Siri on my hazy drive to cop-purgatory, AKA: the Buffalo Police Headquarters on Franklin Street.

Gulp.

All right. Shut up the hell up and sit the hell down, Chief of Police Marvin Witkowski barked, as we all jumped to find a seat as far away from the podium as humanly possible.

Okay, we got a few crappy things that went down last night and this morning. Allow me to elucidate.

First, we have ourselves a gentleman who seems to like to break into people’s homes, beat the living shit out of the folks inside, and then take whatever he wants. If this were Florida, I’d be politically correct to call it a home invasion. In Buffalo, it is simply a badass break-in.

Next, we got a hit-and-run on Elmwood that killed a seventy-two year old woman. Nice guy or girl driver, eh? I bet that AAA will not approve that card again.

Ha?

Finally, we have ourselves another real doozy of a case. The Buffalo Times is already barking like a rabid beagle sniffing up our asses for some fecal details, and frankly once again we have less than zilch. So, here we go.

An eighty-year-old man awoke this morning to discover that his head was no longer attached to his neck. Beheaded in his own bed, presumably as he slept. Torn clean off, to be more precise. Nothing was taken. His wallet had over $200.00 in it. Nothing was touched, the patrolman reported, after a little old lady adjacent heard his door slam shut loud, and phoned it in to 9-1-1. You do know from your disregarded attention to my briefings, the North American Numbering Plan called 9-1-1, correct?

I really needed a nap.

All right, gentlepersons, who wants what? Come on detectives, let’s own up!

Guitterez, a rookie detective and my new-best little buddy since I made him buy doughnuts for me, asked, May we have some more information, such as the names of those attacked, please?

Witkowski rolled his eyes and said, Okay, sure. Break in victim is Dr. Juan Alanzio, a professor of Ecoscience at the University. Arsenic and old-lady was named Ms. Lucy Alfred. Ichabod Crane’s name was, and get this, Mr. Louis Potato, and he represents the sixth stiff we’ve found with a freshly-ripped head in the past five months. There seems no reason why he got clocked. Some of the other five were veteran bad-asses, though.

Personal Journal - Thursday, March 21. 1:29 PM

WTF! The old fart from the CVS! To be slightly honest, I had thought about killing him, but no, cholera it, I didn’t do it!

Kind of wish I had, though…

Professional Journal - Thursday, March 21. 1:30 PM.

The green, overly-zealous Guitterez snatched up the Dr. Juan Alanzio case as he shot me a na-na, na-na, boo-boo sneer and smile. Doughnuts and coffee from now on – my hazing knows no boundaries. My formerly best-friend Thomas Saint (he who still owes me fifty bucks that I loaned him to buy a few hours with a pimple-ravaged skank that he met at happy hour(s) at the Applebee’s over on Amherst Street) grabbed the old-lady case even though he is still killing the clock on some thwack so-called murder that sounded more like a cholesterol kickback than a killing.

So, after nobody else would raise his or her hand for the decapitation, but with my mind spinning back (before being recently astonishingly hammered) to that time-wasting nutcase at the CVS, I stuck up my hand and reluctantly said, O Captain! My Captain.

Okay, Whitman, it is yours!

Personal Journal - Thursday, March 21. 1:38 PM

And with that, Witkowski went off for coffee. I didn’t think that Marvin knew about Honey Boo Boo, much less Walt Whitman!

So. That old bastard lying lizard had over $200.00 in his wallet, and yet he made us all wait while he played his, Oh, poor me, underprivileged insurance games at CVS. Oh, I am so going to look into his financial history and try to figure out why he decided to make us all wait at the pharmacy for so long! CVengeanceS shall be mine!

Oh. And yah, catch his killer, too.

Professional Journal - Thursday, March 21. 2:01 PM

Thanks for taking that head case, you head case.

Only he could so ineloquently fuck up my recuperative cup of coffee; black, hot.

You are so very indubitably welcome, Chief of Police Witkowski, I said in my best English accent, trying to sound a little bit like James Bond.

You need acting lessons.

Sure, and you need cop lessons, Marvin, I briskly retorted. Besides, this one’s kind of personal to me.

Why, are you in the sentimental phase of your career now?

I feigned a heartfelt tear, nodded sadly, and then told him to screw himself sideways. After a few more minutes of mannish bantering, I asked him what, if any, information or physical evidence the badges had collected at the crime scene, assuming that they bothered to take notes or shoot pictures.

They’re not exactly CSI, Trench, that’s now your job. Just pray they didn’t make things worse.

Swell, I said under my breath.

Well, man, don’t waste time sitting here talking with me. Off you go now!

It’s always a waste of time talking at you, Marvin, and off I went.

Professional Journal - Thursday, March 21. 2:14 PM.

Asked Siri to hit record: Whenever picking an impounded ‘car-for-rent’ cop ride from the station’s lock away at 166 Dart Street, it is always prudent to be as inconspicuous as possible, especially when driving into a neighborhood that would terrify a bloodthirsty Somalian street gang, so I naturally I picked somebody’s new, bright orange BMW M3 convertible.

My personal car was a vibrant-yellow 2007 Kia Sportage that I had named Daisy. I don’t care what anyone thinks about the name; she was my baby and I loved her! I had purchased her from Scott’s Auto and Eyeglass out on West Egg when I was visiting some old pals from cop school that were living just off of Courtesy Bay Drive. So, needless to say, I used other people’s cars whenever I went into wickedly dangerous situations so that my lass may stay forever pristine replete with opulent accoutrements such as her really cool and novel safety green high beams, just ready to shine lustrously!

Hey, they did the crimes so the law kind of says