Jack Manito: Spokane Man With A Mission

The following is the first, and, we can hope, the only chapter of my mystery novel, “Jack Manito, Spokane Detective”:

The beautiful, yet distraught, woman looked straight at me and uttered these astonishing words, “Hi! My name is Jack Manito, Spokane detective.”

I darn near swallowed my Gummi Bear.

“Baby, in a city full of coincidences, this is the biggest coincidence of all,” I said, pushing my Spokane Indians gimme-cap back off my forehead. “You have the same name as I do.”

“I do not,” she said. “I was reading your name tag.”

“Oh. Right. I forgot to take it off after the Soroptimists luncheon,” I said, ripping the tag savagely from my Bloomsday ‘88 T-shirt.

Allow me to clarify. I am not actually a Soroptimist. I’m a private eye, a shamus, a gumshoe, a detective and another word that begins with D that I try not to use because people have their minds in the gutter and they snicker. Anyway, I had just returned from a Soroptimist luncheon at the Shiloh Inn where I was trying to drum up some divorce business, or even some lawn-mowing business. Things have been slow.

I got no bites, but at least I got some free nibbles off the buffet table.

Now I was back in my office on Main, upstairs from Dutch’s Pawn and Loan, looking at this beautiful, yet distraught, woman across my desk.

“You got a name, sister?” I asked, taking a contemplative drag on my Gummi Bear.

“Esmeralda,” she said demurely. “Esmeralda Wandermere.”

“Ah,” I said. “Easy Ezzie.”

She slapped me. Hard. I deserved it. I also realized that I had swallowed my Gummi Bear.

“Please, Mr. Manito, you’ve got to help me,” she said, mascara streaking her face like something Richard Harris left out in the rain. “I was in a cab earlier today, delivering an important envelope. I paid the driver off, walked into the building and discovered that I had left the envelope in the cab. When I ran back out, the cab was gone.”

“Wow,” I said. “That was dumb.”

She began weeping like a Riverfront Park willow.

“I mean, it was unfortunate,” I said. “Not your fault at all. What kind of cab was it?”

“I don’t know,” she wailed. “All I know is that it was white and kind of green. If I don’t find that envelope, I’m in big trouble.”

A little voice in my head whispered that there was something big in this envelope. Something bigger than all of us. If I played my cards right, maybe I could snatch a little piece of it for me.

“Well, Ms. Wandermere,” I said. “Lucky for you. I specialize in these taxi-related cases. I’m like a taxiinvestigator. A taxi-collector.”

She looked at me blankly. I forged ahead.

“A taxi-dermist,” I said “Where did you catch the cab?”

“In front of the Ridpath Hotel,” she said.

“Come on,” I said, grabbing Esmeralda by the wrist. “We’re taking a little hike to the Ridpath, you and me. I hope those stiletto heels are up to it.”

For the first time, her eyes flashed with hope. Or maybe annoyance. I had hold of her wrist pretty hard.

We had marched to within a block of the hotel when she peered down the street and said, “There he is!”

“Of course,” I intoned. “I knew all along that he’d be back at the … “

“No,” she said. “Never mind. That’s a Dodge pickup.”

Her cab was nowhere to be seen. I walked up to the only cab there, a Mauve Cab, and jerked my thumb backward toward Esmeralda. I said to the driver, “Help out the little lady. You know of any cabs that are white and green?”

“I ain’t talkin’ to no copper,” said the cabbie.

“Do I look like one of Chief Mangan’s finest?” I said with exaggerated politeness, but an edge of menace.

“Yeah,” said the cabbie, spitting some Copenhagen an inch from my foot. “Either that or a snooping reporter.”

“Oh, well, I can explain that,” I said. “I used to be a critic for the old Chronicle, see, but I got fired when they caught me in a movie theater during working hours.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“I wasn’t the movie critic,” I said. “I was the beer critic. Anyway, these days I’m Jack Manito, private eye.”

“Oh,” said the cabbie, with new respect. “In that case, tell the lady that the cab she’s looking for belongs to the White-and-Green Taxi Co. Here’s their phone number.”

With a small smile of triumph, I navigated Ms. Wandermere into the Ridpath lobby, up the stairs and over to the bank of pay phones. I got the White-and-Green Taxi Co. on the horn, and I asked them if one of their drivers just happened to find an envelope.

Surprise, surprise. They had.

Five minutes later, a cab rolled up to the Ridpath. The driver handed me an envelope. The next thing I knew, a delirious Esmeralda Wandermere was planting big wet kisses all over my three-day beard.

She grabbed for the envelope. I held it above my head and said, “Not so fast, Ms. Wandermere. Whatever’s in this envelope, I want a cut of. Don’t you think I’ve earned it? Hey!”

A Generation-X-er on a mountain bike streaked behind me, grabbed the envelope on the fly and disappeared down Howard. All I caught was a blur of goatee and spandex.

“Honey,” I said to an ashen Esmeralda. “What’s in that envelope?”

“I can’t tell you,” she said. “Just call it the Spokane Curse.”

I raised my eyebrows.

Then she looked at me with big, wet brown eyes and said, “I - we - need your help more than ever, Jack Manito, Spokane detective.”

Look for the next installment of “Jack Manito, Spokane Detective” when and if I can figure out what Esmeralda is talking about.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Jim Kershner The Spokesman-Review