The Pooch, the Professor, The P.I. and the Pre-Columbian Popsicle                     --------------                                     By Israel Ramirez, Cover Illustration by Frank Stone         Never get mixed up with a dame in a red dress. Most fellas see a dame in a red dress and they charge right toward her, but not me. I run the other way like a blind raccoon with its tail on fire. If there's one thing I've learned after 20 years as a Private Dick, it's that a dame in a red dress spells trouble with a capital "T" -- the kind of Trouble you want to avoid at all costs. Unfortunately, back in October of '29, I wasn't as smart as I am now. If I had been, I assure you I'd have never gotten mixed up with Betsy Blunt, the gal that walked into my office carrying an over-sized rat under one arm and a bag full of cash in the other. It was raining and Betsy's red dress was soaked to her skin. She was pretty easy on the eyes for a skinny girl in a new-fangled bob haircut. As for the rat, I never did like rats much, but this was a really special, fancy-looking one, a "Chi-Hwa-Hwa Rat" I think she said it was. It had long, thin legs and huge eyes. Scariest sort of vermin I'd ever seen. "I'm guessing you're lost, Ma'am," I tells her, "The exterminator's office is further down the block." "You Frank Flint the private Dick?" she asks. "Why yes, Ma'am," I say, sitting up straight and wiping the biscuit crumbs off my tie. It'd been a long time since I'd had an actual paying gig, so any client was a welcome one. "I'm Betsy Blunt, a Professor specializing in Pre-Columbian Arts and Antiquities at the University of Pacific," she says. "I'm in trouble and I need your protection." Betsy takes a sopping wet wad of cash and slaps it down on my desk. "You look like a pretty tough customer. Can you handle a gun?" she asks. As she says this, she looks at the bandage I've got on my cheek. She also seems impressed by the fact that one of the shoulders on my trench coat has been ripped right off. I decide not to tell Betsy that I've got the bandage on my face because I got hit with a foul ball at the ballpark last night. I also don't tell her my trench coat ripped when someone grabbed me by my shoulder while trying to keep me from falling out of the stands. I awoke a few hours later I feeling sore, but mighty rested. I'd fallen right on the ol' noggin. This was the tenth straight game I'd been knocked out by a batted ball. I guess I should stop going to the games, but a fella's luck has gotta change sometime. Besides, I really like the peanuts. Lucky for me, I didn't miss much of a game, seeing as how "Ol' Mighty Casey" had struck out for the 459th straight time. Casey might be everybody's favorite player, but it's sorta embarrassing that he's still playing for the Mudville Nine because he's 78 years old and so senile that he sometimes holds the bat by the wrong end. But Casey keeps playing because a sportswriter wrote a famous poem about how he struck out 40 years ago and people keep paying good money to see Casey redeem himself. Betsy's looking at me strangely, no doubt thinking that my wits have gone a-woolgathering, so I figure I'd better answer her question about the gun. "Oh yes, Ma'am, I've been in quite a few scrapes," I says pulling my revolver out of my desk drawer and brandishing it impressively. "As for handling my gun, I think I handle my gun about as well as I handle my women and I reckon that's a darn sight better than most." "Good!" Betsy says. "Bring your gun, follow me and I'll explain the job along the way."                     ---Chapter 2--- Back in the 1850s the State offered Stockton a choice between getting a brand-spanking new State University or a brand-spanking new loony bin. I won't tell you which one they ended up picking, but let's just say folks in Stockton have gotten pretty darn used to hearing some crazy stories over the years. Even so, I'd bet you dollars-to-doughnuts that none of those stories can hold a candle to the yarn Betsy told me on our way to her penthouse suite at the Hotel Stockton. Betsy told me she had the Sorcerer King Kalakamul frozen in a block of ice in her hotel room. She said the storm knocked out power to the hotel and her ice-freezing contraption had stopped working. Now she's worried because the block of ice is melting and according to ancient prophesy, Lord Kalakamul is about to come out of his deep-freeze and start sacrificing folks. I tell Betsy that if she wants to get me in her hotel room all she has to do is ask, but when we get to her hotel room -- Jumping Jehosaphat!! -- Betsy really does have a frozen half-naked savage trapped in a block of ice in the tub! Betsy tells me her plan. She'll take her pet rat and hide out at the Juke Joint by the ballpark for a while. My job is to shoot the savage if it starts to come to life. About an hour after Betsy leaves, strange things start happening. First an eerie glow emanates from the amulet Lord Kalakamul is wearing around his neck. Then (even though his lips aren't moving) I hear the King's deep, raspy voice, bouncing around inside my skull, "I am Lord Kalakamul, the Pre-Columbian Pooh-bah! A sacrifice must be made before midnight tonight, or the sun won't come up and the world will be plunged into horrible darkness. People will be diving out of windows right and left!" "Does that mean you want me to help you out of that ice block so you can sacrifice Betsy?" I ask. Kalakamul answers, "Betsy's blood will not be spilled. The blood of her Chi-Hwa-Hwa will quench the thirst of the gods." I think it over a bit and say, "I don't much care for that rat of hers, but I made a deal and I'm going to let you out." The room goes silent for a few minutes. Then a slightly exasperated, squeaky falsetto voice fills my head. "Frank, this is not Lord Kalakamul, this is your innate inner intelligence speaking. You don't have to worry about Lord Kalakamul projecting his voice into your head anymore because Lord Kalakamul has declared that he refuses to have a battle of wits with an unarmed man." The squeaky voice sneezes and says "You'd better do something before this block of ice decomposes completely. Everybody knows the best way to keep something from decomposing is by salting and preserving it, so you should gather as much salt as you can and pour it on this block of ice. That'll keep it from melting." Well I'd never heard my inner intelligence speak before, but it was making a lot of sense.  I run down to the hotel kitchen and bring back a 30-pound sack of salt. I pour it all over the block of ice.  The ice starts melting even faster. The block of ice breaks in half with a loud "crack!" and Lord Kalakamul opens his eyes. Chunks of ice roll off his seven-foot frame as he starts to move. At first he's about as graceful as a three-legged duck in a prickle patch, but he manages to get out of the tub. I try to shoot the brute, but nothing happens. Doggone it! I'd forgotten that I'd taken the bullets out of my gun! Take it from me, never listen to doctors who tell you to take the bullets out of your gun just because you happen to accidentally shoot yourself in the leg three or four times. Kalakamul laughs and draws a dagger from a sheath around his waist. He smiles with a mouth full of teeth that are every bit as sharp as the dagger he holds in his hand. I high tail it out of the hotel with the Pre-Columbian in pursuit. Behind me he starts a strange and chilling Pre-Columbian chant, "Aaamalgaaamaaated-Meeeetaaaals-doooown-siiiixteee-twooo, Jaaay-Peee-Moooorgaaaan- Aaaand-Coooompaneeee-doooown-eeeeeighteee, Geeeeneraaaal-Mooootoooors-doooown- foooortee-fooouur!!" As I run down the street I see Betsy coming up the street chasing her Chi-Chi-Hwa-Hwa right toward me. "Betsy!!" I yell, "The Pre-Columbian is loose!! Run the other way!" Betsy yells back, "Frank, do whatever you have to do, but don't let Kalakamul grab my little Chi-Chi!" The rat is now around 20 yards ahead of Betsy and heading straight toward me, so I do what comes naturally --I act without thinking. I punt the rat back towards Betsy as hard as I can. I've played a little pro football with the Duluth Eskimos, so after I punt it, that rat flies straight and true into Betsy's arms.   Betsy snatches it out of the air and turns down Main Street. Even in high heels, she makes moves like I haven't seen since Jim Thorpe's famous broken-field run against the Massillon Tigers. I follow her, but the Pre-Columbian is moving really fast now.  As he corners us in the alley by the ballpark, I step in front of Betsy. With a fist the size of a Christmas ham, Kalakamul grabs me by the front of my coat and starts to lift me up off the ground. Dangling in mid-air, I hear the crack of a bat and the roar of the crowd from the ballpark. An instant later, a baseball flies out of the sky, ricochets off of the top of my head and hits Kalakamul right between the eyes. Kalakamul lets out a moan and collapses in a heap on the ground. God Bless Mighty Casey! He'd gotten his 3,000th hit! He'd ended the last game of the year in the bottom of the 16th inning with a walk-off homer, just seconds before midnight. Even before the cheers of the crowd die down, the clock in the church tower began to strike. Just as it strikes midnight, Kalakamul's body disappears in a puff of smoke. Then, for some strange reason, Betsy's pet rat explodes too, spraying bits of fur and gristle everywhere. Betsy walks over and looks up at me, her eyes wet and glistening. "Golly Betsy," I ask. " Do you suppose all that flim-flam about the end of the world and the sun not coming up tomorrow was true?" Betsy wipes some Kalakamul dust and rat bits off my lapel and gives me a kiss on the cheek. "Don't you worry your rock-hard head about that, Frankie; you've done a great job and you're gonna get a big reward. If you give me back all the cash I gave you, I'll quadruple it with two- thousand dollars worth of stock certificates." "Sounds good to me, doll," I say, handing her my money. "And after I cash these certificates tomorrow I'll come up to your suite and we'll celebrate with steak and lobster!" "Sure thing, Toots!" she says. Then she winks and walks away in her red dress, wiggling like a sack of cats headed for the river.                                                                                                                         --- Chapter 3 --- Well, Ol' Kalakamul was dead wrong. The next day was Tuesday, October 29, 1929 and the sun came up just like it always does. Nothing out of the ordinary happened at all, 'cept for maybe that little stock market crash. "Black Tuesday" I think they called it. I never saw Betsy again and the folks at the bank laughed when I tried to cash those stock certificates. I told them the story about Betsy, but they didn't believe me. "Not worth a plugged nickel" the Bank President said. I asked him whether he was talking about the stock certificates or Betsy. I'll never forget what he said, "Both," he said. "And remember, never get mixed up with a dame in a red dress."