The Crazy Mixed-Up Corpse

by Michael Avallone

  “Your crazy mixed-up corpse has kept me busy long enough, Michael.” I stepped inside the cab. “I’ve got a date with a live body for a change. A real live body.”

  “You leave Texas and that treasure to the Department, Ed,” he warned me. “We’ll check on it. Where the hell do you think you’re going now?”

  “Not to Texas. I told you I’ve got a date.”

  Monks grudgingly smiled, his face wrinkling into a million creases.

  “She got a friend?”

  “Sure,” I said, giving the impatient cabbie an address. “Me.”

  “Well – what’s her name? Maybe I know her.”

  I had one last thought for him before taking off.

  “I doubt that an old married man like you ever says as much as hello to another woman. But if you must know, her name is Penny Darnell. And she’s from nowhere near or around the state of Texas. This Penny’s from heaven.”

  “Ouch,” he winced and stepped back.

  I was still laughing when the cab shot away from the kerb.

  THE END