Sluice Tundra, Private Eye In: The Case of the Murdered Party (Part Two)

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(In our last installment, Sluice Tundra, Private Eye, was pulled out of retirement by a mysterious woman and hired to find out who killed the Republican Party.)

I decided to start right at the top, with the chairman. I found him in his office, looking as nervous as a cat at the Westminster Dog Show.

“Thanks for seeing me, Mr. Prius,” I said.

His expression changed from anxious to annoyed.

“It’s Priebus,” he said. “Reince Priebus.”

“Right,” I said. “So tell me, Raunch …”

“Reince,” he corrected me.

“OK, Rinse. I was seeing if you knew anything about who might have killed your party.”

“Killed?” he said, sweat breaking on his brow. “It’s not dead.” He took out a hankie and wiped his face. “It’s fine. Everything’s going to be fine. Really.” His right eye started to twitch. “We’re going to unite behind the nominee. Mr. … Mr. …”

“Trump,” I said.

He visibly flinched. “Yeah. Him.”

I could tell I was getting nowhere with this guy. He was deeper in denial than a Sanders supporter looking at the delegate count. “You have a nice day, Mr. Peebles.”

He stopped shaking and looked at me with narrowed eyes. “Are you doing that on purpose, or are you just an idiot?” he said.

“You’ll never know,” I said.

Next, I decided to pay a visit to the governor. He was seated on the veranda at his palatial Massachusetts mansion. I was startled to see a short, balding guy standing behind him, running a comb through his perfect hair.

“William Kristol?” I said. “What are you doing here?”

Kristol gave me a contemptuous look and whispered something in the governor’s ear.

“Bill here is talking to me about running as a protest candidate,” the governor said.

“You know he’s always wrong, don’t you?” I said. “I mean, like, always.”

Kristol whispered again. “He says you’re one of the takers. The 47 percent. Why should I talk to you when you’ll never vote for me anyway?”

“Whatever,” I said. “If you want to run, all I can say is what another guy said to you last time.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“Please proceed, governor.”

“Get out!” he bellowed. I did.

Next, I headed down to Texas to talk to The Cowboy. I found him hard at work on his ranch, engaged in his favorite pastime: clearing brush.

“Wow,” I said. “I would have thought you’d have cleared away all the brush after this many years.”

“No problemo, amigo,” he said. “I have new brush trucked in every night.”

“Amazing. So, what do you know about who might have killed the Republican Party?”

He stopped clearing for a moment and eyed me suspiciously. “That sounds like the kind of traitoristical talk that risks emboldenating our enemies.”

“What?”

“Remember, muchacho, you’re either with us or with the terrorists. Hey, would you like to see one of my paintings? I have a new self-portrait of me in the bathtub.”

“Um … thanks, but no thanks.”

I got out of there as quickly as I could. I felt like I was running out of options. I had one more visit to make.

Suddenly, everything clicked into place. I had the answer. I dialed the woman who’d hired me, who I knew only as “dollface,” “kitten” or “precious” — at least until now. I got her voice mail.

“Meet me at my old office,” I said. “I have the answer.”

She arrived just as I was pulling the dust covers off the furniture. “Take a seat, angel,” I said. “Or should I call you … Gov. Palin?”

She hesitated, then pulled the mask off, revealing the face of the half-term governor of Alaska. “Guess you think you’re pretty smart, doncha, big fella?” she sneered. “Well, smart don’t feed the bulldog there sonny, not in the real America where we’re gun-clingin’, Bible-slingin’…”

“Can it, sister,” I said. “I know you did it. But you didn’t do it alone.”

She looked confused. Maybe she always looked like that. “I didn’t?”

“No. All of you did. You pretended to be pushing low taxes and limited government, but all you were really selling was fear. Fear and resentment. Fear of Scary Brown People, and resentment of anyone you could convince people was getting something they weren’t. You also promised people things you couldn’t deliver. You were going to ‘deport all the illegals’ and repeal ‘every word of Obamacare.’ But you couldn’t. And after a while, someone came along who did fear and resentment better than anyone. You all created this monster, and now he’s going to eat your party alive while he takes it over a cliff.”

“Wow,” Palin said. “I thought I was bad about mixing metaphors.”

I got up and showed her to the door.

“I got a million of ’em, toots. Now scram.”

If I hurried, I could still make the Early Bird Special at the Retirement Home for Private Eyes.

Sluice Tundra, Private Eye In: The Case of the Murdered Party (Part One)

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It was a bright and sunny day at the Home for Retired Private Eyes. The smell of newly mown grass filled the air, and the birds were singing.

I hated it.

I’d spent my professional life as an honest gumshoe, plying my trade in the dark alleys of the mean streets, where life was cheap, the dames were cheaper, and hot lead waited for a man around every corner. …

“Mr. Tundra?”

It was the nurse. She was shaking me by the shoulder. I squinted up at her. “That’s me, dollface. Sluice Tundra, Private Eye. An honest gumshoe, working …”

“Yes, sir. Mean streets, hot lead. You were muttering it to yourself again. But you need to wake up. There’s someone here to see you.”

“Who is it?”

“I don’t know. But they say it’s about a case.”

“A case!? I’ll be right there!”

The woman standing in the dayroom had the kind of face and figure that made more promises than a hedge fund prospectus, but I knew that any sucker who took her up on it would soon be going to Capitol Hill for a bailout. Half of me knew I needed to be careful, but the other half was hungry for some action. A private eye can only live so long on prune juice and a weekly gin rummy game in the Multi-Purpose Room.

“What can I do for you, sweetheart?” I said. “Other than the obvious.”

She gave me a tolerant smile and dodged my grasping hands as deftly as Hope Solo shaking off a defender in the World Cup. “Mr. Tundra,” she said, “Your country needs you.”

“The last time I heard that, sugar-lips, I ended up spending two years scraping garbage cans on an Army base in Killeen, Texas. You’ll have to do better than that.”

“Well, how about …”

She pulled out an alligator hide checkbook and named a figure with a lot of zeroes in it. It got my attention.

“You have my attention,” I said. I even stopped trying to grab her.

She nodded, tore the check out of the book and handed it to me. “I need you to solve a killing.”

I took the check and stuffed it in the pocket of my beat-up trench coat. “You came to the right place, angel-britches,” I said. “Sluice Tundra’s the name, murder’s my game. Who’s the stiff?”

She sighed and tears sprang to her eyes. “The Republican Party.”

Suddenly, there was a dramatic, crashing organ chord. The girl jumped a foot in the air. “What the heck was that!?”

“Oh,” I said. “That’s just Doris. She gets a couple of early afternoon cocktails in her and passes out on the keyboard of her Wurlitzer. Pay her no mind.” I tightened the belt on my trench coat. “So, are you sure it’s dead?”

She sniffled. “It might as well be. That awful man Trump is going to be the nominee. He’s going to kill it. Just kill it, I know.” The sniffles turned into a wail of despair. “How could this happen?” she sobbed as she fell into my arms.

Now this was more like the old days. “Don’t worry, punkin,” I soothed. “I’m on it.”

She looked up at me, her eyes brimming with hope along with the tears. “Really? You’ll take the case?”

“How could I turn you down, precious?” I said. “I’ll start interviewing suspects right away. I’ve got some ideas.”

“Who?”

“The Governor. The Other Governor. The Cowboy. Maybe even that guy who shoots his buddies in the face.”

“Oh, Mr. Tundra,” she said earnestly. “Do be careful.”

“I don’t need to be careful,” I said. “And you can call me Sluice.”

“OK. Sluice?”

“Yes, kitten?”

“If you don’t remove your hand from where it is, I’m going to break it off. And if you call me one of those stupid pet names again, you’ll be eating your next meal through a straw. Now, don’t you have work to do?”

I sighed and stepped back. Yep, just like the old days. “Yes, ma’am.”

TO BE CONTINUED …

Sluice Tundra, Private Eye In: The Bubble People

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I stood in the window of my office, looking down on a street that was as dark as my mood and as empty as my bank account. From somewhere far off, I heard the sound of a lonely saxophone. I felt a rush of melancholy before I realized it was my ringtone.

I fumbled the cheap cellphone out of my pocket. “Sluice Tundra, private eye,” I said.

“Mr. Tundra?” a female voice said.

“That’s what my mom calls me,” I replied.

The woman sounded confused. “She calls you ‘Mr. Tundra?’”

“We’re not a close family,” I said. “What can I do for you?”

“Oh, Mr. Tundra, please come quickly,” she said.

“What seems to be the matter, Miss …”

“Winger,” she said. “And it’s ‘Mrs.’ It’s about my husband. But I can’t talk about it over the phone.” She gave me an address in a neighborhood that was so upscale that even the trash collectors wore Dolce & Gabbana.

When I got there, she was waiting at the door, dressed in a low-cut dress that was as flimsy as the rationale for restrictive voter ID laws. She led me into a luxurious living room.

The guy seated on the couch looked to be in his early 60s. He was a big man, with a disgruntled expression on a red face that looked as though it had never been gruntled. But that wasn’t the strangest thing about him.

“Mrs. Winger,” I said, “does your husband have some sort of immune disorder?” She just shook her head, so I added, “Then maybe you can explain why he’s inside a bubble.”

“I don’t know!” she cried. “It started last summer. And it’s getting worse.”

“I think you’ve got the wrong guy, sister,” I said. “I’m a private eye, not a doctor. I’m not sure what I can do to help.”

“I talked to several doctors. They don’t know what’s wrong. I just need to know who did this to him.”

I tapped on the bubble. It was hard, like plastic. I leaned over. “Can you hear me in there?” I shouted. It was then I spotted the “Romney 2012” pin on his lapel. I had a feeling I knew what this was about. “Mr. Winger,” I yelled. “You know that Romney lost, right?”

“Yeah,” he replied, his face getting even redder. “But only because the takers outnumber the makers! Obama voters just want people to give them stuff!”

“How do you feel about the liberals opposing the president’s proposed intervention in Syria?”

“What opposition? The left are a bunch of hypocrites for being silent about it! Those dirty leftists won’t say anything bad about Obama! Ever!”

“Hmmm,” I said. I turned to his wife. “What does your husband watch on TV?”

“Why, Fox News, of course,” she replied. “Like everyone else. We have it on all the time.”

“And does he listen to the radio?”

“Only conservative talk radio,” she said proudly, adding, “like everyone else.”

I straightened up. “Mrs. Winger, your husband is trapped in the Conservative Bubble. He only watches or listens to things that confirm what he already believes, even if those beliefs have squat-all to do with reality. Like this idea that leftists aren’t speaking up against war in Syria. A lot of them are. Michael Moore, Juan Cole, Markos Moulitsas …”

“Who?”

“See, that’s a sign of being a Bubble Person,” I said. “You complain a lot about what ‘leftists’ say or do, but you really don’t know of any. If you did, you’d know that there’s a lot of arguing on the left about Syria, and a lot of the people arguing oppose intervention.”

“Well, why aren’t the liberal media reporting that, then?” she demanded. “And why are Barack Obama and John Kerry for war in Syria?”

“Maybe because the media aren’t really liberal,” I said. “They never saw a Middle East war they didn’t cheerlead. At least until it goes bad, which it usually does. As for Secretary Kerry and President Obama? On their most ‘leftist’ day, they’re moderates. But you won’t hear that inside the Fox News/talk radio bubble.”

“Well,” she said, her own face beginning to take on the same red shade as her husband’s. “I can see you’re just another one of those people who’ve drunk the Obama Kool-Aid.” As she spoke, the air around her began to shimmer. She was developing a bubble of her own.

“Sorry, lady,” I said. “You asked who did this to him? He did. And now you’re doing it to yourself. There’s nothing I can do for you. I’ll send you a bill for my time.”

I left, headed back to the mean streets, knowing I had as much chance of getting paid as a North Carolina teacher has of getting a pay raise. Some people you just can’t reach.

Sluice Tundra, Private Eye In: The Case of the Bothered Bird

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The street was clean, colorful, brightly lit. The doors were painted a vivid, friendly green, and cheerful red curtains hung in the windows. The place looked welcoming and warm, a neighborhood anyone would want to live in.

It gave me the creeps.

My name is Sluice Tundra. I'm a private eye. I usually make my living on meaner streets, where the only thing hotter than the dames is the lead that flies when the bad guys meet the badder guys, where the only thing darker than the night is the evil that lurks in every alleyway, where men's lives are often measured out in intervals shorter than this monologue.

But it wasn't the contrast between this street and the ones where I ply my usual trade that sent a shiver of warning up my backbone. It was the fact that the street, which you'd expect to be full of happy people doing happy things, was empty. I knew there were people behind those doors and windows, but no one moved. No one made a sound.

Something was seriously wrong on Sesame Street. And I was here to get to the bottom of it.

"Hey, buddy," a growly voice said behind me. I looked around.

The guy addressing me from the trash can was covered in green fur, with a bushy unibrow over wide, bulging eyes. He looked a lot like my brother-in-law from my first marriage. Or my sister-in-law from my second.

"My name's Tundra, not buddy," I said.

"What's your business here?" he demanded.

"My business is my business," I said. "And it's not with you."

"Awright," he said. "You had your chance to play nice."

I felt a sudden sharp pain in the back of my leg. I looked down. Another little furry guy, this one covered in what looked like crimson shag carpeting, was whacking the back of my leg with a lead pipe.

"Hey!" I snapped. "Cut that out!"

He ignored me, just kept waling away, as if he was trying to chop me down like a tree. I reached down and picked him up by the scruff of the neck.

"I said -" I began, before I realized my mistake. I'd raised him to head level. He nailed me right on the forehead, and everything went black.

I awoke on a hard concrete floor. As I sat up and rubbed my head, I noticed the guy who'd hit me a few feet away. But it was the figure next to him I'd come to see. Eight feet tall, covered with bright yellow feathers, and sporting an absurdly long beak.

"Big Bird, I presume," I said.

The little guy spoke first. "Elmo's really sorry, Mister," he said. "But Elmo can't be too careful."

"That's OK," I said. "Elmo was just doing his job." Dang, now he had me doing it.

"Sorry," Big Bird said. "But with you-know-who gunning for us, me in particular ... well, we're all a little jumpy."

"I get it," I said.

"Well, I don't," said the bird. "What did I ever do to him? We take up less than one one-hundredth of 1 percent of the federal budget."

"He's trying to make an example of you," I said.

"Why?" he said bitterly. "To scare other puppets?"

"No," I said, "because he won't be specific about any other things he wants to cut, except ones that don't add up. He said he wants to save money by repealing Obamacare, but the Congressional Budget Office says that while that would reduce spending by $890 billion, it'd cut revenues by $1 trillion and increase the deficit.

"He says he wants to cut taxes, raise military spending, and maintain Medicare and Social Security at the current levels for people 55 and older. To do that, he'd have to cut all other government spending by at least 53 percent. On everything. Student loans, national parks, cancer research, food and drug inspection, environmental protection, small business loans, highways, the State Department ..."

I was running out of breath. When I recovered, I went on. "If he talks about the rest of the stuff he'll need to do to make his promises come true, he'd be about as popular as stomach flu. So he name-checks you."

"This doesn't make me feel any better," Big Bird said.

I shrugged. "Cheer up. The way this guy flip-flops, tomorrow he may be claiming he'll nominate you for secretary of education."

"So what can we do?"

"One, hope the president's on his game enough to try and pin you-know-who down on his claims. Two, get out the vote."

"We can't vote," he said. "We're Muppets."

"What, no photo ID?"

He shook his giant head. "You're really not from around here, are you?"

The Return of Sluice Tundra, Private Eye: The Case of the Missing Maverick

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The hinges creaked as I swung the office door open. It looked like my first order of business was going to be to find an oil can.

Actually, I thought, that was going to be the second order of business. I walked over to the desk, kicking up dust bunnies as I went, and opened the bottom drawer. There it was, faithfully awaiting my return, the private eye's best friend: a pint of Old Overshoe.

I uncapped the bottle and took a drink, wondering if age had improved the stuff. It hadn't. The rotgut whiskey still had a kick like an angry chorus girl with a black belt in karate.

It was good to be back.

There was a knock at the door.

Well, I thought, that didn't take long. I turned.

A young couple stood there, looking around nervously. They were young, well-dressed, and polite. I vowed not to hold it against them. At least if they were paying clients.

"Can I help you folks?" I asked.

"Are you Mr. Tundra?" the woman asked.

"That's me, toots," I answered. "Sluice Tundra, Private Eye. An honest gumshoe, out on the mean streets, where the lead is hot and the women are...are..." I stopped.

"Are what?" the guy said.

"Dang," I said. "It's been so long, I forgot the rest. Anyway, come on in. Pull up a chair and tell me how I can help."

"Thanks," the guy said, eyeing the client chairs that were covered in cobwebs. "We'll stand."

"Suit yourself," I said, plopping down in the chair behind the desk. They immediately vanished in the cloud of dust that puffed up. I really had been away a long time.

When we all stopped coughing, I wheezed, "So what's the trouble?"

"It's Senator McCain," the woman said. "Something's happened to him."

"And what's your interest in the case?"

They looked at each other. "We're moderates," the man said. "We were big fans of Senator McCain. But we don't recognize the guy that's running for president."

I sighed. I knew what kind of case this was going to be. "Let me guess," I said. "He's taking positions that are different from what he's said before."

"Well, yes. "

"For example, where he once said that detainees at Guantanamo Bay 'deserve to have some adjudication of their cases,' now he says the Supreme Court decision giving them the right to contest their imprisonment in the federal courts was 'the worst in the court's history.'"

"How did you -- "

I interrupted him. "Where McCain once said we were going to have to negotiate with Hamas because 'They're the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another,' now he says that Barack Obama's proposal to hold talks with the terrorist-supporting government of Iran shows 'naïveté and a lack of judgment.'"

"Exactly," the woman said.

"So you're wondering if maybe the straight-talking John McCain you voted for in the primaries might have been replaced by some sort of right-wing robot, or maybe an evil clone."

"Wow," the guy said. "you really are good, Mister Tundra."

"Let's just say I've been around this block a few times. Sorry, kid, but the guy you voted for has been at this a while. This is a guy who once said, 'I think that gay marriage should be allowed,' and then 'I do not believe that gay marriages should be legal,' and said both of them at the same campaign appearance. This is a guy who called the Confederate flag 'a symbol of racism and slavery' in South Carolina in 2000, then backpedaled so fast he left skidmarks."

"Are you saying he's a ... a flip-flopper?"

"If the shoe fits, kid."

"But he's a war hero!" The guy said. "He flew fighter planes!" His jaw tightened. "You can't criticize a war hero. You just hate the military."

"Not really," I said. "Look, I can hardly blame the guy. He's trying to get elected. To do so, he has to come up with a position that satisfies both ends of the Republican Party: the one that thinks the government should have limited power and a practical foreign policy, and the one that thinks government needs to be the all-powerful Big Daddy who keeps us safe from evil gays and Scary Brown People. Problem is, he can't do it. No one can. Not even a war hero."

"But if Senator McCain is making all these flip-flops, why isn't the press pointing it out?"

"Now there," I said, "is the real missing persons story."

"I guess you're right," the guy said. He turned to leave.

"Wait!" I called out. "What about my fee?"

He turned back. "There's no mystery," he said. "You said it yourself. No mystery, no case, no fee." He and the woman walked out.

"Dang," I said.

Clueless in Connecticut: From the Case Files of Sluice Tundra, Private Eye

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It was a hot August day in the city without dreams. I stood by my office window, trying to catch a breeze and sipping from my last cold can of Old Cambodian (the beer that made Phnom Penh Famous). The ceiling fan moved sluggishly, as if it were bogging down in the thick humid air. All it was really managing to do was move hot air around. Sort of like Bill O'Reilly, only less noisy and less annoying to watch.

I heard the office door open. I turned to see a short fellow in a suit standing there. He had a fringe of blonde hair around his balding dome that reminded me of a monk's haircut. When he spoke, it was in an unctuous whine that set my teeth on edge. "Mr. Tundra?"

"Hey, I said, "you look familiar."

"We met a few years ago," he said, "after the 2000 election."

"Sorry, pal," I said, "you've got the wrong gumshoe. I don't do politics. I'm Sluice Tundra, just an honest PI in a dishonest world.... "

"....trying to survive on the mean streets, where the women are fast and the bullets fly faster," he finished.

"OK. Maybe we have met," I said. Suddenly I recognized him. "Senator Lieberman," I said. "Good to see you again." I indicated the client chair across from my battered desk. "What can I do for you?"

He took a seat and pulled out a scented hankie as if to wipe his impressively broad forehead. Suddenly he burst into tears. "I don't know what happened!" He bawled. "First the vice-presidency was stolen from me, now this!"

I thought back to the headline on a newspaper I'd seen that morning. The paper had been hard to read because it had been covering a sleeping bum, but I got the gist. "Ah," I said. "Yeah. Sorry about your losing the Connecticut Democratic primary."

"I didn't lose it!" he snapped.

I'll say," I replied. "You didn't just lose it. You got your butt kicked by a guy no one had ever heard of. Jeez, what an embarrassment."

He stopped crying and glared at me. "Is this your idea of being helpful?" he said.

"Sorry."

"It was stolen, I tell you! Stolen! And I want you to find out who did it!"

"Here we go again," I muttered.

He didn't seem to hear me. "There's no way I could have lost!" he hissed. "I'm an 18-year veteran senator! A party leader! That Ned Lamont's just a county selectman! I had Joe-mentum, I tell you! And endorsements!"

"Like who?"

"Sean Hannity!" he said triumphantly. "He said I was a great guy! He said he'd send money to my campaign!"

"He did?"

"And Michelle Malkin! She likes me, too!"

"Why? Most Democrats make her foam at the mouth. And I mean that literally."

He calmed down a little. "She likes me because I believe the Iraq war's going great."

"Ah. So you're the one."

"I even got an endorsement from the College Republicans!" he said proudly. "They were going to come work for me!"

"Wait," I said. "I thought you said you were running in the Democratic primary."

"I was."

"So -- and I'm just speculating here -- you think maybe the reason Democratic primary voters rejected you is because they mistook you for a Republican? "

"But but I'm bipartisan!"

"Well, if trying to please people who call your fellow Democrats 'nuts' and 'traitors' and 'terrorist supporters' is what you call bipartisan, I guess that's true. I call it being a chump."

His face got red. "You can't call me that! I'm good friends with the president! He even kissed my cheek at the State of the Union address!"

"I think I'm beginning to see the problem," I said. "You checked Dubbya's approval ratings lately?"

I closed the notebook. "Case solved, senator. You ran as the Democrat the Republicans Love, while Republicans were kicking Democrats in the teeth every chance they got. You tied your fate to a president and a war that both took a huge dive in the polls."

"But but this will destroy the Democratic Party! It's been taken over by radicals and left-wing nuts!"

"So I hear. I mostly hear that from Republicans and right-wing talk show hosts. I'm sure they have the best interests of the Democrats at heart. Maybe if you didn't spend so much time worrying about whether the Republicans were going to say mean things about the Democrats, you might have done better."

I got up and walked to the door. "Here's another clue, senator. Read a paper sometime. Being against the war and wanting the troops to come home isn't a radical leftist position anymore. It's gone mainstream. And by the way, it's not just the war. I'd appreciate it if you'd convey that to Senator Clinton as well. You obviously were slow to get the message, but after this, maybe she will."

I opened the door and stood aside, showing him the way out.

He was beginning to turn purple. "I'll run as an Independent!" he sputtered. "You haven't heard the last of Joe Lieberman!"

"Unfortunately," I sighed, "That's probably true."

Sluice Tundra, Private Eye In: The Case of the Straw Man

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The phone rang. I rolled over and looked at the clock. 2 a.m. Who the heck would call at this time of night?

I picked up the phone.

“Mghpnbh?” I asked.

“Dusty,” a voice said. “It’s me.”

“Whdfggisme?”

“Your old friend. Sluice Tundra, private eye. An honest gumshoe, working the mean streets, walking by night, following the clues that lurk only in the shadows …”

“This better be good,” I interrupted him.

“It is, buddy,” he said. “I found the guy you’re looking for.”

I sat bolt upright in bed. “You mean …”

“No, not that guy, the other one.”

“You mean …”

“No, not him either.”

“You mean …”

“That’s the one,” he said.

“I’ll be right down,” I said.

Sluice’s office was on Mean Street, two blocks from the intersection with Lonely Avenue. It wasn’t a neighborhood I was used to. I’m willing to bet I was the first person on that street in a long time to show up in a bathrobe and bunny slippers. But hey, I was in a hurry. I mounted the creaky steps to Sluice’s office on the second floor and tapped on the door. At his mumbled “come in,” I entered his dingy office.

Sluice Tundra was slumped in a wooden armchair, his fedora pulled low over his eyes. His rumpled trench coat was wrapped around him like newspaper around a freshly purchased sea bass. He was holding a gun on another figure sitting in a chair a few feet away.

“This is the guy,” Tundra said in his familiar baritone slur.

“You mean ..?” I asked.

“Let’s not start that again!” he snapped.

I came closer.

“So,” I said, “After all this time, we meet at last. The Democrat who doesn’t want us to fight the War on Terror with every tool in our arsenal. The Democrat who’d rather give the terrorists cookies and therapy than destroy the threats to our nation. The Democrat who says if you’re Muslim, you can’t be free ….” I stopped.

“Sluice,” I said, “this guy is made of straw.”

“You ain’t exactly a model of stability yourself, there, pal,” the figure said. I jumped a few feet in the air.

“Look,” the straw man said. “I’m not going to run anywhere. Can I stand up?”

Tundra and I looked at each other. “Sure,” I said.

The straw man unfolded himself from the chair. He was dressed in old, cast-off clothing, packed tightly with what looked like pine needles. They jutted out here and there from the nooks and crannies of his clothing.

“Of course,” I said. “It all makes perfect sense now.”

“Mind explaining it to me?” Tundra said.

“A straw man,” I said, “is a dishonest debating technique. It’s used whenever someone can’t successfully address his opponent’s real position, so he claims the opponent said something completely different, usually something ridiculous, and attacks that.”

“I don’t get it,” Tundra said.

“OK,” I said. “Say, for example, you don’t have any problem with fighting terrorism, you just want the government, particularly the president, to obey the law while they do it.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Tundra said.

“Of course,” I replied. “Anyone could agree with that. But if someone didn’t like you criticizing the president, he’d say, for instance, that instead of what you really said, you were advocating that we not fight terrorists at all. That’s a straw man.”

“That’s idiotic,” Tundra protested.

“Hey!” the straw man said.

“No offense,” Tundra said.

“I see it clearly now,” I told the straw man. “You’re a monster, created in the minds of men. The living embodiment of a warped fantasy.”

“I am the Republicans’ words made flesh,” he agreed.

“Straw,” I corrected.

“Whatever.”

“So you really believe we should surrender to terrorism?”

“Yup.”

“You’d like to see us all living under Islamic Law?”

“You got it.”

“But you don’t exist,” Tundra said.

“Neither do you,” the straw man pointed out.

“I’ve heard enough,” Tundra said. He whipped out his trusty Zippo lighter. “How about a little fire, scarecrow?” he sneered.

The straw man screamed. He made as if to run out the door, but when Tundra moved to block his path, he faked left, the right, then bolted for the open window. He dove through it headfirst. Tundra and I ran to the window, but it was too late. The straw man had landed on the pavement below. But as we watched in amazement, he staggered to his feet and ran off into the night.

“There was so little substance to him,” I said, “that he must have made a soft landing.”

“He got away, then,” Tundra said dejectedly.

“He did,” I said. I looked down the darkened alley where the straw man had disappeared. “But it’s an election year. I have the feeling we’ll see him again.”

The End?

Sluice Tundra: The Case of the Missing President

Latest Newspaper Column . For those of you unfamiliar with my hardboiled sleuth Sluice Tundra, other columns featuring him are available here, here, and here.

Outside the window, a heavy rain was falling. I took another sip from the bottle of Old Overshoe I keep in my desk for medicinal purposes and looked out the window, watching the rain.

There was a knock at the door. “Come in,” I called out.

There were three of them, dressed in suits and ties. They were classier than the usual run of client that came through my door. Older, better dressed. “Are you Mr. Tundra?” one of them asked. He looked to be the oldest.

“Could be,” I said, “depending on who wants to know.”

“We’re clients,” the old guy said. “Paying ones.”

“Then I’m Sluice Tundra, Private Eye,” I replied quickly. “An honest gumshoe, out there on the mean streets, where the hot lead flies and justice is dispensed at the end of a fist …” I trailed off. They were looking at me expectantly. “Yes?” the old guy said.

“Sorry,” I said sheepishly. “Most people don’t let me get that far. I don’t really have an ending to it.”

“Yes. Well.” The old guy said, “My friends and I have a job for you. We want you to find out what happened to this man.” He placed a photograph face up on my battered desktop. I picked up the photo and wiped the batter off.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “This is George W. Bush.”

“That’s right.”

“The president of the United States.”

“Exactly.”

“Well … have you looked in the White House?”

“Mr. Tundra,” the old guy said heavily, “that man in the White House is not the man we voted for.”

“What do you mean?”

“We voted for a man who would be a strong and decisive leader in times of crisis. We voted for the man who we thought would keep us safer. The man in the White House dithered around for days on his vacation, eating cake with John McCain, pushing his Medicare plan, and playing a guitar some country singer gave him, all while a massive hurricane trashed the Southern U.S. The man we voted for was honest and forthright. This man in the White House let his people claim that the delayed disaster response was because the governor of Louisiana never asked for help until it was too late.”

“Which as it turns out,” I said helpfully, “was a total lie, according to the Congressional Research Service.”

The old guy didn’t seem to hear me. “The man we voted for,” he went on, “was going to be a wartime president who would lead us to victory over terrorism. The man in the White House has us bogged down in a seemingly endless operation that keeps producing more casualties and creating more terrorists.

“We voted for a man who had a clear vision. The man in the White House keeps telling us to ‘stay the course,’ but he won’t tell us what the course is, or when we can say we’ve arrived. We voted for a Republican, because the Republicans were the party of fiscal responsibility. The man in the White House spends money like a drunken sailor in a Bangkok brothel and keeps running up huge deficits while cutting taxes.” He slammed his hand down on the desk. “This can only mean one thing.”

“You were duped by the most shameless con man since P.T. Barnum?”

“No. The man claiming to be the president of the United States is not the man we voted for. Somewhere after the re-election, he was replaced by an imposter.”

“Sorry, pops,” I said. I turned back to the window and took another long drink of whiskey. “I can’t help you. Some of us tried to tell you all through the last election that the Emperor George had no clothes, that he was a mean-spirited hack whose only real agenda was creating power for himself and his party. The guy sitting in the White House is exactly the guy you voted for, because you thought it was funny to wear fake purple band-aids to mock John Kerry for not being wounded badly enough in Vietnam.”

I stopped. The three men couldn’t hear me. They had put their hands over their ears and were chanting, “Liberal. Jane Fonda. Michael Moore. Liberal. Jane Fonda. Michael Moore.” As one, they turned and began marching out. I sighed and turned back to the window. After a moment, however, I heard the door open again. It was the youngest of the three guys who had just left.

“So…” he said hesitantly, “what can we do?”

I shrugged. “There’s an election next year,” I said. “You can elect people who’ll stand up to him, who won’t rubber stamp everything just because it’s demanded by King George.”

He thought about that for a moment, then his face brightened. “Thanks!” he said.

“No thanks necessary,” I said, “I’m just Sluice Tundra, an honest gumshoe, out here on the…”

But he had already left. It was just as well. Some day, I’m really going to have to figure out an end to that bit.