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Volume 3, Issue 17
August 16 - August 29, 2001
MANHUNT
@
BENNY'S RESTAURANTE Y CANTINA
301 E. 7th Ave., 303-894-0788
Bobby is gone. The words rang through my head as I sat in shock.
I couldn't believe the star columnist had just up and disappeared; no review, no
word, no trace. The publisher explained
the situation again with a solemn expression,
in a slow monotone: "Bobby is
gone. We don't know where he is. He
isn't answering his cell or home phone.
There's no Tattooed Food Critic for the
Dining Guide."
On the exterior, I'm sure he only saw the
skinny, mild-mannered editor that shows
up every day for work at 6 am and toils
away in his three-piece suit until 8 pm,
when he goes home with proofs shoved in
his Italian leather briefcase. But that's
only the surface of me, the me I let the
office see. Underneath is an ex-Green
Beret who has seen horrors unimaginable
to the average entertainment journalist.
And every pint of my Green Beret blood
was pumping. I knew what I had to do.
I took an immediate leave of absence,
peddling the lame excuse that my sister
needed help moving to Phoenix. They
bought it. Nobody even questioned why
anyone in their right mind would move to
Arizona in August. With a three-day
reprieve granted in the heat of deadline
week, I called my old friend from Special
Ops in Washington, Colonel Grimm.
"Any enemies or suspect political connections?"
Grimm inquired once I briefed
him on the emergency.
"He's grumbled in a paranoid way about
enemies, but nothing concrete. All I have
is a scrawled note we found in his trash
can: 'Sigruts' it says, in blood."
"Sigruts?"
"We thought at first it might be code for
'cigarettes' since he just quit smoking.
Then an old friend in the LAPD mentioned
a small town south of the border
called Sigrettez. He might be there.
Bobby was never much of a speller."
"Hm," Grimm grunted. "Assemble the
old team and go after him. Terminate enemies
with extreme prejudice."
And so it was that I got back together
with Juan Barracuda, John "Mad Dog"
Murdoch, and Jean-Luc "Frenchy"
Lessoir. We piled in Barracuda's hum-vee
and drove south. It wasn't long before I
spotted a hangout notorious for trapping
diners with large appetites: Benny's.
Word on the street was that Benny held
big eaters in a locked room in the back,
where he fed them delicious burritos,
tacos, rellenos, and tortilla chips until
they were too weak to do anything but
siesta and turn over top secret food critic
information.
Mad Dog ran point with his Colt Python
drawn. Frenchy and Barracuda scouted
the exterior for snipers. I served back-up,
holding my finger to the trigger of my
loaded Heckler & Koch PSP 9mm pistol.
All was clear. The team waved me in.
We were seated right away. Mad Dog
held the host's eye contact for three seconds.
It was his Commie test: if a man
could stand his gaze for three seconds
without squinting, he wasn't a Commie.
Just one reason we called him Mad Dog.
We all dropped into our seats except
Frenchy, who went to scout the bathrooms.
Barracuda rigged up a small listening
device with a straw and one of the comment
cards on the table. He wanted to listen
to the conversations of the numerous
diners around us, just in case a mole
dropped a clue. The waitress approached
our table. She passed Mad Dog's
Commie test, so we ordered a pitcher of
sangria, tacos al carbon (steak), and three
plates of something called Combination
H (beef taco, relleno, smothered bean
burrito). Mad Dog laughed.
'Combination H' reminded him of a
nerve gas that gave him the shits in 'Nam.
Frenchy returned. "Bathroom eez clean.
No bugs." People nearby might have
assumed Frenchy meant the restroom was
merely sanitary (which it was), but we
knew what he was really saying.
The food came quickly, right on the heels
of our drinks. This made Barracuda nervous; had the staff intuited our hurried
nature?; Were they on to our mission? No,
it turned out everyone's food was served
right away, without the usual interminable
wait found at other area restaurants.
Just one reason Benny's had the
reputation for trapping eaters.
The meals were fantastic and filling. We
were soon ordering another pitcher of
sangria and baskets of sopapillas. Even
Barracuda let down his guard. Before
long, we were all leaning back in our
chairs, watching the pre-season football
game and loosening our belts. It was time
for a siesta.
Mad Dog snapped us out of it. When we
didn't respond to his barked orders, he
decided to take matters a step further, and
yanked me out of my chair by the collar.
Then he slammed me against the wall.
"Wake up, man! Don't forget our mission!
If we don't find Bobby and get him
back to Go-Go, you'll be printing some
other Communist fancy-pants food critic
like all the other Red freedom-hating rags
in this rat-infested metropolis!"
He was right. We all sat at attention while
we paid the bill. Clearly Bobby wasn't
here, but Benny's had lived up to its reputation.
The place was dangerously hard
to get out of ... even an old Green Beret
like myself wasn't guaranteed to make it
out alive.
On the way out, a bus boy failed Mad
Dog's eye contact test. He was immediately
slammed against the wall, just like I
had been. We showed him the scrap of
paper -- "Sigruts" -- and threatened to
beat a confession out of him. He choked,
"It's backwards. It says 'Sturgis' ... that's
where the bigs have planned a rendezvous."
Clever bastards. Who'd have suspected
Sturgis as a Commie headquarters? Just
before we climbed back in the vehicle, I
wired the Go-Go office: "NO BOBBY
STOP GOING TO STURGIS STOP
RUN ISSUE WITHOUT ME STOP." I
could only hope it wasn't too late. A
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