If Tommy was back in town, he’d be needing lettuce. So my first stop was the shop of Manny the parrot.<\/p>\n
I could tell right off that Manny wasn’t too glad to see me. If a parrot could go pale, he would’ve turned about fifty shades of white.<\/p>\n
“Well if it isn’t the Smellephant. Sorry, I’m just closing up.”<\/p>\n
I got my trunk in the door just in time. “Not so fast Manny.” I took a quick glance around the shop, enough to tell me my hunch was right. “Looks like you’re a little low on lettuce today. Got a new customer?”<\/p>\n
“Look, I don’t want any trouble. You know I can’t talk.”<\/p>\n
“Waddya mean you can’t talk? You’re a parrot<\/i>.”<\/p>\n
“OK, you got me there. But I gotta watch what I say. I’m walking on egg shells here.”<\/p>\n
“You mean tortoise shells, don’t you?”<\/p>\n
“Hey, give me a break. Tommy’s not a guy you want to cross. Somebody could be listening.”<\/p>\n
“No chance of that,” I said, “I wasn’t followed. I know how to shake a tail.”<\/p>\n
“All due respect Smellephant, that’s not an image I want to think about.”<\/p>\n
“Whatever.” I was getting impatient. “You know I’m the only reason you’re not doing time in the coop right now.”<\/p>\n
“Hey, I’m no chicken. I’ll talk, but nobody can find out where you got this from. We got a deal?”<\/p>\n
“Yeah,” I said, “We got a deal.”<\/p>\n
Finally he started to sing. And I could tell right away he was gonna name names. Only he got about ten seconds into it when a shot rang out. Got Manny right between the eyes.<\/p>\n
Just then somebody came through the door. I spun around, my trunk automatically reaching for the gun in the pocket of my trench coat. Then I saw who it was. “Hey Chief,” I said.<\/p>\n
“Hey Smellephant.” The police chief looked down at the lifeless body at our feet. “We got a call down at the station there was trouble at Manny’s shop. Thought I’d check on it personally.” He looked at me, and then he looked at my gun.<\/p>\n
“It’s not how it looks.”<\/p>\n
“It looks,” he said, “like trouble was the right word.” He gave me a hard look. “Trouble just seems to follow you around, doesn’t it?”<\/p>\n
I knew better than to argue. So I figured the best thing to do was cut right to the chase. “Chief, Tommy’s back in town.”<\/p>\n
“Damn,” he said. “Well, I’ll need to call this in. Don’t leave town for the next few days.”<\/p>\n
“You really think I had something to do with this?”<\/p>\n
The Chief shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. I know a dead parrot when I see one, and I’m looking at one right now.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If Tommy was back in town, he’d be needing lettuce. So my first stop was the shop of Manny the parrot. I could tell right off that Manny wasn’t too glad to see me. If a parrot could go pale, he would’ve turned about fifty shades of white. “Well if it isn’t the Smellephant. Sorry, … Continue reading “A Nose for Danger, part 2”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9749"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9749"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9754,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9749\/revisions\/9754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}