Norm Nowrecki woke up with a start and bitchslapped his squalling Motorola off of the Jatoba nightstand and into the relentless darkness of the shipping container that had served as his apartment for the last six months.
He heard a tinny voice out in the blackness and crawled towards it on all fours.
"Tage Frid, Tage Frid!", peeped out the disembodied presence connected to the other end of the cellular connection.
"Tage Frid!", hollered Nowrecki. "Talk louder, I can't find the phone!"
"Strombolis, it's the Strombolis!", came the muffled cry from the duct tape covered cell phone speaker (Norm had punched holes through the duct tape but they didn't help all that much).
Lurching at the source of the sound coming out of the murk and gloom, Norm Nowrecki finally wrapped his sweating paws around the fractured phone.
"WTF are you talking about Strombolis for? This line is for emergencies only, not freaking food orders!"
Norm tried to calm himself, wondering how a Stromboli joint could have gotten hold of the emergency phone number, let alone the "Tage Frid" password.
"The Strombolis rigged the election and they're going to take over the Wreck! You have to help us!"
Nowrecki flicked what he hoped was not what he thought it probably was from his leg and tried to concentrate. The only person who had the emergency number and knew the "Tage Frid" password was the leader to the Wreck.Norm Cabal. Why would he be calling him in the middle of the night to order Strombolis? Had the man been into the sacred Everclear, reserved for the priest class of Shellackians? Had he reverted to his forsworn habit of sniffing Polyurinestain fumes? Brain aneurysm?
Norm decided on a subtle approach.
"Who the f*ck is this?"
His ear fixed firmly to the ancient Motorola, Norm took in what the Voice was trying to explain to him.
It wasn't pretty.
When the Voice was done describing the situation, Nowrecki offered some comforting words.
"You'll wire the money to the usual place?"
It was agreed. The money would be wired to Nowrecki's numbers account at the check-cashing place down the street from Norm's shipping-container home.
Norm thought over the name of the woman that the Voice had described as initiating the Wreck.Norm takeover. His Scary Sharp mind converted it easily into its obvious anagrammatic form:
"SHELLAC NEW US"
"That sonofabitch.", breathed Norm Nowrecki. "He's back with that Shellac Selling Troll again - I thought that O'Deen had gotten rid of him forever"
Norm sat and stared into the Stygian fetidness of his shipping container for a bit, finally sighing to the uncomprehending night:
"Nothing is forever, not on Wreck.Norm it ain't".
Nowrecki punched in the number of his travel agent. He was off to research election fraud at the best of all possible places for such toil - the Banana Republic of Florida.
(Next time - The Fruits Of Norm Nowrecki's Research And Why It's Important To Note That news.groups Is An Anagram Of "WE PONG RUSS")
Regards, Tom.
"People funny. Life a funny thing." Sonny Liston
Thomas J.Watson - Cabinetmaker (ret.) tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (real email)