"Your order sir?" "Hmm?" The waitress blew a bubble with her gum, rolled her eyes and repeated impatiently, "your order?" Captain Panic had been lost in thought. The waitress's coffee-stained apron had brought him back to one of his more painful memories. It was the day before his twelfth birthday. He was eagerly waiting for his presents, knowing very well that he was going to get the shoe polishing kit he'd always wanted. That day, when his step-father got home from work, he accidentally knocked over his bicycle which had been standing at the side of the driveway. It fell sideways onto the lawn, and the right handle got dirty. "I'll have pancakes and a chamomile tea, please," he requested. "Eee," said Stealth Monkey. "Coffee with that?" she asked, but Stealth Monkey just shook his head. She nodded and scampered off to the kitchen. "What about this case, huh?" asked the Captain, but Stealth Monkey was lost in thought. A fallen bicycle that he'd seen on the way in brought him back to one of his more painful memories. While doing time at the local Zoo as a child in an outdoor, shelterless monkey pen, there was a rain storm that last three weeks. Al he'd had to cover himself with was a coffee-stained tablecloth. For weeks he shivered in the cold rain. Finally one day, he found a bike and made his escape. "Egad!" cried the Captain while stirring his tea, "I think I've got this case solved!" "Eee?" The case he was talking about was a tough cookie of a case, a case that had had them stumped for well over an hour. The perp, or perps, had been going around to all the local laundromats and replacing peoples' articles of clothing with wooden ones. The fakes were good, but after a couple of months, people started to sense that something was amiss. A call was placed by the mayor, and Captain Panic and Stealth Monkey were on the case before you could say "splinters". Without saying another word, they paid for their meals, grabbed some complimentary mints and ran out to the car. Ten minutes later they pulled up in front of Larry's Luscious Logging, the local lumber mill, and ran inside. "Where's Larry?" demanded the Cap, his eyes darting around the room. They settled on a plaid jacketed, six-foot-six, bearded monstrosity of a man. "Are you Larry?" he asked, instantly suspicious. The man quietly shook his head and pointed to the clown in the corner. "Eee," said Stealth Monkey disapprovingly. "I agree," said the Captain, but then the clown spoke up. "I'm Larry," he croaked. He cleared his throat. The Captain turned this over in his head, but he couldn't budge it. He shrugged. "Well Larry, you're responsible for the Laundromat Wooden Clothing Replacement Scam, aren't you?" "Yeah," sighed Larry, "I was just trying to drum up business, it's been slow around here, yknow?" "Well you're gonna have to stop it." "All right." "Good. Wanna go get a beer?" "Sure, just let me go get my tricycle." Tricycle. The very word brought Captain Panic back to his childhood, when a trip to Ireland with his parents resulted in temporary deafness in his right ear and a debilitating fear of plastic coated playing cards. On the flight home, the stewardess gave him extra peanuts and a free Pepsi. END

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