"Lodorus!"

I snapped out of my day-dream -- hey, it had been a slow day at work -- and tried to locate the voice. Right shoulder, no. Left shoulder, no.

"Over here!"

I looked up so fast both the chair and I nearly toppled backward. Frankie Chan was tapping his fingers impatiently against the rail of the staircase leading to the second floor.

"Yeah?" I corrected my position to face him comfortably.

"Need your help."

"Need your help" is one of the phrases a superhero hears most frequently, by the way. Others include "oh" followed by various expletives (or religious references) and "nice spandex."

"Someone's been drinking my condensed milk," he complained as we climbed up.

"Your what?"

"Condensed milk," he repeated impatiently. Come to think of it, rarely did I encounter the patient Frankie Chan.

"Sweetened condensed milk?"

He looked at me. "What difference does that make? Yes, sweetened."

I shrugged. "Well, get a new can. Sweetened condensed milk is everywhere. Had you said salty condensed milk, that would've been tough."

Having clearly muttered a "whatever, Superhero" in his mind, he ignored me for the rest of our five-second journey. At the end of it, I found ourselves standing in his cubicle.

"You keep your sweetened condensed milk in your cubicle?" I made an attempt at locating the precious thing.

"Huh? Of course not. Anyway, here's what I need your help with." Gone was my missing sweetened condensed milk case, which would've made an interesting change from the usual "I lost my cat" routine.

Frankie lifted a bottle. It was a clear green bottle with an "Ink" label and looked empty. "Whoa, someone's been drinking your ink, too?"

Another "whatever, Superhero" flashed and Frankie said (by his standards) almost patiently, "It's invisible ink."

"I see." Which I did not. It was invisible, after all. "What about it?"

"Someone's been using it." Well, I thought, not far off the mark, was I? "And I think I know who."

"Okay. Who?"

"That's the problem, you see. I have no proof. And without proof I can't go around accusing people, can I? So I won't say who it is until you find me something concrete."

"But you're my client. We're covered by the attorney-client privilege. Well, sort of."

He shook his head decisively. "No. I'm not telling you. You find out for yourself, I don't want to cloud your judgment."

Something felt wrong to me about this logic but I let it go. I grabbed a chair from the next cubicle, which was vacant, and sat down. Frankie took his place and gestured to me to get closer. "You don't have a super-hearing power, do you?" I shook my head. "Then closer, please."

"Before you go on, I'm curious about something and it's killing me. If the ink is invisible, how do you tell when it's time to refill?"

Frankie, seemingly past the "whatever, Superhero" phase by then, sighed and pointed out, as patiently as a Frankie Chan could, that, "the ink is not invisible, what you write with it is."

But of course. Silly me.

***

I told Frankie Chan that the Case of the Missing Invisible Ink would have to wait until I had time later that day. It was four in the afternoon, my time to knock off. The ever effective government of this country -- under the Jerusalem Convention, signed years before by representatives of superheroes the world over (or so they claimed) and world leaders, superheroes have to observe and obey the laws of the countries where they are residents (the technical terms are so much more complicated than that, of course, involving phrases such as "shall include, but are not limited to" and "shall not be obligated hereunder") -- has stipulated that, in the interest of general public, men and women that possess super powers bla bla bla, are exempted from the 40-working-hour rule while continuing to enjoy the same benefits as those of do not. Simply put, people like yours truly spend six hours (maximum) at their day jobs, after which they are to serve people in need of help.

It was my turn today to man the Unbelievable Special Beings' headquarters. By five, I was in the Operation Room, seated next to Cammy Cross AKA Shadowmaker. We take turns in teams of two to (in the local lingo) hold the fort for a four-hour shift, which means receiving calls, assigning tasks to other superheroes on call, and if necessary acting on emergency cases ourselves. I had no complaints having to spend a few hours with her. Cammy was easy to look at; fairly sexy -- though not quite the American comic sexy, or Halle Berry sexy for that matter (who is, anyway?) -- with some healthy fashion sense. She was twenty eight and a single mom with a 2-year-old daughter. Now, that is what I would call a superhero. A day job and a volunteer work (you think we get paid being Unbelievable Special Beings?) to go with a child and no partner, and yet she was still able to find time to shop.

I was studying Shadowmaker's pointy leather shoes -- no doubt, the result of her latest shopping quest -- and trying to guess how much she had paid for them. "Mmm, I would say, three hundred?"

Cammy laughed. "Boy, you're really terrible at this, aren't you? I paid eighty only. It was a hundred, but I used my charm to get a discount." She lifted her right foot slightly. "Good buy, don't you think?"

To me, eighty bucks for a pair of shoes you would not wear beyond three months hardly constituted a good buy. But I knew better, of course, and nodded instead. They say, it's the process that excites them, not the end products.

She yawned. "Pardon me, you know I enjoy your company. It's been a long day. And a long night yesterday." Her pretty lips smiled, no doubt at whatever had taken place the night before. Today, she was wearing a cream blouse and a matching brown skirt. A pair of pearl studs decorated her diminutive ears. Very attractive, as always. Nothing special to me, though; I had seen the lady in her Shadowmaker spandex.

The phone rang and I picked it up. A guy needed help locating his 5-year-old kid, last seen near the canal behind his house. I hung up, went through the on-call list, and assigned Arad X to it. Routine. It was my turn to yawn. This drew a grin from our beautiful Shadowmaker.

"Tell you what." I rose. "I'll make you a nice cup of coffee and you'll help me with this case I'm having at work."

"Deal."

***

"Has to be that Andrew guy," Shadowmaker leaned back at the end of my facts presentation and concluded with certainty.

I looked at her long lashes.

She said, "Oh, come on, Lodie. Who else could it be? Can't be that Chung the janitor. Can't be Sammy from Accounts. To me, it's clearly Andrew."

"But Andrew is Frankie's best friend," I protested. "I mean, I understand how girls who are best friends at times sabotage each other's work for the sake of the higher objective that is the promotion. But we guys don't do that."

"Excuse me?"

"Never mind. Tell me more, please."

"Well, see, it happened before, didn't it? The ink became noticeably less?"

I nodded. "One occasion. Frankie was not sure, but he thought it could've taken place once more before that. So make that a possible three occasions with this one."

"And at both -- make that a possible all three -- times, Frankie was working on some big-time presentations, wasn't he?"

"Pre-sales, yes. Together with Andrew."

"And there you go. Who else had the chance? Andrew could hang about Frankie's cubicle without arousing suspicion -- they were working together."

I considered this. "I don't know, man. Something doesn't ring true to me. It's too easy."

"Like, people would immediately put their fingers on Andrew?"

"Yeah. Here's the bigger question, though: what would Andrew gain from all this? A crime, if that's what it is -- for all I know, it can still be some kind of misunderstanding -- requires both chance and motive. What's his motive?"

"You tell me," Shadowmaker looked amused. "Why would someone want to steal invisible ink? What does Frankie use it for, anyway?"

"That's, uh, a good question. I'll ask him tomorrow."

Our beautiful Ms. Cross chuckled. "Some detective you are."

To which I had no answer.

***

[No, it doesn't end here. I seem to have misplaced the other half of this piece, written not long after this -- and they have come up with a cooler version 2 since. So, if any of you have any suggestion of an ending, I'd like to hear it.]

Current music: 2Pac - Old School
Current mood: happy