(GUY NOIR THEME & GK SINGS)
TR: A dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets, but high above the busy streets, on the twelfth floor of the Acme Building, one man is still trying to find the answers to life's persistent questions --- Guy Noir, Private Eye ---
(PIANO)
GK: It was June, and the weather in Minnesota had turned sultry, and naturally that was when my air conditioner gave up the ghost (MOTOR KNOCKING, GASPING) so when a woman named Stacy came to see me and said she wanted to pay me to go to Seattle --- hey, no problem.
PO: I want you to find a statistician named Sandy Daniels, who's staying at the Seattle Statler Hotel.
GK: I see. Sandy Daniels at the Seattle Statler.
PO: She'll be wearing saddle shoes and coral-colored apparel and she's somewhat disheveled.
GK: Is this Sandy Daniels case involving some type of financial scandal in Seattle, Stacy?
PO: Not a financial scandal. This is homicide. Deadly cinnamon cyanide was sprinkled on a cup of espresso at a rehearsal for a recital.
GK: A recital in Seattle?
PO: A recital by a Seattle contralto named Sally Tuttle. The rehearsal was in Sally Tuttle's studio in her gothic castle in rural Seattle.
GK: I see. And was it a single sprinkle of cinnamon cyanide?
PO: Yes. And Sally Tuttle's accompanist Basil Bristol was the victim of the single cinnamon cyanide sprinkle. One swallow and he was horizontal.
GK: And Sandy Daniels was at the rehearsal?
PO: She and her spaniel, Emmanuel. And her little sister Crystal, a vocalist from Yazoo City, Mississippi.
GK: Let me get this straight. At her recital rehearsal, contralto Sally Tuttle and her little sister Crystal Tuttle and Sally's spaniel Emmanuel are standing at the espresso----
PO: No, sorry. Crystal isn't Sally Tuttle's sister, she's Sandy Daniels's sister. So Sally Tuttle the contralto was there, and Sandy Daniels and her spaniel and little sister Crystal, a gospel vocalist from Yazoo City, Mississippi, and of course Basil Bristol from Bainbridge Island.
GK: Sally's accompanist.
PO: Exactly. (KNOCK ON DOOR)
GK: Yeah? Who's there? Come in. (DOOR OPEN, FOOTSTEPS)
PO: Crystal!
SS: Wrong, Stacy. I'm Crystal's twin sister Cecilia.
GK: From Mississippi?
SS: How did you know?
GK: Stacy told me.
SS: What else did she tell you?
GK: She told me that you and your sisters Crystal and Sandy Daniels were at contralto Sally Tuttle's studio for a recital rehearsal and that Miss Tuttle's accompanist Basil Bainbridge was---
PO: Bristol. Basil Bristol. From Bainbridge Island.
GK: Basil Bristol of Bainbridge Island was assassinated by a cinnamon cyanide sprinkle on an espresso.
SS: Exactly.
GK: I see. But why?
SS: Ask Stacy.
PO: What??? What are you talking about?
SS: Her real name isn't Stacy, it's Sadie. Sadie Tuttle. Sally's stepsister.
PO: I'll get even for this, Cecilia.
SS: Sadie and Basil Bristol were buddies, and Sadie and Crystal Daniels had been bitterly hostile since Basil sought the dismissal of a controversial official at the Seattle Gastro-Intestinal Hospital who was said to be an apostle of the transcendental Pentecostalist pastor Chris Makropoulos of Palo Alto.
GK: I had no idea there were Pentecostalists in Palo Alto.
PO: He was a Transcendental Pentecostalist.
GK: Chris Makropoulos, huh?
SS: Chris Makropoulos was the executive secretary of the Palo Alto Coastal Pentecostal Transcendental Society.
GK: Well, I'm here to get to the bottom of it. Would either of you care for coffee? Sadie? Cecilia?
PO: I'd like a triple skinny siamese pygmy height-weight proportional with hazel razzle, 2% milk, an artery block, and hold the bath beads.
GK: Cecilia?
SS: Just water.
GK: Lime? lemon?
SS: Just water. And a plate of anemones.
GK: Okay. Excuse me. (PICKS UP PHONE, DIALS ROTARY. WAITS. RINGS. PICKUP)
TK (ON PHONE): Yeah?
GK: Is this Chuck's Coffee Shop?
TK: Yeah.
GK: I'd like a---- what was that you wanted? Tell the man what you want. Here.
PO: I'd like a triple skinny siamese pygmy height-weight proportional with hazel razzle, 2% milk, an artery block, and hold the bath beads.
TK: Okay. Gotcha.
GK: You get that?
TK: Got it. Anything else.
GK: And a water. Plain water. And a plate of anemones.
TK: Anemones. Fine. What kind of water?
GK: Just mineral water.
TK: Charged or non-----
GK: Uncharged.
TK: Got Perrier, got Pellegrino, got San Marino, got Stockholm Springs, got Our Lady of Lourdes, got Antarctic Icecap, got Rain Forest, got eighty-five other kinds of water----
GK: Whatever is close at hand.
TK: Antarctic Iceberg okay?
GK: Sure. How much is it?
TK: Fifty bucks for 8 ounces.
GK: How about tap water?
TK: What city?
GK: Seattle.
TK: Lake Washington or Lake Union?
GK: Washington.
TK: Okay. Anything else?
GK: And a regular coffee for me.
TK: What coffee?
GK: Regular coffee.
TK: We don't have that.
GK: Well, make some.
TK: We got cappucino, espresso, latte, you name it----
GK: Just regular coffee. You know. Ground coffee in a can, you put some in the basket, the water drips through, glass pot, it sits there for a few hours ---- regular coffee.
TK: We don't have it.
GK: Well, look for it. Find someone else who has it. Come on. Use your noodle. (HANG UP) Okay, where were we now. Basil Bristol has been offed by a cinnamon cyanide sprinkle on an espresso at Sally Tuttle's contralto recital rehearsal due to a controversy between the Seattle Gastro-Intestinal Hospital and the transcendental Pentecostalist pastor Chris Makropoulos of Palo Alto. Right?
SS: That's how I see it.
GK: But how did this Palo Alto Pentecostalist get involved with a Seattle contralto named Sally Tuttle?
SS: She was the executive secretary of the Seattle Tacoma Coastal Pentecostal Transcendental Society and also co-chair of the Seattle Gastro-Intestinal Hospital Society Ball and she'd sold Chris Makropoulos a pistol she'd swindled from a Russian hustler named Russell Slivovich, which coincidentally Basil Bristol had accidentally rented from Sally's secretary Crystal.
PO: My stepsister Sally Tuttle never sold a pistol to anybody, let alone a Pentacostalist.
(PHONE RING. PICKUP.)
GK: Yeah? Noir here.
TK (ON PHONE): I found you some regular coffee, but it's about two miles from here. At a diner. I can send a cab over for it. Cost you about fifteen bucks.
GK: How much does that other coffee cost?
TK: The triple skinny siamese pygmy height-weight proportional with hazel razzle, 2% milk, an artery block, and hold the bath beads?
GK: Right.
TK: Five bucks.
GK: Give me that one.
TK: Okay. Be right over. (HANG UP)
GK: So---- where were we? You think the cinnamon cyanide sprinkle on Basil's espresso was what----
SS: Was evidently meant to silence Basil and forestall the disclosure of Chris Makropoulos's Seattle Tacoma Coastal Pentecostal Transcendental Society's close connections to the Seattle Gastro-Intestinal Hospital.
GK: Somehow you'd expect a Seattle contralto to be more subtle than poison her accompanist with a sprinkle of cinnamon.
SS: She was desperate to get the pistol that Crystal had accidentally rented to Basil and then sold to Chris Makropoulos.
PO: There was no such pistol rental!
SS: There was too.
GK: Ssshhhhh, Cecilia. But how did the pistol rental by Crystal occur?
PO: That's the riddle. That's what I need you to go to Seattle to find out.
TR: Maybe I can solve that riddle for you.
PO: (GASP) Basil Bristol.
TR: Wrong, Stacy. I'm Basil's twin brother Biff Bristol.
GK: You a pianist too, Biff?
TR: All of us Bristols are pianists. I specialize in Norwegian composers and in my spare time I raise horses. Sorrels. I'm a man of sorrels and acquainted with Grieg.
GK: So what's the answer to the riddle, Biff?
TR: This recital rehearsal Sally Tuttle held at her castle in rural Seattle --- the one where my brother Basil Bristol got the bad cinnamon sprinkle on his espresso --- where Sandy and Crystal and Cecilia Daniels and her spaniel Immanuel were in the studio hearing Miss Tuttle sing Tartini, Manfredini, Houdini, Rossini, Albinoni, Respighi, Paganini, Puccini, Cherubini, and Tommasini, accompanied by Basil --- but not on piano. On harp.
GK: Your brother Basil was a harpist.
TR: He was but he had been disco dancing the night before at a bistro called The Sand Clam and he lost his instrument.
GK: You're saying that he---
TR: He lost his harp in The Sand Clam Disco.
GK: So this has nothing to do with the Palo Alto Pentacostalist pastor Chris Makropoulis or the Seattle Gastro-Intestinal Hospital.
TR: This was an affair of the harp. Basil administered the cinnamon cyanide sprinkle himself. Cinnamon was his way out.
GK: I see. (KNOCK ON DOOR) Yeah! Come in. (DOOR OPEN, FOOTSTEPS) Chuck's Coffee Shop.
TK: Yeah. Got your two coffees. Right there. And the water. But we're out of anemones.
SS: No anemones, huh?
TK: Nope. So we substituted a plate of these fresh fronds.
SS: Well, with fronds like these, who needs anemones?
(BRIDGE)
GK: So it was suicide, the cinnamon cyanide sprinkle in Basil Bristol's espresso. Suddenly, there didn't seem to be a reason to go to Seattle. Maybe another time. The coffee wasn't bad though. It wasn't regular, but it wasn't bad. (MUSIC)
TR: A dark night in a city that keeps its secrets, and there on the twelfth floor of the Acme Building is a guy still trying to find the answers to life's questions.....Guy Noir, radio private eye.
(MUSIC OUT)
© 1997 by Garrison Keillor