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become
molten lava. I managed to smile wanly and I pulled my arm free, as
I stepped away sideways toward the stairs.
    Oh this was bad! Mrs. Thachet was the worst
gossip in the whole building bless her heart. It would be common
knowledge by tonight that I had a man. I groaned inwardly.

Chapter Six
Strung Up
    Of course, the first person I had to run into
when I entered the office was the Captain. Immediately I started to
stumble over myself, in my hurry to apologize for sleeping in late,
but he held up a hand.
    “I’m just glad to see you rested, no apology
needed. You’ll want to check in with Sal and Rafferty. They found
out something interesting about our mystery man Flint.”
    He patted me on the back and continued on
down the hall. I watched him go, all the while choking on what
needed to be said, but I just couldn’t tell him. Somehow the words
just didn’t come out. How could they? He’d think I was joking.
    Rafferty and Sal looked up at my approach and
to my surprise neither mentioned my tardiness, which I was very
grateful for. “So, what did you find out about our mystery man?” I
asked, feeling like the worst sort of hypocrite and traitor there
could be.
    Sal swiveled around in his chair, “Well, not
so much about the actual man. We’ve only been able to pull a few
vague references to a man that goes by the name of Flint. Mostly
third world countries. The name popped up in France in a big
international scandal a couple of years back. The Chinese have a
three million dollar bounty if captured alive and only a million if
he’s dead. Apparently somebody really wants to have the joy of
killing him all to themselves, it would appear. Besides that juicy
tid bit that’s all we can find out about him.”
    Rafferty looking pleased as he stated with
authority, “But I thought the name sounded familiar to me so I
started trying to remember where I had heard it before. It is not a
common name at all. Only seven are listed in the entire country and
four of those are dead and the other three are in nursing homes. I
kept thinking about it and then it clicked, Louis L’Amour.”
    I stared blankly at Rafferty and mimicked his
outspread hand motion after a moment. “What?”
    “You don’t know him? Oh come on you too!”
Rafferty exclaimed throwing his hands up in the air.
    “Should I?”
    “You bet you should. He’s only the greatest
western writer that ever lived!” He exclaimed explosively.
    I smiled, “Well that explains why I’ve never
heard of him. I’m not currently up on my western fiction reading
for the month you might say.”
    Rafferty crossed his arms, looking offended.
Sal broke in, “Well, anyway this author wrote a lot of books. A lot
of books.” He underscored dryly at the last by pointing at the
multiple cardboard boxes on the table. I picked a book up out of a
box.
    “There must be nearly a hundred books here!
These are all yours Rafferty?”
    “Eighty six to be exact, and yes they are!”
He finished testily, still wounded over my rejection of his
favorite genre and author it would appear.
    “What do any of these books have to do with
our case?”
    Sal picked up a book and I read the cover
title, “Flint!”
    “Got us to thinking about our mystery man a
little more. He seems to be something of an international fix it
man. While a lot of what we know doesn’t appear to be illegal
depending on your perspective, some of it most definitely appears
to be. Stranger than that he seems to have no connection with any
governing body here or elsewhere in the world, but rather seems to
act independently. Which got us to thinking, maybe he’s not alone.
We took all of the main character names from the books by this
author, both male and female, and this is what we got.”
    Sal slid his chair to the side so I could see
his computer screen. It was a rough summary of thirty seven names.
“As far as we can tell characters started popping up in the
international scene in the mid 1970’s and have