The Binturong Blues by Ann Marie Potter

My boss leaned back in his chair and gave me a blank, wordless stare. Not an unreasonable response to “I think the binturong ate my condom.”

 “Have a seat, Mr. Dittlegray.” His tone evoked memories of my junior high principal and my buttocks tightened involuntarily. I’d been a rotten kid. My boss is a brilliant man. Operating a private investigative service is challenging. In Vegas, it’s like having a front row seat at the squirrel circus. And Jules Underwood has been patient with me, even though my work history is somewhat spotted. Mostly with blood. Mostly my own. “And what exactly is a bintur…”

 “A binturong. It was dark, and the thing was moving pretty fast, but it looked like a cat. Or a dog. Or maybe a bear. It climbed a tree, so I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a deer.”

Mr. Underwood sighed deeply, the long-suffering genius doomed to the company of idiots. “Your assignment was to surveil Dennis Leopold at his place of employment in order to obtain a DNA sample. Said sample is needed to establish paternity.”

“Yes, sir.” Answers are like mini-skirts. The shorter the better.

Now the boss was turning pages in a manila file labeled “Jergins/Leopold” Monica Jergins was mother to the muppet whose paternity was in question. “I see that Mr. Leopold works the high-stakes table at the Continental. This binturong was, what, swinging through the casino on the way to the buffet? Was it tropical fruit night at the Biji Room?”

I was tired, sunburned, and cranky. Professional etiquette be damned. “Look, Mr. U. I’ve been following Leopold for three days now. The guy doesn’t eat, drink, spit, or pee. The only thing he does do, is screw.”

 “Pardon me?”

I thought I better clarify, in case “screwing” hadn’t been included in the Harvard MBA lexicon. “He has sex with everything and anyone in a skirt. He nailed his pit boss in the unisex staff bathroom. Twice.”

“It seems to me that such sexual activity would yield an abundance of biological evidence.” The boss was out of his element and starting to squirm. I tried not to smirk. Sometimes his arm-chair quarter-backing annoys me.

“You’d think,” I answered. “But I was watching through a hole I accidentally punched in the plaster. Panty hose down, skirt up, zipper open. Not very splashy if you pardon the pun. When he was done, he took off the condom and put it in his pocket.”

Mr. Underwood’s mew of distaste was gratifying. Petty, I know, but he pushes paper all day and drives a Beemer. It grates. “I see,” he said, although he wore the expression of a blind man at an art exhibit. “And this creature, swinging through the trees?”

“When Leopold left the casino, he did fast food at the mall and then went to the zoo. I paid the admission fee and followed him in.” It couldn’t hurt to soften the blow of Friday’s expense report. I probably could have lived without that second trip to Emeril’s.

“He went to look at the animals?” Mr. Underwood sounded hopeful.

“He went to bend the veterinarian over the artificial insemination table.”

Mr. Underwood looked physically ill. Who says Mondays have to suck? “Anyway, I figure by now he knows he’s being tailed.” I didn’t mention that Leopold had caught me peeping him in the casino bathroom and threatened to arrange a conjugal visit with a toilet brush. “So I waited until he was past the point of no return with Dr. Do-Me-A-Little, and jumped out from behind a bag of ostrich chow.” Sometimes my wit and gift for storytelling astound me. Mr. Underwood looked close to tears. “I thought he was going to fight me, but he ran. Thing is, he forgot to…”

“Please don’t say it.” Underwood looked pre-stroke.

“Yup. Swinging like a koinobori in a Honshu windstorm. I chased him around the tortoise pen a couple of times and he stopped to rest. I don’t think he realized that he had “inserted” himself into the binturong cage until the thing lunged. Peeled the condom off with its teeth.”

“And Mr. Leopold?” Underwood’s voice had withered and I knew sugar-plum lawsuits were dancing in his head.

“Not a scratch, although he did faint with a spectacular thud. By the time the ambulance crew left, the zoo was closing up and I had to make myself scarce.  I’ll go over the wall tonight to try again. I’ll have an audience, though.  Binturong’s are nocturnal.”

“How nice for them”

“Of course, if he ate it, we’ll be waiting for a bowel movement. I hope the thing isn’t constipated.”

“Heaven forfend.” Now Underwood was looking at me with something akin to pity. No doubt wondering about the results of my last random drug test. Perhaps wondering if my next weekly activity log would be submitted in crayon. I left him pondering the bleakness of my future, and went home to rest up. I had a midnight rendezvous with a hostile mammal. Or was it a primate?

Whatever it was, it hated my guts. The minute his beady eyes caught sight of me, the binturong started wailing like a dromedary with a herniated hump. Worse yet, the damn thing had released some kind of scent that smelled like popcorn and I was suddenly ravenous.

I have never been so happy to see an animal shit in my life. I’d forgotten to bring gloves and I did my best not to think of my grandmother’s homemade lentil soup as I probed with one hand and held my nose with the other. Instead, I wondered about my insurance company’s policy regarding binturong bites. I’d barely gotten last month’s line of duty injury past their investigator. Of course, getting gored in the scrotum by a plastic bull isn’t a daily occurrence, even in the P.I. business. Luckily, Las Vegas Boulevard had been crowded that day and I had plenty of witnesses. Hundreds of them. Laughing their collective asses off.

My fingers had just closed over something especially slimy when the binturong sprang. Instinct told me to protect my face and my balls. Of course, the binturong was interested in neither. Instead, he took a large chunk out of my right thigh. I endured forty-eight stitches and the snickers of the emergency room staff with triumphant stoicism. I had emerged victorious from the binturong cage. I had my condom.

As it turns out, Leopold’s little swimmers hadn’t survived their epic journey through the binturong’s intestinal tract, but the blood from my thigh wound was in the pink. Consequently, the only DNA on the condom, aside from the binturong’s, was mine. Monica Jergins, who couldn’t have picked me out of a lineup, suddenly remembered a passion filled weekend we’d spent together in Bonnie Springs. I’m going to be paying child support for a long, long, time.

Ann Marie Potter          

Image by Jaka Firman from Pixabay – A Binterong – a grey furry animal with huge claws and fluffy round ears sniffing the air.