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“Chief!” he cried, surprise making him a little squeaky-voiced. “Hey, there, buddy!”

But Alec wasn’t responding with the same joyful surprise at this happy reunion. On the contrary, he simply stared at Chase as if he were a bug he’d just discovered in his potato salad. He didn’t look like the Alec he knew, either: he was sporting some sort of ridiculous outfit: black leather jacket and black leather pants, and on top of his head was a wig of some kind and his face had been festooned with sideburns and a mustache.

“Do I know you?” asked the Chief coldly.

“Alec, it’s me—Chase!” he said, patting his own chest, then holding out a welcoming hand, which the other pointedly ignored.

“I’m afraid you must be mistaking me with someone else,” said Alec. “My name is Wolf Moonblood, not… what did you call me?”

“Alec Lip,” said Chase, sobered to some extent. He was pretty sure he wasn’t mistaken, so he approached the guy and grabbed his ridiculous hair and yanked it off.

As he’d surmised, it was just a wig.

“Hey!” said Alec, grabbing at his now hairless head. “What do you think you’re doing!”

“What’s going on, Alec?” asked Chase. “Don’t you remember me?”

“Give me back my hair,” said Alec coldly.

Chase frowned, then decided to take things a little further still, and took a good grip on the man’s mustache and gave it a yank. It easily came off, and now he was holding both the man’s hair and his mustache. Only those ridiculous sideburns were left.

“Hey! This is assault!” said the Chief. “I’ll have your badge for this, you ridiculous…”

“Alec, buddy!” said Chase. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but you gotta snap out of it!” And for good measure he snapped his fingers in the man’s face a couple times.

Alec blinked, then frowned.“I would like to have my hair and mustache back now.”

“Oh, for crying out loud!” said Chase, and took a firm grip on the man’s sideburns and pulled. There was a slight ripping sound, and both came off in his hands, too!

And there he stood: Chief Alec Lip, large as life, and looking decidedly dazed after having been divested of all of his facial hair.

But before Chase could slap the man on the back and invite him for a drink to tell him what had happened, suddenly three burly men arrived on the scene and attached themselves to his arms and started to drag him off instead!

“Let go of me!” he bellowed, and fought them off as well as he could. Now Chase was a powerfully built man, but he was no match for three brutes like this, and before long he was being muscled off the premises and deposited squarely at the entrance to the fair.

“And stay away!” warned the biggest and toughest of the trio.

“I’m a cop!” he said, and showed them his badge. “And you’re holding a man prisoner!”

“Oh, buzz off, cop,” said one of the goons with a shrug.

“I’ll be back,” he warned.

“Promises, promises,” said the guy, who had a cleanly shaven head, was wearing red Converse shoes, had a crooked nose, cauliflower ears, a tattoo of a skull and crossbones on his neck and spoke with a Boston accent. And only then Chase realized thatthis man resembledthat man very closely indeed—the man he was looking for!

He now took the picture he’d been showing around out of his pocket.

“This is you,” he said.

The man glanced at the picture, then at Chase, and said,“No, it’s not.”

“Yeah, it is!”

The man looked over to his musclebound colleagues, and they must have exchanged some sort of secret silent code, for moments later they had attached themselves to Chase’s arms again, and this time proceeded to drag him in the opposite direction!

“Hey, you can’t do this to me!” said Chase.

“Oh, shut up already,” grunted Cauliflower Ear. “Why is it you people always have to come and ruin things for us.”

“Heeeeelp!” Chase yelled, feeling a little annoyed he had to ask for help from others while he was usually so capable of taking care of himself. “I’m being abducted!”

But then Cauliflower Ear grunted something, hauled off, and planted a meaty fist on Chase’s jaw, and all of a sudden the lights went out and the world turned dark.

[Êàðòèíêà: img_3]

Officer Sarah Flunk was feeling a little blue. Her boyfriend of several months had finally proposed, only for him to tell Detective Kingsley he’d only proposed after being coerced, which made the whole thing leave a very sour taste in the young police officer’s mouth. In fact she wouldn’t mind smacking Barry in the face right now, the bastard.

And as she showed the picture of that unsavory character who’d forced Barry into proposing marriage to her while also having a hand in Chief Alec’s kidnapping to another stallkeeper, she suddenly became aware of a fracas or altercation (or even a skirmish), so she heaved a deep sigh and headed on over to see what was going on.

Great was her surprise when she found none other than her commanding officer Detective Kingsley staggering around, looking as if he’d drunk more than he was used to.