Les Trois Glorieuses

In the third story of the trilogy, 'Beune Appetit' Bette and Deuce are in Beaune, the center for wine trade in France's Burgundy region. The Trois Glorieuses or three glorious days takes place the third weekend of November. The first event is held on Saturday at the Clos Vougeot, a producer of some great Burgundies. Its vineyards were first planted in the year 1111. There is an induction ceremony and dinner at Clos Vougeot. Deuce will be inducted into the Burgundian wine tasting society, the Confrérie des Chevaliers des Tastevin. Clos Vougeot is pictured below:

On the second day the Hospices de Beaune charity auction takes place. The Hospice is the world's oldest charity hospital. It was founded in 1443 and up until the 1970s it operated as a charity hospital for the poor, the destitute and homeless. In 1851 the charity wine auctions were started. The Domaine des Hospices de Beaune owns about 61 acres of parcels that have been donated to the Domaine over the years. The auction consists of wines, still in the barrel, made from those parcels and the auction prices more or less set the pricing on the current vintage which will be released a few years down the road. Below is a picture of the Hospices de Beaune:

On the third day of the Glorieuses is the Paulée. It is held at the Chateau de Meursault and starts with a lunch at 12 noon. But it isn't just any old lunch! Burgundy producers bring what they consider are their best bottles--some may go back fifty years. The event breaks up around 9 that evening. Deuce likes to think of this event where one can get trashed on some of France's greatest Burgundies--all for free! Pictured is the Chateau de Meursault below:

Rating wine by the numbers, or the game of numbers.

This page taken from 'Half-life': book one of the Deuce Luce Wine and Crime Trilogy'

“To bring home the ‘bacon’ so to speak I told the story of the man who made a pest of himself to any lawyer or judge who would listen to him. He had been at the swank affair put on once a year by his wine club. At the dinner one of the guests was in his cups and made the mistake of saying,  ‘Well sir, I’ve seen your wife and I’d give her a 71’.  Hearing that, the man became enraged, called him every name in the book and said he’d not heard the last of this.

“He asked for an opinion from his attorney as well as from any others that would listen. Did he have a case for taking the man to court and suing him for damages?  He was told by all in the legal profession not to waste his time or the court’s.  Well, he couldn’t let it go and finally one judge in the small claims court agreed to hear the case. He agreed only that after his ruling he hoped the man would give it up and stop making a nuisance of himself. Comes the day of the ‘hearing’:

‘Well sir tell the court in what way you have been damaged by the your wife’s being rated at 71 points. That is to say if 50 points is your  average score she was actually given a compliment.’ 

‘Your honor, I won’t even purchase a bottle of wine unless it’s rated at least 85 points.’

‘Sir before I let this go any further here is what the court rules. Since the defendant chose not to appear, on that technicality I rule in your favor; also court costs will be waived. Furthermore I’ve seen your wife. I’d give her a 65 tops. Case closed.’

“Now my dear I hope the length of this tale hath not stanched your creative flow. Pray, entertain me with your concupiscent couplet.”

“Dearest it’s a near nothing compared to your oration but I will happily submit it to you as I will happily submit myself to thee:

 Love's Momentary Glee

My heart's a-twitter
 My thighs a-quiver 
So do please deliver
Your manhood thither.                                       

                                           

                                                  

“Bette, Bette—your clever ribaldry is well placed. I cannot best that one for its sheer impudence.  I shall declare you the victor in this joust of words. My attack a bit long-winded. Your parry, short, to the point and dispatched with aplomb

“Nay, my most exalted one, that saucy couplet is but an Elizabethan Burma Shave sign compared to your convivial verse. Deuce, my love, you have quenched my literary thirst now please do quench this Brobdingnagian fire that burns twixt my thighs. Pray, darling, please mount me anew and let us journey together to arrive at Venus’s portal in tandem.”

Deuce thought how do you top that? The bard would rise out of his grave a jealous suitor.

Original Cover for Matters of Taste--can you find the mistake?

This was the original cover for the second book in the series--if only I got it right--it should have read 'Matters of Taste'. Finally I decided to be consistent and use the same background jpeg of the Hospices de Beaune for all three books.

Matters of Taste

With all of the recent revelations concerning the NSA and some of the nasty stuff they're up to I am suddenly concerned about the chances of me being in trouble. One of the characters in 'Matters' is a kook by the name of Mike Majeski. It turns out he has a lot of animosity toward Deuce Luce's wife, Bette. So much so that he goes to the extreme of making a few bombs and using them. I got on to some Internet URLs that discussed bomb-making, the components as far as mechanical devices like timers and detonators as well as various chemicals to make bombs extremely lethal.

So it occurs to me that with the NSA snooping on everyone's use of their phones and their use of the Internet I am probably on someone's shit list as far as dangerous radicals are concerned.

A character study of Lurid Lawrence Bystrom, P.I.

This is the start of a blog dealing with the Deuce Luce Trilogy. Read the three books in the order they appear:

Half-life

Matters of Taste

Beaune Appetit

It was just a few weeks ago that I finished and published the third book of the Deuce Luce Trilogy, 'Beaune Appetit'. Here is Larry Bystrom at his best. He is an old friend of Deuce's. He is asked by his wife, Amy, to talk about his exploits when he worked for the FBI. He tried to beg off  saying that he was not allowed to discuss any Bureau business. Finally he relented with the caveat that some details as names and locations had to be changed for security reasons. Here's his story:

" All right, here we go, and the names and location have been changed or deleted to protect the innocent. Deuce, you're an old newspaperman—do you remember the Tri-state Old-timers?"

"Oh yes. Folks this was a gang of old farts that used to go around knocking off banks in the Midwest. I guess they were damned good at what they did."

"Oh they were good, all right. They began their careers back when safe crackers or burglars were called yeggs. We got a tip from a very reliable source that they were going to be breaking into the main bank of the town. The town shall be known as Upper Dufusville. Now these guys, as we later learned, spent an extraordinary amount of time casing their target. It was nothing for them to post look-outs on street corners observing the bank staff coming and going all hours of the day and night. Times were logged into a notebook, the type and manufacturer of all of the locks on the entry and exit doors were duly noted. In short, with the huge amount of time they were devoting to this endeavor, you could not say that crime pays. We reckoned they were knocking down about eighty-cents an hour.

"Anyway, like I said, we got this tip so we set up surveillance on the front and rear entrances. I was with my partner in a car parked about a block away on a street that was on the getaway route. My partner Morrie and I would take turns looking into the rear view mirror. It was important to know not only what was happening in front of us but behind us too. You don't want any surprises while you're playing the waiting game.

"Next thing I know Morrie says 'there's a bogey at six-o'clock—open your door and crouch behind it and get a better look'. So I get out, it's about three in the morning and the street light is out, so I have to wait and let the guy walking toward the car get to within ten feet so I can make a determination: friend or foe? Now I'm laughing uncontrollably and I just about fell to the ground in a paralytic heap.

"My partner, Morrie gets out and draws his weapon, then re-holsters it and says to this guy, 'who in the fuck are you and what the fuck do you think you're doing?'

"I try to compose myself as best I can and take a closer look at him and start laughing again. Really, it was very unprofessional on my part. But if you would have seen this character: he was dressed in jockey silks but missing the pants—naked as a jaybird from the waist down but he did sport a spiffy pair of cowboy boots and a cute little jockey's cap. Between his legs he had a child's toy horse—the kind that looked like a broom stick but with a horse's head on top. And he had a riding crop that he was using to spank his butt while yelling giddyup, giddyup. Again, Morrie asks him who he is. The guy says he's the poet laureate of Keokuk, Iowa.  At this point I completely lost it—my stomach muscles hurt from laughing so hard.

"Morrie looks at the guy with a straight face and says, 'Here's the deal Mr. Lone Ranger—you and Seabiscuit better skeedaddle back to the OK corral', then looking at me, he continues, 'or Tonto over here is going to cap your ass with a couple of silver bullets'.

"And the guy takes off. Evidently he got the message. So after I regained some of my composure, I asked Morrie how he could remain so cool with this half-naked dufus spouting all kinds of nonsense?"

To which Morrie replied "You mean he wasn't the poet laureate of Keokuk?"

With the punch line Deuce spits out a mouthful of coffee and Bette and Cindy can't stop laughing. Then Bette chides Deuce that he can't drink coffee and laugh at the same time. Amy says to Deuce not to worry, she'll clean up the mess. Bette asks Amy if she thought the story was funny because she wasn't laughing that much. "Bette, I was doing all I could to stop from peeing in my pants—well, for the most part I was successful."

 Amy asked Bystrom what happened after the half-naked dufus got out of there?

"Glad you asked, dear. It turns out that Morrie was a brilliant guy. He had a hunch that the dufus in racing silks was just a diversion so he gets a hold of agent Likens on the walkie-talkie. Likens is scoping out the rear entrance of the bank from an adjoining roof-top. He says to him there ought to be a bunch of old geezers fleeing the bank any moment. Sure enough, almost on cue, like a bunch of roaches scurrying for cover after a light is turned on, six senior citizens are doing all they can do to flee the scene. They were rounded up without anyone breaking a sweat."

"Larry, you need to write a book about your Bureau experiences."

"No, Deuce, you're the writer. You can't believe all of the shit like this that went down. Trouble is I'm not allowed to talk about it."

... "Now that we are alone honey, I'm going to haul you off to bed and have my way with you."

"Larry dear, you can have me any way you want me but before I willingly submit, answer me this one question."

"Anything for my insatiable wife. What's the question."

"How did you Bureau guys know that the tip you got was for real and who did you get it from?"

"Amy, I told you there is some FBI business that I can't discuss with you. But let me think. I'll tell you what—the leader, the brains of the Tri-State boys was sleeping with the wrong bimbo."

Thinking about the phrase 'sleeping with the wrong bimbo', Amy chuckled, "I know the answer—the guy talked in his sleep."

"God, thank you letting me have the good taste and the good sense to marry the smartest woman this side of the Mississippi, and the hottest one too. Bingo, Amy—you shoulda been an agent."