Ashes to Ashes and all that Jazz

By: S.L. Kotar, J.E. Gessler

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Mr. Harold Poxie, owner of CANS news service, is coming to London. When editor Sweet McGraw threatens to introduce him to Gypsy if Kimbo doesn’t take the unappealing assignment to cover the sudden death of Mr. Goldfinch, the one of the company’s best clients, he reluctantly agrees. Anything to get her away from the old man’s clutches. As anticipated, the funeral is dull and dreary, with few useful quotes to gather for the obituary. One, however, strikes him as odd: the complaint from an elderly woman that the body appears desiccated. Waiting until the mourners have departed, Kimbo takes a closer look at the corpse. Not only was the observation an accurate one, he discovers why: the leg bones have been replaced by broomsticks and a poorly sutured wound in the chest indicates organs may also have been removed. Further questioning reveals his isn’t the only corpse that has appeared less than optimal, and on the hope of a story – any story – Kimbo and Gypsy go in search of modern-day grave robbers. Discovering another funeral parlor where rumor had it the clients were less than well preserved, the find two other bodies where obvious unauthorized surgery has been done, extracting everything from eyes to hearts. Reminding Sweet of the guy who woke up in a bathtub with both his kidneys removed (although failing to remind him that news item had been disproven), Kimbo gets get permission to follow up on the fate of the stolen body parts. After a trip to a crematorium where Kimbo and Gypsy, masquerading as foreign surgeons, are enlisted to preform emergency surgery on a fresh corpse to remove its brain for a client in urgent need (by actually stealing the grey matter from a nearby supply closet), they are handsomely paid and asked, as an additional favor, to mail the package to its destination. Eagerly accepting the task which gives them an address in Amsterdam, they are waylaid on the way to the post office by none other than Captain Helen Chandler who is on a training assignment with Interpol. Managing to escape her suspicious clutches, the pair drive to Amsterdam where they discover a clearing house for the international organization selling organs to research labs. Stoically ignoring Amsterdam’s other tourist attractions including legal, upscale whorehouses, they infiltrate the warehouse, only to inadvertently trip the wire to an incendiary bomb and nearly blow themselves up. Recovering from wounds sustained in the line of duty, they follow another clue which leads them back to England and the picturesque Dales. The final confrontation here almost proves their undoing, but eventually affords Kimbo the “story of a lifetime.” Until he discovers the byline has been shared and the text significantly altered to conform to “Mr. Poxie’s moral standards.”