I used to be just another Mick in a city detective squad but
the cops were too busy committing crimes to ever solve any, so I quit and went
into business on my own. Now I get paid to do stuff that skirts the law. Skirts
being the operative word. Nothing but trouble.
Anyhow, I was sitting in my office minding my own business
since there was no other business to mind. Suddenly, this tall blonde walks
past my window. I knew she was tall because my office is on the second floor. Five
minutes later the door burst open, and she waltzed in, (must have been playing
Strauss on her iPhone). Good looking woman, well built, could have played
fullback for the Rams. She wore a thirty-eight. She had a gun, too.
She flashed some green at me, (spinach in her teeth from
lunch), and laid out her problem. Actually, if she had laid her problem out
cold, she probably wouldn’t have needed a Private Investigator. Her husband had
a lazy eye, and she was worried he was seeing someone on the side. If I would
check it out, she would make it worth my while. I told her I was more
interested in money.
Her husband had phoned and said he’d be working late at the
office that night so this was the opportunity she’d been waiting for. She told
me where he worked and the car he drove. I hung around the office parking lot
and sure enough at 7:00 a guy walked out of the building and drove off in the
car. I followed. He was not headed for home.
You can never be too careful. A pair of headlights flashed
in my rearview mirror. I was being tailed. Pardon the pun. There was more to
this than met the eye. The dame didn’t give me the whole story. Hard to shake my
tail and keep my quarry in sight too. He pulled up at a three-story Brownstone
in a seedy part of town and I drove on past. Took me 5 minutes to lose the
other car and I doubled back.
Parked a block away and slipped back, staying in the shadows.
Saw movement in the upstairs window so I climbed a conveniently located tree so
I could see better. And I had never seen anything better since the clubs in
Germany in 73. Had to get a firm grip on myself to keep from falling out of the
tree.
Suddenly the branch broke and I came off my perch and hit
the ground like a wool sack full of gravel. The mugs in the other car hadn’t
stayed lost and had followed me. They started beating me like a rented mule.
Finally, they got tired and left me lying there, more dead than alive. A full
brass band was playing 76 Trombones inside my head. I thought this kind of
stuff only happened to Jim Rockford.
Crawled to the car, found the magnum of whiskey under the
seat, and the .45 Magnum under the hood. Tucked one into my pocket and the
other under my left arm pit. I needed to find that dame. She had set me up. Then
it hit me. She was the woman in the Brownstone house. The guy I’d followed was
not her husband. Who was he? Did she even have a husband? What was the point of
all this? I needed clues and I needed them fast. If clues were shoes, I was
barefoot.
The dame’s goons were coming back; I could see them about
half a block away. The tire irons they carried didn’t look very friendly.
Reached under my arm for my trusty Magnum, drained it in two long gulps, threw
it away and unlimbered my revolver. This time I was ready for them.
Tune in next week, when you’ll hear Dr. Bob say, “Please add
hackneyed detective clichés in the comments section and maybe he can figure out
how to end our misery.”
