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Not that I’m a hard-bitten old cynic, you understand! Oh no. Not me! Yours truly; your favourite P.I. Not for one minute. I wouldn’t trade this job for the old nine-to-five rat race. Not me. Why, I’d even bust the jaw of my best buddy if he so much as hinted at anything like that. I hope we’re clear on that score!
Just in case you still doubt my steely resolve about bringing the sleaze-bags and sewer-sucking scum-buckets to justice, Hank Conan style, then you can go and look up my JACKSY! That’s the "Joint Anti Crime Knowledge Surveillance Yearbook", as you probably know. Even if I say so myself, I’ve got the reputation of having a pretty big entry between the covers.
Let me tell you about my recent case, though.
I was in a foul mood. The heavens had opened and I’d got drenched running seven blocks to find an all-night bicycle store to get a puncture repair outfit for my - er - bike: I like to burn rubber as part of my workout. My body’s a temple, a shrine to the thousands of devotees of Charles Atlas. Nobody kicks sand in this dude’s face. Not since I got a pair of dinky little goggles.
Anyway, the rain was heavier than a two-bit hood in a concrete overcoat. I was jogging back to the office when I noticed a car parked outside the building. I feigned a stitch and slowed down to survey the occupants.
My impromptu wheezing, which I decided to affect on the spur of the moment, must have caught their attention. One of the guys leaned out of the car and shouted my name. His hand darted towards the inside of his jacket - but my hand was faster.
In a flash I’d given him the finger and exited down a nearby alleyway, scattering the trash cans and old papers behind me.
The chase began in Earnest - and finished in another ludicrously named small part of town.
While sustaining my ongoing-pursuit-disengagement-scenario activity, my mind flipped through the alleyways and canyons of my mind and the millions of archives of escape plans, information and ruses stored in my limitless memory.
If those guys were from the ‘mob’ they were pretty sloppy, calling my name and alerting me like that. They should have snook up behind me and offed me where I stood.
Come to think of it, them having the keys to access the secure car park outside the office was strange. Why would the ‘mob’ have bothered with such formalities?
Come to think further of it, why would the ‘mob’ be in a police car?
I suppose I should have told you this earlier, but a good P.I. never reveals his sources - Peri Stalsis told me that!
I retraced my footsteps by applying an old trick I taught Marine Commandos in Belize: going back the way I’d come. The car was still there.
I appeared, wraith-like, at the driver’s window. "Well, Officer O’Shameonyou," I snarled. I’d recognised him earlier (I reckon I should’ve told you that before as well. Plot twists, eh?). "Fancy seeing you here. Out for a drive with your Girl?"
Officer Girl never liked the play of words on his name and I liked to wind him up whenever I saw him with my famous wit and repartee. Though what he was doing with MY wit and repartee is anyone’s guess! What O’Shameonyou said next, though, chilled me to the thermals.
"We’ve been waiting for you, Hank. I’m afraid it’s bad news. We’ve found a skeleton. It was at the address of one of your informants, Viv Isection. We think it belongs to her. Would you care to come down to the station?"
Thoughts of the pleasure I’d been tremblingly looking forward to .... er, mending the puncture on my bike, drained from my glands.
I imagined the masticated and assimilated contents of someone’s lower bowel being propelled at great force into the rotating metal blades of a device used to circulate air of a different temperature around the immediate environs of a habitat or similar milieu! If the skeleton was Viv’s, what was the explanation?
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Things had certainly changed down at the station since my day. These decorating and makeover programmes have a lot to answer for: potted plants should never be mixed with that colour dado rail!
Officer O’Shameonyou handed me over to a rookie detective. This guy was a greenhorn, still wet behind the ears.
"Sorry to disturb you while you were showering, sir," said O’Shameonyou. "This is Conan. Thought you might like to take the interview yourself."
The steely blue eyes of the square-jawed detective fixed me with a look I’d never seen before - until I realised that, coming out of the shower, he’d zipped his fly a little too quick.
Interview suspended.
Closing the ambulance doors, I took time out to pull up the collar of my trenchcoat, flip out a Marlboro, tip the brim of my homburg to a rakishly jaunty angle, and turn to the audience.
Fear not readers. Your favourite P.I. will be out and away from the pigs and screws in time to write the next episode before you can say ‘Deoxyribonucleic Acid’, to discover the truth behind the discovery of the skeleton at Viv’s apartment.
As you know, possessing an unregistered, and therefore illegally-held, skeleton without being a medic is a serious offence. Viv could be in big trouble. People have been sent to the electric chair or gas chamber, sometimes both, for owning a skeleton. Rumours about Viv could be true: she really did have a body to die for! But what if she didn’t know about the skeleton? Someone else could have planted it. Someone could have a stiff for Viv!
Viv needed an alibi. She’d helped me out in some sticky moments - I’d give her one!
Hah! Stool-pigeon Stella - The Private Dick’s Inflatable Friend could whistle.
Which, strangely enough, was just what she was doing when she went down on me as all this began!
THE END.
Hank will return in:
HANK CONAN - PRIVATE EYE.
EPISODE FOUR - FOR THE SAKE OF OLD LAG STEIN.
SEE BELOW
