A True Story

A True Story

Chapter 1


My name is P.J McCloud, and I'm a private eye. You probably expect me to live in a dump, and have a tiny office. You might expect me to always be behind on the rent, and trying to make ends meet. In other words, you might expect me to be the typical P.I. that you see in movies. Well, to tell the truth, I am. When a guy works off other people’s sorrows and misfortune, he had better be ready to work hard to scrape together four square meals a day.
So, you're probably wondering what I look like. Typical question. Imagine a bear. Now shave it. Now keep it awake for several days with coffee. That is me, or as close as you will get to the original. I mostly wear the classic P.I costume, trench coat and gumshoes. Now, this isn’t to look like a reject extra from Casablanca, but because it's the most practical thing for this line of work. When you're tailing a suspect in a murder case, you can't stop at the nearest Laundromat to dry out your socks 'cause they're wet.
My personality. Well, if I was to tell you I knew about this, then I would be lying. I have no idea what everybody is talking about, tossing out "deep thoughts" on their inner psyche as if it was an interesting movie. I don't know. Just don't ask. It's easier for everybody, especially me.
My story started out like any other cheap detective novel. The beautiful dame walked into my office, blah, blah, blah. After the formalities had been carried out, we got to business. She wanted something done, someone “taken care” of. I told her that she had seen too many gangster movies, and that I didn’t “take care” of people. If she wanted that, she’d have to go to one of the outfit hitters that abound in New York, the city of a million people (Well, 8.4 million to be more precise.)
After a refreshing and invigorating cup of concentrated caffeine, I reluctantly agreed to take the case. It wasn’t as bad as it sounded, and I needed the money worse than the white rabbit needs a new watch. This gal was so grateful that… well, to tell the truth, nothing happened, she just said “thanks” and dropped her card on the table. Too bad, though, she was quite the looker. As she walked out the door, she pulled out some snappy exit line, but I wasn’t paying attention. I was too busy preparing for my afternoon nap.

Chapter 2

Well, here we are. My least favorite part. This is the part where the goon breaks into my office and beats me up, trying to get me to “lay off this case.” Fortunately, I had played this part too many times to fall for that crap, so I had goon repellant, in the form of a .9 Mil Colt and a Louisville slugger.
I heard footsteps down the hall. They sounded like a small man, which was unusual and a tad bit scary. You know what they say “little things come in yellow boxes” or something like that. A knock or two came at my door. Strange, but I had prepared for most anything, so I said the only intelligent thing that occurred to me. “Yeah?”
The gent outside took this as an invitation, and opened the door. A small neat man in a grey suit tapped his expensive way into my dingy office. “Good day. My name is Adrian Hoffman. I am an associate with the Parkman Group.” Crap. Lawyers. This was a new one, and frankly, one that I wasn’t equipped to deal with. Before suspicion was aroused, I popped my gun into a desk drawer, and tried to jam the bat under my knees.
My perambulations under my desk weren’t exactly fostering trust between me and Adrian. He began to look disgruntled, so I tried to look natural and smile. He started to spew lawyerese at me, but I managed to tune it out before it turned me into one of them.
It turned out that I wasn’t in trouble for anything I had done, just what I was about to do. It was mostly the same thing as a goon breaking in and breaking me, just without the all the breaking. After he left, I realized that this was a lot easier on the furniture, but I missed all the simple language and threats. It just wasn’t the same.
After Adrian fancy Pants had left, I elected to go to my old hangout. Now, you’re probably thinking that it’s a smoky old bar. However, I eat at Joe’s Diner. You know, “eat at Joes.” I sashayed up to the counter and ordered my usual from Flo the waitress: apple pie, shaken, not stirred. While I drank my usual coffee a la mode, I mulled over why I should write about this caper.
It didn’t seem like a very interesting detective novel, no case, no suspects, nothing. So why would I be writing this story, unless it was a true story.
Blah blah blah, you say. True stories are always boring, except when they have ghosts in them. Fortunately, this story has no ghosts. I don’t think a gumshoe like me could take a development like that. Ghost pops up; a heart attack could kill me as surely as a bullet wound.

Chapter 2.5After I left Joe’s I went home to my Podunk one room apartment, and slept off my apple pie. After a refreshing siesta, I did a little homework.
It turned out that the company that Adrian was paid to yak at people for was a front for the main organized crime despot of New York, Harold Kumar, or “Dirty Harry” as most people called him.
It seems that Harry had a more stereotypical hangout for a mob boss: a nightclub. I looked it up in my handy-dandy yellow pages, and off I went.
This club was called “soIn.” Not that original in my opinion, but hey, different strokes. I bypassed the bouncer with a simple bribe, and after the coat and weapons check, I was in.
Dirty Harry wasn’t hard to find. I just had to look for the table with the most bodyguards at it, and sure enough, there he was. Just like Jabba the Hut. I walked right up to the table, and announced my presence and intentions. “Greetings, great Jabba. I come in peace.”
I wasn’t sure if Harry got the reference or not, but he knew he was being put down. He glared at me, and significantly cut into a steak that I hadn’t noticed before. It appeared old Harry was playing the sinister vibe a little too hard.

Chapter 3

Now, I'm a forgiving person. I like to be nice, heck, everybody does. But you gotta draw the line somewhere. My line happens to be a bottle smashed over my head. And yes, you guessed it that is right where we are. A barroom brawl, not the best or my favorite place to be. You have to keep on your feet in this kind of a situation. But, let's just say that I was never called "Twinkle toes McCloud" by my "buddies at the dance club"
However, no amount of deep philosophical discussion can make a man ignore a bottle to the head, so I was out colder than frosty the snowman's feet.
Fortunately, the lights went out so that I could watch the pretty fireworks show.

You’ve probably guessed by now that Dirty Harry pulled a fast one. I didn’t even see it coming. Probably someone behind me thought I was getting too chatty, and decided to shut me up. When I arose from the land of nod, I was tied to chair, and a typical goon was sitting there multitasking, watching T.V, eating Chinese takeout, and totally ignoring me.
“Wow, Buster. Really quite the busy man, I see.”
He grunted a nonverbal reply, threw a chopstick at me, and went back to his foraging in a box of mushu pork.
I was running out of options. For one, I had no idea what was going on, and I also had no tangible storyline. This would look like chicken scratch to any respectable writer like

But back to my problem. This cell was locked up tighter than, well, a jail cell. And I had a feeling lazybones the guard would get a little friskier if I tried to escape. I had to come up with a plan to escape without Buster there being any the wiser.

Fortunately, Harry solved all my problems by walking in. Suddenly, Buster’s T.V. was off, and the takeout box was stowed in the desk. Harry was too fast, though, and gave the goon a withering look as he swaggered toward my cell.

He non-verbally indicated to Buster that he should open my jail cell, and he did so, also without a word.

Either these people were all mute, or I was just skimping on the dialog. This was a rather poor choice on my part, because I’m really liking this Harry guy.

“Weell, what have we here…” crooned Harry. “A dirty stinkin’ gumshoe runnin around my turf. Now ain’t that a shame for him. Heh, heh, heh” (okay, maybe a little less dialog)

But Harry had other ideas. He yanked me up the side of the cell wall by my neck, just like you see all the bad guys do in movies I‘m guessing that it hurts a little less then.
“Rough him up a little, Louie.”

This is another of my least favorite parts. You can guess why. As a courtesy to myself, I’ll skip this part. After the complimentary beating, I was forcibly ejected out of the nearest portal to the outside world, with yet another complimentary insult.

So, we have a beautiful woman, no perp, no crime, no suspect, and one beat up P.J.
We can sum all this up, baddies: 4, P.J: Zip.
Not a good score by anyone’s standards, let alone a zipper CEO’s

You’re probably asking why I’ve included the beautiful woman in my story. Well, this is why. She pulled up in a car that cost the same as I made in four years, and rolled down the tinted window. Not exactly necessary, since the car was a convertible, but it had the desired effect.

She beckoned to me with a ring encrusted finger, and I got in. After a turn around the block, I was a little better acquainted with our heroine.

It seems that little miss pretty was the wife of Dirty Harry, and she wasn’t too happy with him. My little foray into the territory of Harry was a distraction to arrange her passage out of the country, and to her boyfriend in the Swiss Alps.

So there we had it. The crux of the matter. The reason I was hired, beaten up, and generally mistreated. There wasn’t even a perp or a crime for that matter. This was turning out to be a pretty lousy detective novel. But hey, it has action, mystery, noir, and romance. Well, maybe not so much romance. But I got paid, and that‘s what‘s important for my purposes.

The End