I got a call from this broad come August. Can’t complain because I can’t choose my clients. Said she got a case of the usual, good for nuthin’ hubby making excuses on where he kept going at night.
I’m Dick Bullet, private eye, got a cheating wife/husband and/or business partner then I’m the sap who sits outside of their house for days, hoping to snap up the incriminating evidence.
This Mrs Mallory may have been a goddess of the silver screen forty years ago, but Old Father Time is a mean old man and chips away at anybody’s good looks. Where she was once stunning with eyes sharp enough to pierce diamonds and legs slender than a snake, practically death and sex wrapped in one tight glove, now she was like a dried raisin, those dark eyes had gone greyer than a rain cloud, her hair was whiter than the north pole and her skin sagged worse than a mattress left out in a forest.
Her drawing room though, spoke of enough pennies to fill up the Grand Canyon, the carpet was cleaner than a saint’s conscience, the chairs cut from burgundy leather and dark mahogany, and adding to the taste a few decent prints of Vermeer and Botticelli hung on the walls.
Mrs Mallory smoked her thin cigarette as her poodle, Satan wrapped up in forty pounds of white fur, hissed and snarled at me.
“Mr Bullet,” she spoke in a pitch higher than Everest , “I believe my husband is having an affair.”
Yeah, nine out of ten, it’s the suspicion of a cheating spouse and nine out of ten that’s the correct answer.
“You wanna confirm it?” I asked “or do you want peace of mind? I’d suggest you sit back and let the whole thing run its course, but if you wanna get leverage over your better half then sure lady, I can conjure up some nice juicy pictures.”
The past her prime dame, took a drag on her cigarette and let the smoke issue heavenly upwards.
“I can’t rest without knowing the facts. I need the truth Mr. Bullet.”
Yeah, they all say that, not knowing that the truth isn’t like a gentle pinch more like a fifty-tone punch to the pelvis. Like a wish on the monkey’s paw, they get what they ask for, and it tears them up inside like swallowing a demonic paper shredder.
“Well okay lady,” I shrugged “just gimme a few facts huh?”
I wish I could tell ya that this case led to some shady land deal or that Mr Mallory was found dead in his office but no, I just sat on my ass for seventy-two hours outside his mistress’s house before snapping the photos. I was paid my dues, and I read in a paper months later the Mallorys had separated.
So, what can one say only that a private eye’s life can be as tedious as a three-day car journey across the Midwest. That’s the fact, jack.
