Lee Hacklyn 1980s Private Investigator in Wrestlinguistics: Lee Hacklyn, #1

By John Leister

New York City. 1984.

 

Lee is hired by professional wrestler Val Gerschel,

AKA Vain Glorius, to investigate what he believes

is the murder of American Wrestling Society President

Tad Miller.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Leister
• Release date: Oct 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215005989

Book preview

New York City.  1984.

CHAPTER ONE

Well, isn’t this a dandy way to start a day?

Initially, it started off great.

I was always happy to find my office door actually locked.

Every cleaning lady, um, I mean, Clean-and-Tidyista, I’d ever hired had this alarming habit of leaving my office door unlocked.

Not that there was a lot inside to steal and what there was wasn’t worth much.

My client chairs and desk came from the Salvation Army.  My coffee maker was a birthday present from my sister, Ann.  My filing cabinet, which actually had a few files in it, came with the office.

It was the lack of mindfulness that bothered me.

Like the toilet paper roll in my bathroom at home.  It isn’t next to the toilet, where it ought to be.  It’s next to the bathtub.

Of course, the first time I took a shower there, my own lack of mindfulness resulted in a soaked and ruined roll of toilet paper.

How about the person whose job it is to replace the toilet paper rolls in a restaurant restroom for the customers; and doesn’t bother to pull on the end a little more to make it easier for the customers to actually use it.

Or when I’m in a movie theatre and there’s a huge bag of garbage sitting right in front of it?

Oh, I get it.

Fires never happen.

Anyway, the source of my old man grumpiness, hell, I wasn’t old, I wasn’t even middle-aged—was I?—was the broken key I had in the keyhole of my office door.

I’d already tried to pull it out with my fingertips.  No dice.  Always carry a pair of tweezers on your person, in case of an emergency, like this one.

What was I going to do?  Call a locksmith?  Is there such a thing as a lockjones?  Oh, of all things.  That’s going to cost me a fortune.

I resisted an urge to cry.  I’m fearless, for real, I’ve got what the CIA guys call, a kill list, to prove it, when it comes to fighting evil, but this kind of stuff drives me to despair.

It’s not the big challenges of life that make us lose our marbles.  They only happen, sometimes, and when they do, it’s sink or swim. 

Most of us, I think, have a survival instinct in our DNA that will compel us to swim, like Mark Spitz.

Most of us will do just about anything, if we have to, even if it was for nothing more than a guarantee of at least one more second of corporeal existence.

I can’t imagine what goes on in a person’s mind before he actually goes through the act of suicide, the one thing that we can never take back.

If you walk out of a bad movie, you’ll never know if got any better.  I think life is like that.

I put my back against the wall, slid down it, landed on my butt and lit a Blue Buzzard.

Sad Sack, the movie, starring Yours Truly.

The elevator doors opened and a famous man alit from the car.  He was so mammoth, it’s a wonder the cables didn’t snap.

He was at least seven feet tall and maybe two hundred and fifty pounds of solid muscle.  He looked like one of those guys you see on the cover of magazines like Muscle and Fitness.

Moussed hair, red tank top, terry-cloth headband, high-tops, spandex, not a lot in the bulge department, hey, I’m a private eye, I’m expected to notice EVERYTHING, maybe a side effect from steroids, a word that never appeared in any of the muscle mags I leafed through while standing in line at Galaxy Groceries.

His eyes were terrifying and narrow.

He wore a portable phone on his fanny pack that could’ve doubled as a paperweight.

I’m looking for Lee Hacklyn.

Isn’t everybody?

I have no patience for smart-asses.

Even a genuinely funny and insightful smart-ass?

His mouth twitched upwards, but he willed it into a disapproving frown.

Who does that?

People who like power.

CHAPTER TWO

I put my smoke out, dropped the butt into my jacket pocket, rubbed my hands together and warily stuck out my right hand.

I said, I’m afraid you’ve caught me with my pants down, Vain.

We shook.

He liked that I knew who he was, released my now-sore hand on it’s own recognizance, so to speak and said, My real name’s Val Gerschel.  But most folks call me Vain.  That’s fine.

His stage name was Vain Glorious.

He was a professional wrestler—what they now call sport entertainment—in the American Wrestling Society.

I love that they called it a society.

I’d watched wrestling as a kid, and still did, on occasion. 

Sometimes Vain was a what they call a heel, or bad guy, other times, he was what they call a babyface, or good guy.

I had to give the writers credit.  They came up with some pretty wild storylines. Nothing was off the table.  The ring was no holds barred, inside and outside.  Alien, time-travel, the occult, everything was fair game.

I pointed at my door and said, I broke my key in the lock.  And how’s your day going?

Vain grunted and said, I’m gonna enjoy this part of it.

He raised his foot and fired the bottom of it at my door.  It did not have